Entitled?

For the LORD of armies says this: “After glory He has sent me against the nations that plunder you, for the one who touches you, touches the apple of His eye.  Zechariah 2:8

In my prayer journal, I have written, "Where have I embraced an entitled attitude?" I think it's a fair question, for me and for you as well.

His Word is full of declarations of His love for us, of His pledge to be with us, of His neverending faithfulness, and infinite watchfulness over our lives. Zechariah 2:8 is merely one of them. However, with all those promises put before us, there is a very subtle danger; we can be seduced into believing that we are not only entitled to His fulfilling all those promises, but that we should be exempt from any real hardship along the way. Or, if there has been hardship, we feel He is obligated to make it up to us at some point, to compensate us for our pain. It's a dangerous snare, and many, including myself, have fallen into it. When it happens, we are often very slow to realize that it has.

In my writings, I've chronicled a good deal of the suffering and pain I've walked through with Him. Divorce, loss of my ministry, a great unknown laid out before me. In His goodness, faithfulness, and mercy, He restored both my life and my ministry. In His doing that, an attitude of entitlement entered in that I didn't even recognize at the time. That's how subtle and deceiving that spirit can be.

When I went to Northern Virginia to plant a church, I was committed to that work and willing to do whatever I must for it to succeed. I worked, prayed, and believed. But in the midst of that, there was something else going on as well. Underneath was this lurking sense that He "owed" me success. I had walked through a great deal of pain and suffered as a result of my staying faithful to Him in it. I had a sense that not only would He reward my faithfulness, but that He was bound to do so. I was entitled to it. I had forgotten Jesus' words about servants that should not expect special favor for their being obedient to the master. They were doing what a servant was expected to do. I'd lost sight of that. I was wrong to expect special favor for my obedience to Him. It was what He expected of me no matter how dark the way I walked might become. I was not entitled to anything, but through His grace, He offered me everything. There's a difference, and we need to know and learn that. Entitlement is rooted in pride. There's no real humility on our part. And we place no real value on all that He gives because, well because He owes us.

I thought I'd experienced everything in those years of darkness, but in His love, He showed how much more I had to learn. There was still so much purification that was needed in my heart and life. It took Him time. It always does with stubborn folk like me, and like you too. I did come to the place of realizing that whatever sacrifices I might make, were sacrifices He expected as I committed to entering into "the fellowship of His suffering." I wasn't entitled to anything because of it. I promised to follow Him, and He promised that my reward would be great, but I learned that the reward would be so much greater than the earthly desires I had limited it to. 

The Father has been better to me than I could have ever believed. He has blessed me beyond any desire I ever had, but I have learned the infinite value of His grace that He so freely bestows but that He never owes me. He has given us everything in His Son, Jesus Christ. We were never entitled to Him and we never will be. The only way we will ever learn that is by way of the cross. His way.......Are you feeling entitled today in some area of your journey? If so, you need to go anew to His cross....and yours as well.

Blessings,
Pastor O

 

MASH Units

Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.  Matthew 11:28

Matthew 11:28 is a much quoted Scripture is the church. I've a question though. When we quote it, preach it, and send out the invite, does "all" really mean all to us? Do we really welcome all who are weary and carry heavy burdens? If we do, we need to be prepared for what that will mean: a bloody mess. Is your church fellowship prepared for that? Are you?

When I went to Northern Virginia in 1992 to plant a church, I thought "all" meant all. The work He called me to experienced steady and impressive growth in its first few years. I was beyond happy. We were attracting young families. Nice families. They had giftings and they enjoyed the fellowship they found there. I envisioned a church filled with such people. A church that could offer a wide range of ministries to these kinds of families and people. Yes, broken people were welcome and we did seek to minister to them with love. It shames me to say it now, but these were not the folks I wanted to build upon. I wanted to attract the kinds of folks that could help me get to where I wanted to be. All didn't really mean all. God had other ideas, and He wasn't shy about showing me that He did. 

Northern Virginia is a highly transient place. People move in and out freely and constantly. That started to happen in our fellowship. People began moving to other areas of the country, but the same kinds of people were no longer moving in. I was crushed, and it was the Father who was doing the crushing. He was in the process of making Matthew 11:28 my reality, not just my ideal.

