Tag: gospel

The Glory of Gripping Things

Acts 17:33 Artwork | Bible Art

I never had an opportunity to attend a seminary, and only have a three year diploma from a Bible Institute. But I’ve had to rely on the Holy Spirit in ways that a seminary trained pastor will never really understand. I’ve come to see the wisdom in the way God has led me.

“It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out.”

Proverbs 25:2

Concealing things and searching for things are contrasting actions. God hides things purposefully–they are sort of like a spiritual version of “Where’s Waldo.” Certain things are hidden, but always in plain sight.

Searching for things should definitely be our own response. The word used in Hebrew means to investigate, but with a planned purpose. It’s more than curiosity, rather it’s a passionate curiosity. And the Holy Spirit is always pleased with that.

In the New Testament book of Acts (17:11) we can see this attitude of the Bereans. They were the only ones in Scripture to be called “noble minded” for their serious study and thought. When they heard Paul’s teaching they sat down, opened their Bibles and began to investigate for themselves.

But it will always take humility. Always.

Intellect is important but it’s not enough. The list seen below is something to work through, and the issue is one that has been a challenge for me through 40+ years of following Jesus.

Here’s a study that I’m confident will bless you.

Justification & Sanctification– Gripping the Two
  •  Justification is free (John 4:1)
  • Sanctification is costly (Lk. 14:25-33)
  • Justification is instantaneous (Jn. 3:8)
  • Sanctification is a lifelong process (Jn. 8:31)
  • Justification is by faith (Eph. 2:8)
  • Sanctification is by faithfulness (1 Cor. 4:2)
  • Justification is not of works (Eph. 2:9)
  • Sanctification is of works (Eph. 2:10)
  • Justification involves Christ’s love for me (Jn. 3:16)
  • Sanctification involves my love for Christ (1 Jn. 4:19)
  • Justification concerns Christ’s righteousness (2 Cor. 5:21)
  • Sanctification concerns my righteousness (Lk. 14:25-33)
  • Justification involves my position in Christ (Col. 2:11-14)
  • Sanctification involves my practice (Col. 3:1-11)
  • Justification considers what God has done (1 Cor. 15:3-4)
  • Sanctification considers what I am doing (Lk. 14:25-33)
  • Justification is God’s commitment to me (1 Jn. 5:9-13)
  • Sanctification is my commitment to God (Jn. 14:15)
  • Justification requires obedience to one command: to believe the Gospel (Ac. 6:7)
  • Sanctification requires obedience to all of Christ’s commands (Matt. 28:19-20)
  • Justification focuses on the cross which Jesus took up once and for all (1 Cor. 1:18)
  • Sanctification focuses on the cross which I am to take up daily (Lk. 9:53)
  • Justification is finished at the moment of faith (Jn. 5:24)
  • Sanctification is not finished until I go to be with the Lord (1 Cor. 9:24-27)

Discerning between the two should only be a blessing. In some sense working through the differences between justification and sanctification should energize you, and bring truth to your walk. Now you might disagree, but let it be after you’ve worked through this list.

“I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation.”

Psalm 119:99

The author of the above ‘list’ is unknown. May they be blessed by this if they should read this post.
 
 
cropped-christiangraffiti1 (3)
 

Being a Feet-Finder

A terrific study is finding the people who fell at Jesus’ feet. Tucked in the Gospels you’ll find stories of those who despair. You’ll also see them come to Jesus in brokenness and humility, without any other recourse. I call these the feet-finders.

They came to Jesus because they had no hope otherwise. They were people who were hopeless and wretched, they had long ago run out of options. They came to Jesus, falling down in front of Him. They were all feet-finders.

They were men and women who were truly desperate.

“Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

John 11:32

One of the classic scenes in the Gospels is when Mary meets Jesus after her brother’s death. She doesn’t understand Jesus’ delay, Lazarus has been very ill and Jesus could have healed him. She is grieving and confused. But she only has one posture and one place in her heart to be– at the feet!

There are some common characteristics that feet-finders have:

  • A great need that can’t be met without His touch
  • To understand one’s true condition–humility, brokenness
  • To beg for a healing, for self or family
  • To honor Jesus as the Messiah
  • To be more receptive to His teaching, to understand Him
  • To become a witness to others (although it does seem secondary)

The following 3 verses are just a small selection of those who fell at Jesus feet.

