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Believe!

Christianity Boils Down To Belief

Getting Closer to Jesus: If you were a spiritual seeker exploring what the Christian faith was all about, and John’s Gospel was your only source, it wouldn’t take you very long to discover the key component of Christianity. It can be boiled down to just one word—a very simple word that is repeated throughout the book; a single, simple word, yet a word that carries with it the most profound implications. That word is “believe.”

That is Christianity at its purest and simplest: To believe in Jesus Christ.

Now, this is the belief that is more than a mere intellectual acknowledgment of the historical Jesus. It is more than just acknowledging that he was a good man, a wonderful religious leader, or even saying that he was God come in the flesh.

Rather, the kind of belief John is describing—the kind that brings us into an experience of the abundant life of God now and eternal life after we die, is to believe that Jesus Christ is both Savior and Lord. It is to be fully persuaded of whom Jesus is and convinced that what Jesus said is true. It is to have complete confidence that the claims and demands Jesus made are credible beyond any shadow of a doubt. It is the kind of belief that entrusts one’s life and stakes one’s eternity upon the veracity of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. It is to be so radically won over that all of a person’s life will be placed under the guidance, pleasure, and worship of Jesus.

In the twenty-one chapters of John’s Gospel, all but three use the word “believe” to describe either people’s response to Jesus or Jesus’s call to those who would be his followers.

In John 1:7 John the Baptist is introduced as the one whose entire purpose is to prepare people to believe in Jesus, the coming Messiah.

In John 1:12, the Apostle John explains of Jesus, “All who receive him, to those who believe in his name, he gives the right to become the children of God.”

In John 3:14-18, which includes the most famous verse in the entire Bible—the Bible summed up in just one verse—John 3:16, we learn that Jesus will ultimately die on the cross so that people might believe and thereby live forever: “The Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him,” Jesus said. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”

Now in this present chapter, John 2:11 tells us that after Jesus performed his first miracle, his disciples believed in him. Toward the end of the chapter, the Jewish leaders ask Jesus for a miraculous sign to prove his authority for driving the merchants from the temple. Jesus only offers them the sign that will come after they destroy the temple, which he will raise up in three days (a veiled reference to his own death and resurrection). Speaking of that in John 2:22, the Apostle John writes, “After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled that he had said this, then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.”

When you get to the end of the Gospel, John reveals to the readers of his Gospel account why he has recorded the stories and teachings of Jesus:

Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. (John 20:30-31)

Believe! That is Christianity pure and simple. And as you read the Gospel of John nearly 2,000 years after John wrote it as an eyewitness to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, that same purpose is still in effect: That you might believe—place totally, radical, life-altering trust—in Jesus Christ as both Savior and Lord!

Missionary David Seamands told the story of a Muslim man who became a Christ-follower. His friends ask the man, “Why have you become a Christian?” He answered, “It’s like this: Suppose you were going down a road that suddenly forked in two directions and you didn’t know which way to go. At the fork were two men, one dead, one alive. Who of those two would you ask which way to go?”

Friend, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is the proof! Do you believe?

That is the most important question you will ever be asked.

Take the Next Step: As you read through the Gospel of John, underline any place where you see the words “believe” or belief” as it relates to either people’s response to Jesus or Jesus’s call to those who would be his followers. And above all, ask that God would deepen your own belief as you absorb the Good News of Jesus Christ.

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Access Denied

Never Stand In the Way of People Finding Your Heavenly Father

Getting Closer to Jesus: I have always enjoyed this story of Jesus cleansing the temple. I love the robust image it paints of him. It stands in stark contrast to most of the historical paintings as well as the more recent images we get from the portrayal of Jesus by filmmakers. For some reason, artists from the Renaissance on up to this very day have given us a soft, tender, doe-eyed, almost porcelain-like Jesus—a kinder, gentler Jesus, if you will.

That is not the Jesus of John 2:13-17,

To those who had, in effect, turned God’s holy temple into a one-stop shop place of commerce, he said, “Get your things out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a shopping mall!” (John 2:16, The Message)

Jesus doesn’t appear all that soft in this encounter, does he? As a matter of fact, he opened up a can of comeuppance on these greedy merchants of religion, and no one dared stop him. Go down to your local Saturday Market and do that and see what happens. People typically don’t take too kindly to their economic system so abruptly and ingloriously disrupted.

