Eternity with Christ...

...will be better than the best that we experience or can imagine in this life.

That's a comforting, empowering thought.

But when I was an atheist, I thought that the Christians' hope of resurrection life with God beyond the grave meant that they were anesthetized while living in this life--disengaged, heedless of the injustices faced by others, fatalistic.

That's exactly what Karl Marx, another atheist and writer of The Communist Manifesto, thought. He famously wrote, "Religion [by which he meant the Christian faith into which he had been baptized and which prevailed in the Europe of his day] is the opiate of the people."

He got it precisely wrong. There undoubtedly are Christians so focused on heaven that the idea of loving God and loving neighbor, the very things the crucified and risen Jesus set us free to do, is far from their minds and agendas. For Christians like these, Jesus is a private fix, a ticket to eternity.

But for those who seek to take Jesus and His preeminence over their whole lives, the certainty of eternity in God's perfect kingdom for all who believe in Christ, is the freedom to live, to love the unlovable, to speak up for the powerless, to pursue the promise of our lives on earth, to share the gifts of God granted to us with others.

God, forgive for failing to live more mindfully of eternity because in doing so, I fail to live fully here. In Jesus' Name. Amen

Set Free!

I thought of a statement made by Martin Luther, posted a few days ago on Facebook by the Institute of Lutheran Theology, as I read today's installment of Our Daily Bread and the incident from Jesus' ministry on which it's based.

Luther said: “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject of all, subject to all.”

Certain of their eternal futures, Christ sets each of His followers free to live a lives of servanthood unencumbered by the worldly desire to come in first.

Just one more reason that the radical Gospel of Jesus Christ is so scandalous in a dog-eat-dog world of self-promotion and self-seeking. But it's only at those moments when we realize that life isn't about us that we're set free to become the Christ-like people we were made to be.

From Someone Who's 'Dumber Than Dirt'

The biggest regrets of my life are all associated with those times when I have impulsively decided to do what I wanted to do, rather than taking the time to seek the wisdom of God in the Bible and through prayer in Jesus' Name.

Fifty-eight years on Planet Earth have taught me that I'm not "all that" and that the mere passage of years doesn't make a person wise. Only the God we know and follow in Jesus Christ can give us wisdom. That's why I love Proverbs 9:10 in the Old Testament:

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,
and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.

Though my use of God's wisdom has often been limited by my own egotistical resistance to taking instruction from anyone or anything besides my intelligence, knowledge, common sense, or emotional impulses, I've learned that God is not stingy about giving us His wisdom if we're humble enough to ask for it.

We may not always like the guidance that God gives to us, but it will always set us on the right path. I can't say that about the "wisdom" I might derive from myself or other people.

So, seek God's wisdom. Dig into God's Word, the Bible. Lift up prayers for counsel to God through prayer in Jesus' Name. Ask God to send Christian counselors to you as you make decisions. And ask God to give you the faith to walk in the paths He marks out for you.

James writes in the New Testament:

If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, Who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you. (James 1:5)

My wife and I often say that, in so many ways in life, we are "dumber than dirt." But we've found, often against our own wills or initial judgments, that God is a lot wiser than we are and that when we submit to Him, He helps us to make wise decisions.

Check out these thoughts on getting wisdom from God in today's post at Our Daily Bread. Be sure to read Proverbs 2:1-9, on which it's based, first.

It's a "Get To," Not a "Have To"

At least that's true on the days that I get my gaze off my own navel. Followers of Jesus are His ambassadors and we get to tell others the best news ever...news not just about Him, but, news that can also be about them!

A Tough, But Liberating Word

Today's installment of Our Daily Bread is based on James 4:1-10:

Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? ²You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because you do not ask. ³You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures. ⁴Adulterers! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. ⁵Or do you suppose that it is for nothing that the scripture says,

 “God yearns jealously for the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? ⁶

But he gives all the more grace; therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” ⁷Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. ⁸Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. ⁹Lament and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into dejection. ¹⁰Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.   

"Adulterers," I take to be addressed not only to those engaged in adultery, but in all activities that put the world, the self, and other pursuits or relationships ahead of God. Through the prophets in Old Testament times, God described Himself as husband to Israel, condemning His people's penchant for playing the adulteress by worshiping other gods.

The New Testament describes the Church as the bride of Christ. So, any time we Christians allow other things to take God's place of absolute ruler over our lives, we are engaging in idolatry--idol worship, or as the Old Testament puts it, adultery.

The passage from James ends with a tremendous promise: "Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you." This is nothing other than a call to wake up and acknowledge reality:

• God is bigger than you are. 
• Only God can give you life. 
• And unlike all the other things you might submit to in life, God will help you and love you even when you fall or fail. 

In Philippians 2:5-11, the apostle Paul gets at much the same message when he cites what most scholars agree must have been a hymn of the early church that reminds us that in calling us to submit to the will of God the Father, we're not being asked to do anything more than Christ did.

God "opposes the proud," not because God is an egotist, but because God wants us to live. As I mentioned in another post recently, if the only way for a drowning man to get to shore is to hold onto the lifeguard, you would hardly call the lifeguard arrogant for saying so to the thrashing victim. The God we know in Jesus Christ is that lifeguard. Take it from one willful thrasher to another: Submit to the Lifeguard and you will have real life!

Read the Our Daily Bread piece by Anne Cetas.

Why I Care So Much About Sharing Christ with Others

Ephesians 2:8 reminds us that we are saved from sin and death by God's grace through our faith in Jesus Christ. That's why I am so passionate about sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ with others. I want all people to experience the forgiveness, joy, and everlasting hope that comes to those who end their inborn rebellion to God and surrender to the Savior.

Sharing Christ with others is the only activity to which we can commit themselves that will make any real difference, whether in our own lives or in the lives of others. It also happens to be the mission every Christian is charged with fulfilling.

Please click on the links above and please also read the following passages of Scripture:

 "If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." (Romans 10:9)

[Jesus told Nicodemus:] “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. ¹⁷Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. ¹⁸Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God" (John 3:16-18)

 [Peter and John said:] "There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12). 

Check out today's devotion from Our Daily Bread.

Loved

In spite of ourselves.