Know Fear

I'm preparing to go to Dickinson this next weekend to participate in a friend of mine's DiscipleNow weekend. I'm leading a High School group and I'm speaking on Saturday night. I've been thinking about what I'm going to speak about and God brought me back to my post of March 3, "Who Am I?"

As I thought about fear, I started thinking about what it is that we fear. Most people, when they are talking about fearing God, are afraid of God and His judgment. We live at an arm's length because we know our sin and we are afraid that God is going to zap us as punishment for that sin. And this is true when before we come into a relationship with God. Once we ask Jesus into our heart as our Lord and Savior, we no longer have to fear God's judgment. We are forgiven and our sins are forgotten by God. When we begin to understand what the March 3rd post really means to us, the fear changes to that of awe and reverence.

When I think about what God has done for me, I can't believe it and I stand in awe of who God is and what He has done. I still have a healthy fear of God but I am able to approach Him and draw close to Him because my sins are gone.

Discipline vs. Pruning

Several months ago, I started using a devotion book based on a book entitled, "Secrets from the Vine." This book is based upon Jesus' teaching in John 15. It really began to teach me some interesting things, but like a big dummy, I decided to switch to another devotion book and never finished "Secrets from the Vine."
Well, about a month after I switched devotionals, I lost my job with Farm Bureau. I was a little disappointed but I knew that this was opening the door to a new opportunity. I began to put out applications with school districts for Choir jobs. I had an interview in a district, but I didn't get the job and I got very angry with God.
Fast forward to a few weeks ago. I was asked to lead a study of the book "Secrets from the Vine." I am finally getting to finish the book that I started. Little did I know how much God was going to show me.
We've spent two weeks talking about how when we are not producing fruit (good works that glorify God), we go through God's discipline. This discipline comes in the form of rebuke, chastening or scourging. God begins with rebuke and if we refuse to repent, He moves to chastening and hen to scourging if we continue to resist Him.
When we finally repent of our sin, and for some of us it takes longer than others because we are a little hard headed (guess who hat would be), God ends the discipline but He begins to prune us to produce more fruit for Him. The problem comes in that discipline and pruning both cause us pain and we end up confusing one with the other.
Because we think that we are undergoing discipline when we are actually being pruned, we get frustrated and often times angry with God. We are confused because we think that God is disciplining us for no reason.
I look back at the difficulties that I've faced the last months and realize that what I thought was discipline was God pruning away things in my life so that I could be more fruitful. I made the mistake of getting mad at God and turning away from Him. I realize now what was taking place. As a result, I've had to repent and allow God to start the process of pruning me again.
Are you in that place today? What do you do to figure out what God is doing in your life? The author gives these suggestions:
1. Examine your life and see if there is any unconfessed sin in your life. If so, pray for God's forgiveness.
2. If you can't think of any sins that are unconfessed, ask God to reveal them to you.
3. If after a period of time, say about a week, God has not revealed any sin, understand that God is pruning you to produce more fruit for Him.
4. Relax and release yourself to Him and allow Him to work in your life the way He sees best.
If you have any questions about this, please leave me a comment and I will answer you or by the book "Secrets from the Vine" and study it for yourself.

Who Am I?

If you want your behavior to change so that it wil be more like Christ's, then you will have to acknoledge your new identity in Christ, and you will have to resist Satan's attempt to deceive you.-from "Life on Purpose"
So who are we in Christ?
1. We am no longer an enemy of God. Before we accept Christ as our Savior, we are enemies with God. We are in direct conflict with Him. Often it's not an obvious "hate" relationship, but we don't desire God's will and plan for our lives and it puts us at odds with Him. When we accept Christ, we accept God's plan and desires and we are no longer His enemy. Now we are His children.
2. We are forgiven and justified. When we accept Jesus, we are forgiven of all our past sins. God no longer sees them. The Bible tells us that God casts our sins "as far as the east is from the west." Think about that: if you started flying east, your compass would read East. As you continue to fly, you would eventually reach California (the West Coast), but your compass would still read East. East and West never meet. Not only am I forgiven, but I am justified. I am clean in God's eyes, just as if I had never sinned. The blood Christ shed on the Cross covers my sins and cleans them.
3. We are a new creation. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" The old is gone, what does that mean? Our old desire to do what we want to is gone. We have been given a new mindset. We want to do what God wants. Our nature has changed. The power that Satan had over us is broken. We now have the power, through the Holy Spirit in our lives, to say "No" to sin. We are still tempted, but we have the ability to resist.
4. We are heirs to God's Kingdom. We have been made a child of God. We have been adopted into His family and we are given all the rights and privileges afforded to God's children. Because we are adopted, we can never lose that inheritance-Heaven.
Have you ever entered into that relationship with God? What great news that we are new in Christ. If you want to know more about this relationship, leave me a comment and I'll get back with you.

