Book of John

We are reading through the Book of John at dinnertime, as a family.  This verse really stuck out to me the other night.

John 15:5b  Jesus is talking here, "...without Me you can do nothing."

So why is it that we so often try to do things in our own power?

If you're anything like me, you're an independent person that doesn't ask people for help.  It's not in my nature to ask for help and I often forget to lean on God for help and ask for His wisdom.  I am getting better at it, but it's a process.

Remember Proverbs 3:5 - Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean NOT on your own understanding.

Are You Putting Yourself Under The Law?

There are so many scriptures that tell us that God tests our hearts, He knows the secrets of our hearts, He is concerned with the state of our heart.  (Psalm 7:9, 44:21, Proverbs 15:11, 17:3, 21:2, 24:12)

I ask you today to examine your heart.  Look inside and see if any of these statements describe you.

Do you go to church because you have to?  Do you read your Bible because you have to?  Do you worship because you have to?  Do you tithe because you have to?

Does your mind weigh your actions on a balance sheet?  A column for wrong actions and a column for right ones and you try to make sure the right ones outweigh the wrong ones?  Going to church, for example, cancels out the fact that you cussed someone out the other day.

Do you ever question whether you are worthy of God's love?  Do you question whether you will make it into heaven?  Do you feel guilt and condemnation?  Do you lack peace?

How many of these things can you answer yes to?

If this describes you, you are putting yourself under the law.  I say to you, that you do not have a true revelation of God's grace and love!  You do not truly understand the work of the cross.

"But," you say, "we must obey God's Word!"  

It comes down to your heart's motivation.  Ask yourself, "Do I do these things to be on God's good side, to attain His love?  Or am I responding out of gratitude of His love for me?"  You see, there is a big difference.  It is the difference between life and death, peace and misery.

You see, God loved you first.  (Please read I John 4:7-19)  God loved you while you were a sinner.  He sent His Son to die in your place, for your sins!  How many of your sins were yet future when Jesus died?  All of them!  Christ died for your past, present, and even future sins!  Until you wrap your brain around that one, you won't stop trying to attain His forgiveness and love through your works.

It is our human nature to try to work things out ourselves, to work out our own salvation.  The first humans on earth, Adam and Eve, tried to work it out themselves.  They covered themselves with fig leaves, but God came and showed them that it wasn't enough.  Our works will never quite be good enough.  The blood of an innocent animal had to be shed to cover their sin.  Jesus' blood had to be shed to cleanse our sin.

Christ came to fulfill the law.  The requirements of the law were death to those that broke it.  You and I were born law-breakers.  Christ took our place, He died so we don't have to.  Paul tells us that we were crucified WITH Him!  Let that sink in.  If we were crucified with Him, then we are dead!  Dead to the law and dead to sin.  Can the courts condemn a dead man?  Certainly not!  If you are saved, the law can't touch you.  But the good news is that if you are dead to sin, you are alive in Christ!

Where you full of joy when you got saved, but now are finding the "burden" of the Christian life too much to bear?  All the things you do aren't bringing you peace?  This is the trap of legalism.  Legalism brings bondage and death.  You have just traded your bondage in sin for a bondage to the law.  But the law was given so that we would sin even more!  Sound crazy?  Read Romans 5:20.  The law was to show us that there is NO way we could ever be justified on our own merit and that we have need of a Savior.

Jesus came to fulfill the law, He has actually called us to a higher law, the law of love.  He said His burden was easy and light to bear.  However, we can only walk in His way if we totally and completely depend on His strength, His grace, and truly have a full understanding of His unconditional love, grace, mercy, and redemptive work!

You see it comes down to the motivations of your heart, that is what God looks at.  Are you going through the "Christianity" motions to work for God's love OR do you truly love to worship Him, truly love to go to church, truly love to give the tithe?  And when you slip up, are you confident of God's unconditional love for you?

This is the real difference between Christianity and all other religions.  The other religions of the world tell you what you must do to be right.  God says, you can do nothing, I have done it all.  And it is blasphemy to try to add to that work!

The good news is that forgiveness is available for you and you can start fresh.  Start by studying this concept.  Study this until the light bulb comes on for you.  Here is a list of references to get you started:

Romans 8

Ephesians 2:1-10

Book of Galatians (yes, the whole book, it's a short one!)

