Todays Life

Philippians 3:12-14  (NLT)
Pressing toward the Goal

¹² I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. ¹³ No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, ¹⁴ I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.

We are half way through our time of Lent and this is a good opportunity to take a halftime moment to ask ourselves a few questions on our time of reflection and repentance. Our goal a few weeks ago was to find and acknowledge a sin in our lives that was impacting our life and relationship with God. We have been asking and reflecting on the following thoughts:

• Did we find a sin that was impacting our character that needs correcting?
• Did we find supporting scripture to help us see the gap from where we are to where God would have us to be ?
• Are we on the right track to end up going in the direction of God’s purpose in our lives ?

Like all halftime reviews in life we can take this opportunity to see where we are and what adjustments or changes we might need to make to end up where God would lead us to be. The challenge we often have is our focus on the negative because we view the gap that we need to close is too big. We sell ourselves short and also feel like there is too much unknown to move ahead. God sees that as our greatest opportunity because if we truly admit we cant close the gap and ask Him He will help us go further than we ever thought possible. Take this halftime to reflect on the positive thoughts and changes you already are making and allow those to move you forward. You may be closer to an actual breakthrough than you realize. The quote above from Andy Andrews is spoken by the angel Gabriel, in Andy’s book the Travelers Gift, to help us realize that the path of life is a continual one of challenge and our response to it. The tragedy in life is not that we lose but that we ALMOST win. We can get so close to something great for our purpose and when we cannot see the end in sight we stop. We give up, and if we quit we must admit that we lack Faith. Faith never quits, it never rests or gives in, it is always looking for a way forward. Mountains that we need to get over to realize the truth of faith will always lay in our path. Some are there by circumstances of our own making from poor decisions, others allowed there by the actions of someone or something else over which we had no control but they are in our path. Faith does not stop to question the origin of the mountain it only looks for a way past it to get to where God needs us to be – Faith will go over, under or around an obstacle because once we are past it then it is just that in our past and it cannot stop us again.

May your halftime reflection provide you a boost in your spirit to know that the greatest Cheerleader in the world is pulling for you and He wants you to reach your goals and live to your purpose that he has called you to.

Jeremiah 29:11  (NLT)

¹¹ For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.

In Hebrews 10 1-7 the writer reminds us that God’s plan was for a relationship not a process of sacrifices that would be offered in exchange for something temporary for us. When Jesus came to fulfill God’s plan, his expression is in Vs 7 – He had come into a time of sacrifice and religious process. The proclamation here is that Jesus had come and the “Book” or from the translation “God’s Whole Word” or the “Book”. The entire Bible in the Old Testament points forward to Jesus. The recorded writings there provide proof for our faith that God had a plan for us from the beginning. Jesus came into this world in a human form to fulfil God’s plan by carrying out His Will. In understanding just this simple truth we can find our purpose in recognizing that the entire Bible is a reference to Jesus. The Old Testament points to His coming to this world, the Gospels record His birth, life, death and resurrection to bring God’s plan to us. The remaining letters point us to His second coming.

Lent allows us an opportunity to see ourselves in light of this text in two very helpful ways. First, Jesus being the Word of God, written into the Book from the beginning, ensures that we know that no matter where we go in scripture to improve our relationship with Him we can count on our reading to keep us focused on Jesus. Second, if Jesus came to this world in human form “to do God’s will” then we can also be confident that we are here for the same purpose. The “entire Word” is available to us to use to reflect on our lives and to build on our relationship with God so that our relationships with one another become stronger as others see His Word in us.

Romans 7: 14-17      God’s Law Reveals Our Sin    –     Struggling with Sin

¹⁴ So the trouble is not with the law, for it is spiritual and good. The trouble is with me, for I am all too human, a slave to sin. ¹⁵ I don’t really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do what I hate. ¹⁶ But if I know that what I am doing is wrong, this shows that I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷ So I am not the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it

Once we have used God’s Word as a standard to evaluate our lives looking for an area to improve our relationship with Him, it is time for us to get to work. If we root cause most of the sins in our lives we will find at its source we violate one of God’s direct standards of Law for us in the 10 commandments. The first 4 cover our relationship with God and the remaining 6 our relationship with each other. We will usually find a pretty direct path from our sin to the relationship with others ( last 6 commandments ) because that is where the symptoms normally show up. The root cause of the symptom will almost always connect to one or more of the first 4 commands and that may be harder to identify. This is one of the decisions we will make that will allow Lent to add value to our lives or miss the opportunity.

