Tag Archives: scripture

His Disciple: The Search & The Priority

Intro

There is a narrow path and a broad path, of that, I’m sure. Not just because Jesus told us so, which would have been enough for me, but because I see these paths. I see what leads to life, and what leads to death. But through the blurry vision of just past middle-aged eyes, I see something else and it stirs emotions in me that I haven’t been quite sure how to manage.

I see those who chose the narrow road now attempting to widen that road. Cutting away things that make it harder to walk, things that make the narrowing. Redefining sin. Cutting out whole parts of God’s words. Twisting what is left to fit nicely over flesh that wants control of the ship and I am grieved somewhere deep and wondering if I too have a machete in my hand.

So I am doing the only thing I know to do. I’m going to search the scriptures for what it looks like to be a true disciple of Jesus. A follower who walks a narrow road behind the One who walked it first. I’m doing this for two reasons: to let God uncover my own heart in this matter, and to know how to pray for others who are widening what must remain narrow.

Let’s Go

We hear Him speak for the first time when He was twelve, after a frantic search by His parents found Him in the temple courts “sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.”

And He said to them, “Why did you seek Me? Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?” Other versions say “My Father’s House.”, but in either version I see the same thing:

Jesus was, and is, always about His Father’s business (and personally, I think the Father’s business is His house, which is His Church). Regardless, what Jesus is not always about is our business. Our agenda. Our vision. Our dreams and goals and ideas. Listen to what He said when Peter attempted to rebuke Him for saying He must suffer—

“But He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.” (Matthew 16:23)

Strong statement made to someone Jesus loved. But let this sink in: Peter thought he had in mind the right thing. He knew in part, saw in part, but thought he understood in full. We are Peter’s brothers and sisters, cut from the same cloth. I just don’t know that very many of us would admit to it.

From the first recorded words of the Son of God we get our first glimpse of His priority, and that priority never changed.

“ Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work.” (John 4:34)

“For I have not spoken on My own authority; but the Father who sent Me gave Me a command, what I should say and what I should speak.” (John 12:49)

“I can of Myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is righteous, because I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me.” (John 5:30)

 “Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done.” (Luke 22:42)

If I desire to be His true disciple, my priorities must align with His and that, dear friend, is easier said than done. As much as I wish it were not true, self-interest runs deep through my heart, filled with my preferences, my assumptions, and my wants. Oh, they aren’t presented that way. No sir. Sometimes they’re labeled as my calling, how I’m wired, my giftings, my mission.

So this is the first stop on my search for true discipleship. To wrestle with my own heart and what it wants and why it wants it and most of all, is it willing to give all of that up for what He wants? To let Him strip away the stuff that gathers over time that tends to make me forget what I know to be true: The whole world and everything in it is about God. The wide road makes it about us.

Lord, have Your way in me. Let something shift in me that brings down the idol of self-interest, self-priority, and self-preservation. I want my heart to align with Yours, so Jesus, show me Your heart.

We’re just getting started. Thanks for reading. See you next time.

Exodus 1: Who Is Afraid of the Men?

It started in Genesis when Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers and taken to Egypt. Then God sent a famine, which brought the rest of Joseph’s family to Egypt seeking food. Tears, forgiveness, and grace all flowed freely, as did favor. Because Pharoah favored Joseph, he also showed kindness and favor to his family.

And then Joseph’s generation died, a new king came to power, and everything changed.

And this is where we can learn an important lesson.

 He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and powerful than we are. Come, let’s deal shrewdly with them; otherwise they will multiply further, and when war breaks out, they will join our enemies, fight against us, and leave the country.” 

Exodus 1:9-10

Oppression doesn’t always come from a desire to have more power and control. Sometimes it comes from fear. Maybe we try to hold down and control the thing (or people) we fear the most. And maybe when it works, we feel powerful, and we want more of that feeling. Maybe.

But sometimes it backfires. Egypt’s king was afraid of the large number of Israelites, so he had them oppressed and what do you know? The more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied, and I wonder if that’s what happens when we try to push down and control the thing we fear. It just gets bigger.

So the fearful king tried a different strategy. He tried to control their population by killing off the boy babies, because boys become men and that was actually the fear the king was trying to hold down.

“…otherwise they will multiply further, and when war breaks out, they will join our enemies, fight against us, and leave the country.” 

Women didn’t go to war, men did. So the king needed to stop boys from becoming men.

And that right there is a rabbit trail I wish we had time to explore. Instead, the conspiracy theorist in me is just gonna throw out a few questions to ponder –

Why is our culture trying so hard to keep boys from becoming men? Why are they being encouraged to become girls? Why are they calling masculinity toxic and encouraging men to suppress who they were created to be? Who is afraid of men being men?

Thankfully, the midwives feared God more than they feared the king, and the plan to eliminate the growing population of boys who would become men failed.

What is your fear? How are you handling that fear? Is it working?

Do you fear God more?

