Don’t hate yourself because of your sin.
Don’t hate yourself for your sin. You are a sinner, but God valued who you are so much that He died so He could redeem you and work in your life. He knew you would make mistakes, but He didn’t choose to throw you away. He wants to SAVE you, and save the parts of you that truly define the real you (which is NOT your sinfulness). There are things about you that make you truly unique and special, apart from the mistakes you’ve made, and THOSE are the things that make God so CRAZY ABOUT YOU. Those are the reasons He said, “I just can’t give you up.” He knows He can HEAL your sin and brokenness and TRANSFORM you into that person that you so desperately long to be.
Jesus loves you so much, just as you are. Come to His feet in your heart, right now.
I beg You, please, remember me.
Lord Jesus Christ, I feel like that thief hanging on the cross next to you. I am completely helpless, with absolutely no way out of my present situation. I can do absolutely nothing without you. All I can do is come to you. Sit at your feet like a hungry child. Reach for the hem of your garment like that woman with the hemorrhage. Letting go of my anxieties and all the things I try to earn on my own, I open my hands, my empty hands, and just wait for you to fill them with yours. Lord, without you I can do nothing. I simply wait upon you. I wait for your mercy and your grace and your love. And I know that the rest depends upon an action of your will. I know that I have reached the end of my capabilities. I am tied up and hanging on that cross. You are my only hope now. I beg you, please, remember me.
Note from your secret admirer
Passing along a message from your secret admirer…
You don’t really know me, but I know you. I couldn’t let this Valentine’s day pass without taking this opportunity to express what I feel for you.
I’ve tried so many times to get your attention, to win your love with grand gestures and small tokens just to let you know I’m thinking about you. But you don’t seem to notice. Have you ever loved someone who didn’t feel the same for you?
The thing that breaks my heart the most is seeing that you would rather give your heart to someone who hurts you than to give it to me. Nobody could ever love you like I do. If those whose attention you so idolize could really know you, they might not feel the same way about you; but I’ve seen your worst and I’m still crazy about you.
Have you ever loved someone so much you thought you would rather die than be without them?
You have no idea how many times you’ve rejected me. Most sane people would have given up on you by now. But I can’t. I can’t get you out of my head. Every time my heart beats, it just seems to scream your name.
So I’m asking. I’m asking one more time, hoping that you will give me that one chance. Don’t believe everything you’ve heard about me. Please, just get to know me for yourself. Read my letters. I wrote them for you.
I’m still here for you, waiting.
Knocking.
And when mortal words fail, I fall back on these….
I love you. I love you. I love you!!!!
Please call me.
- Jesus
Do you have a life?
I heard some of the New Year’s performances that were broadcast last night. Beyonce singing about how she wants people to know and never forget that she was here. Another artist singing about how they just want to celebrate and “live [their] life”. There’s a lot of “pride of life” going on in these songs.
For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. (1 John 2:16)
One of the major themes of the first angel’s message in Revelation 14:6-7 is that God calls human beings to recognize the distinction between their Creator and themselves. Worship God as the Creator and Source of life. God calls us to acknowledge that we are not equal to Him as part of our act of worshipping Him. After all, you can’t worship God if you don’t also acknowledge that He is greater than you. And yet, people like Beyonce blast the message that they equate themselves with God. If that sounds exaggerated, take a thoughtful look at the song lyrics of some popular songs. Far from worshipping God, popular artists frequently worship themselves (and each other).
In a very real way, we can’t really say, like Bon Jovi, “It’s my life.” It’s not our life. Sorry to break it to any of these famous artists, or anyone else for that matter, but we really don’t own our lives. As much as those who don’t choose to love, worship, and give their lives to God might want to express their rebellion and disdain toward Him, they still can’t escape the fact that their every waking moment happens only by His power and because of His grace, that they draw every breath they breathe from His nostrils. The God they despise and seek to disgrace is the only reason they can exist. There is no possibility of life apart from Christ, because He is life. Every human life is a tangible, visible monument to the continued grace of God.
