Tying God’s Hands

Only You Can Surrender Your Willful Unbelief

SYNOPSIS: What is the one thing Jesus can’t do? Violate a person’s willful unbelief, that’s what. He will help a person’s humble admission of unbelief (“Lord, help my unbelief”), but he will not impose his Lordship on someone’s refusal to give him a chance. And that includes you! Only you can control your willful unbelief.

Moments With God // Mark 6:5-6

Jesus could do no mighty work there, except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them. And He marveled because of their unbelief.

This is one of the most amazing texts in the entire Bible. Jesus—the second person of the Trinity, the visible image of the invisible God; the one who existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation; the one through whom God created everything in heaven and on earth, the things we can see and the things we can’t see. Think of all those things Jesus created and controls, even when it doesn’t seem like things are under control: thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world. Yes, Jesus is the one by whom all creation is held together (Col 1:15-17). He is the one who had raised the dead, healed the sick, delivered the demonized, fed the five thousand, and walked on water. Astoundingly, this very Jesus could do no mighty works in his own town because of the unbelief of the people who knew him.

And even he—the one who had seen it all—was amazed by their unbelief. I would dare say it must take an awful lot to stump Jesus!

What is the one thing Jesus can’t do? Violate a person’s willful unbelief, that’s what. He will help a person’s humble admission of unbelief (“Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, ‘I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!’” Mark 9:14-25), but he will not impose his Lordship on someone’s refusal to give him a chance.

Now before we get all huffy about Jesus’ neighbors, do you think we sometimes do that with Jesus, too? Haven’t we seen his glory, tasted his goodness; been touched by his love and grace and power, yet we still question his right of Lordship over our lives? You might say, “but I don’t do that!” Yes, you do—so do I! How? We do that when we give in to doubt, worry, fear, depression, anger, or engage in any number of other self-medicating, self-destructive acts, like overspending, overeating, oversleeping, over-talking, over-sharing, over-indulging in sexually addictive behaviors, substance abuse…and the list goes on.

Why would we surrender to any of those harmful and deceptive things when we have seen and touched the power and glory of the Lord Jesus Christ? Truthfully, I don’t know why we would. Sometimes my own propensity to resist Christ’s loving Lordship amazes me.

Here’s what I do know: If we will take an honest look at where we are resisting Jesus’ right to rule over us—both passively and willfully—and come to him with a humble request that he help our unbelief, even that crack in the door will be enough for him to do his mighty works in our lives.

Otherwise, you will be tying God’s hands. And that will amaze even him—and not in a good way. So instead offer him your humble, simple faith, and Jesus will likewise be amazed—and I mean in the best way possible, just as we see in Luke 7:9,

Jesus was amazed. Turning to the crowd he said, “Never among all the Jews in Israel have I met someone with faith like this.”

Take A Moment: Offer this prayer sincere today: Jesus, there are still areas of my life where I resist your Lordship. Help my unbelief. I open the door of my heart to you and invite you to burst through it to accomplish your mighty works in me.

Job Description For Jesus’ Disciples

Reflecting and Replicating the Master

SYNOPSIS: Are you a true disciple? The answer is easy: If you are reflecting and replicating the life of the Master, you’re in pretty good shape. If you aren’t, you need to go back and have a serious conversation — should I say, “conversion” — with the Master.

Discipleship is a journey.

Moments With God // Matthew 28:18-20

Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

What do real disciples do? Two things actually: They reflect and they replicate.

First of all, authentic disciples become like the Master. They fully devote themselves to his life and they fully obey his teachings. They become like Jesus in thought, word, and deed to the point where his very being is reflected in the essential quality of their being. The Master becomes the sum and substance of their lives. Only by the kind of transformation where the Master is fundamentally reflected from center to circumference in their lives can Christ’s disciples in turn “go and make [other] disciples.” Only then can they teach others to “observe all that [the Master] has commanded.”