As the Church, have we adopted the fear of our current culture and bought into the lie that men are bad, or toxic? God forbid. I pray that we will be the ones who fear God enough to speak the truth and who encourage men to be men. Godly men, but by all means, men.

Declaration & Praise: Day 4

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.” – Matthew 13:45-46
“But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things.” Philippians 3:7-8

Jesus, You are the pearl of great price. My greatest treasure. Worth everything that I have and more. Nothing on this earth could ever compare to You, nothing can compete with You, and nothing is worth not having You.

Whatever I had before, whatever I could ever gain in this life, it’s nothing compared to the worth of knowing You. I will gladly lose everything for Your sake. Your love is better than life to me. I would rather spend just one single day in Your presence, than thousands of them anywhere else.

Jesus, You are worth the surrender of everything. Today, I will not hold tightly to possessions or accolades. Both are revealed to be rubbish in the light of Your presence. Today, I will remember the treasure I have in You and the incredible gift of knowing You.

genesis 28: the ladder

“And he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it!”

That ladder. Connecting heaven with earth. Because sin happened and God no longer walks in the garden with us. That ladder had a lot of meaning, more than Jacob probably understood.

“And He [Jesus] said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” (John 1:51)

This ladder. Connecting heaven with earth. Connecting sons and daughters with their Father.

Giving access to His throne. To His heart. To Him.

From the garden when the connection with His presence was broken, to the dream of a man on the run, to a tabernacle in the wilderness, to a bloody cross on a hill, God has been telling us that He doesn’t want to be apart from us. Every dream, every detail of that first temple, and every sacrifice from the first one to the final one…every step of pursuit has been our Father’s heart for nearness to His children.

How painful then, to see so many come to Jesus but not to the Father. They receive salvation but live as though still father-less.

He is the way (to your Father). The truth (about your Father). The life (with your Father).

You didn’t just need a way out of hell, you needed a way to your Father. Jesus gives you both.

i remember – my soul longs for You

See, there is this yearning on its way. It comes in answer to prayer. A yearning for the more, the deeper, the overwhelmed by God. To long for Him. The wake me up in the middle of the night to speak with me kind of thing. The get out of my way I’m going to meet with Jesus thing that I can’t explain any better than that. That’s my yearning and it’s here, like waves hitting the shores — strong one minute and then it recedes, only to return bigger and stronger.

I asked for this yearning and I feel the urgency to grab it and live in it. Put it on like a robe and allow myself to simply long for more of Jesus everywhere I am.

In the morning, I want to have to extricate myself from His presence so I can go to work. I want to feel the pull and I want it to be strong. I want it to be hard to leave the Word of God, to leave our conversation, you know? 

At work, I want this longing to be the background in every conversation, every task. I’m sick to death of longing for lunchtime, or 5:00, or Friday or some thing. Silly longings that have no meaning except to a flesh soothed by silly things. 

I want to choose Him over my television, over social media, over myself, every single time. I want to wake in the night and seek His voice and have whispered talks with Him until I fall back to sleep.

I want to prefer time with Jesus more than anything else, and right now – I do not. Right now I enjoy being with Him, but my soul has not been yearning for Him. Longing to be with Him. But it’s coming. The waves are hitting the shore of my soul like I knew they would. Because I asked. I asked Him to call me back again to the longing place. 

I have been in His Word in preparation for leading others – in bible studies, in Lifegroup (small group), or in public speaking. But it’s been too long since I’ve come to His Word just to be with Him. Too much to do, for underlining and scribbling notes in the margins. No time for lingering, for the slow turn of pages waiting for Him to speak. Because He takes His time you know. He’s in no hurry. He’s not like me.

But this morning I came, in no rush. Nowhere else to be. I came and I opened a battered, torn, book where I have always found Him waiting for me. In familiar pages I breathed in and caught His breath and I remembered.

I remembered that I love Him and I miss Him and that He feels the same way about me.

I remembered that there is nothing on earth that comes close to soothing my soul like time spent with Him here, in slow turning pages worn from seasons of longing. 

I remembered that I learned the sound of His voice here in this book. I learned who He is here and who I am and that I haven’t learned it all.

I remembered that this is where I sit at the feet of Jesus. It’s where I learned to pray and where I learned to worship. I remembered that this is where I found truth and learned my worth.

I remembered that the nearness of His presence found in these worn pages has no rival. 

And I remembered that being with Him makes me long to be with Him.

I pray you remember that your soul longs for Him.

declarations

Hard week. A member of our lifegroup lost her 23-year-old son on Saturday. We are all a bit in shock, I think, but at the same time, our church community has gathered like an army around this family. It’s a beautiful picture to watch. If you think about it, lift up the Thomas family in prayer. They are living every parents’ worst fear.

At lifegroup last night I felt led to have us do some declaring. So after worship, we got down to it. With 3 pages of declarations in hand, we went around the table taking turns reading them. It got a little loud at times, lemme tell ya. These women de.clared some things! Vehemently. Passionately. Beautifully.

