Tag: Jesus

TO PRAY OR NOT TO PRAY

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The idea of public education comes from the church, the Christian church. It was started back in the day of Martin Luther in Germany. Eventually that idea found its way to America through the Pilgrims.

And wouldn’t you know that with education came the idea of praying to the one who ultimately gives knowledge, even the God of all creation. And what a privilege you might think to be able in concert to offer a prayer of thanks to the God above an within through the name of his most wise son Jesus, in fact the wisest man who ever lived on this earth. Wise by almost all human evaluation.

I wonder if in our institutions of learning do teachers ever teach on the history of prayer. Jesus certainly did. He was forever telling his disciples, his apprentices the importance and the effects of prayer for the Kingdom of God on earth.

And while reading about the recent Supreme Court decision to allow forms of public prayer I couldn’t help but smile to think how the real SUPREME COURT regards all this mess. If I am not mistaken the original congress probably had a chaplain to lead in prayer.

I like how Benjamin Franklin put it back in 1787:

“I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth: that God Governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings, that ‘except the Lord build the House they labour in vain that build it.’ I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better, than the Builders of Babel . . . I therefore beg leave to move— that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the Clergy of this City be requested to officiate in that Service.”

Make no mistake about it. Prayer if one of the highest forms of stewardship, the stewardship of God’s love, his daily grace and his wisdom so necessary in these days for all ages.

And it is through the Messiah Jesus that our prayers reach the ears of God to his glory and our good. So thank you Supreme Court for doing your duty. Let’s keep on praying.

 

 

THE KNEE IS CONNECTED TO THE HAMSTRING

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SO after tearing my meniscus playing basketball I went to the therapist to get my knee fixed. I thought.
She began by saying, “We need to work on your hamstring and your quad and then your calf muscle and then your balance.” Whoa, I thought to myself. What about my knee? Seems that if you work on  discipline to other parts of your leg your knee will actually be better. Yeah, even the balance thing, standing on one leg, helps to strengthen all the parts around your knee and the outcome is a healthier, stronger knee.
Can you see where this is going? People want stronger faith and yet so often don’t want to go through the disciplines to get there. People want to love more and yet are hard pressed to discipline their lives towards love.
So that’s why we are told to read the Scriptures, memorize them, practice them to the end that our faith and our love are built up. That’s why we have the gift and discipline of prayer, to work on our faith and our love to the end that after much conversation with our God we will be strengthened. The discipline of prayer may start out as hard work. Being still before God is often hard work for busy people. But do it as much as you would do physical exercise knowing you will be better for it. You will understand the work of God, and much more the grace of God.I don’t mean a shout out to God once in a while but an intentional approach to God in quiet prayer or just sitting intentionally in silence before God knowing that such silence is a benefit to your spirit.
And then nothing beats practicing love. Forgiving someone, share a kind word with someone, giving up yourself for another who would not necessarily do the same for you. The more we call all practice that kind of grace in this world the closer we will grow to our Master, Jesus. And that is a therapy worth its weight in gold.
So here’s to the spiritual disciplines. I have mentioned but a few.  There are many more.
Blessings.

OPTIMISM

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There is an ethos throughout the Bible of optimism, of seeing and believing the best, a sense of knowing that this universe is in good hands, that we are in good hands. How does the Bible say it? ‘Underneath us are the everlasting arms.’ (Deut. 33:27) As God provided for the Israel nation he provides for his creation. He establishes us as his people. He has given us his word to light our path and his son to bring us into a new covenant through the sacrifice of Christ.
We could look at this world of ours and find plenty of reason to be despondent, and hopeless except for the return of Christ but I dare say that even in this life, the now life, our God is with us. He who cares for the birds and flowers has promised  to care for you and me.
If heaven were our only goal then Jesus could have announced it to Adam and Eve and saved a lot of human history. But God was and is and will be looking for humans to grow into relationship with him in order to share in his eternal life as the trinity. This world is the training ground for eternal life. Some are spared this training by the will of God and some endure a living hell but the thing to remember is that God knows how it all turns out to our good. And that truth gives us hope and a confidence to live each day with God. Living with God is the most optimistic way to endure and even thrive.
Read what a man in World War II has to write:

By Jürgen Moltmann

“This was the saving experience of my life. It was 1944, at the end of World War II. As a boy of 18 years, I was drafted into the German army. In February 1945, I was taken prisoner of war and spent more than three years behind barbed wire in Belgium, Scotland and England. April 1948, I was repatriated.

