Category: Christian Life

Securely Anchored

anchorAnchors have been around as long as we have had boats on water.  They are a means of securing a boat to keep it from drifting away.  On larger vessels capable of ocean voyages they also secure the ship against the storms that come.  Oil drilling rigs are often stationed in some of the worst areas in our oceans for storms and they are anchored securely and even the worst of the storms the crew can remain secure in the fact that the anchors have been designed to keep them secure and in place.  They won’t drift or blow away.

In our lives anchors are important as well.  We live in a world that is going crazier every day.  With new bombings happening in Belgium, and Turkey, and terrorist attacks on the rise all around the world our lives are become more and more unstable.  People are beginning to question much of what they had counted on for securing.  With global instability rising, and markets crashing even the finances we had set aside and based some security in for our future is disappearing.  Overnight people are waking up to realities where the moneys they had worked so hard to set aside and plan for had disappeared.  Many lost thousands as the market values crashed and world currencies devalued.  Security has become an illusion for many people.  With home invasions on the rise, and gun violence all around us many have become disillusioned with what we had at one time considered security.

In all of this there is an opportunity to have real hope.  An all-encompassing sense of security inside, even when the world is going crazy outside.  There is an ability to have a confident peace that is secure and quietly allows you to weather all that life may send your way.  It isn’t an absence of things going wrong, but a confidence and hope that fills us regardless of things going wrong.

1 Peter 1:3 talks about this hope that is available to us.  “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” NIV Jesus is alive.  He was dead, and was raised to life again, and because of this we can have a deep-seated hope and confidence that is not dependent on our circumstances.  A hope which anchors us securely through all that life sends our way.  “This hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls.” Hebrews 6:19 NLT

As we enter the season where we as Christians reflect on what Jesus did for us, and offers to us because of His death and resurrection we need to refocus our lives at times.  We can get distracted and allow ourselves to let go of our anchor and tie ourselves to many other things which will never be able to hold us true and steady.  In this season we need to ask ourselves what are we anchored to, and will it hold no matter what comes?

Are you following?

follow meWhat does it mean to follow someone?  In our world it doesn’t mean much.  It usually means that we go in the same direction as the one we are following.  But in Jesus’ day follow me actually had a depth of meaning.  When Jesus spoke to His disciples and said “Follow Me…” they knew it was more than traveling together.

A modern image of following someone would be an apprenticeship.  When you apprentice for a trade, you are a student or follower, and you allow the teacher or master to guide you and train you to become like him.  If your studying to be an electrician you will follow a journeyman or master and learn to be an electrician by doing what you see done.

Following in Jesus’ day meant more than just learning a trade.  It also meant learning a life.  When you followed someone you became like the one you followed.  You learned to think and act like them.  You didn’t trade in your personal identity at all, but you submitted your life to the one you followed, and you learned to live life the same way they did.  It went deeper than apprenticeship.  You learned a lifestyle, a world view, a way of relating to the world around you, and you took on the mission of the one you followed.  Your character changed, your life mission changed.  Peter and the other disciples left their respective trades and jobs to become like Jesus.

Paul, who encountered Jesus and became a follower stated in 1 Corinthians 11:1 “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.“ NIV  Paul understood what it meant to follow.  In essence you become like the one you choose to follow after.  You take on their traits, some of their habits.  You allow them to speak into your life and character and to build you up.  And you take on their mission.  You become an electrician if your following one.

If you look at your life who would you say you follow.  As Christians we are called to follow Jesus.  But we don’t see much of the life of Christ when we look at our lives.  Wolfgang Samson wrote “In the West, the lifestyles of many Christians are still centered on careers, TV, hobbies, privacy, and pets. We sugarcoat our faith with a thin layer of Christian behavior: attending church services, praying before meals, and listening to Christian music. This is not much different from the lifestyle of the average person living in the West where almost everything is geared toward the pursuit of personal security, success, fun, and even individual spiritual growth.”   We call ourselves Christians, or followers of Christ but are we following?  A follower always becomes like the one they follow.

