The Exchange

 One of the most powerful words ever spoken by Jesus is found in the simple word, "Come." We know the word in English to mean a movement towards something or someone. In the Aramaic/Greek, which was the language of the Jews of Christ's time, the meaning of the word for come meant, "transact." That meaning speaks to me on many levels. The meaning of the word transact, or more properly, transaction, is "an interaction or exchange between people." This makes what takes place when a person truly comes to Jesus Christ so clear and beautiful. We experience an interaction and an exchange.

Think about that for a moment. When we come to Him in faith, there is a definite interaction between He and us. We experience Him and He covers us. It's a mystical, spiritual, and beautiful interaction. By faith, we may also have a transaction take place. Though we have nothing to offer in ourselves, we do have something, many things, that He desires from us. He seeks that there be an exchange between us.

He invites us to exchange our mourning for dancing, our ashes for His beauty. He calls us to give Him our cares, fears, lost hopes, and emptiness, and in exchange, He gives us His peace, courage, confidence, hope, and fulfillment. He asks that we give Him our darkness in exchange for His Light, our death for His Life. Our guilt for His forgiveness. Our despair for His joy. Our life for His Life and our will for His will. In essence, He asks us to give Him everything that has kept us from Him. Everything in our lives that is killing us by inches. 

I think that perhaps the most beautiful picture I can envision in this exchange is this; He invites us to exchange the filthy rags of our own righteousness for the white raiment of His holiness and purity. He also invites us to exchange the orphan status that is the lot of all who are without Him for the high favor and joy of becoming sons and daughters of the King. 

This transaction, this exchange that He invites us to and into gains us all the riches to be found in Christ and His Kingdom. Infinite riches, and it costs us nothing yet everything. It costs us the laying down of our lives so that we might live in the fullness of His. There is no currency but the currency of faith and surrender. 

Have you ever made this transaction? Have you ever experienced this exchange? If not, you can. Right now. He invites you to come, and exchange that which is crushing you for that which lifts you up. Let go of the weight that pulls you deeper and deeper into the darkness and lay hold of His Life that lifts you to heights you never dreamed of. Come. Come to Him now.

Blessings,
Pastor O 

Look And Live

 "Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God." Hebrews 12:2...."Looking at the wound of sin will never save anyone. What you must do is look at the remedy." Dwight L. Moody

It's so easy to get caught up in looking not only at the effects of sin upon the human race, but upon the one who is the author of sin, Satan himself. What we look at always grows greater in our sight, Conversely, what we're not looking at always grows smaller. I think this is why so many, believer and unbeliever alike, stumble at believing that the promise of victory, abundance, and fullness of life in Christ. We keep looking at the wound of sin, and the sight of the wound only grows bigger. 

A question for each of us this day is, just how often do we look, really look, to Jesus in the midst of our trials, challenges, and deepest needs? How much time do we spend looking at them, and in conjunction at ourselves and our ability to overcome them? I think the second question and its answer gives us the reason we struggle so mightily with our addictions, compulsions, attitudes, unforgiveness, and the chronic sinful behaviors in our life. It's not that we wish to stay in this place, it's just that we've been so long in looking at the "wound" and its power over us that our only response ends up being discouragement, leading to despair, leading to hopelessness. We've tried so hard, yet fallen on our face time and again. We feel trapped. We are trapped. We need a change of scenery, but it's a change that doesn't involve a physical move on our part. It means looking in a new direction. A direction that fills the eyes of our heart with Him, Jesus Christ.

Where Jesus is, the power of sin is broken. Where sin is, wounds of every kind are healed. Where Jesus is, darkness is replaced by Light. Death is replaced by Life. His Light and His Life, but we will only know and experience that when we take our eyes off the wound and fix our eyes on Christ, the Author and Finisher of our faith.

