Walking With Jesus

Radical Beholder

“Because I am righteous, I will see you. When I awake, I will see you face to face and be satisfied.” (Psalm 17:15 NLT)

King David was a radical beholder of the Lord. Day and night, morning and evening his thoughts were on His Sovereign Lord and Leader of his life. Perhaps that’s the major reason the Lord said of David that he was a man after His own heart (1 Samuel 13:14). In Acts 13:22 the Bible says: “But God removed Saul and replaced him with David, a man about whom God said, ‘I have found David son of Jesse, a man after My own heart. He will do everything I want him to do.”

How descriptive is God’s observation of David, of His observation of you? Of me? What does that look like; what might that mean? According to Scripture, it not only means to be a diligent seeker of God through prayer, but through life. Praying often and well is vital to our having a strong walk with the Lord, but prayer in and of itself isn’t enough, we must also be diligent doers of His will.

Prayer is our lifeline. It’s through the medium of prayer we hear God’s voice, but we also must hear His holy heart. It’s His voice that informs, but it’s His heart that motivates us to respond in obedience to His directives. I can know God’s will in my mind, but until His will is activated with the rest of my body, His will won’t be accomplished, and I won’t have obeyed the directives of His heart.

We can be radical listeners without being radical beholders, radical followers, radical obey-ers! What made David a man after God’s own heart wasn’t His heart for God alone, but his radical determination to obey God and to walk before God as His humble servant.

That would be impressive regardless of who David was, but to remember that he was a king, a ruler of a nation of God’s people, is what makes His radical stance before God impressive. Few in their lifetime attain such status before men, yet, fewer still attain such radical status before God.

Do you long to be a person after God’s own heart? Someone whose sole purpose for existence is to please, honor, love, and serve God well? Someone whose soul longs for oneness and intimacy with your Father and with His only Son? If you want to be a person after God’s own heart, it begins by being a radical beholder of your Master, Lord, and Savior. But how?

First, by shifting our focus from ourselves to the Lord. If we’re honest we must recognize that a very high percentage of our thoughts focus on ourselves – our health, our wellbeing, our schedules, our social circles, our families, our jobs, our social networks and on and on. Our lives center and focus on the big “I”! We’re what matters and too often God is an afterthought if any thought at all. But that must change!

To be a person after God’s own heart we must intentionally prioritize God’s preeminence in our thoughts and actions throughout our days. Is He preeminent in your thoughts? When you’re working, relaxing, playing, interacting with others? Whatever you’re doing is He on your mind, is He the center and focus of your heart?

To be a radical beholder of our Savior and best Friend takes intentional action and discipline. It won’t happen unless and until we intend for it to happen. We must establish disciplines in our life that will help us to focus on Him during every waking moment. If He’s not vital in our thinking He will never be vital in our living.

Food for thought.

Blessings, Ed 😊

All In?

“It was in the year King Uzziah died that I saw the Lord. He was sitting on a lofty throne, and the train of His robe filled the Temple. Attending Him were mighty seraphim, each having six wings…They were calling out to each other, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Heaven’s Armies! The whole earth is filled with His glory!’” (Isaiah 6:1-2a, 3 NLT)

It’s difficult for us to imagine what Isaiah was feeling in those moments. Only a small percentage of God’s followers are privileged to experience such personal audiences with the God of Creation. Perhaps Peter, James, and John could relate when Jesus’ appearance was transformed, and they were visited by Elijah and Moses. (Mark 9:2-4)

In my mind’s eye I see Isaiah still, engrossed by the beauty of the presence of the Lord, listening intently, captivated by God’s voice. While we may not experience visions of God as Isaiah did, we nonetheless have opportunities to sit in God’s presence, worship and listen to His voice. There are things that this unique experience taught Isaiah and I believe can teach us.

In verse 5 we’re told: “Then I said, ‘Its’ all over! I am doomed, for I am a sinful man. I have filthy lips, and I live among a people with filthy lips. Yet I have seen the King, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.’” Worship invites us not only to gain a clearer vision of God, but a more accurate vision of ourselves. Unless we see our wretchedness in the presence of the Lord, we’ll not understand our need to have complete dependence upon Him.

