Remember Christ Our Savior Was Born On Christmas Day

I love this Christmas carol. It often goes through my mind throughout the season because it reminds us that it wasn't just a baby that was born, but the Savior who saves us from our sins.

There is no other. 

"I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life", He said when he grew up...and died on the cross for our sins...and rose again.

"Remember Christ our SAVIOR was born on Christmas Day".

Remembering The Jesus Of Christmas (Audio)

This week's audio message:

Remembering The Jesus of Christmas

Grace For Life audio archives are here.

Remembering The Jesus Of Christmas

It's almost Christmas as I write.

And we all know the Christian warnings about remembering Jesus. Jesus is the reason for the season. Keep Christ in Christmas. And these cliches have become cliches because they are valid.

Still, the baby in a manger was just the beginning.

It's good to celebrate the birth of Christ. But the Son of God didn't come to earth for the purpose of being a baby. As He grew in years, He grew in wisdom and stature, as a man. He was and is God, but now God with us, Emmanuel.

And He came to us, dwelt with us, tabernacled with us, in a human body, on Earth, that He might die to pay for our sins, so that we might be saved, forgiven. And then He rose again from the dead, and lives today, in a body at the right hand of the Father, but by His Spirit in us, who believe in Him.

Have you ever done Bible memorization? I have.

If you have, one verse you probably haven't memorized is 2 Tim. 2:8.

It's something important that Paul the Apostle told his spiritual son and protege, Timothy. He tells Timothy to remember something. It's something that you wouldn't think Timothy would need to be reminded of. But he did need to be reminded of it, and so do you, and I.

2 Tim. 2:8:

“Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, descendant of David, according to my gospel.“

Why would Paul remind Timothy to remember Jesus?

1. To be strong in grace.

“You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.”

Strong in the Grace? Sounds like a contradiction.

But life is tough, isn’t it? Timothy had things to do. And so do you.

These things require the grace of God. Remember Paul’s thorn in the flesh?

We can’t be strong in grace if we don’t remember Jesus, that He is alive (risen from the dead). He's not just a dead Savior, He is a living Savior, and may I say it like Jesus did?...He calls us his friends.

Can you imagine? We are FOJ's. Friends of Jesus. The Creator of the Universe, the Lord of all Creation, the almighty God, calls us His friends.

And the Lord wants us to be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.

Do you ever hear preachers, or other Christian folks, all they talk about is sin? Now if you're preaching through the Bible and you come to something about sin, preach it. But do you notice how some think the most important subject in the world is sin? I'm talking about Christian brothers and sisters. They think the most important subject in the world is sin.

Now sin is important. As Christians we're against it, aren't we? But we don't need a huge amount of teaching about it, because we are very familiar with it, aren't we? It's not something we need to be constantly reminded of, or to be constantly dwelling on.

What we do need to be constantly reminded of, and to be dwelling on is Jesus Christ, and His astounding grace. That's what honors Christ, and that's what gives us the light to walk by, the light to walk in the Spirit. And the Bible says that when we walk by the Spirit we won't fulfill the lust of the flesh.

See how that works? If we dwell on sin, we end up trying to defeat it in the flesh, which just compounds the mess. It's like trying to clean honey off of your hand with your other hand, and both hands end up sticky with nowhere to go.

But if we dwell on Jesus, who gives us the water of life, He by grace fills us with His Spirit, and we walk with clean hands. It's grace we need to obsess over, not the Law and sin. And the grace will minimize the sin, as we realize freshly that we are not under Law but under grace, and we are dead to sin and alive to God through Jesus Christ, Rom. 6:11.

"The Law came by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." –John 1:17

2. Because of His past faithfulness.

Don’t you just love the Book of Psalms?

An entire Christian life could be spent meditating on the Psalms. Maybe no other book so exalts God as the powerful creator of the universe, and maybe no other book exalts God as the faithful provider of mercy for His children.

He is faithful.

And the Psalm-writers, mostly David, write over and over about remembering the Lord.

I want to mention some things the Psalmist says about the Lord, and just let them wash over you.

Take a few moments. Be still, and know He is God.

Remember Him for these things. His:

Loving-kindness
Mercy
Word
Salvation
Faithfulness
Deliverance
Justice
Compassion
Righteousness
Strength
Watchful eye
Blessing
Protection

We are so prone to forget these things, and partly because we are so prone to forget Him.

We live in a “now” world.

We have things to do, people to see, presents to buy, things to arrange, go go go!

And we've got problems, and we have them NOW.

And we know we will have more problems in the future.

And so we’re prone to worry.

But then we remember Jesus.
That He is born in Bethlehem.
That He died for us, for the forgiveness of our sins.
That He is risen.
That He is here.
And not just here, but in us (Christ in you, the hope of glory).

And we remember His faithfulness in the past.

How He rescued us from that storm of life (even a literal storm, maybe).
How He comforted us in that loss we had.
How we had this thorn in our flesh, but His grace was sufficient.
How we lost hope in a certain person and then God turned them around.
How we had that financial setback or lost that job, and He provided.
How we thought we just couldn’t get through that one thing, and He brought us through it.

And so we remember His past faithfulness to us.

We remember Him as we walk through the day, and we remember Him as we lie on our beds at night, like David did.

We remember Him as our Rock and our Fortress, and our Deliverer, and our Friend, and we long for Him like the deer who pants after the waterbrook.

And we love Him. We love Him.

And we remember that He loved us first. Even when we were unloveable. And maybe we don’t feel all that loveable even today. But He loves us anyway. And so we love Him.

I became a Christian in 1976.

Contemporary Christian Music was a brand new phenomenon.

Four years before I became a Christian, there was a man named John Fischer who wrote a song. And it’s a song I have never forgotten in 30 years. It’s simple, almost simplistic, but it sticks in your mind, and it blesses you, and then you realize how profound the simple little song is.

It’s called the “All Day Song”.

"Love Him in the morning when you see the sun arising,
Love Him in the evening ‘cause He took you through the day.
And in the in-between times when you feel the pressure coming,
Remember that He loves you and He promises to stay."

Have a blessed Christmas as we celebrate the birth of our Savior!

Merry Christmas.

Baby Jesus - 3 Reasons To Reject Him (Audio)

This week's audio message:

Baby Jesus: 3 Reasons To Reject Him

Grace For Life audio archives are here.

Baby Jesus - 3 Reasons To Reject Him

1. Virgins don’t have babies.

I mean, the whole idea is absurd. Remember the birds and the bees? Remember biology? Remember, the egg has to be fertilized by the seed, then grows until birth? How could a virgin have a baby without any seed to fertilize the egg?

2. Gods don’t humble themselves.

There has never been a humble God in history. From the beginnings of man in Mesopotamia, Gods aren’t humble. Gods can’t be humble. After all they’re gods. They are above men, they rule over men, they squash men at will, they fight with men, they dominate men.

To humble themselves would be to show weakness, to show that they’re really not gods. No god ever humbled himself and no god ever will.

3. Gods don’t make friends.

This goes along with number two. Gods don’t make friends because that would be to humble themselves. And they sure don’t make friends with man. What do they even have in common? Nothing. Gods are gods and men are men, and never the twain shall meet. The very idea of having a god as a friend is like a man having an amoeba for a friend. Not going to happen.

I didn’t actually see it, but I read about an episode of the TV show Thirtysomething. I never watched the show because by the time I even heard of it I was already Forty-something.

But this episode was about the character Hope, who was a Christian, arguing with her Jewish husband, Michael, about the holidays.

“Why do you even bother with Hanukkah?” she asks. “Do you really believe a handful of Jews held off a huge army by using a bunch of lamps that miraculously wouldn’t run out of oil?”

Michael shoots back, “Oh, and Christmas makes more sense? Do you really believe an angel appeared to some teenage girl who then got pregnant without ever having had sex and traveled on horseback to Bethlehem where she spent the night in a barn and had a baby who turned out to be the Savior of the world?”

Well, do you believe it, friend? I do.

Well, it wasn’t a horse that Mary rode to Bethlehem, it was a donkey. But the character Michael got it pretty accurate, otherwise, didn’t he?

And it’s got to be one of the most ridiculous-sounding stories ever to be written, that the writer actually expects you to believe. We’re not talking about some fiction writer telling of Hobbits or Jabba the Hutt, and hoping we’ll pretend to believe it just long enough to enjoy the story. We’re talking about serious theological guys who tell the story of the birth of Jesus without batting an eye, and expect us to believe it as true, down to the last bit.

Well, what about our three reasons to reject this baby Jesus?

Let’s take them one at a time.

