Category Archives: Culture

It’s Life or Death

Quiet time with Jesus this morning was fast and furious. Some days it’s slow, quiet, and contemplative. Not today. A few days ago I felt led to return to the book of Genesis. It’s a well read, well underlined, highlighted, circled book in my bible, but I was sure that God would say something fresh from it. I was not wrong. Let’s get to it.

 The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (Genesis 2:9)

A planting from God in the center of man’s world, from the very beginning. Adam, and all who would come after him would continually be confronted with a choice—life or death, and the loving command of God to choose life.

“This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to His voice, and hold fast to Him.” (Deuteronomy 30:19-20)

“The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and life.” (John 6:63)

From one end of the Bible to the other runs a continual theme. Choose God’s way and live, or choose our own way and find death.

“There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death” (Proverbs 14:12)

After four hundred years of silence between the prophet Malachi and the Gospels, God spoke the same refrain. Choose life or choose death.

“For God so loved the world that he gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

“Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” (John 14:6)

But the choice before us isn’t only about heaven or hell. Every day we face small decisions that either breathe life into something or slowly choke it out.

Choosing spiritual apathy will bring death to zeal and passion. But if we will choose the pursuit of God, and zeal for His house, it will bring life to our souls and life to the Church.

Choosing offense and bitterness suffocates forgiveness and restoration—and eventually the relationship itself. But choosing God’s way of grace, mercy, and forgiveness brings life back into our own hearts and breathes new life into relationships that were being threatened with death.

Every time we choose our own way over God’s way, death comes to something. In the center of our existence the choice has been planted, and we must decide the way we will choose to walk. Life, or death.

Jesus or the world. Our own flesh and emotions or obedience to God. Offense that leads to a bitter heart, or forgiveness that heals and restores. The pull of apathy or the call to a “one thing” heart posture, a continual pursuit of the heart and ways of God, and a zeal for Him and His house, the Church.

Choose you this day…

Questions to ask and things to ponder:

  • In the abundance of choices that I make every day, how many of them bring death instead of life?
  • In the big picture of how I live my life, am I choosing life?
  • How can I begin to speak and/or pray life over the people I love?

Living His Truth: Unoffended

Skandalizō is the Greek word for offend, and it has a number of meanings.

  • to entice to sin (Matthew 5:29; 1Corinthians 8:13)
  • to cause a person to begin to distrust and desert one whom he ought to trust and obey; to cause to fall away; to stumble (John 6:61; Matthew 26:33)
  • to be offended in one, i.e. to see in another what I disapprove of and what hinders me from acknowledging his authority (Matthew 11:6; Mark 6:3)
  • to cause one to judge unfavorably or unjustly of another (Matthew 17:27)
  • to cause one displeasure at a thing (Matthew 15:12)

I think it’s safe to say that the opportunities for us to become offended at others or at God are many. I can count, using both hands at least, the people I have known throughout my walk with Jesus who have become offended, using most if not all of the definitions above.

Watching people stumble, enter a life of sin, or walk away altogether, is hard, especially since it is avoidable. Our offenses spring from our flesh and we have been given the Holy Spirit, who does not get offended.

Offended is our choice, not something that happens to us, or something we do that we just couldn’t help.

Mary and Martha could have chosen to be offended when Jesus did not come to heal Lazarus. They may have been hurt, but they did not become offended. (John 11)

In Matthew 11, John the Baptist is in prison, and asks what is now a very well known question:

“Are You the One who is to come, or should we expect someone else?”

The same man who said “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” (John 1:29) is now saying “are You the one?” Jesus’ answer seems puzzling.

 “Jesus replied, “Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.”

I believe John the Baptist knew who Jesus was, but doubts crept in when Jesus didn’t do what John thought He would do. Like many others, perhaps he thought Jesus was there to start a revolution and overthrow Rome. Instead, He was going to “the least of these”.

It seems to me that Jesus’ pronouncement of blessing on anyone who doesn’t stumble because of Him, was also a warning to John. It’s Me, John. I am still the One. Don’t get offended because I am not doing what you expected of Me.

I think we need to hear the same warning because so many of us are waiting for Jesus to “restore to us the kingdom” by overthrowing a government and leading a great political revolution. Or perhaps we’re waiting for Him to give us what we want. To make our lives comfortable, fulfill our dreams, and help us succeed in all of our plans.

Instead, Jesus is still going to the least of us. Healing, bringing us back to life, and telling us the good news that we can be saved from our wretchedness. He is sanctifying us, often by fire, to rid us of our impurities, our selfishness, and our idolatry. Turning our ways into His way. And sometimes, as in the case of Mary and Martha, it can look like He’s not doing anything at all, when in fact He is about to show us the glory of God!

It’s Me, Church. I am still the One. Don’t get offended because I am not doing what you expected of Me.

We may get our feelings hurt. We might get angry at God and for sure one another. But when we choose to be offended we have chosen something far more serious, and dangerous, which is why I think Satan’s goal isn’t hurt feelings in the people of God. It is to encourage us to be offended. And the deeper the offense, the better.

The truth is, Jesus is still the One, His Word is still true, and His ways are still higher than our ways. He is still the head, and we are the body.

We cannot be offended at the body, without being offended at the head. I’ve known people who have said “I love Jesus, I just can’t stand Christians.” Or, “I love Jesus, but I don’t want anything to do with the Church.” The truth is, Jesus will never separate Himself from His Church. We do that, and it is always based on an offense.

We are His Church and the command still stands to walk in love toward one another, to forgive one another, and to consider others above ourselves. To pray together, walk together, serve together, and worship God together.

Bottom line: The whole world is offended these days, and the enticement to join them in it is strong. But we are not the world, we are the Church.

We can choose to live unoffended.

Living His Truth: Crucified

When a woman sat in front of me last year wrestling with her life, she said that someone kept telling her that she needed to live her own truth. Man, that just got my hackles up and they still haven’t gone down. Angry, is what it made me, because that “live your own truth” thing is a lie from hell sent to mess God’s people UP. So I’m going to address it the only way I know. A screen and my keyboard and the Word of God opened up in front of me. This series will be called Living His Truth.

And He said to all, “If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me. – Luke 9:23

And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. – Galatians 5:24

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. – Galatians 2:20

In all honesty, if I live my truth, I’m going to avoid any hint of denying myself or being crucified. My truth tells me to avoid pain, to avoid discomfort, to avoid not getting my own way. My truth is to live in whatever way feels good to me, whatever agrees with my flesh, my feelings, my emotions, my whatever. Because the heart wants what it wants. The problem is that our hearts are wicked and deceitful above all things. (Jeremiah 17:9)

Living my own truth is why I needed to be saved.

Let’s visit the garden, just for a moment.

“You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. {Genesis 3:4-6}

See what he did there? He convinced her that God’s truth wasn’t her truth. And he’s still doing it today because why fix what works?

I don’t get to live however I want to live, if I call Jesus Lord. Following Christ means I follow Him to the cross and I crucify whatever my own will calls truth, and I choose to live according to His truth.

Let’s recap.

My truth will lead me to live my way, not His. Therefore, I can conclude that my truth is not actually true, because if I am walking in the truth, I will walk in the ways of God, who is Truth.

If my truth is not actually true, then I do not have my own truth, I have my own lie.

Moral of the story? If someone is telling you to live your own truth, they are telling you to live a lie. Don’t do that. Deny “your own truth”, pick up your cross every day, and follow Jesus.

We are His people and part of that privilege is that we choose to be crucified with Him so that we no longer live, but He lives in us.

And Jesus will never live our truth.