At the beginning of my imprisonment, I felt completely Godforsaken. I lost all hope; all interest in life faded away. The dark night of the soul came upon me and I felt that last temptation of all who are imprisoned, to give myself up–to die the death of the soul first, and then to the death of the body. 

My turn from this sickness unto death to new hope and new life came about through two things: first through the Bible, and then through the kindness of the Scottish workers and their families towards the prisoners, their former enemies. At the end of 1945, a well-meaning British army chaplain visited our camp and distributed Bibles to the prisoners. Because I came from a secular family in Hamburg, this was the first Bible in my life. Some of us wondered and would rather have had a few cigarettes. I started reading without much interest until I stumbled on the Psalms of lament. Psalm 39 held me spellbound:

“I was dumb with silence, I held my peace and my sorrow was stirred. I have to eat up my suffering within myself. My lifetime is as nothing in Thy sight. I am a stranger with Thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were.”

They were words of my own heart and they called my soul to God. Later I read the Gospel of Mark. When I came to the story of the passion and read Jesus’ death cry, “My God, why have you forsaken me,” I knew with certainty, “This is the One who understands you.” I began to understand the assailed Jesus because I felt that He understood me in my God-forsakenness; He is the divine Brother in distress, who takes the prisoners with Him on the way to resurrection and life. I began to summon up the courage to live again, seized by a great hope. This early fellowship with Jesus, the Brother in suffering and the Redeemer from guilt, has never left me since. I am sure that there and then, in the dark pit of my soul, He found me. Jesus’ Godforsakenness on the cross showed me where God is in my forsakenness, where He had been in my life before, and would be in the future. The suffering God saved me in my sufferings.”

This is the reason for optimism, because Jesus has been there and is there for us. Jesus leads the way and lends the hand to each one of us. Jesus turns the atheist into a friend of God. Jesus reconciles the enemies of God.

We have not trusted Jesus enough. Not given him the chance he died to have in our lives. He is not just the Savior who somehow gets us into heaven but he is the Lord of life who lives his life with us moment by moment. He gives us a new heart, new eyes, a new ethic and a new way to live each day.

He still brings healing and hope because he is the Lord of this whole creation. I didn’t say a church was or any doctrine but Jesus himself. It’s impossible to read his words and not understand that he ‘has our backs’ as they say.

THE GOOD LIFE

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What is the good life? The life of joy and peace? Jesus offers us this life, his pulse beating through our hearts. Here are some of his final words to his disciples for their preparation to live:

9 “As the Father loved me, I too have loved you. Remain in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. 11 I have said these things to you so that my joy will be in you and your joy will be complete. 12 This is my commandment: love each other just as I have loved you. (John 15)

Jesus, the savior and the moment-by-moment teacher of life has given us everything we need for our joy. He has forgiven our sins. He has given us the gift of his commands, which leads to life. Some folks look at obedience to anybody as a challenge to their own rights but Jesus offers to instruct us how to live and not just as a dead teacher’s good advice but as one who is alive and with us right now. Recall his words to his disciples just before he leaves them. “I will be with you always.” (Matthew 28)

See nothing can separate us from God’s love, not even death. (Romans 8)

Jesus offers us the way to life through his words and his love. Just as he has kept the Father’s commands he offers us the way to salvation through keeping his words. He is promising us that we will be joyful people who attend to his words.

I hear someone once say that the commands of God are like guardrails keeping us safe on the road of life. Others say they are like prison bars keeping us from being free.

Fish live in water because it’s their environment for life. If they should choose to jump out onto the sand they would soon find out that freedom leads to death in this scenario.  I once had tropical fish in my office and one morning upon entering the room I noticed that one of the fish decided to be free- on the office carpeting. Free and dead was my little friend.