If our attitude is: “I’ve got this Christianity thing! I’m a good person and I’m living right. What else could I possibly need?” then we’ll likely never come to terms with our own depravity, wretchedness, ugliness, and lostness in comparison to our holy, righteous, and perfect Savior. Seeing God accurately, enables us to see ourselves more clearly, but it also creates in us a hunger to serve, to be used of God.

In the following verses in chapter 6 we see God removing Isaiah’s guilt, then calling him into service. That’s a picture of what should happen in each of our lives. We have a moment when we finally begin to see God more clearly, we recognize what a mess we are, seek His forgiveness, are baptized as a public testimony to what the Lord is doing in our lives, then we’re called to service.

What might that look like for you and me? It essentially means, as I’ve said before, putting our “YES” on the table. That simply means we take a blank sheet of paper, write “YES!” in big bold letters and put our signature at the bottom. What does that mean? It means whatever the Lord says to do, our answer is “YES!” We don’t need to know the specific assignment, all we need to know is the Lord is calling us, and He will equip us.

In some ways it’s like marriage. We stand at the altar pledging to one another our lifelong devotion and we don’t have a clue what that’s going to look like. All we have is our love for one another and we’re hopeful that will be enough. But based on current statistics, it’s not enough for about 4 in 10 couples who give up and give in to divorce. It’s hard to know how that compares with how many begin their walk with God, but fall away.

All I know is if we’ll take the time and make the effort to go “all in,” get a clear vision of the Lord, see ourselves in proper perspective, yield our life and allegiance to Him and follow Him as He leads, we’ll find He’s more than adequate to meet our every need and use us in ways we haven’t imagined He could.

Food for thought.

Blessings, Ed 😊

Marriage and the Gospel

“Jesus replied, ‘Marriage is for people here on earth. But in the age to come, those worthy of being raised from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage.’” (Luke 20:34 NLT)

There are things about marriage that are wonderful, enjoyable, and endearing, but there are parts of marriage that are hard, discouraging, and can be debilitating. We tend not to give the hard parts much credence when our hormones are raging, and our heart is beating with “love” for this “perfect” human being the Lord has put into our life.

As the years unfold, we begin to see more clearly, not only how imperfect we are, but how unlike the person we married is in comparison to how we envisioned they would be. Isn’t that very much like what we see when we compare how we viewed our life when we started our walk with the Lord and how we see things after having been His child for many years?

There’s no question, the Lord certainly got the short end of the proverbial “stick.” We might have been tempted to believe the Lord got quite a prize when He got us, but time and spiritual maturity reveal a more complete picture and enable us to see ourselves in a much more accurate way.

Tim Keller wrote: “The gospel helps us to understand marriage and marriage helps us to understand the gospel.” That sounds very reasonable, but how so? What is it about marriage that enables us to see the Gospel more clearly and vice versa?

In marriage our focus is so much on ourselves, we miss a lot about the person we “love” because we’re so focused on how they’ll meet our needs. We don’t want to think about how we’ll need to change and adapt to this other person’s wants and desires. It’s not unlike that when we first come to Christ.

Forgiveness of sins and eternal life, what’s not to love about that? Then we start hearing words like self-lessness, self-discipline, obedience, submission, authority and we realize in order to be a child of God we’re going to have to do more than say a prayer, we’re going to have to commit everything we are to everything He is, learn to hear His voice and walk in obedience to His directives. It’s a lifelong process that grows richer and deeper the longer we walk with Him.

But how is this even possible? Because it’s the activity of the Lord in and through us as we grow in Him. Matt Capps gives us insight when he writes: “Religion says God will love us if we change. The gospel says God will change us because He loves us.” Marriage is the perfect context in which to allow the Lord to grow us up in Him.

