Prize the Moment!

How can we live everyday and not be moved by the awesome fact that, those who are in Christ, possess an immediate, intimate, inspiring, lively relationship with Almighty God?

When Martha had Jesus all to herself, she busied herself! How can you entertain the God in Man at your home and be distracted with serving?!

Jesus diverted her back to what was important: “Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her.” (Luke 10:41, 42 NKJV)

Martha’s sister, Mary, seized the moment to be at the feet of Jesus. While I’m sure whatever Martha was preoccupied with was important, being alone to enjoy Christ is an advantageous privilege in itself.

Serving God is vital; but don’t let that work supersede your relationship with Christ. He is a Treasure to be prized!

Closer to His Heart

A pastor once said, “You as close as to God as you choose to be.”

There is a lot of truth in that. God doesn’t impress Himself on anyone.

God says profoundly in James, “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.” James 4:8 (NKJV)

A person is as close with Him as they want to be.

Love is like a fire: it grows as much it is fed. It doesn’t stay lukewarm: it either gets bigger or it dies out.

If you love someone, you would desire for that relationship to grow; but it is only to grow if you put effort into it. It is going to take more than wishful thought. If you want to get closer to that person than you have to converse ways for you both to get to know each other better.

Your relationship with Christ grows by the investment you put into it.

We can never lose our salvation for it is a gift, but we can shrink our spiritual life to where it just seems superficial and shallow. This happens if we neglect to feed ourselves continually by talking to Jesus and from reading God’s Word.

God won’t push Himself on us. James says clearly: “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.” James 4:8 (NKJV)

To get close, you must show interest and take action to see it happen.

God said in Jeremiah 29:13,“And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. “

Are you not satisfied with your relationship with Christ? You are at the right place.

Start from wherever you are until you see progress. Call on Him. Prayer can be a simple as, “Help me to want you.”

Christ will embrace your efforts for He sees a child who desires to come closer to His heart.

When God “Pokes” You

God is poking me. He just is today.

In a student group, a student preached from Psalms 73 on developing eternal perspective while living on earth.

The message did impress me, but what really impacted me were verses 25, 26 & 28:

Whom have I in heaven but You? And there is none upon earth that I desire besides You.

My flesh and my heart fail; But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

But it is good for me to draw near to God; I have put my trust in the Lord God, That I may declare all Your works. (Psalm 73:25, 26, 28 NKJV)

Great passage that nudges us to desire God’s closeness in a world full of trivial distractions.

Read it. Great. Then later it came in a conversation. Then as a post on Facebook. Then on Facebook again.

I think God is poking me- giving me some nudges to really digest these words into my being.

God does have a habit in poking people. Little Samuel couldn’t sleep because he kept hearing Someone calling his name.*

Whenever He is tapping for your attention, look up; because He has remarkable secrets for you.

Has God poked you yet?

*1 Samuel 3

My Advocate

I’m not a perfect person. I lie. I lust. I rebel. I put people down…

There are even times where I don’t seek the Lord because I feel I’m not worthy to speak to Him. “I failed Him again…He should not take me back. He’s too good to forgive a wretched guy like me.”

There is a great divide between the filth of John Bell and the perfect righteousness of God Almighty. But I have a mediator.

“For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus” -1 Timothy 2:5 (NKJV)

Between this great divide of sin and righteousness is Jesus Christ. We were separated from God justly for our sin, but by Jesus’ blood, “He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation” (Eph 2:14).

Christ came and bridge the gap between sinners. We now have access to God’s throne!

God even says for us to come to Him boldly (Hebrews 10:19). But what about me and when I fail God in sin again?

1 John 2:1 says,“My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” (NKJV)

Jesus is our eternal advocate to God. Hebrews 7:25 says He is continually in Heaven making intercession for us. We can reside in the fact that because of Jesus, God will never us let go.

He has also promised us that “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:9 (NKJV).

Be strengthened that though you fail in sin, you can still make things right and enjoy fellowship with God.

Fire to the Soul

A light under a bushel either goes out or sets the bushel on fire.*

There are some people that can suppress their zeal for God; they meet a position where they are numb to the pricking of the Holy Spirit and lose their appetite for the things of God.

Then they are others that God has arrested their attention. They are rubber bands that as quickly as they pull away from Jesus they are thrown back to Him.

They can’t stray away. Not because they want to; it’s because they can’t. God has ignited such a fire in their soul that it consumes their desires to dwell outside the company of Christ. It burns such a discomfort in them to settle their lives in complacency.

I know this because I’m one.

For you fellow rubber bands that Jesus has sent such a fire to your soul, enjoy the words of Prophet Nehemiah:

“Then I said, I will not make mention of Him, Nor speak anymore in His name. But His word was in my heart like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I was weary of holding it back, And I could not.” (Jeremiah 20:9 NKJV)

*Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest

Jesus Has No Social Clicks

At a Bible class today, we surveyed in Mark 2 when the Pharisees attacked Jesus for eating with sinners. The beauty of this event is that Jesus expressed genuine love for the people he was sitting with.

