Category Archives: John

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Weekend Meditation: Imperfect But Passionate

Read: John 18-19

Meanwhile, as Simon Peter was standing by the fire warming himself, they asked him again, “You’re not one of his disciples, are you?” He denied it, saying, “No, I am not.” (John 18:25, NLT)

Peter usually takes a beating when evaluated alongside the eleven disciples.  He gets labeled as the stumbling, bumbling, think-before-you-speak, foot-in-the mouth, inconsistent goofball from Galilee, who for reasons God only knows, got chosen to be one of Jesus’ first disciples.  Good old Peter—the first century version of Gomer Pyle in the Lord’s little band of foot soldiers.

But let’s give Peter some credit. He may not have been perfect—by a long shot—but he sure was passionate! And he was there—at least give him that. In John 18, as Jesus was arrested and brought to trial, when everyone else but John had fled, Peter figured prominently. He was like a bull in a china shop—passionate, yes; perfect, no—but he was there:

He whacked off the ear of one who came to arrest Jesus. (John 18:10-11, NLT) Passionate—but misguided!

He surreptitiously followed as the High Priest’s SWAT team took Jesus to jail. (John 18:15-17, NLT)  Passionate—but fearful!

He stood among the soldiers as they warmed themselves by the fire. (John 18:18, NLT)  Passionate—but silent!

He denied knowing Jesus when questioned, but at least he was there to be questioned. (John 18:25, NLT)  Passionate—but weak!

He doubled down on his denial when questioned again. (John 18:26-27, NLT)  Passionate—but fundamentally flawed!

Yes, Peter was all of those things we’ve said—there is no doubt about it—but passionate? You bet—imperfect, but passionate to the core!  Perhaps that is why Jesus gave Peter so much public attention and placed him so prominently on his leadership team. Like the very flawed King David, Peter had a heart after God.

God can use people like that. In fact, I suspect God prefers them over the perfect.  Oh, and just a little hint: There are no perfect people, only those who think and act like they are. Of course, I am not excusing Peter’s imperfection; only explaining it. But I think the reason the Gospel writers included Peter’s gaffes with regularity was not to put him down as the dunderhead we often think he is, but to remind us that God uses imperfect people, especially the passionate ones!

“Passion, though a bad regulator, is a powerful spring. ” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

What If God Took Over?

Ask God to give you greater passion.  Pray for self-control and wisdom, too—but if you are like me, you probably need more passion than the other two.

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Help For Your Toughest Assignment

Read: John 17

“I’m not asking you to take them out of the world, but to keep them safe from the evil one.” (John 17:15, NLT)

I cannot think of a more difficult assignment that you have today than to live in the world but not be of it.  Yet that is the exact calling that God has placed upon your life. You must live as light on a spiritually dark planet yet not be absorbed by the darkness; you are to be gospel seasoning in a tasteless world without loosing your God-flavor.

To get out of balance on either end of that assignment, which is an easy thing to do, by the way, is a recipe for spiritual uselessness at best, and spiritual offensiveness at worst. Some Christians have assumed their assignment is to retreat from the world so far that they are insulated from sin. Great—all they have succeeded in doing in making themselves weird and forfeiting any ability to attract people to the joy and abundance of the Kingdom Life.  Other Christians, much larger in numbers, have gone so far the other way and have so blurred the lines between believer and non-believer that the world has no way of seeing in them the attractive beauty of Christ’s holiness.  Not only that, but they have not made God happy in the process.

It is a tough act to pull off, to be in the world yet not of it, but Jesus, himself, has prayed to his Father for you—so that gives you a fighting chance.  Not only that, Jesus, himself, has set for you an example of how to live in the culture and not be absorbed by it. It’s called the incarnation. The truth is, wherever Jesus went, not only was he untainted by the sinful world, his life for so compelling different that he drew unbelievers to the Father likes bees are drawn to flowers.  Furthermore, Jesus, himself, promised to send you the Holy Spirit to lead you, guide you, walk with you every step of the way and empower you to live in this world but be set apart from it as living witness of the grace of God.

It sounds like your assignment, as difficult as it may be, is completely doable since Father, Son and Holy Spirit are on Team You!

“Our witness – good or bad – is the overflow of our lives.” ~Allistair Begg

What If God Took Over?