1. Virgins don’t have babies.

It’s true they usually don’t. But think with me for a minute. Suppose God wanted to send a Savior to pay for the sins of men by sacrificing Himself on a cross, dying to take our sins on Him so that He could give us the free gift of His righteousness, so that we would be saved from Hell, and have eternal life, everlasting life eventually with God in heaven.

Well, there’s one little problem with that. After Adam sinned in the Garden, sin, or the sinful nature, was forever passed on to everyone who ever lived since, and that sin was passed on, the Bible says, through the seed of man.

But a Savior for man would have to be sinless. A sinner can’t pay the sacrifice for another sinner. To satisfy or appease God’s just wrath against sin, the sacrifice must be perfect, sinless, not only without having committed any sins, but without even a sinful nature. In other words, righteous.

And the sacrifice that God the Father sent, was God the Son. The perfect candidate for sacrifice. Pure, righteous, sinless, and with no sin nature.

But that brings up another problem. How does God the Son get to earth to get this done. After all, since it was by a man that we fell or inherited our sinful nature, it must be a man who sheds His blood in our place for our forgiveness and salvation.

But if Jesus were born as a man in the normal way, then sin would pass on from His earthly dad, through his earthly dad’s seed. Got that? The sinful nature always passes on through the seed of the man.

So God did a miracle, a small miracle for Him really, but one with a huge impact on history. He implanted, miraculously a seed into Mary, which the Bible then calls “the seed of the woman” (see, not the seed of a man). This miraculous seed joined with Mary’s egg, and you know the rest. A sinless baby boy was born. Not only sinless in not ever committing a sin, but sinless in not even having a sinful nature, like the rest of us.

So not only did this virgin have a baby, but it couldn’t have been any other way, or the baby could not have been sinless.

2. Gods don’t humble themselves.

It’s true in human history, that those called gods in verbal stories and written literature never humble themselves. But let me say a couple things about that.

First, they are not really gods, of course. The Bible clearly says there is only one God. There is only one true God who is the Creator of the heavens and the earth, and everything that is in the earth. The Bible says that this one God is in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That’s what theologians have named the Trinity. But there is only one God.

And so all those so-called gods who never humbled themselves, are just made-up stories and superstitions of fictional gods, or in some cases, may be actual beings which we call fallen angels or demons. And anybody knows, no demon is going to humble himself.

But the true God of the Bible did humble Himself.

George Herbert, the poet and Anglican priest of the 1600’s put it poetically like this:

"The God of power, as he did ride
In his majestick robes of glorie
Resolv’d to light; and so one day
He did descend, undressing all the way."

This “undressing all the way” is nothing more than the humbling of the mighty Creator of the universe. This Creator God who spread trillions of galaxies into space, and made the atoms and neutrons and electrons and quasars and army ants and the aardvarks who would eat them; this almighty, all-knowing, all-wise Jehovah God, because He so loved us, humbled Himself.

And came to earth, Emmanuel, God with us. Came to earth as the most helpless creature there is, a baby.

A real baby, by the way. Don’t believe the Christmas carol that says “no crying he makes”. I’m sure He cried alright. And he kicked and cooed, and drooled, and He couldn’t have lived more than a few hours if He wasn’t cared for.

But He grew, and because He was a real baby, He grew to be a real man. He was really God, too. But He set aside the glory and rights that He had as God. Could we dare say, "like a man becoming an amoeba"? Probably not. But it was the most astounding humbling that the world has ever seen.

And it had to be that way, but He didn’t have to do it. The Bible says He did it because He loves us. And He loves us because He chose to love us, before the creation of the world. How’s that for a mystery? He didn’t love us because we’re so lovable, He loved us because He is love, and He chose to love us.


The Bible says He so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whoever believes in Him would not perish, but have eternal life.

An explosion of glorious love as big as God, resulting in a baby away in a manger, no crib for his bed.

3. Gods don’t make friends.

Have you seen the bumper sticker, “The more I get to know people, the more I love my dog.”

It’s a sad point, really, but one that we can understand. People are fearfully and wonderfully made, the Bible says, but the same Bible says "Cursed is he who trusts in man.”

Or how about the cynical little verse, “To dwell above with saints we love, O that will be glory. But to dwell below with saints we know, well that’s a different story.”

What God in His right mind would want to be friends with us?

I would contend that the Bible teaches that God not only loved us when we weren’t lovable, but he chose to befriend us when we were his enemies.

Thankfully, Mary didn’t say to the angel, “Are you crazy?” O.K., she did say, “But I’ve never been with a man.” So she wasn’t gullible. But you know what she was? She was godly. And so she said, “I am the Lord’s servant. May it be to me as you have said.”

She wasn’t gullible and she wasn’t stupid. She had to have known instinctively what she was in for. The humiliation, the doubts even from loved ones, the shame for her betrothed, Joseph, the jeers and stares and tsk tsk’s. But she did what a godly girl should do. She said in effect, “Thy will be done.”

When we read what’s called the "Magnificat", Mary’s beautiful words in Luke Chapter 1 which begin with, “My soul magnifies the Lord”, we see that her language is filled with the Psalms. This tells us that she was probably raised in a Bible-believing home. And this too was part of God’s wonderful plan.

Malcolm Muggeridge, commenting on our modern Roe v. Wade society wrote,

“It is, in point of fact, extremely improbable, under existing conditions, that Jesus would have been permitted to be born at all. Mary’s pregnancy, in poor circumstances, and with the father unknown, would have been an obvious case for an abortion; and her talk of having conceived as a result of the intervention of the Holy Ghost would have pointed to the need for psychiatric treatment, and made the case for terminating her pregnancy even stronger. Thus our generation, needing a Savior more, perhaps, than any that has ever existed, would be too humane to allow one to be born.”

But God worked it out, didn’t He?

With a baby in a manger, who was Himself God, yet man.

And the man grew in wisdom and stature, and He suffered beyond imagination as He shed His blood and died. And by shedding His blood and dying, and rising again from the dead, this man who is also God, became a friend to those who had been His enemies.

This is His Kingdom, the Kingdom of God, a Kingdom of friends of God.

Friends of God are those who have been born again. They are those who believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. And they are those who have given up working and striving to earn God’s love and favor, but accepted the free gift of His love and forgiveness and salvation, by grace.

Jesus said, “No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you.”

As of this message, it’s close to Christmas. The day we celebrate the birth of Jesus. And once again, we are reminded of three wonderful things.

A virgin did have a baby.

And our God did humble Himself.

And the one true almighty God has made us His friends.

Happy Birthday Jesus...and thank you.

Replacing Resentment With Forgiveness

I love science. I'm far from being a scientist, but I love the observation of "the way things are".

And one of the "way things are" is that we are "fearfully and wonderfully made" (Psalm 139:14).

And one of the ways we are fearfully and wonderfully made is in how our soul (mind, emotions and will) affects our body.

And one of the ways our soul affects our body is in the devasting effects of unforgiveness.

We might assume this from the Scriptures, and rightfully so, but it is science which has actually demonstrated that the following is true:

"Resentment is like taking poison, and waiting for the other person to die."

Self-interest is not as high a motive as Spirit-filled obedience to our loving God, but it doesn't hurt to hear the words of scientists who have studied unforgiveness. They have universally found that unforgiveness, bitterness, anger, etc., cause increases in heart rate, blood pressure, cortisol (a fat-producing hormone), nervousness, adrenalin, restlessness, sadness, cardiovascular disease, relationship problems (duh..), and immune deficiency.

But forgiveness is only possible as we draw near to our Lord. As we commune with Him through the Word of God and prayer, as He expresses His Life through us, as we are filled with His Spirit, and as we walk by the Spirit, forgiveness is as natural as the fruit of the Spirit, which is love. Fellowship with Him. Practice His Presence. Let go of the resentment.

May grace and forgiveness govern our relationships. Healing balm for our souls and bodies. Isn't science something?

Daisy Theology

Do you know what Daisy Theology is?

Here are some clues:

1. It quenches the peace of God.
2. It causes believers to experience condemnation, in direct violation of Romans 8:1.
3. It steals the joy of salvation.
4. It's contagious, spreading it's lie like a virus, everytime someone "sneezes" it.
5. It is rampant in the minds of many believers, and therefore in the church.
6. It is seldom directly taught from the pulpit, but it's virus is smeared all over congregations by implication.
7. It seems to "make sense", but is utterly unbiblical, destructive, and anti-Christ (I know, "Picky, picky, picky").

Give up?

Daisy Theology says, "He loves me ... He loves me not ... He loves me ... He loves me not."

Some seem to spend their whole Christian lives that way. They may not say that God doesn't love them, but they feel it. And they feel it because they think it. And they think it because it's taught to them every time performance-based Christianity is held up as an idol.

And it's a shame.

