Daily Manna (Coffee with Jesus)

We say one thing but we do the opposite.  Ugh.  We encourage others in their walk but trip and fall in our own walk.  We stop one day a week to worship God, thanking Jesus for all He did for us. But come Monday morning we jump into the worship of our weekly agendas that demands and enslaves us of our time and thoughts.  We strive to please our bosses by working hard to produce an income that satisfies all we want out of life—namely making more money for more wants beyond our needs.  The more we make, the more we spend.  We are torn between the passions of this world and all that God wants for us.  We live a contradictive life. 

We obey the laws of the land but feel most times they are written for someone else who needs them more than us.  We fudge the speed limit and push the pedal harder to get through a yellow to red light at the intersections without thinking of anyone else that might be hurt from our actions.  Laws are written to protect us.  But sometimes we use the Law as an indicator of how to get around the law for our own benefit.  The line is drawn which serves to seduce the rebellious tendencies in us to see what we can get away with or hide.  We live a contradictive life. 

Believers live a contradictive life.  Paul is no exception.  He is not perfect, either.  Knowing this, Paul explains what is really going on in our thought life and helps us to ask the right question to avoid a life of contradiction.

Romans 7, The Message

Torn Between One Way and Another

7 ^1-3 You shouldn’t have any trouble understanding this, friends, for you know all the ins and outs of the law—how it works and how its power touches only the living. For instance, a wife is legally tied to her husband while he lives, but if he dies, she’s free. If she lives with another man while her husband is living, she’s obviously an adulteress. But if he dies, she is quite free to marry another man in good conscience, with no one’s disapproval.

^4-6 So, my friends, this is something like what has taken place with you. When Christ died he took that entire rule-dominated way of life down with him and left it in the tomb, leaving you free to “marry” a resurrection life and bear “offspring” of faith for God. For as long as we lived that old way of life, doing whatever we felt we could get away with, sin was calling most of the shots as the old law code hemmed us in. And this made us all the more rebellious. In the end, all we had to show for it was miscarriages and stillbirths. But now that we’re no longer shackled to that domineering mate of sin, and out from under all those oppressive regulations and fine print, we’re free to live a new life in the freedom of God.

⁷ But I can hear you say, “If the law code was as bad as all that, it’s no better than sin itself.” That’s certainly not true. The law code had a perfectly legitimate function. Without its clear guidelines for right and wrong, moral behavior would be mostly guesswork. Apart from the succinct, surgical command, “You shall not covet,” I could have dressed covetousness up to look like a virtue and ruined my life with it.

^8-12 Don’t you remember how it was? I do, perfectly well. The law code started out as an excellent piece of work. What happened, though, was that sin found a way to pervert the command into a temptation, making a piece of “forbidden fruit” out of it. The law code, instead of being used to guide me, was used to seduce me. Without all the paraphernalia of the law code, sin looked pretty dull and lifeless, and I went along without paying much attention to it. But once sin got its hands on the law code and decked itself out in all that finery, I was fooled, and fell for it. The very command that was supposed to guide me into life was cleverly used to trip me up, throwing me headlong. So sin was plenty alive, and I was stone dead. But the law code itself is God’s good and common sense, each command sane and holy counsel.

¹³ I can already hear your next question: “Does that mean I can’t even trust what is good [that is, the law]? Is good just as dangerous as evil?” No again! Sin simply did what sin is so famous for doing: using the good as a cover to tempt me to do what would finally destroy me. By hiding within God’s good commandment, sin did far more mischief than it could ever have accomplished on its own.

^14-16 I can anticipate the response that is coming: “I know that all God’s commands are spiritual, but I’m not. Isn’t this also your experience?” Yes. I’m full of myself—after all, I’ve spent a long time in sin’s prison. What I don’t understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise. So if I can’t be trusted to figure out what is best for myself and then do it, it becomes obvious that God’s command is necessary.

^17-20 But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can’t keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.

^21-23 It happens so regularly that it’s predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.

²⁴ I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn’t that the real question?

²⁵ The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.

WHAT DO WE LEARN—HOW DO WE RESPOND?

Long ago a comedian made these words famous; “The devil made me do it!”  Evil does not force us to do anything we didn’t think already think of doing.  Evil does not have that kind of power over people, but he and his demons do have power to seduce us.  He works overtime to distract, deceive with attempts to destroy our faith in God and His will for us.  He guides us to fulfill what we think we want using all kinds of ways to get it—even if it involves cheating, lying, exaggerating our importance or inflating our influence on others who have what we want.  When we are ME centered we are prey for the devil’s fun.

“I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn’t that the real question?” admits Paul.  This is the perfect description of living a contradictive life that frustrates us who believe and desire to please God. 

Paul answers the question and provides the answer for our contradictive dilemma:

“The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.”

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL!

Paul further explains in our next passage that we will study tomorrow, but I can’t wait, can you?  So, here is the beginning of chapter 8;

“With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ’s being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.

God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn’t deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that.  Romans 8:1-4, MSG

The struggle is real.  But we are not alone!

When we are tempted, we must immediately cry out for help in the Name of Jesus.  God’s enemy hates believers on their knees, crying out in the Name of Jesus because he knows Jesus has already won this war!  The enemy flees the area when we take a humbled position before God in Jesus Name asking for help!  We are promised this help and Jesus, our Advocate, gives us all we need!  “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” James 4:7 The struggle is real; but the promise is undeniably real!

Paul taught the Romans that the law could never guarantee eternal life. He proved again that only Jesus Christ could save us.  The Bible teaches us how sinful we have become, but Jesus Christ and his Holy Spirit provide the power to overcome sin.  This power is available to all who believe and call on the Name of Jesus. 

What is the first thing we do when we enter a dark room?  Flip the switch to turn on the lights, right?  When the enemy leads us to darkness; flip the switch and turn on the power of Jesus that is within us so the Light of Jesus can show us the way out.

Lord,

We face temptations daily that distract us from your best life for us.  Give us wisdom to void contradictive living.  May we offer our lives to you as an offering.  We know that you will indeed guide us to your perfect will on any given day.  Show us your agenda for our lives even today.  May our yes be yes and our no be no.  Thank you for the power you give us to run from the battle with the enemy you have already won while resisting the temptations that seduce our souls.

In Jesus Name, Amen

I grew up in an area of the country, dubbed “the Bible belt,” with people who attended local churches with a doctrine that was misunderstood by most of their members’ kids.  As a teen, I remember one conversation I had specifically with one of my friends who like to party hardy with harsh consequences.  My heart ached for her (and others).  It confused me that she did things that I was taught inappropriate for a believer who wanted to follow in Jesus’ ways.  So, one day, I asked her; “Why do you do things that do not match what we say we believe?”  She was a good friend and we are still friends today! 

