But for all of us, Christ has entrusted us with LIFE. This is a concept that’s so hard for us to acknowledge sometimes because we’ve grown so used to the fact that we deserve, and are entitled perhaps, to the life we live and the things we have.

Last Sunday Pastor shared with the church the story of the master entrusting to his servants the talents, or money. Our first reaction is to see this Bible story from the perspective of “tithing” our money, but it goes so much further than that. The Master entrusted to each of his servants something DIFFERENT and yet considered their efforts JUST as important as the others.

The important thing to remember is that the servant who just took what he was given stewardship over and just buried it in the ground until the master returned, was called “WORTHLESS and LAZY.”

God gives generously to those who love him. The meek will inherit the earth. And all of creation groans to give God his glory.

So whether in your job or your family or your participation in church activities or ministries…. are you being a good steward of what God’s entrusted to you?

My attention fell on 1 Peter 4, recently….

^“7therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. ⁸Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. ⁹Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. ¹⁰As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: ¹¹whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.”

Verse 8 paints this beautiful picture of true love which I’ll come back to in a minute. But in the context of God’s body as a church, look at what it says starting in verse 10.

Each of us has gifts, each of us has something that we’re good at. Praise God for that, because having this knowledge, we can better operate as a body, as a partnership in the calling God has placed on our lives both individually and cooperatively. As a church, it seems easier for us to complain about the way certain things are done, or how money is spent, or who gets to do what “job” at the church, and the funny thing about it all is the fact that God, who knows all and is in all, knows exactly who He has called to do those things, and knows exactly where money is to be spent, and knows exactly how to handle his own church. It’s foolish and ignorant of us to act as if God isn’t in control. Not only that, but it’s irresponsible of us to place that kind of condescension upon the servant God called here. Our strongest convictions should be those that turn our focus to service and support of the ministries God placed in his church, NOT criticism…..

Our arguing, or refusal to accept decisions of the church as Christ’s body, is a rejection of what God has entrusted to His followers. We should always remember 2 Corinthians 5:19, which says God has given to each of us the ministry of His reconciliation of the world! Look back at 1 Peter, verse 10, each of us has received a gift, and Peter pleads with you to use it to serve one another, because God’s grace comes in many (varied) different ways, and I have FULL confidence that there are people in YOUR church that can only be reached by Christ’s love through YOU.

Too often I personally spend time contemplating on what I wish to accomplish on my own accord, even though I’m well aware of John 15:5, that apart from Christ, I can’t accomplish anything. But recently God has reminded me that my frustration, and my own attempts at something are ultimately my rejection of not only His grace, but also it’s straight up ignorance because it implies that I don’t believe God’s got it under control. I have to keep telling myself that God is in all things and that all things were created for Him. These are too easily forgotten. So what ends up happening in my own life is this weird sort of… memory lapse where I somehow tell myself that God doesn’t know what’s best for me. But he does. It’s my submission to His will that He desires. Not my efforts at accomplishing my own goals.

I digress, I wanted to say a few things about 1 Peter before I “log off” here, and that is the reminder to carry ourselves in love. It says to love one another EARNESTLY, or DEEPLY. Truthfully, this isn’t always the motivation behind our actions. We get so blinded by our own desires for church, or family, or school or work, that we lose sight of Christ’s goals for our lives – much like Peter when he looses sight of Christ on the sea, and all of sudden starts crying about drowning in the water below him – and in such a state of mind it becomes impossible for Christ to be glorified in our lives. Verse 11 says we are to carry ourselves in love, if only so that GOD MIGHT BE GLORIFIED THROUGH JESUS CHRIST IN US.

I love hearing that “love covers a multitude of sins,” because all those grudges and disappointments and hatred about “the way things used to be” is complete rubbish in sight of the love of Christ. It means that everything in my own life that’s wicked and sinful and unrighteous can still be used to bring God His glory through Christ when we bear the love of Christ in our lives…. and everything else becomes less and less important.

Perhaps Jonathan Stockstill was on to something when he wrote the words to Open Up the Sky:

“Earthly things don’t matter
they just fade and shatter
when they’re touched by love divine.”

It’s one thing to make “Christian” acknowledgements with our lips, but is that where it ends? We like to say or post on facebook that Christianity is “not a religion, it’s a relationship.” This is a good philosophy to contemplate on, but there is so much danger in thinking and operating in this way, because the trouble that potentially arises here is the fact that it’s so easy for us to become hypocritical with our mouths, and nothing else reaches any deeper. In Matthew 23:27 Jesus just clotheslines the Pharisees by calling them “whitewashed tombs” because they appear or sound so beautiful on the outside, but inside they’re full of death and uncleanness. Wow! I never want to come to a point in my life where Christ can call me a whitewashed tomb! The problem is that we’ve grown so used to the fact that church, or prayer, or tithing, or “being good” merits us any sort of righteousness at all! In Isaiah 64:6 we read that even our most righteous of acts are filthy in comparison to the holiness of God!

