Baggage

At one point Jesus was kind of cornered by some religious leaders, and they were asking him how do you sum up the entire bible, what is the greatest commandment. And in Jesus’ day we have to know there were about 633 commandments they made from the 10 commandments, Jesus said I’ll do you one better than that, I’ll boil them down to two main commandments. #LoveGod and #LovePeople (the first and second commandments). It’s very easy for someone to say go out and #LoveGod and #LovePeople, but a lot of times we don’t know how to do that. It’s not that we don’t want to do just that, but we can’t Love them (whoever it may be family, friend, coworker, etc), at least not in the crazy passionate love kind of way that the Bible is truly referring to. And that reason is because of ‘Baggage’. Baggage can be anything from jealousy issues, self-esteem issues, unforgiveness/bitterness issues, anger issues, pride issues, taming of the tongue issues, etc.

In John 17:20-26 Jesus is praying to God. Right there we have to think this is very important, I mean it’s Jesus, he could be praying for anything, and this is his prayer.

²⁰ “I am praying not only for these disciples but also for all who will ever believe in me through their message. ²¹ I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one—as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me….²⁵ “O righteous Father, the world doesn’t know you, but I do; and these disciples know you sent me. ²⁶ I have revealed you to them, and I will continue to do so. Then your love for me will be in them, and I will be in them.”

He said, I’m going to pray that some how all those who believe in me and for those in the future who will believe in me (which is talking about us – Jesus prayed for you) will move together and flow together in community and love as one, and he goes on to say the way in which they love one another will be proof of my existence and my character.

*The way we relate to each other, is reflective of God

God created us in his image. God is a relational God. He creates community within himself, The Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Everything he created was created in community and is all intertwined, the mountains, the sun, the moon, the galaxies. God created for us to live in this loving context of community. God is a relational being and if we are going to reflect that, we have to live in the context of that love and that is community.

Jesus said, the proof that you are my follower and proof of my character is that you love one another. I think that the reason we have a hard time sometimes to love people is baggage and it’s keeping us from living out the commands that God has called us to, to #LoveGod and #LovePeople. And by not doing that, we are not reflecting God the way that we are to reflect him. Your baggage is what’s keeping you from reconciling with your parents, your baggage is what’s keeping you from calling your sibling this afternoon, your baggage is what is keeping your marriage from ever moving beyond mediocrity, your baggage is what makes you jealous and makes it hard to celebrate when others have success, its your baggage.

There is hope, It’s God’s desire for you to have freedom. We have to realize it may be a battle and may take time. We have to be Honest with ourselves with the junk that we may have in our lives. Whatever it is in our lives we need to be honest with ourselves and give it to God. If it is unforgiveness, we need to let it go and forgive. Even though it may be hard, that is the first step to healing, giving it to God. If we are dealing with trust where we have hurt someone. Confession to God is a start, but take a look at Matthew 5:23-24

²³ “So if you are presenting a sacrifice at the altar in the Temple and you suddenly remember that someone has something against you, ²⁴ leave your sacrifice there at the altar. Go and be reconciled to that person. Then come and offer your sacrifice to God.” God not only tells us to ask forgiveness from him but to reconcile with our friends and family. The bible also says in James 5:16 “¹⁶ Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.” It may be scary and tough, but it is clear and simple of what we are to do, and trust that healing will come. When dealing with Envy of others, we see so many things commercials, ads and everything this day in age of the world telling us what we need and want, when God tells us what we really need is Him and his love and contentment in that. Seek that first. With all of what the world is telling us everyday what we need, a good start and reminder of what we really need would be to focus our thoughts on one message a day from God and his word. No matter how put together someone may seem and how much together we think they have it. We all need healing. We all need each other and we all need freedom and we all need God.