She was rather flippant but very assured as a teen as she responded; “I was saved and baptized into my church so I am good forever no matter what I do now.”  “I can do what I want because once saved, always saved—eternal security.”  That pretty much ended our conversation but left me further confused—until I read Paul’s explanation in this passage. 

Romans 6, The Message

When Death Becomes Life

^1-3 So what do we do? Keep on sinning so God can keep on forgiving? I should hope not! If we’ve left the country where sin is sovereign, how can we still live in our old house there? Or didn’t you realize we packed up and left there for good? That is what happened in baptism. When we went under the water, we left the old country of sin behind; when we came up out of the water, we entered into the new country of grace—a new life in a new land!

^3-5 That’s what baptism into the life of Jesus means. When we are lowered into the water, it is like the burial of Jesus; when we are raised up out of the water, it is like the resurrection of Jesus. Each of us is raised into a light-filled world by our Father so that we can see where we’re going in our new grace-sovereign country.

^6-11 Could it be any clearer? Our old way of life was nailed to the cross with Christ, a decisive end to that sin-miserable life—no longer captive to sin’s demands! What we believe is this: If we get included in Christ’s sin-conquering death, we also get included in his life-saving resurrection. We know that when Jesus was raised from the dead it was a signal of the end of death-as-the-end. Never again will death have the last word. When Jesus died, he took sin down with him, but alive he brings God down to us. From now on, think of it this way: Sin speaks a dead language that means nothing to you; God speaks your mother tongue, and you hang on every word. You are dead to sin and alive to God. That’s what Jesus did.

^12-14 That means you must not give sin a vote in the way you conduct your lives. Don’t give it the time of day. Don’t even run little errands that are connected with that old way of life. Throw yourselves wholeheartedly and full-time—remember, you’ve been raised from the dead!—into God’s way of doing things. Sin can’t tell you how to live. After all, you’re not living under that old tyranny any longer. You’re living in the freedom of God.

What Is True Freedom?

^15-18 So, since we’re out from under the old tyranny, does that mean we can live any old way we want? Since we’re free in the freedom of God, can we do anything that comes to mind? Hardly. You know well enough from your own experience that there are some acts of so-called freedom that destroy freedom. Offer yourselves to sin, for instance, and it’s your last free act. But offer yourselves to the ways of God and the freedom never quits. All your lives you’ve let sin tell you what to do. But thank God you’ve started listening to a new master, one whose commands set you free to live openly in his freedom!

¹⁹ I’m using this freedom language because it’s easy to picture. You can readily recall, can’t you, how at one time the more you did just what you felt like doing—not caring about others, not caring about God—the worse your life became and the less freedom you had? And how much different is it now as you live in God’s freedom, your lives healed and expansive in holiness?

^20-21 As long as you did what you felt like doing, ignoring God, you didn’t have to bother with right thinking or right living, or right anything for that matter. But do you call that a free life? What did you get out of it? Nothing you’re proud of now. Where did it get you? A dead end.

^22-23 But now that you’ve found you don’t have to listen to sin tell you what to do, and have discovered the delight of listening to God telling you, what a surprise! A whole, healed, put-together life right now, with more and more of life on the way! Work hard for sin your whole life and your pension is death. But God’s gift is real life, eternal life, delivered by Jesus, our Master.

WHAT DO WE LEARN—HOW DO WE RESPOND?

Today, decades later, some people come on any given Sunday to church, impressed with the love of Jesus and His believing people.  Church is a nice place to be treated well as opposed to other places of business.  We say we believe Jesus, too.  Good!  But we keep on doing what we did before we said it. To say I believe without allow Jesus to change our minds and transform our behaviors is like being stuck in shifting sand or like treading water in a lake with no dock in sight.  We aren’t going anywhere!

Many throw up their hands in exasperation when prompted to take next steps in growing in God’s love and His ways when it becomes too hard to let go of habitual behaviors for God’s best.  The common phrase these days is “I’m just a hot mess, but Jesus loves me, praise God.”  This is treading water.  We sink or we can swim! 

Stay with me…Yes, we’re all a mess in need of a Savior.  Paul tells us clearly, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” Romans 3:23. Yes, Jesus loves us just the way we are, but He also loves us enough not to leave us in the mess we created.  Jesus forgives with power to change.  Jesus takes us farther and higher in His Kingdom of God thinking where our views change as we begin to see life from God’s point of view.  We no longer enjoy the mess but enjoy the goodness of God!  We want to be where He is!

As we move from the mess and offer our whole selves to God, we notice that the way we lived (behaviors) before accepting Jesus begins to transform.  Passions change within us while compassion for others is enhanced.  We begin to look less at ourselves, catering to our own self-interests, our needs and wants, and yes, our mess and begin to look at how we can help others in their need of a Savior. In other words, when Jesus is not only our Savior but is becoming Lord of our lives—everything about us changes! 

Our mess becomes our message of redemption!  We no longer live as a mess or in the mess; we live redeemed and free from the mess!  Our messy lives are no longer our “boast;” our only boast is Jesus!  He is the rescue from the mess.  Jesus’ work on a cruel cross redeemed us set us free from the mess!   

We are not perfect and Paul speaks of our imperfections but he is also telling us we cannot use our imperfections as an excuse to keep on sinning.  Admit, sometimes we take pride in our mess.  But it seems that we diminish the great and excruciating sacrifice of Jesus–our sins nailed on that cross through His flesh—when we keep on doing what he saved us from in the first place!

Will we be ever be perfect?  Not in this life, but do we give up?  No, because we are preparing for when Jesus comes back to take us home for eternity.  We keep on striving to be and do what He says because we love Him back and His ways are always best! 

We discover that the more we lean on Jesus as Lord of our whole being, changing from the inside out, He helps us when we do fall back into the same mess or some other mess.  We also notice that we see sin more readily.  Because of previous experiences, we know that by His power we can get up and run from it.  Each time we fall we are quicker to call on His name, and allow Him to pull us up and out with much quicker speed—knowing that He will.

What is eternal—

His unfailing and unchanging love— “nothing can separate us from His love” Romans 8:35-39

The inhabitance of His Holy Spirit living in us with power equaling the resurrection power that raised Jesus from death to life everlasting!  This same power works in all believers who are becoming devoted disciples as they leave the mess, seeking to be transformed by Jesus as Lord.

Jesus’ aggressive forgiveness called grace that sets us right with God.  We are not perfect but we are perfectly forgiven.

Jesus’ removal of all sins, “as far as the east is from the west,” when we call on His Name and ask for His forgiveness.  Our security is in Jesus alone—our rescue from sin.  “Go and sin no more” Jesus told the woman caught in a mess.  Jesus compassionately lifted her up, forgave her without condemnation, and gave her hope of a better life to live in His Name, set right with God. 

