Category: Thoughts and Meditations

“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor;
he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;”
– Isaiah 61:1

This is the good news of the Kingdom of God! Though this world is still fallen, Jesus Christ inaugurated His Kingdom when He began His ministry nearly 2000 years ago. The Kingdom is here and growing today. One day Jesus will return and the Kingdom will be made complete.

His Kingdom is a place of healing and wholeness, of abundance, comfort, care, and freedom. As followers of Jesus, we are ambassadors of that Kingdom, proclaiming and working for the blessing of the most vulnerable among us and pointing all to the ultimate healing and freedom available in Christ.

We need to live with a Kingdom mindset that is generous, gracious, and life-giving to the poor, the broken-hearted, the imprisoned, and the enslaved. This is the Kingdom in which we already live and the Kingdom we’re called to advance. “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven…”

“That according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being…” – Ephesians 3:16

If you’re feeling weak, worn down, exhausted, crushed, or defeated, you aren’t alone this year! However, if you’re a follower of Jesus, the power of God is available to strengthen you. God’s Spirit lives within every follower of Christ and He can strengthen us to continue running our race with perseverance for the glory of God.

Paul prays here for God to strengthen his readers this way. This is a good and appropriate thing to pray for ourselves regularly and for all those around us in our church family. 2020 reminds us that the challenges of life are far bigger than us. However, God is bigger still! Rather than trying to endure by our own strength we must learn to yield to the power that’s already alive within every Christian.

“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.” – Ephesians 2:1-2

It’s easy for Christians to become frustrated because it seems like non-believers think differently from us. They don’t care what the Bible says. They disagree with our fundamental worldview. At times they ridicule our beliefs. The anger and frustration of self-identified Christians is palpable at this moment and it’s misguided.

We need to stop being surprised or frustrated by the fact that non-Christians don’t act like Christians! Non-believers are still following the prince of the air (aka Satan) whether or not they realize it. We need to stop thinking that the solution is to browbeat people into agreeing with our biblical worldview on issues. That simply isn’t going to happen.

We cannot change people! Our primary mission must be to introduce people to the One Who Changes People. Once they have met Christ, then the process of discipleship will create space for the Holy Spirit to change lives and minds. There will be no movement on issues near and dear to our hearts until there is spiritual life. Spiritual life only comes into the spiritually dead through the power of God, not our own efforts.

“How beautiful upon the mountains
are the feet of him who brings good news,
who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness,
who publishes salvation,
who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns.'”
– Isaiah 52:7

Many of us are naturally shy and fearful about sharing the good news of Jesus Christ. We fear we’ll mess it up. We fear we’ll be rejected. We fear that our mistakes and shortcomings make us hopeless hypocrites.

This verse describes how we really are when we live the command to share the hope we have in Jesus Christ. We are beautiful. We are beautiful messengers of hope and good news. We are beautiful sharers of peace and happiness. We make public the beautiful salvation and redemption available through faith in Jesus Christ.

Sharing Christ is beautiful and we are made beautiful by the act of grace that is sharing Christ! Don’t let fear keep you from the beautiful work to which we are called.

“Woe to him who strives with him who formed him,
a pot among earthen pots!
Does the clay say to him who forms it, ‘What are you making?’
or ‘Your work has no handles’?”
– Isaiah 45:9

We have a natural tendency to argue with God about how He chooses to exercise His sovereignty over the universe. We argue about the challenges and limitations He places in our lives which we don’t appreciate. We question the catastrophes that seem to be everywhere these days. In our radical autonomy we make ourselves God and simply deny the reality of what He created and how He created us.

Woe to us when we do! Our modern culture – churched and unchurched – has far too high of an opinion of ourselves and our wisdom and far too low of an opinion of God and His wisdom. God is indeed supreme and sovereign. He is all-knowing, all-wise, and all-good and He sees across time. We can either expend our energy battling against that and trying to enlist others to join in our denial of reality -OR- we can trust in God’s wisdom and goodness, even when we can’t understand it because we are finite and He is infinite.

When we trust in God rather than battle Him, there’s a wonderful peace that comes from simply asking our Creator each day how we can best glorify Him by living within His plan rather than rebelling against it. There is a joy from pursuing an ever-deepening relationship with our Creator rather than wasting our life battling Him.