Have you ever played soccer or seen it played, or maybe basketball or for that matter any sport? Without boundaries and rules these games would be just chaos, no fun for anyone. So it is with life. Jesus offers us boundaries and rules to make the ‘game’ fun. You can condense all those commands into just two if you like. Love God as much as you can and love your neighbor as you love yourself.(Matthew 22) That pretty much says it all.

But because we are weak in the flesh we need more acute instruction. And so Jesus instructs us about things like anger and lust, worry and giving etc.

Jesus says that the freest place to be is within the Kingdom of God. You and I were made for the Kingdom. I know that atheist folks say ‘hogwash’ to that but what do they know, really? How do they know what they think they know?

Jesus comes along as the smartest, wisest, most loving man in all of history and invites us to live with him, according to his commands and tells us that the reality of God’s kingdom is the one thing you and I can count on. And who’s to say he is not right? Some folks blame their unbelief on years of religious oppression and cruelty, which Jesus never endorsed. Such history is lived outside of God’s kingdom, which is righteousness and peace. And the rules that Jesus lays out are meant to realize that peace and justice and goodness.

For example when Jesus tells us not to be angry he is inviting us into God’s reality of love and forgiveness. So when we learn how not to be angry (which can take some time for most of us) we begin to see life with God’s eyes and love with God’s heart.  Jesus shows us God.

One of the disciples once asked Jesus to show them the Father because they still couldn’t figure this kingdom stuff completely. Jesus said to them that after all this time of his presence with them they should be able to see the Father.

Consider these words from Jesus in John chapter 8-So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, “If you continue in my word, then you are truly disciples of mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

Continuing in Jesus words means that we listen to what he has to say and that we obey his teachings because we have confidence that he knows best for us. If you want to learn to play piano you listen to your teacher. If you want to learn to be an electrician you study hard and listen to your mentor. If you want to do anything well in life then you listen to your instructor. Well, if you want to learn best how to live this life, how to be happy, loving, and righteous and the best person you can be and be free then you listen to your teacher, Jesus. He knows. He really does.

Freedom in the Christian life means that you don’t have to live in sin. We are freed by Christ to live the good life a life that is meaningful, purposeful and eternal.

It means that when you wake up in the morning you wake up in the Kingdom of God, with God, knowing that no matter what happens in that day you are not in the least removed from God’s love and presence brought to us by Jesus who himself said to us that he would be with us forever.

And get this. The apostle John writes in one place that the commands of Jesus are not hard. And Jesus himself tells us that he wants to connect up with us and give us responsibility that is in actuality quite easy. (See Matthew 11) Easy meaning that it fits us well. Of course there are to be problems and suffering in this world. Jesus faced it all but he has given us the tools to face insurmountable odds. At one point he says, ‘my peace I give you, not as the world gives.’

He knows everything about life, our lives, and the life of this universe and eternal life and invites us to entrust our lives into his care, guidance and to live by his rules.

The Sermon on the Mount is probably the best advice ever on how to live this life in the Kingdom of God. It’s three chapters long found in Matthew 5,6,7.

They are words from the very WORD of God to teach us that anybody can live in the Kingdom of God and that by listening to/reading his words we can have the best life ever.

What I sometimes find is that people misunderstand what the rules are. They think it’s about smoking, dancing, drinking and the like. No. His rules are avenues into our hearts. That’s why Jesus says that it is not enough not to kill someone. It’s about loving everyone especially those who are closest to us. We don’t have to work hard not to kill but to love is another story, another adventure if you will. This day or the next you will have opportunity to test that truth as you encounter people who aren’t always on your wavelength so to speak.

Now if we choose to live outside the Kingdom life it would like stepping out of bounds on the basketball court, like riding our cars with no gas (I want to be free of higher gas prices). I’m sure you can think of all sorts of analogies like jumping off a roof thinking that you can be free of gravity. Sure you can be free but you will be broken if you are into that kind of thing.

