Stepping out into the unknown can be scary. Whether it’s starting a new job, speaking in front of a crowd, or sharing our faith. Pastor Lisa’s message over the past several weeks has focused on Pentecost. This is when Jesus shared the Holy Spirit with His followers to give them direction and courage to share His message with the world.
When the Spirit came to them it showed up as flames of fire.
Peter was always pretty bold, but became bolder in his ministry after this fiery experience. His message to the Galatians in chapter 5 verses 13-17 told them that they need to quit using their following of Jesus to be an excuse to do anything they wanted. He told them that the Spirit and their desires were enemies.
The Spirit would give them the power to avoid those desires.
Fire is purifying. It is used to separate good metal from bad. We need to expose ourselves to the fire of the Holy Spirit so that we might be better than we are without it (Psalm 12:6).
Living our lives in the Spirit is not a list of dos and don’ts. It is changing who we are. It is a new and purified way of living.
Living a life on fire with the Spirit gives us the boldness to be who God intended.
It gives us the strength and courage we need because we don’t have to do it alone.
What is it that lights your fire?
Is it the world or the Holy Spirit? Choose wisely.
This past week we observed Independence Day here in America. This is the celebration of our freedom from being ruled over by a tyrannical king. This new start came at a cost and wasn’t easy to achieve. It took time to get there.
Our spiritual freedom is the same.
Being born again is a common saying among Christians but can be hard for those who aren’t Christian to understand. Like the example of Nicodemus, a Pharisee and a Jewish leader, in John 3:1-8. He came to Jesus and asked Him about who He was.
Jesus told him, “I tell you for certain that you must be born from above before you can see God’s kingdom!”
Nicodemus asked, “How can a grown man ever be born a second time?”
Jesus answered, “I tell you for certain that before you can get into God’s kingdom, you must be born not only by water, but by the Spirit.”
This put Nicodemus in a tough spot because most Jewish leaders didn’t believe that Jesus was the Messiah. If Nicodemus believed, it put him at risk of being tortured or killed. Based on later Scriptures it is believed by most that Nicodemus chose to follow Jesus and be “born again”.
We have this same decision to make. We can choose to follow Jesus or follow the world. Following Jesus can put us at odds with the worldly perspectives. But if we follow Jesus, we have the Spirit on our side.
Choosing a clean start is up to us.
Pastor Lisa asked the question whether our spiritual transition was a big all-at-once-aha-moment or a slow, gradual transition over time.
For me it has been a slow process over many years. Looking back, I don’t have any grand transitional experience. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t feel that the Holy Spirit wasn’t a part of my life. This doesn’t mean that there weren’t parts of the journey that weren’t hard … there were.
I used to struggle with this when I would meet people who had had one of those life-altering stories about their “born again” experiences.
I now see that both of these paths lead to the same goal.
The Holy Spirit is working everywhere, all around everyone, all the time.
There are two voices competing for our attention. Right and wrong, good and bad, Holy Spirit and the world. This is like the cartoons with an angel sitting on one shoulder and the Devil sitting on the other. Both are talking to us, trying to convince us we should do what they suggest.
It’s up to us to decide which one we’re going to listen to.
The voice of the world is sneaky. The voice of the world is loud. The voice of the world is everywhere. It makes suggestions that sound like it isn’t anything really bad. It’s just the way things are if you want to get ahead, be popular, have money, be successful, etc.
“But I tell you I am going to do what is best for you. This is why I am going away. The Holy Spirit cannot come to help you until I leave. But after I am gone, I will send the Spirit to you.
The Spirit will come and show the people of this world the truth about sin and God’s justice and the judgment. The Spirit will show them that they are wrong about sin, because they didn’t have faith in me. They are wrong about God’s justice, because I am going to the Father, and you won’t see me again. And they are wrong about the judgment, because God has already judged the ruler of this world.”
The Holy Spirit is the voice that tells us the truth about sin, justice, and judgement.
When Eve took a bite of the fruit, sin entered the world. Our relationship then changed. Sin is choosing to not believe and to not follow Jesus. Jesus left us the Holy Spirit to guide us, if we will just listen.
God’s justice is Jesus paying the price for our sin. He paid the price with His life. This justice is the truth about God. But we must listen to His voice and believe if we want to receive this gift.
The voice of the world will be judged and punished. Our judgement comes if we choose to listen to the wrong voice.
The Holy Spirit is Jesus’ voice in us.
We all have a sense of right and wrong. But we are weak and need the strength of the Holy Spirit to help us make the right decisions. We need to listen to the right Voice.
When we’re faced with voices telling us different things, we can discern the right one from the wrong one with a few simple tests.
First test is the Bible. Does this voice align with Scripture? This doesn’t mean a few select verses, it means the Bible as a whole.
