Pick Up Your Cross…

Have you ever heard the phrase, “pick up your cross”?

It’s part of a verse where Jesus says, “pick up your cross and follow Me,”.

This is a good, important thing to do.

It’s one of the basic parts of being a Christian.

 

To pick up our cross means to pick up the practice of obeying Christ and whatever calling He has placed on our life, to choose to lay our self aside, and to follow Him wherever He leads us.

 

Have you ever read the entire verse?

It’s found in Matthew 16:24 and says,

 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “Whoever wants to be My disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow Me. (NIV)

 

Did you catch that?

It says to deny yourself.

 

Too often we try to follow Christ while still doing things our own way and living life on our terms.

Continue reading

On Being Vulnerable

I recently wrote a post on how I like to journal (read it here).

In the post I mentioned being vulnerable before God.

 

Sometimes, we try to hold back and not talk to God about certain things.

Things we’re ashamed of, embarrassed by, hurt from.

 

Here’s the thing. – God already knows about it!

 

Because God is all seeing and all knowing (omniscient), He knows absolutely everything about everyone and everything already.

There are no thoughts we can think that He doesn’t hear.

There is nothing we can do He doesn’t see.

 

So, when we try to hold things back from Him we are only fooling ourselves.

Not only that, all these things we keep holding back from Him are the very things He wants us to bring to Him.

 

Bringing ourselves before the Lord and laying our hearts open can be scary.

We’re afraid He will be shocked – He won’t. There’s nothing He hasn’t seen.

We’re afraid He will reject us because we are so “bad”. He won’t. He loves us unconditionally, no matter what!

 

Sometimes, part of the problem is, sometimes we don’t want to have to face what we’ve done.

We’d rather turn a blind eye to it, bury it deep within ourselves, and move one.

The problem with that is that not only is it still there, but God sees it and wants us to bring it out and share it with Him.

We might be able to bury it temporarily, but He’ll keep reminding us of it.

The sooner we bring it to Him and face it, the sooner we can get rid of it and stop it from hanging over our head.

The consequences may still be there, but He will walk us through it and comfort us as we go.

 

Another part might be that we don’t realize or we’ve forgotten that He is our Father

As a parent, He wants us to bring our broken things to Him so He can fix them – broken relationships, broken habits, broken thoughts, broken lives.

 

When we are brave enough to go to Him with these things, even if we can only do it one tiny bit at a time, He will begin to heal and restore us.

As He does, we will begin to see and feel His comfort, which will help us to trust Him more.

As we trust Him more, we can bring the bigger things to Him as we open our hearts to Him more.

It’s this heart opening that we do that allows us to be vulnerable with Him.

 

It won’t always be easy.

Sometimes there will be substantial pain.

But, at the end of the day we will be closer to God, relying more and more on His love and mercy, trusting Him and His love more and more.

That’s a pretty good place to be!

 

If there is something you are hiding or holding back from the Lord, I hope you will bring it to Him and ask Him to help and to heal you in that area.

It may be hard, but the peace, relief, and healing you receive will be so worth it!

 

 

He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their woundsPsalm 147:3 (NIV)

 

So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. Isaiah 41:10 (NIV)

 

 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30 (NIV)

 

To read my previous post on journaling,, please click here.

 

 

 

 

What is Salvation?

You’ve probably heard the words Saved or Salvation used by Christians.

What does it mean in this context?

It means saved from our sins.

 

See, back when God first created the world He created a beautiful garden and placed two people in it – Adam and Eve.

They lived a beautiful and blessed life.

There was no sin.

There was no pain.

There was just joy.

Unfortunately, they made a really bad choice that ended all that.

 

When God placed them in the Garden of Eden, He told them about two trees that were there.

One was the Tree of Life; the other was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

God made it very clear they could eat of any tree in the garden except the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

The enemy came to Eve, disguised as a serpent, to tempt her into eating the fruit of the only tree God had told them to stay away from.

She not only ate it, she shared it with Adam.

When they ate this fruit, their eyes were opened to see the difference between good and evil.

It was at the moment Eve yielded to the serpent’s temptation and ate the fruit that sin entered the world.

Because of this, God made them leave the garden so they would not eat from the Tree of Life.

Continue reading

Lamenting Before the Lord

Sometimes I get really frustrated or annoyed about something and will sit on my friend’s porch and talk about it.

I will whine, cry, question the circumstance, and list out all that is bothering me.

By the end of the conversation we are both saying, “But God can help. He can intervene.”

 

This is more than griping, complaining, or whining.

It’s lamenting.

 

Lament – to express deep regret, grief, anger or sorrow. It is followed by moving to an expression of trust.

 

The Bible is filled with these types of things.

My favorite is Psalm 13.

David has had all these bad things happening; things he’s concerned and worried about.

 

He writes about them specifically in the first 4 verses when he is asking God how long he (David) must suffer in all these areas.

Then in verse 5 he tells God, “But I trust in Your unfailing love…”.