Jesus offers us the kind of freedom that allows us to love, to be kind, forgiving, and compassionate and in love with God. The Kingdom of me is about selfishness, anger, resentment, retaliation…it is a way that leads ultimately to the death of the soul. Maybe that’s why Jesus once said (Matthew 7) that the way to life is narrow and few find it. Perhaps for the most part people are into the ‘me’ life. The ‘I did it my way life’. I have to admit that on the surface it is mighty appealing and I am known to have walked that way often. But it is not the real life, real meaning the life that God has prescribed for you and me. It’s fleshly satisfying and fleeting. I want a life that endures, that is built on solid ground. It takes worth but then again what good thing doesn’t?

 

 

 

 

Under Cover of Night

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There just might be something to this Jesus. That’s what one man thought. He was an intellectual and a leader in his community. He had morals and standards but there was something about this Jesus. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it but being a wise man he decided to investigate. Investigate is what smart people do. They don’t just dismiss out of hand evidence for the truth. They seek to understand for themselves.

That’s why I am not troubled by people who are unsure about Jesus. ‘Unsure’ leads to investigation. Questions like, ‘Is there a God?’ ‘Am I alone in this universe?’ “Is there a larger purpose than I am seeing?’

One cannot help but be cynical with regards to the religious establishments, their history and all. But the lives that Jesus has touched deeply matter to anyone with any sense. It’s why Nicodemus went to see Jesus, albeit at night when it was safer and his friends wouldn’t necessarily know. But he went and that’s what’s important. I know folks who in the nighttime of life seek God in some way, wanting to know a reality that is greater than what is in front of their noses. (see John 3)

Thank God for the nighttime when it is a tad safer to ask the questions of Jesus. ‘Are you for real?’ Or how about the person who quietly asks God for help but is not necessarily at that point a follower. That’s all good because if you read about Nicodemus you will discover that although he came under cover of night, eventually he became a disciple.

You may know folks who don’t ‘seem’ like they are believers but you never know how God is working in their lives. And some of them who come to faith will make stronger, deeper followers than some of us because they have tested for the truth and found that truth in Jesus. And nothing hidden remains hidden. It will always come to the light.

And by the way, it might be good for some ‘loud’ Christians to spend some time in the quiet night discovering who Jesus is for real.

 

TIRED

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Sometimes writing a blog can sound a bit too pious like I somehow know the answers on the journey of faith. But it’s not like that. Some days I struggle mightily to be an apprentice to Jesus. For example I give you exhibit A, a recent time in my life that I journaled about.

Sometimes I get tired of being a student of Jesus as an academic exercise in goodness. Sometimes I just don’t want to be loving, or have any more patience. Sometimes I am just annoyed by pretty much everything and everyone. Too many demands and expectations. Too many extra miles to walk in someone else’s shoes. There are periods I would just like to be left alone. Sometimes I just want to be selfish. Not in some licentious way but just quietly minding my own business and saying ‘go away world’.

I wonder if the disciples ever felt like that. Tired of the Samaritans, feeding the thousands of people, storm tossed nights on their fishing boats, everyone pulling at them. I also wonder if maybe Jesus got tired of the whole thing, being fully human and all. I recall him saying that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. If he meant spirit with a small s then I am not sure my own spirit is really all that willing. Paul certainly expresses his own struggles in Romans 7 where he writes that the good he wants to do he doesn’t do and the bad stuff he doesn’t want to do he ends up doing. Maybe Paul got caught up being tired too. Maybe he found himself cranky with those around him pulling on him at every twist and turn in his journey. He does ask rhetorically who is going to save him from the mess and concludes that only Jesus can. I wonder what that exactly means. Cause when I am tired I do not find the strength in myself to even try to be and do good. Prayer doesn’t come easy in these times.

As a retired pastor this may surprise some of you. That’s ok. I’m not feeling all that strong to put on a good face right now. So what to do? You might think I have some spiritual answer at this moment but you’d be wrong. I am just here and all I can do is trust that God in his grace is holding on to me. I have no 5 principles for combatting spiritual fatigue. No ten commandments for being more holy. I just am. At this moment I am waiting on God for whatever comes next. I haven’t lost my faith. I have lost the zeal. So in this experience of being a student of Jesus I think I will just audit the course for a while.