To the extent we, as husband and wife, yield our life and allegiance to Jesus, to that extent we’ll grow in our likeness of Him, thus growing closer to one another. When we are unequally yoked, as the Bible describes in 2 Corinthians 6:14, we create a barrier that will prevent a couple from true intimacy, not only with the Lord, but with each other.

This principle can also be seen in individuals and couples with nominal commitments to the Lord and/or to each other. Satan is a master in dividing our heart in our love of the Lord and in our marital allegiance and bringing misery to those who aren’t equal in their love and devotion to the Lord or to each other.

Food for thought.

Blessings, Ed 😊

Master or Mastered?

“But Jesus told him, ‘No! The Scriptures say, “People do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”’” (Matthew 4:4 NLT)

As a believer in the God of the Bible it should be the aim of all of us to walk humbly and faithfully before our Master, the Lord Jesus Christ. “But how?” is often the cry of our heart. The two primary ways of learning the ways of the Lord are to become avid readers and learners of God’s Word, the Bible, and, secondly, to become earnest seekers of His still, small voice.

Reading the Bible is easy, but hearing God’s voice as He speaks to us through His Word takes time and practice. In the verse above Jesus gives us a glimpse into what we need. We need sustenance for our physical bodies, but we draw spiritual nourishment from the words of God.

The clear implication of Jesus’ words to the religious leaders of His day and to us is to view the words of the Bible as words directly from the mouth of God, but that’s not all. God speaks in many ways beyond the words of Scripture. Granted, that is the primary way, but He also speaks to us through circumstances, through other godly people, through experiences we have that may be unique to us, and, as we grow more tuned to His voice, He speaks directly to us through our spirit. In many ways He speaks as a parent to a child.

My experience has been that what He speaks to us personally will always be verified through His written word. He will never say anything to us that contradicts or is in violation of what He has taught us through His holy Word, the Bible. Which begs the question: What does His Word say? Of course, that’s the purpose of becoming a student of His words but reading the Bible once through doesn’t constitute a thorough knowledge and understanding of all He has said.

As D. A. Carson has so insightfully written: “The aim is never to become a master of the Word, but to be mastered by it.” How does that happen? By continually reading, thoroughly studying, and carefully applying what we’re learning in Scripture. Having read the Bible through many times over the years, I find it interesting that I can read a familiar verse as if I’m seeing it for the first time.

Often our life’s circumstances will dictate a closer look, a deeper meaning, and a more personal application. God’s words are never static, lacking in movement or action. They are, on the other hand, very dynamic, moving, and vary in impact. God’s words demand movement, often from where we’re stuck in any given moment, to where He’s calling us to go and be.

Our various applications of God’s Words will never change their original meaning but can expand that meaning as the Lord shows us specific ways He would have us see, understand, and respond to what He’s saying to us in this moment. Being mastered by God’s words implies a strong devotion to and a willingness to be submissive to God’s authority as revealed through His holy Word.

God’s words should always take precedence over our own words (i.e. what our “heart” is telling us). As God spoke through the Prophet Jeremiah: “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is? But I, the Lord, search all hearts and examine secret motives. I give all people their due rewards, according to what their actions deserve.” To master God’s Word is to be mastered by it’s Author.

Food for thought.

Blessings, Ed 😊

Experiencing God

“We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because He has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with His love.” (Romans 5:3-5 NLT)

If you’ve been a Christ follower for very long, you’re likely familiar with the book by the same title as this article – Experiencing God, by Henry Blackaby. If you haven’t read it and worked through the accompanying study guide, I highly recommend it. One of the primary takeaways that I gleaned from reading and studying Blackaby’s material is that God speaks personally and will guide us in discerning what He wants to do in and through us.

Saying a sinner’s prayer and attending church will not in and of themselves necessarily lead to intimacy with our Savior. Studying God’s Word, the Bible, and spending time in devoted prayer will. But here’s something else He’s teaching me: knowledge is not to be absorbed and sat on, it’s to be shared. Most of the time when the Lord speaks, He has an intended audience. Of course, it can be for just us, but often he has a larger audience in mind.

