An Uncommon Honor

So the honor is for you who believe…
(1 Peter 2:7 – ESV)

What makes something holy ground? When God declares it, when He is working in that place. God has declared believers as holy ground (Romans 8:29 / 1 Corinthians 6:17-20). 1 Peter 1:18-19 – We had better consider ourselves as holy ground or we treat the blood of Christ as less than precious. 1 Thessalonians 4:7-8 – if we disregard holiness we disregard God. We need to become holy ground in our lives as individuals, in our families, and in our churches, and also see to it that our communities know where they can go to be set apart.

Where God is acting we cannot treat as common. Common grace is different from saving and sanctifying grace. Going to church, studying the Bible, praying, fellowshipping with other true believers, fasting, worshipping through song, hearing the Word preached, and living the Christian life with increasing submission and sanctification, these things might appear to be common things. However, they only seem like common things to unbelievers, to believers they are valuable and precious, they are special, they are not common. Only saved or about to be saved people can get any true benefit from them, they are holy things.

1 Peter 2:4-10 – This is special not common, but our common heritage as Christians. Look at the words Peter uses to describe the things of God. We dare not treat these things God calls chosen, precious, holy, acceptable, honor, royal, his own possession, excellent, and marvelous, we dare not treat these things as common. If God Himself thinks they are special, we commit a horrible sin to call them common by treating them as routine and not special. Our salvation, our spiritual sacrifices, and our being built together as living stones that proclaim the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, these things are valuable and precious to God.

Every Sunday is a special time. Just because we get to do it every Sunday doesn’t mean we should treat it as run of the mill. It is God in His abundant grace that gives us the opportunity to meet with Him in the context of meeting with other believers to worship Him. It is a glorious, wondrous, marvelous, precious thing, not some take it or leave it thing. That would be profaning it. That would be treating it as common. Perhaps that is all it is to you, common, but if you are truly growing as a Christian you will have a growing appreciation for just how special this all truly is. Worshipping and working together is an opportunity you don’t get when you are by yourself. It isn’t common and if you think it is that is why you don’t get much out of it because you denigrate its importance. Don’t dishonor God when He has so honored you. Don’t treat as common what God has made clean (Acts 10:15).

“Living For Today With An Eye For Tomorrow”©

Where the Wind Blows

The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.
(John 3:8 – ESV)

The word used for wind and the word used for Spirit is the same in this verse. Truly, the Spirit blows where He wants to, He is sovereign over who is born again. Remember this fact: the Spirit blows where He will, not where we will. No one knows where the wind blows, yet we can know in a sense, because where the true gospel of Jesus Christ is proclaimed, there the breath of God will surely be felt among those whose dry bones now live. We are born again by the Word of God (James 1:18 / 1 Peter 1:23-25), which is empowered by the Spirit (2 Thessalonians 2:13), so where there is true gospel preaching, the wind of the Spirit is sure to blow.

Now true gospel preaching will make much of the fact that we can bring nothing to the table to bargain with God. No matter how good we have been, no matter how much sacrifice we have made, no matter how little we have injured others, and no matter how we think we have served God, we have nothing with which to enable us in any way to advance our case. We must have the righteousness of Jesus Christ accredited to our account or we will never be forgiven, never be reconciled to God, never be redeemed, and never enter heaven. The only thing that can count for salvation is the righteousness of God Himself (2 Corinthians 5:21 / Titus 3:5), that is the only thing He requires, and we must have it or we have nothing.

We might think we have something to say, but we mustn’t speak of our own merit when approaching the bar of God. Even those gracious acts of God wherein He has allowed us to pursue some measure of righteous action in no way constitute saving power. Anything He gives us as an instrument is still only something to use for His righteous glory, and it is not His righteous glory itself, which we must have or we will not have what we need the most. Save your sanctimony or you won’t be saved. The wind blows on those who know they have no breath, and that they must have the breath of God Himself in order to truly live.

The gospel has been largely lost today, and we need men and women who have a passion for the gospel, people who feel the power of the Word of God in their own souls. Believers who believe that the gospel is what we need today, and every day, and people who will stop looking for answers everywhere but where the One True answer is. Most Christians would say they know the gospel but we need people who have a real grasp of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We need people who are possessed by the gospel, who are controlled by its grip. We need people who know that God is sovereign in salvation, people who have been knocked down from their pedestal and onto their blinded faces by the glory of God like Paul on the road to Damascus. We need people who realize that the only reason they have been clothed with the righteousness of Christ is because they have felt the icy chill of the windy Spirit on their dead bones. We need people who have felt the power, who have heard where the wind blows, who know that salvation is all of God or it is none of God.

“Living For Today With An Eye For Tomorrow”©

Frozen Chosen?

You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you…
(John 15:16)

Some things to think about…

Whose choice is it? Is it God’s choice or man’s choice who is going to be saved?

