To Will and to Work for His Good Pleasure

We serve an amazing God!  He puts the desire in us to do something and then as we embrace that choice and stand in faith, He does it (through us).  And to top it off, it pleases Him.  Philippians 2:13 states "for it is God who works in you both to will and to work for His good pleasure."

What work do we have to do?  Clearly the Word of God in James points out that faith without works is dead.  Likewise, Ephesians 2:10 declares "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them."  He intends for us to work as a result of our faith, and He has prepared things for us to do.

Does He do it or do we do it? Yes.  Let me ask you a question.  Did you believe to get saved or did God give you the grace to believe and you simply received it?  The answer is "yes."

Perhaps Galatians 2:20 can shed light on our dilemma. "I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me."  In other words, when I accept that Jesus gave Himself for me and realize by faith that I, my old man, died with Him, then, also by faith, I now live in His resurrected life.  My new life is hidden in the living risen Lord and He is in all I do.  We are eternally joined.  So everything I now do is by His strength and power through faith.  Instead of complaining about having to work, we now understand that God enables me to do all things as a way to partner with Him.  My working together with Him gives Him pleasure.

What a great perspective--we can please the Creator of the Universe simply by doing the things set before as an act of cheerful worship.  Faith makes it happen.  Jesus said the work of God is to believe in the One whom He sent.  When we believe in Jesus and His life in us, everything we do comes from God and is by God's strength.

God's desire from the beginning was to have fellowship with us. He is pleased to accomplish work together with us.  He gives us the desire and provides the power and we get the joy of accomplishing the work.

For Such a Time as This

Back in the sixties Jerry Lee Lewis sang “there is a whole lot of shaking going on.” However, those "shakings" do not begin to compare with what’s happening in the world today and what is coming. Hebrews 12 informs us that everything that can be shaken, will.


What is a person supposed to do who is concerned about what must soon happen? Even Jesus pointed out that in the last days “many hearts will fail for fear.” Nevertheless, God always has a perfect plan. He reveals truth to prepare us, not to cause us to fear. First Corinthians 10:13 reminds us that God is faithful to give us the grace to endure, but more importantly, He will also show us the “way of escape.” In other words, rather than just “grin and bear it,” we are going to overcome. The promise in Isaiah 60 is that when darkness covers the earth, His light shall also come and shine in you. His glory will be seen in you.

“For such a time as this,” Mordecai told Esther in the day of extreme trouble for the Jews, after she had come into the King’s palace. Clearly God had arranged events and given her favor to be in position to stop Haman from killing all the Israelites. Likewise, God is arranging events and giving favor to believers to “know their God and do great exploits” in the days ahead according to Daniel 11:32.

We have a choice. Either we go along with the world in a business as usual attitude, or we wake up and realize we have been brought into God's Kingdom to make an eternal difference. We are called to go beyond enjoying the blessings of peace, health, and prosperity and only living for our own comfort. Desperate times call for desperate measures.  We can use this time and position to come to know Him and become grounded in the truth of His Word.  God commands us to stand in the strength of the Lord, exercise His power in the spiritual fight, and extend the triumph of Jesus Christ to change lives forever.  In short, God sets before us life and death. Choose life.

How do we choose life in this "such a time?" The answer is to make it our first priority to know God. Yet, we can’t even love or know God without His help. So ask the Holy Spirit to reveal Jesus to us each morning. Cry out as Paul did in Ephesians 1:17, "that God may give unto us the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him." Then deliberately take time each day to read and to think about His Word until the truth is stronger than the world's ways or your own human thoughts and desires.

God has brought you (us) into His powerful kingdom and put us in the world in the midst of the shaking going on for such a time as this. Even Jesus before His death and resurrection stated, “For this purpose I have come.” This is the time to get to know and love Him with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, and all your strength.  In this awesome relationship, in His light we will become light.  God needs you (us) for such a time as this to be His light.  We will overcome the darkness.  Jesus reassures us, "Fear not, I have overcome the world."

What is Your Goal for Today?

Focus. In watching the Olympics one thing becomes increasingly clear: these people focus. Whether the action is a routine on the balance beam or a summersault and twist in a high dive, the competitor has learned and trained to focus whole-heartedly on the details to make the execution near flawless. While it is exciting to see someone with such effort and ability put everything on the line for the gold medal, there is something more which rivets us to the screen. In every person there is a deep-seated desire to succeed and reach our goals.

