Category: Thoughts and Meditations

“Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.” – 1 Corinthians 11:1

For all the theological complexities, marvels, and wonders of our faith, the question of how we should live can be answered pretty simply! Imitate Paul who imitated Jesus. In other words, imitate Jesus.

It’s as simple as that. Act like Jesus. Talk like Jesus. Think like Jesus. Don’t just ask what would Jesus do, DO what Jesus would do. Always. No need to overthink it.

You’ll mess up sometimes. It’s inevitable. When you do, there’s always grace freely available from God to cover your sin when you confess it to Him and ask forgiveness. Learn to live in God’s Spirit and mess up less and less over time. Imitate Jesus more and more, better and better.

Imitate Jesus. It’s as simple as that!

“Will you not revive us again,
that your people may rejoice in you?”
– Psalm 85:6

Revival is a quickening of our spirit and a renewal of our love and zeal for God. It takes us from lukewarm faith and limited obedience to blazing hot love and imitation of Christ. Revival shakes the people of God out of the spiritual sleepwalking that easily overtakes us in the busyness of life. Revival is a work of God and is desperately needed in churches throughout this land!

When revival breaks out, the people of God burn with a love for God and His Kingdom that’s almost unimaginable from the perspective of our ordinary lives. Suddenly the restraints we feel regarding what looks respectable and feels safe fall away and we’re ready to simply praise, worship, and serve the Lord. We see God as truly greater than all the other good things that fill our lives.

Let us pray for revival! Pray for God to move the hearts and souls of His people to renewed rejoicing in the Lord, to profound worship, and to powerful evangelism that flows out of joy. Pray for a movement of God’s Spirit to refine those within His churches and to awaken those outside His church. If you’re not currently feeling the deep and endless joy of the Lord, pray too for your personal revival, that you may rejoice in the Lord!

“No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” – 1 Corinthians 10:13

Ah, temptation. It happens to all of us! Every person experiences temptation. Our temptations may change over time but we’ll never be entirely free of the Devil’s work this side of heaven. However, if you’re a Christian, you have everything you need to resist temptation every temptation. The Devil literally can’t make you do anything, so don’t bother making that lame excuse!

In this life, you’ll experience temptation, but in Christ you have the power you need to resist or flee. The critical question is will you? God doesn’t want His people giving in to temptation, so He empowers us to avoid falling into sin and ALWAYS provides a way out of even the most powerful temptation. The challenge for our stubborn pride is that the way out can be terribly embarrassing.

In the Old Testament, Joseph fled temptation and lost most of his clothes in the process. It wasn’t merely embarrassing, but resulted in his suffering a great injustice. Nonetheless, God was glorified and used Joseph mightily because of His proven faithfulness. Pursuing holiness and resisting temptation might be inconvenient, embarrassing, or costly, but it’s SO worth it!

Resisting temptation isn’t just about gritting our teeth and suffering silently. It often requires fleeing, sometimes publicly and in a humiliating fashion. When you next battle powerful temptation will you take God’s offered way of escape for the sake of His holiness?

“And he said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.’” – Mark 5:34

In the blink of an eye, a woman who’d been suffering for 12 years was instantly healed, simply because she touched Jesus. Her physical ailment was healed. In that healing, she was also healed spiritually. No longer was she “unclean” and therefore cut off from the religious life of Israel. Her faith had truly made her well.

This miraculous moment reveals the healing power of Jesus as well as His divine power to make clean those who are unclean. It points us toward Christ’s power of healing and restoration that’s freely offered to every man, woman, and child. All of us suffer from a terrible disease called sin. It has plagued us since birth. All of us are unclean by the fact that we rebel against God’s good design, plan, and will for our lives. All of us exclude ourselves from fellowship with holy God. However, faith in Christ makes us well, just as it made that woman well!

When we believe in Jesus, believing that He’s the Son of God who sacrificed Himself on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins, dying, being buried, and rising from death on the third day, we too are made well. By God’s grace, through faith in Jesus Christ, we are saved. Our sins are forgiven. We’re able to go and live in peace with God for the first time in our lives. We’re truly made well spiritually and we’re healed of our worst sickness – our bondage to sin, evil, and death.

If you’re a believer in Jesus, then your faith has already made you well in the most important ways possible. If you aren’t, are you ready to believe, be healed, and live in peace with God?

“If others share this rightful claim on you, do not we even more? Nevertheless, we have not made use of this right, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ.” -1 Corinthians 9:12

This could be the greatest challenge for Christians in this present age of radical autonomy, independence, preference, comfort, and self-concern! Will we endure ANYTHING rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ? Do we love the lost more than we love ourselves? Paul certainly did!

To really answer these questions, we need to recognize how many obstacles we can inadvertently put in the way of the gospel. Things we don’t think about, things we think “everyone” knows or does, things we know to be our right to do our way. They certainly are our right, but in Christ, we have the strength to forgo our rights for the sake of lost souls! Let that soak in…

We must learn to think outside ourselves, our preferences, our traditions, our experiences and consider things from the viewpoint of unbelievers of different faiths (or no faith), cultures, ethnicities, ages, and experiences. We must recognize where many of the things we prefer or enjoy in our Christian life can actually prevent people from really listening with an open mind and believing the Gospel.

Anything that isn’t biblically mandated, we must be willing to set down for the sake of the salvation of those currently facing an eternity apart from God. Our love for those currently under God’s wrath must be greater than our love for having our way. As much as we might like our patterns, habits, preferences, politics, and traditions, if they aren’t mandated by the Bible, we should be willing to be quiet about them for the sake of saving others.

Take time to reflect on things in your daily life, your character, or your practice of your faith that discourage people from believing in Jesus. Can you endure changing those rather than putting an obstacle in the way of the gospel?