The second test is selfishness. Is this a voice that says you’re all that matters? Every man for himself. No one is looking out for you. This doesn’t sound like the right voice to me.
The last test is: does it sound like Satan’s voice? A manipulation of the truth. Like when he spoke to Eve in the Garden. A questioning, “Are you sure that’s what God meant? What will it hurt if you eat the fruit?”
Being aware of the voices and understanding them is critical to following the right one. Then it comes down to deciding which one to listen to. If we listen to the wrong one there will be an eternal price to pay.
If we hold on to the world, we’ll go down with a sinking ship.
Life is full of things that are hard to explain. Things that happen without any clear understanding or tangible concrete evidence. I can’t explain how this computer that I’m writing this post on works, but it does. It’s amazing how this happens.
Pastor Lisa started a sermon series on Pentecost this past Sunday. Pentecost is a Christian holiday that happens 50 days after Easter. It commemorates the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the followers of Jesus while they were together in Jerusalem.
“Suddenly there was a noise from heaven like the sound of a mighty wind! It filled the house where they were meeting. Then they saw what looked like fiery tongues moving in all directions, and a tongue came and settled on each person there. The Holy Spirit took control of everyone…”
Air is something that we can’t see or touch, yet we are surrounded by it. We know it’s there. We can feel it when it blows. When it blows hard we can see the results.
We can’t live without air.
This is how the Holy Spirit is described in Acts 2:1-4: A noise from heaven like a mighty wind filled the house where they were meeting.
God is one of those things that we can’t see. This can make it hard to explain. Like air, we can see and feel the results after He has blown through our lives.
Then they saw what looked like fire settling on each person. This was the visible presence of the Holy Spirt. We might say the followers of Jesus were on fire.
We hear the phrase “being on fire” used to describe someone or something that is performing exceptionally well. Someone who was full of energy and passion. This usage became popularized in sports where commentators would use it to describe athletes who were performing at their best. From there, it spread into other areas such as business and entertainment.
We need to be on fire for Jesus.
It can be hard for some people to accept that God is real because they can’t see Him. This requires faith and trust. These things can be hard without tangible proof. Yet we accept that the sun is going to come up each morning and that we will have air to breathe.
The evidence of the unseen shouldn’t be overlooked.
Trust and Obey is a well know song that I remember singing in church as a kid. Of course, there are some older than I, whom I’m sure also remember it. It has been around since 1887 after all.
To trust and obey can be hard.
Especially if we have had people break our trust. And this happens too often. People are only human, and we live in a fallen world after all.
So, what is trust? It is the reliance on character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something. It is placing our confidence in this person or thing. Faith is a big part of trust. We have to have faith if we are going to trust. Having faith in something can be scary. It is the expectation of something not yet experienced.
Trust requires courage.
We need to have trust and faith if we are going to obey.
Obeying is acting according to what we have been asked or ordered to do by someone, or to behave according to a rule, law, or instruction. It means to follow, comply, observe, or adhere to.
Obedience requires trust.
All of us have had people break our trust. This can lead to disobedience. As people, we should do everything in our power to do what we say we will to build trust. We should use Jesus as our example. He never did anything to break our trust.
God’s love never fails.
In Psalm 136, we’re given a whole list of examples of this.
He works great miracles
He made the sky
He stretched out the earth and the oceans
He made the sun for the day
He made the stars and the moon for night
He rescued Israel from Egypt
He took them through the Red Sea on dry ground
He destroyed the Egyptian king
He led His people through the desert
He defeated kings
He gave Israel their land
He rescues them from their enemies
Faith, trust, hope … what’s next?
Do you have the courage to obey God and His commands?
This past week was Vacation Bible School at church. This meant that the kids gave us a firsthand example of what they learned. The theme of the week was True North. It’s amazing and encouraging to see these young people living out their Christian faith.
A compass points north by using an ever-changing magnetic north. It’s always close to the True North Pole, but not the one and only True North on the planet. It’s the point where the earth rotates on its axis.
This VBS program takes kids on an Alaskan adventure where northern lights glow over majestic mountains, racing rivers, and glistening glaciers. As they trek through the tundra, they explore how easy it is to lose sight of what’s true in our wild world today. Pointing them toward Jesus, showing them that He is a faithful friend we can always trust.
Jesus is our True North.
One of the things the kids showed us was how what’s impossible for us alone is possible with the help of others. They were asked to reach from one side of the sanctuary to the other. Of course, it was impossible for them to reach thirty feet by themselves. But when they got together in a line and held hands, they could then touch both walls.
What’s impossible alone is possible with the help of others.