Jesus was different. He was right—and people knew it. His anger was one of righteous indignation and holy zeal for the House of the Lord. So why was he so angry? Was it simply because these merchants had ruined Jesus’ preferred way of experiencing worship at the temple? I don’t think that was really it.

No, Jesus was upset because, at the end of the day, enabled by a religious system that had grown corrupt and with the full support of a self-serving priesthood, these merchants had made it more difficult for worshipers to come and freely experience the love, acceptance, and forgiveness of their Heavenly Father. The drift in temple worship had been to restrict access of people seeking God, whereas everything Jesus stood for and did—his miracles, his teaching, and ultimately his death—was to open up a “new and living way” into the very throne room of God (see Hebrews 10:19-25). If you want to get Jesus mad, just make it hard for people to find his Father.

In this case, a house cleaning of the strongest order was long overdue, and if the worshippers present that day didn’t overtly cheer him on, my sense is they were applauding on the inside.

Now as much as we enjoy this story, it really is incomplete if we don’t fast-forward to our time and ask how Jesus would respond if he walked into our church today. How much more zeal would Jesus have for his body, the temple of the Holy Spirit—that is, the church? How much more holy fire and righteous indignation would he display for that which he suffered and died to purify and redeem? How much more upset would he be that the new community of grace—the New Testament church—had denied access to seekers by the very activities, programs, and systems it claims will attract them?

In the new economy of the Kingdom of God, the church has replaced the temple as the dwelling place of God on earth. Of course, that refers more to a people than a place—and yet both are the church. What would Jesus see in your church—in you, in your brothers and sisters in the local community of Christ, and in the activities that take place in your church building?

I have a sense that each—both people of worship and places of worship—is due for a little divine house cleaning. How about we get started before the Lord of the church is forced to show up and do it for us? And if nothing else, let’s eliminate anything that in effect, communicates “access denied” to people desperately needing to experience the presence of God.

Take the Next Step: Is there zeal—a fire in your bones—for God’s house? If not, rethink your attitude and repurpose your energies toward the place where you worship. And not only the physical house in which God’s people gather, but also in the spiritual house made up of his redeemed children—the Body of Christ. Examine your attitudes toward the worldwide church of Christ. And one more thing: How about your physical body? God’s Spirit dwells there, too. Is the way you treat it God-honoring? Change the way you treat God’s house so that it will be said of you, “zeal for your house consumes me.

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Under The Radar Miracles

Let the Miracles Do the Talking

Getting Closer to Jesus: It was his first recorded miracle—and even then, Jesus was reluctant to perform it. It was not yet time to launch his public ministry as Messiah of Israel, but he was at a wedding with his family and the wine was running low. The event planner was in a panic, so Jesus’ mother said, “No worries, my son will take care of it.” Thanks, Mom! So, Jesus turned water to be used for ceremonial cleansing that was being stored in several thirty-gallon jars nearby into the best wine the world has ever tasted, before and since.

Of the many things that could be discussed from this water-into-wine miracle, one of the facets that stands out the most to me is how understated Jesus was in performing this miracle. When the great-tasting wine was discovered, neither the master of ceremonies nor the happy partygoers knew where it came from. Only those who brought the water jugs to Jesus knew that he had transformed the liquid. And Jesus wanted it that way.

In fact, that seemed to be the way Jesus performed most of his miracles. He never made a big deal out of them, other than to draw praise to his Father. He never made a spectacle of his divine powers. He never showcased the recipient of a miracle like a zoo exhibit. Jesus’ miracles, you might say, were under the radar.

Yet there is no way to keep an authentic miracle under wraps—not for very long anyway. Sooner or later, the power of God breaks containment, and word gets out. Maybe that is why Jesus handled miracles the way he did—he let the miracles do the talking.

Unfortunately, too many spiritual leaders today who have been used in the miraculous don’t follow Jesus’ lead. The bigger the miracle, the quicker the press conference, the book deal, or the fund-raising letter! Now, to be fair, if I turned water into wine, raised someone from the dead, or performed some other sensational miracle, I’m afraid I, too, would head right to the local Christian network to tout what God had done through me. That is too bad! God doesn’t get all the glory when we grab some of it for ourselves.

Maybe we would see more supernatural displays of God’s power in our culture if we would commit to allowing the miracles to speak for themselves—and to fiercely make sure that all the glory goes to God when he graces us with one.