That is what it means to be truly Christian. Being truly Christian means being an authentic disciple. One cannot happen without the other—Christianity means discipleship; discipleship means Christianity. Being either is not just in name, it is in the reflection of the Master in the life of the disciple. Calling oneself a disciple is simply wishful thinking without doing the things of discipleship and being in essence the reflection of the Master. Call it what you will, anything less is nothing more than inauthentic discipleship, non-Christianity, a false religion.

Second, authentic disciples replicate the life of the Master through their lives in the lives of others. In other words, they reproduce. Barren discipleship is non-discipleship. True disciples go with the message, bearing the life of the One they reflect and persuading others to follow Jesus.

Disciples don’t just win converts to Christianity; they make other disciples in the way of the Master. To convert a soul to Jesus simply begins the process of discipleship. Conversion is the first step; discipleship is the journey. True conversion begins the journey of authentic discipleship; the convert requires the same full devotion to the Master’s life and the same full obedience to his teaching that took place in the proto-disciple. The Master’s life is replicated in the disciple, who in turn replicates the Master’s life in the convert, who then, in turn, replicates the Master’s life in still others.

That is when discipleship comes full circle and is proven authentic.

Here is the real question in all of this: Are you a true disciple? The answer is easy: If you are reflecting and replicating the life of the Master, you’re in pretty good shape.

If you aren’t, you need to go back and have a serious conversation — should I say, “conversion” — with the Master.

Take A Moment: If you are serious about being a true disciple of Christ, let me suggest that you offer this prayer: “Jesus, you said we cannot truly call you Lord unless we do the things you said we should do. With all of my heart, I want to be authentic when I call you Lord. Help me to give you my full devotion and complete obedience. Make me a true disciple.”

The Cost of Discipleship

No Easy Believism Allowed

SYNOPSIS: Jesus made no promises of an easy, breezy, carefree Christianity. Rather, he demanded complete obedience, costly sacrifice, and selfless servanthood from those who wanted to be on his team. He told them that they would have to “eat his flesh and drink his blood” if they wanted a part in him. (John 6:53) He said people would hate them, misunderstand them, reject them, persecute them, and put them out of the synagogues. And he even promised that people would kill them, believing that in so doing they were helping God out. Yet the eleven disciples (one of them, Judas, got cold feet) fully bought into Christ’s call to costly discipleship. Will you?

Project 52 – Weekly Scripture Memory // Matthew 16:24

Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “Salvation is free…but discipleship will cost you your life.”  I’m pretty sure he was quoting Jesus on that one.

Does Christ’s call to self-denying, cross-bearing discipleship seem a little extreme in comparison to the “easy believism” that passes for some brands of discipleship today? You will likely hear a lot more about a life of comfort, security and success these days from spiritual leaders than the straight talk Jesus laid on his would-be followers.

Jesus made no promises of an easy, breezy, carefree Christianity. Rather, he demanded complete obedience, costly sacrifice, and selfless servanthood from those who wanted to be on his team. He told them that they would have to “eat his flesh and drink his blood” if they wanted a part in him. (John 6:53) He said people would hate them, misunderstand them, reject them, persecute them, and put them out of the synagogues.  And he even promised that people would kill them, believing that in so doing they were helping God out. (John 16:2)

Yet the eleven disciples (one of them, Judas, got cold feet) fully bought into Christ’s call to costly discipleship. They gave up everything they had and left everything they knew for a life that promised nothing except a chance to advance God’s kingdom in a resistant, hostile world. They fully understood that the overwhelming bulk of their rewards would come only afterwards, in the afterlife.

Despite Christ’s less than appealing recruitment campaign, however, these first disciples, followed in the years to come by countless thousands of other hungry seekers, flocked to this self-denying, cross-bearing brand of Christianity. Jesus was a tough act to follow, to say the least, but these disciples eagerly signed up—and they changed the world.

How? Simply by doing what Jesus had asked: They denied themselves, took up their crosses, followed his way daily and laid down their lives for his sake— literally in many cases. Without a political voice, financial resources, social standing, and military might, this unlikely ragtag band of followers conquered the Roman Empire in less than three hundred years.