Sorry, Beyonce, Bon Jovi, and anybody else who uses the expression, “It’s my life,” to excuse their wrong behavior. It’s not your life you’re living. Your life is borrowed, not owned. It’s ownership resides with the One who made it.
In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. (John 1:4)
And the testimony is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life. (1 John 5:11-12)
Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7)
Found this in an old notebook…
You speak a word and it shall come to pass
Oh fountain of all truth and light
Your thoughts are my reality
And Your breath is my life
You love me even as I hurt you
You shield me even as I sin
You take me from the dirt
And hold me like a son
In all my rottenness you cherish me above all else
That’s why you are God
I don’t think I could save the one who brought me so much pain
And I don’t think that I could care for someone who has hurt me
I don’t think I could so love the hand that drove a nail in mine
But after all that is why you are God
That’s why you are god
And I’m so glad that You are God
Sacred Time
“There is, says Pedersen, ‘ a deeper and wider motive for the rest on the sabbath day … It is not the welfare of [the] worker [...] which is the decisive factor. On the sabbath and other feast days work ceases because these days are holy. From the force gathered around them the rest of time derives its strength, therefore all life is dependent on the maintenance of their holiness.’ … Understood this way, the Sabbath is not only a day at the beginning of human existence or the seventh day that rounds off the week, the day at the end. Rather, it is the day at the center, as Jewish thinkers came to see it, a day that ‘permeates every day of the week.’”
Sigve K. Tonstad, “The Lost Meaning of the Seventh Day,” page 119. Andrews University Press, Berrien Springs, Michigan, 2009.
Do you really not need Jesus?
It’s hard for me to imagine how some people just don’t seem to desire a relationship with God. You feel happy about being a husband, a father, you take joy out of life without sensing any greater calling for your life. It’s interesting that you don’t desire the presence of God in your heart, and yet you couldn’t continue to be alive if He withdrew his power from your organism, for by His intentional and constant power all existence holds together. It’s funny that you could derive a sense of happiness and meaning from an otherwise godless life from the joy of being with other human beings and having, raising and loving children, when it is by God’s design that human life, and procreation, are possible. He is the inventor of marriage, the original Creator. The triune God is also the original social being.
You were made in His image – social, gifted with the capacity for pro-creating and loving and making your dreams and plans a reality (within certain bounds). You were made by Him. You exist as the precise individual that you are, only because before you came to be, He imagined you in his heart, He envisioned your face in His mind’s eye, He said, “Let there be you.”
So you get busy making a life for yourself and you make it as full and enjoyable as possible. But why don’t you recognize what has been made evident to you, that there is something more? In disregarding God, you’re disregarding not only the hand that feeds you, but the hand that made you, the mind that saw you before you existed and wanted you, the Person that willed you into existence; the heart that loved you aeons before you came to be; the arms that long to hold you even as you run from them; the soul that gave it’s life for you, before you could even be alive to appreciate it, in the hopes that one day you would choose to reciprocate His love, and accept His invitation to belong to Him forever.
How can anyone not seek to truly know the answer to the question, “Who is Jesus, really?”
It’s easy to think of talk of Jesus as empty. You could say, “Christians are silly little people who don’t have the strength of character to face reality.” But what if you’re wrong? What if the devotion of millions to a Savior they’ve never laid eyes on stems not from foolish denial, but from the gratitude of a healed heart? What if He really did die for you? What if He really lives now, and will truly one day assume the throne of the entire universe and reign over all existence, and you rejected Him when He offered you His hand in friendship? What place will there be for you in that everlasting kingdom, the only one that really matters?
I’m just asking.
The most disturbing sermon I have ever heard, courtesy of Pastor David Asscherick
His opening salvo should have said it all: the Holy Spirit’s work is often to comfort the afflicted, but sometimes He is sent to afflict the comfortable. Nowadays, our greatest need is often for affliction rather than comfort.
