STUPID FAITH

Recently, I attended the Wednesday church service at a local community church. As I expected, near the end of the service, the pastor did what has been universally coined "The Altar Call." It reminded me of my younger days...back in middle and high school attending Christian Youth rallies and such. At the time, I invited many of my non-Christian friends to attend with me. It was always an amazing experience. The pastor would passionately tell his testimony, about the amazing love and grace he had felt since becoming a Christian, and then he would invite those in the crowd to come forward and accept Jesus into their heart. And this is where I come to the title phrase "stupid faith." Many of my friends, coming from broken homes, drug addiction, or just an absence of popularity at school, were simply looking for a place to be loved and accepted, and they thought they had found it there at the rally. So they stepped up to the alter...to "accept Jesus." The problem didn't come with accepting Jesus right then, that's actually a great and brave thing they did, the real problem came a few months later when they still didn't understand their faith, still felt lost, and still felt unloved. They would stand there in the pews every Sunday feeling fake as they sang the same monotonous chorus lines over and over again. And because of this...they left. They left a place that world-round is called "God's House." How could this happen?! It comes down to "stupid faith."
You know when your at the river with your friends, your standing on the edge of a 10-foot cliff over the water, and your friends are saying, "Jump!" "It'll be cool!" "You won't get water in your nose!"? And what do you do? Well, the peer pressure and comforting words of your friends are just too promising, and so you jump. This is what is known as stupid faith. Because they didn't teach you how to jump, or how to hit the water correctly, or how to plug your nose...because they didn't tell you to hold your breath....you end up bellyflopping, inhaling vast amounts of water, deciding that you will never return to that cliff edge again, and finding new friends.
Our faith must be based on something. So many people take the: "faith is believing in what you cannot see" passage in Hebrews 11:1, way out of context. We don't just trust God randomly, we trust him because we have every single one of the 66 books of the Bible to prove to us that God is the creator, that he is at work to this very day, and that he always comes out on top to fulfill His promises. We cannot see God of course, but we can see His invisible qualities in nature (Romans 1:20) and we can also see who He is and what His plans are through His Word.
Many millions of people across the world claim to be followers of Christ, but how many say that with mere stupid faith? Just because they grew up in a Christian family, attended church every Sunday, or have "experience God's love" doesn't actually show any real faith. Do you know how many Budhists "experience peace and love?" Well, just as many as do Christians. REAL FAITH, through knowlege and understanding of God's very Word, the only truth, and acting upon that understanding, is what sets Christians apart from Budhists, Muslims, and any other religion. Do you have REAL FAITH? Or are you walking along this earth claiming to be a Christian, but not really having any grasp on what you believe? If you are humble enough to place yourself in the latter catagory, take a look at the story of the Ethiopian in Acts chapter 8, from verse 26 to the end of the chapter. What does he say to Phillip about "understanding?"
Reading the Bible 100 times isn't going to give you the proper understanding to have REAL FAITH. The Word has to be unfolded before you in order to give you light (Psalm 119:130). And, if you're truly praying and seeking, the light will be provided. Many people are content living with their stupid faith, but just ponder on this thought that Jesus left us in Luke 18:8, "When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?" I hope you or I don't have to find out the hard way.~

JESUS AND A DONKEY

One of my favorite fulfillments of prophecy is the one about Jesus riding on a donkey (Matthew 21:1-11). Have you ever stopped to really think about that?

Usually if a pastor teaches about this story he (or she) will say, “Oh, wasn’t Jesus so humble? He was the Messiah and he road into Jerusalem on an ugly, ungraceful donkey. It’s such a great example of humility for us!”

But actually, for all we know, maybe Jesus really wanted to ride a great white stallion into Jerusalem. The reason he trotted in on a donkey is not necessarily that he wanted to show us humility (everyone, whether Christian or Muslim or Buddhist or Atheist, knows that humility is a great quality), rather, the reason Jesus road into Jerusalem on a donkey and not on a great stallion was simply because prophecy from the Old Testament said he would (Zechariah 9:9).

There are many things that Jesus did that may have seemed weird at the time; a few being: speaking in parables, being crucified as the Passover lamb, and remaining in the grave for three days.  We now know and understand them as the fulfillment of prophecy.

If you really get down to it, if he had not fulfilled just one of these prophecies, if he hadn’t  ridden on the donkey into Jerusalem, for example, then we could actually say: “He wasn’t the Messiah.” Because if Jesus really had God’s spirit he would have KNOWN he had to fulfill these things. Thankfully, he DID fulfill them, and we can trust that God’s spirit was on him.