Often in the day to day reality of life we get caught up in our work, our family, our responsibilities, and even our struggles to survive as pleasantly as possible. If we make it through the day, without rocking the boat too much, we feel like it has been a good day. Unfortunately that is not why God gave us life. What is our main purpose for the day?

Most Christians have read that the purpose of life is to know and serve God. Yet this foundational principle seems so far removed from real daily existence. How do we make it an inner drive of our hearts everyday? What if God, in giving us this first and great commandment (Love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength), also intended us to ask Him for help in doing it? All the commands in Scripture are addressed to our will, in other words, we have to choose to obey them. Then God who “works in you both to will and to work for His pleasure” accomplishes it in cooperation with us. Many of us are like Peter, who promised Jesus his willingness to die for Him, but didn’t have the inner power to do it in the time of trial.

The point is, even in the area of our relationship to God, we need to ask Him to give us a heart to know and love God each morning.  Ephesians 1:17 is a prayer asking the Father for wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him.  The most precious and important goal of our life today is to know and love God , and those who invite the Holy Spirit to empower their will and heart will experience a fresh desire and joy in being closer to Him. It is as simple and yet profound as praying,  “Father God, help me to know and love you today in all I think and do.”

Jeremiah 24:7 Then I will give them a heart to know Me, that I am the Lord; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God, for they shall return to Me with their whole heart.

The Facts, Just the Facts

On Dragnet many years ago Sergeant Friday wanted the facts. Everyone has an opinion, but the facts provide the evidence to reach a right conclusion. The facts are that Christian teenagers are departing from the faith and becoming like the world. Here are the results of three recent surveys.

1. “According to a stunning new survey by America's Research Group, 95 percent of 20 to 29 year old evangelicals attended church regularly during their elementary and middle school years. However, only 55 percent of them attended church regularly during high school, and only 11 percent of them were still regularly attending church when in college.”

2.”Another new survey by the Barna group reveals that less than 1 percent of all Americans between the ages of 18 and 23 hold a Biblical worldview. This new poll data clearly demonstrates that the youngest adults in America are clearly rejecting traditional evangelical Christian teaching.

The Barna survey defined "a Biblical worldview" as holding all of the following six key beliefs:1) Believing that absolute moral truth exists.

2) Believing that the Bible is completely accurate in all of the principles it teaches.

3) Believing that Satan is considered to be a real being or force, not merely symbolic.

4) Believing that a person cannot earn their way into Heaven by trying to be good or by doing good works.

5) Believing that Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth.

6) Believing that God is the all-knowing, all-powerful creator of the world who still rules the universe today.”

3. “The board of the National Association of Evangelicals, an umbrella group representing 60 denominations and dozens of ministries, passed a resolution this year deploring “the epidemic of young people leaving the evangelical church.” Their alarm has been stoked by a survey claim that if current trends continue, only 4 percent of teenagers will be “Bible-believing Christians” as adults. That would be a sharp decline compared with 35 percent of the current generation of baby boomers, and before that, 65 percent of the World War II generation. There is widespread consensus among evangelical leaders that they risk losing their teenagers.”

Also quoted from the New York Times article “Evangelicals Fear the Loss of Their Teenagers” of 10/06/2006 “Genuine alarm can be heard from Christian teenagers and youth pastors, who say they cannot compete against a pervasive culture of cynicism about religion, and the casual “hooking up” approach to sex so pervasive on MTV, on Web sites for teenagers and in hip-hop, rap and rock music. Divorced parents and dysfunctional families also lead some teenagers to avoid church entirely or to drift away.

“Over and over in interviews, evangelical teenagers said they felt like a tiny, beleaguered minority in their schools and neighborhoods. They said they often felt alone in their struggles to live by their “Biblical values” by avoiding casual sex, risqué music and videos, Internet pornography, alcohol and drugs.”

Whether we like it or not, those are the facts. The facts speak louder than words of opinion. The eternal welfare of our children is too important to continue letting the worldly system destroy them. God’s plan includes the promise in Daniel 11:32 that in the midst of troubling events toward the end of the age, “those who know their God will be strong and do great exploits.” If ever there was a time to put your children in a Christian environment where they can know Jesus and learn to walk in the truth of His Word, that time is NOW. For such a time as this.

Walking Through the Crowds

In the past few weeks my family and I have had some wonderful opportunities to walk through crowds from Disney World to a Rockies baseball game. One of my first realizations was that it was impossible for the five of us to stay together in the midst of people of all sizes, strollers, opposing traffic, tour groups, wheel chairs, etc. As each one fought through the challenges all one could do was look around and see if the others were still in the vicinity. In my case I would try to remember what color shirt or what hat each one had, so I could spot them and try to keep track of where each one was at.