For us to begin to love like God has called us to love, for us to reflect God the way we are called to reflect him, we need to be honest with ourselves and begin the healing process in our lives by facing the Baggage we may have picked up somewhere along the way. We need to face the Baggage and start the healing process what ever that may be. I recommend, in what ever situation you are in, to take that Baggage problem and talk to your pastor about a good way to start the healing process. Get God’s word on the situation and begin heading towards a life of freedom.

 

 

Jesus Community

Jesus set an example of how we should live out our lives. What I am going to talk about is 3 key staples of Jesus’ community life. Here is a look at 3 different kinds of relationships that Jesus had. 1st is intimacy with God, he would always draw himself away to spend time with God. That is a relationship that we need to develop in our own lives, it is the most important relationship that we have in our life. 2nd was Jesus’ community with insiders, those who were his disciples. They would spend time eating together, in fellowship together, and were very close. In our church this is the example that we need to live by. Us as a church or a community of believers need to have authentic relationships. 3rdly in Jesus’ life, he had influence with outsiders. Those outside the church, the non-believer. For us, same thing, a relationship with those outside the church.

Luke 6:12-19 is interesting and kind establishes what I just told you with Jesus’ relationships.

¹² One day soon afterward Jesus went up on a mountain to pray, and he prayed to God all night. ¹³ At daybreak he called together all of his disciples and chose twelve of them to be apostles. Here are their names:¹⁴ Simon (whom he named Peter),Andrew (Peter’s brother),James,John,Philip,Bartholomew,¹⁵ Matthew,Thomas,James (son of Alphaeus),Simon (who was called the zealot),¹⁶ Judas (son of James),Judas Iscariot (who later betrayed him).¹⁷ When they came down from the mountain, the disciples stood with Jesus on a large, level area, surrounded by many of his followers and by the crowds. There were people from all over Judea and from Jerusalem and from as far north as the seacoasts of Tyre and Sidon. ¹⁸ They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those troubled by evil^[b] spirits were healed. ¹⁹ Everyone tried to touch him, because healing power went out from him, and he healed everyone.”

If you look at it closer, you see kind of a pattern, Jesus went off by himself to have intimacy with God and spent the night praying. At day break he picks his disciples and has community, he chose some guys that he was going to do life with, to do ministry with, they then come down from the mountain and do ministry to other people. You’ll see this over and over in Jesus’ life, those 3 main relationships.

Why was Jesus’ so concerned with community? Did Jesus really need them? They a lot of the times didn’t even get what he was talking about. They would get in to stupid fights over who was the greatest of them, which is completely the opposite of what Jesus taught, When Jesus told them to stay awake in the garden, they fell asleep. When he told them to go to sleep on the boat, they woke him up and asked him to pray. I mean Thomas was a doubter, Judas was a Traitor, Levi was a tax collector, Peter cut a guys ear off. They told Jesus they would never leave his side, but when Jesus faced his biggest trial, they all scattered. Did Jesus need their community. Maybe he did, because of the value of love.  Jesus needed a group of people that he could do life with. That he could love. So that he could give us an example of how us as a community of insiders, as a church should do life together. (Matt 22) Love God and Love People.

John 13:34-35, Jesus says  “So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. ³⁵ Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.”

Jesus is telling us right now, that we don’t have to be the prettiest, smartest, most awesome people in the world. But what we do need to be, is a people of love, and a people of close community. Jesus stamp on us, is the way that we love one another, that is how people will know we are his.

Here are 3 principles that Jesus tried to establish as biblical authentic community. Here is the first,

1.Everybody is Welcome – it didn’t matter who they were or where they came from. He would accept them, embrace them, include them, ANYBODY who would come up to him. Prostitutes, Tax collectors, etc.This is what Jesus was about. This is how us as a church should be. A lot of people may never again want to go to church because they didn’t have a good experience when they went, maybe they got judged or didn’t feel welcome. We need to be a community and church where everybody is welcome.