If Jesus died for all the sins of all the people ever, doesn’t this include unbelief?

Why, then, aren't all people going to heaven?

Is it God who ensures or man who secures? Is it more loving for God to let everyone of fallen man try and secure his own salvation making it dependent on his own choice, or is it more loving that God ensures that some will be saved, making sure they make the choice?

Did God send His Son to die, so that He could be loved, or did God send His Son to die because He loved?

Does God rescue people that do not love Him, or does He wait till they love Him to rescue them?

Is it “I’m so glad I chose you”, or “I’m so humbled you chose me?” Was it something in me that caused Him to choose me, no, or something in me that caused me to choose Him, no…does it ultimately have to do with us, or was it God’s plan all along? If you believe in Christ, that is wonderful, now give God the glory He is due, for He saved you…

Charles Spurgeon, 19th century preacher, spoke of the gospel call being universal, but the atonement being definite, and it was in an article over at Pyromaniacs the other day, and it is worth looking at if you want some more understanding on this issue…also check out this recent post by our friend Craver VII...

“Living For Today With An Eye For Tomorrow”©

The Good News of God’s Grace

…the Lord had called us for to preach the gospel unto them
(Acts 16:10)

First the bad news…

We can't make it to heaven on our own; no one is good enough to meet God’s perfect standard. Romans 3:23 says all have sinned, and all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Did you know that’s what He requires, perfection (Matthew 5:48)? It’s true. Now come on, admit it, you aren’t perfect, you may be better than a lot of people, but are you as good as God? Left to ourselves, we all will die without God, and that is bad news, indeed. However, that isn’t the end of the story.

Now for the good news…

God had a plan all along; he knew what he was doing. He would show his mercy and grace to a people he would call out for himself. He would send his own son, to die for those people’s sins, and give those called out people the righteousness they needed, the righteousness of his own son, Jesus. Jesus executed that plan; he came to earth and lived a perfectly righteous life, and allowed himself to die for our sins. He was a righteous man, the only righteous man ever, paying the penalty due us. His death meant that God would grant us mercy. His life meant God would give us grace. You see the mercy is God forgiving our sins because Jesus paid the penalty with his death, and the grace is God giving us a righteous standing based on Christ’s perfect life. God accounts our sin to Jesus’ account, and Jesus’ righteousness to our account. This great exchange is explained to us in 2 Corinthians 5:21 – he who knew no sin (that’s Jesus) became sin for us (he paid the penalty) that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him (through his perfect life we meet God’s standard). God had spoken of this plan before Jesus was even born (Isaiah 53:6), and he proved that this sacrifice and this way was what he planned all along by raising Jesus from the dead (Romans 1:4 / 4:25).

Now we obviously didn't deserve it, but that’s grace, my friend (1 John 4:9-10). God draws us to Him in a way that he knows we will respond to if we are one of his, and God gives this gift to us freely. All God asks us to do is believe (John 3:16 / Romans 10:9). When we accept Jesus sacrificial death to forgive our sins, the bible calls this being justified by faith (Romans 5:1), and God counts Christ’s righteousness as our own. But there’s more, because God also leads us into a more holy life, where we learn to truly seek after and please God, and God ensures that we will make it to heaven. Because God didn’t leave us to ourselves, when we die we will be with God, and that is good news, indeed. If you will believe, you’ll make it to heaven, and that’s the end of the story.

“Living For Today With An Eye For Tomorrow”©

Where Are The Potatoes?

Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.
(Colossians 4:2 – ESV)

The man walks down the street and he sees another man, one apparently in need. The other man says he hasn’t eaten in days. The first man decides he will help him, and feels led to give the man more than enough. He wants to lavish a little love on the poor man, and instead of just handing him a few dollars or buying him a sandwich, he goes and brings back a steak for the man to eat. The man, looking with disdain at the one who brought the steak to him, says, “Hey, man, where are the potatoes?”

Well now, how often do we see this today? Not just from our young ones, etc., but how often in ourselves, even as we supposedly mature? Too often we refuse to even try and work with what we’ve been given. If we have made an honest assessment of things and something more is needed, then we should ask for more, sure, but we must be thankful for what we have before we ask for what we need. And were we all to be truthful, we would all have to make confession to the fact that many times what we think we need is really only what we want, and not truly a need. And sometimes the thing we most need is the thing we are reluctant to receive, namely His abundant and abounding grace.

When you are hungry, thirsty, in trouble or in any kind of need, which is always, indeed, make sure you are working with what you already have. Don’t bring home a failing grade on your report card, all the while complaining about the teacher, when you won’t even bring home your homework! Don’t go crying out for lack of potatoes when a steak is right there waiting for you to eat. Yes, we all need grace and more grace, but as Christians, it is abounding toward us with all love. Look for it, and live in it, not for what you don’t see yet. It will come when it is truly needed.

“Living For Today With An Eye For Tomorrow”©