Study commentaries on Galatians and Romans, Dr. Chuck Missler's are great.

I also recommend listening to some teaching by Andrew Wommack on the subject.  He has free downloads on his site, here.

Above all, pray and ask God to reveal His truth to you, to give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, that the eyes of your understanding will be enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of His calling.  (Eph. 1:17-18)

Faith

I just had to post my notes from my study of the Book of Romans today, since it ties in with this article I wrote, here.

These are notes from chapter 2, verse 13.  Paul is laying out the principles on which God judges us.  We are up to principle #5--according to obedience, not knowledge.  (In order to explain how we can be saved, Paul must explain what our predicament is first, so we realize we are in need of a Savior.)

So we are judged based on our obedience, NOT our knowledge.  It is NOT how many Bible verses we have memorized, how many times we have read our Bibles cover to cover, NOT how much we KNOW about the Bible!  The question is, do we obey?  What we know doesn't count, it's what we obey that counts.

All of us are in jeopardy of being in a false comfort of knowing God's truth, but the gospel speaks of the obedience of faith.

We can believe something but we don't have FAITH in it until we show ACTION.  You can believe that a chair will hold you and do the mathematical calculations and everything, but you don't have faith in that chair until you sit in it.  Faith is belief in action.

It IS possible to believe in vain.  The devils believe and tremble.  Disobedience and unbelief are interchangeable words.

Now, this is NOT talking about being saved by our works.  Paul is explaining in the first few chapters of Romans how EVERY single one of us has fallen short of the glory of God, we ALL have sinned and so we ALL need a Savior.

In this passage, chapter 2, verses 11 through 16, Paul is showing that it is the habitual conduct of a person that reveals the condition of their heart, and THAT'S what God's is really after.  Our deeds demonstrate where our heart is really at.  Eternal life in NOT rewarded for good living, that would contradict so many other scriptures that CLEARLY explain that salvation is not by works, but by faith, faith in the work that Jesus did.

So, I had to share today, because I always get excited when revelation is confirmed for me.  We can't build doctrine on single verses alone.  In the mouth of two or three witnesses every word in established.  Confirm scripture with scripture.  (Deut. 19:15)

Bibles for Children

There are a lot of great children's Bibles out there. These are the Bibles my children own.

This one was my son's first Bible.

He got it when he was one. We read him these stories over and over. Now he is nine and has passed it on to his little sister. She loves to read it at bedtime. Her favorite story is of the woman that poured the perfume on Jesus.

When our son was six, we got him the Comic Book Bible. He read this Bible through so many times, the front cover fell off! This Bible exceeds the Bible story books I had as a child. It includes the major and minor prophets, Paul's ministry, and even the book of Revelation, which is more than typical Bible story books. My son knows more about the prophets and Paul than I ever did as a child. Now when we read through the Bible as a family at dinnertime, he recognizes many things from his readings. This is exciting to me, because the more times you hear information the further it sinks in and the more wisdom you can get from it. It's just wonderful for me to see him get this exposure at this young age.

(I have NO idea why this font has insisted on being underlined!)

Last year, after my son had read through the Comic Book Bible so many times, I started thinking it was time for him to move up to the next level. I started to notice certain stories that were missing from the Comic Book Bible. It is a fabulous Bible, it just doesn't contain every single story, it would be too big for kids if it did.

We bought him the Picture Bible. It doesn't have the humor that the Comic Book Bible had, but it still has a comic book format, with frames and conversation bubbles and includes more content. So it was a good step up. If we had bought this one for him at six, I think it would have overwhelmed him and he probably wouldn't have had the interest in reading it, like he did the Comic Book Bible. But now, at nine (we bought it when he was eight), he is really enjoying it. He is almost done reading it through for the first time.

So, like I said, there are a lot of great Bibles available, but these are the ones we own and enjoy.

Analogy

I have been thinking a lot about this whole law and grace thing, after studying Galatians and now starting Romans.

You may or may not know that I am VERY into the topic of food and health, click here to read my health blog.  The thought occurred to me yesterday that law and grace can be compared to diet.

Let's say you are experiencing health issues and your doctor tells you to go on an allergen-free diet.  You can't have any dairy, eggs, wheat, or soy.  You are going to feel VERY restricted, you will feel bondage.  I guarantee, it won't be fun, you will be thinking about all the foods you can't have.  Everywhere you look, there are foods that you can't eat!