Such was the radical power of this brand of fully committed discipleship.

Do you worry, as I do, that Christ’s call to costly discipleship would empty most churches of its people in our day? Though most believers give mental assent to cross-bearing and self-denial, in reality there is very little evidence of it in their lives, or in their churches. A.W. Tozer comments,

It has become popular to preach a painless Christianity and automatic saintliness. It has become part of our ‘instant’ culture. ‘Just pour a little water on it, stir mildly, pick up a gospel tract, and you are on your Christian way.

If Jesus rebuked Peter (Matthew 16:23) — “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men” — for suggesting Christianity without a cross, what do you suppose he would say to us who have suggested Christian discipleship without cross-bearing?

We must aggressively and boldly reject that brand of faith, because that is not the discipleship to which Jesus has called us. And that is not the discipleship that I want for my life.

How about you?

 The first mark of a disciple is not a profession of faith, but an act of obedience. ~Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

Reflect & Apply: Bonhoeffer once remarked, “Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ.” No matter how long you have been a Christian, Jesus is calling you to a more ruthless brand of discipleship. Are you ready to follow?

A Day To Begin Again

The Journey to Christlikeness

The New Year is just a few hours old, and I don’t know what this year holds for you and me, but I know Who holds this year. He is Immanuel, the God who is with us each step of the way. And since he is with us – behind us, in front of us, alongside us – he will fulfill each of his promises and accomplish all of his purposes—not the least of which is to conform us to the likeness of his Son. He is the unstoppable God, and making us more like Christ is his target – and he never misses. He will get us there looking a lot more like Jesus!

The Journey: Matthew 1:22-23

All of this occurred to fulfill the Lord’s message through his prophet: “Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel,’ which means, ‘God is with us.’”

For me, the launch of the New Year is always the opportunity to begin again. I’ve set new goals for myself, and today I continue the march toward that which God has called me: The transformation of my life into complete Christlikeness. Like the Apostle Paul, this will be my consuming passion this year:

Until Christ is formed in you! (Galatians 4:19)

One of those critical goals that will propel me forward toward Christlikeness is to have a “quiet time” with God every single day this year. I know of no more powerful and profound, yet simple key to Christian growth, spiritual health and life change than to read, meditate on, and pray over God’s Word. You cannot grow and you will not be “bless-able” without the intimate relationship with God that comes through his Word. It will not be apart from reading, memorizing, meditating, absorbing, obeying and loving God’s Word that God will truly take over Ray Noah in the next 365 days.

So I want to invite you to join me on this journey. I will be reading the Gospels four times this year—one chapter each day Monday through Friday. When I get through Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, I will return to Matthew and begin again.

So why the gospels, you ask? Well, if I am going to look more like Jesus this year, I figured spending time listening to his words, watching his life, and absorbing his ways couldn’t hurt. And what better way to do that than by saturating my life in his story, which is contained in these four gospels.

Now as you start off today’s reading in Matthew 1, you are immediately confronted with a list of names, which, for the most part, are meaningless to you. You may be tempted just to skip past these names, but I want to challenge you not to do that. You see, each name, just like in your own family history, tells a story. And that story reveals God’s activity in fulfilling his divine purpose to bring about the birth of his Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus did not just suddenly appear in history without context—his birth was the result of God’s eternal plan.

Not only do these names show us how God was fulfilling his sovereign purpose, they show us how he was fulfilling his divine promise. Jesus was born as a result of a promise God had made hundreds of years before, first to Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:15), then to Abraham (Genesis 12:3) and to King David (I Chronicles 17:11-14). God never breaks a promise—you can count on that!

Furthermore, these names not only tell the story of God’s purpose and God’s promise, but they tell us the story of God’s grace in using fallen and quite flawed human beings as the conduit through whom his Son would be born. In this listing of the Messiah’s progenitors are some unlikely and undeserving people: Tamar, a Gentile woman who slept with her father-in-law; Rahab, a Gentile prostitute; Ruth, a Gentile woman from the hated Moabite nation; and Bathsheba, who is listed as the “wife of Uriah the Hittite”, the woman with whom King David had an adulterous affair.