Church has done such a great job at enabling the “Christian mask.” We have all these things that we do or say or sing, that we as church members have become so accustomed to, that their meaning and depth just slip between the cracks. We’ve been taught songs that may be catchy or fun. We’ve said prayers that are easy to remember or repeat. We’ve held services every Sunday or every Wednesday. And all of these things are great things, but have the potential to become detrimental to the relationship we claim to have with Christ.

The biggest message of who Christ was and is – is that he came into this world in order to have a better relationship with us. I love Ephesians 2:12-13 which says:

“remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”

What a picture of the love of Christ! We battle so much within ourselves at trying to discover “true love” and we seek it out in pursuing success, or money, or that one guy or one girl, and we completely miss the point: that Christ came so that WE who we once far off may be brought nearer into a restored relationship with him. That relationship with him is something that requires more time and devotion than what we spend at church on a Sunday morning or Wednesday evening.

What drags us down, deeper, and deeper, and further and further away from Christ is the repetition of traditions that have no meaning to us beyond the surface. And so we grow up, go to church, get married, take the kids to church, and live this life of routine where every Sunday morning becomes “God time” and the rest of the week is our time to live, work, or play.

We’ve come into an age that is so dangerously close to devastation and all we can think about is our own entitlement. We feel as if we can sit in church on Sunday and carry our Bible with us and take notes and say a prayer a few times a week, maybe that’s enough to grant us the freedoms to make our own choices in our own life. We feel like all of our own deeds and accomplishments and “service to his church”  will somehow be sufficient enough for Christ to satisfy His desire for intimate relationship with us.

WRONG

Christ spent most of His ministry here on earth just nailing the Pharisees and rebuking their religious practices. Because it’s not about all the prayers we can say or the songs we can sing. It’s so much more than that. Having a relationship with God is not the summation of what we do and what we give.

But RATHER, what we do and what we give are the products of the relationship we have with Christ.

It’s hypocritical to tell ourselves that we have faith in God, when in reality, we drop the idea of trusting in God at the first sign of trouble or discomfort. Whenever life doesn’t seem to go happily for us, we feel like God has “forgotten us.” Or when a loved one passes away, or we lose our job, we blame God for “abandoning us.” And while all these things are sad, maybe tragic, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that God continues and will always continue to have a genuine love for us.

So I wanted to take a look at Psalm 89 today. Starting in verse 28…

“My steadfast love I will keep for him forever, and my covenant will stand firm for him.
I will establish his offspring forever and his throne as the days of the heavens.
If his children forsake my law and do not walk according to my rules,
if they violate my statutes and do not keep my commandments,
then I will punish their transgression with the rod and their iniquity with stripes
but I will not remove from him my steadfast love
or be false to my faithfulness.
I will not violate my covenant or alter the word that went forth from my lips.”

Okay so at first we read a lot what appears to be punishment for turning away from God, which exists, however that’s not my main focus today. Here in Psalms it’s talking about the establishment God made with David as king over Israel. And what I find as the “beautiful promise” here is that even when things go “roughly” for us, or perhaps we’ve even turned away from God and pursued something else and considered it greater than HIM, God never removes from us his “steadfast love.”

This should be encouraging to us! We so easily tell ourselves that God no longer loves us, or that God has abandoned us, when the reality is we complained so much about having “free will” that God in His divine love gave it to us. And with our free will we chase after idol after idol after idol and place God on the back-burner, foregoing God’s provision and protection. And the result of our selfishness of free will, and as a result of our turning away from God, we become transgressors, and we reap the just reward for our actions. and YET:

“I will not remove from him my steadfast love.”

We carry ourselves in ways contrary to God’s will and YET:

“while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

We deny God like Peter denied Christ, and silence his Spirit at school, work, or in public, and YET:

“God so loved the world, that he gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.”

God loves you.
If you deny him, he will deny you. That’s scriptural: Matthew 10:33.

