Maybe you should panic

"And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations" Matthew 24:14a

You have no doubt seen the signs and picture proclaiming to keep calm and carry on. There have been many variations of this keep calm verbiage. My personal favorite is the one that says "do not keep calm, people are dying and going to hell."

People are hurt and dying. It is a fact that 10 out of 10 people die. An unfortunate fact is most of those 10 will end up in hell because they never heard the gospel or refused it. If we look at our cultural landscape the one thing we need more than anything else, is Jesus. People do not need our politics. They do not need our anger. They do not need propaganda.

They need hope. They need love. Maybe, it's time we panic and do something rash for the Lord.

It's time to get up off our duff and do something. Christ commanded us to go. He said to proclaim the gospel throughout the world, to all peoples. There is no distinction between one person and the other with God. We are all sinners.

It's time we panicked. It's time to get out there and fish for men. People may revile you, but that has always been the case for believers. We are a generation away from being an unreached people group here in the states. Europe is already there because the church stopped evangelizing the continent. Do not allow that to happen here.

May we usher in a new spiritual awakening in this country by putting down our signs and anger and by taking the gospel with love and hope to others. Pick up your cross and follow Christ, proclaiming his glory and his gospel to everyone; and by all means necessary use words.

What fear?

"Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go." Joshua 1:9

Over the next couple of days I will be surrounded by a few thousand people, approximately 7,000 actually. To let you know how this verse is important to me this week, out of the 7,000 people roughly 200 are men.

The idea behind the verse is for Joshua not to think too much on the battles ahead because if he thought about those battles he would become afraid and be discouraged. God told him three times not to be afraid or be discouraged, but to be strong and courageous. The verse applies to us in that we cannot think too much on the troubles we are in or any storms on the horizon. Go forward with your head held up.

I could leave it there, but there is no hope in that. The hope in the verse is God is always with us. When the disciples were on a storm tossed ship they lost sight of the fact that the Word of God was in the boat with them and they panicked. 

They became afraid and dismayed. He was physically present with them and they focused on the storm instead of the one who can bring peace and calm. Right before Christ ascended to his father he gave us the Great Commission. At the end of the commission he said, "Lo, I am with you until the end of the age." That is the hope and encouragement for you to stay strong and courageous.

Grace, Peace to all

"Grace to you and peace from God our Father." Colossians 1:2b

Here is comfort; grace and peace. These two go together like peanut butter and jelly or Abbott and Costello. You cannot have grace without peace following it. You cannot have true peace, especially inner peace, without grace.
Grace is not getting what we do deserve. What we deserve is punishment. What we deserve is eternal turmoil. What we deserve is strife.
However, what we get is love. What we get is peace. What we get is salvation.
Grace to each of you that read this, because what we need is grace. We need unmerited favor from God who can give us peace.
We all go through different ordeals, some are small and some seem mountainous. It is the grace of God that gets us through, as he sends unmerited love and favor toward us.

In our times of trouble God sends his grace to us and from that we have peace. Paul prayed three times for his thorn to disappear, but God didn't do it. Instead, he told Paul, "My grace is sufficient for you."
God grace is sufficient for us, right after writing that in 2 Corinthians 12 Paul goes on to say that he is at peace with this thorn in the flesh because it brings glory to God.
There is another concept to think about, God gains glory through our hardships. In our weakness his power is displayed. We are made stronger by his grace, love, and mercy toward us sinners.
Peace is attainable through God's mercy and grace. Jesus the very one who embodied God's grace, stood up on a boat in the midst of a storm and simply said, "Peace, be still" and it was. In our storms of life, instead of praying the problem away remember that God's grace is sufficient for us. Pray for his grace, because following that there will be peace. The problem may not go away, but there will be peace.
 

If there's a will...

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God... Colossians 1:1a

I have noticed, by way of a sermon from a former professor, we do not truly believe to have God's will be done when we pray for it to be done. It is this way because we want our will done, not God's. 

I find Paul's opening to the church at Colossae, and Corinth, interesting. He calls himself an "apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God". Truth be told he did not want to be an apostle or even a Christian. He was perfectly content as a Pharisee who was paid to round up believers in Christ and take them to jail.

His life was great, until one day on the road to Damascus Jesus appeared to him. God's will on Paul's life changed him. He went from having everything he wanted and persecuting others to having nothing and being persecuted.

Even more interesting is the fact that Paul was completely content in both situations. When he was not in God's will and persecuting others he was content. When he became an apostle he was happy and content. Notice that when he was in God's will he was happy.

You read his letters and you get the sense that he was disillusioned and unhappy as a Pharisee striving after his own glory. Yet, when the change occurred and he gave over to Christ all he was and all he had, he became overjoyed.