2.Nobody is Perfect – We are all on the same level (Romans 3:23). None of us deserved salvation. We all stand in a place at the foot of the cross in desperate need for the bloodshed of Jesus Christ. Everyone of us stand in a place in need the forgiveness of God. There is no room for judging one another. Matt 7:1 – Jesus wasn’t saying that we shouldn’t  make moral discernment to one another. He wasn’t saying there isn’t a time where we should go to a loved one and say “you are screwing your life up”. What He is saying is that there is no room for I’m up here and your down here.We all come from the same place, and we should look at people through the eyes of love.

3.Anything is Possible – Transformation is possible. Jesus took a man by the name of Simon, and called him Peter which means “Rock” and knew you will stand before thousands, who was at one point was scared and ran from Jesus, but then one day he came to a place where he would die for Jesus. Saul was a hater and killer of Gentiles, became Paul who became a man who gave his life to love the gentiles. This is something that we have to get as a Church. Jesus set the example for us. We are to look at one another and say I see something different about you. You have a “New Name”. You are not who you used to be. You can become something different. The old is gone and the new is come. You can become someone new. We should look at people and say I see a new name in you, I see what your life would look like if you just surrendered your life to Jesus Christ. Yet sometimes we don’t treat each other as if anything is possible. We may gossip, or judge inside ourselves, instead of seeing the best in one another. Not looking with the eyes that say anything is possible. We should believe the best in people. God can still transform people. Anything is possible.

Jesus community – Everybody is Welcome, Nobody is Perfect, Anything is Possible

Crazy vs. Civilized

You like the title hey? Can you guess which one you are? Can you tell me which one you want to be? Well, let me talk to you a little bit about the two and which one I want to be and this may come as a surprise! You guessed it, CRAZY.

God’s 1st and 2nd commandments are Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul and his 2nd command is to love your neighbor as yourself.

I want to have a crazy love for God rather than a civilized love. A civilized love is kind of what we have in this day in age in the church. A lot of comfort, inner community, and a love for God that only shows up mostly on Sundays. Crazy love is the kind of love that the early church had. Crazy love is radically passionate about spiritual transformation, about reaching the non-believer and about having great community and relationships/friendships in the local church. Once again like i said in my STALLED blog. You have to OWN your own spiritual life.  Take a look at the early church’s methods (Acts 2:42) They Devoted themselves to teaching, fellowship, sharing meals and prayer. Devotion is a deep word and I don’t believe God chooses his words lightly.

First let’s take a look at civilized love. Sometimes as new believers we find ourselves taking crazy spiritual risks, trusting God in financial decisions, in life decisions. And God can work with that. But sometimes we get to a point where we feel comfortable and everything is going good so we just want to put our life on coast. We lean away from the risks, the Crazy Love for Jesus and being spiritually transformed like we had been. We are comfortable so we become more civilized. We are real casual about our Christianity and our Love for God and his work. We show up on Sundays, give our usual tithe, not even listening for God’s voice on if he wants us to give a sacrificial amount, we may even have devotions every morning. We have all been there, I definitely have and I think in the church it is time we make a decision that we want!, want!, want! that Crazy passionate love and desire for God and his work. I know I do. So we saw that civilized love is real casual and kind of a Sunday kind of love.

Now let’s look at the Crazy kind of love. The kind the early church showed us. They Devoted themselves to teaching, fellowship, and prayer. They would go out and teach and be tortured for it. They would be stoned, and and not the kind of stoned we think of today, the old school kind of stoned haha. They would be sawed in half and boiled in oil. That is a crazy kind of love for God and his work. Now a days if we get a negative facebook comment or a little gossip, it can ruin our whole week. I mean come on, look at the GAP between the Crazy kind of love they had in the Bible and how these words really meant something to them, everything actually and how us the church today have made it real civil like and proper.

