All of Us

Have you ever visited an "Escape Room"?  There's one in the town where I live, but I have yet to try my hand at this new form of entertainment. However, it's also one of the new techniques used in education to help students learn how to work in a group while reviewing or learning new academic information.  In a technology training last summer, I had the opportunity to participate in an example of this type of lesson.

Last week I tried out a similar activity in one of the classes I co-teach.  The students had to work together to solve puzzles, find clues, and decipher codes with no guidance from me or their classroom teacher. They had to rely on each other, listen to the ideas of their teammates, solve problems as a group, and be willing to try approaches that were different than their own.  They had a blast!

After the activity was over, we all talked about how that exercise was like real life.  In most businesses and occupations, people have to rely on the gifts, talents, and knowledge of others to accomplish the objectives of the organization.  While the activity and the discussion that followed was good for my elementary students, it brings up an even better reminder to us as members of the body of Christ.

My pastor likes to say that not one of us is as smart as all of us and not one of us is as strong as all of us together.  We were never designed to walk out this Christian life on our own.  We need each other - not just to work together to accomplish tasks, but just to be there for each other - encouraging, exhorting, teaching, interceding, and serving.

There are spiritual gifts that each of us has that were meant to be shared. What we lack, someone else can give to us. What they lack, we can share with them.  Every time the voice of the Holy Spirit urges us toward some kind of action and we hold back because of fear or self-consciousness, we are robbing our brothers and sisters of a blessing that God desired to give them.

I like the way the Living Bible expresses Ephesians 4:16:

Instead, we will lovingly follow the truth at all times - speaking truly, dealing truly, living truly - and so become more and more in every way like Christ who is the Head of his body, the Church. Under his direction, the whole body is fitted together perfectly, and each part in its own special way helps the other parts so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.

Are you doing your part?  Are you helping in the church where God has placed you?  Are you solving problems, searching for knowledge, contributing your skills?  If a third grader can work in a cooperative group and unlock virtual locks, certainly you can be a functioning member of a healthy, growing, loving body of believers unlocking the promise of God for the corporate body where He has placed you.

Who Has Life?

The other day I heard a phrase we often use in Christianity.  The person speaking said, "I gave my life to the Lord."  What he meant was the same thing we all mean when we use those words - we accepted the work that Jesus did on our behalf, acknowledged our sins, asked for forgiveness, and became a new creation in Him -  born-again.

I've heard the phrase a thousand times, but that particular day the words struck me a little differently.  When you give something to someone, you have to possess it in the first place. While we are in the body, I guess to a certain extent we own our lives.  We are the ones making decisions daily that tell our body what to do and what to say, but the "life" we have is nothing we can give to God.  He gave us the lives in our mortal bodies to begin with.

When we come into a relationship with Jesus, He gives His life to us - not the other way around!

Life is more than just the absence of physical death.  We all have heard of people who seemed to be living "the good life".  They had money, position, fame, talent, looks - everything the world thinks is required for happiness, yet they are miserable and some even take their own lives. I've known others who had little the world would envy, yet the joy that radiates from them is amazing. 

The Bible tells us that "in Him we live and move and have our being" in Acts 17:28.  The life that we have in Jesus is so much more than anything that we can gain in the natural world.  Jesus Himself said, "I am the vine, you are the branches.  He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing". (John 15:5)

If we do not maintain that connection to Him, we can begin to dry up spiritually.  He promised that He would never leave us, but the choice to leave Him can be ours.  I have learned leaving Him doesn't always involve jumping back into the deep end of the sin pool.  It can be as simple as ignoring His voice or avoiding his Word.  It can just be prioritizing our wants before His will.  We will never perfectly follow Him, but we can be pursuing Him in obedience, regardless of how we feel or what circumstances surround us. Choose life!

Hunger and Empty Calories

Anybody hungry?  That's a pretty easily answered question.  From our infancy, we recognize the need for food.  When we are tiny, we cry for it until someone satisfies our craving by bringing us a bottle.  As soon as we develop the least little bit of language, we ask for "milk" or "cookie" or whatever we know how to say in an effort to get those hunger pangs under control.

The more we mature, the more control we have over what we put in our mouths.  Sometimes we make good, healthy choices and sometimes we consume junk.  We wrestle with our weight and vow to control our diet.  Food is a constant in all of our lives.  We depend on it for nutrition and we enjoy it for its taste.  We plan, we shop, we cook, we share, we celebrate - all with food.

God gave living beings the sensation of hunger to ensure that we would seek the food that we need so we could survive. I believe He also gives us a sensation of spiritual hunger to draw us to Himself. 