Recently the Lord laid on my heart to write someone I know who follows the doctrines of Mormonism. On some levels, what He shared startled and frightened me. Upon further investigation I learned that Mormonism, while using familiar terminology and even using Christ’s name in their church title, IS NOT CHRISTIAN! They use similar language, but many of their terms mean something entirely different. Don’t take my word for it, do your own research, but your Mormon friends are LOST and are going to be separated from the Lord for all eternity unless and until they cry out to the God and Christ of the Bible.

That relates to what Timothy Keller wrote: “When you experience God it is deeply personal, but it’s not at all private.” Most of what we learn as Jesus followers isn’t intended simply to make us smarter, better equipped, or even more able to live a holy life, it’s intended to be shared with specific people whom the Lord will identify, who need to hear what the Lord is saying to us.

It may be another believer who is struggling with the very issue with which we’re finding clarification. For example, the subject of suffering, dying, death and related issues can really hang us up, especially as a new believer. Perhaps the Lord has given you an insight as you were reading and studying the Scriptures that brought clarity to your heart and mind. Be aware that very often He will guide you to a specific audience to share that new information.

It may be a close friend, neighbor, co-worker, classmate, or someone with whom you do recreational activities. Perhaps you lead a small group or Sunday School class who could benefit from your insights. But additionally, He may lay a specific person on your heart, as He often does with me, with whom He desires you to share.

Just be open to His still, small voice, which over time, becomes more and more clear and easier to discern. The Lord’s love is personal and so are His messages. He guides, guards, corrects, instructs, chastens, enlightens, and expresses His deep love for us in very personal ways, but often with the express intent to have us share our experiences with others.

Food for thought.

Blessings, Ed 😊

True Happiness

“Since you have heard about Jesus and have learned the truth that comes from Him, throw off your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception. Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. Put on your new nature, created to be like God – truly righteous and holy.” (Ephesians 4:21-24 NLT)

Happiness is a fleeting emotion we seek to attach to moments of endearing pleasure that bring us some measure of satisfaction. We’re “happy” when our children behave, when we do well at work, when our spouse compliments us, or our old car lasts another year. While these moments encourage and sometimes inspire us, they don’t last, thus, the reason we can’t build our life on them.

In this season of my life, I place very little credence in moments of “happiness.” I’ve learned that what sustains and truly encourages me are moments of activated faith. What does that mean? It means I can’t trust my emotions to bring true and lasting peace and satisfaction. I’ve learned to trust that which endures, not only the test of time, but the test of rising and falling emotion.

Faith builds and sustains our life on a foundation that will prove true in the test of time. Faith centered and anchored in Jesus doesn’t quit when pain is intense, outlooks are bleak and the future unsure. It doesn’t tear us down when we fail and doesn’t expire when we don’t know the right answer or the right way to respond to a given situation.

Faith centers our hope on Jesus and HIS ability, not ours. We relax in the knowledge and full confidence that maybe we can’t, but He can! He is our focus and source of confidence; He is our strength in the face of ongoing weakness; He is our assurance when all the doors seem to be closing.

I’ve learned that contentment long term is found only in Jesus and a growing, thriving, maturing relationship with Him. That’s why Tony Reinke’s words caught my attention when he wrote: “The soul’s true happiness is no incidental byproduct of holiness. True happiness is true holiness.”

There’s a sense in which we could legitimately ask the question: “What is true holiness?” or “true” anything for that matter?” The word Paul used in Ephesians 4:24 in speaking of “true holiness,” means: “what is true in any matter under consideration; of a truth, in reality, in fact, certainly.” It means “true” holiness is what the Bible says about it.

It means to be set apart for sacred use by God, devoted and dedicated to living for godly purposes, to find our hope and well being in our love for and service to our Master, the Lord Jesus. Holiness as the Bible describes it means putting what the Lord wants for us ahead of what we think we want for ourselves.

At it’s core holiness means to allow the Lord Jesus to live His life in and through us without restriction or reservation. He’s Lord, we are not; He’s in charge, we are not; He calls the shots in our life, we do not: whatever He wants is okay with us because we trust His judgment more than we trust our own.