John 13:34-35 says “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. ³⁵ By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

This Crazy kind of passionate for the things of God kind of love is what is going to transform you (Romans 12:1,2) and through you transform the world around you. This Crazy passionate love for God is how the world will know you are Christ’s disciples. That crazy kind of love is the kind of love that will move you to do anything God is putting on your heart even if it is a spiritual risk taking, even if all sensibility says that doesn’t make much sense. This crazy kind of love can only come if you decide for yourself, that is what I want. I want that passionate kind of love for God in my life. I want to be radically devoted to Jesus in my life. I want to fully and passionately be a part of this fellowship and community that we have at our local church. I want to reach the non-believers by daily showing them grace and love. And maybe you haven’t accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior and that is the Risk you want to take today. Even if your head is telling you not now and is giving you an excuse, your heart is telling you yes, this sounds like the Crazy passionate love that I want and need in my life.Then go ahead and say this “God, i want you and need you in my life. Jesus I accept your free gift of salvation and thank you for dying on the cross for my sins. God I want to be passionate for your call on my life. I want what you want for me here on earth. In Jesus name Amen”

This Crazy kind of love only comes when you decide, I truly want to be passionate for you God and nothing else really matters except for your will in my life.

Are you making a point or making a difference?

Do “non-believers” need the straight up truth about everything the Bible has to say about everything they may be doing wrong? Do they need you to make a great point about how they are living in sin? Maybe you made a great point about something that they said or did that didn’t match up with God’s word, and all of your Christian friends really applauded you for that. Or do they need you to show unconditional love and to not point any fingers? Do They need someone who won’t judge them for what they may be doing wrong? What does the Bible say? Is there a right and a wrong way to treat a “non-believer”? Let’s take a look at a few scriptures to see how the Bible tells us to handle these situations.

In Luke 19:1-10 “Jesus entered Jericho and made his way through the town. ² There was a man there named Zacchaeus. He was the chief tax collector in the region, and he had become very rich. ³ He tried to get a look at Jesus, but he was too short to see over the crowd. ⁴ So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree beside the road, for Jesus was going to pass that way.⁵ When Jesus came by, he looked up at Zacchaeus and called him by name. “Zacchaeus!” he said. “Quick, come down! I must be a guest in your home today.”⁶ Zacchaeus quickly climbed down and took Jesus to his house in great excitement and joy. ⁷ But the people were displeased. “He has gone to be the guest of a notorious sinner,” they grumbled. 8 Meanwhile, Zacchaeus stood before the Lord and said, “I will give half my wealth to the poor, Lord, and if I have cheated people on their taxes, I will give them back four times as much!”⁹ Jesus responded, “Salvation has come to this home today, for this man has shown himself to be a true son of Abraham. ¹⁰ For the Son of Man came to seek and save those who are lost.”

This was a problem for a lot of the religious people. And I’m sure we can see that a lot today. A lot of people might see someone new show up to church with a baseball cap, tattoos and piercings and smelling of the Marijuana or alchohol and want to kick them out on the spot, but that is not the way Jesus showed us. Jesus didn’t go up to Zacchaeus and say you are a dirty sinner and I want nothing to do with you unless you get saved and then walk over to his disciple buddy’s and say “yeah Peter did you see me drop that bomb on him, he didn’t see it coming” haha. No Jesus didn’t want to make that point, you will see the religious Pharisees doing that, but not Jesus. Instead Jesus made dinner plans with Zacchaeus and I’m sure showed him Grace and Love! And then Zacchaeus changed for the better. Jesus came to seek and to save the lost, to make a difference, not to make good points.

*Jesus allowed for people to Belong before they Believed

In Matthew 11 The religious people tried to dis Jesus by calling him a “Friend of Sinners”. But Jesus wasn’t in the business of trying to impress other Christians. On paper Jesus had more in common with the Pharisees than the Pagans and non believers, but Jesus constantly directionally leaned toward the people he may have disagreed more with, the people he had less in common with. I want to make a note that a lot of Christians may not agree with, that is that we should not fear guilt by association. We shouldn’t freak out if someone from church sees us out to eat with a “sinner”/non believer. If you struggle with the sin, then be smart about it, but don’t be afraid of reaching out to sinners and showing them grace and love. We to should be a friend of sinners.