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”  John 3:16-17

There’s more to come from Paul…but we are getting a much clearer picture of what it means to live to please God because of His love in us. 

Pause to pray.  Thank God for Jesus, His Plan of redeeming us from the messiness of sin.  Do I really believe in Jesus or just impressed with Jesus?  Reflect on the excuses we make, and ask forgiveness for them.  Ask God to help by His wisdom as our love for Him grows. 

Lord,

Cleanse my heart, renew my mind, transform my behaviors, refresh my soul with your new mercies, and restore the joy and peace of you in me and me in you.  Daily and forever.  I love you with all that is in me.

In Jesus Name, Amen

In the beginning God, His Son with Him, created all and is in all.  His greatest masterpiece, His work of art and heart, was Adam followed by Eve.  From God’s lungs, He breathed life into them.  He loved and enjoyed their company as they walked in the cool of the evening, under the stars, in a magnificent garden of paradise that only God could provide. God also gave them the freedom to choose.

Soon the Enemy entered, presenting these first humans with two choices: Follow God or be like the enemy had done, be gods themselves and follow their own ways without God.  These perfect humans, created in the image of their Creator, chose to sin by saying no to God and yes to the Enemy who enticed them to sin—to have what they thought they deserved.  They are no longer perfect, living in a perfect place, with a perfect God.  They were disobedience to God by choosing death over life.

But God knew and God loved.  God also designed the perfect plan to resolve decisions made to sin that led to death. This Plan would reconcile (reconnect the relationship) to God that separated humanity from God. This Plan was Jesus whom God sent to save us and show us who He is and what He does in and for us.

God did not and does not force humanity to love Him back because that is not real love not how the love of God works.  So, God demonstrated His love for us—even while we were yet sinners.  Jesus, His Son, took the punishment for our sins on His shoulders and nailed them once and for all to a cross.  God’s love for his created was demonstrated deeply and compassionately by this act of sacrifice.  He knew exactly what everyone needed most:  Grace.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”  John 3:16-17

Romans 5, The Message

The Death-Dealing Sin, the Life-Giving Gift

^12-14 You know the story of how Adam landed us in the dilemma we’re in—first sin, then death, and no one exempt from either sin or death. That sin disturbed relations with God in everything and everyone, but the extent of the disturbance was not clear until God spelled it out in detail to Moses. So death, this huge abyss separating us from God, dominated the landscape from Adam to Moses. Even those who didn’t sin precisely as Adam did by disobeying a specific command of God still had to experience this termination of life, this separation from God. But Adam, who got us into this, also points ahead to the One who will get us out of it.

^15-17 Yet the rescuing gift is not exactly parallel to the death-dealing sin. If one man’s sin put crowds of people at the dead-end abyss of separation from God, just think what God’s gift poured through one man, Jesus Christ, will do! There’s no comparison between that death-dealing sin and this generous, life-giving gift. The verdict on that one sin was the death sentence; the verdict on the many sins that followed was this wonderful life sentence. If death got the upper hand through one man’s wrongdoing, can you imagine the breathtaking recovery life makes, absolute life, in those who grasp with both hands this wildly extravagant life-gift, this grand setting-everything-right, that the one man Jesus Christ provides?

^18-19 Here it is in a nutshell: Just as one person did it wrong and got us in all this trouble with sin and death, another person did it right and got us out of it. But more than just getting us out of trouble, he got us into life! One man said no to God and put many people in the wrong; one man said yes to God and put many in the right.

^20-21 All that passing laws against sin did was produce more lawbreakers. But sin didn’t, and doesn’t, have a chance in competition with the aggressive forgiveness we call grace. When it’s sin versus grace, grace wins hands down. All sin can do is threaten us with death, and that’s the end of it. Grace, because God is putting everything together again through the Messiah, invites us into life—a life that goes on and on and on, world without end.

WHAT DO WE LEARN—HOW DO WE RESPOND?

ALL have sinned.  There is no one is good.  No one is perfect.  Only God is Good.  Only God is Perfect.  To believe otherwise is falling for the enemy’s lie yet again—just like Adam and Eve!

God sent His Perfect Son to earth to be Love and Light to all; with a promise to save us from all our sins!  But a sacrifice of perfection had to be made for our sins.  Jesus was indeed that perfect sacrifice for a flawed humanity.  To all who believed in Jesus, all were saved for Life!  Eternal Life! 

God’s aggressive forgiveness, called grace was delivered personally by Jesus, God’s One and Only Son.  Love and Mercy came down to earth and Grace won the battle between the two opposing forces.  Grace still wins for all who believe!

“In a nutshell, we have two choices:  Life or death.  Choose wisely as the consequences of our choices are a matter of life or death!  We are saved from our sins because of God’s love coupled by His mercy and grace.  In short, mercy is God not giving us what we do deserve; grace is God giving us something we do not deserve—namely, Jesus!

We are not perfect but we are perfectly forgiven forever!   Pause to pray and be grateful!  Focus all our attention on the One who saves us from our selfish sins of disobedience and sets us right with God who created us!

Are you hurting and broken within?
Overwhelmed by the weight of your sin?
Jesus is calling
Have you come to the end of yourself?
Do you thirst for a drink from the well?
Jesus is calling

O come to the altar
The Father’s arms are open wide
Forgiveness was bought with
The precious blood of Jesus Christ

Leave behind your regrets and mistakes
Come today, there’s no reason to wait
Jesus is calling
Bring your sorrows and trade them for joy
From the ashes, a new life is born
Jesus is calling

O come to the altar
The Father’s arms are open wide
Forgiveness was bought with
The precious blood of Jesus Christ
Forgiveness was bought with
The precious blood

Oh, what a Savior
Isn’t He wonderful?
Sing hallelujah, Christ is risen
Bow down before Him
For He is Lord of all
Sing hallelujah, Christ is risen

O come to the altar
The Father’s arms are open wide
Forgiveness was bought with
The precious blood of Jesus Christ

O come to the altar
The Father’s arms are open wide
Forgiveness was bought with
The precious blood of Jesus Christ

The Father’s arms are open wide..

(Come to the Altar, by Elevation Worship. Songwriters: Wade Joye / Christopher Brown / Mack Brock / Steven Furtick) https://youtu.be/VT_br9kJVNw?si=9rmRdzTwA8xmuatS

There is nothing we have done that God’s grace cannot overcome.  Come…

Lord,

Thank you for your aggressive forgiveness that provides the Way back to You who is the Truth who leads us to Life eternal with You!  Thank you, Father God. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Holy Spirit who cares, convicts, confronts and encourages us stay connected and in constant communion with our Creator who loves us most!