Sometimes when our family is out in our van, my two-year-old granddaughter passes the time by pretending different things.  One of her games of imagination involves giving everyone in the vehicle virtual gummy bears.  They are always pink.  She puts some in my hand and tosses them over her head to her papaw and her daddy in the front seat.  It's a delightful little game and we all play along - thanking her for her gift, but her gummies have no taste, no calories, and no nutrition. We don't get any enjoyment or any energy from what she provides to us.  Imaginary food profits nothing, even if it's fun.

In our lives as Christians, we sometimes settle for fun things that profit nothing instead of pursuing things that are spiritually nutritious, that provide energy for our lives and yes - that we can enjoy. The Bible tells us to "taste and see that the Lord is good".  However, we settle for the food of the world that is at best bland, and at worst - poison.

Are you feeding your hunger with empty calories?  How is that working out for you?  It's not working out too well for me and I'm asking God to direct my choices so that I am taking in that which He knows will strengthen me and help me grow. 

Are You Really Listening?

This weekend I learned why 60-year-old women do not have babies.  I already knew that raising children is a challenge even for young people, but a weekend of managing a strong-willed two-year-old showed me the wisdom of God's plan in trusting tiny people with younger parents! 

Sometimes my son and his wife say of their little one, "She doesn't listen".  I decided this weekend that her problem wasn't a listening problem - it was an obeying problem. Of course, just about everything this kid does points me to a larger lesson and I realized that sometimes my own problem is not in the listening, but in the obeying.

How many things am I neglecting to do when God has already told me in His word what He expects?  How many times have I felt that nudge of the Holy Spirit to say or do something and used some lame excuse to avoid being obedient to that calling?

When Bella doesn't do what she is told, it is because she really wants to continue to do what she wants.  Just like all of us, her flesh says that playing with something dangerous is fun or that it's more important to explore the possibilities of what is in that mystery cabinet than it is to truly listen to what I am asking her to do or warning her to avoid.  She's human and she is two.  I will love her regardless, but I will expect her to grow in obedience as she gets older.

In the same way, God will also continue to love us, but He expects us to grow in obedience and understanding as we follow Him.  That selfish, self-centered spirit that is in all of us must come under His control and guidance as we pursue Him.

Outside Looking In

This morning, I took my two-year-old granddaughter, Bella, to church with me.  The nursery was not yet open when we arrived, so she pretty much made the rounds of the church lobby exploring.  Behind a set of glass French doors in the lobby is an area of the children's church where two children were playing with a remote control toy.  One side of the doors was locked in place, while the other side was open to the room where the children were. Bella stood with her face pressed to the glass of the locked side of the doors, watching the kids play.  She wandered back and forth in the lobby several times, always returning to that latched door to gaze through the glass to see what they were doing.  All the while, just one step to the side would have centered her in the door frame of the open door where she could have just walked on through to have a closer look or a turn to play. 

Well, I immediately knew that there was a lesson in that observation for my Sunday blog, but I didn't know just how timely it was until I heard the sermon for this particular Sunday morning.  Pastor Scott was preaching about demonstrating the love of God through serving and how we are to be doers of the Word and not just hearers. He stressed that we need to find our work and our purpose in the kingdom of God and to get involved in what God is doing instead of just sitting each Sunday morning in a chair, soaking up the music and the sermon and returning to "life as usual".

Just as Bella only needed to shift her perspective a little to the side to get the full experience of what she was watching, many people need to take one step to move from being an onlooker to a participant.  God has so many blessings for us that are tied to our obedience.  True love for God demands that we share our gifts and talents with others for their good.  There really can be no true fulfillment in our lives until we are helping others reach toward what God has for them.  All of us together, encouraging, loving, and serving each other, makes each of us spiritually strong, mature, healthy and productive.

That step may already be apparent to you.  You may know exactly what God is calling you to do, but you've let the enemy tell you that you aren't worthy, that those church people really don't want you, that you'd be a hopeless failure at anything you attempt to do for God.  It's time to start saying about yourself what God says about you.  Read his Word and start declaring to the enemy what is really true about who you are.

Maybe you have no clue about where you can begin to serve.  You'll need to pray, of course, and begin to think about the natural talents and abilities you have and how God could redeem those things for his purposes. Talk to leaders or Christian friends who will encourage you and ask good questions to help you find that place.