Christ conquered sin in all of its forms. In Him, we conquer it as well. On this side of eternity, the enemy will never cease his attacks upon the people of God. He will seek through these attacks to keep our eyes focused on him and what he's doing. He knows that the moment we look to Jesus, the reality of his defeat becomes clear to us and he's put to flight. Scripture tells us to "resist the devil and he will flee from you." Our resistance will always fail when we look to our own abilities. When we look to His infinite power, we are empowered as overcomers. We stand in and with Him....and Satan flees.

There's a lyric in an old hymn that goes, "Look and live, my brother, live! Look to Jesus now and live!"

Look and live my brethren. Look to Jesus.....NOW....and LIVE!

Blessings,
Pastor O

Unworthy

"His son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy of being called your son.' " Luke 15:21

We live in a culture built upon a sense of entitlement. People feel that they have a right to, are entitled to, just about anything that they want. It has poisoned the culture, and worse, it has found its way into the heart of the church. The results have been devastating.

One of the most damaging areas we see this is in our relationship with Him. We invite people to enter into a relationship with Him, but we so often seem to make the invitation about a transaction. We exchange a life that is not good for one that He has promised to make good. We offer Jesus Christ as a kind of "cure all" for whatever it is that we want to be rid of. In short, Jesus Christ is a very good deal for us.

Lost in all this is a sense of the reason for our need for Jesus Christ and the salvation He offers. We come to Him without a sense of our sin and that we are hopelessly lost and powerless to do anything about it. We come to Him without any real sense of what it cost both the Father and Christ Himself to come to us, to live among us, and then die for us upon a cross of shame. Since we have no real recognition of the cost to Him, we not only devalue His cosmic sacrifice, we devalue what it is He offers. We don't realize how our sin created an unbridgeable gap between the Father and ourselves. We also have little understanding of His holiness and majesty and how unclean we are before Him, as well as our having no means to make ourselves clean. What we end up with is how worthy He is of all the honor and glory to be given Him and how unworthy we are to be in His presence. Our churches are filled with people who fit this description. Are we among them?

Luke 15 contains the story of the Prodigal Son, the son who demanded his inheritance from his father, went and lost it all through selfish and sin-filled living, and then, in poverty, found himself feeding pigs and eating the food that they ate. Scripture tells us that in the pig pen, he came to the end of himself, realized his state and his need, and decided to return to his father in his brokenness. He'd left in the fullness of his pride, but returned in fullness of humility. He knew he was an unworthy son.

Scripture tells us that his father had been watching for him, saw him coming from a long way off, and ran to meet him. The  son began to tell him how unworthy he was, but all the father could do was take him into his arms in love. This is the picture of God's love for us. It wasn't until the son realized how unworthy he was of his father's love that he could really experience the wonder and beauty of that love. It is the same for us. None of us is worthy of His love and if we continue to be unaware of that, we'll never know or experience the fullness of His love. Grace will mean little or nothing, as will His salvation, His sacrifice, and His mercy.

May we, you and I, have a fresh sense of how glorious and wondrous is His love and mercy, and how truly unworthy we are of it. Only then can we truly enter into a worship that brings Him honor and glory. May we recognize and honor Him in all of His splendor. May we not need to end up in a pig pen for that to happen.

Blessings,

Pastor O 

Throne Room

 "Then as I looked, I saw a door standing open in heaven, and the same voice....spoke to me with the sound of a mighty trumpet blast. The voice said, 'Come up here, and I will show you what must happen after these things.....From the throne came flashes of lightning, rumblings and peals of thunder." Revelation 4:1,5...

"You can't experience the peace and joy of His throne room unless you pass through the thunder and clouds and lightning that surround it." Chris Tiegreen

The Bible says so much about what it is to experience His Presence. Certainly, it is an awesome experience, so wonderful that those who experienced only a portion of His Presence could do nothing but fall on their faces before Him. Scripture says that it is an awful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God. Awful in the sense of how terrifying it is for our flesh. All these are true, but for those who were brought into His presence, such as John in the Book of Revelation, there is also the following sense of deep peace and well-being. Christ is Perfect love, Perfect peace, and Perfect joy. He wants us to experience and know this, but so few of us ever really do. There's a reason.