Born Again

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Today I should like to suggest that the tired phrase ‘born again’ is a very rich expression for life in the Kingdom of God. Recall Jesus saying to Nicodemus, that he must be born again if he was to SEE the Kingdom of God. (John 3:3) One could say ‘born from above’ or ‘born anew’ but either way there is, from Jesus, the sense that one must start a new kind of life. I see that life as one of intentional interaction with God. It is not just enough to believe there is a God who is sovereign, who cares for his creation through his providence. One needs to have a new life experience with God. One needs to trust that God is actually engaged with us, is beginning a new work in us in the words of Philippians 1:6. This God is not static. His life is dynamic with us always moving, and relating with us.I believe that too often we can be satisfied with the theory of God and not the reality of God in us.

Jesus came to the earth to bring a brand new reality that can be trusted. That reality he called the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of the Heavens. And to see that Kingdom as a reality one needs a new birth, a starting over in life with a new perspective that throws out most old notions of God as ‘up there’ or ‘the man upstairs.’ We need instead to place our confidence in the Jesus who came to show us ‘The Father’ and through whom as Jesus said we actually see the most perfect loving character of God the Father.

Maybe other expressions of ‘born again’ would be ‘alive’ ‘have new eyes’ or ‘be alert’, ‘excite your senses’, ‘think outside the box’, ‘get rid of all your restraints’, ‘think creatively’.

If we, any of us, are going to experience Kingdom living here and now we have got to start being creative in the attitudes of our hearts and minds. We cannot love like Jesus love without this ‘interaction’ with the Father. We love because God loved us and that love of God is big. It’s huge. And our little kingdoms that we build all by ourselves do not have the capacity to love like that. When Jesus tells us to forgive everyone or we won’t be forgiven it requires a new dynamic, a new paradigm, a model unlike anything we have ever known. It requires really a new birth experience.

Jesus told his followers, his new students that they needed to become like a little child in order to enter the kingdom of God. (See Mark 10:15) They and we must come with a simple trust; arms wide open to receive the love of God in Christ as never before.  A child places his or her confidences in those who care for them. They are not prejudice. They don’t worry about tomorrow.  They don’t even worry about the clothes they wear. Children know how to love unconditionally.  Jesus had a special care for the children and told the folks the danger of hurting any one of them.

When Jesus tells us to be ‘born again’ he knows that we come with a package of previous behavior and attitudes but he also knows that by God’s grace those characteristics where they are harmful can change. We can set them aside as it were. (See Colossians 3:8) Paul’s writings

So how does this new birth take place? It is a conscious decision to place our confidence in God’s son, Jesus, who came to show us the character and providence of God. And as with a child we learn a new language of trust and love and peace and righteousness. The new birth is certainly assisted by the Holy Spirit, which is why Jesus probably mentions the wind blowing where it wants to because God in Christ is up to a new thing in his creation. It may be the first time we actually experience love from God.

We are given new eyes to see as when Elisha prayed for his servant to be able to see the armies of God surrounded them against the enemies. (2King 6:17)

If we are born again, starting new, revitalized then like a child we will need to learn how to read and here I refer to the Scriptures that can make us wise. (2Timothy 3:15) And as we talk with our Father we begin to learn the language of love.

And most of all being born again means that we become apprentices of Jesus. We enter his school of grace and truth. We sign up to practice the life that Jesus told us to live. He promises to live with and within us, to be with us to the end of the age.

So let me conclude by saying that being born again is a dynamic life with God at every moment. It affects our body, our minds, our spirit, our souls. This is not a theory. It’s not a doctrine. This is the new reality of the Kingdom of God that has come in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. He is the Kingdom of God and invites us into life with God.