Whether you already know or have no idea, ask what needs to be done.  Start by serving in the small things because actually there are no small things.  What you do may not be seen or recognized, but all the little details that people see to in the kingdom come together to make one harmonious whole that leads people to Jesus - some for the first time, some just going a little deeper- but all of it is necessary and your faithfulness in doing it is rewarded by God. 

Quit looking through the glass of a locked door.  That lock wasn't meant for you and it can't keep you out if you just take that one step into your destiny in God.

Detox!

Scrolling down my Facebook newsfeed the other day, I saw an article which quite startled me.  It described a special steam treatment to cleanse and detoxify your scalp and hair!  Do you mean to tell me that I've been walking around all my life with a toxic scalp? Horrors!

That reminded me how much I see on social media about "cleanses".  People do master cleanses, juice cleanses, vegan cleanses - all in an effort to rid their bodies of impurities. The world is trying to purify what can be seen, while what cannot be seen is filthy. 

Why are we so concerned about removing all the toxins from our bodies and not at all engaged in blocking all the negative messages we are taking into our mind, soul, and spirit?

My pastor preached this morning about how we need to watch who we allow to speak into our lives.  There are people who will give you permission to back off from the things of God - to stop trusting and following Him.  They will insist that you don't have to do "all that" to be right with God.  Then there are the media messages which tell you that the Bible is outdated, that Christianity is mean-spirited and not inclusive, that a real, approachable God is a myth that weak-minded people rely on to get by in life.

If you allow all those messages to bombard your mind, instead of filling it with God's word, your thinking will be toxic, which is much more dangerous to your heart than the environmental poisons of the world. 

Just as you can't avoid all the toxins in the world affecting your body, you can't totally block all the contamination that comes to your ears from the enemy through media, friends, family or acquaintances. By the same token though, you wouldn't deliberately ingest a poison into your body and you shouldn't willingly listen to the voices that attempt to halt your journey to what God has promised.

The Bible is full of warnings about listening to fools and encouragements to listen to wise counsel.  God knows that what we hear helps form who we are and what we do in Him. 

Romans 10:17 says, "So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God."  Let's let that pure voice be the only one that influences us.

It's Time to Feed Yourself!

My husband and I went out to dinner this evening with our son, his wife, and our two-year-old granddaughter, Bella.  Throughout this busy Sunday, she hadn't eaten very much at breakfast or lunch, which sometimes happens when other things have her attention.  However, when her macaroni and cheese arrived at the table, she made up for lost time!  She wielded that adult-sized fork like a pro, only occasionally dropping a piece of macaroni onto her shirt. She polished off the entire serving plus a good-sized helping of fried apples.

Because her self-feeding skills have improved so much, the rest of us were able to enjoy our meals without having to stop and spoon-feed her.  In fact, if we had tried to feed her, she would have said, "I do it!" She likes to demonstrate her growing skills and her independence in the things that she can handle.

My pastor was preaching this morning using the example of the children of Israel.  God delivered them from Egyptian slavery and His plan was to lead them to a land of "milk and honey", but taking that land meant that they had to fight for it under His leading and with His help.  The sermon continued to explain how we can't just sit back passively and expect God to just deliver His promises to us, but that we have a responsibility to pick up the sword of the Spirit and fight to attain the promise of God.

Ephesians 6:14-17 talks about putting on the whole armor of God.  The only people who have historically needed armor are those who are soldiers - those who fight.  These verses tell us:  "Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace, above all,taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God......"

What I have learned is that you can't take up the sword of the Spirit if you don't know the Word and you won't know the Word unless you pick up the Word and you won't pick up the Word if you don't make it a priority in your life.  Even if you go to church every Sunday of your life, the little bit of God's Word that you hear through your pastor is not enough to sustain you.  Even little Bella understands that she has the ability, the right, and the joy of feeding herself.  How much more do we need to learn to feed on the scriptures for ourselves in addition to what we hear at church?

"But Jan, I just don't understand the Bible when I try to read it.  It just seems so confusing."  Newsflash! - I don't understand everything in the Bible either, but that doesn't mean that I can understand nothing.  There are all sorts of resources and people who will help you learn the Word - online resources, videos, Bible study books, small groups at your church, mentors and many versions of the Bible that aid in breaking down scripture to help your understanding. Besides, we have the best teacher of the Word - the Holy Spirit - if we will listen to His voice and ask for His help.

My husband and I have recently discovered an online Bible study that we have embarked on together.  It goes back to the very basics of doctrine, but it's helping us to strengthen the knowledge and foundations of why we believe what we believe.

Wherever you are in your relationship with God, you need His Word.  I encourage you to find the tools you need to feed yourself.  You can't fight with a weapon you don't hold.