One quick way to check if you are following Jesus is to see if you are passionate about His mission.  Jesus stated His mission was “For the Son of Man came to seek and save those who are lost.” Luke 19:10 NLT  And He stated that following Him would have us taking on His mission.  “Jesus said to them, “Follow Me. I will make you fish for men!” Matthew 4:19 NLV.  If we are not becoming sharing the hope that we have with those we come in contact with and seeking to connect them with Jesus, can we say we are following?  Someone once wrote “If your not fishing, your not following.”  Who are you following?  Does it need to change?  Only you can decide who you want to follow.  Everyone follows someone.  We need to decide if they are worth following and if we really want to become like them.

Worship? pt 5

Worship in Spirit.

Much of what we “offer to God” each week has little to do with what God wants or desires.  In fact much of what we do is centered on what we want and desire.  Having led worship in churches for almost two decades I am amazed at what people expect from worship.  We gather to “have our ears tickled” to borrow slightly from 2 Tim 4:3.  Worshipping God in truth means that we come before Him and see Him as He is, not as we think He should be, and we offer ourselves as we are, imperfect and incomplete.  We give God honor, respect, awe and proclaim Him for who He is, all the while recognizing who we are, knowing that we come before Him not on our own merit, but because of His value of us.

Worshipping God in Spirit is based on this one thing.  Life in the Spirit, as written about by Paul in Romans 8, hinges on the fact that we have nothing to offer God in ourselves, but ourselves.  Nothing that we can do will ever qualify us to receive anything that God has for us.  At no time can we stand before God and say “look what I have done.”  Everything we have to offer Him is a direct result of everything He has obtained and offered to us.  This begins our walk in the Spirit.  We begin by recognizing our standing before a holy and perfect Judge, who requires that payment be made for our actions.  Everything we do has a consequence, whether it is good or bad.  Isaac Newton only discovered God’s law that every action has a reaction.  Or to put it in Bible terms “we reap what we sow.”  When we recognize that we have completely missed the mark and fallen short of God’s standard for us, and we realize that God isn’t pleased with our actions and they require punishment we begin to have our hearts opened to life in the Spirit.  2Cor 7:8-10 states that we need to have repentance with Godly sorrow. ” I am not sorry that I sent that severe letter to you, though I was sorry at first, for I know it was painful to you for a little while. Now I am glad I sent it, not because it hurt you, but because the pain caused you to repent and change your ways. It was the kind of sorrow God wants his people to have, so you were not harmed by us in any way. For the kind of sorrow God wants us to experience leads us away from sin and results in salvation. There’s no regret for that kind of sorrow. But worldly sorrow, which lacks repentance, results in spiritual death. ”   Repentance is simply changing the way we think about something.  We begin to see things from God’s perspective.   We come to understand how much our actions have missed God’s intended mark for our lives and how deeply this has offended Him.  This then calls us to have a sorrow inside that regrets the thoughts and actions we have had simply for the reason that they have offended God.  If all we have is a feeling of ” now I’m in trouble” it does us no good. 

Godly sorrow leads us to open our heart to understand and receive the grace God offers to us.  We can never reach God on our own.  God’s grace, or His power doing in us what we cannot do, restores us again to relationship with Him and we come alive to His Spirit and are joined in relational communion with our creator who so greatly loves us.  Life in the Spirit is based solely in  that simple life giving relationship with God.  As we stay connected with Him and journey with Him we have a life lived according to His plan, fulfilling what He desires for us and we live empowered and guided by His Spirit in us.

This is also the way we need to worship.  That connection we have with God needs to be maintained.  It is the source of all we have to offer God.  Jesus said in John 15 that we need to abide in Him.  In modern language it simply means we need to stay connected.  The very fact that Jesus told us to stay connected means that we can become unconnected.  And once that happens no more life flows from Him to us, and we are off wandering around doing our own things even when they are covered with religious veneer.  Simply gathering with other “Christians” and singing some songs and listening to a teaching doesn’t mean we are connected.   And without that connection we cannot worship God.  How’s your connection doing today?  Does it need some attention?  The good news is God wants us to be connected and is willing to reconnect us if we have wandered off.  It is up to us to evaluate what we are offering when we gather.  It is just something that makes us feel good because we have “done our duty” or are we connected to our source and offering worship born from that connection.