It’s cool to think about how God really does have a plan and a purpose; he does stick to his word and doesn’t change his mind, even down to the last donkey. It is with his word that we can prepare and trust that his prophesied kingdom (seen in New Testament prophecies) will be completed. It is an amazing God we serve! Amen? ~

WATER OF LIFE

Imagine an IV you can plug into your arm that will allow you to live forever. The Bible promises water that leads to eternal life, here are a few places it is mentioned:

“My People have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.” (Jeremiah 2:13)

“Jesus answered, ‘Everyone who drinks this water (from the well) will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’” (John 4:13-14)

“He said to me: ‘It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the water of life.’” (Revelation 21:6)

“Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb.” (Revelation 22:1)

Jesus gives water, God gives water, and the water flows from the throne of God and of the Lamb. We have a few clues of what that water actually is:

If we look in the Old Testament in Deuteronomy 32:1-2, it says: “Listen, O heavens, and I will speak; hear, O earth, the words of my mouth. Let my teaching fall like rain and my words descend like dew, like showers on new grass, like abundant rain on tender plants.” The teachings and words of God are likened unto rain or dew.

Absence of God’s word is referred to as a famine in Amos 8:11: “’The days are coming,’ declares the Sovereign LORD, ‘when I will send a famine through the land – not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD.’” What is a famine caused by? Usually a drought, right?

Conclusion: The water we must drink to obtain eternal life is God’s word which encompasses the words of Jesus. So the question you should be asking yourself is: Am I drinking the RIGHT spiritual water? ~

SPIRITUAL TATTOO

Getting a tattoo is a pretty big decision for many people. It’s something that you are writing on your body permanently (well, now days there is removal, but it’s costly and often leaves scarring). But what about writing something on your heart?

God promised to do this in the New Covenant (Jeremiah 31:31-33, Hebrews 8:7-13). It says: “I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.” Many Christians have no idea what the New Covenant is, or even the Old Covenant for that matter.

Hebrews 8:7 says: “For if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have been sought for another.” And we see that God DID find fault with the first (old) covenant and Jesus was the mediator of a New Covenant. The definition of mediator, among many similar ones, is “to be in a middle or intermediate position.”

We see that Jesus is just that; the old covenant ends when he arrives here (because he is the fulfillment of it), and in Matthew 26:27-29 he starts or establishes the new one through new promises. Jesus says, “I tell you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it anew with you in my Father’s kingdom.”

What is it we always are praying in the Lord’s Prayer from Matthew 6, “Your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” right? We are praying for that time when God’s Kingdom in the spiritual realm comes to earth and, essentially, when we can "drink the cup anew" with Jesus in his Father’s kingdom. That is the moment when the New Covenant is finally complete.

A covenant is a promise or a contract; it has a starting point and an ending point. We can see this from many examples in the Old Testament: Covenants between Adam and God, Noah and God, Abraham and God, and Moses and God. In all of these situations God promised something conditionally. It was always “If you keep this covenant…” The same applies for the New Covenant we have through Jesus. There are conditions we must keep, but also promises and blessings we will receive if we keep those conditions.

Part of the New Covenant is what was earlier stated: writing the law “on their hearts.” God’s word is the law…specifically the NEW promises we have through Jesus. We need to know these promises, so that when they are fulfilled, we will be ready. And hopefully, like a tattoo, they will be written on our hearts and minds for that very reason. ~

FINDING THE NARROW GATE

Matthew 7:13-14 about the narrow and wide gates has always been a convicting passage for me. It says: “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

When we look at the time of Jesus’ first coming we see that Jesus really was that narrow gate. John 10:1-18 talks about this, in verse 7 it says: “Therefore Jesus said again, ‘I tell you the truth, I am the gate for the sheep.’” In contrast we see in Matthew 23:13-14 that the Pharisees and teachers of the law are the wide gate. It says they “shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces.”

When Jesus, who had God’s spirit, came to the earth, he exposed all the words, ideals and orthodoxies of the Pharisees, Sadducees, and all other denominations of the Jews at that time, as garbage.

In 1 John 4:1 it says: “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.” So, according to what John says here, we must test what people are saying and doing to know if they are truly from God. This, in turn, will save us from being deceived and will guide us through the narrow gate where we want to go.

How do we test a person’s words and actions? We test them according to the Bible. That is the only tool we have. But, we must test using the Bible accurately. In Matthew 4 Jesus is tempted by Satan. Satan tempts Jesus using the words of God (just like Satan tempted Adam and Eve in the garden by twisting God’s words), but Jesus is able to overcome Satan by using God’s words accurately to fight back.

It’s not easy testing if we don’t know or understand God’s words well enough. We must be always seeking and testing and growing in knowledge and understanding of the Bible so that we can find and go through the narrow gate which Jesus Christ promised us. ~