Read John 17 out loud today, and absorb the words as Jesus prays for you.  You will be encouraged.

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You Are Not The Holy Spirit

Read: John 16

“And when he comes, the Holy Spirit will convict the world of its sin, and of God’s righteousness, and of the coming judgment. (John 16:8, NLT)

You and I do a horrible job at being the Holy Spirit in other people’s lives.  Yet how tempting it is to do his work for him. It is easy to do when you are passionate about truth. It is easy to do when you see how someone you care about is living counter-productively. And frankly, it is easy to do when people aren’t fulfilling your vision for their lives.  Yes, God loves them and you have a wonderful plan for their lives—and it is your job to make sure they live up to your high calling. Right?

Wrong!

Spiritual maturity demands that we know the difference between serving as the voice of truth and reason for people and allowing the Spirit to transform their thinking and behavior. We step into his territory the minute we assume the role of CCO—Chief Conviction Officer. Of course, there is a fine line between sharing the truth in love, respectful persuasion and passionate debate—all of which are good and necessary to being the influencer Jesus calls us to be—and with being argumentative, rude, nagging, arrogant and flat out irritating. We have been called to lead the horse to water, so to speak, but only the Holy Spirit can create the unquenchable thirst that makes a person want to drink deeply from Truth.

It takes real discernment and sensitivity to figure out what to say, how much to say, and when to say it—and when just to shut up and let God go to work. Oswald Chambers said, “One of the hardest lessons to learn comes from our stubborn refusal to refrain from interfering in other people’s lives. It takes a long time to realize the danger of being an amateur providence, that is, interfering with God’s plan for others.”

The truth is that God, indeed, has a wonderful plan for people’s lives, but we must allow him to convince them of how that plan needs to play out.  By all means, we ought to take the role of encourager, exhorter, and at times, admonisher, but only the Holy Spirit can bring the change of heart, the right thinking, and the right steps that will lead them to the incredible life God has envisioned.

Chances are there is someone in your life right now whom you have the opportunity to influence, but the temptation is tell them what to think, how to feel and which way to go. Perhaps it is your child, maybe it is your spouse, or it could be a friend or a co-worker—it is just part of the human equation.  So let me suggest in that particular situation you simply take your foot off the gas pedal, pray a lot more, and let the Holy Spirit work.  If you will, the transformation in that person’s life will happen a lot more quickly, deeply and enduringly.

So try to remember at all times: You are not the Holy Spirit! Observing that one piece of advice will save you and the people in your life from a great deal of frustration.

“There is no better evangelist in the world than the Holy Spirit.” ~D.L. Moody

What If God Took Over?

Ask God to reveal where you have been doing the Holy Spirit’s work for him.  When he shows you, first, repent, then second, ask for greater discernment and sensitivity to fulfill the role of influencer God has called you to play.

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A Hateful World

Read: John 15

“If the world hates you, remember that it hated me first. The world would love you as one of its own if you belonged to it, but you are no longer part of the world. I chose you to come out of the world, so it hates you.” (John 15:18-19)

It is a real dilemma for Christians: God loves the world so much that he gave his Son to die for it, but the world hates God (they didn’t like his Son too much either) because it belongs to the Evil One. But wait, there is more: The story that he has commissioned his followers to bring to the world, called the Good News, is received most of the time as bad news because it first has to deal with the problem of human sin—which kind of makes sinners a bit uncomfortable.  Hold on, I’m not through yet:  You and I belong to God, and since Satan, the current strong man who dominates this world and its inhabitants, hates God and every thing of God, we are included in that hatred.  Jesus couldn’t have put it in any clearer terms:

“Since I picked you to live on God’s terms and no longer
on the world’s terms, the world is going to hate you.”
(John 15:19, Message)

Now that is tough to swallow, especially in our culture, where Christians have been brought up for the last couple generations on a steady diet of positive mental attitude pablum, seeker sensitive evangelism, and a church growth movement that tries everything in its power to make the unbeliever want to come to church. For the last thirty years, a great many churches in the western world have placed more emphasis on making sinners comfortable than making committed disciples, which requires preaching Christ and him crucified.  More energy and resources have been devoted to creative messaging and capturing the “cool factor” than cross-bearing discipleship.