Take the Next Step: In his book, The Way of the Heart, Henri Nouwen wrote, “To live and work for the glory of God cannot remain an idea about which we think once in a while. It must become an interior, unceasing doxology.” Spend some time today—and make it a practice every day—thinking of how to give God glory through your life. Do that and your life will be an amazing doxology of praise!

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Exerting Eternal Influence

Just Be Faithful and Available to God

Getting Closer to Jesus: I would argue that Andrew is one of the most inspiring and important figures in the New Testament because of his simple, non-threatening, doable example of bringing lost people into a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. The cumulative effect, compounded through history, of his simple but winsome witness ranks him among the greatest in terms of exerting eternal influence.

Andrew didn’t have any special skills or advanced evangelism training; he just simply brought people to meet Jesus and then let Jesus do the rest.

Even though Andrew was the first disciple Jesus enlisted, and even though he was the first to recognize Jesus as the Messiah, he never achieved the fame that his brother Peter did. Jesus never included Andrew in his inner circle, like Peter. Andrew wasn’t there at the Transfiguration, like Peter. Andrew wasn’t there when Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, like Peter. Andrew never preached like Peter, never wrote a letter that got included in the New Testament, like Peter, and was never recognized as a key leader in the early church, like Peter.

Peter’s name appears close to 200 times in the New Testament, 96 times in the four gospels—only Jesus is mentioned more often. We find Andrew in only 11 different places, 10 of them in the Gospels—mostly in a list of the disciples, and 5 of those were as “Peter’s brother.” Only 3 times do these passages tell us any details about Andrew—and even that is minimal. Someone once asked a conductor what the most difficult instrument to play in the orchestra was. He said, “second fiddle.” That was Andrew!

Yet beneath everybody’s radar, Andrew was being used in the most powerful way of all—to bring people to Christ. Andrew not only brought Peter to Jesus, but in John 6:8, we find it was Andrew who brought the boy with the loaves and fish to Jesus, and then one of the outstanding miracles of the Bible took place: The feeding of the 5,000 with five loaves and two fish. On account of Andrew, we have a story preserved that has helped millions to understand that Jesus is the true and only Bread of Life. Then, in John 12:20, some Greeks came to Philip and said, “We want to see Jesus.” Philip took them to Andrew, and what did Andrew do? He hooked them up with Jesus.

Andrew became both the first home missionary—when he led Peter to Christ and the first foreign missionary—when he led these Gentiles to Jesus.

In Andrew, you don’t find any special skills, or an incredibly charismatic personality, or an extremely articulate speaker. You just found a guy who is faithful, available, and useful. He just kept bringing everybody who got near him to Jesus.

 

Tradition tells us that Andrew just kept on introducing people to Jesus for the rest of his life. He was finally put to death at a ripe old age in Greece. His death came after he befriended Maximilla, the wife of the Roman proconsul Aegeas, and led her to faith in Christ. Aegeas became so enraged over this that he ordered Andrew to offer sacrifices to a heathen god. When Andrew refused, he was severely beaten, tied to a cross, and crucified. That cross, shaped like an X is today called St. Andrew’s cross. It is said that he lingered for two whole days before dying, but the whole painful time, he preached the Gospel to everyone who came by. Andrew never stopped introducing people to Jesus, even to his last breath.

Every time Andrew is mentioned, he’s bringing someone to Jesus—then Jesus does the rest, and lives get transformed. His single talent seems to have been leveraging his earthly relationships to introduce seekers to eternal life through Christ. He doesn’t lay the “Four Spiritual Laws” on people; he doesn’t whip out a “Roman Road” tract on them. He just says, “Hey, come with me; I’ve got someone I want you to meet.”

That’s exerting eternal influence, which is as simple as inviting family, friends, and acquaintances into your spiritual environment—your church, your small group, your ministry team—and letting God do the rest.

Take the Next Step: Following Andrew’s example, exert some eternal influence this week by bringing someone to church with you.

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Grace and Truth

That Is What God Is

Getting Closer to Jesus: There is a cute story about a family who brought their newborn daughter home from the hospital for the first time. The mom was a little concerned how the baby’s 4-year-old sister—who had been the only child to that point—would handle this new addition to the family. So, mom and dad instructed “big sister” that she could be around the baby only when they were there, and that she had to be very loving and very gentle.

It wasn’t long after that mom walked by the baby’s room only to discover the sister hovering over the crib. Mom was alarmed, so she snuck up behind the little girl to see what was going on, and noticed she was gently stroking the baby’s hair with her hand and whispering, “Baby, can you tell me what God is like…I’ve forgotten.”