By the way. Nicodemus? He shows up again as a follower of Jesus. (John 19:38-42)

 

 

WE HAVE BEEN LIED TO

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Call it Satan, evil, powers of darkness or even ‘the secular world’. There is a lie out there that says God doesn’t intimately love or care for his creation particularly his children. It is a lie initiated in the ‘garden’ when Adam and Eve were told there was something more, something better than God. It is a lie perpetuated by people today who point to events in the world, atrocities, natural disasters, disease and humanity’s inhumanity to one another and say this can’t happen under the watch of a good God or a powerful God. It is a lie that would turn our eyes away from God and turn our hearts to the affection of others and other things. It has all the markers of the ‘accuser’ who wants to thwart God’s people away from confident, trust and praise to God. It is an evil from the pit of hell that tried even to distract Jesus from his purpose on Earth when he was in the wilderness faced by satanic forces, tempted to think that God some how doesn’t know how to restore earth, or has left earth on its own.

God’s greatest power is love and he will do anything to convey that love to his creation. He will even allow his creation to groan in order that people will seek and find him. He is near to the brokenhearted not the proud. The lie tells us to be strong in ourselves, to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps, to do it our way because we can’t trust the one we can’t see. Jesus says blessed are you who do not see and yet believe.

God is faithful, loving, gracious, kind and every other characteristic we see in Jesus. God is also holy and God knows God’s plans for us and he will not be thwarted to change to accommodate humanity’s egoistic desires. God is happy with his creation because he knows how this whole thing is turning out for our good and his glory. God is saddened by the death of his creation for God’s loving heart is the origin of the love we feel for those who suffer, for a creation, which suffers.

God is good which means that his virtue is impeccable, without sin. Jesus came to prove amidst suffering and sinfulness that God intends good for his creation and will go to any lengths to bring us into community with him now and for all eternity. In some respects we can no more understand the goodness and love of God than a child in the womb can fathom what a parent’s care will be like. The Apostle Paul writes to one of the churches saying that he longs for Christ to be formed in them with all the pains and groaning of a mother giving birth to a child. (Galatians 4:19)

It’s like that with suffering. Until we grasp Christ ‘in us’ we cannot know the complete love of the Father. When Christ dwells inside of us we will know God like Jesus knew his Father, even when Jesus was in agony and felt forsaken and was dying. There is a verse in Colossians which says that Christ being in us is the hope of glory.’ Colossians 1:27.  That means that the life of Christ in us will allow us to see the radiance, splendor, joy and salvation of God.

Now, don’t expect that such revelations happen easily. It is a journey of a lifetime to discover the Christ in you and me. It is a journey worth the taking. We have seen others take that journey, a path that often leads through suffering, that of our own or watching the agony of loved ones or even from a distance seeing it in the world but it is a journey that God places us on when we place our confidence in him. He is doing the work of forming Christ in us as our own will allows. He will not force. His love is patient and long-suffering and there will be times when we feel left alone, angry, shamed but He promises to allow us to see the glory, maybe a glimpse here and there, maybe a flash of insight, a moment of forgiveness, maybe a radiant burst of light that overcomes all darkness. But it will come. He will not leave us nor forsake us. The history of faithful Christians bears that witness. And when the life of Christ grows ever more present in us we will become like him, we will live his life in this world. We will say like the Apostle Paul, ‘it is no longer I who live this life but Christ living in me.’(Galatians 2:20)

It will be sometimes a tortuous journey, sometimes exhilarating but it moves forward, onward, and upward. It is an eternal journey, which begins now.

 

Becoming an Olympian Christian

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It must be an amazing journey to become a participant in the Olympics. The process usually starts when a person is very young and someone has his or her sights set on the Olympic prize for a child or young person.  They need sponsors, lots of money and the opportunity to practice at time 24/7. They win at school events and then in the community, state and country.  They work hard for a goal, the medals and a place in history. Whether for a team or as an individual the Olympian is the best of the best.

 In some religions there are systematic ways by which with much striving, working, self-denial and self-discipline one can attain to the goal of being welcomed into the religious community, into the company of the elite.  But here I want to say that with Jesus it is different.

It is sort of like being made an Olympian first and then getting to practice until you reach perfection. Let me explain.

