“Nehemiah was able to accomplish a huge task against incredible odds because he learned that there is no success without risk of failure, no reward without hard work, no opportunity without criticism, and no true leadership without trust in God.”
~NASB study note from the book of Nehemiah
Any time the church, Christians or Jesus followers leverages anything other than love we go backwards not forwards. Because Jesus said by this one thing all men will know that you’re my followers – how you love one another. And once the church got the power, they decided we’re not going to leverage love any more. We’ll leverage some other things. And so after the church got in control, The Great Commission began to sound more like this — “Therefore go and impose my teaching, values and world views on all nations threatening them with judgement and destruction if they don’t obey everything I commanded you.” That’s the message of a group that has the power, that is in control NOT the message of Jesus neither was it the message of the New Testament.
You don’t win peoples hearts by imposing your will. Somewhere along the way they (the church) decided we’re not going to leverage love any more. We’re going to leverage our power, our authority. We’re going to go from winning to threatening, from God is love to God will get you. And whenever the church, Christians or believers leverage anything other than the love of God, we go backwards every time.
I’m convinced because we’ve gotten this wrong, we’ve set ourselves unnecessarily at odds with culture.
~Excerpt from Andy Stanley’s Christian: Insiders Outsiders.
I just read this in the NASB Study Bible and it stood out to me:
“Faith is the step between promise and assurance. Miracles seem so out of reach for our feeble faith. But every miracle, large or small, begins with an act of obedience. We may not see the solution until we take the first step of faith.”
I’m listening to an Andy Stanley series on the story of Joseph (Genesis 37-47) and heard this quote:
“The test of prosperity is passed by fewer people than the test of want and need.”
Good stuff.
“Our greatest woes result from the corruption of our highest good, e.g., speech, sex, technology, atomic
power.”
~Gordon J. Wenham
Recently I was reading Charlaine Harris’ new novel, Dead and Gone. A paragraph from the book resonated with me:
Don’t you just hate nights like that, when you think over every mistake you’ve made, every hurt you’ve received, every bit of meanness you’ve dealt out? There’s no profit in it, no point to it, and you need sleep.
Satan definitely hits the replay button on my life a lot. It’s hard to remember, but God has forgiven and forgotten my sins.
as far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us. (Psalm 103:12)
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)
Then I acknowledged my sin to you
and did not cover up my iniquity.
I said, “I will confess
my transgressions to the LORD “—
and you forgave
the guilt of my sin. Selah (Psalm 32:5)
In James 1 we read:
2Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. 4Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. 5If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. 6But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 7That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; 8he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.
In The Sacred Romance the author interprets this passage like this:
James tells us in the introductory thoughts to his letter that we should count it all joy when we fall into various tirals because God will use them to make us substantive. He tells us that this will happen as we learn to trust totally in God rather than halfway counting on our own devices with God as a fallback (being double-minded).
I never thought of it in quite this way. I suppose I thought of perseverance as working harder, doing more. But that’s not what God asks for. God is asking for me, just as I am. It’s ok to admit I’m tired. It’s ok to say I cannot go further. It’s ok to rely on Him.
Unfortunately it’s all too easy for me to rely on myself, to be self-sufficient, to think I have to do it all on my own.
Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.
My first post on this topic made me think – God has already taken hold of us. In Phillipians, we read “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.” Or at least that’s how a pastor explained it years ago at a Navigator conference I attended. Cool idea though, huh?