What uniquely spoke out to me at this passage is the Pharisees’ upset and bafflement of Jesus mingling with people outside his social status.

Its almost like they were saying: “Hey Jesus, we don’t hang with those kind of people.”

How I see this passage relate today is how we adjust to ‘clicks’.

“Don’t talk to him, he aint cool.”

“That guy is a freak”

“She is so weird”

When we get down with isolating every person we deem inadequate to meet our social acceptance, do we contain a real love for people?

My teacher fed this idea of isolating people when he said: “When you get done with isolating people, they only people you know are your people.”

Jesus said, “For if you love those who love you, what reward have you?” (Matthew 5:46)

Partial love never impressed anyone. I can’t say that I am not guilty of isolating people, but its questionable to see people redeemed by the universal love of Jesus, filter love.

1 John 3:1a is an appropriate reminder of what Jesus’ impartial love made us:

“Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!”

Jesus has no clicks.

God Wants to Know You!

In the heart of every individual is the want for relationship.

When the Lord formed man out of the ground and put him in the garden, the Creator said to Himself, “It is not good for man to be alone” (Gen 2:18 NKJV)

From the very beginning, man was destined for relationships.

Adam had the world under his dominion and yet he was alone. He yearned to be circuited to a relationship.

Remember when you were in love? How you long to hear from her. Every email you read from her, made your heart leap. You want nothing more than to be closer to that person.

You know what I found about being in love: the same wish that I have to know a person more intimately, is the same desire God has for us. Made by God, we share his desire for intimacy. God wishes to know you intimately.

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any opens the door, I will come into him and sup with him and he with me” (Rev 3:20 NKJV)

God wants to know you. The God of all the universe, is the God you can know.

Light

Light cannot ever coincide darkness (duh). Whenever light enters a dark space, it repels the darkness around it. They can never be together; its either one or the other.

God is holy. He is always pure and righteous. In fact the Bible describes Him as light:

“This is the message we heard from Jesus and now declare to you: God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all.” – 1 John 1:5

Sin is not God’s vocabulary, and like light to darkness, He also can’t coincide with it. Sin separates us from God (Isaiah 59:2). Size doesn’t matter. Once you have sinned, you have broken fellowship with God.

As Romans 3:23 stated, “all have sinned”; at one time in our lives we have fallen short of God’s glory, and therefore we are repelled from relating to God.

“And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight. ” -Colossians 1:21-22

It was by the blood of Jesus on the cross that we are removed of sin’s power and punishment over our lives and now we can have fellowship with God.

“But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.” -1 John 1:7

God desires intimacy with us. To keep healthy intimacy with God, we must “walk in the light”.

If we truly desire to be intimate with Him then we must seek to be in the light as He is in the light; that is being removed from the presence of sin and seeking to be filled of righteousness.

Access to God

We have access to God by Christ. The Bible said that when Jesus died, there came a terrible earthquake:

“And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit. And behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth shook and the rocks were split.” -Matthew 27:50-51

It shook the earth greatly and his spectators fled in fear. A centurion in his awe said,”Truly, this man was the Son of God!” (Matthew 27:55). Among the impressive damage the quake left was the tear of the veil of the temple that guarded the Holy of Holies – the imaged presence of God.

But God had a purpose to ruining his furniture. The veil being torn represented man’s now available access to God. The shedding of the Lamb of the God was the completed sacrifice that made the permanent remission of mankind’s sin. No longer will anyone have to give offerings to make peace with God for Christ paid the price of the payment for sin on the cross.

What does this mean? It means the end of traditions, rituals, procedures to come into God’s presence. We can simply come to God just as we are. We enter into community with God by receiving His grace -the grace that brought salvation. Christ giving to us no what other could: peace with God.

May we come to the Lord with reverence. Honor his holiness by confessing sin and requesting Him to be filled of His spirit.

War

A common excuse I have for God is,”Hey God I want to be with you but I just don’t have time.” But when you add it up- an hour on Facebook, some hours playing some computer games and hanging with friends and homework is thrown at the tail of that somewhere- honestly, we really don’t have an excuse to say I don’t have time for God.

Looking at myself, I feel we enjoy the comfort of being independent. Evaluate your day and you’ll see its mostly made of things that you want to do. Night sets in, and end up again giving God the leftovers of our day. What I fail to see that there is a war raging in all of us: our flesh vs the spirit.

Paul said: “For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish.” (Gal 5:17 NKJV)

Flesh and Spirit competing each other for our attention. The flesh seeks us to live out our selfish ambitions – ‘I’m in for me!’; however the Spirit is calling us to seek Christ and develop in the life to which He calls us.

Do you see how different these two forces are? There two extremes both at the divide of the line, pulling at the arms to win you over to their side.

Understand every moment outside God’s presence is time lost to please ourselves.

Remember more importantly that you are among“…those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” (Gal 5:24 NKJV).

God has already destroyed the power of your flesh. Ask Him for the strength to overcome it that you may fully walk in the spirit.

“I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.” (Gal 5:16 NKJV)