What makes Christianity any different? - That’s a great question that has been discussed and debated for many centuries.  Here’s the short and yet very profound answer to that question:

     First off, it depends upon what you are including in the term “Christianity.”  Many groups that have “Christian” attached to their name are Christian in name only.  And religion is religion is religion.  God did not come to establish a religion.  Jesus Christ came to re-impart God’s lost image in man, thereby restoring man to a state of completeness so that he/she can enter into a relationship with God.  Man wants a religion.  Jesus Christ came to establish a relationship between a HOLY GOD and fallen man.  Jesus Christ bridged the gap between the two by accepting the penalty of sin for those who would receive Him. 

     What does every religion, Christian or otherwise, say about the way to God and salvation? - ALL religions have the works of man attached to their attainment.  You hear the same thing from Muslims as you do Hindus as you do Buddhists as you do those practicing the Christian religion.  And it is clear that ALL of these groups attach works to their salvation.  How do you know? - Because NONE of them KNOW (for sure) that they will be going to Heaven because ALL of them know they might “blow it” and NONE of them want to presume on God or have the audacity to proclaim themselves “good enough” to make it into Heaven.

     Now, contrast this line of reasoning with Bible Christianity, which IS NOT a religion… 

1.  Jesus Christ paid the ENTIRE price of salvation.  There is nothing you can do to obtain it except receive God’s free gift of salvation by faith in payment made by Jesus Christ through HIS death and resurrection.

2.  Once you have been born anew, you cannot become unborn.  It isn’t your righteous living that keeps you in good standing with God.  It is Jesus Christ’s standing with the Father that keeps you safe and secure.  The only way you could lose your salvation is for Jesus Christ to sin because it is HIS righteousness you receive at the new birth, NOT your own.  Praise God it is impossible for Him to sin!!! 

     Keep in mind, Bible Christianity says YOU CAN’T DO ANYTHING TO ATTAIN GOD’S RIGHTEOUSNESS!  Bible Christianity says, “There is none righteous.  No not one!”  Bible Christianity states in Romans 6:23:  ”The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”  (Note that eternal life here is mentioned as a gift, not something you attain.)  Ephesian 2:8-9 says, “For by grace are ye saved through FAITH; and that NOT OF YOURSELVES:  it is the gift of God:  NOT of works, lest any man should boast.”

     I want to leave you with a few verses to meditate on…  Romans 4:3-5 states:  “For what saith the scripture?  Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.  Now to him THAT WORKETH is the reward NOT reckoned of grace, but of DEBT.  But to him THAT WORKETH NOT, but BELIEVETH on him that justifieth the ungodly, HIS FAITH is counted for righteousness.” 

What’s going on this week? - Lots!

Tuesday - Way of the Master continues from 7 pm to 9 pm.

Wednesday - Jr. H’s SOLD OUT and H.S.’s Home Groups

Jr. H meets at the Point from 7 pm to 8:30 pm.
H.S. Home Groups are at various locations throughout the KC metro area from 7pm to 9 pm.

Friday - The Next Level Bible study at the Alumni Room at 6 pm on UMKC campus. See Andy Castro and/or Josh & Erin Coleman for more details.

     There are two interesting passages that were contrasted in my reading this morning.  The first describes a king who, although his heart was not perfect before the Lord, God granted victory because he trusted in the Lord.  The second passage describes a man who had a perfect heart toward God but stopped trusting the Lord later in his reign. 

     Is your heart perfect before the Lord?  Who are you counting on right now to get you through?  If you say “God!” and you don’t have peace then you aren’t really trusting God.  Take some time right now and write down the difficulties you are facing and recommit them to the Lord in prayer.  Remember that Jesus Christ ALREADY HAS THE VICTORY and that, as a Christian, you are a “joint-heir” with Christ.  Praise God for what He is going to do in the situation at hand.

     I am reading through The Green Letters a third time now and continue to get much from the reading of it.  I thought the reading from this morning was especially apropos on the tail of yesterday’s Word on plowing on, regardless of the “cold” in our lives.

     Once again, here is some vintage Miles Stanford: 

     “When we first start out hungry and zealous for Him it is often imagined that extensive progress has been made, when as yet we have barely begun.  As our Lord takes us along through the years it slowly dawns on us that there are vast, almost infinite, areas of development through which He must still lead us. 

     Many of these development areas are just plain desert - no spiritual activity, no service, little or no fellowship with Him, or others.  What prayer there is has to be forced and is sometimes dropped altogether for months at a time.  Bible study finally grinds to a halt; everything seems to add up to nothing.  It is during these necessary times that the believer often feels that God has ceased to carry out His part, and there is little or no use in seeking to continue on.  And yet there is a hunger deep within that will not allow him to quit…

     Are we to love and trust and respond to Him only when He seems to be ‘blessing’ us?  What sort of love is that?  Self - love?  Our Father strips everything away from time to time to give us the opportunity of loving and trusting and responding to Him just because He is our Father.  He knows what the cross is going to mean in our lives; He knows the death march that lies ahead of us in order that there may be resurrection life; He knows the barren, bleeding hearts beyond to whom He must minister through us - hence He is going to bring us to the place where we don’t care what happens:  He is all that matters!”