It is nothing less than amazing that God would use people you would never expect as the human conduit through which he would fulfill his purposes and his promises. And if God would use people like them, he will use people like you and me. That is the grace of God!

This opening chapter here in Matthew’s Gospel that begins with all these strange and boring names tells us the amazing story of how our purposeful, faithful and gracious God went to extreme lengths to reach us and redeem us with his love. He didn’t send his love through a written message, or a public service announcement, or a sign in the heavens. He sent himself! He sent his love through a baby born in a manger, who was called Immanuel—which means, “God is now with us.”

Here we are at the beginning of the New Year, and I don’t know what this year holds for you and me, but I know Who holds this year. He is Immanuel. He is God, and he is with us. He is the God who will fulfill each of his promises and who will accomplish all of his purposes—not the least of which is to conform us to the likeness of his Son. He is the unstoppable God, and making us more like Christ is his target—and he never misses!

And he is the God who has every right to rule my life—and yours!

Have you set some action steps that will allow God to completely rule your life this year? I hope so. I have—I’ve listed 5 of them below (I have a few more that I’ll not bore you with at the moment). Take some time to write down your action steps—and if you don’t mind, share them with someone to whom you will be accountable.

  1. To have a daily quiet time with God—Bible reading, journaling and prayer.
  2. To share my faith with a lost person at least once per month.
  3. To live a morally pure and God-pleasing life each of the next 365 days.
  4. To look more like Christ in my thinking, feeling and acting life—that my growth in Christ-likeness will be evident to my family, associates and followers.
  5. To know and do God’s perfect will.

A Simple Prayer To Be More Like Jesus:

Lord, I really need your help on this. This year, pull out all the stops to conform me to the image of your Son. 365 days from now, may there be a noticeable change in me—may people actually mistake me for Jesus!

Estate Planning As Discipleship: Get In On The Act Long After You’re Gone

ThanksLiving: 365 Days of Gratitude

Whether you are wealthy or poor, you can and should think of how to impact the Lord’s work posthumously. Why? Because you believe in laying up treasure in heaven—even after you are gone—and because you are so grateful for God’s undeserved blessings in your life that you just want to keep on giving back. Make plans now to bless God’s work later—wherever you choose—through visionary estate planning, and get ready to watch your investment grow from the great cloud of witnesses!

Going Deep // Focus: 1 Kings 7:51

So King Solomon finished all his work on the Temple of the Lord. Then he brought all the gifts his father, David, had dedicated—the silver, the gold, and the various articles—and he stored them in the treasuries of the Lord’s Temple.

King David was now dead and gone, but his impact on God’s kingdom continued in both large and small ways. As the new king of Israel, Solomon, was finishing up his amazing job of constructing and furnishing the temple, we are told that he brought out treasure after treasure that his father David had prepared in advance of death in anticipation of this day. Now that is visionary estate planning!

There was not a man more passionate about God than David. He was deeply flawed—that is well known—but deeply committed to living a repentant life before God as well. He pursued the Lord with reckless abandon, so much so that God himself declared of David, “I have found David son of Jesse, a man after my own heart; he will do everything I want him to do.” (Acts 13:22)

God didn’t want David to build the temple; he had sovereignly ordained Solomon to that task. David desperately wanted to, but he humbly accepted God’s decision. That didn’t stop David, however, from making preparation for the day when a grand temple would be dedicated to the glory of God by one of his sons, hopefully Solomon. So in the bell lap of his reign, David began to think through things that would elevate the worship experience of the Israelites when they finally had a permanent house in which to offer their worship to God. Moreover, he began to craft gifts that would be lovingly presented to God for no other purpose than to make God smile. We don’t know exactly what those gifts were, but they were meaningful enough, and impressive too, that they met the well-heeled Solomon’s high standards for use in the temple.