It left us wanting more.

I don’t know the mechanics of it. Can’t answer why. But I do know this – there is power in the room when truth is being declared. There is a fierce kind of faith that rises up when the scriptures are spoken over those in the room. When we declare the truth over ourselves and over our lives, lies begin to break.

{Because a lie from the enemy cannot withstand the sword of the Spirit.}

We will have ‘declaration nights’ more often. And hopefully, that will turn into declaration mornings for us individually. And declaration days. Until declaring truth is how we live life.

top 3 list, but bottom line, read the bible. find God.

In my previous post I talked about the top 3 reasons Christians aren’t reading the Bible. This time, I’m giving my top 3 scriptural reasons why Christians need to read the Bible.

You have been created with purpose, and there are good works that have been planned for you to do.  You need a thorough equipping in order to live the life and do the work God has for you, and it will only be done through Scripture.

But how have many believers twisted this one? By assuming that it means that scripture is useful to us for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training OTHER PEOPLE. So when (if) they spend time in God’s word, it is for that purpose — to prove that others are wrong. I have seen the fallout from those who have used Scripture against other people while ignoring what it says about themselves. It turns people away from the Word of God, and even from the Church. It wounds the Body of Christ.

I want to speak particularly to mothers and fathers. Do not attempt to train your children with the Word of God unless you are allowing it to train you. Do not wield an authority that has not been tempered with humility. We are never more humbled than when we allow the Word of God to tell us we are wrong and then teach us how to be right. If you do not train your children up with humility, it will be done with pride. And pride hurts more than the prideful.

The Word of God, describing itself:  I am alive. I am active. I am sharp. I am penetrating. I divide. I judge.

We know ourselves enough to know there are things that need to change. Thoughts, attitudes, motives. But the trend I have been witnessing is the people of God devouring anything that will tell them they are okay the way they are. Those soothing blog posts that tell us that we need to love ourselves, accept ourselves and be our own champions sound like truth to ears begging for something sweet. Sermons and podcasts that convince us that our greatest mission is to go out, love others and share the Gospel. So we have an entire generation of people doing just that. Just that. Because we forgot to tell them that before Jesus commissioned His disciples, He taught them, and He revealed their own hearts to them. He allowed Peter to deny Him, because Peter needed to know that denial was in him. He revealed the motives of brothers who wanted the best seats. He called His closest followers out for their lack of faith on numerous occasions. We like to look at the stories in scripture and see that His disciples were ordinary people, just like us. That makes us feel better about ourselves. But we fail to see that they became extraordinary people because they had been with Jesus, the Word of God, night and day for three years straight. The disciples did not remain the same people they were before they began following Him. Neither should we.

Jesus is the Word of God. Then and now.

To those first followers, He was alive and active. Sharp. Dividing. Judging. Is He the same for His followers today? Yes. If we are in the Word of God, allowing it to do the work of piercing, dividing and revealing. If not, we are a people learning to love ourselves to death, sharing a Gospel we are not really experiencing.

How can we live a life of purity? How do we seek Him with all of our heart? How do we keep ourselves from sin? Every answer is the same.

The Word of God.

How are you living according to the Word of God, if you are not living in the Word of God? If you are living according to the Word of God, then you are living according to His will and His ways. If you are not living according to His will and His ways — then you are living according to someone else’s will and ways. I’ll give you one guess as to who that someone is.

Where did David hide God’s Word? In the place where sin begins.

“But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.” {Matthew 15:18-19} 

He didn’t hide it in his mind. While knowing the Word of God begins with mental knowledge, it cannot remain there. It must make its way into our soul (mind, will and emotions), into our heart. My personal opinion? We can know the Word of God in our minds, but still not believe it or trust it. But when we meditate on it, choosing to let it go into our hearts and bring forth change, then we are in a place of not just knowing His Word, but trusting it to be true and right.

So let’s review my top 3 reasons that Christians need to read the Bible:

  1.  We need to be thoroughly equipped to live the life God has called us to live. And, we need to be taught, rebuked, corrected and trained by the Word of God. We just do.
  2. We need the piercing, dividing, revealing work of the Word. We have no idea the things that are in our own hearts. We need the Word of God to tell us that we have hidden motives, thoughts, and desires that are contrary to Him, and that it’s just not ok to stay that way.
  3. We need the Word of God to keep us from sin. Bottom line. That will not happen through sermons, or through a brief or sporadic glance at scriptures. It comes when we have lived in the Word of God until it is living in us.

Jesus found me in a hospital cafeteria, covered in sin. I found Him in the scriptures, covered in blood and grace and mercy and kindness and truth and glory.

My life, my character, my motives, my thoughts, my belief system — all changed when I was found by Jesus and surrendered to His lordship. That was the timing of it. But the method of it was by immersing myself in the living Word of God, and staying there.

Read your Bible. Find God.