In Jesus Name, For Your Glory, Amen!

Sing the wondrous love of Jesus
Sing His mercy and His grace
In the mansions bright and blessed
He’ll prepare for us a place

When we all, when we all get to Heaven
What a day of rejoicing that will be (rejoicing that will be)
When we all see Jesus
We’ll sing and shout the victory (shout the victory)

… Onward to the prize before us
Soon His beauty we’ll behold
Soon the Pearly Gates will open
We shall tread the streets of gold

(Author: E. E. Hewitt, 1898)

I grew up singing hymns of praise such as this one, “When We All Get to Heaven,” thinking the victory in Jesus (another hymn) won’t happen until I pass from this life to the next. Sometimes we act as if what God does is at the end of life.  But that is not the case.  We receive victory as soon as we receive and believe in the Victor!

Oh, victory in Jesus, my Savior forever
He sought me and bought me with His redeeming blood
He loved me ‘ere I knew Him and all my love is due Him
He plunged me to victory beneath the cleansing flood

(“Victory in Jesus,” Songwriters; E. M. Bartlett,1939)

God gave us Jesus.  Upon believing Jesus as our Savior, we have been immediately cleared and declared “not guilty” of all our sins!  We discard the old lifestyle and embrace a new way of living, step by step with His Spirit that leads to real life that is eternal!  A profound relationship immediately begins with God, because Jesus made us presentable to God by removing our repented sins once and for all!

God welcomes us with open arms and throws the doors to His Kingdom, (and the wisdom of His Kingdom thinking and behaving), wide open to experience His grace and see His glory at work all around us! 

There’s no waiting on aisle three!  The Three-in-One; God, Jesus, and His Holy Spirit stands ready to help us develop the character traits of Jesus as we cannot do this on our own.  We are given gifts and abilities from God that are beyond ourselves to serve others in need of a Savior.  We now love God back with all our hearts, minds, and souls and obey His Holy Spirit who lives within us.  This is the victory—when we see, really see and believe, Jesus as Savior and Lord of our lives right now!

God did not wait for us to clean up our act.  Jesus, sent by God, acted on our behalf, while we were yet sinners, to save us.  So, why wait until death looms over us to accept God’s gift of generous grace—the removal of our sins?  And why wait to sing and shout until we all get to heaven?  Sing and shout the victory right now!  Seriously, stop and give Him praise!

Take the shackles off my feet so I can dance
I just want to praise you, I just want to praise you
You broke the chains now I can lift my hands
And I’m gonna praise you
I’m gonna praise you…

(“Shackles”, Songwriters: Erica Atkins-Campbell / Trecina Atkins-Campbell / Warryn Campbell)

Romans 5, The Message

Developing Patience

5 ^1-2 By entering through faith into what God has always wanted to do for us—set us right with him, make us fit for him—we have it all together with God because of our Master Jesus. And that’s not all: We throw open our doors to God and discover at the same moment that he has already thrown open his door to us. We find ourselves standing where we always hoped we might stand—out in the wide open spaces of God’s grace and glory, standing tall and shouting our praise.

^3-5 There’s more to come: We continue to shout our praise even when we’re hemmed in with troubles, because we know how troubles can develop passionate patience in us, and how that patience in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue, keeping us alert for whatever God will do next. In alert expectancy such as this, we’re never left feeling shortchanged. Quite the contrary—we can’t round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit!

^6-8 Christ arrives right on time to make this happen. He didn’t, and doesn’t, wait for us to get ready. He presented himself for this sacrificial death when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything to get ourselves ready. And even if we hadn’t been so weak, we wouldn’t have known what to do anyway. We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him.

^9-11 Now that we are set right with God by means of this sacrificial death, the consummate blood sacrifice, there is no longer a question of being at odds with God in any way. If, when we were at our worst, we were put on friendly terms with God by the sacrificial death of his Son, now that we’re at our best, just think of how our lives will expand and deepen by means of his resurrection life! Now that we have actually received this amazing friendship with God, we are no longer content to simply say it in plodding prose. We sing and shout our praises to God through Jesus, the Messiah!

WHAT DO WE LEARN—HOW DO WE RESPOND?

Our response depends on our belief.  Do we really believe what God says about Himself and His Son really real? 

Pause, be still, evaluate, reflect. 

Does my life reflect the victory of Jesus? 

What we truly believe is demonstrated in our behaviors.

Still holding back?  There is nothing you have done that God cannot and will not forgive in Jesus Name.  “At our worst, we were put on friendly terms with God by the sacrificial death of His Son…”Believe and be saved. 

Then sing and shout the victory!

Lord,

Thank you for your sacrifice that saved us and your resurrection power available to us to live in relationship with you!  Thank you for daily cleansing our hearts, renewing our minds, correcting our course, refreshing our souls with new mercies, and restoring the joy ad peace of you in us and us in you.

In Jesus Name, Amen

Shine.
Make ’em wonder whatcha got.
Make ’em wish that they were not
On the outside looking bored.
Shine.
Let it shine before all men.
Let em see good works and then
Let em glorify the Lord.

(“Shine”, Newsboys, Songwriters; Songwriters: Angel Taylor / Kevin Hammond / Michael Blue / Mikal Blue)

It’s in our DNA—we all want to fit in and belong to something beyond ourselves.  This need to belong was put into our inmost being as we were being formed by God for God.

“For you created my inmost being;
    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
    your works are wonderful,
    I know that full well.

My frame was not hidden from you
    when I was made in the secret place,
    when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
    all the days ordained for me were written in your book
    before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts, God!
    How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them,
    they would outnumber the grains of sand—
    when I awake, I am still with you.” Psalm 139:13-18, NIV

God made us, we do not make ourselves.  We do not make Him or decide who God is. God is God. He was at the beginning, is now currently, and will be at the end of time.  I am amused and bit perturbed when people remark, “God is whoever you decide him to be for you.”  That is a lie produced by the enemy who wants to take God’s place and rule over God’s creation.  (But the enemy has already been defeated!)

Paul begins his teaching with what his audience already knows—the story of Abraham who was known as the founding “father” of the nation of the Jews.  Abraham believed God and trusted God to do what He said He would do.  The Jews believe currently that you fit it by obeying all the rules and rituals.  They also believe that you do not fit in unless you were born a Jew and do what Jews do—obey the Law.  Paul carefully and compassionately explains God’s plan and promise from the beginning that goes beyond the story of Abraham to the story of God who will save us from ourselves.

Romans 4, The Message

Trusting God

^1-3 So how do we fit what we know of Abraham, our first father in the faith, into this new way of looking at things? If Abraham, by what he did for God, got God to approve him, he could certainly have taken credit for it. But the story we’re given is a God-story, not an Abraham-story. What we read in Scripture is, “Abraham entered into what God was doing for him, and that was the turning point. He trusted God to set him right instead of trying to be right on his own.”