Love you guys.
thanks for reading.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”

I love this passage of Scripture! It reminds of Ephesians where Paul talks about learning to be content with many things or with nothing at all. In 1 Peter, the author reassures us that our true inheritance is being held for is heaven – an imperishable, undefiled, and unfading one! This really struck me a little humorous because when you think about, whatever we receive here on earth, we defile. I know that might seem strong language to some, but isn’t it true? We automatically fall into our own sense of entitlement to the point where we feel like our house, our car, our money, and our family is all our own, and even thinking that defiles those things God has granted us as gifts and blessings! So obviously, “according to his great mercy,” God has reserved the greatest gift he could give us in heaven. Our salvation. How exciting!

We read on, though, because Peter also says that right now, maybe for a little while, we are grieved and downtrodden by the trials of life. This is usually where you hear the illustrations about “falling down so we can get back up” and “you have to lose some to gain some” and all… but look what he writes here:

“so that the tested genuineness of your faith may be found! [Resulting in] praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ!”

Even gold perishes in enough fire, yet we are not to be discouraged. Faith produces righteousness. Faith that God knows what he’s doing. Even in a time where money’s tight it’s transparent, and life just beats you down more and more, and work isn’t fair, school isn’t easy, and friendships fall apart we shouldn’t be focusing on any of those things as the source of our happiness or righteousness! In 1 Peter it says despite being able to see Christ, we love him. Despite seeing Christ, we believe in him, and in doing so, “obtain the outcome of our faith: salvation.”

Does that blow anybody else’s mind? Wow…

So the things in life that don’t go my way… I should be too preoccupied about. You know why? Because my grievances during these sore excuses for “trials” exist so that my faith may be genuine. To be honest, an open, genuine heart is one of my greatest aspirations.

Love you guys.

-ᵯ

The interesting thing about it all was the notion that our “church policy” could be simply stated by: “For God’s glory.” Sounds simple enough, right? As funny as that sounds, it really could be a simple as that. For instance, when a situation comes up about budget spending, or property use, or calendar planning, any scrutiny on the topic should really just fall under the precursor: “does this bring glory to God?”

Perhaps it’s too broad… or it seems so at least. See, we love to talk and hear about how stubborn the modern church is and how people hate change and all that… but it seems to take a pretty sharp turn when the focus really does shift towards us. I think we too constantly have justified our position perhaps without even knowing it. We feel like we are pretty open to new concepts, different ideas, or semi-radical philosophies on ministry, but what do we discover with a little inward examination? What are some of the traditions or ideologies in our own lives that we’ve somehow determined aren’t negotiable? And is standing firm in those things just because that’s the way we’ve always done it, is that glorifying God?

I had the extreme honor of serving at Texas Super Summer this year, and the theme was taken from Psalm 47:10,

“Be still and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth.”

And during the week, we were really challenged to change the way our minds have always looked at certain things, like this very Bible scripture. We usually read be still and know that I am God and stop reading there. But the “bottom line” as Super Summer’s theme stated it, is not focused on us at all! The point of all of this is that God will be exalted!

I think we get all too focused on the fact that we’ve been commanded to be still, and so we focus way too much on our own actions, and if they coincide with whether or not that’s “being still and knowing” that He is God. While there may not be anything wrong with those things, we’re missing the point altogether! The point is that God will be exalted!

So in consideration of church policies, or planning your youth’s summer calendar, or organizing a worship service, or a family summer picnic at church, the central focus of questions should not be how much money it costs, or how many people will show up. I’m not saying these are irrelevant questions, because they are good questions to be asked. But they shouldn’t be the main focus. However, one thing to consider is whether or not the “investment” as we see it, displays God’s glory or not. That’s the bottom line, right? That should be the focus of our efforts – of our lives.

I heard on the radio the other day a quote made by a young athlete: “You can’t dwell on the past, or it will become your future.”
This has really given me the opportunity to stop and think about things from a healthier perspective. Typically, we from our relationships and lifestyles based on who we used to be, and what we may have accomplished in the past. While this by itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it can tend to hinder the strengthening of a relationship with Christ because it’s something we’re placing between ourselves and Him.

For example: In Matthew 8:18-22, we see an example of what Christ expects from us. And the answer is pretty simple: Christ wants our everything in the present. We can’t offer to him our future or our past, just the present.

A man comes to Christ and says, “I’ll follow you wherever you go.” Christ stops the man and tries to explain that following Him isn’t a path that’s taken lightly. It’s not a journey endowed with luxurious hotels and fancy meals and celebrity status. It’s quite the opposite many times, as we see from the Gospels. Then another man says to Christ, “First, let me go bury my father.”

Christ’s reply seems a bit uncaring at first, but Christ is not dismissing the fact that a man’s father has died. Christ was pointing out the fact that there will always be something “we need to take care of first” before we get up and follow Christ.

My question is this: What is in your life that’s so much more important than following Christ that you put HIM off to take care of?

