“Prove me, O Lord, and try me;
test my heart and my mind.
For your steadfast love is before my eyes,
and I walk in your faithfulness.”
– Psalm 26:2-3

May we each come to the point where we can say these words along with David, inviting God’s scrutiny of our lives without fear! When we embrace Jesus Christ as our Savior, putting our faith in Him, we are instantly made holy in the eyes of God, because Christ’s righteousness is credited to us. In Christ, we ARE holy.

However, we’re also called to BE holy – to pursue a life increasingly like that of Jesus! We are to work in cooperation with the Holy Spirit to be transformed into the image of Christ. We must fill ourselves more and more with the vision and love of our Savior through worship, study and meditation on the Bible, fellowship with other Christians, service to God, and the sharing of Christ with those who don’t know Him. We must learn to live each day in faith and obedience to all that Christ commanded.

Faithful Christian life is a constant challenge to walk with God so closely that we increasingly see and desire nothing but more of Him and we walk in step with God’s Spirit. When we do, these words of David become true of us. As we grow in Christ, we increasingly become what we already are in the eyes of God, and that is a glorious thing!

“And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again.” – Mark 8:31

Jesus knew exactly what was going to happen to Him and He knew that it was God’s Plan A from before time began! The suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus was no accident or unfortunate turn of events. Jesus stepped out of eternity and into this world as a baby specifically to deal with the problem of human sin and to reverse the comprehensive damage it did to all creation.

By His perfect sin-free life, His sacrificial death on a cross, and His resurrection Jesus paid the penalty for our sin and set all who believe in Him free from sin and death. On the cross He carried all the righteous wrath of God for our personal sin, selfishness, and cruelty. He set us free, reconciled us to God, and established a new covenant between God and mankind in His blood.

When you put your faith in Jesus Christ, committing your life to follow Him, you enter that new covenant. The old covenant was all about laws and rules – hundreds of them – that we couldn’t hope to ever follow completely. The old covenant led to despair, because we could never measure up to the perfect holiness of God.

The new covenant is a covenant of grace – God’s gift of love, restoration, redemption, healing, and transformation that we can’t ever earn and never deserve. We don’t deserve what Christ did for us, and that’s the point. He did it out of love – for God the Father and for us – and all we must do is believe in Jesus as Lord and Savior. Do you believe?

“And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, ‘He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.’” – Mark 7:37

Visiting a predominantly Gentile region, Jesus performed miracles unlike anything they imagined possible. There were no words to describe their astonishment – it was beyond measure! These were not “the people of God” and would have had little familiarity with the Jewish Scriptures, yet their words of amazement unconsciously echo the prophecy of Isaiah 35.

What they saw in their midst and described with their words was the unique activity of the long-expected Messiah. By performing this miracle in their midst Jesus, the Messiah (or Christ), was making clear that He wasn’t merely a Messiah for the Jewish people. Jesus came for the Gentiles as well.

Jesus came to seek and to save the lost among all peoples – Jew and Gentile alike, every nation, every race, every language. This is an extraordinary truth: the people of God are no longer defined by ethnic heritage or nationality but by faith in Jesus alone.

This is truly good news in our multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-national community, because Jesus came to be their Messiah as well. However, they need to know about Him so they can believe in Him. We can’t assume they know, because they don’t. We must be willing and eager to cross the street to share this good news with our neighbors from every part of the earth, because Jesus came to be their Lord, Savior, and Messiah too!

“The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him,
and he is held fast in the cords of his sin.”
– Proverbs 5:22

We often like to go through life trying to operate a sin management program. We convince ourselves that our favorite sin isn’t that bad and that we can manage and control it. We do our best to minimize it, so that it’s a fairly small part of our lives, but we nonetheless like to keep it hanging around in the margins of our lives, because some part of us likes it. We get that it’s bad, but we don’t think it’s really THAT bad.

That’s all a bunch of lies we tell ourselves. We can’t manage sin. If we leave it hanging around it eventually manages us. We might think we have our problem with (fill in the blank: lust, addiction, anger, greed, gossip, etc…) under control, but we don’t. It ensnares us in a web of lies and excuses. It grabs at our ankles as we try to walk away and gnaws at our minds at unexpected hours. When we think we most have our favorite sin under control, it stages a sneak attack to prove it’s still in control.

Friends, we aren’t commanded to manage our sin, because we can’t. We’re called to kill our sin, to crucify it. We’re able to do this because when Christ gave Himself up to be crucified, He broke the power of sin over the lives of His followers. If you’ve accepted Christ as your Lord and Savior, then you have the power to kill the sin that lurks within.

It will not be easy. You won’t be able to do it in your own strength. Your sin will fight back! But if you commit yourself to crucify your sin every day, every time, then as you grow in your relationship with God through prayer, study, worship, and meditation, you will be able to put that sin to death.

Don’t play around with sin, because it isn’t playing around with you. Kill it. Fight it with all the power of God’s Holy Spirit within you. Fight it and be free!

“Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord?
And who shall stand in his holy place?
He who has clean hands and a pure heart,
who does not lift up his soul to what is false
and does not swear deceitfully.”
– Psalm 24:3-4

This is what it takes to enter the presence of God: clean hands (your actions are perfectly without sin), a pure heart (your thoughts are perfectly without sin), a soul that only delights in truth and worships the one true God, and a tongue that never, ever shades the truth. Does that describe you??? If you say yes, you’re lying to yourself (1 John 1:8)!

So what are we to do? God made us to be in relationship with Him. We long to be in relationship with Him. But He is pure, holy, righteous, good, and just. He can permit no unrighteousness to come before Him. How do we escape this conundrum? There’s only one way!

God made the way through His eternal Son Jesus Christ. Jesus is the only one who had truly clean hands, a pure heart, a soul fully committed to God, and a perfectly honest tongue. He lived the life we can’t, then He sacrificed that life on a cross, paying for our sins with His innocent, fully divine and fully human blood. His sacrifice canceled the debt of all who believe in Him and commit their life to following Him.

As a follower of Jesus, God credits the righteousness of Jesus to us because Christ lives within us. When we believe in Him, we are united with Him, and we are made righteous, standing before God as new creations in Christ, no matter what lies in our past.

Now for the most important question in your life… Does that describe you??? If you say no, what’s holding you back from following Christ in faith? We would love to talk about that with you.