24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. 25 For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.

Whether we realize it or not, sin is our greatest enemy. Every pain, heartache, and hardship we face is the consequence of our or someone else’s sin. Jesus Christ came and died to free us from it. Praise His name!
 

I’ve been listening a lot to an album I bought a couples years back, Hymns Ancient and Modern, from the Passion people.

I was in the car driving the other day, and this track came on. I’ve heard it many times—maybe hundreds—but have never really stopped to listen to the lyrics. This time, however, I did and was really blessed by them.

The hymn is called The Solid Rock:

My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly trust in Jesus’ Name.

On Christ the solid Rock I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand;
All other ground is sinking sand.

When darkness seems to hide His face,
I rest on His unchanging grace.
In every high and stormy gale,
My anchor holds within the veil.

On Christ the solid Rock I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand;
All other ground is sinking sand.

His oath, His covenant, His blood,
Support me in the whelming flood.
When all around my soul gives way,
He then is all my Hope and Stay.

On Christ the solid Rock I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand;
All other ground is sinking sand.

When He shall come with trumpet sound,
Oh may I then in Him be found.
Dressed in His righteousness alone,
Faultless to stand before the throne.

On Christ the solid Rock I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand;
All other ground is sinking sand.

Simply put, it’s so easy to put my trust in things besides Christ—in friends/relationships, in success, in achievement, in being respected, etc. All those things, though, at some point fail and I’m left back where I started. Only when I trust in Christ am I trusting in something solid. As the hymn says, all other ground is sinking sand.

“⁵ Gracious is the LORD, and righteous;
our God is merciful.
⁶ The LORD preserves the simple;
when I was brought low, he saved me.
⁷ Return, O my soul, to your rest;
for the LORD has dealt bountifully with you.”

Let me just say that I love this passage. For me, so much of the time, I find myself really fighting to find joy in the Lord and rest in Him. It is always because I forget who God is, I forget who I am, and I forget, therefore, what my fitting response to these truths should be. This verse concisely points me toward the truth regarding those three areas.

1.) About God: Verse 5 reminds me that God is gracious: He shows me favor when I don’t deserve it; that God is righteous: He’s not going to harm me or try to abuse me somehow; and that God is merciful: He spares me the punishment that I deserve for falling short of his standard (Romans 3:22-24).

2.) About me: Verse 6 reminds me that God has preserved me and that he saved me. I know that I am not right on my own apart from Jesus Christ. This reminder is helpful for when I’m feeling proud or when I think I have it together. God saved me and I am therefore indebted to him–but it’s debt of gratitude. I can’t every begin, even, to pay it back.

3.) Response: The last verse is so beautiful to me because it shows us the fitting response to these truths. By nature I am a person who worries, so that makes this is even more helpful for me. This verse clearly reminds us to stop and rest in the Lord because he has shown us so much favor that we don’t have anything left to be concerned with. He has dealt very bountifully with me! The salvation of my soul, of course, being the most generous gift He could have ever given, but that’s really only the beginning of the blessings He’s shown.

Love the Lord today!

This is part of the big prayer Jesus prayed in John 17 before he was betrayed, arrested, and eventually crucified. As someone who has grown up in Christendom and who has been at church and stuff my whole life, I guess I would have expected Jesus to pray for something else.

I guess I believe that one of the most important things for Christians to do is reach out to those who don’t know Jesus. After all, God loves us and wants to be with us, but we’re separated from Him by our sin and condemned to eternity apart from Him if we do not know Christ as Savior. This is completely true, I believe. I think I would expect Jesus to pray, “Help my followers to be really faithful witnesses, dynamic communicators, and passionate about the Lost.”

Instead, he asks the Father to make us Christians unified as he is unified with God. (That’s intense unity, by the way.) I put one verse as the verse of the day, but throughout this prayer, Jesus continually asks God in various ways to help us to be unified. It really appears to be the primary thing that was on His heart at the time.

So, briefly, what does that mean to us? I guess, a lot of things. To me, though, I was pretty convicted about one thing when I read this. I like to be funny. A lot of times, being funny, for me, involves a level of sarcasm. While I don’t want to say all sarcasm is wrong (it may be, but I don’t want to say it :)), I really wonder how it affects the unity that our Lord Jesus Christ is so passionate about.

I live with someone with whom most of my conversation is pretty insincere. We joke around a lot and most of the time it is sarcastic. While I like the guy, I don’t really feel super close to him and I don’t feel super unified with him because we rarely have real, heart-felt, genuine conversation. Thinking about how that relationship has been affected by my lack of seriousness and especially by my consistent sarcasm, has really got me wanting to change.

I think in summing Ephesians 4:3 puts it well: “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” What does every effort mean? Well, no holds barred.

I read this passage this morning and I was really taken by it. I remember learning John 11:35 as a child and really enjoying how it was the shortest verse in the Bible or something like that. Because of my familiarity with the verse, I haven’t always given it a lot of thought.

Today, though, when I read it things were different. In context, a friend of Jesus’ died, Lazarus. His sisters, before his death, asked Jesus to come heal him. Jesus didn’t come immediately and he died. When Jesus does come, Martha (one of the sisters) comes to Jesus expresses her sorrow that her brother died and that Jesus wasn’t there.

Jesus tells her, though, that her brother will “rise again”. This is all before he arrives at the grave. So, going into this situation, Jesus, Martha, and Mary know that Lazarus is going to come back to life.

And herein lies what really hit me, Jesus, despite his knowledge of what will happen, still weeps with the people who are mourning Lazarus’ death. To me this just seems like such a huge expression of love and compassion. Even though Jesus knows that, in some ways, what they are going through is temporary and maybe not really significant (in light of his knowledge), he still loves them enough to meet them where they are at—in sorrow. Verse 36 indicates that Jesus’ love was very apparent.

After reading this verse this morning I am just really humbled and excited that I serve such a gracious and loving God. He has raised us all up to life, if we’ll accept His gift, then beyond that he loves us enough to simply meet us where we are at. Whether we’re in joy or sorrow, he is there right along with us; even though he knows enough (he knows all things work together for his good! Rom 8:28) to never necessarily need to feel with us, he does because he loves us.

I love Jesus!

1 John 3:2-3 (English Standard Version)
“²Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. ³And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.”

First, this passage gives me great hope! Oftentimes, in my journey to know my Lord more, I get discouraged because my own shortcomings and insufficiencies. While I know that I can trust God to be perfecting me (to be completing the work He began per Philippians 1:6), sometimes the completion of that seems very far off. Thus, confidently knowing that at some point I will become like Christ gives me great joy.

The second thought I have from this passage is more of an application. Notice how it says that “we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” This implies that just seeing our Lord Jesus Christ has great power to transform us. While we must wait till the day he is revealed to see him in his fullness, in the mean time, by seeking the Lord through his word and in prayer we can begin to see a foreshadowing of him. I want this desire to see my Lord to consume me, as I want to be changed more into his image. I want to love like Jesus, and I want to change the world as he did also. I want to proclaim his praise and glory to the nations, and I want to tell all people of the great gift of grace he has to offer them—which can save them from the eternal consequences of their sin. I know that in order to do this, though, I must be changed daily to be more like him.

So this must be my goal: to know Jesus more—that is, to see him more clearly—by seeking him constantly.