     It is interesting as I ponder these things over the last 18 years of walking with God and how God has divorced my heart from so many of the things I once saw as important.  I understand now that God allows trials in these areas to harden our hearts toward them and show us that ONLY THE LORD IS WORTHY.

     Lord, You alone are worthy.  Our hearts are with You.  Be glorified.  Be our passion.  Be our prize.  Be our all in all, as Paul once said.  We love You.

Proverbs 20:4 says, “The sluggard will not plow by reason of the cold; therefore shall he beg in harvest, and have nothing.”

I was thinking about this idea on Sunday morning when preparing for our 8 am prayer time in the upper room of the Point.  I was thinking about how we were a little down in numbers yesterday morning and the thought came to mind:  “I bet it’s because it is so cold, people didn’t want to come into church as early and pray.”  And then I read the above verse and started thinking about another quotation.  I don’t remember who said it but the quote goes like this:  “Constancy to purpose is the secret of success.”

Sometimes when dealing with the cold, frigid realities of life like being lonely or depressed or directionless or whatever, we decide just to go another direction or not get in the Word or allow despair to win over faith.  The key is to keep going!  The key is not to give into those things which are not from God.  Sometimes we just get lazy.  Don’t give into laziness!  The sluggard ends up begging because when they were supposed to be pressing forward they gave into whatever emotion that derailed them.  Start from faith!  Start with what God has said and then follow what is right to do in that moment.  When in doubt, keep plowing!

Tuesday - Way of the Master continues in the upper room of the Point from 7pm - 9 pm.

Wednesday - Home Groups and SOLD OUT.  This is your opportunity to invest in the next generation!

Friday - The Next Level meet at UMKC in the Alumni Room.  See Castro for more details.

Sunday - Message #2 of our series on Nehemiah.

Have a great week!  I love you guys!

Jim

     I was reading in 1 Kings 12 this morning the story of Rehoboam, son of Solomon, and how he lost the majority of his kingdom to Jeroboam.  (It had been prophesied some time before due to Solomon’s sins at the end of his reign.)  Prior to this event, Israel was one nation.  After this event the kingdom divided into two kingdoms, Israel and Judah.  At the end of the day, God gave Rehoboam Judah which actually consisted of two tribes and He gave Jeroboam the other ten tribes.  This entire series of events was FROM THE LORD.

     Having said that, there is something I understood this morning that I have never understood before…  I got a glimpse of what must have been going through Rehoboam and Jeroboam’s minds.  We read in vs 21 that when it became apparent that Jeroboam was leading away the ten tribes, Rehoboam immediately and frantically raised up an army to fight him.  God stopped it from happening through the prophet Shemaiah.  He reported that the entire series of events was FROM THE LORD.

     Later, after the division of the kingdom between the two men, you see Jeroboam building cities and fortifying his kingdom.  This, in turn, causes Rehoboam to frantically build fortified cities as well.  In vs 27 you see Jeroboam freaking out at the prospect of losing his new kingdom to Rehoboam due to the fact that the people had to sacrifice in the Judah-held city of Jerusalem.  So what does Jeroboam do? - He freaks out and makes his own gods, creates his own feast days, and does everything he can to keep what was his FROM THE LORD.

     NOW UNDERSTAND SOMETHING…   It was God Who gave Rehoboam the two tribes.  HE WAS TOLD THAT.  It was God Who gave Jeroboam his ten tribes.  HE WAS TOLD THAT!  My point? - My point is RELAX PEOPLE!!!!  Why do we have to frantically keep what is ours from the Lord anyway???  Why do we have to scratch and claw and worry and devise and scheme?  RELAX!  The Lord is good!  These men wasted all of this energy when there WAS NOTHING ANYONE COULD HAVE DONE TO TAKE AWAY WHAT GOD HAD GIVEN THEM.  What they had was FROM THE LORD.  They allowed their circumstances to freak them out and put them in a frantic mode of action.

     I understand that our circumstances may be pointing in scary directions.  I understand that we are tempted to grab on even tighter and try to work the situations of our lives in our own power.  But let’s not.  Let’s trust the Lord.  He knows what you and I need and He loves us.  Let’s relax and let God be God.  He’s really good at it!  I call this “naked belief,” when all of your circumstances are pointing against what God has promised He would do AND YOU BELIEVE HIM ANYWAY.  That’s sweet.