Don’t believe me?  Just walk into any number of church lobbies, and you will feel like you are in a Starbucks rather than a sanctuary’s vestibule. When the service starts, listen to the music and you will think you are listening to America’s Top 40 in a sea of concert-goers enjoying a rock concert rather than among engaged worshipers offering up the sacrifice of praise to please their God. Sit through a sermon and you will think you have just listened to a hybrid of David Letterman and Tony Robbins helping you to laugh your way in seven easy steps to your best life now. Check out the altar call at the end of the message, if there even is one, and you will think people have just signed up for a thirty-day free trial of Netflix.

What you are unlikely to find, though, is any talk of sin—it just makes people feel too uncomfortable.  You may not hear words like “repentance” or “surrender” or “obedience” or “Lordship”—it may just scare the pre-Christians away.  What you are going to hear, however, is what I would call a Burger King Christianity—you know, the kind that says, “special orders don’t upset us…have it your way.”

Now listen, I am not just a grouchy, out-of-touch, aging pastor—okay, I am at least one of those. I don’t think preachers ought to go out of their way to be offensive.  I do believe that churches ought to think creatively about reaching the disinterested and hostile in their community.  I love excellence, and think the church service ought to be a first class affair—we are worshiping the King of kings after all.  And by all means, believers ought to do what they can to build bridges to the lost people in their lives.

But our job is neither to impress the world by trying to be a cool version of it or to tell it that everything is mostly okay with it—except for a few minor adjustments. Our job is to talk about the Good News that Jesus died for our sins—sins that had separated us and made us hostile to a holy God. Once we deal with the sin issue through proclaiming the truth in grace and love, inviting sinners back to God through the repentance of sin and calling them into a surrendered lifestyle of committed, cross-bearing discipleship, both we and the sinners we help to rescue will realize that what we have found is something more satisfying, more valuable, more positive by far than anything this world can provide.

Quit worrying about whether the world will like you or not. It won’t—that is guaranteed.  If you belong to Jesus, you will be hated, but that is okay, because God loves you.  And that is all that matters.

“Jesus Christ did not say, ‘Go into the world and tell the world that it is quite right.’” ~C.S. Lewis

What If God Took Over?

How much have you bought into the mentality that your job is to get the world to like you?  Ask God to help you jettison that unhealthy need from your life.  And take a moment to meditate on I John 2:15 (NLT)

“Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you.”

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The Defining Spirit of Authentic Discipleship

Read: John 14

“Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me.” (John 14:1, NLT)

In his book, Ruthless Trust, Brennan Manning tells the story of ethicist John Kavanaugh, who traveled to India to work with Mother Teresa in “the house of the dying”. Kavanaugh was searching for what to do with the rest of his life, so he asked Mother Teresa to pray for him that God would grant him clarity.  She refused, however, saying, “Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of.” When Kavanaugh protested that Mother Teresa herself seemed to have such great clarity, she responded, “I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust.”

It is trust, Manning goes on to say—simple but ruthless childlike trust we place in God—that is the defining spirit of authentic discipleship. I agree. That is what Jesus called his disciples to in the first century—to trust in God, to trust in him—and that is the challenge Jesus lays down for those who would follow him in our age.

No matter how you slice it, the basic minimum requirement for following Jesus always comes down to this: Will you give him your total trust? If you will, you are on your way to the most exciting and rewarding experience of life a person will ever have—walking with Jesus. And from what Jesus said in John 14:1, we can deduce that one of the basic blessings of placing our trust in God is a trouble-free heart.  Not a trouble free life, mind you, but a heart (and a mind, Paul adds in Philippians 4:7) that is guarded by Jesus himself.

However, if you won’t give God your total trust, your Christian experience will never get out of the harbor and set sail on the rewarding voyage of risky discipleship.  You will find yourself nursing a troubled heart and traveling a less than satisfying journey with God.

“Trust in God,” Jesus says, “and trust in me, too.” So, are you?  When your faith is boiled down to its basic elements, will we find there, in spite of life’s circumstances and in scorn of faith’s consequences, a simple but ruthless childlike trust in God?  Or is trust something that merely gets talked about but never fleshed out?

A lot of people talk about trusting God, fewer people actually place the totality of their lives in the Father’s hands and unequivocally say, “into your hands, I commit my spirit.  May your will be done.” If you are one of the courageous and committed few who do, you have given the greatest gift a human being can place before the God who has everything—the rare trifecta of extreme dependence, radical faith and resolute obedience.  Nothing brings a smile to the Father’s heart like that.