“And great crowds came to him, bringing with them the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute, and many others, and they put them at his feet, and he healed them.”

Matthew 15:30

“But immediately a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard of him and came and fell down at his feet.“

Mark 7:25

“Then people went out to see what had happened, and they came to Jesus and found the man from whom the demons had gone, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.”

Luke 8:35

But there are several other instances where people came to sit at Jesus’ feet:

  • Mark 5:22-23, Jairus, a leader in the local synagogue
  • Luke 7:37-38, a sorrowing mother for her daughter
  • Luke 8:41, also Jairus
  • Luke 10:39, Mary, when Jesus was teaching
  • John 11:32, Mary, meeting Jesus entering Bethany
  • John 12:3, Mary, with her perfume
  • Revelation 1:17, John to express what he was seeing (also 19:10)

In every case we find people consciously coming and kneeling at the feet of the Lord Jesus. It was a deliberate action that came from their hearts. Each had a terrible need, and each was without hope.

It’s the end of religion if you’re a feet-finder. No more facades, no more treadmills. Instead your heart forever changes.

Formality and religious politeness are jettisoned. Brokenness and true humility takes their place. A foot-finder is no longer operating on spiritual niceties. Religion is comfortable, noble, and respectable, but it cannot heal or change people deeply.

Feet-finders know that they need Jesus desperately and will go to any length just to be touched by Him. They defy what is conventional and proper. They are not what we call respectable. You can find them at the feet of Jesus. They are feet-finders. Foot-finders weep, kneel, beg, shout. Too many tears and maybe some snot.

Hardly decent to religious people.

Are you really that desperate yet? Have you seen your need, and do you realize how lost you would be without His healing touch?

Often when I do pray, I sometimes think of the woman who was unclean. She speaks to me about approaching Jesus. I see myself in a crushing crowd of people, and I’m reaching out just to touch the hem of His robe. I know only Jesus can stop my own uncleanness. (Matthew 9.)

I’m convinced only Jesus can make me clean and whole.

I’ve tried to be holy and acceptable to Him. But I felt like a juggler, trying to keep my balls in the air all at the same time, and I could never pull it off. So I tried again and again. I was the unofficial master of religious effort.

But I found my rightful place at His feet. It’s where I belong. I love Him.

I’m not ashamed to be found kneeling.

bry-signat (1)

*

Admitting I Need Jesus

When I was in the sixth grade, a friend invited me to her church. My parents didn’t go to church, but said I could go with Clarissa if I wanted to. Before long, I was spending at least three days a week with my church friends. I learned who Jesus was and that if I believed in Him I would be saved.

I believed, though I didn’t fully understand my need for a Savior.

It would be many years and much wayward living later before I would realize the importance of the Apostle Paul’s words to the church in Rome. “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, ‘But the righteous man shall live by faith.’” (Romans 1:16–17 NASB).

It’s easy to think “of course I’m not ashamed of the gospel.” Why would anyone be ashamed of the good news that Jesus died for our sins so that we might be reconciled to Him?

But at its core, faith in the gospel requires the believer to say “I can’t do this myself.”

Well, let me tell you a little secret that believers and nonbelievers often forget. We humans, with all our self-importance, like to think we’re the kings and queens of the universe. We strut around like peacocks, patting ourselves on the back for our so-called brilliance. And you know what? We even pass that audacity onto our poor children, encouraging them to be little independent dynamos. But hey, who needs divine intervention when we’ve got our fabulous human ego, right? wink

I remember a time when my son was in high school and because of a snow day his class schedule was changed. As a result, he took the wrong books. He called to ask me to bring the right books to the school office on my way to work, which I happily agreed to do. When I got to the office to drop them off, the school secretary chided me for bailing him out. “These kids need to learn to be responsible or suffer the consequences,” she said.

I’ve thought of that encounter often, being thankful that Jesus didn’t say the same to the Father when the plan of salvation was put into place. What if Jesus had said, “You know Dad, these humans need to be more responsible or suffer the consequences.” We’d all be doomed.

