“Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’” – Galatians 3:11

It’s the most natural thing in the world to want to make yourself right with God by “being a good person”, doing “good things”, and following whatever moral or ethical code you find meaningful. We humans know there’s something wrong with the world and with us, so we desperately want to save ourselves from the consequences of our bad choices, bad actions, bad thoughts, and inexcusable inactions. We want to rationalize and justify away our separation from the utterly holy God of the Universe. None of those things work!

God is holy. He is perfect. He is utterly without sin or darkness. We aren’t, no matter how hard we try. Even our best moments are often tainted with selfish or mixed motives. Even our best actions can be accompanied by ugly thoughts. Then there are all the other moments and actions which aren’t our best!

We can’t get ourselves right with God by rule following. Ever. We can’t get ourselves right with God through charity, kindness, and good deeds. We can’t get ourselves right with God through greater knowledge or better habits. To be justified is to be declared fully righteous and that’s only possible through faith.

But faith in what or whom? The only faith that can make us righteous is faith in the One who was perfectly righteous and died on a cross as an innocent sacrifice so that His righteousness could be credited to us by God’s grace through faith. “For our sake, He made Him to be sin Who knew no sin, so that in Him, we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Who is that Him? Jesus Christ, the Righteous (1 John 2:1)!!!

“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” – Galatians 2:20

This glorious statement reflects wondrous realities and crucial challenges for those who’ve accepted Jesus! If Jesus is your Lord, then He truly does live in you! He loved you and gave His life for you! He died on the cross and rose from the grave so that your sins could be fully, finally, and completely dealt with in the eyes of God! You, the old you, the natural you, the you whose sins nailed Jesus to that cross, have been crucified with Christ!

The question is, if these things are true about you, have you made it a priority to make the other things in this verse true? Is your life – your whole life, 24×7 – being lived by faith in Jesus? Is your whole life (public and private) devoted to glorifying Jesus, drawing ever nearer to Jesus, and become more and more like Jesus?

That’s the call to live a crucified life by faith! Are you truly yielding your life to Jesus Who lives in you, or are you trying to have it both ways and continue living according to old patterns, preferences, and habits? The most wonderful things are true about us in Jesus Christ, but these truths invite us (and command us) to pursue even more wonderful things! Sadly, too few Christians pursue those things with the kind of zeal with which we pursue other things of this world. Don’t let that be true of you. Embrace everything Paul writes here as the dominant theme of your daily life!

“Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Because you have prayed to me concerning Sennacherib king of Assyria’” – Isaiah 37:21

We humans like to overthink things. That can include overthinking prayer. We ponder what and how prayer works. Why should we tell our needs to an all-knowing God? Why should we have to articulate our requests to a God Who is always for us? If God is all-good, can our prayers even make a difference? Does prayer change God’s mind or plan? The list goes on…

Don’t overthink prayer! The Bible invites us to pray, encourages us to pray, and commands us to pray. Jesus, the Son of God, prayed often and modeled a life of prayer for us. We’re told that prayer has great power (James 5:16). We see the power of prayer throughout the Bible. In this passage, King Hezekiah is told that because he prayed about the Assyrian invasion of Judah, God would dramatically and miraculously rescue them from Sennacherib.

Not all prayer is answered with a visible “Yes”. Not all prayer is answered as quickly or dramatically as Hezekiah’s prayer. However, all prayer is heard by God. One of the greatest privileges of Christian life is being able to approach God on His throne and make every request, concern, fear, anxiety, and burden of our heart known to Him. Through our ongoing life of prayer, we come to know God better, our heart is aligned to His heart, our fellowship with Him ripens and matures, and we absolutely do see many prayers answered.

Jesus was clear: ask and keep asking, seek and keep seeking, knock and keep knocking, pray persistently and never give up!

“Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
then shall the lame man leap like a deer,
and the tongue of the mute sing for joy.
For waters break forth in the wilderness,
and streams in the desert;”
– Isaiah 35:5-6

In Isaiah 35, God promises a wonderful time of renewal and restoration from all the devastation Israel would experience. The reversal of human suffering described in these verses is the heart of this wonderful promise and a picture of God’s Kingdom. This promise would be fulfilled some seven centuries later in the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth.

Jesus opened the eyes of the blind. Jesus unstopped the ears of the deaf. Jesus healed those whose disabilities kept them from leaping. Jesus released the tongue of people who were mute. Jesus knew He was the fulfillment of these verses and pointed those who doubted Him to these very words. Jesus alone offers the Living Water that flows from deep within every one His followers so that we never run dry spiritually!

All God’s promises are yes and amen in Jesus (2 Corinthians 1:20)! He is the revelation of God, the fulfillment of Scripture, and God in the flesh. Jesus suffered, died on a cross, and rose from the dead for you, so that your sins would be forgiven when you believe in Him. In Him, we not only find spiritual healing and eternal life, we enjoy the certainty of a glorious eternal future in God’s presence with full sight and hearing, perfected bodies, and tongues that will praise God forever. Have you embraced Jesus as your Lord and Savior?

“For we cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the truth.” – 2 Corinthians 13:8

Truth must matter to the people of God! This is even more true in our post-truth culture in which many let their politics and preferred news sources define truth. We’ve entered an era in which our political loyalties (in any direction) and non-stop news/social media consumption (which is directly tied to our political loyalties) not only spoon feed us our truth, but we don’t care at all about the possibility of any truth coming from a different source. This is unacceptable for followers of Jesus!

We serve the God of truth and are commanded not to bear false witness (including passing along false information). God’s Word is our ultimate source of truth and its content must take priority over any earthly news source. That must be the absolute, rock-solid first commitment for every Christian.

Then when it comes to earthly news sources, we must branch out beyond just those that repeatedly echo whatever it is we like to hear or happen to believe about the news of the day. God sends rain on the just and on the unjust, so there is no single human party, channel, or twitter feed with a monopoly on the truth (though some may be entirely false). Christians should engage with a variety of sources and kinds of information.

We should be people who are curious, who use the faculties God has given us to be actively learning our whole lives. We must become people who discern and sift the mixture of truth and falsehood flows out of any human speaker, party, channel, or feed. We should be people who are quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to get angry, and slow to like and share. We must be for the truth. Not “our” truth. Not “their” truth. “The” truth. Truth must matter!