And it's not just a shame. It's a blasphemous denial of the Cross of Christ, where He said, "it is finished". It's Galatianism at its most subtle. It's the attitude that God loves me when I'm "good", and frowns with disappointment and anger when I'm not "good".

It's screamed from the pulpit every time condemnation is heaped on the sheep, because they aren't performing to perfection.

It's screamed by pop Christian books that consist of nothing but 10 or 40 or 100 "rules to live by". Books like How to Be A Good ______ [husband, wife, friend, Christian, worshiper, charity worker, pray-er, etc. ad nauseum].

Written by men and women who know that they fall short, but think it is incumbent on them to tell everyone else how to be a "Good ______."

Not just precious principles from a loving God who loves us because He chose to before the foundation of the world, but rules to measure by. Rules to condemn by.

Daisy Theology is one of the most subtle and destructive corruptions of the Word of God that has ever been cooked up by the Doctrines of Demons, Inc. lie factory.

Don't buy their product! Call the Better Bible Bureau and report them! If you are Christ's, there is nothing that can separate you from His love. Don't forget that. There is nothing you can do that will make Him love you more or love you less. He loves you, period. The curtain has been torn apart. The wall has been torn down. It is finished. He loves you, period.

Don't even look at a daisy, until you are completely recovered.

Grace For Life Creations

Grace For Life Creations
graceforlife.com/gifts

Grace For Life has inspirational gifts that are designed to renew your mind.

Romans 12:1 tells us not to be conformed to the world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.  

The thing that renews our minds is scriptural truth.  

And so Michele is continually designing more and more gifts with scriptural truth incorporated into the gift.  These make good gifts to give to others, or for yourself.

This includes things like:

• Mugs
• T-Shirts
• Water Bottles
• Notecards
• Tote Bags
• Mouse Pads

When you purchase a gift at this site, you help support Grace For Life. Just click on: 

graceforlife.com/gifts

Happy Thanksgiving!

A Few Things For Believers To Thank The Lord For
-Eternal life

-Peace with God

-The peace of God

-Forgiveness

-Love shed abroad in our hearts

-The promise of Heaven

-The indwelling Holy Spirit

-Ability to approach God in prayer

-The promise to be like Him someday

-Freedom from the power of sin

-The ability to understand the Scriptures by His Spirit

-The fruit of the Spirit

-Gifts of the Spirit

-Unity with other believers

-The promise to reign with Christ

-Adoption as sons of God

-The promise that God is working all things together for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose

-The promise of eternal security in our salvation

Is The Book of James Against Grace?

I have seen much confusion caused among believers because of a misunderstanding of the message of James in the Epistle of James. Some have glossed over it and made it seem as if James didn’t really say what he said, others have twisted the words of James to mean what they want it to mean, and others have outright rejected the Book of James, teaching or implying that it shouldn’t even be in the Bible.

In Martin Luther's preface to the New Testament, he wrote the famous words, "St. James' Epistle is really an epistle of straw, compared to them; for it has nothing of the nature of the Gospel about it." (Actually that appeared only in the 1522 edition. In the 1545 revision it was taken out.)

Is the Book of James against grace?

After all, James uses the word “law” 12 times, and “grace” only twice. He uses the word “works” 13 times, but the name “Jesus” only twice.

He even says blatantly, in James 2:24, "You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone." And he gives an example in James 2:25, "In the same way, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way?"

Is the Book of James against grace?

In case you’re getting a little nervous, the answer is, “No, James is not against grace." Two things are important here.

First, we need to understand that James is not just writing to believers.

He is writing to “the twelve tribes who are dispersed abroad”. These were Jews who were scattered around the then-known world, some of whom were now Christians.

You can never understand James until you realize that he was addressing unbelievers as well as believers, some who professed to believe in Jesus, and some who truly did believe. And James, in some of his comments, sort of throws them all into a hopper and mixes them up, and then tells them what’s what.

You may not like his method here. You may prefer a systematic Paul, who more logically progresses with his points and makes it clearer whom he is talking to. But God has used James to make some points that no other Bible writer has made.

Second, we need to see the purposes in James' writing.

He was not laying down a theological treatise on salvation, or what we call soteriology. He wasn’t, like Paul in Romans, detailing the makeup of man, the work of Christ on the Cross, and the election, calling and justification of men by grace through faith.

To see these purposes of James, let’s do a very brief review of the Book of James, and comment on some of the issues James was dealing with. There are 5 chapters, and we’ll give each one a title, reflecting the main theme of each chapter. These 5 titles will begin with letters which spell out the word Works. W-o-r-k-s.

Chapter 1 “With Trials Comes Growth”

Chapter 2 “Only Works Show Faith”

Chapter 3 “Rudder-Tongue Steers Ship”

Chapter 4 “Keep Humble, Get Grace”

Chapter 5 “Suffer Patiently, But Pray”

So James is not against grace. But he wants true grace to be in evidence. Not a false or spurious grace.

He wants to emphasize that when you become a New Creation, there will be fruit that comes from that. When you are born again, something happens. You are given a new spirit, which is the true you, the essence of your being, your very nature…a new nature which loves Jesus and hates sin.

And when that new true nature of yours expresses itself, there will be good works. And when we walk by the Spirit, some of those works will be seen. And it’s all by Grace!

Election 2012 - The State As God

Barack Obama is not the real problem.  Really.

Obama is only the Priest, the Bishop, the Pope if you will, of an ancient religion with a new face.

The real problem is this:

The State has become the God of the people. 

The State has become the Provider, the Sustainer, the Hope, and the Source for a huge number of our people.

Instead of El Shaddai, it is the State which is Almighty.

Instead of Adonai, it is the State which is Master.

Instead of Jehovah Raah, it is the State which Shepherds us in green pastures.

Instead of Jehovah Jireh, it is the State which is our Provider.

Instead of Jehovah Shalom, it is the State from which we derive our Peace.

Instead of Jehovah Rapha, it is the State which is our Healer.

Whereas the Creator was once almost universally recognized as the source of the blessings of our nation, now He has become so ignored as to be deliberately left out of the platform of the Democrat Party.

We've seen this coming for a long time.  But it struck me like never before when I watched the Democratic National Convention a few weeks ago, and was a little surprised to see what fired up the crowd:

1. They BOOED when from the stage it was brought for a vote to put "God" back in the platform (the speaker on stage crammed it into the platform, even against the people, for obvious political purposes)!

2. They CHEERED each time the stealing from "each according to his ability" to give "to each according to his need" was celebrated [for it is indeed stealing, and you may recognize those phrases as from atheist Karl Marx].

2. They CHEERED each time the right to marry "whomever you love" [new code words for homosexual marriage] was advocated.

3. They CHEERED each time the right to murder unborn children was celebrated [see http://goo.gl/CCwxb]!

"BUT, you say, God SHOULD be in the platform, and God FORBIDS stealing, and God HATES the perversion of marriage, and God HATES the killing of unborn children!"

"Ah, but OUR God is the State!  And the State doesn't mind.  Oh State, we worship you, and the President Priest who represents you!"

By the way, I'm well aware that most will vehemently deny that they have made the State their God.  But idols are sometimes sneaky -- and seductive -- and corrupting -- and often accompanied by denial.  Ask Solomon.

Election 2012 is a turning point in our nation.  It's official.  The recipients of the Sacraments of the State largely outnumber those who involuntarily pay for those Sacraments.  And those recipients are perfectly happy to vote for the Priests who will loot others to give them what they are "entitled" to, in the name of "equality".

Am I optimistic?  Yes and no.

I'm pessimistic about the direction of our nation regarding the State as God, the Holocaust of the Unborn, and the perversion of marriage.  

Some say, "We just need a MORE CONSERVATIVE candidate!  Or a Libertarian!  Or a Christian!  Or a Conservative Libertarian Christian!" 

But I think they likely miss the point.  That's not where the appetite of the State-as-God people is.

What can an opposition Party do?  Out-Statist the Statists?  Advocate even more "redistribution"?  Legalize more abominable sins?  Freedom and capitalism isn't connecting with the State-as-God crowd.

However, I'm 100% optimistic about the true Kingdom of Jesus Christ, Who died on the cross for our sins, was buried, and rose again on the third day.  Whoever believes in Him will be saved from their sins and have eternal life with God. 

As He said, "I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it."


If you don't know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, I urge you to believe in Him.  Read the Gospel of John in the New Testament if you haven't.  It's great.

And as the song says, "The things of Earth...grow strangely dim, in the light of His glorious face" when we turn our eyes upon Jesus.

May God have mercy on America.

Post Tenebras Lux

In Geneva, Switzerland there is a wall called The Reformation Wall. That's it in the picture above.  I'll tell you a little about it.