That’s one of the deepest cries of the human heart, you know: To know what God is like.

Bible teacher R.C. Sproul was once asked, “What, in your opinion, is the greatest need in the world today?” His answer was that people needed “to discover the identity of God.” He was then asked, “What is the greatest spiritual need in the lives of church people?” His answer was much the same: “To discover the true identity of God. If believers really understood the character and the personality of God, it would revolutionize their lives.”

The good news is that God has made himself knowable. He is not some unapproachable deity way out there in a galaxy far, far away. He is the God who is here, who is near, and who will reveal himself to those who long to know him.

Jesus, the one who knew the heart and nature of God better than anyone, taught us in the opening line of the Lord’s prayer to approach God as “Our Father in heaven,” which literally means, “Our Father, who is as close as the air we breathe.” Moses exclaimed in Deuteronomy 4:7. “What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the Lord our God is near us whenever we pray to him?”

What does God want us to know? He is near and he is knowable, that’s what. Furthermore, he has made himself knowable in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. And what do we know of God through Jesus? Primarily, God is the perfect blend of grace and truth!

Grace and truth are what Jesus perfectly modeled. Remember Jesus’s interaction in John 8 with the woman caught in the act of adultery who was about to be stoned? After embarrassing her executioners into inaction, he gently asked this guilty woman, “Where are your accusers? Has no one judged you guilty?”

She replied, “No one, Sir.”

At that, Jesus offered these grace-truth words that would utterly right this sinner’s upside-down life: “Then I don’t either. Go now and leave your life of sin.”

Behind this amazing display of grace and truth, as Walter Trobisch said, what we find is that Jesus “accepts us as we are but when he accepts us, we cannot remain as we are.” Jesus brings our sin to the surface, and when we acknowledge it by confession and repentance, he totally, graciously, and forever forgives it. The adulteress went away forgiven, with a new clean heart and a brand-new chance at life.

Only grace and truth can do that for sinners.

Becoming a Christian—not just in name only, but placing life-altering, radical trust in Jesus as Lord and Savior—is predicated upon forgiveness. God’s forgiveness of our sins is the pivot point of authentic faith. When we accept Jesus, Jesus accepts us—just as we are but when he accepts us, we cannot remain as we are. Jesus brings our sin to the surface, and when we acknowledge that sin by confession and repentance, he totally, graciously, and forever forgives it. That’s why, when you read the Gospels, prostitutes, publicans, and other big-time sinners responded to Jesus so readily. At some level, they recognized their sin. That was why forgiveness was so appealing to them—and still is!

What does the world need more than anything right now? What does your sinful next-door neighbor so desperately need? The same thing you need: God’s forgiveness! And when you meet Jesus, you meet God’s full forgiveness—given freely but costing you a changed life.

And when you meet Jesus, you meet God. And when you meet God, you get a whole lot of truth and a big dose of grace—and it completely revolutionizes your life.

Take the Next Step: As best as you can, examine your life from the point of view of those who know you best. Would they say that you are completely truthful but at the same time overflowing with grace? If not, offer your life to God today and, if you dare, ask him to do whatever it takes to make you more like him.

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An Offer You Shouldn’t Refuse

You Are a Fully Loved Child of God

Getting Closer to Jesus: What an unbelievable invitation the Apostle John is describing! Anyone who personally accepts Christ as Lord and Savior is granted the privilege of becoming a fully loved child of God—including all the authority and benefits of being fully included in God’s forever family. Now that is an invitation to which no other compares!

Because of statements like that, arguably, the Gospel of John is the best-loved of the four Gospels. John speaks from a closeness to Jesus that few have ever experienced—and it leaks through every line in his account of Jesus. There are more memorable verses in this Gospel than the others—John 3:16, for instance, the entire Bible is summed up in just one verse. Each chapter inexorable draws the truly interested and open-hearted seeker to desire Jesus more and more. It’s no wonder people love John’s clear and compelling story.