Life on this side of eternity is filled with trauma. Brokenness is the order of the day in this fallen world. We experience death, loss, and times of devastation. In all of it we wonder where He is? We want His Presence and comfort, but He seems so far away. It's at this place where the choices must be made. Choices as to whether we will believe His promises of peace and comfort or not. Will we choose the truth of what He's said against the way things appear to be? This is why the above quote from Tiegreen speaks so loudly. I hope that each of it will hear what he's saying.

We are born with a bent toward trusting in what we can touch, hear, and see. We trust our natural senses. Because of our fall away from Him through the sin of Adam and Eve, we are also born with a bent towards not trusting anyone, especially Him, over ourselves. Only Christ can set us free from this bent, but even in salvation, we can continue to retain some part, often a great part, of this inclination. Our troubles, losses, and disastrous happenings make us want Him, but they so often are what keep us from Him. They are the frightening thunder, clouds, and lightning that keep our eyes from seeing Him....but He's there, in the midst of all of it. But we have to brave the fierce storm surrounding Him to lay hold of Him. Too few of us are willing to do so. We turn back instead of pressing in.

On this side of eternity, we won't lack for times, even many times of thunder, lightning and darkness. What we must know is that He rules over all of it and will always be found in the midst of it. When we're hit with life's crushing blows, what we'll first experience is thunder and lightning. It will be fearsome. There we have the choice; will we look at these, or will we look for the Face of the One who is right there, with us, in the midst of it. Will we brave the fierce storm, press on, and be enveloped by the peace, joy, and beauty of His Presence? We get there by way of the storm.

Perhaps you're in that storm right now. Press on my friend. He rules the heavens. He will not allow the storms to overcome you. Press on....to Him....and the beauty and wonder of His Presence. He calls to you, to us, "Come up....to where I am."

Blessings,
Pastor O

Two Fires

In my prayer journal I have the words, "Living between two fires." I can't remember my exact reason for writing them, but I believe I was thinking about the two fires that Peter found himself at different times in the Gospel of John.

The first instance is found in John 18. Jesus has been arrested and taken before the Jewish religious authorities for trial. All the disciples, including Peter had scattered when Jesus was arrested in the Garden, but as they took Him away, Peter followed Him at a distance. He followed Him into the courtyard where the council was meeting to try Jesus. As he waited, he was cold and saw that some of the guards and other onlookers had built a fire. He joined them there in order to warm himself. We can't let that detail escape us. Peter was warming himself at the fire of the enemies of Jesus Christ. Peter was standing right among the very people who wanted to kill Jesus. Even worse, as he stood there, he was recognized as one who'd been with Jesus. In fear, he denied it....3 times. The last with a curse. After the third time, Jesus was led past Peter and the others in bonds. His eyes met Peter's. What must have passed in the minds of both as their eyes met?

The second fire came about in John 21. Jesus had risen and had appeared to not only the original disciples, but to 500 other people as well. Peter and 6 other disciples decided that they would go fishing. Another detail not to be missed. Jesus had called them from their nets to follow Him. He never meant that they should go back to those nets. Their fishing yielded nothing. Then Jesus appeared on the shore and called to them. At first, they didn't recognize Him, when some of them did, Peter leaped into the water and swam to the shore. When he got to Jesus, he found that the Lord had made a fire and was broiling fish on it. This fire was kindled by Jesus, so unlike the first which was made by men. 

Two fires. Where are we, you and I, living in relation to them? I think in many ways, a large number of us try to live between the two. Not really fully integrated in the fire kindled by the world system that is anti-Christ in spirit, but not fully integrated into the fire that only He can kindle and sustain. We end up trying to live between them....except that we can't. We must choose. Have you chosen? Which fire do you warm yourself at? Which fire sustains your soul?

Peter stood at the first fire because he was afraid to be identified fully with Jesus Christ. How many of us are joining him there in some part of our life? Where do we evade fully identifying and standing with Jesus? Where are we compromising what we say we believe by standing at the fire of the enemy? Jesus looks into our eyes as we do. What does He see? What do we see?