Life doesn’t really get any easier, our schedules never really get any more open, and our situations don’t really get any less complicated. One tremendous truth, however, to remember in these instances is that Christ has accepted us wherever, whatever, and whoever we might be.

And so here we are – wherever that might be – procrastinating our participation in His kingdom, and for what? It has been evidenced, wouldn’t you agree? that Christ carried all our burdens when he carried the cross to Calvary. And yet, for some reason, we feel some sort of possessive obligation to the things that weigh us down. Our sins, our friends, our lifestyles, our occupation, our hobbies, or whatever they might be, are NOT intended to be burdens any longer! Christ already carried those!

The point is that whatever’s happened in the past, is exactly that: in the past. What matters to CHRIST, is what we do right here, right now.

Are you offering excuses to Christ, instead of devotion? Are you impeding your own relationship with Christ by dwelling on matters that aren’t important to Him anymore?

Paul writes in one of his letters that even when we’re at our very best, it’s still worthless in front of God. I think it’s become so easy for us to delude ourselves with the mentality that we can put on our “Sunday best” and that it becomes acceptable for us to be before the throne of God. But the simple fact of the matter is that it’s completely bogus to live in such a way!

God’s never fooled by our actions. There’s not some smoke-screen we can throw in front of God to trick Him into thinking we’re someone that we’re not. God never says, “Oh, look, Marshall has been in church every Sunday for the past 3 years! Man, I really like that guy,” or, “Man, Marshall does so many good things for others, I really want him on MY team.”

Our idea of what God wants from us needs to change drastically. It can’t always be, I should really make it to church this week because God needs me to be there, or, I should pray because that’s what Christians are supposed to do. But rather,

I want to be at church this week so that God can reveal His will for me,
or
I pray because I desire to build a relationship with God.

A familiar verse of Scripture to many of us is Romans 12:1, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship.”

There’s a lot of depth in this small and simple verse that we may have memorized in Sunday School as children. But when we take a deeper look, here are a view things that rise to the surface.

1. Our actions in life are a direct result of what we’ve inherited because of God. (in view of God’s mercy)

2. Having God’s mercy, we are endowed with the capability to bring pleasure to God. (holy and pleasing to God)

3. Each of us does this in countless ways, not defined by physical or material barriers, but by the desires of our heart. (spiritual act of worship)

on 1… Before we are able to genuinely approach God, whether on Sunday morning, or any instance throughout our week, we need to come to the understanding that the time that we have, the air we breathe, is all because God has displayed mercy to us by granting us these gifts. (We’ve learned through Scripture that God does not always patiently tolerate the ignorance of His creation. He flooded the earth to rid the world of the wicked, He consumed an entire “metroplex” of Sodom and Gomorrah at His distaste for their practices, He brought down plague after plague after plague to Egypt to get the reality of His will to become evident.)

Remember that God’s love wouldn’t have any meaning if it weren’t for the justice that love is withholding.

on 2… Being created in God’s own image (Gen. 1:27), we have not only the capability, but the opportunity to bring offerings to God. The great part about this is the fact that what we offer God doesn’t always have to be an immense sacrifice or a huge sum of money or the very clothes off our back (though at times God can ask these things), but what God really gets pleasure out of is His creation (us) bringing Him glory in the way we live the life that He gave us in the first place. Mercy, right?

Remember that God would be justified in being rid of anyone who doesn’t bring Him glory. We were created for God’s glory.

on 3… The beauty of the human condition is that inside of existing in the image of God, each one of us is different. Some of us have talents and ideas that take us to far places in business, and others have gifts and vision to create art and music, and others have passion to connect and interact with people, and thousands of others! All of these things are possessions of our spiritual hearts that God has mandated to be used to bring His glory. It’s never been said that being a follower of Christ requires no money, no success, no happiness. God is responsible for the way the world operates. In business, in finance, in agriculture, in relationships, in everything. The reason it’s so easy for us to categorize “Christianity” as the group of people that “don’t have any fun” is because we’ve lost touch with the way God intended for earthly pleasures to operate. We can serve God and have money, and we can serve God andenjoy life. But of all God’s commandments, there’s one that transcends the entire Bible and is the focal point of all human history.

“You shall have no other gods before me.” (Ex 20:3)

God is a jealous God. And rightfully so. We’ve taken the world that He gave in His merciful and loving nature, and created idols out of every good thing! God wants us to enjoy the life and the pleasures He’s given us within the parameters of the way He created those things to exist.

Worship is defined as “our response to what God has revealed to us in the world and in our lives.” Think about everything God’s done for you.

Now what have you done for Him?