Now, let's say that you are studying about health and learn that something isn't good for you, sugar, for example.  You start cutting back on sugar, you may cut out desserts altogether, you may cut out soda altogether, you may start reading labels and becoming more aware of what foods have sugar in them.  It's not a hard thing for you to do, it's relatively easy, you don't desire sugar as much as you used to, you desire to eat more healthy.

This is the difference between law and grace.  Law puts you in bondage, it says what you can and can't do and humans are rule-breakers by nature.  Grace gives you the desire to do what's right and pleasing to the Lord.  It's easy.

Perhaps another analogy will help you.  Let's talk about music.

As a teen, I was told by my church, my parents, and my school that secular music was bad and I was not allowed to listen to it.  Well, remember I said before that we humans are, by nature, rule-breakers.  I rebelled and listened to secular music every chance I got.  Music was my life, I love all types of music, from classical, to jazz, to hard rock.  To tell me I couldn't listen to a huge group of music was unbearable.

Now many years later, I still have a wide repertoire of secular music I enjoy, but I find that if it's not true, noble, just, pure, lovely, of good report (Phil. 4:8), I don't have the desire to listen to it.  (There is actually a lot of good, quality secular music out there, it's not a clear-cut, secular versus Christian thing.)  In fact, I find the desire for music, on a whole, is just not there like it used to be.  I would rather use my time to listen to a podcast of one of my favorite Bible teachers.

As Christians we do not have a big list of dos and don'ts, it is not a life of bondage and restriction.  We have the power of the Holy Spirit working on the inside of us (Phil. 1:6 & Gal. 5:22) so that we want to please the Lord.  And it is not that since we are no longer under the law, we are free to do as we please, either!  (Romans 6:1-2)  Our lives are no longer our own, we have been bought by the blood of Jesus (Acts 20:28) and when we get a true revelation of His sacrifice and His love for us, we want to please Him.  When we have faith in His redemptive work (His Word, His instructions), and obey the things He leads us to do (be a doer, not a hearer only), it is easy, because of His grace.

Information

We just came home from church and it was a great message.

Our pastor taught us about how Jesus gave people information, He didn't just inspire them.  He was constantly teaching the people.

Inspiration is important, but you can't do much with it, unless you have information.  You will need information about how God's kingdom works in order for Him to work in your life, in order to have peace in your life, in order to have healing in your life, in order to have financial prosperity in your life.

Hosea 4:6  My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.

And this is exactly WHY I have started this blog--to inspire you to study God's Word for yourself!  That is where you get the information about who God is, what God's plan is and how you fit into it, and what your response should be.

So don't delay--first, you need to be in a church that is preaching the Word, not just making you feel good; and two, start a habit now of reading God's Word!

What Do I Obey?

This could also be titled, "What is God's Will For Me?"  But since this is a study I did with my nine-year-old son, I used kid-friendly terms.

Since we finished up our study of God's grace (see here), we had to see what God's Word instructed us to DO.  Because God's grace works together with our faith and we read in James that faith without works is dead.  Works being obedience.  So what do we obey?

::The Ten Commandments  -  Exodus 20:1-17

::Parents  -  Ephesians 6:1

::Be humble  -  James 4:6 & Isaiah 14:12-21  (story to illustrate the effects of pride)

::Be givers and tithers  -  Malachi 3:10-11, Luke 6:38, & II Corinthians 9:7

::Be a hard worker  -  II Thessalonians 3:6-13, Proverbs 10:4-5, & Proverbs 12:24

::Love our neighbors as ourselves  -  Luke 10:25-37, John 13:34-35, & Romans 13:9-10

::Be a servant  -  Phillipians 2:3-8, John 13:1-10, Mark 8:1-10, & Mark 9:33-34

::Preach the gospel  -  Mark 16:15-20 &  II Timothy 3:14-4:5

::And most importantly of all--Love God with all your heart!  -  Deuteronomy 6:5

I covered these over the course of two weeks with my son.  Obviously, this is a list geared toward a child.  You can search the scriptures and find many, many more specifics of God's will for your life.  Specifics about your role as a wife, husband, a single person, parent, employee, boss, how to handle your finances, what God's plan is for you and what His purpose is for all of us as humans, and yes--even what and how to eat!

What is God's will for your life?  Search in His Word and find out!