Here is a simple example with a few of the moving parts – Commandment #10  – Not to be envious of what others have.

Rather than find contentment where we are, our human response is to find a way to get what others have so we will no longer have to be envious. In our assessment of how to best do that we realize we are going to have to work overtime and that will require working on Sunday. Now have violated Commandment #4 – Keeping the Sabbath Holy but that is the easy part. Still we move forward under the misguided thought that we are taking on more work to take better care of our family. Next we begin to accumulate the money needed to support our plan but our patience is shorter than we thought and we borrow the money to go ahead and obtain the things we “have” to have now. We find then that our entire focus in life revolves around the money we now “have” to earn to pay our bills that include these new things in life. Often without even noticing it we have started bowing down to worship money as an idle because we cannot live without all of it we can make. We have crossed over Commandment #2 in worshipping something other than God whether that is money or the things money buys us. In rolling together our actions across commandments # 10,4 & 2 we have substituted all these things for our relationship with God and we have put many things before Him. We now have trespassed Commandment #1 – Only Worship God.

This is an example we may have lived or have seen lived out many times. Our opportunity during Lent is to spend time in God’s Word to move from our symptoms to our root cause sins that are moving our lives away from God. The really great thing is that if we put in the time and study to determine the right area it will payoff in many areas of our lives. It will strengthen our witness for Jesus Christ as His purpose for our lives will become a part of our character.

Romans 12:3 NLT

³ Because of the privilege and authority God has given me, I give each of you this warning: Don’t think you are better than you really are. Be honest in your evaluation of yourselves, measuring yourselves by the faith God has given us.

Paul’s warning here is actually a straightforward and simple order for us to follow every day and especially if we want to establish a starting point of value in Lent. He asks us to come to God in Humility “Don’t think you are better than you really are.” Honestly “Be honest in your evaluation of yourselves,” and “measure ourselves accurately in Faith.” Our measurement of our Faith can only be of value if we use a consistent standard and the only standard for Christians is God’s Word.

Let’s consider a day to day example to see the value of a consistent standard.  Baseball is Americas game so lets take a look at how it grows with us from the center of a standard. Depending on the age of the participant, base distances, backstop and outfield fences can all be different to allow the game to be both fun and competitive. We have seen developments and improvements in baseball that seem to move the game quickly by leaps and bounds. The players are stronger and faster than ever and increasing their skills everyday. Athletes are better than they were a generation ago and vastly improved over several generations. We for sure have better tools and resources but it is a consistent measurement that has driven the advancement. In the areas above of the baseball field that change there is still one main link between offense and defense that is the exact same for all ages and always has been – HOMEPLATE. Think how quickly the game would change if the pitchers could widen the plate and the hitters could shrink it. Homeplate is 17 inches wide – for all ages, all leagues it is the standard that is the measurement and center of the game of baseball. Our lives have a standard that has always been there for our measurement – God’s Word. If we change that standard based on our circumstances, our day to day emotions or someone else’s view of the standard then it is no longer a standard. Once it moves everything else moves and our lives quickly would slide into chaos. May we always approach God’s Word with Humility, Honesty and the courage to measure our lives by our Faith. We can then look for the improvements in our lives that come only from Faith in God.  

James and Paul see our use of God’s Word to be an active engagement not just a reference. Our review of our lives in Lent doesn’t have to be complicated but it needs to be of value to our lives in how we serve God and others. If the Lent time of repentance is meaningful then the measurement has to be accurate and the only way to ensure that is to have a “standard” to measure against. If we were to decide upon a review of our physical bodies that we needed to lose weight then that review would have to become active if it has a hope of being accomplished. We would possibly research a new dietary plan, add an exercise regimen and last but not least is to have an accurate scale to get our current state ( TRUTH ) and set our future goal. Then with the scale as our “standard” or TRUTH we start an active lifestyle change to move toward our goal. Setting a frequency to continue to review our results, to our goal using the “standard” of measurement and goals.