But first, let me tell you a happy -- and sad -- and happy story on this Reformation Day, October 31.

A happy story...

The happy story is that over two thousand years ago, God came to Earth as a baby, born of a virgin, Mary in Bethlehem of Judea.

His name was Jesus (which He was named because it means something like "yahweh or jehovah saves", and He would indeed save his people from their sins -- "God rest ye merry gentlemen, let nothing ye dismay.  Remember Christ our Savior was born on Christmas Day.").

Jesus grew to be a man, was crucified and died on a cross to pay for our sins, was buried, and rose again from the dead on the third day.

And whoever will believe in Him is saved from their sins and hell, and will have eternal life forever with God.

This good news is called The Gospel, because "gospel" means "good news".  And this salvation was (and is) a free gift from God to all who believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.  That "free" aspect is what is called "grace", and our salvation is by grace...that is, free!

There.  I've covered Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, and and the Gospel.

A sad story...

But there is a bad news, sort of.  The bad news is that a form of religion crowded in on this good news, this gospel.

Men, in the name of The Church, began to add things to this Good News, this Gospel.

Things like Sacraments which they said could give us "grace".

Things like priests, and popes who claimed to be "intermediaries" between God and men, even "vicars" (actual fill-ins for Christ on Earth).

Things like "good works" which they said must be mixed with "grace" in order for us to get to heaven.  They wrote in official documents that the Sacraments and the "good works" gave us "grace", contradicting the very meaning of "grace" as a "free gift".

They even invented something called Purgatory, so that those who didn't do enough good works and sacraments on Earth could get "purged" of their uncleanness by suffering over many many years after death, sort of earning their final passage into heaven.

The popes sold what were called "indulgences" for money, so that fearful people could buy the way out of purgatory and into heaven for their friends and relatives who had already died.

They so perverted the Good News of the Gospel, that the masses of people descended into Darkness, no longer even knowing what the Gospel was.  They descended into the Darkness of trying to earn their way into heaven, an impossibility in light of the awesome holiness of the God whose standards all of us have broken.

And no doubt millions perished under this great Darkness, just as millions today perish under the dark illusion that they can merit what can only be given as a gift by God through the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

But the story becomes happy again.

After 1,000 years of this Darkness, God opened the eyes and hearts of a few...then many. 

One of the first was a Catholic Monk, Martin Luther, who had his heart opened as he read the Scriptures, and realized for the first time that salvation was a free gift of grace, through faith alone, not earned by works.  Alas, lacking blogging software, he posted his "95 Theses" by nailing them to the church door at Wittenburg, Germany, stating some of the errors of the Roman Catholic Church and its Pope.  And thereby endangering his own life.

That day, October 31, 1517, Luther began, and joined with others, in a movement that blew open a window of Light that the Darkness folks have not been able to shut since.

I said I'd tell you about the Reformation Wall in the picture above.  It portrays four others of these "Reformers" who went out and proclaimed the Light of the Gospel which had been mostly hidden in Darkness for so many years.

They are Guillaume Farel, the first to spread this Reformation in Geneva -- John Calvin, a main leader of the Reformation Movement, and spiritual father of Geneva -- Theodore Beza, Calvin's successor, and -- John Knox, friend of Calvin and the mighty preacher of the Reformation in Scotland.

These men were not gods.  They were mere men.  Fallible men.  But God used them to light a fire that has still not gone out.  And on this Reformation Day we "give honor to whom honor is due", to these men whom God used so wonderfully.

On that wall is printed a Latin phrase, the title of this post:

Post Tenebras Lux.

It means literally "After Darkness Light", or:

Light After Darkness.

Jesus said, "I am the light of the world."  Then He said, "You are the light of the world", referring to us, His disciples who tell others about Him and His Gospel.  As we shed the light of the Gospel of grace, God opens up more and more hearts, making disciples who desire to learn of Him.

Friend, if you don't know Jesus Christ, I urge you to call on Him as your Lord and Savior.

After 1,000 years of darkness, God saw fit to raise up a few men, who recaptured the ancient truth:

Whoever believes on the Lord Jesus Christ shall be saved.

Will you?

Pope Benedict Names Seven New "Saints"

As Pope Benedict names seven new "saints", we should be reminded what a real saint actually is.

Spoiler alert: It's not what the Pope says it is (love that hat, though).

In the Bible, anyone who is a born-again believer in Jesus Christ is a saint.

This can be readily seen by looking at most of the epistles in the New Testament, and seeing the author address the Christians in the various churches as saints, for example:

"...to all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints..." Romans 1:7

"...to the saints who are in Ephesus..." Ephesians 1:1

"...to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi..." Philippians 1:1

1. "Saint" (Greek hagios) simply means "set apart one" or "holy one" ("holy" likewise means "set apart").

2. All born-again Christians are "set apart" by God as His children and part of the Body of Christ, and are therefore saints.

3. The Roman Catholic Church has perverted the meaning to give special recognition to certain dead Catholics, and then perverted the "mediator" role of Jesus Christ by teaching that praying to those dead "saints" can get one in good with God.  Nonsense.

4. Attempting to communicate with the dead is forbidden in Scripture, and some of the reasons are clear.

a. We are free to speak to and petition the Lord directly, indeed to come "boldly" before the throne of God through Jesus Christ.  It's absurd to think that going through some intermediate dead person is better than that.

b. The Bible specifically forbids consulting the dead, a practice called "necromancy".

c. Demons can pose as spirits of dead people and engage in abominable interaction with gullible humans.

d. Sidenote: praying to Mary the mother of Jesus is no more valid than praying to any other dead person, though she was a godly woman used greatly by God.

5. We Christians should greatly rejoice in being "set apart" by God as saints.

Through the death of Jesus Christ for our sins, His burial and resurrection, all who believe in him are saved, set apart, and therefore saints of God.

We demean that wonderful truth by acknowledging that any man can "name some more saints".

For a related article, see "Was Pope John Paul II A Great Spiritual Leader?"

Cheering The Holocaust of the Unborn

Posted on Romney V Obama :

http://goo.gl/CCwxb

Reservation Legalism

There is a form of legalism which is so subtle that most people wouldn't even notice that it's legalism at all. And yet it is extremely powerful.

I mean “extremely powerful” in the sense that it causes Christians to be fake, phony and stifled.

Now when a Christian is fake, phony and stifled, something happens. They quench the Holy Spirit, and live as though they were of the world.

You may be asking at this point, “Terry, what in the world are you talking about?” Okay, let me jump into this subject.

Off The Reservation

You may be familiar with the phrase “off the reservation”. It is a sort of politically incorrect statement originally referring to a Native American, otherwise known as an Indian, who has left the reservation and has become rebellious to one degree or another.

The “reservation”, of course, is the piece of land that was reserved for the Native American to live on. Having usually been kicked off of his original land, but that's another story.

He was given a place to live, which was often not the best place, and which could even be considered a form of incarceration. For him to travel off of the “reservation” was considered an act of disobedience or rebellion against the Government, and he could be punished, or even engaged in battle.

Anyway, the term has come to refer to anyone who has a different view from some sort of group. He is an oddball. One who doesn't go along with the crowd. Theoretically, he may be right or wrong, but the point is that he doesn't go along with the majority, and so he is considered at least a rebel or maverick, if not an outright enemy.

A Cultic Form of Legalism

I say all that to say this. There is a form of legalism that is not just unfortunate, but cultic. It is a form of legalism that keeps a Christian from being able to dig into the Scriptures and think.

It keeps a Christian from exploring the meaning of Scripture to see if it really means what the group has always thought it meant, because if he questions whether it means what the group has always thought it meant, he will be thought of as “off the reservation”.

End of thought.
End of inquiry.
End of exploration.
End of being a Berean.

You remember the Bereans were applauded by Paul the Apostle, because they not only welcomed the preaching of the Word, but they also searched the Word to see if the preaching really was accurate. To see if the preaching matched up to the Word of God.

This Berean attitude is often applauded today by those who teach the Word. They exhort us to be Bereans. To not just accept anything we hear preached, but to examine the Scriptures to see if what is preached is really true. The term “Berean” is typically used as a compliment. “He is a Berean”, or “she is a Berean”, meaning that they are discerning, and not easily fooled by a false teacher, because they check it out against the Scriptures.

However, when that ugly spirit of Reservation Legalism rears its head, the Berean spirit is quenched. If you are a part of a certain group, and you even begin to question the way that something is usually taught, you are likely to be considered an oddball, if not an outright heretic. Not for teaching false teaching, but for even questioning the way it's always been taught.

