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Author: LC

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Published on 6 Comments on Thoughts on Ephesians 1
  • We have been blessed with ALL spiritual blessings in Christ. (Ephesians 1:3)
  • We were chosen to be holy and blameless in His sight before the world was created.  (Ephesians 1:4)
  • God intended for us to be a part of His family through Christ.  We do not have to plead for this privilege; we only have to accept the invitation.  (Ephesians 1:5, Ephesians 1:11)
  • God's grace and forgiveness are given to us through Christ's sacrifice.  His grace does not depend on us or on anything that we may or may not do.  (Ephesians 1:7-8)
  • When we hear the truth of God's gift of salvation and accept it, we are given the Holy Spirit as a seal--a family crest.  The Holy Spirit should shine through us and be a sign of to whom we belong, but the Holy Spirit is also our assurance, a deposit to guarantee our inheritance from God. (Ephesians 1:13-14)
  • Spiritual wisdom and revelation are available from God. (Ephesians 1:17, James 1:5)
  • Believing comes first, and then the eyes of our hearts are enlightened. Faith is required. (Ephesians 1:18,Believing Is Seeing)
  • His power is made available to us.  The extent of His power was demonstrated when He raised Jesus from the dead.  (Ephesians 1:19-21)
  • God gave Jesus authority over the church (those who believe).  (Ephesians 1:22)
  • The church is Christ's body, His representation on earth.  (Ephesians 1:23)

Please share your thoughts on Ephesians 1 in the comment section.

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Today's post was written by pastor Rick Cowan.  You can visit his website here.

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It was quite a shock to find ourselves behind two air bags and atop a fallen traffic light last night.  We reacted like any parents would, quickly checking to see if all the kids were OK (having to calm six shaken kids forces you to look past your own nerves!).  Once we assessed the condition of our kids and realized they were all safe (apart from some seatbelt burns and a loose tooth), we began to praise God for his goodness.

This morning as I reflected on the accident I began to thank God for his goodness once again.  Then it occurred to me.  What if one of us were seriously hurt? What if one of my kids were taken away via ambulance?  Would God not still be good?  What determines God's goodness?  Things going our way?  Averting injury? What prompts us to thank him for his goodness?

The truth is, God's goodness exists outside of circumstance.  It is not determined by what makes us feel good.  God is good all the time.  Not because our lives are pleasant all the time.  Not because we get what we want all the time.  No.  God is good all the time because his goodness is an unchangeable aspect of his perfect character.

It was sobering this morning to search my own soul and consider, would I still be thanking God for his goodness if our accident had a less than happy outcome?  I pray that I would.

It was right to thank God for his goodness yesterday, not simply because he kept us safe but because he is good no matter what he chooses to do.  No matter the circumstance, God never violates his goodness.  So, to thank God in this way is to affirm within our own hearts that God is good even when circumstances are bad.

After thinking on this a while this morning I began to consider -- "What then could have been a better prayer?"  I began to thank God, not just for his goodness, but for his mercy.  The truth is, we deserve nothing.  Our sin condemns us to death.  Yet God, by his mercy, chose to allow us to keep on living.  I don't deserve life and I only live by his mercy.

Lamentations 3:22  It is of the LORD'S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. [KJV]

I am thankful for God's goodness, which is independent of any circumstance.  I am also thankful for his mercy on undeserving men.  I am thankful that God is unchanging and that no matter what happens we can be assured that he has violated none of his perfect attributes.  He is the unchanging, unmovable Rock upon which we can build our lives.

Psalms 23:6  Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever. [KJV]

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Published on 3 Comments on I Corinthians 1:18-31 Believing Is Seeing

Years ago, my husband moved to a new town to start a new job.  Because I was in the middle of a Master of Education program at home, I didn’t move with him.  One or the other of us would travel back and forth to see each other on weekends, but his colleagues questioned whether I truly existed or not.  They didn’t know me.  They had never met me.  Some people are in the same position with God.  I often have people tell me that God doesn’t exist, that He is just a crutch for people that can’t deal with life on their own.  I, however, know that He exists, because I know Him.  I will never be able to convince someone who doesn’t know Him though; that is something that only the Holy Spirit can do.

The Apostle Paul, in I Corinthians 1:18-31, gives the Corinthian believers a similar message.  The people of that time also thought that the idea of God, and especially of Christ, the Messiah, hanging on the cross, was foolishness.  The Jews expected, and demanded, miraculous signs, demonstrations of great power from their awaited Messiah, but they still would not believe. (Luke 16:31, John 12:37)  Where was the power in Jesus hanging on the cross?  It didn’t make any sense to them.  The Greeks, were, and still are, known for their great intelligence and wisdom, but their human wisdom was not enough to understand the value of Christ’s crucifixion.

Paul’s audience, the Corinthians, were not noble, powerful, or privileged, and yet they had become believers because they had accepted the call of God.  They knew God, because they chose to believe in Him by faith.  God calls all of us, but there is absolutely nothing we can do through our own power or wisdom to earn salvation.  All we can do is accept His gift.  We may not completely understand God’s ways of doing things, but that doesn’t mean that our ways are better or that we are smarter.  We can’t even begin to fathom the wisdom of God because it is so far above our own.  Christ’s willingness to sacrifice Himself in such a humiliating way, for us, is all that we should boast about.