When you are at the center of God's will you will have joy. I will not say you will be free from strife and stress, because Paul wasn't and we are never promised that.

We are promised the Spirit to comfort and empower us. We are told that God's grace is sufficient for all our needs. 

It is by God's will we are called.

It is by God's will we are sanctified.

It is by God's will we live.

Where there is the will of God, we must be in it.

Living Peace

"If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all." Romans 12:18, ESV
This one is difficult to carry out, there are many people we know that need a slap in the head. Yet, we are told to live in peace with all. How do we reconcile God's demands and our human instincts?
Look at what Paul says here, "as far as it depends on you." It is up to you to live at peace with one another. You cannot depend on the other person to change, you must change.
You are the one who has to forgive and forget. Do not wait on the other person. When it comes to hurts we need to drop them. When it comes to stumblings, get up and move on.
Paul goes on to say in verse 20: "if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head."
Ever been nice to someone that is mean to you? It really messes with them. It's fun and it frees you from any pain associated with their hate. Try it sometime.
You cannot control how another person reacts or what that person will or will not do. You can only control yourself. Prayer is a mighty key here. You must be in prayer to have patience, peace, understanding, self-control, etc.
Live at peace, as far as it depends on you, not them. You must worry and control yourself. Do not expect others to apologize, you are the one to seek forgiveness. Be kind and treat all with respect and love.
We are all sinners fallen short of God's glory, some of us are redeemed. Some are vessels set aside for destruction, but we still have to love no matter what they do to us. Live at peace.

Our Comforter

We are unfortunately and inextricably reminded that we live in a fallen world. A world where a joyous occasion has people constantly looking over their shoulders. A world where we are shocked but not shocked at the news of atrocious and cowardly acts of violence.
This is the state of our world now. The past two Sundays I have spoken about comfort in the form of the Holy Spirit comforting us in our struggles and comfort in knowing that Christ will return and take his throne; at that point there will be no more death, pain, mourning, tears. There will be nothing to remind us of our fallen world.
That is a wonderful comfort and hope that one day this tragic, fallen world will be destroyed in the wrath of God by fire and those that do such unspeakable evil will be thrown in the lake of fire.
I was perusing Isaiah in light of the Boston tragedy and I found this verse in chapter 51. "I, I am he who comforts you; who are you that you are afraid of man who dies, of the son of man who is made like grass?" Isaiah 51:12
We seek comfort from one another but our true comfort is in The Lord. In this verse God is speaking to those "who pursue righteousness, you who seek The Lord." (51:1) I wish I could tell you that is where the chapter ended, but it doesn't.
Starting in verse 17 to the end of the chapter, The Lord speaks to the unrighteous and asks the questions, "who will console you? ... Who will comfort you?" The Lord prepares a place for his people and a place for those who are not his. He gives the unrighteous a cup full of his wrath to drink, and he asks them where their comfort lies.
To us there is no problem, our comfort and our help is in The Lord. To the others we can tell them about our great hope because they may not have our comfort. In times like this our job is to come alongside those that are hurting and love on them.
Our job is to give comfort to those that need it most. We are to love the unloved. We are to touch lives, hearts, and souls with the comfort we have, so that one day we might see the fruits of our labor worshipping the One, True God in glory

The Struggle

O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest. Psalm 22:2
One of the big problems we struggle with as Christians is our struggling. We think it's silly to question God. We think it might mean we are not the Christians we think we are.
Here's the thing, we all struggle and we all question God. There is nothing wrong with this. It is through our struggles that we become stronger. We become better. We become more like Christ.
Before a butterfly is a butterfly it is first a caterpillar. The caterpillar grows and eventually creates a cocoon around itself. A couple of weeks later it begins to emerge by breaking through the cocoon with some force and struggling to set itself free. When it is finally free it is beautiful and strong. It is able to make its migratory trek.
If you happened by and saw the caterpillar struggle to be free and cut open the cocoon in an attempt to be merciful the butterfly would be weak. The wings would not be fully developed and it would die in a matter of days. Why?
The struggle of the butterfly to be free is what gives it strength. The struggle helps to fully develop the butterfly's wings. It is the same with us humans.
If we do not go through the struggle how will we ever know how to be stronger the next time. If we do not wrestle with The Lord and question his goodness, how will we ever learn to fully trust him. We ask the questions, "Why," "How long," and "Where were you."
It is by our finiteness grappling with the infinite that we grow. It is OK to question God, sometimes he is silent because he is waiting on us to give it all over to Him. Sometimes there is silence because God wants us to be obedient and faithful while we are rebellious.
We sometimes struggle because life isn't what we expected or want it to be. We are called to be obedient not successful and famous.
Remember what the apostle James said, "Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." James 1:2-4
May you be encouraged to persevere in the valley so you can later have the strength to ascend the mountain.