And, just so we’re clear, true holiness IS true happiness.

Food for thought.

Blessings, Ed 😊

Yes, God Sees!

“People of Israel, listen! God publicly endorsed Jesus the Nazarene by doing powerful miracles, wonders, and signs through Him, as you well know. But God knew what would happen, and His prearranged plan was carried out when Jesus was betrayed. With the help of lawless Gentiles, you nailed Him to a cross and killed Him. But God released Him from the horrors of death and raised Him back to life, for death could not keep Him in its grip.” (Acts 2:22-24 NLT)

We understand intellectually that God knows everything, thus, enabling Him to see, interpret accurately, and respond to every detail of our lives. He sees what we physically do, of course, but He also sees more clearly than we ever will, WHY we do what we do – the true motivation behind every decision we make, every word we speak, and every thought that crosses our mind.

There are certainly positive and negative ways to respond to that knowledge. We can cower in fear and conclude: “He knows everything about me. What’s the use of trying to be good or serve Him faithfully? He already knows I’m going to mess up, I might as well just go ahead and do whatever I feel like doing!”

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That’s certainly an option, but it’s a fatalistic disaster. It’s essentially to sentence ourselves to death and hell based on our inability to save ourselves. Here’s the truth – we’ll NEVER be good enough to satisfy the strict law of God, only Jesus, the only perfect Man who ever lived, could do that. That’s why we put our trust in Him and His righteousness, not in our own ability or goodness.

When we correctly understand and respond to the Lord’s ability to see every detail of our lives, it results in encouragement, not discouragement. Why? Because He knows our heart! He knows our strong desire to always and only walk in harmony with His will and purposes for our life. When we fail to live up to the standard of holiness to which He calls us, it should enable us to see Him more clearly, trust Him more implicitly, and depend on Him more fully to protect us from what caused us to fail in the first place.

Failure is not final when we see our fallenness in its proper context. We’re growing, maturing, developing as a child of God and that progress never stops until our heart stops. As long as we’re on this earth we’ll be under the Holy Spirit’s supervision, and we’ll be subject to His correction. Yes, He sees us when we fall and fail, but He also sees us when we’re struggling and in pain, and when, by His grace, we rise triumphantly in Him.

Dr. Tony Evans gives us insight when he writes: “God sees every time you are wronged. Leave it in His hands. He will vindicate or restore you when you put your trust in Him.” The appropriate response whether we’re hurt or the one doing the hurting, is trust. Trust in the Lord grounds us in the reality that we are fallen and capable of hurting others, while at the same time capable of being hurt by someone else.

It’s part of the deal of being a human being, but to brush either scenario off as irrelevant is to misunderstand God’s investment in us and His observations of us. He watches us, not to catch us in a moment of weakness, though He does see that, He keeps a close eye on us to protect, nurture, and express His love for us.

Not unlike a loving parent keeps a close eye on their toddler (or teen for that matter), we do it ideally out of love, to help prevent a danger or mistake that could be tragic. Yes, God sees everything, but always with an eye for comfort, healing, and restoration when necessary.

Food for thought.

Blessings, Ed 😊

The Price We Pay

“The Lord hears His people when they call to Him for help. He rescues them from all their troubles. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted; He rescues those whose spirits are crushed.” (Psalm 34:17-18 NLT)

If you’re walking faithfully with the Lord, have you ever stopped to consider just how valuable that relationship is? The verses above give us insight into our special “status” with the Lord. You may have a heart for children, especially those who are suffering or hungry, but that level of concern doesn’t compare with how you think of your own child or children.

God doesn’t see us as a collection of people who love Him, He sees each one of us as if we were His only child. The intimacy we can have with God, the closeness, the freedom we enjoy knowing our every concern is on our Heavenly Father’s heart and mind is beyond description and is of incalculable worth.