Peter was found at the second fire because He loved His Lord. He had to reach Him. When he got there, Jesus led him into a full and complete commitment and identification with Himself. He would never return to that first fire. He would live out his life, ministry, and calling at the Fire of the King. Will we join Him there?

Two fires. We will be found at one or the other. This day, this moment, at which do you stand?

Blessings,

Pastor O 

Holy Boldness

 "Preach the word of God. Be prepared, whether the time is favorable or not. Patiently correct, rebuke, and encourage your people with good teaching." 2 Timothy 4:2...."A blind world needs us to stand, to fight, and to pray." Chris Tiegreen

On the surface, I'd say most every professing believer, and especially pastor/preachers, agrees with the above Scripture....in theory. I say in theory because the cost of actually living it out can be huge.

Most church folks will say they want a good preacher, one who preaches the word. But do they really? If a preacher is committed to preaching the word then it must be the WHOLE word, and that means preaching words, His words, that can cut, burn, and pierce. Scripture says His word pierces us in our innermost being. To preach His whole word means that there is no topic that's off limits as concerns the state of whatever culture the church finds itself in. To preach His whole word means that someone, perhaps many someone's will be offended. Many of them will be influential, especially financially. Many of them will likely seek to exercise that influence on some level. When that happens, will we still be committed to boldly preach His whole word?

Next, we're exhorted to do so whether "the time is favorable or not." That means that the cost of proclaiming His full truth is not only dangerous and costly within the church, but within the culture as well. In this day, proclaiming what His word says about all the darkness raging and growing everywhere around us can bring great trouble. Many pastors and churches have already been threatened by the government for stances they have taken against blatant evil because the surrounding culture no longer considers it evil. They consider it normal. When there is nothing favorable to proclaiming His truth in the culture, will we still proclaim it?

Next, we are exhorted to do it all with patience and love. Anger is growing in every segment of society, including a large part of the church. The need is desperate for prophetic voices that boldly proclaim truth, confront sin, and expose darkness, but do so in His patient love. That means persisting in it when it appears that no one is listening. Someone once told me that as a preacher, I needed to have a warm heart and a cool head. I still need that. May God raise up a generation who have that trait.

Last, Chris Tiegreen exhorts the church to intercede for this ever darkening and dying world. To stand in the gap for it, to fight for it, and to pray without ceasing for it. Everything is at stake. The soul of a nation and nations, and the souls of billions. May God raise up in this hour, prophets, pastors, teachers, and believers everywhere who will fight for the soul of their nation and its people and for the soul of the church and His people. Jesus asked if when He returned, would He find faith on the earth. May He find us standing, fighting, and praying when He returns. If I should still be here when He does, may He find me doing so as well. With all my heart.

Blessings,
Pastor O 

Prozac Jesus

 Someone asked if, when we "invited" a person to come to Christ, just what and who were we inviting them to? It's a valid question, perhaps more so today than ever.

When I came to Christ, I remember one of the popular invitations was to come and discover the "wonderful plan" He had for my life. That was appealing to me, especially since my life to that point had evidenced no plan whatsoever. More than that, the wonderful plan seemed, at least to me, to be one that was filled with blessings and happiness. They weren't outright lying. His plan is ultimately wonderful, and there is ultimate happiness, but I heard little to nothing about the cross He expected me to take up and carry. I heard little or nothing about the suffering that would come with that cross. I heard much about the "destiny" that He had for me, but I'd no idea that I'd often find myself in places where I'd ask, both silently and out loud, "Is this it? Is this my destiny?"