In the 1850’s, a famous tightrope walker named George Blondin, for a publicity stunt, decided he would walk across Niagara Falls on a rope that had been stretched from one side of the falls to the other. Crowds lined up on both the Canadian and American sides to watch this unbelievable feat.  Blondin began to walk across, inch-by-inch, step-by-step, and everybody knew that if he made one mistake he was a goner. He got to the other side and the crowd went wild.  Blondin said, “I’m going to do it again.” And to the crowd’s delight, he did. Then, to everybody’s amazement, he crossed again, this time pushing a wheel-barrow full of dirt.  He actually did this several times, and as he started to go across one last time, someone in the crowd said, “I believe you could do that all day.” Blondin dumped out the dirt and said, “Get into the wheelbarrow.”

In a very real sense that is what God is saying to you and me. Our talk alone is cheap.  At some point, we need to get in the wheelbarrow of trust and prove that our discipleship is real.

“Trust is our gift back to God, and he finds it so enchanting that Jesus died for love of it. … Unwavering trust is a rare and precious thing because it often demands a degree of courage that borders on the heroic.” ~Brennan Manning

What If God Took Over?

Pray this honest and humble prayer:  “God, I trust in you.  Help my lack of trust!”

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At Your Most Christ-like Best

Read: John 13

“Since I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash each other’s feet.” (John 13:14, NLT)

If you are going to be a fully devoted follower of Christ, you will have to think, do and live like Jesus thought, did and lived—not the least of which is to take on the attitude, exhibit the actions, and live the lifestyle of a servant.  Yes—you will have to serve as Jesus served!

Serving is what Jesus did because servanthood was at the very core of who Jesus was and why Jesus came. The Gospel of Mark, the first written biographical account of Jesus, sums up the life and ministry of Jesus with this simple, clear and compelling mission statement:

“For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45)

Fleshing out this mission statement, John 13 presents the servanthood of Jesus in action in the most unusual and unforgettable way: He washed his disciples’ feet.  Then, as he completed this humbling task, he said to them, “I have given you an example to follow. Do as I have done to you.” (John 13:15, NLT) It is abundantly clear from this passage, along with other Scripture, that serving is an unmistakable, unavoidable demand of discipleship.  Not only is serving a demand, but when we look at Jesus’ example, we find that serving is also a delight.  It is what makes us bless-able:  “Now that you know these things, God will bless you for doing them.” (John 13:17, NLT)

Think about it:  Serving like Jesus is what puts you at your Christlike best!

You are called to serve! Paul writes in Philippians 2:5-7, “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who being in very nature God…took on the very nature of a servant.” Galatians 5:13 says, “Serve one another in love.” If you are serving, you are fulfilling your basic Christian calling.  If you are not, then you are not!

You were created to serve! Like a fish swims and a bird flies, a Christian serves! Ephesians 2:20 states, “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Before you were even conceived, God laid out specific plans just for you. You are not an after-thought; you do not just exist; you are on this earth not just to be a potted plant, you were born not just to consume, but to contribute.  God deliberately shaped you to serve his purposes, which means that he has placed an important responsibility on your shoulders that only you can fulfill.

You contribute to the Body of Christ when you serve! God specifically created you, converted you, and called you to contribute to the life, health and mission of a local church.  Paul taught in I Corinthians 12:27, “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.” Verse 12 says, “The body is a unit, though it’s made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body.  So it is with Christ.” Verse 18 says, “God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.” Why?  Verse 7 tells us it is “for the common good.” I Peter 4:10 says, “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms.” Perhaps you didn’t realize this, but you serving in your church is the primary means of other people receiving God’s grace.

You capture the world’s attention when you serve! Our humble, authentic acts of service put God in a good light. Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount, “Let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father. (Matthew 5:16, NLT)  Jesus said in John 13:35, “By this will all men know that you are my disciples:  That you have love for one another.” It’s by authentic servanthood that you become living proof of a loving God.

Jesus ended the washing of his disciples’ feet by issuing this very simple challenge: Now that you know these things, God will bless you for doing them.” (John 13:17, NLT)  It doesn’t get any clearer than that!