^4-5 If you’re a hard worker and do a good job, you deserve your pay; we don’t call your wages a gift. But if you see that the job is too big for you, that it’s something only God can do, and you trust him to do it—you could never do it for yourself no matter how hard and long you worked—well, that trusting-him-to-do-it is what gets you set right with God, by God. Sheer gift.

^6-9 David confirms this way of looking at it, saying that the one who trusts God to do the putting-everything-right without insisting on having a say in it is one fortunate man:

Fortunate those whose crimes are whisked away,
    whose sins are wiped clean from the slate.
Fortunate the person against
    whom the Lord does not keep score.

Do you think for a minute that this blessing is only pronounced over those of us who keep our religious ways and are circumcised? Or do you think it possible that the blessing could be given to those who never even heard of our ways, who were never brought up in the disciplines of God? We all agree, don’t we, that it was by embracing what God did for him that Abraham was declared fit before God?

^10-11 Now think: Was that declaration made before or after he was marked by the covenant rite of circumcision? That’s right, before he was marked. That means that he underwent circumcision as evidence and confirmation of what God had done long before to bring him into this acceptable standing with himself, an act of God he had embraced with his whole life.

¹² And it means further that Abraham is father of all people who embrace what God does for them while they are still on the “outs” with God, as yet unidentified as God’s, in an “uncircumcised” condition. It is precisely these people in this condition who are called “set right by God and with God”! Abraham is also, of course, father of those who have undergone the religious rite of circumcision not just because of the ritual but because they were willing to live in the risky faith-embrace of God’s action for them, the way Abraham lived long before he was marked by circumcision.

^13-15 That famous promise God gave Abraham—that he and his children would possess the earth—was not given because of something Abraham did or would do. It was based on God’s decision to put everything together for him, which Abraham then entered when he believed. If those who get what God gives them only get it by doing everything they are told to do and filling out all the right forms properly signed, that eliminates personal trust completely and turns the promise into an ironclad contract! That’s not a holy promise; that’s a business deal. A contract drawn up by a hard-nosed lawyer and with plenty of fine print only makes sure that you will never be able to collect. But if there is no contract in the first place, simply a promise—and God’s promise at that—you can’t break it.

¹⁶ This is why the fulfillment of God’s promise depends entirely on trusting God and his way, and then simply embracing him and what he does. God’s promise arrives as pure gift. That’s the only way everyone can be sure to get in on it, those who keep the religious traditions and those who have never heard of them. For Abraham is father of us all. He is not our racial father—that’s reading the story backward. He is our faith father.

^17-18 We call Abraham “father” not because he got God’s attention by living like a saint, but because God made something out of Abraham when he was a nobody. Isn’t that what we’ve always read in Scripture, God saying to Abraham, “I set you up as father of many peoples”? Abraham was first named “father” and then became a father because he dared to trust God to do what only God could do: raise the dead to life, with a word make something out of nothing. When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn’t do but on what God said he would do. And so he was made father of a multitude of peoples. God himself said to him, “You’re going to have a big family, Abraham!”

^19-25 Abraham didn’t focus on his own impotence and say, “It’s hopeless. This hundred-year-old body could never father a child.” Nor did he survey Sarah’s decades of infertility and give up. He didn’t tiptoe around God’s promise asking cautiously skeptical questions. He plunged into the promise and came up strong, ready for God, sure that God would make good on what he had said. That’s why it is said, “Abraham was declared fit before God by trusting God to set him right.” But it’s not just Abraham; it’s also us! The same thing gets said about us when we embrace and believe the One who brought Jesus to life when the conditions were equally hopeless. The sacrificed Jesus made us fit for God, set us right with God.

WHAT DO WE LEARN—HOW DO WE RESPOND?

Only by God’s generous gift of grace are we made right with God.  That gift is Jesus, God’s One and Only Son, who was sent to seek and to save the lost without God.

We learn that is not what we do for God but rather what God is doing in and for us, as we trust God.

Fitting in means trusting God in faith to do what we cannot do for ourselves—setting us right with God—a sheer gift of His love, mercy, and grace to us—a gift no one else can give.

Abraham “plunged into the promise” by his faith in God.  We learn that it our faith in God that makes us fit for God!  By believing in Jesus, who died and rose again, as a sacrifice for our sins, we fit in!  Finally, a place to belong—for eternity! Abraham was not perfect.  We are not perfect.  But we are perfectly forgiven by Jesus.  Living redeemed builds our fitness of faith!

Think about it…we sing “I’m standing on the promises of God” but don’t you love the more passionate term— “plunging” from the Word today?  This seems to be a more committed demonstration of our faith in God!  When we plunge into the promises of God, we are committed to diving into what God is doing without wondering where or how we will land!  We simply trust that God does know!

Are we ready to plunge in the promises of God and become one of the “whoevers” who believe Jesus and who will not perish but have eternal life? 

Are we ready to embrace what God is doing all round us and in us? 

Are we ready to bow down in humbled praise to the One who loves us most and has a plan for each one of our lives? 

Are we ready to make the shift from merely obeying all the rules and rituals to get God’s attention as a boastful arrogant servant to growing an intimate, holy, loving relationship with God through Jesus His Son? 

Our faith in God, embracing what HE does not what we do, makes us right with God. Believing Jesus died to save us and rose again to give us life forever makes us right with God.  Believers fit in and belong to His eternal family as a child of the Father, God. Our trust and hope is based on nothing else but the blood shed by Jesus who took our place and redeemed us from sins’ punishment.

Believing is belonging to His family as joint heirs with Christ! We fit in because of a fit faith in God.

Lord,

Make my faith fit for you while you make things right between us.  You gave so I give my life to you.  I’m listening.  I’m embracing.  I’m looking around to watch you at work in me and others.  And I’m grateful, oh, so very grateful for a love like yours that allows all of us to belong and fit in by saying yes to you.

In Jesus Name, Amen

Children are constantly growing mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually as they go through the stages of life in becoming adults.  Children learn best from who they think they know they can trust.  They imitate who influences them the most.  When they are hurt and in need of comfort, they will run to loving parents or another significant adult who loves them and cares for them, knowing they will “fix it.”  Parents who love well do not like to see their offspring hurt.  They will run to their aide with remedies to ease their pain with embraces of compassion.  They will indeed try to “fix it.” 

But what no parent on earth can fix is the sin problem we are born into as we entered the world as new born infants.  However, what believing parents can do is point the Way to Jesus, sent by God to remove our sins once and for all.