And what John is describing in this stunning invitation is nothing less than unfathomably profound! Think about the One who is really making this offer: It is none other than the eternal and exalted Christ himself. John describes him in the most eternal and lofty language possible in the opening lines of chapter one. Let me offer you this paraphrase (from the Living Bible) of how John sees Jesus:

Before anything else existed, there was Christ, with God. He has always been alive and is himself God. He created everything there is—nothing exists that he didn’t make. Eternal life is in him, and this life gives light to all mankind. His life is the light that shines through the darkness—and the darkness can never extinguish it. (John 1:1-3)

It was God himself, in the person of Jesus, who came into a world he created—a world that for the most part, not only missed the true consequence of his arrival but actively rejected it: “But although he made the world, the world didn’t recognize him when he came. Even in his own land and among his own people, the Jews, he was not accepted. Only a few would welcome and receive him” (John 1:10-12)

But here is the good news—and it is the best news you will hear today, or any day hereafter for that matter: “But to all who received him, he gave the right to become children of God. All they needed to do was to trust him to save them.” (John 1:12b)

What that means is that if you are trusting in Jesus Christ as your Savior (the only one who can forgive you and cleanse you from your sins), and have personally invited him to be the Lord of your life (the one to whom you have turned over control of your moment-by-moment life), then you have been given the right (authority given by God himself) to be made right with him, brought into his eternal family, given the gift of eternal life (John 3:16) and given the opportunity to walk in intimate relationship each and every day with the very Agent and Owner of Creation (the One who spoke everything into existence by his own breath for his eternal purpose and therefore has the sovereign right to rule over all of it and everything within it).

Wow! You matter to God that much; you are that important to him!

You have been invited into a close, personal fellowship with Jesus—the Designer, Creator, Ruler, and Sustainer of the universe. If you can begin to fathom what that means, it will absolutely blow your mind, in the best sense of the phrase.

The right to become a child of God—now that is an unbelievable invitation! I hope you will believe it—and live like God’s true children are meant to live.

Take the Next Step: Memorize John 1:12 in your favorite version. Each day this week, list a benefit of being a true child of God. Throughout the day, declare that to be true of you.

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How To Save Planet Earth

Let Your Little Light Shine

Getting Closer to Jesus: An insightful person pointed out that some people change their ways when they see the light, others only when they feel the heat.

First, some good news: God is in control. He has an unstoppable plan—and if you are a fully devoted follower of his Son, Jesus Christ, you are in the very center of that plan. Good things are in store for you. Hang on to that as you read on.

Now a dose of reality: Most people would agree that Planet Earth is in serious trouble; it is rapidly, steadily being engulfed in moral, cultural, and spiritual darkness. We don’t need a prophet of doom to tell us that; we are reminded of it every time we open our eyes. Ask the average man or woman on the street and they will tell you that humanity is headed in the wrong direction.

Obviously, this present world has a growing list of seemingly unsolvable needs—poverty, ignorance, climate upheaval, famine, disease, political instability, crime, violence, the threat of war, war, drug abuse, human trafficking, intolerance, religious persecution, the breakdown of the family, and on and on the list goes. Though these problems are nothing new to the world scene, there is now a sense of foreboding in both high officials and ordinary citizens around the globe that these problems are swallowing up any chance for progress toward civility and stability that we might have been moving toward at some point.

 

 

The writer of Judges prophetically summed up our twenty-first-century world in the last verse of his book when he wrote, “There was no controlling moral authority to govern people’s lives, so everyone did what was right in their own eyes.” (Judges 21:25) Unfortunately, in the day of the Judges, and in our day, “what was right,” with no presence of the “Controlling Moral Authority”, without fail produces moral, cultural, economic, and global chaos. Predictably, as Alexander Solzhenitsyn famously lamented, “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.” Yes, what we see and sense today is what happens when humanity forgets God. In his famous Templeton Address, “Men Have Forgotten God”, Solzhenitsyn said

The failings of human consciousness, deprived of its divine dimension, have been a determining factor in all the major crimes of this century…Yet we have grown used to this kind of world; we even feel at home in it.

Don’t get used to it! Don’t ever feel at home in this present world. Don’t accept the growing darkness as inevitable. Why? The light that has come into this dark world, and while most reject the light for the growing darkness, you can live in that light and even be a reflector of that light in the darkened corner of the world in which you live.

Take the Next Step: The Apostle Paul wrote in Colossians 1:27, “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Since Christ Jesus lives in you by his Holy Spirit, how about you let his light shine through your life in the darkened corner of the world to which he has assigned you? How? Re-read Matthew 5:1-16 where the Lord calls us to let our lights shine. I think you might come up with a few ways to turn on your high beams for Jesus.