Category: Thoughts and Meditations

“And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.” – Romans 1:28

Here Paul describes one of the devastating consequences of widespread cultural rejection of God. When enough people reject the existence, presence, or authority of God as Sovereign Lord of the Universe, He gives them exactly what they want. When enough people tell God to get lost, He steps back and removes His restraining hand. What follows is absolute madness!

He removes the restraints of conscience, morality, and custom and lets people indulge every whim, every fantasy, and every destructive, shameful, and degrading idea they can come up with. To be clear, this is a punishment, not a blessing! This is the last stage of a dying culture before it either dies completely or turns back to God in repentance and revival.

Are we there yet??? It certainly feels like we might be. There no longer seem to be any filters stopping people’s most irrational thoughts, dreams, and fantasies from being expressed loudly and acted out proudly. Plenty of people have told God to get lost and rejected His authority in matters of politics, culture, art, family, justice, education, and sexuality. Media and the arts tend to be increasingly degraded and calling it progress. Our culture and society is ripping itself apart from the indulgence and selfishness demanded by each person doing whatever they think is right in their eyes.

This current cultural moment certainly feels like a Romans 1 time. Pray that the western world would recognize the madness and finally humble itself before God in vast numbers praying, repenting, and seeking God’s face. Pray for widespread revival and renewal in the name of Jesus. Pray for those who don’t know Jesus and for those who do but are still living in this degraded Romans 1 way. #FollowJesus

“For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’” – Romans 1:17

What is the “it” in this verse? The Gospel good news of Jesus Christ! The Gospel reveals God’s perfect righteousness and gracious work of salvation which is always, only, and completely through faith in Jesus Christ. The Gospel reveals God’s absolute righteousness and our total unrighteousness. It highlights the perfect, unstained, purity and holiness of our Creator. It also reveals the countless ways we have all sinned and fallen short of His glory and standard.

The Gospel makes it clear that we can’t possibly save ourselves. It emphasizes that no amount of rule-following, morality, self-discipline, or good deeds could ever make imperfect people like us perfect. The Gospel also reveals God’s limitless mercy and grace in making a way for our sins to be forgiven and righteousness declared. That way is only through repentance and faith in the perfect life, sacrificial death, and physical resurrection of Jesus Christ, God’s eternal Son.

We can only grab ahold of God’s righteousness by believing the Gospel, entrusting our lives to Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. It is only by faith that we are saved and enter into new spiritual life in Jesus Christ. This was always God’s plan from eternity past. The only remedy for our sin is God’s grace poured out through faith in His Son. Take some time today to really think about how good this Good News is! Rejoice and give thanks if you believe it. Decide to believe it for the first time if you haven’t before. #FollowJesus

“When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law, he tore his clothes.” – 2 Kings 22:11

Whenever we’re tempted to complain about our nation’s moral and spiritual decay, we should remember that things could be much worse! Judah, the remaining people of God, had drifted so far from the Lord that they’d completely lost the Scriptures! It’s hard to say how many decades they went without having or reading God’s Word. However, when the scroll of the Law was found, the righteous king was horrified. As God’s Law was read, he instantly understood just how great the nation’s disobedience was.

Because King Josiah was a godly man, he lamented, repented, and sought the Lord. The message he got back from God was that Judah’s disobedience had been so profound for so long that their fate was already sealed. Nonetheless, God was pleased by Josiah’s repentance and blessed him by sparing him from the coming wrath headed for Judah.

Flash forward to today. We’re blessed to have God’s Word readily available in many high-quality translations both in print and online. And yet, the prevailing culture is profoundly, proudly, and loudly disobedient. We don’t have Josiah’s excuse that we have no idea what God expects. We know. Even unbelievers know, they just don’t care or respect God, Jesus, or the Bible.

Our situation is nowhere near as dire as Judah’s. We have God’s Word. That’s all the more reason we MUST pray for people to come to repentance and return to God. Perhaps it isn’t too late for a nationwide or global revival. As God’s people, we must pray for that. It must begin with us (Christians) – repenting of our sins, rejecting our excuses, and reforming our casual attitudes towards obedience to God’s Word, will, and expectations. Then we must pray for revival to spread. Take time every day to pray for the Holy Spirit to sweep across this land and draw millions to #FollowJesus!

“For out of Jerusalem shall go a remnant, and out of Mount Zion a band of survivors. The zeal of the Lord will do this.” – 2 Kings 19:31

This verse addresses a critical theme and recurring pattern throughout Scripture. God always preserves the faithful remnant of His people. Over and over again, from Genesis to Revelation, we see that not everyone who identifies with God is actually a faithful believer. Those who claim the name of God without truly believing and living out that faith in obedience eventually suffer catastrophic judgment. It has happened repeatedly to Israel and to other nations. But God always preserves a remnant who are truly faithful.

It happened in the great Flood. It happened in the Wilderness. It happened in the Exile. It happened after the destruction of Jerusalem by Rome. Jesus describes it in Matthew 25. Paul describes it in Romans chapters 9 through 11. Not all Israel is Israel. Not all Christians are Christian. Many today claim the name of Jesus. But is He truly their Lord and Savior? Have they submitted to Him, having been saved by God’s grace through life changing faith in Jesus as resurrected and ruling Lord? Jesus promised that everyone who believes in Him will be saved. However, He was emphatic that if we don’t live in obedience to Him we don’t really believe in Him.

Expect another great culling of the church in the coming years. Be prepared for hard times that will cause many who are only nominally Christian to leave because of the cost of obedience. However, God will always preserve the faithful remnant unto eternity. Take stock of your own faith and make sure you are in that faithful remnant. Is Jesus your Savior? Is He truly the Lord of your life? Have you submitted your life, your time, your talents, and your treasure to obeying and serving King Jesus? Is His Kingdom and character increasingly your Kingdom and character? Are you pursuing the agenda of Heaven or grasping at the things of the earth? #FollowJesus

“He removed the high places and broke the pillars and cut down the Asherah. And he broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it (it was called Nehushtan).” – 2 Kings 18:4

About 700 years before this verse, the people of Israel had grumbled against God in the desert and been punished by venomous snakes. To save them, God had instructed Moses to create a bronze snake on a pole. Once bitten, the people could look up at this snake and be healed. About 700 years after this verse, Jesus explained in John 3 that the whole episode illustrated the need for God’s people to look to Him and His work on the cross to be healed from the poisonous effects of sin in our lives.

However, almost exactly halfway between the creation of the statue and the fulfillment of everything it really illustrated, the people of God had twisted the statue’s purpose in an ungodly way. They were worshiping the statue instead of the Lord Who commanded its creation! They had taken something that was originally good and ordained by God and made it a holy object worthy of worship and sacrifice. For the spiritual health of God’s people, King Hezekiah had to smash this object of the people’s inappropriate devotion.

In Christian life, we can easily make the same mistake as the Israelites. We often elevate good traditions and practices that started with a godly purpose to an inappropriate level of devotion. We pour our emotional devotion into those rather than into God, thinking they are the same. That could be about the order of things in a worship service, the type of worship music we prefer, a much-loved event in church life, some aspect of the church building, the “proper” way to observe a special day, or simply “the way we’ve always done it”. Those things almost certainly began with a good and godly purpose, but when they take on an inappropriate level of emotional attachment in our hearts, we inadvertently move them into lordship in a way displeasing to God.

Sometimes, we simply need to break up our bronze serpents – the grand traditions that we love a little too much – so that our hearts are more fully attached to Jesus. Take some time to reflect… is there anything that’s become so important to you that God might want you to smash it to more fully #FollowJesus?