Each day we face new challenges, pains, heartaches, and avenues of suffering due to our inability to grasp the weight of all we face from all the sources that demand our attention. What a comfort to know our dear, loving, kind and caring heavenly Father has them all sorted out. On the days when I’m struggling physically and emotionally, I don’t have to explain anything to my Abba, my heavenly Papa, He knows every detail and has more clarity than I, not only about what I’m feeling and experiencing, but about what needs to happen to correct the problem.

Oh, the price we pay when we don’t take our every care to our Heavenly Father! The burdens we bare, the emotional torment and strain we suffer trying to carry the weight of our burdens alone. I’m reminded of the poor widow in 2 Kings 4 whose sons were at risk of being taken from her if she couldn’t pay her debt. Rather than worry and fret, she immediately went to the man of God, Elisha, and God miraculously supplied her needs.

Over and over throughout the Old and New Testaments God provides in miraculous ways, many times for people who don’t even profess faith in Him. Think of the feeding of the 5,000 men, plus women and children in Matthew 14 and the feeding of 4,000 men, plus women and children in Matthew 15. Jesus didn’t fret or “send them away,” as His disciples had suggested, He simply ask His heavenly Abba to provide what was needed, and He did!

When we’re exercising confidence in God through faith and trust, our worry, anxiety and stress are eliminated, but if we choose to nurture them instead, they become the price we pay for not placing our full confidence in our Father who has never failed. “Yeh, but I prayed for a new car, and I didn’t get one.” I also didn’t pray first, bought a new car and lived to regret it. Often times God’s “NO” is a gift we couldn’t have anticipated.

Another common question is: “Why should I consult God about something I can easily afford?” Just because we can afford something doesn’t make it right for us to purchase it. What if rather than purchase something that’s a luxury or non-necessity for us, we bought something for someone else that is a necessity for them?

In our lack of trust in God, evidenced by our moving forward with decisions that should be presented to the Lord, we miss opportunities to be a blessing for another person, and to put a smile on our Father’s holy face. It becomes another in a long line of ways we pay a price for our lack of trust in our Father.

Food for thought.

Blessings, Ed 😊

Our Pardon

“But the other criminal protested, ‘Don’t you fear God even when you have been sentenced to die? We deserve to die for our crimes, but this man hasn’t done anything wrong.’ Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when You come into Your Kingdom.’ And Jesus replied, ‘I assure you, today you will be with me in paradise.’” (Luke 23:40-43 NLT)

As we grow older, having followed the Lord Jesus for many years, while we would never admit this publicly (you won’t tell anyone will you? 😊), our hormones are on their last leg, our mind wavers between puddy and cement, the only real rise we get about anything is when someone mentions dessert, so the devil gets frustrated and leaves us alone much of the time. As a result, we get comfortable in what we deem to be our safe spiritual position and are too often tempted to think more highly of ourselves than we ought.

A frightening byproduct of that is our tendency to be critical of others who aren’t as far along on their journey as we are. It’s easy to see a young person struggling with perhaps the very same sin that nearly killed us spiritually, but rather than have compassion, come along side and walk with them, we forget how much we wrestled and what a path of carnage we left in our wake. It’s frightening because it’s wrong and disappoints our Savior and highlights how easy it is to slide into a state of self-sufficiency, believing we’ve arrived when we clearly have not.

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It’s as if we’re just waiting to die, wrongly believing the Lord is finished with us, that He has no more spiritual mountains for us to climb or sins for us to overcome. News flash: Satan NEVER stops tempting; thus, God is NEVER finished with us until we draw our last breath.

As a young Pastor I was excited when Dr. D. James Kennedy published his Evangelism Explosion material. It was straightforward, easy to remember, and very helpful in engaging people in listening to the Gospel. A simple question that we would ask was: “If you were to die today and stand before the God of heaven, and He would ask you: ‘Why should I let you into My perfect heaven?’ what would you say?”