We continued to reach people, but they were not the kind of people who could "help me." At least not in the way I thought I needed help. They were wounded, broken, bloody.......and very hard at times to deal with. Some of our people became frustrated with that and left. Others were frustrated and stayed. But a few saw deeper, and one in particular verbalized what I was beginning to see was the Lord's purpose. He told me, "Pastor, we're like a MASH unit." MASH units are Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals. Their purpose is to attend to badly wounded soldiers on the front lines, do the immediate surgery needed to save them, and then pass them onto hospitals that are far better equipped for their needs. In a lot of ways, that's the kind of church we became. We met people who were badly wounded on the front lines of life, brought them in, ministered to them, bandaged the wounds as best we could, and led them to the Master Surgeon for Him to operate on them. It was a bloody business. A messy business. At times a heartbreaking business, but also, when they yielded to His hands, the most rewarding "business" one could be a part of. We never became the kind of church I had once envisioned. We never got to the place of offering the best kinds of ministries that so many are seeking, but I think we fulfilled our calling, or at least did our best to fulfill it. In the end, He'll have to be the judge.

I know that not every church is called to be what we were, but I think every church can be to some degree what we were. If not a MASH unit, certainly an ER that knows how to deal with trauma. Churches that really do invite all, including the ones who have nothing to offer that's tangible except themselves. Such ministry will not win the applause of the masses, but I do believe it deeply blesses the heart of the Father. It surely is a life that manifests the life of Christ to all, and seeks all......even those who are the most bloody and beaten.

If your church is a MASH unit rather than a showcase, take heart. The Kingdom desperately needs you, as much, and perhaps more than the showcase fellowship. Both are needed, both are loved by the Father. Celebrate where you are, and celebrate the ministry He's called you to. I never wanted mine, but now, from the perspective of my elder years, I would not trade what I learned there for anything.....and I would not trade what I experienced in Him for anything as well.

Blessings,

Pastor O 

Sermons

Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season  2 Timothy 4:2....."We just never stop talking to ourselves. We never stop preaching some kind of gospel to ourselves.....Today, what kind of gospel will you preach to you, and what effect will it have on how you live?" Paul Tripp

There is a growing emphasis in the church for pastors to "preach the Word," and I join wholeheartedly with them. I want preachers of fire and anointing to be filling the pulpits of His church. I'm hoping you do as well. Yet, I'm greatly intrigued by what Paul Tripp has said in the above passage. No one preaches more to us than we do ourselves. Just what is it that we're "preaching?" Are our thoughts towards ourselves in line with the Word of God? Do they fall in line with what it is we say we believe?

12 men were sent into the new land promised to the Israelites by God. They saw wonders. They saw a beautiful and rich land. Truly a promised land. They also saw great obstacles to possessing it. Walled cities. Warriors of huge stature. Trained armies and a hostile population. Two of them, Joshua and Caleb, didn't see that. They saw the promises of their God. They saw themselves carrying and living out those promises. The ten others, whose names we don't know, saw the overwhelming hopelessness of what they'd face, and they saw how insignificant they were in the face of it all. The thoughts of Joshua and Caleb "preached" to them the faithfulness of their God and all of His promises. The ten had thoughts that "preached" to them the utter futility of trying to go into the land. Joshua and Caleb were grounded in His truth. The ten in the lies of the enemy and the fear he put upon them in it. For those of us who call ourselves His, we fall into not just the two groups shown here, but into a third. One that I think the majority of us end up walking in. The one that bounces back and forth between them.

That the true spiritual battlefield is our mind is nothing new. We've heard that many times over, but we keep getting overcome by the enemy there time and again. The Holy Spirit seeks to lead us ever deeper into His Life, His Truth, and the knowledge of who He is. Our enemy, Satan, keeps showing us "pictures" of why none of it can be true for us. We believe in victory in Christ, but not for ourselves. We believe that He does have plans to prosper us, but "us" doesn't really include us. We do believe He provides for His people, but somehow we doubt that He'll really do so for us. The enemy provides a false gospel by way of his fiery darts aimed at our minds, and we too often accept it and preach that false gospel, which is based on lies, fear, and self-loathing, to ourselves each day. So we stay on the other side of the realization of His promises, held in captivity because we struggle to believe we can really be free, can really have victory.