An Example

I hesitate to give examples, but I feel like I must, in order to really get the point across. So here's one example:

Suppose you are a Covenant Theologian. And so you have been taught that the Ten Commandments are not only operative for today, but that they are the “rule of life” for the believer. And that the Fourth Commandment, to keep the Sabbath, is one of these rules that the believer is to follow even today.

And suppose that you are reading some Scripture that seems to indicate that the Sabbath is no longer binding on Christians under the New Covenant, but that the Sabbath in the Old Covenant was symbolic of our rest in Jesus. That is, our rest from our works as a means of earning God's salvation, or His love and favor.

And suppose that you want to discuss this question with someone from your group. Are you free to examine this Scripture? Are you free to question whether a Christian today is to follow the Sabbath, and cease from working on Sunday? Or are you free to question whether the Sabbath was ever changed from Saturday (the seventh day) to Sunday in the first place?

The answer is “no”, you are not free to question the group's belief.

Of course you may question it, but you are not really "free" to do so, because you will be thought of as “off the reservation”, and the group pressure to stay “on the reservation” is fierce. To even attempt to discuss it is to mark you.

You are not free, because you know in your heart that if you even bring the subject up, you will be thought of as “weak” in some way. You will be thought of as someone who is not strong on doctrine, someone who is not discerning. Someone who may even be a troublemaker, who is not “one of us”. Someone who is “off the reservation”.

I hope that gives you a feel for the concept I'm talking about. It's very subtle, yet I believe it is one of the most prevalent forms of legalism, and one of the most destructive.

If you are not free to go before the Lord and study His Word, and question whether your group is right or wrong, without your group thinking you are not “one of them”, then you may hurt your own spiritual growth by suppressing the truth in some way, or by denying outright what you see as true, according to the Scriptures.

Many years ago, I heard Dallas Theological Seminary professor Howard Hendricks define “friendship”. He said a real friend is someone you can share your worst heresies with. Think about that. That's pretty good.

We all have questions or thoughts from time to time, that make us question whether our most cherished doctrines are true. And it's good that we ideally have others who can correct us when we're clearly wrong, or at least sharpen some iron with us by discussing it.

But when that same person subtly or not-so-subtly makes us feel like we would be somehow a traitor or an undiscerning fool if we brought up an opposing view for consideration – well, we just don't bring it up. And so we lose not only the chance to hash it out together and see if it might be true or false, but we lose the courage that it takes to question the way it's always been.

The loss of courage in these things is a very serious thing, because when we cower from examining the Scripture and questioning the group, because we want to fit in with the group, error often takes hold, a cultic attitude develops, and we think more of the group's opinion of us than we do of God's truth.

When we fear going “off the reservation”, even if we think the reservation is wrong, truth suffers, we suffer, and those whom we might have helped suffer. And the guardians of the reservation are puffed up and proud, having saved another soul from drifting off the reservation.

But hopefully you are different. You don't want to be obnoxious, but you want to be courageous. You don't want to be someone's thorn in the side, but you want to be truthful. You don't want to go off the reservation just to be a troublemaker, but you don't fear going off the reservation if you think it is right and true, either.

Which brings me to the subject of reservation legalism and grace.

Reservation Legalism & Grace

See, when you really begin to get a handle on grace; when you really begin to understand the Scriptural principle that we are no longer under law, but under grace; when you really begin to understand that your performance isn't the basis of God's love for you, then you are veering off the reservation of most churches, who desperately need to be set free from their bondage of performance-based Christianity.

And when you begin to realize that you are no longer a sinner as far as your biblical identity, but that you are a new creation who loves Jesus and hates sin;

when you begin to realize that you are righteous because God declared you to be righteous when you believed in Jesus Christ;

and that you are righteous apart from your performance or your obedience;

then you are wandering off the reservation of most churches, who are so focused on their sin that they can't really see their Savior.

And when you come to realize that, although doctrine is important, without love doctrine is empty;

without the life of Jesus living through us, doctrine is cold and dead;

without the fullness of the Spirit, doctrine is an academic graveyard;

without a warm fellowship with Christ, doctrine kills; and

without seeing Jesus in every part of the Word of God, even the Word of God is just a bunch of facts, and history, and rules;

when you come to realize that, [then] you are so far off the reservation that those cold sterile pushers of what they consider perfect doctrine, think there is no help for you.

Yet it is they who need help. It is they who need to understand Galatians 2:20 when it says that we have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer we who live, but Christ lives in us.

At worst, you will be called a heretic, one way or another. At best, you might be looked at with suspicion, and you might not be understood. But what they will understand is that you're different. What they will understand is that you are not on the reservation. That you have wandered over the line to another land that doesn't fit with their group-think. That you don't line up with their Christian guru or their cultic Seminary culture.

Unlike Howard Hendricks, they don't think that a friend is someone you can share your worst heresies with. They think a friend is someone who will be so horrified if you even mention the possibility of another view, that he will pounce on you and do his best to herd you back onto the reservation.

That, friends, is reservation legalism.

How To Fight Reservation Legalism

Here are three things to do in order to combat Reservation Legalism:

1. First, walk in the Spirit.

You be in fellowship with Jesus. You be filled with the Spirit. You commune with the Lord and practice His presence day by day. Without Him you can do nothing. But with Him nothing is impossible, including shaking off reservation legalism. This close fellowship with Christ is the foundation for the next two points.

2. Be courageous.

Always strive to be true to Scripture, but always have the courage to put your honest understanding of Scripture above what any person or group has established as politically correct. Even if they shun you. Even if they look at you funny. Even if they wonder about your faith. Die to self, and follow Jesus. Now there's someone who was off the reservation.

3. Err on the side of love.

You won't do this thing perfectly. Love one another, in Christ. Be humble off the reservation. Don't flaunt your freedom. Don't be a rebel for rebellion's sake. Don't scoff at those who have not come to understand what you have.

Don't be a grace Pharisee, pouncing on everyone for every single statement that could be seen as legalistic. Even though they may be wrong, graciously give them line upon line, precept upon precept, gently leading them toward the truth, as best you can.

Perhaps the day may come when they join you "off the reservation".

Resentment And Forgiveness - Part 3 of 3

In Part 1 we talked about how resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die. We talked about how toxic unforgiveness is to our bodies, as well as our souls.

Then we looked at a few verses of Scripture which gave us some instruction and some wisdom on forgiveness, forgiving one another, and not holding resentment against others.

Then in Part 2 we made an attempt to actually define “forgiveness”, and we said it was sort of the other side of the coin to biblical unconditional love as found in 1 Corinthians 13, for example.

Here's the definition we gave for “forgiveness”:

“Forgiveness is not holding something against someone as regards your unconditional love for them.”

And since it's the other side of the coin to biblical unconditional love, here's how we defined “love”:

“Love is truly, by the Holy Spirit, desiring the best for the one loved.”

So we said that when you forgive someone, you no longer hold their sin against them by withholding your love for them, that is, you still desire the best for them, in your heart. You still love them, with the love described in 1 Cor. 13.

What Do Forgiveness and Unforgiveness Look Like, And What Hinders Forgiveness?

OK, now let’s talk about what forgiveness LOOKS like, and what unforgiveness looks like, and how to forgive, and what hinders forgiveness.

And we’re going to do that backwards, starting with what hinders forgiveness.

Well if forgiveness is the other side of love, that unconditional God kind of love, then the main thing that hinders forgiveness, the one thing that keeps us from forgiving is a lack of love. And since love is a fruit of the spirit, then the main hindrance to forgiveness is what we call walking by the flesh, instead of walking by the Spirit.

A Little Side Road About Anthropology

Now let's take a small side-road and give a reminder of biblical Anthropology. That's the study of Man, what he was like before being born again, and after being born again. When you were born again, you became a new creature or a new creation, it says in 2 Cor. 5:17.

You were given a new spirit, a new nature, and in your new nature you love Jesus and hate sin. And of course the Holy Spirit came to dwell in you, Christ in you, the hope of glory (Col. 1:27). And you became one spirit with the Lord (1 Cor. 6:17).

Your old nature was killed, crucified with Christ, the Bible says. Gal. 2:20 says, “I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” And that's the new lifestyle that we want to live, isn't it? We want to live such that Christ is living out His life through us, and that requires walking by the Spirit.

Now, when we are in fellowship with Jesus, in surrender to Him, thinking “Not my will, but yours, Lord”, and being filled with the Word of God, the Bible, we are being filled with the Holy Spirit. The Bible tells us not to be drunk with wine, but to be filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18).

And you may have heard that by the verb tense of the original Greek, we know that it actually means to “be being filled” with the Spirit. In other words, it’s not a one-time thing, but should be a lifestyle. And so when we are in fellowship with Jesus, and being in surrender to Him and His will, and being filled with the Word of God, we ARE being filled with the Holy Spirit.