This past Sunday was also Pentecost. This commemorates the descending of the Holy Spirit on Jesus’s followers. They were gathered together when they heard a noise from Heaven that sounded like a mighty wind. And the Holy Spirit took control of them.
The Holy Spirit can be a little harder to understand than God and Jesus. Think of it this way. People we know have physical bodies, but they are more than that. They act in certain ways. They do and say things that are a part of who they are. When thinking about people who have died, we remember them in spirit more than their physical being. Their spirit is who they are. The Holy Spirit is who God is.
In Matthew 28:16-20, Jesus tells His followers to go to the people of all nations and making disciples. Baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to do the things that He has told them. And He will always be with you.
The Holy Spirit is how He is with us.
Back to the kids working together to reach across the sanctuary, we all need help as we traverse this wild world every day. The Holy Spirit will help us on the journey to the True North in this wild world.
I was asked to write an article for the July edition of Niccie Kliegl’sAs For Me and My House Magazine. This online magazine features articles focused on House, Marriage, Parenting, Finances, Health, and Community. I’ve written three previous articles—one on finance and two on houses—which fit well with my construction-focused business.
But this time, I was asked to write about marriage…
That felt a little scary.
As I thought about the topic—and about some of the mistakes I’ve made in my own marriage—I realized that most of those mistakes came down to one common problem: being out of balance. Spending too much time and energy on the business, and not enough on my marriage.
My life was out of balance.
But what does a balanced life really mean?
Often the word balance creates the picture of weighing two separate things and trying to get the weight to match. But in life, there’s a lot more than two things fighting for our attention.
Life balance is a lot more complex than a 50/50 split.
So how do we find that balance?
We tend to be binary thinkers. We assume things have to be one way or the other, ignoring the nuances and complexities of life. But that kind of thinking doesn’t work well in balancing your life.
Sure, sometimes there are only two choices. When choosing between right and wrong or good and evil, I believe this is the case. But most of life? It’s lived in the middle. And if we only see two options, we’ll stop trying to find balance altogether.
For example: one spouse is upset because the other is working too much. The one working sees that time as necessary to pay the bills and take care of the family. But they also know they can’t spend as much time at home as they do at work. So they throw up their hands and say, “There’s no way to make this work, so why even try?” And the imbalance stays.
Merriam-Webster has an extensive definition of balance that covers people, weight, stability, accounting, mental and emotional wellbeing. But the image I go back to is this:
A large platform, centered and balanced on top of a single, small point.
When nothing is on the platform, it stays level. If you place one thing near the center, it stays relatively level. But as more and more things are piled onto the platform—and things begin to move away from the center—the imbalance starts. The load gets heavier in different areas, and the platform begins to lean. One heavy thing (or too many smaller things) can cause the whole platform to tip in that direction. If it leans too far, things will fall off. So, keeping things on the platform is all about weight and location.
Our lives are like that platform. God sets it perfectly on the point and gives us the responsibility of keeping it there. The hard part? The sheer number of things we could pile on our platform. The choices are endless. Whether it’s spiritual, family, work, friends, fun, community, and so on. Some things carry more weight than others. And as we go through life, the things we have on our platform will and should change.
Finding and maintaining balance is our responsibility.
Will we be perfect at it?
No.
Can we learn and get better?
YES!
Balancing your life is one of the foundational blocks in BUILDing the life of your dreams:
BE AWARE of when you’re out of balance.
UNDERSTAND what imbalance looks like and that you can do something about it.
Take INTENTIONAL ACTON to restore balance in your life. You have to do something if you want things to change.
LEARN new and different ways to keep your life centered.
Find balance and it will put you on the path to your DREAM life.
And I can tell you this:
My marriage is much better now because my life is balanced!
As living things, we are either growing or dying. It takes intentional work to grow to our full potential. We need to be nurtured and watered. We need to have the dead parts cut away. We need a good Gardener that knows what will help us produce good fruit.
It’s the time of year when planting and gardening are happening. In the children’s message, Wilma used a small tomato plant as a visual. She spoke about how much she enjoyed tomatoes and all the different things that they could be used for. She also said how disappointed she would be if the plant didn’t produce fruit.
We don’t want to disappoint God by not producing fruit.
I know I’ve witnessed this at home, as Debby has new plants sitting in the kitchen sink being watered until she can get them planted. She’s also cutting straggling limbs from bushes and trimming the rose bush.
One of these examples is that rose bush that Debby was pruning. It was planted by my grandmother years ago. It produces a lot of beautiful flowers because it gets pruned every year.
Another example of the importance of gardening is a tree that we planted a year ago. Things had been dry, and it appeared that I hadn’t been watering it enough. When the other trees began to bud, it appeared to be dying. I amped up the watering schedule and now … it appears that it may survive. I may need to prune some dead branches that will take away from the live ones.