Only God can “fix it” and set things right in our imperfect world.  Only through Jesus can we reconnect to God and grow in an intimate, loving relationship with God.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” John 3:16-17

Romans 3, The Message

God Has Set Things Right

^21-24 But in our time something new has been added. What Moses and the prophets witnessed to all those years has happened. The God-setting-things-right that we read about has become Jesus-setting-things-right for us. And not only for us, but for everyone who believes in him. For there is no difference between us and them in this. Since we’ve compiled this long and sorry record as sinners (both us and them) and proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, God did it for us. Out of sheer generosity he put us in right standing with himself. A pure gift. He got us out of the mess we’re in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he did it by means of Jesus Christ.

^25-26 God sacrificed Jesus on the altar of the world to clear that world of sin. Having faith in him sets us in the clear. God decided on this course of action in full view of the public—to set the world in the clear with himself through the sacrifice of Jesus, finally taking care of the sins he had so patiently endured. This is not only clear, but it’s now—this is current history! God sets things right. He also makes it possible for us to live in his rightness.

^27-28 So where does that leave our proud Jewish insider claims and counterclaims? Canceled? Yes, canceled. What we’ve learned is this: God does not respond to what we do; we respond to what God does. We’ve finally figured it out. Our lives get in step with God and all others by letting him set the pace, not by proudly or anxiously trying to run the parade.

^29-30 And where does that leave our proud Jewish claim of having a corner on God? Also canceled. God is the God of outsider non-Jews as well as insider Jews. How could it be otherwise since there is only one God? God sets right all who welcome his action and enter into it, both those who follow our religious system and those who have never heard of our religion.

³¹ But by shifting our focus from what we do to what God does, don’t we cancel out all our careful keeping of the rules and ways God commanded? Not at all. What happens, in fact, is that by putting that entire way of life in its proper place, we confirm it.

WHAT DO WE LEARN—HOW DO WE RESPOND?

Being a Jew does not save us.  Being a Catholic or Protestant does not save us.

Going to church every Sunday does not save us.

Giving to the poor does not save us.

Being the best server in the church does not save us.

Reading the Bible does not save us—Unless we do what the Word says—repent.

Only Jesus saves us from our sins when we bow down to Him and repent of those sins. We simply ask Jesus to remove our sins, believing that He can and will. Jesus immediately forgives us. God’s Holy Spirit moves in to help us live freely for Jesus as Lord of our new lives without sin’s entanglements. This was God’s Plan from the beginning to set us right with Him and to help us by His power to avoid sin. 

Our sins no longer have ahold on us for they are no longer in us!  Jesus removed our sins as “far as the east is from the west”! 

Psalm 103 proclaims this message of reconciliation with God:

“God makes everything come out right; he puts victims back on their feet.
He showed Moses how he went about his work, opened up his plans to all Israel.

Paul showed us and the rest of the world that no one can claim innocence. Everyone has sinned. But through Christ’s death on the cross God has redeemed us.  Willing and ready, God will forgive us if we come to him in faith through believing in Jesus Christ, His Son.

God is sheer mercy and grace; not easily angered, he’s rich in love.
He doesn’t endlessly nag and scold, nor hold grudges forever.
He doesn’t treat us as our sins deserve, nor pay us back in full for our wrongs.

As high as heaven is over the earth, so strong is his love to those who fear him.
And as far as sunrise is from sunset, he has separated us from our sins.

As parents feel for their children, God feels for those who fear him.
He knows us inside and out, keeps in mind that we’re made of mud.
Men and women don’t live very long; like wildflowers they spring up and blossom,
But a storm snuffs them out just as quickly, leaving nothing to show they were here.

God’s love, though, is ever and always, eternally present to all who fear him,
Making everything right for them and their children as they follow his Covenant ways and remember to do whatever he said.” Psalm 103:6-18, MSG

Believe and be saved.  This is the only response that gives life!

Lord,

All have sinned but because of your love you had a plan to “fix” our sin problem once and for all by giving us a way out of sin. Thank you for willingly laying done your life for ours. Thank you for saving me and restoring me from sin’s consequences of hurt and despair.  Help me to make the most of every opportunity to point the Way of forgiveness to others who struggle with not knowing you and your love for them. 

In Jesus Name, Amen

“I was blind.  But now I see.”

“I was one way but now I’m different.”

These quotes are testimonies of people those lives were changed by Jesus.  Jesus changes everything when He enters our lives and begin His work to make us holy and presentable to God.  This change begins by trading our arrogant, rebellious will that leads only to death, for real life now and eternal life later that is only attainable because of what Jesus did to save us.  It is God who freely gives us a choice to say yes to Him or to refuse Him. 

God wants us to love Him back—but only if we willfully desire to love Him back.  We are the same.  What kind of love is it to have your spouse or children love you back only because they were forced?  That’s not a healthy relationship!  And it’s the same with obedience!  To obey God because you feel obligated or you obey only from fear is not what God wants from us.  God is love who wants to permeate our very being with all of Him in all of us. It is His love that changes us from the inside out. By His love we will know God. By loving God back expands his love in us and through us. His love makes all the difference!

As we grow deeper in God’s love it becomes easy and involuntary to love Him back as we realize the depth of love He has for us.  This love causes us to love others with more compassion and less judgement. The more we learn how God loves, we begin to love in the same ways.  Like Father, like son and daughter.  “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13)—Jesus was the One laid down His life for removal of our sins. God demonstrated His love for us through His One and Only Son!  Believing Jesus makes the difference!

“The eyes of the Lord search the whole earth in order to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him.” 2 Chronicles 16:9 God looks for those who hearts are completely his.  His love in us is the foundation of our commitment to Him.  God seeks to pour out His blessings over those who will see Him as the only one who is Good, the One who stands ready to give His best to all who seek Him.  Humbled hearts given to God makes all the difference!

“You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” Seeking our Most Holy God with His assurance of being found is one of many tremendous promises of a faithful God!  But it depends on the condition of our hearts! Some of the Jews left God long ago—even as they cared for God’s Word as the Chosen. How did this happen?  By losing grasp of the most important relationship of their lives that continually provided love, mercy, and grace from the One who loves us most.  But there’s hope for our hearts!  He is called Jesus!  Jesus makes the all the difference!

Romans 3, The Message

^1-2 So what difference does it make who’s a Jew and who isn’t, who has been trained in God’s ways and who hasn’t? As it turns out, it makes a lot of difference—but not the difference so many have assumed.

^2-6 First, there’s the matter of being put in charge of writing down and caring for God’s revelation, these Holy Scriptures. So, what if, in the course of doing that, some of those Jews abandoned their post? God didn’t abandon them. Do you think their faithlessness cancels out his faithfulness? Not on your life! Depend on it: God keeps his word even when the whole world is lying through its teeth. Scripture says the same:

Your words stand fast and true;
Rejection doesn’t faze you.