In Galatians 2:11-13 we see an example of Peter getting embarrassed to be hanging out with uncircumcised gentiles. Some friends of James came by and Peter basically ditched out on them, on the uncircumcised gentiles that is. And as a result some other Jewish Christians followed that hyprocritical example of Peter. He was afraid of criticism from other believers. We should not be afraid of criticism.

I want to give some props and credit to someone that I know, that is a great example of how we should be toward sinners and non-believers. Clayton, my brother-in-law, has been such a great example in reaching out to non-believers full of grace and love. Ever since I have known him, this has been his ministry and there is always people coming to the Lord from it just like Zacchaeus did. I think a lot of us “Christians” can learn a lot from him on how to reach out to the unsaved and treat them. He is constantly asking them if they need rides, taking them out to eat, inviting them into his home and that is the way Jesus did it and the Bible tells us to do it. So if you know him, take his example in that area! We shouldn’t judge non-Christians for acting like non-Christians. 1 Cor 5:12 says “What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church?”

Here is a key verse from what i have been talking about is this

Colossians 4:5-6 “Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders, make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation always be full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.”

Surrender your agenda and lovingly serve the people in your path.

Instead of judging and saying sinner, sinner, sinner,  Rather than saying you are a  sinner, doing this wrong, doing that wrong and saying oh yeah, by the way, Jesus Loves You. Rather than those things, Be full of grace and season it with “some salt”. In other words, show them love and we can season it with a little bit of God’s word, but don’t over do it. Balance it the way this verse does “full of grace, seasoned with salt…FULL of grace and just SEASONED with salt. Show them patience and humility so much so that they can see there is something different with you. That something is the same love and grace that Christ showed towards the sinners. He didn’t come to condemn the world, but to save it! So we should take his example and run with it. We should do more of it! I know that I need to do more of it and in doing so I can bet that we will be making more of a positive impact and difference rather than a negative “point” or impact.

Plan B

What do you do in life when your dreams are shattered? What do you do in life when life isn’t going according to plan? What do you do when God doesn’t show up for you the way you thought he was going to show up for you? Everyone of us in different times and different seasons are faced with things that we didn’t expect. The dream that we had, the plan that we had seemed like it was right there, but at the same time it seemed like it was slipping away.

Plan A is the plan that we have for ourselves. For some of you it’s to be a mom, to get that promotion, go get in to that college, to accomplish certain goals we have set out for ourselves. Plan A is always somewhere in our comfort zone, something that we know we can handle.

But what I want to talk to you about is Plan B. A lot of times in life we find ourselves in situations that we feel we don’t deserve. Sometimes our Plan A isn’t working out and not because of anything we have done wrong. We want to have things all under control, but life throws us a curve ball and maybe you didn’t get the promotion, maybe you didn’t make it into the school you wanted, maybe life isn’t turning out the way you thought it would be and you can’t figure out why God would let this happen, I mean it is your Plan A. But God may have another plan for you, a Plan B. Plan B may be something that you don’t have the skill set for, you don’t have the know how for, it may be something that requires more patience than you have. God’s plan may be Plan B. We have to realize that a lot of times God’s plan is going to require more than what you can give. It is going to require things that you can’t do on your own strength. God will set before you a Plan B that may be impossible on your watch, but we have to remember that “God is with us”, the same way he was with Joshua leading the people across the Jordan River. I’m sure they were complaining and thought this is impossible, this wasn’t in the plan. But with God with them, He made it possible, God gave Joshua specific instruction on how to do it. It is the same way with us, Our Plan B maybe something that you can’t do on your own and it requires a spiritual risk taking on your part, it requires for you to lean on God and put your trust in God as if He is actually with you.