Most of the answers I heard started with some version of: “Because I…” “Because I’m a good person.” “Because I was baptized, belong to a church, serve, give, or a thousand other things,” all of which miss the point and stray from the truth of the Gospel. Anytime we begin our defense with a personal pronoun we display our misunderstanding of the Gospel. “I,” “me,” “mine,” etc. places the weight of responsibility of our salvation on our shoulders, and we can never be enough, give enough, serve enough, be good enough to earn a place in heaven.

Think of the conversation with the angel when the man who died on the cross beside Jesus arrived at the gates of Paradise just hours from his conversation with the Savior. The angel asks him who he is and why he’s there? The man is baffled by the angel’s questions. “I’m a thief and I know I don’t deserve to be here.”

The angel continues: “Have you been baptized? Did you repent? Did you say the sinner’s prayer?” All met with a blank stare. Finally, the man says, “I don’t understand any of what you’re asking me. All I know is I’m here because the man on the cross beside me told me I could be.”

Let me leave you with these powerful words from Charitie Lees Smith’s hymn “Before the Throne of God Above” a verse of which says: “Because the sinless Savior died my sinful soul is counted free, for God the just is satisfied to look on Him and pardon me.” HALLELUJAH! WHAT A SAVIOR!

Blessings, Ed 😊

What Are You Sowing?

“Don’t be misled – you cannot mock the justice of God. You will always harvest what you plant. Those who live only to satisfy their own sinful nature will harvest decay and death from that sinful nature. But those who live to please the Spirit will harvest everlasting life from the Spirit.” (Galatians 6:7-9 NLT)

To believe we can live an offensive, self-focused life, yet still “reap” eternal life in heaven is like planting corn and expecting a harvest of wheat? What we sow we reap, but that’s not the only implication. We’re so blind to believe because “no one else knows about my sin,” it won’t really “hurt anyone.”

At least two fallacies exist in that thinking. One is to ignore the fact that our sin hurts the heart of God and He knows every detail of our lives, even our thoughts. Purity of heart, mind, soul, and body recognizes that our goal is to please and honor the Lord, not break His heart with our thoughtless sin. As God’s child we want to put a smile on His holy face, not bring Him sadness.

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But the second, often neglected or ignored implication of our sin is the effect it has on our “body,” the Church. When we’re sick or suffer physically, our whole-body aches and is weakened. It’s like our whole system is disoriented and malfunctioning. It’s not unlike that in the Body of Christ. Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 12:26 “If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it, and if one part is honored, all the parts are glad.”

Pastor Corky Calhoun sheds light on this when he wrote: “The church always reaps collectively what we sow personally.” We’re naïve to believe we can live as we please and it not hurt our corporate effect as a body of believers. Where do you think the common criticism of Christians is derived that says: “Christians are just a bunch of hypocrites!” or “The church is just filled with fakes and liars!”

It breaks my heart when I hear those kinds of comments, and I do my best, as I’m confident many of you do, to stop that kind of “negative press” in its tracks, but words are cheap. I would hope that what people watch is our life, not simply hearing our words in a heated or unguarded moment, but, unfortunately, opinions are derived from moments, not years.

What we “sow” day after day, week after week will hopefully render such a strong “crop” of evidence that we’re real, caring, hopeful, joyful, and radiate the love of Jesus that those who have had negative experiences with Christians can rethink their position. Yet, we all have weak moments or even seasons when we’re ashamed and regretful for what we’ve said or done. However, too often the “seeds” have been sown, and the hurt has been inflicted. We can only pray for forgiveness and ask the Lord to send someone to help heal the hearts of those we’ve hurt.

It would be wrong of me to project these negative things onto you or others, because I’ve been as guilty as anyone in not living up to God’s standards, especially in my early years of walking with the Lord. When appropriate, I’ve begged forgiveness of those I know I wronged and asked the Lord’s forgiveness and for His help in making things right, but His instructions have always been the same – “You can’t undo what is done, you can only live in a way that shows it wasn’t representative of the person you’re becoming in Me.”

Each of us has “sown” some rotten “crops,” but our prayer is that the Lord God would enable us to change and to bear the fruit representative of true repentance and a heart being formed by our Savior.

Food for thought.

Blessings, Ed 😊