The spiritual review of our lives requires an identical process, because all improvement and positive changes require looking at our life with regard to a “standard”, THE WORD OF GOD. The most important part of any commitment is the TRUTH or “standard” we hold ourselves to while we work to improve. The reasoning is simple – we all have, and are entitled to, an opinion which can be different between us no matter how close we are or how long we have known each other. What we are NOT entitled to is our own “standard” or TRUTH. TRUTH has some unique properties in that it can never be wrong and it can never change so it is not an evolving concept.

Lent allows us an opportunity to look beyond our surface challenges and into our heart for our life’s real challenges and find a sin that we want to go away but so far have not been able to move. The most likely reason we have not worked on them recently is because we tried and failed on our own. That is why God sent Jesus to fulfill His plan of salvation – because we could not do it on our own? The sins we need to work on are the ones that require God to help. They require FAITH – Hebrew 11:1 says that our Faith is the substance of things Hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. The sins we want to work on will come from the heart because these are deep seated sins that our lives have become conditioned to that we know God would not approve of and we would like to change if we could. God clearly told Jeremiah that “our hearts are the most deceitful of all things and desperately wicked.” (Jeremiah 17:9-10) This should free us up so that we can look at any area of our life because God is here to help us fix it through our Faith in Him and our efforts. In his second letter to the Church in Corinth Paul encourages us to “examine ourselves to see if our faith is genuine” 2 COR 13:5. In Lent as we repent from our sins of the heart by examining our life with regard to the mirror of God’s Word we need to understand the value of the “standard” . We will look at the “standard” and its value in our next Lent Post.

Lent is technically the 40 days leading up to Easter ( excluding Sundays ). It is a reminder of Jesus 40 days of temptation in the wilderness and has historically been observed as a time of repentance and fasting. It is a period of time for review and examination of our lives and our mortality – it can be sad and depressing but it is also is a sobering reminder that our chance of death is actually 100%.

The Lenten season is intentionally set aside for examination, instruction, repentance and prayer. This season is one of preparation for all the people of God. The Lenten time of reflection brings our individual lives along-side God’s word so we can find areas of our relationship with God that we can improve. Review and sacrifice in Lent leads us to focus on how to reflect and honor God by living out His purpose each day.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 NLT

All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right.  God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work.

The value of this review time is it asks us to dig deeper than the surface. It will not find us on the mountain top celebrating or in the deepest valleys because what we hope to find in Lent are areas hidden from even ourselves and we pray that Lent will make it visible to us.

Lent is the time for a restoration project that will reveal the beauty of God’s design for us, showing once again the scale, proportion, and priorities intended for us by our Maker. Further, Lent is a season of hope and with ashes on our foreheads and hope in our hearts, we go forth to love and serve. For by God’s grace in Christ, we do not have to stay the way we are.

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of a 40 day period of prayer and fasting or abstinence. Ash Wednesday derives its name from the practice of placing ashes on the foreheads of adherents as a celebration and reminder of human mortality, and as a sign of mourning and repentance to God.  Ash Wednesday is a day of repentance and it marks the beginning of Lent. Ashes were used in ancient times, according to the Bible, to express mourning. Dusting oneself with ashes was the penitent’s way of expressing sorrow for sins and faults.

This was bad news for Adam, and it is bad news for us. Like Adam, we have come from dust, and to dust we will return. Throughout our lives, our dusty bodies remind us of our mortality, when they get sick, or when they work imperfectly, or when they age, or when they stop working altogether.

Often, our bodies are the instruments of sin, rather than of God-honoring work and worship. Of course, many good things come from our bodies, including new human life, fulfilling work, loving embraces, and acts of charity. The inherent goodness of our bodies has not been obliterated by sin, though it has been tarnished and twisted.
So Ash Wednesday begins with bad news. It invites us into a time of extended contemplation and contrition, as we consider during Lent just how much we need One to save us from our sin. Ash Wednesday also signifies hope. The ashes that are imposed on our heads form the shape of a cross. Sometimes these crosses are obvious; sometimes more subtle, but the very stuff that symbolizes our mortality and sin also alludes to that which will set us free. It reminds us that God has entered into our human condition in order to break the power of sin and welcome us into the fullness of His life. It is not a day to focus on the cross so much as a time to begin to realize just how much we need the cross.