We read in the Bible that God will never give you more than you can handle, right?…Wrong, it is actually the opposite. God gives us things that we can’t handle on our own strength, on our own ability, with our own talent and plan. Paul says in 2 Cor. 12:9 “That His strength is made perfect in my weakness”. God gives us a plan not to handle on our own, but a plan that makes us depend on Him and his strength and ability. When we realize that our Plan B is God’s plan and that we need him to accomplish anything worth living for, that is when we start walking with God and start walking with God’s power and ability working with us. Whether it be raising 4 kids, holding down a job and finding time to spend alone with Him or Becoming the next Revivalist to lead thousands to Christ. God has the skill set, ability, and strength that we don’t have. We need to start relying on Him and his ability and go with his Plan B for our lives.

Sync – STALLED

Why is what I’m about to talk about important? It is, one, because I need this for myself and you may also need this. My life is not and has not been prioritized in the way that it should be. It is a little Out-of-Sync from where it should be.The Real issue is that I have no one else to blame for this, because the responsibility of living this balanced, prioritized life lies solely on my shoulders. My personal life with Christ is not where it should be.

Why your church may need to hear this? I am taking notes from a message I heard spoken. There was a survey taken from Christians that attend church from all different backgrounds across the board (new, old, denominations, non-denominations, etc). They put “us” into 5 categories.

-Exploring Christianity

-Growing in Christ

-STALLED

-Close to Christ

-Christ Centered

They had 4 different practices categories, such as – praying, confessing sin, reading scripture, and setting time aside alone with God. The reason this blog is called STALLED is because people in the STALLED category were often sometimes lower in the practices categories than even the “Exploring Christianity”.

Right now, I would say that way to many of us, including me are in and have been in the STALLED category. New explorers, believers, new to church people for the most part are excited about everything – reading, growing, getting involved in groups and programs, they are growing! That was/is you. Then 2 years, 3 years or further down the road, all of the sudden we “STALL”. We all I’m sure have experienced this before. We look back and think, “What Happened?”, “I was growing, becoming more like Christ, amazing things were happening in my life” and then all of the sudden, it kinda just “STALLED”.

2 things can often happen when we get “STALLED”. 1- They often leave the church, because they are frustrated and angry and they assume that I must not be doing something right, because I was growing and all of the sudden I am stagnant and have been that way sometimes for a couple years. Thinking “Either the Christian thing wasn’t really true” or check out because I’m feeling guilty that I am not where I need to be. 2 – People will stick around and complain about everything, because they can’t quite put a finger on what it is that is going on. So they say “the church isn’t doing it for my anymore” or say “I need something deeper” (Which you probably do, but are looking in the wrong place.)

If you are STALLED in your spiritual life and are Out-of-Sync. You are looking in the wrong place. You don’t need more “me”, you don’t need a better message, or more intense worship, you don’t need another program, You certainly don’t need to find a new church. What you need is more of Jesus Christ in your life. And you haven’t found a way for that to happen yet. You are depending on certain instruments and institutions to do that for you that weren’t intended to do that for you in the first place.

John 15 talks about Jesus being the vine and us being the branches and apart from him we can do Nothing. Look it up and dwell on in for a few minutes. Its pretty simple. It’s not just some cute little phrase, it’s not something Jesus just wanted to put on a t-shirt or something. This is a promise, the REAL DEAL. He tells us to “Be in Me”, not just be in a church or a small group. This next thing I am going to tell you is KEY, make sure that this hits home with you!

“You Have to OWN your Own Spiritual Life”  – You need to get to that place where you understand that that is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY!

As you grow and mature as a believer you become less dependent on programs and more about an arranged life. The church can do it’s best to team up with you and try and make things clear for you, but at the end of the day, no one can do it for you. No one can read scripture for you, serve for you, give for you, etc)

You have to OWN your own spiritual life.

