Very Few Obligations

 The Good News of Jesus sets my imagination to running sometimes; and, I need it to do this because, like too many people, I can tend to take things for granted and forget that I have very few obligations to which I must unequivocally yield loyalty.

For instance, did you know that not one of us is obligated to take with us the situation into which we were born?  We may have been born in the pits, but we do not have to take the pits with us into our tomorrows.  There may be things we can't change but we are under no obligation to let the past dictate our future.  We can if we want to, but we are under no obligation to do so.

We are under no obligation to live in the muck and mire of life, either.  We can if we want to, but we are under no obligation to do so.  Also, we don't have to let sin reign in us or continue to make poor decisions or build personal relationships with people who tear us down.  We can if we want to, but we don't have to.

Maybe the most setting-free verse in the entire Bible is the one where the apostle Paul said, "We have obligation -- but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it" (Rom. 8:12, NIV).   As believers in Jesus we can choose differently.  We can give ourselves to a different values system, say no to the things that destroy the quality and meaning of life, and say YES to the setting-free and life altering amazing grace of God.

The future can be different than the past because the past and the future have been invaded by the God of all grace, the God who loves us with an everlasting love. 

Floodgates of Grace

 When I was a kid my family made a trip back home to Missouri, a part of which was to the Ozarks where my mom was raised.  She and her family took us about as far from reality as my young mind could comprehend, to the home in which they were raised. It was August in Southern Missouri, and it was hot (humid hot), I mean hot hot. 

           

As we walked around the old house that had not been lived in for quite some time, someone remembered an old Artesian well they used for family needs.  They began a search and after some time, found it.  It was covered by a piece of wood about two feet by two feet.  As they lifted up the cover, sure enough the water was bubbling away.  And, like everyone else, on that hot and humid August Missouri afternoon, I placed my face right down into the bubbles and I tell you for a moment on that August afternoon I thought I was in heaven.  It was cool and clear and clean and it rejuvenated my body and made August a doable month in Missouri.

           

And Jesus tells us, "He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, 'From His innermost being will flow rivers of living water'" (John 7:38).  Greater even than an Artesian well on a hot and humid Missouri afternoon, Jesus opens the flood gates of grace so that the waters of the living God will rejuvenate our lives and quench the thirst that is in us.

           

I wonder how many people are living in hot and humid days in their inner lives, days in which relief seems never to come.  Yet, relief has come.  There is a Savior and to believe in Him is to have let loose in one's life the river of God.  This awesome Savior says, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink" (John 7:37).

           

Go ahead.  Come to Him.  Put your face right down into the fresh, cool, clear, wonderful river of life, a river that flows from the throne of grace, and soak it all in.    

Awesome News

 Can things really be different in this world?  Can people really change?  Can persons really alter their core values?  Is the old Christian teaching about transformation just a lofty and noble sales pitch or is it an actual possibility in a world broken by the harsh realities of sin?

The Bible says something awesome about God, His Word and the ramifications of God and His Word in a persons' life. I John 5:3-5 says, "For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome. For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.  Who is the one who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?"

The awesome news is that in Jesus the future can be different than the past.  Priorities and values can change.  Weakness can be embraced in the power of God.  Old things can pass away when Jesus is invited into a person or situation.  There is a way of not being a victim anymore and of overcoming the ways and means of the world.  To "the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?" new beginnings and awesome possibilities are a heartbeat a way (I John 5:5). 

Do you feel like you are going down for the third time?  Are you sick and tired of being sick and tired?  Is there a way out of the story that has become your story?  Jesus stands, inviting you into His life.  It's not magic he performs.  It is transforming love embracing you out of the past and into a new and wonderful future.

IF GOD IS LOVE

How is this for a direct statement, "The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love" (I John 4:8)?  Period, exclamation point, end debate.  Well, almost.  John's thinking is rooted in a great, cosmic size reality that says, "In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation (an atoning sacrifice) for our sins" (I John 4:10).  Then the great conclusion, "Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another" (I John 4:11). 

Here is the reasoning.  If God is love and loved us so much that He sent His Son, Jesus the Messiah, into the world to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins, then it is unthinkable that to really know this God one would live in a way contrary to what has been revealed in God's loving actions.  Therefore the conclusion, "The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love" (I John 4:8).

To take it a step further, how do we know we really are of God?  John gives us the answer.  He writes, "Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.  We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us.  God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in Him" (I John 4:15-16). 

There is no doubt about it.  Acts that do not reflect the love of God are not of God, no matter how loudly one may protest that he does in fact love God.  To quote another source,

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing" (I Corinthians 13:1-3).

Practice, Practice, Practice

I heard about a man who was visiting New York City and asked a cab driver, "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?"  The Cabbie responded, "Practice, practice, practice:"  probably not what the tourist wanted to hear but still very good advice. 

           

The Bible calls us who follow Christ to love, "in deed and truth" (I John 3:18).  How do we go about doing this?  Practice, practice, practice.  We take the call seriously, and we give ourselves to do whatever it takes for us to live this way.  It may not come easily, but it is the call.  Shall we take it seriously?  Absolutely!   How could we not when "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son" (John 3:16)?

           

Here is an important reminder, however.  The call to love does not stand a lone.  It is a part of a two-fold call.  I John 3:23 says, "This is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us."  Believe in Jesus and then we are able to love with God's kind of love. 

           
Love is defined by what it means to live in response to Jesus Christ, by living in His mind and spirit. It is in getting in step with Him that we are enabled to live in a way that may or may not come naturally to us, but in a way that is of the essence in being truly human and truly alive.   When we get our own inner selves in order we are then in a place where we can begin to "love one another."

           

Jesus said to His disciples one day, "By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:35).  Isn't that interesting?  Its not simply that we believe in Him that enables us to model to the world that Jesus lives in us.  It is that we love one another.  Francis Schaeffer said the mark of Christian is love.  Belief is important but it is love that reveals just how important.