Writer and pastor Paul Tripp used the term "Prozac Jesus" in one of his writings. Prozac is a drug used to treat depression and anxiety. Its goal is to greatly lessen or even eliminate both. A Prozac Jesus is one that we can bring all the unhappy things that can happen in life to and find full relief from them all. Prozac is meant to give the illusion of wellness. We want much the same from Jesus Christ. We want Him to protect us from all that is bad, wrong, and evil, as well as all their effects. We want our life view to be that of one relaxing in a recliner. He wants us to see life as He did from His cross. We want Him as a remedy for and protection against pain, discomfort, and suffering. Christ calls us to walk through all of that, bearing our cross, and experiencing His resurrection life in the midst of it. He's the Hope of the world and He proclaims that hope through His people. 

The recliner life isn't real. Neither is Prozac Jesus. Both are illusions. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that when Jesus calls a man, "He bids him to come and die." He does call us to death, but it is death to the greedy demands of the self-life so that we might experience the wonder and abundance of the Christ-life. The door to the latter is His cross. We live in a fallen world. Jesus didn't promise us protection from it, but the grace and power to live through it in victory, and to know His abundance through it all. To know and live a life filled with His riches; joy, peace, and beauty out of ashes. Most of all, He fills our lives with Himself, and then shines through our lives as a means of drawing others to Himself through us. He doesn't keep us from trouble, He enables us to overcome life's troubles in the strength of His Life.

In the movie The Matrix, rebel leader Morpheus offer Neo a choice between two pills; a red one that will bring him total awareness of what really is, or a blue one, that will allow him to go back to the illusion of life that the machines, who have enslaved the human race, have trapped them in. Our enemy, Satan, created the Prozac Jesus and every other counterfeit representation of Jesus Christ. This is the Jesus he would have us know. Christ offers Himself as He truly is. Illusion or reality. Life or death. Which have we chosen? Which do we choose now?

Blessings,
Pastor O

Crowding Jesus

 "At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from Him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, 'Who touched My clothes?' 'You see the people crowding against you,' His disciples answered, 'and yet you can ask, 'Who touched Me?' " Mark 5:30-31....."Do we crowd Him or touch Him?" Vance Havner

Mark 5 tells of the story of the woman who had been bleeding for many years. This rendered her unclean according to Jewish law and made her an outcast. The last place she should have been found was in a crowd, and she should especially have not been near a revered teacher like Jesus. Yet she was. So desperate was she for His healing touch that she risked everything, the crowd's anger and possible violence, as well as the possibility, she thought, of Jesus outright rejecting her and sending her away. She would not be denied. She would lay hold of Jesus and receive her healing. She did touch Him and she was healed. We may glory in that, but there is another aspect to the story that we easily miss.

There was a crowd all around Jesus. There was always a crowd around Jesus. Surely in that crowd were countless people with needs. Desperate needs. Yet only one seemed desperate enough to reach out to Him, to lay their hands upon some part of Him. They wanted a real encounter with Him. That was the bleeding woman, but what about all the others? They were pressing in on Jesus, crowding about Him. They were the crowd, but we don't know who any of them were. We only know of the bleeding woman. It would seem that at that moment, with Jesus in their midst, it was she alone who had her desperate need met as she took hold of Him. The crowd pressed in, but not with the fervor and passion that she did. She had a hunger and desire for Him that somehow, the crowd seemed to lack. The crowd was observing Him. She was encountering Him.

I see a direct relation between this and what we call our regular "worship" gatherings. Every pastor and church wants to draw a crowd. Crowds come for lots of different reasons, Good music, good programs and ministries, even good fellowship. Jesus is named, but is Jesus the true focus? Are we, who are certainly part of the crowd, behaving like the crowd, or like the woman? Are we merely observing Him or encountering Him? Are we desperate to meet with Him, to encounter Him? Or are we just part of a crowd who each time we come together, watch Him pass by but never do more than observe His passing? Do we have a desire for Him that won't be denied, like the woman? Or do we have more in common with the watching crowd, seeing Him "pass by" each week in the singing, the preaching, the fellowship, but never laying hold of Him?

Lots of questions here. Sunday, worship day, is coming. Where will it find you? In the crowd with the rest of the onlookers.....or at His feet, experiencing Him?