David’s action took faith and vision along with careful planning and determined effort to do what he did. And he knew he would never see his gifts in use—at least not from the perspective of earth. Perhaps he had a sense that he would be in that great cloud of witnesses watching the temple’s dedication from the grandstand of heaven. Whatever the case, David leveraged his life when he had it to advance the kingdom and glorify God when he no longer had the breathe of life. His was an excellent example of estate planning long before seminars on how to prepare for your demise existed.

What about you? Do you love the Lord enough to want the material wealth he has given you to advance his kingdom long after you are gone? Out of gratitude for God’s undeserved blessing in this life, are you, like David, willing to exercise faith and foresight so that God’s work will be resourced through your estate? Do you want your love for God to live on even when you are gone from the earth? I hope so!

Now you may be thinking, since I am a pastor, that I’m fixin’ to take an offering? Not at all! I simply want you to invest in things that will produce an ever-increasing return even after you have joined David in that great cloud of witness. I want you to passionately love God so much that even what you leave behind continues to witness to his great name. I want you to do the kinds of things out of the kind of heart David offered to the Lord that Almighty God will say about you what he said of David, “I have found one who has a heart after me.” By the way, it is not the amount that matters; it is the intent of your heart. Whether you are wealthy or poor, you can and should think of how to impact the Lord’s work posthumously.

Now I am not suggesting you do something that I haven’t done. After much heartfelt discussion, my wife and I spoke to an estate planning attorney and legally bound a percentage of our material wealth, such as it is, to resource God’s work through our church and the missions ministry of our choice. We did that because we believe in laying up treasure in heaven—even after we are gone. We did that because we have seen the impact of financial resources in advancing kingdom business. We did that because we are so grateful for God’s undeserved blessings in our lives that we just want to give back—and keep on giving. We did that because we know that “tis one life will soon be past, and only what’s done for Christ will last.”

I hope you will receive this in the right spirit. Mostly, I hope you will do something about it. Make plans now to bless God’s work later—wherever you choose—through visionary estate planning. And get ready to watch your investment grow from the great cloud!

Going Deeper With God: Do not wait any longer. At the next opportunity, talk to an attorney or attend an estate planning seminar, and set a strategy for kingdom advancement even after you are gone.

The Cost Of Discipleship

Reflect:
Matthew 16:24

“Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “Salvation is free…but discipleship will cost you your life.”  I’m pretty sure he was quoting Jesus on that one.

Does Christ’s call to self-denying, cross-bearing discipleship seem a little extreme in comparison to the “easy believism” that passes for some brands of discipleship today? You will likely hear a lot more about a life of comfort, security and success these days from spiritual leaders than the straight talk Jesus laid on his would-be followers.

Jesus made no promises of an easy, breezy, carefree Christianity. Rather, he demanded complete obedience, costly sacrifice, and selfless servanthood from those who wanted to be on his team. He told them that they would have to “eat his flesh and drink his blood” if they wanted a part in him. (John 6:53) He said people would hate them, misunderstand them, reject them, persecute them, and put them out of the synagogues.  And he even promised that people would kill them, believing that in so doing they were helping God out. (John 16:2)

Yet the eleven disciples (one of them, Judas, got cold feet) fully bought into Christ’s call to costly discipleship. They gave up everything they had and left everything they knew for a life that promised nothing except a chance to advance God’s kingdom in a resistant, hostile world. They fully understood that the overwhelming bulk of their rewards would come only afterwards, in the afterlife.

Despite Christ’s less than appealing recruitment campaign, however, these first disciples, followed in the years to come by countless thousands of other hungry seekers, flocked to this self-denying, cross-bearing brand of Christianity. Jesus was a tough act to follow, to say the least, but these disciples eagerly signed up—and they changed the world.

How? Simply by doing what Jesus had asked: They denied themselves, took up their crosses, followed his way daily and laid down their lives for his sake— literally in many cases. Without a political voice, financial resources, social standing, and military might, this unlikely ragtag band of followers conquered the Roman Empire in less than three hundred years.