That is definitely true in most American churches, I’d say, if my personal record is any indication.
Here are the highlights:
The spirit of Christ is a missionary spirit. The very first impulse of the renewed heart is to bring others also to the Saviour.—The Great Controversy, 70
Every true disciple is born into the kingdom of God as a missionary. The Desire of Ages, 195.
(If you want to be sobered, do a search for the phrase “missionary spirit” on egwwritings.org and read some of the results.)
The two-part seminar is much more in-depth, and I highly recommend that you watch each part in it’s entirety. But, these two statements are enough to express the sermon’s thrust.
Aren’t those two statements by Ellen G. White obviously true? In fact, one of Christ’s mission statements is “to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10). Saving the lost is Christ’s passion.
In Galatians 2:20, the apostle Paul wrote, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me…” Now, if we seek to make the same claim; if having Christ in our hearts is an ideal to which we continually aspire; and, if Christ’s Spirit is a missionary spirit – do you see the logical conclusion? If Christ truly lives in you, and in me, then His missionary spirit will be lived out in our lives. His passion will be our passion.
Pastor Asscherick said, “Heaven is not for members. Heaven is for missionaries!”
In His book, “Christ’s Way of Reaching People”, Philip G. Samaan quotes Roy J. Fish and J. E. Conant as saying, “It is not the imperative of an external command that sends us after the lost; it is the impulse of an indwelling presence … Behind all successful work for the lost is an inward spiritual impulse; and behind the impulse is the Holy Spirit who reproduces Christ in us” (pg. 19).
If the Presence of God is in us, then we will be missionaries.
If the Presence is not in us, we will not be missionaries.
If we aren’t missionaries, Christ is not in us.
Ouch! Witness lately???
Listen, the Bible doesn’t say the Word of God is “living and active and sharp as a two-edged sword” for nothing. It’s supposed to cut sometimes. If it doesn’t cut you, you aren’t using it right.
Watch the message here:
http://www.vimeo.com/19129552
http://www.vimeo.com/19132046
Devotional: Rooted and Grounded in Christ
January 9, 2011
Rooted and Grounded in Christ
The righteous shall flourish like a palm tree. Ps. 92:12.
He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither; and whatever he does shall prosper. Ps. 1:3.
These texts describe the happy state of the man or woman whose soul is rooted and grounded in Christ. Bur there is always danger that souls will not anchor themselves in God, but be content to drift hither and thither, the sport of Satan’s temptations.
Are you beginning to see the defects in your character? Do not feel helpless and discouraged. Look to Jesus, who knows your every weakness and pities your every infirmity.… It is no disgrace to confess our sins and forsake them. The disgrace rests upon those who know their sins but continue in them and grieve the dear Savior by their crooked paths. A knowledge of our wrongs should be more highly prized than a happy flight of feeling, for it is evidence that the Spirit of God is striving with us, and that angels are round about us.…
In true contrition for sin, come to the foot of the cross, and there leave your burdens. Come exercising repentance toward God because you have broken His law, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ to pardon your transgressions and reconcile you to the Father. Believe what God says; take his promises to your heart…
See the weary traveler toiling over the hot sands of the desert, with no shelter to protect him from the rays of a tropical sun. His water supply fails, and he has nothing to slake his burning thirst. His tongue becomes swollen; he staggers like a drunken man. Visions of home and friends pass before his mind as he believes himself ready to perish in the terrible desert. Suddenly those in advance send forth a shout of joy. In the distance, looming up out of the dreary, sandy waste, is a palm tree, green and flourishing….
As the palm tree, drawing nourishment from the fountain of living water, is green and flourishing in the midst of the desert, so the Christian may draw rich supplies of grace from the fountain of God’s love and may guide weary souls, that are full of unrest and ready to perish in the desert of sin, to those waters of which they may drink, and live. – Signs of the Times, June 16, 1884.
From the Ellen G. White devotional book, “From the Heart”.