     “Watchman Nee startles many by saying, ‘God’s way of deliverance is altogether different from man’s way.  Man’s way is to try to suppress sin by seeking to overcome it; God’s way is to remove the sinner.  Many Christians mourn over their weakness, thinking that if only they were stronger all would be well.  The idea that, because failure to lead a holy life is due to our impotence, something more is therefore demanded of us, leads naturally to this false conception of the way of deliverance.  If we are preoccupied with the power of sin and with our inability to meet it, then we naturally conclude that to gain the victory over sin we must have more power.  ‘If only I were stronger,’ we say, ‘I could overcome my violent outbursts of temper,’ and so we plead with the Lord to strengthen us that we may exercise more self-control.  But this is altogether wrong; this is not Christianity.  God’s means of delivering us from sin is not by making us stronger and stronger, but by making us weaker and weaker.  This is surely a peculiar way of victory, you say; but it is the divine way.  God sets us free from the dominion of sin, not by strengthening our old man but by crucifying him; not by helping him to do anything but by removing him from the scene of the action.’”

     This passage in the Green Letters is concluded with the following paragraph which brings the notion of “Stop asking God for help” full circle.  Why should we stop asking God for help? - Because it implies, by its very request, that WE are the ones at work and that we simply need God to aide US!  No.  We need to completely remove SELF, get out of God’s way, and allow Him to have His way.  Now watch how this section of the book is concluded…

     “The believer does not have to beg for help.  He does have to thankfully appropriate that which is already his in Christ; for, ‘…the just shall live by faith…’ (Heb. 10:38a).  And dear old Andrew Murray encourages us with, ‘Even though it is slow, and with many a stumble, the faith that always thanks Him - not for experiences, but for the promises on which it can rely - goes on from strength to strength, still increasing in the blessed assurance that God himself will perfect His work in us (Phil. 1:6).”

     I wanted to follow up with more Green Letters quotations on this idea of not asking God for help.  Initially, doesn’t it sound totally anti-biblical?  In actuality, it is EXACTLY the mindset of the Spirit-filled believer.  There is a subtle, and yet profound, distinction we need to make:  We don’t need the Holy Spirit to help us, as if we were doing something supernatural in the lives of others.  We can’t do anything that is eternal!  The self-life is what you and I were born with, the natural life, that will one day die.  It isn’t the supernatural life that God intends that we live from.  God intends that we reckon/ count as true that our old natural life/ self-life has already been crucified with Christ and that it is His life ALONE that is lived out through our lives.  OK…  So here’s another quotation to check out…

     “William R. Newell said, ‘Satan’s great device is to drive earnest souls back to beseeching God for what God says has already been done’!  Each of us had to go beyond the ‘help’ stage for our new birth, and thank Him for what He has already done on our behalf.  God could never answer a prayer for help in the matter of justification.  The same principle holds true for the Christian life.  Our Lord Jesus waits to be wanted, and to be all in us and do all through us.  ‘For in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.  And ye are complete in him’ (Col. 2:9, 10).  God is not trusted, not honored, in our continually asking Him for help.  In the face of ‘my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus’ (Phil. 4:19), how can we beg for help?  Our responsibility is to see in the Word all that is ours in Christ, and then thank and trust Him for that which we need.”

     This quotation so resonates with me!  It is so profound and life transforming and freeing.  Spend some time meditating on it and see if God’s Spirit would reveal this truth to you.  If you sit there and this doesn’t excite you, it is probably because God has you in a different place and is teaching you different things right now in your life.  Relax and enjoy where God has you.   

     We need to stop asking God for help.  Doesn’t that sound crazy???  But it isn’t.  We really do need to get out of that mode.  The reason is found in the implication of who is doing the work. - You are.  YOU need help to get it done; but YOU aren’t the one who is supposed to be doing it anyway. 

     In a chapter called “Help” in the Green Letters, this idea is expanded.  I think it is THE KEY to an effortless, effective, Spirit-filled life.  “For most of us, it is time to stop asking God for help.  He didn’t help us to get saved, and He doesn’t intend to help us live the Christian life.  Immaturity considers the Lord Jesus a Helper.  Maturity knows Him to be Life itself.  J. E. Conant wrote, ‘Christian living is not our living with Christ’s help, it is Christ living His life in us.  Therefore that portion of our lives that is not His living is not Christian living; and that portion of our service that is not His doing is not Christian service; for all such life and service have but a human and natural source, and Christian life and service have a supernatural and spiritual source.’”

     I don’t know if you are able to get this yet or not.  It takes time to learn the futility of ”doing a work for God.”  You have to fail over and over again until you figure out that you are unable to produce supernatural results.  Only our supernatural God can produce supernatural results.  We don’t need Him to help us produce results.  He MUST.  We need to die to ourselves…  our agendas….  our programs…  everything that is done in the power of self…  and realize WE CAN’T!