What keeps you from enjoying the prospect of future joy? And would you say you enjoy God now? I regularly meet Christian leaders who have sacrificed their joy on the altar of their busyness. They don't have capacity or space left to enjoy God any more. They have simply filled up all their time and God-directed spiritual life goes out of the window
Read moreIs Christianity All About Being Religious?
Religion is not Christianity. In fact it is the denial of Christianity. Christianity says I need Jesus to do it for me. Religion says I will do it myself by performing the religion. Christianity is Jesus and Levi. It is a place, a relationship with God for messed up people where he offers forgiveness, adoption, acceptance, power to change. A church is a family of sinful people who are loved by God and precious to him. He invites everybody in, including me and you. There is not a single person in this room, a single person in this world, who isn’t messed up. There is no one who is perfect, least of all people who are relying on religion. There is nobody who doesn’t need this from Jesus.
Is Christianity all about being religious? Of course it isn’t ladies and gentlemen. If Christianity was about religion then Levi wouldn’t get a look in and neither would any person who was honest about their own failings of life and heart. Jesus Christ is the opposite of religion, he says in the Bible that he loathes religion, he confronts it all over the place, and He is Christianity.
Read moreThe Danger of Drift; Hebrews 2:1-4
You can turn away from God by direct, downright apostasy. But its much more common for it to happen by drift. Drift is so imperceptible - and that is its danger. It usually only becomes apparent when it receives public notice, and by that point it is often too late to do anything about it.
Why on Earth would Christians drift from this supreme King Jesus? And how does it happen? The writer gives two reasons:
not paying attention - just getting distracted
ignoring this great salvation - distraction leads to other things simply being more important and time-consuming, so that people end up simply editing salvation out of their every day thinking
That is the pattern of drift. What starts off as not paying attention to salvation ends up as ignoring it. The best list of reasons for drift is given by Jesus in Mark 4: Satan stops people hearing God's word, trouble or persecution make Jesus seem less appealing, the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth, desires for material possessions all choke off our attention through distraction.
Read moreThe Transforming Power of Jesus
we tell them. “I don’t act this way because I am a good person. I act this way because Jesus is my King and my righteousness.” And you will be laughed at and you will get despised and scorned but you will be doing Acts 3. And some, gloriously, will see the miraculous work God has done in us and will hear the explanation and they will repent and turn to him just as we have done.
Read moreOn Squirrels and such like
Mark Driscoll writes in his 'On the Old Testament' :
"The opening line of the scriptures introduces us to its hero. Through the pages of this scripture God is revealed. In the closing line of the New Testament scriptures we are reminded that the God who is the hero of the scriptures is Jesus Christ"
(p34)
Yet, for all the screaming obviousness that the Bible is about God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) somehow we miss it.
In the New Testament Jesus makes some very bold claims about the Old Testament.
1. The books of Moses are about Jesus (John 5v46) and the way to respond is to believe.
2. All the promises are fulfilled in Jesus (2 Corinthians 1v20) - however unreliable people are God's promises are firm.
3. The books of Moses and the prophets are about Jesus (Luke 24v27) and if we're reading it right our hearts will be burning within us.
Moreover - the apostles in Acts seem to focus their activity on proving that Jesus is the Christ from the Old Testament scriptures. It's nice in theory, the question is how.
For more on this see: BeginningWithMoses.org and Thoughts on some of the "Five Festal Garments" at TheBlueFish.org