In essence, we preach a "sermon" to ourselves throughout the day and days. What's the effect of our preaching? Do we speak chaos or peace? Defeat or victory? Despair or hope? Does our message cause us to take heart or take flight? What's the "sermon series" that you'll be presenting to yourself this week? Where will it lead you? Into His fullness or into the wilderness? We choose the message. What will the message be?

Blessings,

Pastor O 

Hard Company

 A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.  Proverbs 18:24

The above Scripture is one that I have always loved. I love the reality that Jesus is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. A friend who will not leave us or forsake us. A friend and companion that goes before us, comes behind us, and walks beside us. A friend who surrounds us, protects us, and provides for us. A friend like no earthly friend could ever be. Yet I had a thought today. A thought I have rarely had or wanted to entertain. I was reminded by the Spirit that in the midst of all the truth I list here is one other; while Jesus has been such a friend and companion, and the best "company" I could ever hope to have, what hard company I must be for Him sometimes. Many times. And so have you.

I know that I weary Him at times. My stubborn pride, my faulty attitudes, my self-righteousness, my sense of entitlement. There are people whose company we are not anxious for. Their presence can grate on our nerves and spirit. We may love and wish the best for them, but we'd like to do so from a distance. This is human. We don't want to see any ill come to them, and we do want the best for them. But they're "hard company" for us. We know that, but somehow, we never seem to think we might be the same for Him.

I've been reading John Bevere's book, "The Awe Of God," and he really speaks to how we have lost the awareness of living with a sense of fear and trembling before Him, and with that loss, the dying off of holy reverence for Him and a holy fear of Him. I think it's caused us to know that He is always with us, but we are not much concerned with how we "affect" Him and whether the things we say, do, and think please Him or not. We think little about what aggravating and wearying fellow travelers with Christ that we so often are. I was confronted with that reality this morning. I had to wonder how He puts up with me sometimes. How He puts up with you. How He puts up with any of us.

We're imperfect people living in a fallen world. The Father knows this. Christ knows this. He realizes that perfect living is not possible this side of eternity, but a godly and pleasing life before Him is. I think that a life lived with its priority being our pleasing of Him has greatly diminished in importance in the church. We're much more interested in Him pleasing us than it being the other way around. We sometimes more resemble the complaining, bickering, drag them along Israelites on the way to the Promised Land. We can be very hard company for Him and I think we need to be confronted on that.

May it be that living a life that pleases Him does become central to our walk. May we once again or perhaps at last walk in a way that pleases and blesses Him. A walk rooted and motivated by a holy fear of the Lord. May we be a joy for Him to be with and not a trial. May we live in a such a way that He rejoices to call us "friend." May we start to do so right now.

Blessings,
Pastor O

Grieved

 David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, “As surely as the LORD lives, the man who did this must die!

Nathan then said to David, "You are the man!" 2 Samuel 12:5,7......"You cannot confess what you haven't grieved." Paul Tripp

King David, who the Bible says was a man "after God's heart," had deeply sinned. He had seduced the wife of another man and impregnated her. Seeking to cover it up, he got the husband drunk in order that he might go and sleep with his wife so that he might be seen as the father. When he failed to succeed in this, he ordered the husband, Uriah the Hittite, to be put in the front line of battle, and then have the surrounding troops move away from him so that he might be killed in the fighting. In effect, he murdered him. Eventually, he took the wife, Bathsheba into his palace and made her his wife. He went on as if nothing had happened. Sin does that. It hardens us to our own wrongdoing. It certainly hardened the heart of King David.

God then instructed the prophet Nathan to go to David and tell him a story of a man who had abused and cheated another person. David was enraged and ordered the man punished, to which Nathan then proclaimed to him, "you are that man." With that, the heart of David melted. He saw his sin. He saw what its effect had been, upon the Father, upon Uriah, Bathsheba, and upon himself. He was overwhelmed by grief and remorse over what he'd done. 