How Exactly Do We Forgive?

When this is happening, we will be walking, or living, by the Spirit, and we will have the fruit of the Spirit, which is love, joy, peace, patience, and so forth. But we’re keying in here on love. Because when we are loving, we will be forgiving. We will be casting aside the hindrance to forgiveness, which is lack of love, and we will love and forgive.

Remember, when we're walking by His Spirit, we are also walking by our own new spirit, too, in harmony with God.

So that pretty much also answers the question, How do we forgive, but let’s expand on that a little more.

How do we forgive? Do we just SAY “I forgive you”, or is it like a New Year’s Resolution, “From this day forth, I will forgive so-and-so”? Or is it a change of heart and mind that I just hang around and wait for the Holy Spirit to do for me?

How do we forgive?

First of all, if we are walking by the Spirit as a general lifestyle, we won’t even normally have to ask the question. Forgiving will be as natural as breathing. Forgiveness will flow out of us like carbon dioxide does when we exhale.

But what if we sense that we’re NOT forgiving? What if the very mention of a person riles up our bad intentions toward them? What if we not only don’t desire the best for them, but frankly we’d just as soon they’d exit the Planet, or at least exit our lives?

Then there is a process to get back to square one.

A Practical Process For Forgiveness

It’s not a complicated process, in fact it’s simple. It’s as simple as the simplicity which is in Christ, as the Bible says. It’s not an exact formula, but it might go something like this:

1.A recognition of the wrongness of unforgiveness, coupled with repentence, a change of mind, perhaps a prayer,

“Lord, I’m sorry for harboring that resentment. I know it’s sinful. I know it’s wrong. I want to love that person, and therefore forgive them. Fill me with your Spirit, because without you I can do nothing. But with you all things are possible.”

2.Coming back to the recognition of your new life in Christ. Again reckoning yourself dead to sin, and alive to God through Christ Jesus (Rom. 6:11). It won’t hurt to say it out loud, but of course it’s not magic:

“I am dead to sin and alive to God through Jesus Christ. I don’t have to hold resentment, and withhold love for that person. I am free in Christ to love and forgive, because the old me died and I am now a New Creation."

3.Exercising love toward that person. It may not be face to face. You may not even have that opportunity. If you do, great. Go ahead and show them love. Show them you are not holding a grudge or resentment. But if you don’t have the opportunity in person, pray for them. Every time you think of them, put off the resentment, and put on a prayer of love for them.

“Lord bless so-and-so. Draw them near to yourself, and work your wonderful will in their lives. And if possible, Lord, let them know that I love and forgive them.”

4.Rinse and repeat, just like shampooing your hair. Don’t ever give up. Don’t ever let a root of bitterness grow. Practice is not unbiblical. Part of the fruit of the Spirit is self-control, and sometimes we just need to PRACTICE these things, until they are habit.

It can be a habit to walk by the Flesh, and it can be a habit to walk by the Spirit. So practice walking by the Spirit. Practice loving, practice forgiving.

Then you may find that in some mysterious way, it’s not you doing it, but Jesus, living His live through you. You may be skywalking in another realm, a heavenly realm, an eternal realm, and wondering how it was you used to hold all that resentment and bitterness for anybody.

A miracle will have been worked in you by God Himself. You will be walking by faith, not by sight. You will be setting your mind on things above, not on things of the earth. You will be walking in forgiveness.

And what does that forgiveness look like? It looks like love.

It’s patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (1 Cor. 13)

And then you are free.

Part 1
Part 2

Resentment And Forgiveness - Part 2 of 3

We talked last time, in Part 1, about how resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die. We talked about how toxic unforgiveness is to our bodies, as well as our souls.

Then we looked at a few verses of Scripture which gave us some instruction and some wisdom on forgiveness, forgiving one another, and not holding resentment against others.

OK, now let’s talk about what forgiveness actually is. How can we identify forgiveness, so that we aren’t harboring some unforgiveness or resentment under the surface that will spring up at any old time, or even worse, that will become a root of bitterness, not easily dug out? How do we know if we are really forgiving someone?

We’ll answer that today, but first let’s switch gears, and talk about another subject which may seem unrelated, but is VERY related to forgiveness. It’s SO related to forgiveness, it’s like wet is to water; like dry is to desert; like Abraham Lincoln’s picture on one side of a penny, and the Lincoln Memorial on the other side.

Love and Forgiveness

The subject I’m talking about is Love. And of course there are different kinds of love.

That Loving Feeling

There’s the affectionate kind of love, that anyone may have for another person that they are bonded to, such as a mother and child, or two long-time friends, or a couple getting married who we say are “in love”.

Now that’s a wonderful kind of love. That’s the kind of love that someone was talking about when they said that “Love makes the world go around.” It’s built into most people, and we could say like the old song says, “Everybody loves somebody sometime.”

It’s wonderful. But it also has a couple of problems.

And part of the reason it has a couple of problems is that it is based pretty much on feelings. Nothing wrong with that. Feelings are something God has built into us humans, so much so that if someone for some reason doesn’t seem to HAVE feelings, the psychologists diagnose them with some kind of so-called illness.

So this love which is a feeling is wonderful, but because it is based so much on feelings, it has a couple of problems.

First, it may not last. Now sometimes it does. Many parents keep their affectionate love for their children all their lives, and many husbands and wives grow old still feeling affection for their spouse.

But sometimes it doesn’t last, and the reason is, something has interfered with the good feelings. Maybe one person betrayed the other, or maybe they hurt them in some way, over and over, or maybe they rejected them, or slandered them, or left them, or physically abused them, or just ignored them.

Or maybe they just came across someone who gave them BETTER feelings, and so they stopped loving the one whom they loved before. Whatever happened, it knocked the legs of good feeling out from under the chair of love, and the chair crashed to the floor.

That’s the kind of love that most people talk about when they talk about love. That’s the kind of love that Hallmark and Soap Operas, and 20th Century Fox are usually talking about.

A Higher Love

But there is a higher kind of love than that. I’m not saying it’s better, exactly. And I’m certainly not saying that it necessarily FEELS better all the time. But it’s a higher kind of love, because it’s the kind of love that God has for His children.

And because it’s the kind of love God has for His children, He can put that kind of love into His children, so that they too can have that kind of love for God, and for other people.

Let me say that again: because it’s the kind of love God has for His children, He can put that kind of love into His children, so that they too can have that kind of love for God, and for other people.

And He does that through His Holy Spirit, and that’s why Galatians 5 says that Love is a fruit of the Spirit. It’s a fruit that is automatically produced in us when we are filled with His Spirit, when we walk by the Spirit, or walk according to the Spirit.

And when we do that, and when we have that God kind of love, it will have certain characteristics, which we see in 1 Corinthians chapter 13. You probably know these. Even Hallmark knows these, though they may not know what they mean. Here they are:

“Love is patient,
love is kind and is not jealous;
love does not brag and is not arrogant,
does not act unbecomingly;
it does not seek its own, is not provoked,
does not take into account a wrong suffered,
does not rejoice in unrighteousness,
but rejoices with the truth;
bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things.

Now an important thing about this kind of love is that it has these characteristics NO MATTER WHAT. In other words, it’s what we call UNCONDITIONAL.

It’s not conditional on what the other person does. It’s not conditional on how we may feel, or what wrong may have been committed to us, or who the person is, or whether the person is our family member or whether they are evil or good, Christian or non-Christian, friend or enemy.

Yes, we can even love our enemies, because this God kind of love is a fruit, produced in us by the Holy Spirit. And all we have to do is walk in that Spirit, and we will have that kind of love produced in us.

That’s why the Bible says that "Love Never Fails".

That God kind of love never fails. And that’s why God will never leave us or forsake us. Because He loves us with that kind of love that never fails. Never.

And we can love others with that kind of love. Love that never fails.

And may I say this? With love that FORGIVES.

Forgiveness Defined

Which brings us to our subject. Remember our subject? We are talking about resentment and forgiveness. And now we can clarify what forgiveness really means. Because forgiveness is the other side of the coin of love, this God kind of unconditional love.

And with that in mind, let me take a stab at a definition of forgiveness, as the Bible presents it, and as God desires us to practice it. The kind of forgiveness that is not based on feelings, but on the fruit of the Spirit, which is love.

I’m not saying this is a perfect definition, but we don’t forgive by definition anyway, we forgive by love, so cut me some slack and let this definition sink in a little, and I think you will profit from it. Here’s the definition of forgiveness:

“Forgiveness is not holding something against someone as regards your unconditional love for them.”

And we might define Love like this:

“Love is truly, by the Holy Spirit, desiring the best for the one loved.”