When Jesus began his ministry he told all people that they were welcomed into the Kingdom of God by his invitation. Say yes to the invite and they were ‘in’. Recall the Beatitudes, ‘Blessed are the poor for theirs is the Kingdom of God.’ (Luke 6:20)  Jesus is not saying that the state of being poor is blessed. It’s not. But to those who were poor, and whose poverty was seen as disfavor by God, Jesus said they were welcome into this Kingdom that had been newly inaugurated on earth through his presence.

 Jesus starts with the goal and once enlisted those who follow him will be taught how to live life in the Kingdom of God. They will be challenged to become perfect even as their heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5:48) And that’s a good thing because that kind of life is the good life, the God life in us.

 New life has come in Jesus and all we need do is place our trust in him and begin the journey. Will the journey be arduous at times? You bet but here’s the great thing. The coach will stay with us through the whole experience. In fact the coach, mysterious as this might sound, will place his life in ours.

I suspect if you are an Olympian athlete the coach’s voice will become ingrained into your very soul. Well, take the words of Jesus and let them soak into your mind. The Bible puts it like this, “Let the word of Christ dwell richly in you.” (Colossians 3:16) By word and Spirit we can’t go wrong.

 So no matter your condition when Jesus meets up with you please know that you are welcome into the Kingdom of his Father. It’s a brand new exciting life. And for the rest of your life you can have the pleasure of being in the day-to-day Olympics of living here and now in the Kingdom of God. 

‘Judgment free driving’

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Ok, let’s get back in our cars and take a test drive today. It’s time for ROAD GRACE, that wonderful experience on the highways of life that teach us about what it means to follow the Master Jesus in the journey of faith.

If you have been following ‘Road Grace’ you have come to realize that driving offers a school of experience in which to practice the graces of the Christian life.  Today’s lesson is about ‘judging’.  You may recall Jesus’ words on this subject from the Sermon on the Mount where he plainly says to the students he has collected, “Don’t judge others, or you will be judged. 2 You will be judged in the same way that you judge others, and the amount you give to others will be given to you.3 “Why do you notice the little piece of dust in your friend’s eye, but you don’t notice the big piece of wood in your own eye? (Matthew 7:1-3 New Century Version)

So, how do you feel about people talking on their cellphones, drifting off their lane?If you are like me you think, ‘What a jerk’.  What about the guy who rushes up on the right shoulder so that he can get ahead of the traffic? What a selfish so and so. We form opinions pretty quickly out there on the roadways. Those ‘rich folks’ drive their fancy cars. Over in the other lane are a bunch of no doubt rowdy kids looking for trouble. And how about those trucks that are so high off the ground you need a ladder just to get into the driver’s seat? How stupid. All kinds of thoughts dart in and out of your mind as you watch other drivers, their style, their appearance, their speed and if you are like me you often find yourself quick to judge that ‘other’ person.

It’s not much different in the journey with Jesus.  His instructions make it clear to the disciples, his students, that to judge someone is to find fault with them and thereby set us over and above them. Judging comes from pride. It’s what the Pharisee did to the tax collector in Jesus’ parable, not knowing anything about the heart of that publican.  It’s what we do on the highways and in personal relationships that comes from our own pride. We judge by other’s actions, words, lifestyle without ever knowing what is in their hearts. This might not be such a big deal on the highway but in real life situations and relationships it is most damaging.  We dismiss if not destroy another’s character when we should be more closely looking into our own hearts for those hints of pride and prejudice. Judgment comes from an inflated sense of self. And in judging we do not let God be sovereign. Let God do that work in us that needs to be done to build our character without tearing down another’s.

Out there on the highway we have the opportunity to practice in a sometimes-humorous way the disciplines and graces we need in all relationships with others and with God. So when you see another person looking or doing something that is ‘not quite right’ remember to say to yourself, ‘Move over ego and let the Master drive this automobile. Think of one person in your life about whom you make judgments and for a moment in prayer ask God’s forgiveness and pray that God will bless that other person. You will thus open your soul to a wealth of love and forgiveness from God.