Why do I write this? I do so because I think we have softened the idea of sin, its consequences, and our personal responsibility in it. We invite people to Jesus. to come to His salvation, but salvation from what? The captivity of sin? Yes, but of their captivity to their own sin? How many eagerly come to Him for what He may offer, but have no real sense of need, of personal cleansing from both the sin they were born into and the sins they have committed? How many really grieve over what the cost of their sin has been to others, to themselves, and to the God who created them and the Savior who died for them? How many have given their hearts to Him, but are unaware that those hearts are more stone than tender flesh. Heart that bear no remorse or grief for the price they have paid, and others have paid because of sin?

Paul Tripp says you can't confess what you haven't grieved. He doesn't mean that we beat ourselves up or that we live in condemnation over what we've done and how we've lived. He does mean that when the Holy Spirit is truly at work in us, at some point, we will realize what our actions, our sins, have done to all involved in our lives and how we have broken the heart of the God who loves us and the Lord Jesus who died for us. True confession and repentance will involve a real grieving over sin and its effects upon us and those we love. Especially the God we say we love.

Tripp has a kind of prayer for those who would truly be cleansed. "Cry for grace to be willing to stop, look, listen, receive, grieve, confess, and turn." Grace that shows us what we've been, but also shows us what we can be in Him. Grace that causes us to grieve what we've been and done, but grace that also offers a transformation into the person He created us to be. Grace that turns our grief into joy. Have you known such grace? Would you know it now? We are that man and we are that woman. The man or woman we have been, perhaps still are, and the man or woman He would make us.

Blessings,
Pastor O

Holy Frustration

 Come near to God and he will come near to you.  James 4:8

I greatly enjoy the work of devotional writer Chris Tiegreen. In one of his works, he has two prayers in the same devotional entry for the day. He prays, "Please increase my capacity to experience You." A bit further on he prays, "Father, use any frustration in my life to draw me closer to You." I think most of us would readily pray the first prayer, but not very willingly the second. Yet, the truth of the matter is that drawing near to Him is never an easy way.

God is an infinitely holy God and we are a totally fallen race. We cannot come near Him because our sin separates us. This is why we so desperately needed the atoning work of Jesus Christ on the cross. His death and resurrection opened the door for us to come to Him through faith in the Person and work of Christ. The door is open, He desires with all His heart that we do come to Him, but each of us who have believed upon Him come with our own types of "baggage." Things in our heart, our mind, and our spirit that still erect a barrier between us.The Father is determined that our baggage and the barriers it creates be removed. This is a process, and the process can be difficult and painful. He uses many means to do this, and our personal frustrations can be His favorite way.

No one enjoys frustration and especially, we who call ourselves His likely hate it the most. Yet His record of dealing with His people, both corporately and individually is one of allowing great amounts of it into our experience. Israel was constantly frustrated along the way of entering into their Promised Land. They didn't like the many challenges God led them to and through. They often thought they had a better way, and freely let the Lord know it. They had been set free from the slavery in Egypt, but they still lived with the mindset of slaves and that mindset kept them far from the heart of the Father. He used all their frustrations and accompanying attitudes to do a work of purification upon them as a people. They could never come near to Him without it. Neither can we.

Think upon your own experiences with Him. It is not the easy places in the journey that brought you closer to Him. It was the place and places where you had to face your fear, your doubt, your sin, and admit your deep need for Him. It was in those places where you were desperate for Him to appear, to "show up," and make a way for you. In those times of frustration where you seemed thwarted and hindered on every side, it was then that you came to the end of your resources, the end of yourself,  and stepped into His and into Him. He used your frustrations to lead you into a deeper faith, a deeper place in Him.....if you allowed Him to. Have you allowed Him to?

Most of us do want to come near to Him. Most also want to hold on to our baggage. Jesus traveled light in His earthly ministry, He still does. He drew His disciples close to Himself as He did. He still does that too. They experienced a great deal of frustration along the way because they misunderstood so much of what He was doing, but they pressed on and into Him. They came near because in their hearts, they desired the same result that Tiegreen does, intimacy with Him. Don't waste your frustrations and problems. They're part of the pathway to His heart. Press on through them and ever deeper into Him.