This means that when you forgive someone, you no longer hold their sin against them by withholding your love for them, that is, you still desire the best for them, in your heart. You still love them, with the love described in 1 Cor. 13.

Now there’s a lot packed into that little definition.

To use an extreme example, if someone physically abuses you repeatedly, do you continue to let them into your presence and just “put up with it”? Of course not. You take steps of wisdom to prevent that. But you still love them. You still desire in your heart the very best for them. That’s love.

When you forgive someone, you still love them, unconditionally. And love, as 1 Cor. 13 says, “does not take into account a wrong suffered”. It forgives. Forgiveness is merely the other side of the coin of love.

How do we know when we are NOT forgiving someone, maybe even growing a root of bitterness? When we are not acting and thinking in love toward them. When we’re not patient and kind. When we are arrogant, when we are selfish, and so on.

Which is why we need to stay in close fellowship with Jesus. He is our life. When we commune with Him, these things tend to take care of themselves. He is in you, friend, if you are a Christian. Draw near to Him. After all, He's already there.

In another message we’ll look at what forgiveness LOOKS like, and what unforgiveness looks like, and how to forgive, and what hinders forgiveness.

Until then, spend some time with Jesus. Fellowship with Him in some sort of quiet time, and throughout the day as best you can. Walk in the Spirit, and you will see changes in how you love and forgive.

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Resentment And Forgiveness - Part 1 of 3

One of my favorite quotes is from a fella named Malachy McCourt which goes like this:

“Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”

Let me say that again:

“Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”

Isn’t that great?

Resentment, or bitterness, or unforgiveness, is destructive, bodily, mentally, and most important, spiritually.

And in this day and age, I don’t know of anyone who would really dispute the health aspects of unforgiveness. You don’t have to be a Bible-believer, as I obviously am, to understand the detrimental effects of unforgiveness.

Toxic Effects of Resentment

The toxic effects of unforgiveness on our body/mind systems are clinically documented as well. Unforgiveness:

-distresses the central nervous system;
-stresses the circulatory system;
-stresses the muscular-skeletal system;
-stresses the glandular (endocrine and lymphatic) systems; and
-depresses the immune system.

One expert named McInnis put it this way,

“Unforgiveness distresses my central nervous system by harboring such feelings as irritability, nervousness, anxiety, hostility, anger, resentment and depression.

“Its distress constricts my heart rate’s variability, a crucial measure of nervous system health, as well as my cardiovascular system’s flexibility. It also disrupts the harmony of my brain waves, making me less able to think clearly and to make good decisions.

“In addition to fostering cardiovascular inflexibility, unforgiveness distresses my circulatory system by increasing blood pressure, heart rate and arterial wall pressure.

“Unforgiveness distresses my muscular-skeletal system by increasing forehead muscle tension, thereby producing headaches, and by also producing other symptoms: stomach aches, muscle and joint aches, dizziness, and tiredness.

“Unforgiveness distresses my glandular system via unproductive adrenaline rushes in support of fight or flight responses. When neither of these responses occurs to utilize this energy boost, it dissipates by agitating my other body systems.

“As my unforgiveness invokes all of the foregoing mental, emotional and physical strain, it simultaneously depresses the ability of my immune system to ward off both acute and chronic disease.”

Now this should come as no surprise when we look at what God has to say about forgiveness.

Some Scriptural Wisdom

And as an introduction to the Biblical view of this subject, I just want to do a survey of some Scriptures that deal with this subject, make some general observations, and then in a later message, offer some Biblical help in this area.

In listing those things which are common to the ungodly, in Rom. 1:29-31, Paul writes this:

“...sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving...”

Now that's some pretty bad stuff, isn't it? But do you know what's next on Paul's list, there in verse 31?

"Unforgiving."

A similar list occurs in 2 Timothy 3:2,3.

“For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power.”

Ah, but Ephesians 4:32 injects some life and breath into this unforgiveness situation. It says,

“And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ forgave you."

Just as God in Christ forgave us? Yes, Ephesians 1:7 says,

“In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace.”

Forgiveness of what sins? All of them. He has forgiven us of all our sins. Are there any sins of others that we may not forgive? Of course not. Again, Col. 1:14 says,

“...in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.” And again, that's all of them.

And so it's reasonable for God to say to us, as He does in Col. 3:13,

“...bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also.”

Now I don't want this to be one of those “beat the sheep over the head with their duty” messages. I would contend that you already know your duty in forgiving others.

Yet you may not even really recognize that you are harboring resentment. Or you may recognize it, but have problems forgiving others.

And so, in two more messages in this three-part series, I want us to talk about what forgiveness really is, how to forgive, what hinders forgiveness, and so on.

But let me give you a preview by simply saying this. Forgiveness is one side of a coin. The other side of the same coin is Love. And love is the fruit of the Spirit, without which we are nothing, 1 Cor 13 says.

Pretty strong language, isn’t it? But we have love, shed about in our hearts by the Holy Spirit of God.

Next time we’ll talk about tapping into that rich store of Love.

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One Nation Under God

Happy 4th of July, American friends!

In America, today is Independence Day, the 4th of July, commemorating the signing of the Declaration of Independence, declaring independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1776.

Since that day, God has blessed American in a unique way.

Millions have come to America to live, to worship, to work, to prosper, to thrive in the freedom that was wrought through the labors of our Founding Fathers.

America has been uniquely free.

Not because we are a "Great People", but because we have been greatly blessed by the Sovereign God Who created us.

Not because we are "exceptional", but because our Sovereign Creator has seen fit to give us an exceptional foundation in the Word of God, which tells of the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

And this foundation of God and His Word was used to construct both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.

No human document can even approach "perfection". But these documents had two qualities that make them exceptional:

1. They acknowledge God our Creator, and

2. Instead of seeking a Utopia, based on the absurdity that men are basically "good", they take into consideration the sinfulness which every person is born with, and seek to protect against that sinfulness by insuring certain inalienable "rights" to its citizens.

By insuring these rights, and by limiting the powers of Government, and through the "balance of powers" within the Government, the Founders sought to give the maximum opportunity for freedom -- a freedom which, while not a Utopia, yet gave people the room to grow, and learn, and prosper, and preach the Gospel, and give to others, including other nations.

Far from perfect (remember the sinful nature that all are born with), yet through the influence of those principles of the Word of God, and by His Grace, we made changes for the better.

Even the Constitution itself included a mechanism to improve by "amendment". So, for example, the evil of slavery which was a "blind spot" at best, and an evil regardless, was permanently eliminated by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution.

This foundation of the Word of God and the Savior Jesus Christ has historically been woven into the fabric of our nation, even among those who have not come to personally know Jesus Christ. The Lord, His Word, and His righteousness have been at least to some extent honored by the vast majority of Americans...

...until recent years or decades.

Our problems are not primarily political.

They SEEM that way, but they're not.

Many of you reading this believe our nation is in decline. I agree. Rapid decline. Dangerous decline.

But if we think this decline is merely dependent on the next election, we are wrong. If America does not radically revert back to the FOUNDATION, the decline will continue. Rapidly.

Full disclosure: I am a political animal. I love politics and the economics that intertwine it. I am an opinionated Libertarian-ish "thinker".

But even political and economic Liberty cannot save our nation from its decline. Only the Creator Himself can. But He is a Jealous God, and our nation is no longer leaning on Him nor giving Him the honor that He so justly deserves.

If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, I urge you to commune with Him first, above every other priority in your life.

Seek His face, seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness, bask in the Grace of His Life within you and the work He has already accomplished on the Cross. "Draw near" to Him and He will draw near to you.

Then in your politics, you can love, not hate -- persuade winsomely, not bicker and beat over the head -- be at peace in your heart, not bitter and anxious.

And out of that the Sovereign Lord may choose to reverse the decline.

And He may not.

Be involved in politics. Vote. Run for office. But don't "lean" on that as the ultimate solution. It is NOT the ultimate solution.

And as you vote, vote "righteously".

While the world says, "It's the economy, stupid", for example, don't be shamed into thinking the Holocaust Of The Unborn should take a back seat. Over 50 million unborn children have been killed...so far.

No candidate is perfect, nor ever will be. But I have declared that I will NEVER vote for any candidate that favors the right to kill the unborn. I am saddened to see brothers and sisters in Christ who have abandoned this issue, or even promoted the "right to choose"!

Yet we expect the continued blessing of God on our nation?

"Lord, I pray you WILL bless America. But I pray that we will understand the principle from your Word when you said, 'Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit,'."

God Bless America,
Land that I love.
Stand beside her, and guide her
Thru the night with a light from above.
From the mountains, to the prairies,
To the oceans, white with foam
God bless America, My home sweet home.