Blessings,
Pastor O

Martyrs

 MARTYR: A person who willingly suffers death as the penalty of witnessing to and refusing to renounce their faith....."I have not been called as yet to die a martyr's death, but I am called day by day to live a martyr's life." J.B. Chapman

If you're a sincere believer and follower of Jesus Christ, you've likely wondered at times whether you would be able suffer death as a consequence of your faith in Him. Certainly, there are right now thousands upon thousands of fellow believers around the world who are dying for their faith. It's a sobering fact and though we in America cannot really envision that such a thing could happen here, it could, and we need to consider the cost of what it may one day be to follow Him. Still, right now, it is not likely that any of us here will suffer a literal death for our faith, but we will be called to suffer death for Him, and if I can be blunt, such death may be more painful than a bullet.

J.B. Chapman's quote has haunted me since I first read it a few months ago. Jesus may not ever lead us to a place in our faith where we may be literally put to death for it, but He will certainly lead us to places where we must suffer "death" in order to press on in our journey with Him. This is what Chapman meant when he said he was called and expected to each day "live a martyr's life." Each day we will be faced with choices as to who and what we will live for. Will we live for ourselves and our own gratification? Will we live for our spouses, our children, our professions, our ministries? Our hopes and our dreams? All of these are objects and people that we may love, and many of them can be very good loves, but do we love them more than we love Him? Whatever we love more than Him comes between us and Him. We will not die for One who is not our first love. That is only possible if we have already died to all that is not Him. We can only do so when we live as martyrs, day by day.

This week, perhaps this day, we'll be faced with choices between other things, good things, and He who is the best thing. The best One. Laying down our other loves in surrender to His Lordship and love will be painful. In many cases intensely painful. In those places, can we die a martyr's death. Can we do so because of the depth of our faith in Him? To be His means that we are not only willing to live for Him, but that we're willing to die for Him as well. Living as martyrs day by day. Only by His grace can we. By His grace, will we?

Blessings,
Pastor O

At The Cross

 "He who was seated on the throne said, 'I am making everything new.' Then He said, 'Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.' " Revelation 21:5...."Whatever was broken in the fall can be healed at the cross." Chris Tiegreen

I have a simple message for today, a desperately needed one. It's been available to all for over 2000 years, yet so few believe it fully, even in His church. What has been broken in the fall of humankind in Eden has been healed at the cross. And what has been broken in your life, wherever you have fallen and been broken, can be healed there as well.

I'm the teaching pastor in our church's Celebrate Recovery ministry. I've been involved in it for over 5 years now. Each week I see streams of broken, wounded, and hurting people come through the doors. They want to be whole but so many seem unable to believe that they can be. 

I recently taught about forgiveness, and some of the feedback I've gotten has to do with how many in our group struggle deeply to forgive, to be cleansed of bitterness and hatred. They want to be free, but they can't let go. They try, but they can't. I believe that in most cases, it's because they miss the key element of it all. Coming to His cross and surrendering the pain, anger, and woundedness there.

We're all born into this world as broken people. Sin has seen to that. Because we live in a fallen world we experience head on collisions with other broken people, as well as the fallen world system we live in. Oftentimes it seems we may be broken beyond repair. We're not, and we have to believe it. We have to because He has called us to wholeness and freedom. He came to break the power of sin and He did so at the cross. If we're to experience that in our lives, we must come to His cross as well. We bring our brokenness, our pain, our wounds, and all their effects to the cross....and we nail it to that cross. The brokenness is no longer ours to hold. It's His to heal. 

The old hymn goes, "At the cross, at the cross, where I first saw the Light, and the burden of my sin rolled away." The witness of the ages is that this is true. Is it true for you? Come to the cross. Bring your brokenness, all of it, with you. Place it, all of it, at the foot of the cross. Release it to Him, let it no longer be "yours." The band Delirious, in one of their songs has the lyric, "Let us rejoice at the foot of the cross, we can be free, glory to God!" Let us rejoice, all of us. Let us be free...all of us. At the foot of the cross! Glory to God!

Blessings,
Pastor O