But if our wrongdoing only underlines and confirms God’s rightdoing, shouldn’t we be commended for helping out? Since our lies don’t even make a dent in his truth, isn’t it wrong of God to back us to the wall and hold us to our word? These questions come up. The answer to such questions is no, a most emphatic No! How else would things ever get straightened out if God didn’t do the straightening?

^7-8 It’s simply perverse to say, “If my lies serve to show off God’s truth all the more gloriously, why blame me? I’m doing God a favor.” Some people are actually trying to put such words in our mouths, claiming that we go around saying, “The more evil we do, the more good God does, so let’s just do it!” That’s pure slander, as I’m sure you’ll agree.

We’re All in the Same Sinking Boat

^9-20 So where does that put us? Do we Jews get a better break than the others? Not really. Basically, all of us, whether insiders or outsiders, start out in identical conditions, which is to say that we all start out as sinners. Scripture leaves no doubt about it:

There’s nobody living right, not even one,
    nobody who knows the score, nobody alert for God.
They’ve all taken the wrong turn;
    they’ve all wandered down blind alleys.
No one’s living right;
    I can’t find a single one.
Their throats are gaping graves,
    their tongues slick as mudslides.
Every word they speak is tinged with poison.
    They open their mouths and pollute the air.
They race for the honor of sinner-of-the-year,
    litter the land with heartbreak and ruin,
Don’t know the first thing about living with others.
    They never give God the time of day.

This makes it clear, doesn’t it, that whatever is written in these Scriptures is not what God says about others but to us to whom these Scriptures were addressed in the first place! And it’s clear enough, isn’t it, that we’re sinners, every one of us, in the same sinking boat with everybody else? Our involvement with God’s revelation doesn’t put us right with God. What it does is force us to face our complicity in everyone else’s sin.

WHAT DO WE LEARN—HOW DO WE RESPOND?

Love God.  Love Others.  This is a revolutionary lifestyle but it will make all the difference as we go from dark to light!  We must put these words of Jesus into practice so we can learn to love “as if our lives depended on it!”

“Go after a life of love as if your life depended on it—because it does.” –Paul, 1 Corinthians 14:1, MSG

Peter shows us ways to love like Jesus—

“Most of all, love each other as if your life depended on it. Love makes up for practically anything.  Be quick to give a meal to the hungry, a bed to the homeless – cheerfully.

Be generous with the different things God gave you, passing them around so all get in on it:

if words, let it be God’s words; if help, let it be God’s hearty help. That way, God’s bright presence will be evident in everything through Jesus, and he’ll get all the credit as the One mighty in everything – encores to the end of time. Oh, yes!

Friends, when life gets really difficult, don’t jump to the conclusion that God isn’t on the job.

Instead, be glad that you are in the very thick of what Christ experienced. This is a spiritual refining process, with glory just around the corner.

If you’re abused because of Christ, count yourself fortunate. It’s the Spirit of God and his glory in you that brought you to the notice of others.

If they’re on you because you broke the law or disturbed the peace, that’s a different matter.

But if it’s because you’re a Christian, don’t give it a second thought. Be proud of the distinguished status reflected in that name!

It’s judgment time for Christians. We’re first in line. If it starts with us, think what it’s going to be like for those who refuse God’s Message!

If good people barely make it, What’s in store for the bad?  1 Peter 4:8-18, MSG

Paul continues to encourage the church in Rome to be set apart from the world. What the world thinks is different than what Jesus taught us about God who made a right relationship with him possible and available to all people.  God hates sin and desires all to follow him in word and action for their good and His glory.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”  John 3:16-17

Lord,

Thank you for making a relationship possible and attainable no matter who we are and what we have done! Thank you for saving my soul and restoring the broken pieces of my life.  You put us back together better than we were before knowing you. YOU make all the difference!  I pray others might see You in us as demonstrated by our love for you and each other.

In Jesus Name, Amen

“GOK” were initials used in the language of teachers in my past.  There is always that “one child” who seems to ace every test, knows the answer to every question, while wondering why the rest of the class does not know the answers, too.  At the end of the year, when standardized tests are given, teachers look forward to seeing the evaluation results that might finally indicate what level this child could actually reach.  But sometimes, the results were inconclusive.  If the child aced even the standardized tests, then the results were translated: GOK— “God Only Knows.” 

ONLY GOD knows all that is known.  God created us and knows everything about us.  God is sovereign.  Sovereign simply means “above.”  That means God, and only God, is above all while being in all He has formed.  He knows the motivations of our hearts, the abilities placed within our beings by Him, along with the number of hairs on our heads!  (See Psalm 139, Psalm 100) 

God is the supreme authority and in control over His creation.  There is no one higher than God. 

God was “at the beginning” who breathed his breath into all His living creation.  God made us, we did not make ourselves.  God is unlimited in His power, and unchanging in His Love for us. God has been and always will be faithful in His love, mercy, and grace.  Everything we are and all that we have is because of God. There is no one like our God!   

God’s Word verifies what God knows.  Paul consistently reiterates and restates to the religious without relationship, (who Paul used to be) who God is from Scripture with what His Son did to save us, change our minds, and transform behaviors by His power working in us.  Jesus changed everything about Paul because Jesus turned everything around for Paul.  Paul, who was one of the “religious elites”, has been changed from the inside out by Jesus.  “It takes one to know one.”  This is his testimony…

Romans 2, The Message

God Is Kind, but Not Soft

^1-2 Those people are on a dark spiral downward. But if you think that leaves you on the high ground where you can point your finger at others, think again. Every time you criticize someone, you condemn yourself. It takes one to know one. Judgmental criticism of others is a well-known way of escaping detection in your own crimes and misdemeanors. But God isn’t so easily diverted. He sees right through all such smoke screens and holds you to what you’ve done.

^3-4 You didn’t think, did you, that just by pointing your finger at others you would distract God from seeing all your misdoings and from coming down on you hard? Or did you think that because he’s such a nice God, he’d let you off the hook? Better think this one through from the beginning. God is kind, but he’s not soft. In kindness he takes us firmly by the hand and leads us into a radical life-change.

^5-8 You’re not getting by with anything. Every refusal and avoidance of God adds fuel to the fire. The day is coming when it’s going to blaze hot and high, God’s fiery and righteous judgment. Make no mistake: In the end you get what’s coming to you—Real Life for those who work on God’s side, but to those who insist on getting their own way and take the path of least resistance, Fire!