Blessings,
Pastor O

Another Jesus

"He questioned His disciples, saying to them, 'Who do people say that I am?'....."Who do you say that I am?'....Peter answered and said to Him, 'You are the Christ (The Messiah.)' " Mark 8:27,29

Jesus asked a penetrating question of His followers. He did so because there were a great many opinions among the people as to who He might be. This was shown in the response of disciples to the question. They said that some believed Him to be John the Baptist or the prophet Elijah, or one of the other Old Testament prophets come back to life. It was Peter who discerned who He truly was, the Christ, the promised Messiah who came to save and deliver. Jesus believed it was imperative His disciples knew the truth of who He was. He still does, and our need in these days to know His reality is desperate.

 A recent survey said that only 44% of those who identify as born-again believers in Christ believed that He lived a sinless life. This is mind-boggling. A central doctrine of the Christian faith is that Christ, who was fully God and fully man, came as a sacrifice for our sin. All sacrifices offered to the Father had to be without blemish. Perfect. Christ was and is sinless perfection and only He was able to take the sin of the world upon Himself and take upon Himself the wrath of God against all sin. If Christ was not sinless, He was an imperfect sacrifice. We who believe in Him are still lost in our sin. How could almost half the professing church come to believe such a heresy?

We have a huge and growing problem in the church. Too many don't really know who Jesus is, and as a result, don't really know what He accomplished on the cross and their own desperate need for His cleansing blood.There is a culprit here, and the culprit is the church itself. We have been doing and continue to do, a poor job of proclaiming His whole Word. In short, we are not making disciples. We ask people to believe in a Christ we tell them they need, but go into little depth as to His Person, His Work, and a plethora of other Scriptural truths. We offer Jesus as a kind of a welcome addition to our lives, but just an addition, not as Lord and Savior. This sets us up to believe what is often just half truths or outright falsehoods. Erwin McManus said that Christ is being lost in the church that bears His name. The result is the presenting of a Jesus Christ that bears little, if any resemblance to the Christ of the Bible. Many are being led into error and outright shipwreck in their faith lives. Many are embracing another Jesus. One that Peter, the rest of the disciples, and the early church would neither have recognized or received.

I once had a very difficult time with a lady in my church who had befriended a couple from a cult. This couple testified to being followers of Christ and told her they'd believed on Him. For her, their saying they believed in Him was enough. It was a painstaking process for her to accept just what it was they believed about Him, and how unscriptural their beliefs were. This was one who'd grown up in the church, professed to follow Him wholly, but at root, didn't really know just who He was, and what was involved in actually coming to Him in saving faith. I fear that she has a lot of company.

Who do you say He is? Is He the Messiah and Savior who appears in some way through every book of the Bible, a Savior at whose name every knee will bow, or, is He a Jesus fashioned in a more acceptable way to our flesh? A Jesus we can receive on our terms, who brings us good things, but leaves our fallen nature alone. A Jesus who changes everything around us to our desire, but changes nothing within our hearts. Author John Eldredge said he wanted Jesus, the real Jesus. Do you, or do you look for another Jesus. One who changes our outward environment to our liking, but leaves the corrupted environment of our heart alone.

Blessings,

Pastor O 

Every Word

 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

Matthew 4:4...."It takes all of the Word of God to make it the Word of God." A.W. Tozer

I've never had a problem with people who don't believe the Bible. They're unbelievers, and I was once one myself. Then He captured my heart, and my heart, eyes, and mind were made open to receive Him. Unbelievers are people who may one day become believers, and it's the job of those who are His to live a life witness and testimony to the truth of His Words before them, love them, pray for them, and trust in His grace to pursue them. There have always been and always will be those who refuse to believe. It's tragic, but their refusal to believe doesn't in the least take away from the reality of the Truth of His Word.

I do however, have great problems with those who profess to be His followers yet are now questioning just what within His Word is actual truth and what is not. There has always been a segment of the professing church from which the element spoke, but they were not large. That is changing. The full authority and truth of Scripture is not only being questioned today, it is under full frontal attack. The result is a growing division and yes, confusion within the Body and confusion is never of the Holy Spirit. It is of the spirit of the enemy. 