“When God wanted sponges and oysters He made them and put one on a rock and the other in the mud. When He made man He did not make him to be a sponge or an oyster; He made him with feet and hands, and head and heart, and vital blood, and a place to use them and He said to him, ‘Go work.’” ~Henry Ward Beecher

What If God Took Over?

I have one simple question for you:  Where are you serving?

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Weekend Meditation: The Emotional God

Read: John 11-12

When Jesus saw Mary weeping and saw the other people wailing with her, a deep anger welled up within him, and he was deeply troubled. “Where have you put him?” he asked them. They told him, “Lord, come and see.” Then Jesus wept. The people who were standing nearby said, “See how much he loved him!” (John 11:33-36, NLT)

Jesus felt things very deeply—and I am so glad he did.

Jesus was fully human, yet fully God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. His whole incarnational purpose was to live among us (John 1:15) in order to bring God close us (Isaiah 7:14), reveal who God is and what God is like to us (Colossians 1:15,19-20), and through his redeeming sacrifice bring us back into a right relationship with our  Creator and Father (Colossians 1:21-22).

In coming to earth to fulfill that mission of revelation and redemption, we do not find in Jesus an uncaring, distant, emotionless Deity, we find one who knew full well what it was like to be one of us. Therefore, he was the perfect bridge between the Divine and the fallen. In his earthly journey, God the Son experienced—and expressed—a wide range of emotions that were uniquely human. Just in John 11 and 12 alone, we see several occasions where humanity “leaked” from Deity:

He got angry and upset: “When Jesus saw Mary weeping and saw the other people wailing with her, a deep anger welled up within him, and he was deeply troubled.” (John 11:33, NLT)

He expressed unmitigated grief and the unstoppable flow of tears: “Then Jesus wept.” (John 11:35, NLT)

He refused to be pacified when an issue was unresolved:  “Jesus was still angry as he arrived at the tomb, a cave with a stone rolled across its entrance. ‘Roll the stone aside,” Jesus told them.’” (John 11:38, NLT)

He got fed up with an insincere disciple:  “Jesus replied, ‘Leave her alone. She did this in preparation for my burial.’” (John 12:7, NLT)

He felt unsettling concern over the future: “Now my soul is deeply troubled. Should I pray, ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But this is the very reason I came!” (John 12:27, NLT)

In several different Gospel accounts, we discover Jesus expressing other quite human emotions:

He was frustrated with his disciples’ thick-headedness: “Jesus asked them, ‘Are you still so dull?’” (Matthew 15:16, NLT)

He was overcome by the weight of responsibility: “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.” (Mark 14:34, NLT)

He felt irrepressible joy: “At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, ‘I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.’” Luke 10:21, NLT)

Jesus, the perfect God-man, was able to feel things uniquely human: Sorrow, anger, frustration, spiritual exhaustion, and a tremendous capacity for joy.  But are those emotions uniquely human?  No, in truth, they are completely Divine. These feelings are not of just human origin; rather, they are feelings that originate within the very being of a feeling God, who has simply placed them within the genetic code of that part of his creation he holds most dear, human beings, which includes you and me.

The fact that you and I feel simply reminds us that our Creator feels.  What that means, among other things, is that we belong to a caring, compassionate God.  God the Father feels—he even dances over you with delight (Zephaniah 3:17); God the Son definitely feels, as we have just seen; God the Holy Spirit feels—he can be grieved and pleased (Ephesians 4:30, Galatians 6:8). That is good news, because it gives him an unfettered capacity to relate to our feelings and us great confidence to come before a caring, understanding God to express our deepest feelings. Hebrews 4:15-16 says,

“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

Yes, God feels. Jesus clearly demonstrated that.  So come confidently to a caring God to pour out your deepest, most inmost feelings.  His great promise is that you can exchange your feelings for his mercy, your emotions for his grace, your tears for his comfort, your fears for his strength and anything else you are carrying, good or bad, you can turn over to a Father who can definitely relate.

Now that is something you can feel really good about!

“Spiritual experience by definition is an internal awareness that involves strong emotion in response to the truth of God’s Word, amplified by the Holy Spirit and applied by Him to us personally.” ~John MacArthur

What If God Took Over?

This present moment might be a good time to take God up on the incredible offer he made to you in Hebrews 4:16!