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Published on 2 Comments on Romans 5:1-5 Faith Is The Mother of Hope

At the beginning of this new year, I am thinking about hope. As I have said before, Biblical hope is not wishful thinking, but a confident expectation that God will fulfill His promises to us. If we look carefully enough, we can find stories of hope all around us. The television programs 100 Huntley Street and Full Circle specialize in sharing stories of hope. If you were to ask your friends, most of them could share personal stories of hope—stories of redemption, of gain from loss, of family members going down a path that would lead to destruction, one that they couldn’t see the way back from, but they did—somehow, miraculously—find their way back. No one, let me repeat that, NO ONE is without hope. What is impossible for humans is possible with God. (Matthew 19:26, Mark 10:27, Luke 1:37, Luke 18:27)

In Romans 8:24-25, the Apostle Paul states that it is in hope that we were saved. Let’s be clear about this. We are saved through faith. (Ephesians 2:8) We must believe that what God has said, even though we do not completely see or understand it, is true, and we wait in hope until the fulfillment of all that He has promised. Matthew Henry has said, “Faith is the mother of hope.”

In the meantime, we live in an imperfect world. We are surrounded by pain, sadness, frustration, injustice and suffering, and it’s hard. Our hope is not yet complete. We do not see the end results yet; if we did, there would be nothing left to hope for. Earlier, (Romans 5:1-5) Paul states that our suffering produces endurance, which produces character, which in turn produces hope. All of the things we have gone through in the past have strengthened us, along with God’s grace, to go through the things we are now facing. And we can rejoice in the hope of God’s glory.

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Published on 6 Comments on Matthew 6:33 Hearing God’s Voice

At this time of year, many people start thinking about New Year’s Resolutions. What can I do differently in the coming year to make my life better? Many plan to start diet or exercise programs, and some plan to start Bible reading programs that will take them through the Bible in one year. A lot of these Bible reading programs alternate between Old and New Testament. Some read from four different sections each day. Some read straight through from cover to cover, and others go in chronological order. In order to read the Bible completely in one year, you need to read about three or four chapters a day. I have done this a couple of times before, but I don’t intend to do it again. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a good thing to read your Bible--this whole blog is built on it. I don’t think it’s wrong to read the Bible straight through either; in fact I think it’s a good idea to do so, either how it is written or in chronological order. But I don’t think that you should set yourself up for a schedule that you can’t keep, and that you will feel guilty about if you give it up. I think it is more important to forget the schedule, and read at a pace where you can stop and think, and pray, about what you are reading.

Many of you are familiar with Matthew 6:33 and the context around it. We are told not to worry about material things, what we will eat, what we will drink, what we will wear, because our Heavenly Father knows that we need them, but to first, above all, pursue His kingdom and righteousness, and the material things we need will be provided. The context tells us why we should put God first, and I think most of us would agree even if only for practical reasons. The problem is that most of us who have read, even memorized, this verse and agree with it, have trouble putting it into practice. So I want to talk about how we put God first. How do we get to know Him? How do we hear and know His voice? Surely His provision for us involves our cooperation. How do we follow His leading if we don’t know where He is directing us?

Rather than following a reading plan that will take you through the Bible in one year, why not make a commitment of how much time you will spend each day reading the Bible and in prayer. Why not try to get to know God, to understand Him. Many people pray for God to speak to them, to guide them on the next step of their journey. Do they expect to hear a booming voice from heaven with the answer telling them what they should do? Being a follower of Jesus Christ is not about religion, and following a list of rules, especially self-prescribed rules, it is about having a relationship, being adopted into a new family. How can you get to know that family if you don’t spend time with them? Reading the Bible, just for the sake of getting through it, and not really paying attention to it or considering how it could change your life, would be like having a conversation with someone while you’re daydreaming about something else. If you want to improve the relationship, you have to listen. For those of you who are waiting for God to speak to you, He already has—volumes.

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Published on 1 Comment on Acts 12 Faithless Prayer

Today's post was written by Tim Challies, an author and pastor. You can visit his website here.
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Acts 12 contains one of my favorite stories of the early church. It is a great little bit of writing—a short story in three acts. I was reflecting on that story recently and just had to tell you about it.

The chapter begins with a description of Herod’s persecution against the church. In order to please his Jewish subjects Herod has James arrested and killed. This makes his subjects so happy that he then goes after Peter, throwing him in prison as well. Knowing the popularity of these upstart Christians, Herod puts Peter under the care of four whole squads of soldiers. The first act ends with these words: “So Peter was kept in prison, but earnest prayer for him was made to God by the church.” This earnest prayer is no incidental detail; it is a little fact, some narrative tension, that the author offers to foreshadow what will come.