A great part of the problem is that as the culture changes, so does the way many look at His Word. They believe that it and our understanding of it must change as well. This despite the fact that His Word says that He does not change and the Words He speaks do not change either. Human rational thinking and logic are being applied in an attempt to explain and understand what is at root, supernatural and can only begin to be understood by the leading of His Holy Spirit. A Holy Spirit who was the One guiding and inspiring those who "wrote" the words found in Scripture. Paul said all Scripture is "God breathed." Now, we have those who believe they can decide which parts actually are, and which are not. How strange though that the Scriptures they are saying are not, are the same ones the culture seeks to dismiss as well.

This is a subject far greater than I can even begin to explore in a writing such as this. So, I'll just end by pointing to the quote from Tozer, found above. "It takes all the Word of God to make it the Word of God." God, through His Holy Spirit, has breathed His Word into what comprises the 66 books of the Bible over the course of four millenium. Both Old and New Testaments contain His fullness of truth. He said in Isaiah that this world would pass away, but that His words "would never pass away." We forget that to our great harm and destruction. In the end, what men say about it all matters not at all. Scripture says all things "hold together in Christ." Christ is the Living Word. I will live my life of faith on that foundation. How about you?

Blessings,
Pastor O

The Box

 Your eyes will see the king in all his splendor, and you will see a land that stretches into the distance.  Isaiah 33:17...."God's words are always calling us out of our boxes and deeper and further into His heart and Kingdom. Only those who are willing to be stretched can hear them." Chris Tiegreen

My father was fond of saying of someone that, "they can't see past the end of their nose."  I don't know. Maybe he was talking about me? :-) In truth, he could have been talking of most of us, at least as concerns the things of the Spirit and the Kingdom.

Tiegreen speaks of the "boxes" that we tend to live in and confine God to. We're not able to imagine or think that a life outside of them is really possible. We see all that is within the box, but little or nothing of what lies beyond. And what we are seeing is viewed from the perspective of the five senses. The Father wants to take us beyond that. Far beyond that. He wants to take us to the "land of far distances." He wants us to see things, experience things with an eternal perspective always in mind. To see beyond our present circumstances and the confines of the here and now. He wants us to see past the ends of our spiritual noses. There's a condition though. We have to be willing to be stretched, and there can be pain in the stretching. Our comfort zone will be violated. So will our sense of being in control. But what we "see" in that distant land will be worth it all.

The land that He seeks to bring us into is the land that is His heart and His life. In Him are infinite depths. We will never exhaust the riches found in Him, and He is eager that we should never cease to explore and have those depths as our own.He is our inheritance in Christ, and He desires that our inheritance be in full, but it never will be to those who live in their boxes. Will it be, has it been for you and me?

The Father is constantly seeking to give us glimpses of all that He has for us. We won't fully see it all until we enter fully into eternity, but we can begin to see and have them right now through our faith and relationship with Christ. He calls us ever onward, ever upward, and ever deeper into Himself. We're not to "make camp" anywhere along the way. We keep pressing on. And in the going, we'll be stretched. Stretched beyond what we thought were the limits of our faith. Stretched beyond where we thought we could ever go in His Kingdom. And no matter where the last stretching has taken us, He has another one just ahead. And we press on.

Are you living for the land of far distances, or for a life in a box? Why would you choose to live in a box?

Blessings,
Pastor O

Received?

 “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” he asked them. “No,” they replied, “we haven’t even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”  Acts 19:2....."Holy Spirit, I desperately need Your touch, Your voice, Your power. Fill me." Chris Tiegreen

Have you ever been asked the above question? If you have, how do you answer? If you haven't, then I have another; do you really understand what it is to receive and live in the fullness of the Holy Spirit?

The Person of the Holy Spirit has been misunderstood, ignored, forgotten, feared, and debated at great length by every segment of the professing church. Francis Chan wrote a book a few years back entitled, "Forgotten God," which dealt with the greatly diminished role of the Spirit has become in His church....and the great damage suffered by His church as a result.

