“I’m planning to be civil toward any of my neighbors who may be heading for the local mosque. But in no way will I accept the charge that to tell them of the truth of the gospel of Jesus is to jeopardize the ‘pluralism’ that has made America a great springboard of freedom for so many generations. And no way either will I concede the right—a right that has now become a duty—to tell them that the error of their thinking is profound. I will do that not because I hate them, but because I love them.”

-Joel Belz

As Christians who seek to please the Lord, we are absolutely required to love the people around us regardless of their beliefs. That includes treating them with kindness AND telling them the life-saving truth of the Gospel.

The missionary’s message is the limitless importance of Jesus Christ as the propitiation for our sins, and a missionary is someone who is immersed in the truth of that revelation.

–From Os Chambers for today.

Psalm 29:4-9

The voice of the LORD is powerful;
   the voice of the LORD is full of majesty.

⁵The voice of the LORD breaks the cedars;
   the LORD breaks the cedars of Lebanon.
6He makes Lebanon to skip like a calf,
   and Sirion like a young wild ox.

⁷The voice of the LORD flashes forth flames of fire.
⁸The voice of the LORD shakes the wilderness;
   the LORD shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.

⁹The voice of the LORD makes the deer give birth
   and strips the forests bare,
   and in his temple all cry, “Glory!”

Christians sometimes talk about hearing the voice of the Lord. In reading this this morning, I was just really challenged at how I perceive God and how I think about hearing from Him. The truth is that through Jesus Christ and His sacrifice for our sin, we are now able to come boldly before God (Eph. 3:12). God doesn’t destroy us with His voice (or other agents of His strength), but we still serve the same God. Holy awe at His Being is the only honest response to understanding who He really is.

Just a thought.

As I heard the words to this song, I guess, I was really touched. This is totally the attitude and motivation I have sometimes and want to have all the time.

Take a listen. Song: “Loving a Person”

John 10:28-30
²⁸ I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. ²⁹My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. ³⁰ I and the Father are one.”

As someone who has been a Christian for a while, it’s easy to forget some of the most basic truths about my condition. It’s a beautiful reality that I have been given eternal life and that I will never perish. Additionally, I’m secure in the hands of God—He won’t let anything “snatch me out of [his] hand.”

Surely God loves us and surely he has blessed us greatly! Be thankful.

“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!

“For our appeal does not spring from error or impurity or any attempt to deceive, 4 but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts. 5 For we never came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed—God is witness. 6 Nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others, though we could have made demands as apostles of Christ. 7 But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. 8 So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us.” (1 Thes. 2:3-8, ESV)

The things I thought were really cool are how, first, any appeal made to people for God should always only come out of love for God and a desire to please Him. It’s easy for me to get the focus on myself and end up “serving God” in a really self-serving way. That’s wrong.

Secondly, it is never okay to use any sort of deceit or trickery to convince people of the truth, nor is it okay to have ulterior motives in trying to communicate it. The gospel is powerful enough on it’s own, God’s spirit is powerful enough to communicate it without us twisting it.

Finally, the thing that is going to work in helping people understand God’s love, is simply being motivated by it ourselves. We need to be willing to, as the verse says, share the Gospel and even our entire lives with people so that they can know the love of Christ.

The following is a quote from A. W. Tozer from an essay he wrote entitled, “We Need Men of God Again” (You can find the whole thing here if you are interested.):

“We languish for men who feel themselves expendable in the warfare of the soul, who cannot be frightened by threats of death because they have already died to the allurements of this world. Such men will be free from the compulsions that control weaker men. They will not be forced to do things by the squeeze of circumstances; their only compulsion will come from within–or from above.” (Emphasis mine.)

There is sort of a lot there and if you read the whole essay, which is good, there’s probably more too. So, I won’t go into very much detail, but one thing that really gripped me was the idea of considering my life to be “expendable in the warfare of the soul”. I am not exactly sure the best way to explain what I’m thinking but, basically, I do not consider my life expendable at all. I often view my time as important, my skills as unique, and my presence with people as a blessing that is mine to give. While this is disgusting to recognize–this level of pride in me–it’s for sure true.

We are called in Philippians 2 to take an attitude the same as Christ, who being God, didn’t consider that something to be grasped, but instead became a servant. This is mind-blowing to me, because in the history of human existence, Christ is the only one who could have rightly demanded to be respected, honored, valued, etc, but he was the first one to truly love and the one who has taught all other true lovers how to love truly.

The reason this passage caught my attention, though, initially, is because I have been reading and hearing Romans 12:1 a lot recently. There’s been sort of a struggle for me in figuring out what does it mean to present my body as a living sacrifice? That means a lot of things for sure, but to me trying to begin considering my life to be expendable for the cause of Christ seems to be a helpful starting point. When I can let go of thinking of MY life, MY time, and MY ability and just have open eyes to what will advance God’s kingdom, I think that is when I start to get used in big ways by God.

Love you, Andrew