May what we fast from during Lent be minor in comparison to what God can help us add to improve our relationship with Him.

Mark 8: 11-12

¹¹ When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had arrived, they came and started to argue with him. Testing him, they demanded that he show them a miraculous sign from heaven to prove his authority. ¹² When he heard this, he sighed deeply in his spirit and said, “Why do these people keep demanding a miraculous sign? I tell you the truth, I will not give this generation any such sign.” ¹³ So he got back into the boat and left them ….

It seems like we are always using our relationship of dependence on God to place where we substitute Certainty for Faith. We want to be certain that we are on the right path without any risk or steps of faith on our part. We would like for God to not only shine a light on our path but also to put up some road signs along the way that tell us we are where he wants us to be. We often say we are waiting on a sign from God or the more popular phrase today is “God’s Got This” and while that is true and may be helpful, it is like affirming the earth God created is round – of course it is and of course he’s got this because he has everything. There is nothing wrong with using these certainties to affirm our faith in God and to support one another but in our daily walk with God how do we live out our faith?  

Hebrews 11:1 Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see.

The writer of Hebrews asks us to look beyond what we can see to our hopes and dreams so that God can accomplish His purpose and fulfill our faith. To do that maybe we need to send a sign to God that we are willing and able to move and act on His behalf. We can send Him a sign that our Faith lives in our hearts and our actions. He might in turn send a sign ( evidence ) that the purpose He has for our faith is both real and working. Then may our lives of faith be seen as a sign by others that God is real by the evidence of our lives.

While we can learn valuable things looking into our past by learning from our failures. All too often that can consume a lot of time digging into the details that may or may not contribute to improving our future. The Negatives of the past often overshadow our lives – we try to realize that Our past is now a TRUTH. It cannot be changed, it is not flexible or open for opinion. The Good News in it for us is that this translation from Isaiah on “former things” and “dwelling on the past” cover things far back into our past and more recent failures we may have experienced. God asks Isaiah to take his past as a Truth but to know it is overshadowed by the Truth of today in the new things God is doing in his life. We try to teach our youth through sports that the past can’t be changed and can only be managed by how we let it affect our future path. In baseball a strike is a strike and in 100 years when the scorebook is found in the dusty corner of a dugout it will still be a strike. While the call cannot be changed and is now a part of the Truth in life it has no power over the future of a player.
We strive to realize that our past only controls us when we stay stuck in it and not come to a point of understanding it as a learning point:
1) You cannot change your past, but you can change how you react to it.
2) You are much wiser now based on the knowledge our past brings to us.
3) You are not the same person you used to be, so you do not have to make the same mistakes you once made.

What can always be of value is looking at our past from the view point of neither success or failure but from a perspective of how have we lived and treated others. When you leave this life the only measure that will hold up and prevail is how we treated others – did we help and love our neighbors, family and friends.  Were our decisions and actions with others ethical and moral and would they be pleasing to God. More importantly do we truly believe in Faith that God is always working on a new beginning and can we see it, can we see the way he is making for us in the wilderness of our day to day world.

As the result of circumstances in our lives we sometimes would describe ourselves as “broken”. The term “broken” can take on many faces; it can describe a part of our life that is dysfunctional for one reason or another; it can refer to a vital relationship in our lives that was a part of our identity that has changed and it can also refer to our whole state of being or our spirit is “broken” leaving us unable to function in our day to day lives.

It doesn’t matter how we got to where we are even though we spend a lot of time and energy trying to go back and analyze what happened and who might be to blame. God doesn’t look backward except to provide us an example of faith that can help us move forward. Our faith puts us in a position for God to work in our lives as we work for a positive change. Fortunately, God is in the restoration business of making new from old – 2

2 Corinthians 5 : 17    NLT¹⁷ This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! 

Our faith to move forward all starts with Jesus Christ. God did all the heavy lifting thru the cross and the resurrection. God Loved us before we loved Him – He made the first move and the next move is ours and if we are “broken” then God has allowed us to be here to prepare us for our next move.  God will move mountains to create an opportunity for us and we have to be prepared to move in faith according to the purpose He calls us to.