In Mark 1:14-15 Jesus tells us “The time has come, the Kingdom is near” and is telling us that (paraphrased) “it’s possible for you to live in the context of the kingdom. You can be a part of the kingdom, all you have to do is follow me. Do what it is that I do. I don’t care how old or young you are, how good looking or athletic you are. If you want to be a part of the kingdom movement, you can be a part of the movement, just follow me. You can be like me, you can experience transformation in your life.” The Apostle Paul talks about this in Romans 12:1,2, being transformed by the renewing of your mind. Being transformed as talked about in the Bible is very dense, deep and sometimes really hard to try and figure out and understand. How can we spiritually transform, what is the best way to do that, where do we go from here?

I am going to give you an Acronym that can probably help us in this area.

VIM

V is for Vision – Understand what Spiritual Transformation looks like/to really follow Jesus

I is for Intention – YOU have to make a DECISION that YOU want this more than anything else in life

M is for Methods – a process and certain disciplines

Matthew 13:44-45 “Kingdom of Heaven”, we need this Vision, discovering the kind of life Jesus wants you to live.

We have settled for a life of mediocrity, a life chasing after cars, money, popularity, a raise, applause and ignoring the Reality of the life that God has called us to live.

We can grow more like Jesus. Spiritual Transformation is possible if we lean on Grace and Faith and we are willing to center our lives around the activities of Jesus Christ. We have compared this vision of the life that Jesus wants for me and the reality of where we are really at. There is this gap. I’m not really where I want to be. I’ve settled and am chasing after all this stuff that is different from the life God has designed me for.

If we are honest, a lot of us would say my life really isn’t centered around the fact that Jesus is in me. Instead we wrestle with doubt issues, fear issues, anger issues and all of these other things are dominating my life but not Christ in me.

We are not talking about external behavior or legalism, we are talking about the “inside”, about Christ being formed in you and understanding that that’s a reality and that is possible. That is the Vision, and at some point Intention and decision has to come, you have to say to yourself that “That is what I want, I want that.” Of course this won’t be a perfect journey. There will be times when you forget, get off track, screw things up, but the decision we will always come back to the Intention of it! ARE YOU THERE?

Methods – Jesus engaged in certain practices in his life here on earth. He withdrew himself to spend time with the Father, He threw himself into scripture, He was always a part of service and community. If Jesus used these methods, how much more do we need them in our lives, how much more important is it.  Don’t only “trust” Jesus for your salvation, but trust him with your life. Believe that he knew and knows how to do life. The purpose of methods is to free you up in the right things at the right moment. It’s not just another chore or responsibility to make you feel guilty.

Intent – Have YOU yourself made the decision for yourself that you want Christ formed in you and you want something more than a STALLED or stagnant life, more than anything.

John 8:12 Jesus said we don’t have to walk in darkness. Don’t be a slave to earthly things. Follow Jesus into his way and this way of life. Jesus freed us from the power of sin.

John 10:10 Jesus came to lead us to a better life and a better way.

So if you are STALLED. Remember that YOU have to OWN your own spiritual life. Its not anyone else’ responsibility. Sync up with Jesus way of life.

Hello world, here I am!

Hey all of you peeps out there! This is my first post of many to come. You can learn a little about me and this blog in the, guess where, “about” section. Basically what I want to accomplish with this blog is to help people understand that the Bible is very relevant to your life and that God is everywhere in this life, if you are looking. There are so many truths and so much guidance in God’s word that, basically, are just darn right hard to understand. That is where I want to do my best to help. Even though these posts will be geared toward life and God, it’s not meant for only “Christian” eyes. On the contrary, all you others out there who have been to church and didn’t feel welcome, or thought it was boring and so confusing, this is definitely the right place for you to. I want to break down different life lessons from scripture and try to make them easy to understand and show you how real God is today. So I would love it if you would give me the chance to do just that! Please feel free to share this page, fb it, tweet it or whatevs! Don’t let the cheesy lingo fool you, I am very serious about this and really have a desire for it, so please take this journey with me.

-Jon