Coming Soon

So it's been over 3 months since I posted my last thoughts. I'm in the process of starting this blog back up. I've been through some things that have lead me to really re-evaluate my life and my walk. I hope that in the next few days to be able to share some personal things and hope that they will help you in your life and your walk. Keep checking back.

DUH Moment!

Okay, I had one of those DUH moments this morning. As I was doing my Quiet Time, still continuing to look at the book "Secrets from the Vine" by Bruce Wilkinson, I was reminded about the pruning process God puts us through so that we can produce greater fruit for the Kingdom. Now I'm no green thumb...in fact I have a brown thumb and can kill a plant really quick. But my mother was and is a pretty good gardener and one thing I used to always see her do was remove branches and what she called "suckers" from her tomato plants. When I asked her why she did it, she said, "It helps the plant produce better fruit."

In my Quiet Time, Wilkinson talked about the same thing. By removing excess growth, the sap can then flow to the fruit and make it bigger and sweeter. It is beneficial in the producing of fruit.

Okay, so here's the DUH moment I had. God wants to prune us so that we are producing the right kind of fruit for Him. We have this idea that if we are busy, we are productive. Not so. Productivity, or fruit, and activity have nothing to do with one another. In fact, we need to cut back on some of our activity and focus more on those things that are producing fruit for the Kingdom. I've been guilty to many times of being busy but not really producing any fruit.

Lord, prune me. I know that it is a painful process but remove from my life anything that is getting in the way of me producing fruit for the Kingdom. Help me to willingly give up that which takes away from my productivity for you.

How about you? Do you need to pray that kind of prayer today?

Cut Off or Taken Up

God continues to teach me from John 15. In verse 2, Jesus says this, "He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful." I always struggled with this verse because this sounds like those Christians who aren't producing fruit are cut away from the vine and it is thrown away. If that was the case, how then do Baptist's reconcile our "Once saved, always saved" belief?

During my devotional time this morning, Bruce Wilkinson's book shed some excellent light on this. The Greek word that is translated "cut off" or "take off" can actually be better translated as "to take up." It is the same Greek word that was used when Jesus told the lame man to, and I paraphrase, "Take up your bed..."

The idea here is that the branch is not actually cut off and discarded. It is far to valuable to do that. Instead, the idea is that a branch that has strayed off the trellis and gotten down on the ground where it has become dirty and diseased is gently lifted up by the vinedresser, cleaned us and reattached to the trellis so that it can become a productive branch again.

We are the branch. We have a tendency to stray away from God and get caught up in the world where we become spiritually dirty. But instead of God cutting us off because we've strayed away from Him, He gently reaches down and encourages us to return to Him. When we return in repentance, He gently cleans us up and moves us back to His "trellis" where we can begin to produce MUCH fruit, as I talked about in the last post.

Aren't you glad that God never gives up on us? The world will give up on you and Satan will try to convince you that you have messed up to bad to ever be productive again. But God always allows us to return in repentance and He restores us and encourages us to be productive in His Kingdom once again.

Welcome Back!

That's kind of how I feel since I haven't had a post on here in over a month. But I'm back-not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Gone through a lot of things over the last few weeks-learned a lot of things along the way. Just want to share some of those with you. Going to be a little transparent here so don't laugh.

I spent 15 years in full time ministry and have been teaching a Sunday School class for the last two. I used to always tell my students that they need to have a Quiet Time everyday. Talk is cheap! It's easy for me to tell them to do it, but I've struggled with it for years. Just recently, God really drove home the need for me to be spending time with Him everyday. I'm currently using "Secrets From the Vine" (I think that's the right name) by Bruce Wilkerson. The whole book is written around the teachings of Jesus in John 15-you know "I am the vine and you are the branches..."

I've read that passage numerous times and have even taught on it a few times. Yet I missed some really important things in there. The biggest thing that I've learned in the last week is that God expects each Christian to produce MUCH fruit. Why? To bring glory to Him. Fruit is not for us, but so that others will see God at work and be attracted to Him. To produce MUCH fruit we must be attached to the vine, because Jesus said any branch that doesn't produce fruit will be cut off and thrown away (that's my paraphrase, by the way). And to be attached to the vine means that we must totally surrender ourselves to God, holding nothing back from Him.

That's where I have failed. I've put up what I thought was a good front and did all the "Christian" things. Yet as I stepped back this week and looked at things, I haven't been totally surrendered to Him at all. At best, I would say that I'm actually about 50% surrendered. This drove me to my knees (figuratively-if I get to my knees I'm not sure I could get back up again). Then I heard this song echoing over in my head:

Lord I want more of You
Living water rain down on me
Lord I need more of You
Living breath of life come fill me up

Lord I want more of You
Living water rain down on me
Lord I need more of You
Living breath of life come fill me up

We are hungry, We are hungry
We are hungry for the more of You
We are thirsty, oh Jesus
We are thirsty for the more of You

That's my prayer from this point forward. Lord, I want more of You. How about you?