Philippians

What an incredible inspiration!  I've just been reading it in the Message version.  Philippians 2 really highlights how amazing Jesus of Nazareth is!

Light from darkness -- lightmagazine@gideons.ca

When people think about the Bible, they often think of it as a spiritual instruction guide or a book of things that Christians are supposed to do.  However, Christ Himself tells us that the Scriptures are not about Christians at all; they are about Him and what He came to do -- an epic story with Christ as the central theme from beginning to end (Luke 24:25,27,44-47)

The Bible is made up of 66 books written by about forty different authors over a period of approximately 1500 years.  The Spirit of God superintended the writing of all 66 books, which is why they are all telling the same story:

Christ, the light of the world came into our darkness.  He came into our suffering and sin to give us His life.  Today we have over 34,000 historic manuscripts of the Old Testament and New Testament that all align to bring unbelievably good news:

Christ Jesus, the light of the world, can overcome the darkness of our sin.

The human problem is not outside us (our environment), nor are the answers within us (sin); our answer is outside us (a Saviour).

Because all humanity was condemned when Adam sinned at the beginning of creation, sin is not simply an act, but the condition we are all born into.  We don't need to look far to see the effects of sin in our world.  Nobody is perfect, yet perfection is precisely what a perfect God requires from us.

Therefore, God lovingly planned to send His light -- Christ -- into our darkness to pay the price for our sin, accomplishing it by His perfect life, sacrificial death and divine resurrecution.  Placing our faith in Christ takes us from darkness and brings us into light, freeing us from the death penalty of our sin.

Nobody lives forever on earth, but we who hope in Christ have assurance that our end is not darkness and death -- it is light and eternal life.  This is the gospel of Jesus Christ, the light of the world.

Character development

Two good books to study in this area are:

"Experiencing the Spirit" by Henry and Melvin Blackaby
and
"Growing Kingdom character" by Tom Yeakley

http://www.familyreunionmusic.com/article/128/music/del-friends/i-heard-about

What to do with sin?

A lifer once said "just praying and asking God forgiveness doesn't seem right" and I agreed with her yet I struggle with appropriate loving discipline.  My favourite strategy is "cleaning up spilt milk" and "learning from our mistakes" but some messes are very hard to clean up. Here is a cool verse God showed me.

"Produce fruit in keeping with repentance." Luke 3:8

Living God's way

When the church was so ticked with Jesus as He spoke the truth they took Him to the edge of a cliff and were ready to throw Him off and stone Him to death and He said, sorry folks, it's not my time and walked away. (Sherrill's paraphrase)

Then when it was His time He stopped Peter from fighting by healing the soldier Peter had hurt and saying to Peter "if you live by the sword you die by the sword"

Jesus is modeling what Zerubbabel had taught years before

"This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel: 

'Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,' says the LORD Almighty. Zechariah 4:6

A Kingdom prayer

Jesus prayer teaches us so much.

1) "Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Your name"
An airplane over Soweto or a view of the satellite in Canada reminds me that all the complexities of both machines to our naked eye seem like nothing as we look up.  They are so small compared to God's universe.  Even the most brilliant mind, with all the technology we have still doesn't know all the prime numbers in the universe yet our God knows and is bigger than all of this. So let us respect and honour God.

2) "May Your Kingdom come and Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven"
This is a simple test. Are our neighbours, communities, families, and friends, seeing a touch of heaven here on earth because of what God is calling us to do? And do we have the faith to obey the next little thing He tells us to do?

3) "Give us today our daily bread"
In general, in the western world this prayer has already been answered but there are some kids who won't get food today because their parents drank the food money away and some senior who won't get fed because they can't feed themselves and.... are we sensitive to these needs?

4) "And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us"
The truth is we're all human. We all make mistakes.  It could be a bad assumption, it could be the sin of unbelief, it could be .... so help us to release our hurt and bitterness and allowed God to mold us into who He wants us to be so that He can continue to answer our prayer that "His Kingdom will come here on earth as it is in heaven"

5) "Lead us not into temptation"
Many advertisers want to lead us into temptation but the Lord of the universe wants to keep us away from it so if we really mean it; He'll help us.

6) "And deliver us from evil"
Satan doesn't want God's Kingdom on earth but God is bigger than the technology, our temptations etc and even if we can't stay away from evil on our own remember God wants to help; Jesus told us to pray this way.

7) "For Yours is the Kingdom, the power and the glory"
Not the Baptist's, not the Salvation Army, not the Catholics, not the Jews, not the Buddhists, not the Muslims, not the....but Yours; the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob...the God who wants to bring heaven to earth, the God who wants us to grow His fruit of love, joy, peace, kindness, faithfulness, self control".  That God wants the power and the glory.  Galatians 5

Everything: $, sex, technology....everything, can be used for good and bad so let us use Jesus simple prayer to keep us on track.

Blessings.

Humility in the Kingdom

Philippians 2 amazes me. That Christ would leave everything to connect with us.  Yet He did. And He didn't even make the every day folks feel out of place.  What a blessing He is.

Jesus likes kids -- Matthew 19:13-15

Jesus encounter with kids in the bible

It's interesting that in John 3 Jesus told an educated leader that he had to be born again. He need to start again to understand his spiritual journey.  Yet maybe there is more to this than just the birth.  What if we were to spiritually develop like we do physically.  Could this mean that Jesus was also encouraging child likeness?  Read  Matthew 18:2-4  to find the answer.

There is a lot we can learn from children. 

For instance in most cases:

1) Children don't hold grudges very long

2) Children don't have built in prejudices

3) Children like to investigate and learn

4) Children don't have preconceived ideas

Feel free to blog your thoughts on this.

Discipline in the Kingdom

Jesus had a fascinating approach to things.  I'm paraphrasing stories from the bibliographies of Jesus (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John)

• When His disciples said there was a problem He said; tell me what you have to fix it and then He took it, blessed it and gave it back to them to fix  (the story of the feeding of the 5000)
• When a woman; not the man, was caught in adultery he told them all to sin no more.
• When the tax collector took too much He met his need for acceptance and the tax collector choose to fix the problem himself.
• When the church crowd took Him to the edge of the cliff to throw Him off and stone Him to death because they were ticked with Him He said "sorry, not my time yet" and left.
• When it was His time He told Peter to put away his sword because if we live by the sword we die by the sword; and ultimately, when Peter was ready to listen, he told Peter "if you love me feed my sheep".

Freedom to choose; so how do we choose correctly?

1 Corinthians 10:23
"I have the right to do anything," you say--but not everything is beneficial. "I have the right to do anything"--but not everything is constructive."