Paul had come upon a group of believers in the city of Ephesus. This is key. They were believers. They had believed in Christ for salvation. He was present in their hearts and lives. Still, Paul asked them if they had received the fullness of His Holy Spirit since they had come to Christ. Their reply was that they didn't even know of the Spirit. I think their reply shows the state of much of the present day church in the west. We have believed in Jesus, but we walk and live in the power of our own strength and not His. We have never received, by faith, the fullness of His Spirit. His Spirit may be present in our lives, but not in His fullness, not in His power. And our lives reflect it by our up and down spiritual lives and the presence of so much weakness and defeat in our lives. The men, who Paul called disciples of Christ, had received the water baptism of the new life in Christ, but had never experienced the baptism of His Holy Spirit. In essence, what happened to the 120 in the Upper Room at Pentecost and to Paul after his experience on the Damascus Road, had never happened with them. They had not even heard of the Spirit. I expect that many if not all of us have, but are we, are you, living as if you haven't? Have you received and are you living in the fullness of His Holy Spirit since you first believed.....or not? What is the true vitality of your spiritual life?

In the walk of faith, there will come a time when we realize that try as we may, we just can't seem to live up to the call of Christ upon us to live a holy life. We want to and we try to, but we keep falling short. We're defeated more than we're victorious. What is happening is that the Father is showing us our need for the fullness of His Spirit to permeate every area of our heart and life. To be baptized in the fullness of His Holy Spirit. We know our need, and we seek His fullness in response to it. It is a desire that grows ever more powerful, and we cannot leave off until He responds by pouring out His Spirit upon and into us. We come to the place of praying a prayer like the one Tiegreen breathes in the above quote. We want desperately to be filled with His life and power, hearing His voice, and walking in His victory. We don't just want it, we must have Him. All of Him in all of His life. Are you at that place?

Today's writing barely scratches the surface of all the ways of His Spirit. I simply encourage you to entertain and dwell upon the question of whether you have received His Holy Spirit in power and are you walking in and living out the power of Pentecost? May you seek, desperately, for both the answer and His fullness. He will be faithful to answer and to pour out upon you as you do. He has been so since Pentecost. He will be so now.

Blessings,
Pastor O

Amazing Grace

 Amazing grace! How sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.    John Newton....."....but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, that, as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign in righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."   Romans 5:20-21

John Newton was a man of the lowest character. He reveled in his evil ways and amused himself by seeking to come up with new and greater ways to blaspheme the name of God. He was heavily involved in the slave trade and very much enjoyed the life. Though raised by a mother of deep faith, he completely abandoned all pretense of following Christ. Then, through a series of crisis moments in his life, culminating in the near loss of his life in a heavy storm at sea, he came before the Lord, knowing the dirt of his sin and the depth of his need. Eventually, as the Lord worked in his heart, he saw the brutality of the slave trade and left it. He became heavily influenced by the teachings of John and Charles Wesley, and eventually became an Anglican minister and outspoken opponent of slavery. All of the working of God through His love, mercy, and grace as shown through Christ, led to Newton's writing of the most famous of all hymns, "Amazing Grace." Newton knew the depths of his personal sin, and he also knew the limitless depths of God's grace in forgiving his sin. Amazing grace indeed. So, how is it that most of us have little idea of just how amazing His grace is? How can we take it so for granted?

Most believers can mouth a definition of grace, that it's His unmerited kindness, goodness, and mercy towards us, but so few of us ever seem to realize how desperate our need of His grace is. We are pursued by His grace, saved by His grace, and kept by His grace. He is not just a God of grace, He is grace Himself. John Newton could look at his life and recognize how evil and lost he was. Grace opened his eyes to see that. Has it ever opened ours.....yours and mine? 

We've managed to convince ourselves that we're really not all that bad. Certainly not when we compare ourselves to the likes of Hitler, Stalen, Pol Pot, and many other infamous figures in history. We know they were lost, but we don't seem to believe that we're just as lost as them. Sin is sin, and all of us are under its death sentence. Only His grace, shown through His only Son's death on a cross and resurrection can set us free from its penalty. Too few of us realize why we need His salvation and how desperate our situation is without Him. We've so cheapened His grace that we've reduced it to a nodding of our heads in response to an invitation, coming to a Jesus we have no real understanding of and why we need Him. That's it's a matter of life and death....ours.

"Grace makes the King of kings your Father and His Savior Son your brother. Now that really is beyond amazing. Pray for eyes to see it and a heart to embrace it, and then, let your soul soar."  Paul Tripp.... Someone wrote a book titled, "What's So Amazing About Grace?" Can you answer that? If not, you need to pray the very prayer that Tripp invited you to. Then, may your soul soar.

Blessings,
Pastor O