Enjoy this very beautiful musical piece, in honor of the Lord Who gave us America (HT Tim Challies).

Jesus Our Sabbath Rest - Part 2

AUDIO (More Grace For Life audio archives are here.)

Before we get started, I want to say something briefly about physical rest.

Although the Fourth Commandment to do no work on the Sabbath or seventh day of the week, indeed the Old Covenant itself, was made obsolete by the New Covenant, there is nothing wrong with taking a day off to rest.

One of the beauties of studying the Old Testament is in learning the wisdom of God, who is all-wise, and knows all things. And physical rest is important, just as rotating crops from year to year was important, for example, so as to not deplete the soil.

And just as too much of almost anything can lead to what we have come to call burnout. So I encourage gleaning practical and spiritual wisdom and principles from the Old Testament, as long as we don’t fall into the trap of legalism, or putting ourselves under Law as a means of earning God’s love and favor.

O.K., Jesus our Sabbath, Part 2:

Brief Recap of Part 1

In Part 1 we gave several reasons why the Old Covenant Sabbath-keeping is not for believers under the New Covenant.

Briefly these are as follows:

1.In Colossians 2:16-17, Paul clearly refers to the Sabbath as a shadow of Christ, which is no longer binding since the substance (Christ) has come.

2.The Sabbath was the sign to Israel of the Old Covenant
( Ezekiel 20:12). Since we are now under the New Covenant (Hebrews 8), we are no longer required to observe the sign of the Old Covenant.

3.The New Testament never commands Christians to observe the Sabbath.

4.The church met on the first day of the week in the book of Acts (Acts 20:7), and even that is not a command, but merely a practice that sprang up, possibly in honor of Christ who rose from the dead that day.

5.We touched on this already, but nowhere even in the Old Testament are the Gentile nations commanded to observe the Sabbath or criticized for not observing it. That makes it clear that Sabbath-keeping is not meant to be an eternal moral principle.

6.Nowhere in the Bible does anyone keep the Sabbath before the time of Moses, and there are no commandments in the Bible to keep the Sabbath before the giving of the law at Mt. Sinai.

7.The apostle Paul warned the Gentiles about many different sins in his epistles, but breaking the Sabbath was never one of them.

8.In Galatians 4:10-11, Paul rebukes the Galatians for thinking God expected them to observe special days (including the Sabbath).

9.Nothing in Scripture indicates that Sunday has replaced Saturday as the Sabbath. Believers tend to gather on Sunday, which is the first day of the week, but there is no command of Scripture to do so.

10.Lastly, Hebrews 4:9-11 makes it clear that the Sabbath was all along meant to be a shadow of Christ who came to be our Sabbath rest.

It’s that last point, number 10, that I would like to dwell on for a while…that Jesus Christ Himself is our Sabbath rest, and we need no other.

About the Book of Hebrews

But before we get to this argument in Hebrews, primarily Chapter 4, let me give just a very brief overview of the Book of Hebrews as it relates to the New Covenant.

Hebrews was written specifically to Jewish Christians who had been undergoing some persecution, and would no doubt have more persecution in the future.

The letter was intended to show the superiority of Christianity over Judaism, or maybe to put it better, to show how much better the New Covenant is than the Old Covenant. And not just better, but how the New Covenant made the Old Covenant obsolete, as we read in Hebrews Chapter 8.

Let me just sort of rattle off these great themes of Hebrews. I won’t read the scriptural passages, though I would love for you to read them when you’re through listening to this, so I’ll reference the Chapters where these themes occur.

Here are the themes:

Jesus is a better revelation of truth 1:1-3
Jesus is better than the angels 1:3-14
Jesus is better than Moses 3:1-6
Jesus is better than Aaron, Moses’ brother, the priest 5
Jesus is a better high priest 6,7
The New Covenant has a better law 7:12
The New Covenant is a better covenant 8:6
The New Covenant has better promises 8:6
The New Covenant has a greater temple 9:11
The New Covenant has better sacrifices or sacrifice 9:23
The New Covenant has a better possession 10:34
The New Covenant has a better country 11:16
The New Covenant has a better resurrection 11:35
The New Covenant has better blood 12:24
The New Covenant has better atonement, which of course, goes beyond just covering sins, but taking them away, which the Old Covenant atonement could never do 10:1-5

So we see the overall theme of Hebrews might be called “betterness”, the betterness of Christ over Moses and the betterness of the New Covenant to the Old.

Who Hebrews Was Written To, And A Warning

Now I’ve left out part of Chapter 3 and all of Chapter 4, but now I want to talk about that, because this is where we find that the New Covenant has a better Sabbath.

Now when I said that Hebrews was written to Jewish Christians, I should have said PROFESSING Jewish Christians, because the writer is careful not to assume that all his readers are really born again.

And so he warns them in Chapter 3, verses 7-11, not to harden their hearts as the Israelites did in the Wilderness, causing God to swear, “They shall not enter my rest.” Now the writer is quoting Psalm 95 here, but here’s what’s important to realize. These Israelites already had the Sabbath law. They already had the Fourth Commandment, and yet they did not enter God’s rest.

And the writer of Hebrews is warning those who have not yet really believed in the Messiah, and then encouraging them to believe, by showing them the superiority of Christ.

He makes it clear that the rest is to come by belief, by faith. Faith in what? Or more accurately, faith in whom?

Well, Christ, the Messiah! The one who is better than Moses and whose New Covenant is better than the Old. Or to put it another way, believing the Gospel, the good news. Look at Chapter 4, verse 2, “For indeed we have had good news preached to us...”

The "Rest" Of The Gospel

And so the case is made in Chapter 4 that this rest comes from believing the good news, and in verse 7 the writer emphasizes that the day to believe the good news is “Today”. It’s always “today”, isn’t it? Today is the day of salvation, today is the day to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ if you haven’t.

Thank God we are still under the New Covenant. It’s still “today”.

That’s why Hebrews 4:9,10 says, “There remains, therefore, a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His.” That’s our Sabbath. See that?

A Shadow of Things To Come

That’s why we read in Colossians 2:17 that the Old Covenant Sabbath was just a shadow of things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.

Christ is our Sabbath, our better Sabbath, because He paid for our sins, and gave us forgiveness for all of our sins, past, present and future, and declared us Righteous in Him.

So we can rest from our works. We can rest from our performance as a means of gaining the love and favor of God. He already loves us and He has already favored us in Christ. That’s our rest. That’s our Sabbath.

Now I should mention, if you might be reading the King James version, that Hebrews 4:9 doesn’t say “Sabbath rest”, it just says, “rest”. But the Greek word is Sabbatismos, and it’s the only place it occurs in Scripture. It’s the word for Sabbath, applied to the beautiful rest from our works that Christ has provided.

It Is Finished

And one more thing about Chapter 4, verse 10. When it says, “For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works...”, those words translated “rested” are written in the verb tense which means they are DONE, they are completed, they are finished, just as Jesus said on the Cross, “It is finished”.

What that means is that when you believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, when you became a Christian, when you were saved, you permanently entered into His rest. He no longer holds your sins against you, because you have rested from your works and His work on the Cross has paid for your rest.

Why is that important? Because it tells you, “Don’t be restless, now that you’ve rested.” Don’t jump back into the Law-based mode and try to earn God’s love and favor. Rest in the love and favor that He already has for you, paid for by Jesus on the Cross.

And that’s why the writer of Hebrews can go on to tell of the better priesthood, and the better promises, and the better sacrifice, and the better blood. Because under the Old Covenant, there was this awful veil of separation between God and Man, but under the New Covenant, the veil has been torn, and we now can come boldly or draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, to receive mercy and find grace to help in time of trouble.

Christ In You, The Hope of Glory

We not only can approach the throne of God boldly, we have the very Christ Himself inside us, Christ in you the hope of glory.

That’s our Sabbath. That’s our Sabbath rest.

And that’s why Jesus, just before one of his Sabbath confrontations with the Pharisees, in Matthew 11:28,29, said, “Come to Me, all you who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you shall find rest for your souls.”

Have you entered that rest? Have you believed on the Lord Jesus Christ? He died on the Cross to pay for sins, and to give the free gift of His righteousness to all who would come to Him. Then He rose from the dead, and is alive today. Believe in Him today, if you haven’t.

And if you are already a believer, you have entered into that rest, that beautiful Sabbath rest which is Jesus Christ. Your works, your performance, are no longer the requirement for God’s favor. He has given us all spiritual blessings in Christ (Eph. 1:3) He loves you and desires your close fellowship with Him.

Oh, you will do works. But they will be the works worked in you by His Spirit, His very life. For it’s God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure (Phil. 2:13).

Friends, rest in Him, your Sabbath rest.

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