In a world where DIY is all the rage and dependence on anyone else is frowned upon, Paul’s message is all the more important. We cannot be ashamed to admit that we’re unable to perfectly do the right thing always.

And so, although it requires me to admit I can’t do it alone, I choose to live by faith in the One who gives me His righteousness.

For the broken believer (which is all of us, if we’re honest), it is all the more important to be okay with something less than full independence. We were created to be dependent on God and on one another. We were created to live in community and relationship with others.

Note: A version of this article was originally published in the January 2020 issue of The Christian Journal, a publication I highly recommend, and not just because they publish some of my writing.

My site is at anotherfearlessyear.net.

Clinging to God’s Assurance

John, the Apostle

My favorite of all the apostles is John, “the disciple whom Jesus loved.”

Some people give him a bad rap for calling himself that, saying it’s arrogant. I disagree. I don’t believe this title for himself is any indication he thought he was the only one. Rather, I believe it reveals how certain he was that Jesus loved him and everyone else, including you.

I love John’s Gospel, his three epistles, and Revelation.

One of my favorite passages is from 1 John 4:7-21. It’s all about God’s love for all of His children and how we should love each other in the same way. There’s not a hint of arrogance here.

There are a number of things I love about John’s writings:

  1. He reminds his readers that he was an eye witness to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. That means he writes with truth and authority of what he knows to be true.
  2. He clearly sets out the evidence for Jesus’ divinity. Especially in the Gospel, where we see the “I am” statements of Jesus.
  3. He focuses, particularly in the epistles, on the love of God. In fact, he says “God is love” twice in 1 John 4.
  4. He reveals the power and purpose of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers. It is by the Spirit that we overcome sin and know we are God’s children.
  5. He provides believers with an assurance of salvation.

It is this last point that I’m focusing on today. Early in the history of the Christian faith, deceivers had come into the church who taught that one had to achieve sinless perfection to be saved. John wrote his first epistle to combat this heresy. The same type of heresy has crept into many legalistic denominations even today. By outwardly following the rules, such people claim to be without sin. But as John writes:

“If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.”

1 John 1:8-10 (NIV).

John here provides assurance that the fact that the believer sometimes sins does not negate their salvation, because Jesus is faithful and forgives our sin. One dictionary definition of assurance is “full confidence; freedom from doubt; certainty.” Throughout this epistle, John provides further assurance that those who trust in Jesus can be certain of their salvation even though they are not sinless and perfect.

The word know appears 42 times in this short epistle.

John wants to make sure believers know that God loves them and that they can rely on His promise of salvation. In each of the chapters of the epistle, John includes his assurance:

“Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.”

1 John 3:21-24 (NIV).

“If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.”

1 John 4:15-16 (NIV).

“I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.”

1 John 5:13-14 (NIV).

None of us is perfect and completely sinless. If we were, we would not need a savior. But we do need Him, and we thrive best knowing that He is faithful in His promise of salvation for those who believe.

Now don’t get me wrong. John does not advocate living a life in which we sin willy-nilly simply because we know we can be forgiven. Those who truly believe in Jesus, and trust in Him for salvation, will desire to keep God’s commands. His Spirit living in our hearts will help us to overcome the temptations of the world and to love as He has commanded.

Are you struggling today with worries that you are not good enough, that you’ve sinned too much, or that God will give up on you and you will lose your salvation? Meditate on John’s words, inspired by God, and know that these worries are unfounded. It is the struggle itself that proves you are alive in Christ.

Remember, God is faithful in His promises. He has promised eternal life to all who believe in Jesus and allow His love to live in them. He has not hidden the truth from us, but has made Himself known through His Son and the witness of the apostles so that we can be assured of our place in His Kingdom.

Linda L. Kruschke is the author of My Name Is Beloved, winner of the Unpublished Memoir category of the Oregon Christian Writers Cascade Writing Contest, as well as self-published author of two poetry books. She is a wife, mother, active member of her church, and former Bible Study Fellowship leader. After struggling through years of major clinical depression and finding God’s healing grace, she is now a fearless follower of Christ, living in the assurance of her salvation and God’s love. She is an overseer of this blog–brokenbelievers.com.

She also blogs at Another Fearless Year (http://AnotherFearlessYear.net).