He wraps up the Psalm by declaring he will sing God’s praise –

He will praise God because God has been good to him.

 

Instead of focusing on his problems he chooses to look to God and His unfailing love,

In other words, David is saying he has all these problems but is choosing to look to the Lord and to trust Him.,

Not so God will fix them.

Not so God will answer his prayers, but because David recognizes who God is and what He’s done for him.

Continue reading

Galatians 3:3

In Galatians 3, Paul is explaining to the Christians in Galatia that it’s not about following the law that makes us free.

Some Jewish converts to Christianity in Antioch were telling the Gentile Christians the men had to be circumcised if they wanted to be true Christians. They were trying to make it a condition of salvation.

They were teaching this because under the law of the Old Testament, God told all Jewish men to be circumcised.

Paul was explaining that it was no longer necessary to live according to the law.

Once Christ came the Old Testament law was fulfilled by His life, death, burial, and resurrection. Therefore it no longer applied.

Then Paul brought the point home when he asked the question:

 

Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh? Galatians 3:3 NIV

 

In other words, you know it’s grace that saves you by having faith in Christ and what He did for you at Calvary. Why are you now trying to use your works and your actions to make it happen?

The truth is we can’t.

Salvation is only given to us by us having faith in Jesus, not by anything else we do.

No matter what we do, we can never be “good enough” to earn our way in to Heaven.

It doesn’t work that way.

 

As I was reading this verse I thought about how we as humans often try to make things happen, not just concerning salvation but also in our lives and the lives of others.

Continue reading

Prayer Language

One of the struggles I’ve had with praying is feeling comfortable with what I’m saying.

When I was a child I was taught to pray by my grandmother.

Because she read the King James Bible (KJV), she used that grammar and vocabulary when she prayed.

Not that there is anything wrong with that version of the Bible.

There isn’t.

It’s just that it’s a very old version and was written in Old English and some of our words and ways of saying things have changed.

For example, instead of you, the KJV says thou.

Instead of brothers it says brethren.

Still the same message, just different vocabulary.

 

As I grew up, I tended to pray the way my grandmother did.

It felt stiff, bulky, and awkward.

In short, it felt fake.

 

I thought that was how you were supposed to pray and that because it made no sense to me I must not be doing it right.

I knew prayer was supposed to be respectful and reverent, but I thought I had to speak God’s language to be heard.

So, after awhile I just stopped praying.

 

Then, one day I found this verse:

Trust in Him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts to Him, for God is our refuge. Psalm 62:8

Continue reading

The Idolatry of Prayer

One thing Christians say and hear a lot is that when things are going on or we are dealing with situations, we should just pray about it.

Praying is a very important part of our faith walk.

 

There’s just one question, though::

What is our motive for praying?

Really deep down, why are we praying?

 

Is it:

Because we’re supposed to?

Because we know God will probably help?

Because we have something we want God to do?

Because we want God to intervene in a situation and cause it to turn out the way we think it should?

 

Or, is it because we know God is our only hope and that He is the only one who can handle the situation so that it turns out the way it should?

Continue reading

Journaling

For several years now I’ve had the habit of journaling.

Typically, I do it first thing in the morning before I start my day.

I’ve found that writing before the world has a chance to distract me means that my truer, unguarded self comes out on the page.

 

Sometimes, I vent about people and events.

Sometimes I remind myself I need to buy milk.

Always. by the end of the second page I find God there.

As I’m listing my thoughts I begin to think about and then ask the Lord’s opinion on things.

I begin to become aware of where He’s working in my life and where I need to pray and ask Him to intervene and help me.

 

Some days I write 3 pages, some days I write 10.

Always, I make a point of laying aside all pretenses and focusing on being my true self, writing my real feelings.

Continue reading

He Who Began A Perfect Work…

When my kids were young I taught them about Jesus as best as I could.

All 3 got saved and baptized at a fairly young age.

As they got older and started going out on their own and were exposed to the world a bit – school, friends’ houses, the mall, the movies, etc. – then later college – they began to witness and experience bad things..

Things people typically witness or experience in a broken world.

Painful things.

 

Before long they struggled with their faith as society bombarded them with all sorts of lies that downplayed God and emphasized self.

Lies that characterized God in false, disrespectful ways.

 

They weren’t always obvious.

Continue reading

Belonging to God

I was reading a bible study book and it mentioned Psalm 100:3, which says:

Know that the Lord is God.
    It is He who made us, and we are His;
    we are His people, the sheep of His pasture. (NIV)

 

There’s a lot of good stuff in this verse, but what really stuck out to me was the second line –

It is He who made us, and we are His,

 

According to this verse, it is God who made us.

We weren’t made by accident. We didn’t suddenly just exist.

We didn’t evolve from slime somewhere.

God made us.

On purpose.

He meant to do it.

 

Because God has made us, we belong to Him.

We are His people.

This means we aren’t our own.

Continue reading