Then it struck me. This is so much like raising children to be Christian. You can't always be together and keep track of everything they are doing. Each one will have diversions, meet other people with different ideas, get jostled around by various challenges, and move forward at different speeds. You just hope that their relationship with Jesus and the truth of the Word you planted in them will be enough to be their guide so that you all end up at the right place. So periodically, you may see them, share a word, or even have the opportunity to make comments, but the individual direction is clearly out of your control.

As parents who have been entrusted children, it is our most sacred responsibility to train them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Unfortunately, there is also an enemy who desires to instill in them the opposite, the way of the world. This oncoming contrary wave challenges our convictions and the price we are willing to pay to complete the God-given task of making sure each one is grounded in truth. Many parents have sacrificed much to home school their children themselves or to send them to a Christian school that teaches Bible principles in order to plant God's truth and ways in their hearts. Others have taken the broad path of "free" public education only to see all their children's Biblical values undermined and polluted with such issues as homosexuality, rebellion, toleration of sin, abortion, living for one's own pleasure rather than for God, and other worldly ideas contrary to the truth the parents have taught. Then as the years of life pass on, the child can no longer be seen heading the right direction and the final heartbreak is that he or she will not end up in the right place.

God will make a way through the crowd for you and all your children to arrive safely. Even though it may cost time, money, and laying aside other desires, nothing compares to obeying God in this sacred trust of bringing up children to know Him. The cost is nothing compared to the glory of God. Eternity is a long time and you and your family will be eternally grateful.

Don't lie; Tell the Whole Truth

What do you do if the physical pain is still there and you have prayed and believed for healing? Can you say, “I am healed by Jesus’ stripes” and not feel like you are lying? Obviously the same dilemma happens when you say “My needs are met according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus” and there is not money to pay the bills.
There is an answer. Tell the whole truth. The whole truth includes the fact that there is a spiritual realm that also exists and is greater than the physical realm. Don’t deny the physical pain and pretend like it doesn’t exist, but deny that the physical realm is the only source of truth. My words can be based on whichever realm I hold as greater. So the truth is “I have physical pain, but in the spiritual realm the resurrected Christ dwells in me, and His healing stripes have already healed me. My needs are met because I am in eternal covenant with the infinite, almighty God which easily handles the present physical challenges. I choose faith, choose to believe “It is finished,” and declare with my mouth what I hold as true.
Mark 11:24 confirms this principle. When we believe and declare the spiritual truth over the physical realm, then there will also be a manifestation in the physical realm in due time.

2011 A Year of Knowing Jesus!

As we counted down the seconds until the new year, my heart realized that one thing is for sure about 2011: we are one year closer to Jesus coming back and all things on earth being fulfilled. The clock continues to tick loudly.
Jesus’ first words to the disciples, when they asked about the time that all things would be fulfilled, was “Take heed that no one deceives you.” He further said that many will fall away in the last days. With a slight tremble on the inside of me, my heart silently cries, God do not let me(us) be deceived. What word has the power and persuasion to keep our hearts and minds from being deceived?

In Matthew the passages on the end times concludes with the sentence, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away.” When Jesus warns us about a problem He also gives the answer.
Yet many read the Bible only intermittently or superficially. Some may even be bored with the contents and don’t see how these words can direct their lives. May we suggest the simple way Jesus gave to let the Scriptures be the light He meant it to be.

Jesus, in John 5:39-40, stated to the Pharisees, “You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life. So how do we “come to Him” while we read the words of God and taste this life? The Holy Spirit as author and teacher of all Scripture uses the Word to bear witness to Jesus. He invites us to interact with Him and through this relationship get to know Him. When the Bible verse gives us something to believe, such as “do not fear, only believe,” the Holy Spirit points us to Jesus and then we can stop right then and ask Him to help us believe. When the Word tells us to “forgive those who hurt us,” the Spirit reminds us of our weakness and that Jesus is available to pour that grace into our hearts. We cry out for His love and experience His forgiveness which enables us to do likewise. Often there are verses in between the commands that are just information which set the scene for us to realize the next opportunity to draw life from Him.

2011 will be a life-changing year if we heed the admonition to not be deceived by increasingly coming to Jesus through responding to the Word He has given. Schedule a daily time and deliberately choose to meet with Jesus by coming to Him in His Word everyday.