These things will result in better plants and a prettier yard.
In John 15:1-8, Jesus told His disciples, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts away every branch of mine that doesn’t produce fruit. But he trims clean every branch that does produce fruit, so that it will produce even more fruit.
Just as a branch cannot produce fruit unless it stays joined to the vine, you cannot produce fruit unless you stay joined to me. I am the vine, and you are the branches. If you stay joined to me, and I stay joined to you, then you will produce lots of fruit. But you cannot do anything without me. If you don’t stay joined to me, you will be thrown away. You will be like dry branches that are gathered up and burned in a fire.”
Pruning happens in our lives. We need to have the bad, unproductive things cut away. This can be painful but beneficial. It helps us produce better fruit.
Too often we try to be the gardener in our lives. We need to remember that God is the Gardener.
Choice is a superpower that too often gets overlooked and under used. We’ve been given free will, but more often than not, we ignore it. Too much of the time we get sucked into the perspective that this is the life I have, and I just have to deal with it.
One of the things about being human is that God has given us the ability to choose. Some may refer to this as the power of choice, but no matter how you define it, we all have free will.
When you look at what the Bible says about free will, you discover that we have the right and the ability to choose the direction we will go and what we will do. This power to choose is not something that should be considered lightly.
The power to choose is the reality there are consequences for your choices.
While many love the freedom that comes with free will and the power of choice, sometimes people don’t always want to own the ramifications that come with it.
With this reality, we need to consider what the consequences might be when making decisions. Especially when these decisions are regarding eternal life.
We can choose to believe that there is no eternal life. This choice can remove some of the pressure in our daily decisions. But what if we are going to live forever? Is this worth taking the risk of spending eternity in hell?
Looking at things from a worldly perspective removes some of the pressure of the consequences.
Looking at things from a Christ-centered perspective changes that.
In John 14:1-6, Jesus is telling His followers to trust in God and in Him. He is going to prepare a place for us, and we know the way to that place. Then from a worldly view, Thomas asks, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Old Thomas sure needed a lot of proof. But don’t we all?
Then Jesus goes on to say,
“I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
He didn’t say, “I am a way, a truth and a life. You can make it to God and eternity in Heaven in a whole bunch of different ways. Just pick one that works for you.”
There is no other way, no other truth, no other life.
“Truth is truth. If a thousand people believe something foolish, it is still foolish! Truth is never dependent upon consensus of opinion. I have found that is better to be alone and acting upon the truth in my heart than to follow a gaggle of silly geese doomed to mediocrity.”
I like how Andy makes this point in his book.
Things can be true and still not be “THE TRUTH”.
We encounter things every day that may be true, but not the TRUTH. When it comes to life we can choose what we believe and how we will live. These choices will have consequences.
For me … I’m going to believe that Jesus is THE ONLY WAY, THE ONLY TRUTH AND THE ONLY LIFE.
Jesus makes this statement to Martha as they are talking about her brother, Lazarus, who died four days earlier. Jesus asks her if she believes her brother will rise from the dead. She says she knows that he will, in the resurrection on the last day. (John 11:23-24) The Jews believed there would be a resurrection on the last day, but most did not realize that Jesus was the key to this.
Martha was upset that Jesus hadn’t been there sooner to prevent her brother from dying. She wanted Lazarus back now. She didn’t want to wait.
They went to Lazarus’s tomb and Jesus told them to remove the stone. Martha protested. She said,
“Lord, the smell will be awful! He’s been dead four days.”
Jesus replied, “Didn’t I tell you that if you believe, you will see God’s glory?” So they removed the stone. Jesus looked up and said, “Father, thank you for hearing me.I know you always hear me. I say this for the benefit of the crowd standing here so that they will believe that you sent me.” Having said this, Jesus shouted with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” (John 11:39-43)
When Jesus was resurrected He was in His heavenly body. This was not so for the other people that Jesus raised from the dead. They all had to die again. Having to go through the struggles and pain of life a second time doesn’t sound like much fun.
However, there’s another side to this.
I think getting a second chance would make them appreciate life more.
I’m basing this on my own personal experience when I got a second chance. Back in 2012, I fell when a scaffold plank broke. I was unconscious in the hospital for three days with a severe concussion. This may not be the same thing that Lazarus experienced, but I remember nothing from those three days.
I can tell you that this second chance changed my outlook and gave me a new appreciation of life.
If we gave our spiritual lives as much attention as we do our physical lives, the world would be a different place. Just like Martha asked Jesus to raise Lazarus and He did. He will do the same for us.
God gives us free will to choose to be raised. It’s up to us what we do with that choice.
We all start out spiritually dead. We stink in our worldly sins.
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