The second act tells how Peter is delivered by God through one his angels. Peter, half asleep, sees his chains fall off and quickly passes all the guards before waking up and realizing what is happening. He hurries quickly to the church, to the gathering of people who just happen to be praying for him at that very moment. There is a delightful bit of comedy injected into the text when Rhoda, the servant girl, so excited to hear Peter at the door, runs to tell everyone that he has arrived. But she forgets to let him in; he is left standing on the street, pounding at the door. With the prayer meeting coming to a prompt end, the people belittle Rhoda, refusing to believe that Peter has actually arrived. And yet, because of Peter’s persistent knocking, they soon come to realize that he really has been rescued. Peter quickly tells his story and then disappears, presumably opting to lay low for a little while.

In the third act we return to Herod. Herod has ordered the execution of the soldiers who allowed Peter to escape. And then we find him accepting worship as a god. His Creator is most displeased and strikes him down so “he was eaten by worms and breathed his last.” Herod bookends this story, appearing as a cruel tyrant at the beginning and as a pathetic worm-eaten corpse at the end. He has gone from holding the power of life and death in his hand to being struck down by the Lord himself. It’s a pathetic end to a pathetic ruler.

Acts 12 contains a great little story, a little vignette of life in the early church. Despite the miraculous (Peter being rescued, Herod being struck down) there is such a human element to it. We see the church in prayer, undoubtedly begging God for the life of their friend and pastor. Yet when God answers their earnest prayers, they refuse to believe it. “You are out of your mind,” they tell Rhoda when she insists that God has answered them. Two thousand years later we laugh at them, wondering why they would bother to pray if they didn’t believe that God might actually answer. And then we realize that we do little better; we realize how much effort we put into pleading for God to act and how little effort we put into seeking answers to those prayers. I trust the lesson was not lost on the early church. I trust they learned from it that God’s miraculous rescue of Peter was not in any way separate from their prayers. Those prayers, even though they were offered with little expectation of an answer, were instrumental in God rescuing Peter from his imprisonment. God answers prayer, even when we ask with little faith.

It is also worth noticing that as soon as Peter arrived he was sure to share all that God had done. Peter, the object of all those prayers, wanted to ensure that the church knew that it was God who had acted with such power and in such an unusual way. “He described to them how the Lord had brought him out of the prison. And he said, ‘Tell these things to James and to the brothers.’” He wanted this great act of God to encourage all of the believers.

The chapter closes with these familiar words: “the word of God increased and multiplied.” Have you ever noticed how often these words, or ones just like them, appear in Acts? Just a brief overview of the first chapters shows them in chapters 2, 4, 6, 8, 9, 11 and 12. In every case, Luke wants us to know that God continued to build his church. In times of joy and pain, times of peace and persecution, God built his church. All that God did was for his own glory and served his ultimate purpose of drawing a people to himself.

And this God, who acted so faithfully, so consistently, so powerfully, is the same God we serve today.

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Imagine that you live in a place where everyone not only likes you, but they have nothing but good to say to you or about you. Imagine that you have everything you need and much more besides. Imagine that all the problems you are facing now were gone. Jesus had things far better than we could imagine, and He left it all to come to Earth to face ridicule and persecution and torture. Why did He do that? For us. So that we could come into the presence of a holy God. So that we can enjoy the same privileges that Jesus has. That is the reason for Christmas.

This is my favourite carol. Merry Christmas everyone!

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Published on 2 Comments on Luke 16:1-9 Focus on Eternity

Most Christians, whether they actually practise it or not, would tell you that we are supposed to give 10% of our money, a tithe, to God. We think of it as our money, and by giving 10% we are either fulfilling an obligation (like paying a tax) or we are being generous and giving to charity. Financial expert and author Michel Bell would tell you that it is all God’s money, and we are just managing it while we are here on this earth.

The Clever Steward in Luke 16:1-9 was doing something very similar. He was the manager of his master’s household and was in charge of managing his master’s finances. But the manager started acting as if he were the owner and used the money for his own benefit. The master found out and fired him. What was that manager going to do now? Who would hire him? He was used to having a desk job, so he didn’t think that his back could take doing manual labour, and he certainly didn’t want people to think he was poor, so he didn’t want to beg. He had to come up with an idea fast, and so he did. He went to the people who owed his master money, and made deals with them. He cut one person’s debt in half, and another’s by 20%. I can’t imagine that the master was going to settle for a lower amount, so I believe that the manager paid the difference. This accomplished two things. He arranged for the master to get his money back more quickly, and he also won some friends by charging them less. That meant that when he was jobless there would be people willing to help him out. His master commended him for shrewd actions. His master certainly wasn’t commending him for his dishonesty. That is why he fired him in the first place.

What does Jesus want us to learn from this? I’m sure He doesn’t want us to imitate the manager’s bad qualities—dishonesty, selfishness and pride. But the manager had some good qualities too. He was quick-thinking, decisive and focused on his future; he knew that he could make use of his money to win friends. If we were to focus on our future, it would include eternity. Jesus is telling us that we need to use our wealth in ways that will reach people for Him. Instead of spending it on things that have no eternal value, we could buy Bibles, take missions trips, or support organizations that are already working to further the Kingdom. The more people who are saved because of our use of money, the more friends we will have in our eternal home.