Such was the radical power of this brand of fully committed discipleship.

Do you worry, as I do, that Christ’s call to costly discipleship would empty most churches of its people in our day? Though most believers give mental assent to cross-bearing and self-denial, in reality there is very little evidence of it in their lives, or in their churches.

A.W. Tozer commented that “it has become popular to preach a painless Christianity and automatic saintliness. It has become part of our ‘instant’ culture. ‘Just pour a little water on it, stir mildly, pick up a gospel tract, and you are on your Christian way.’”

If Jesus rebuked Peter (Matthew 16:23) — “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men” — for suggesting Christianity without a cross, what do you suppose he would say to us who have suggested Christian discipleship without cross-bearing?

If Jesus rebuked Peter — “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men” (Matthew 16:23) — for suggesting Christianity without a cross, what do you suppose he would say to those today who have suggested Christian discipleship without cross-bearing? Jesus made no promises of an easy, breezy, carefree Christianity. Rather, he demanded complete obedience, costly sacrifice, and selfless servanthood from those who wanted to be on his team—and with that, a chance to change the world now and unending, indescribably joy in the world to come.

We must aggressively and boldly reject that brand of faith, because that is not the discipleship to which Jesus has called us. And that is not the discipleship that I want for my life.

How about you?

 “The first mark of a disciple is not a profession of faith, but an act of obedience.” ~Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

Reflect & Apply: Bonhoeffer once remarked, “Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ.” No matter how long you have been a Christian, Jesus is calling you to a more ruthless brand of discipleship.  Are you ready to follow?

This Is What Disciples Do

5×5×5 Bible Plan

Read: Matthew 28
Meditation:
Matthew 28:19-20

“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

Shift Your Focus… What do real disciples do? Two things actually: They reflect, and they replicate.

To begin with, authentic disciples become like the Master. They fully devote themselves to his life and fully obey his teachings. They become like the Jesus in thought, word and deed to the point where his very being is reflected in the essential quality of their being. The Master becomes the sum and substance of their lives.

Only by the kind of transformation where the Master is fundamentally reflected, from the center to the circumference, in the lives of his disciples can they in turn “go and make [other] disciples.” Only then can they teach others to “observe all that [the Master] has commanded.”

That is what it means to be truly Christian. Being truly Christian means being an authentic disciple. One cannot happen without the other—Christianity means discipleship; discipleship means Christianity. Being either is not just in name, it is in the reflection of the Master in the life of the disciple. Calling oneself a disciple is simply wishful thinking without doing the things of discipleship and being in essence the reflection of the Master. Call it what you will, anything less is nothing more than inauthentic discipleship, non-Christianity, and false religion.

Then, authentic disciples replicate the life of the Master through their lives in the lives of others. In other words, they reproduce. Barren discipleship is non-discipleship. True disciples go with the message, bearing the life of the One they reflect, and persuade others to follow Jesus.

Disciples don’t just win coverts to Christianity, they make other disciples in the way of the Master. To convert a soul to Jesus simply begins the process of discipleship. Conversion is the first step; discipleship is the journey. True conversion that begins the journey of authentic discipleship requires the same full devotion to the Master’s life and the same full obedience to his teaching that took place in the proto-disciple. The Master’s life is replicated in the disciple, who in turn replicates the Master’s life in the convert, who then, in turn, replicates the Master’s life in still others.

That is when discipleship comes full circle; when discipleship is proven authentic.

Here is the real question in all of this: Are you a true disciple? The answer is easy: If you are reflecting and replicating the life of the Master, you’re in pretty good shape.

If you aren’t, you need to go back and have a serious conversation — should I say, “conversion” — with the Master.

“Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ.” ~Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Prayer… Jesus, you said we cannot truly call you Lord unless we do the things you said we should do. With all of my heart, I want to be authentic when I call you Lord. Help me to give you my full devotion and complete obedience. Make me a true disciple.