^9-11 If you go against the grain, you get splinters, regardless of which neighborhood you’re from, what your parents taught you, what schools you attended. But if you embrace the way God does things, there are wonderful payoffs, again without regard to where you are from or how you were brought up. Being a Jew won’t give you an automatic stamp of approval. God pays no attention to what others say (or what you think) about you. He makes up his own mind.

^12-13 If you sin without knowing what you’re doing, God takes that into account. But if you sin knowing full well what you’re doing, that’s a different story entirely. Merely hearing God’s law is a waste of your time if you don’t do what he commands. Doing, not hearing, is what makes the difference with God.

^14-16 When outsiders who have never heard of God’s law follow it more or less by instinct, they confirm its truth by their obedience. They show that God’s law is not something alien, imposed on us from without, but woven into the very fabric of our creation. There is something deep within them that echoes God’s yes and no, right and wrong. Their response to God’s yes and no will become public knowledge on the day God makes his final decision about every man and woman. The Message from God that I proclaim through Jesus Christ takes into account all these differences.

Religion Can’t Save You

^17-24 If you’re brought up Jewish, don’t assume that you can lean back in the arms of your religion and take it easy, feeling smug because you’re an insider to God’s revelation, a connoisseur of the best things of God, informed on the latest doctrines! I have a special word of caution for you who are sure that you have it all together yourselves and, because you know God’s revealed Word inside and out, feel qualified to guide others through their blind alleys and dark nights and confused emotions to God. While you are guiding others, who is going to guide you? I’m quite serious. While preaching “Don’t steal!” are you going to rob people blind? Who would suspect you? The same with adultery. The same with idolatry. You can get by with almost anything if you front it with eloquent talk about God and his law. The line from Scripture, “It’s because of you Jews that the outsiders frown on God,” shows it’s an old problem that isn’t going to go away.

^25-29 Circumcision, the surgical ritual that marks you as a Jew, is great if you live in accord with God’s law. But if you don’t, it’s worse than not being circumcised. The reverse is also true: The uncircumcised who keep God’s ways are as good as the circumcised—in fact, better. Better to keep God’s law uncircumcised than break it circumcised. Don’t you see: It’s not the cut of a knife that makes a Jew. You become a Jew by who you are. It’s the mark of God on your heart, not of a knife on your skin, that makes a Jew. And recognition comes from God, not legalistic critics.

WHAT DO WE LEARN—HOW DO WE RESPOND?

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” –Jesus, Matthew 7:3-5

Paul is developing Kingdom of God thinking that Jesus wants us to have.  Kingdom of God thinking points the way to salvation for everyone through Jesus.  Kingdom of God thinking leaves all the judging to Jesus for only God, who knows our hearts has the right to judge.  Paul is committed to Jesus with a desire to be more like Him in every way. He reminds us…

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”             John 3:16-17

Paul speaks the same words Jesus spoke to the religious elite when He walked the earth.  This is happening all because of God’s intervention in his life.  Paul no longer thinks he knows it all; because now he knows the One who does! 

Paul, led by a new Spirit, God’s Holy Spirit, repeats the words of Jesus concerning the sovereignty and salvation of God.  He also speaks of the useless pursuit of merely adhering to the Law of God without accepting the work of Jesus, God’s Son to save us who reconnected us to God in a growing, intimate relationship with God.

Paul no longer leans on his own understanding of the Law; but wholly leans on God’s Holy Spirit who teaches him to trust God completely, believe in His Son without reservation and timidity, while giving his life to God daily so he can grow in God’s love more and more each day.  Love God.  Love Others.  Jesus said all the commandments hang on these two laws—the Law of Love. 

Paul reminds us that we are not God.  Only God is God.  We have no authority to point fingers and criticize with condemnation.  The only pointing to be done is to point the Way to Jesus!

Know the Enemy enough to recognize him and resist him…

Satan’s best tools of destruction are not from outside the church, they are from within the church. A church will never die from the immorality in Hollywood or the corruption in Washington. But it will die from corrosion within—from those who bear the name of Jesus but have never met him, and from those who have religion, but no relationship.

GET TO KNOW THE ONE WHO LOVES YOU MOST…

Spend uninterrupted time with Jesus today. Tell him your thoughts, dreams, worries, and sins.  He is always ready to bend down, sit with us, wipe our tears, and listen.  Jesus will mend our broken hearts while caring enough to open our eyes to Truth which leads to Real Life.  Call on the Name of Jesus who takes us by the hand and leads us on the narrow, but greater path to everlasting Life. 

(If you want to avoid crowds, this path is the one less traveled.)

Lord,

Thank you for always being with us. Thank you for saving our souls.  Thank you for being for “whoever believes” with the offer of a loving relationship with you—forever!

In Jesus Name, Amen

“Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!”  We watch the commercial and wince when a challenged person falls and cannot get up from the fall.  They lie helpless until they are rescued.  If they only had “live alert” hanging around their neck, the advertisement promotes.  But what if our fallen state is spiritual which leads more importantly to our mental, emotional, and intelligent condition of health and well-being?

An uninfected computer can be bought—but an uninfected person? Impossible. Trace a computer virus back to a hacker. Trace our mental viruses back to the fall of the first man, Adam. Because of sin, our minds are full of dark thoughts. Paul’s draws an accurate picture of humans then and now: “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools.” (Romans 1:21-22, NIV).

We must admit; Sin messes with the mind. But what if the virus never entered? Suppose a person never opened Satan’s emails? What would that person be like?  Don’t spend much time on that thought because the deed has already been done. However, Our Rescuer provided Way to rise up and out of our fallen state of mind, heart, and soul!

Romans 1, The Message

Ignoring God Leads to a Downward Spiral

^18-23 But God’s angry displeasure erupts as acts of human mistrust and wrongdoing and lying accumulate, as people try to put a shroud over truth. But the basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is! By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can’t see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of his divine being. So nobody has a good excuse. What happened was this: People knew God perfectly well, but when they didn’t treat him like God, refusing to worship him, they trivialized themselves into silliness and confusion so that there was neither sense nor direction left in their lives. They pretended to know it all, but were illiterate regarding life. They traded the glory of God who holds the whole world in his hands for cheap figurines you can buy at any roadside stand.

^24-25 So God said, in effect, “If that’s what you want, that’s what you get.” It wasn’t long before they were living in a pigpen, smeared with filth, filthy inside and out. And all this because they traded the true God for a fake god, and worshiped the god they made instead of the God who made them—the God we bless, the God who blesses us. Oh, yes!

^26-27 Worse followed. Refusing to know God, they soon didn’t know how to be human either—women didn’t know how to be women, men didn’t know how to be men. Sexually confused, they abused and defiled one another, women with women, men with men—all lust, no love. And then they paid for it, oh, how they paid for it—emptied of God and love, godless and loveless wretches.

^28-32 Since they didn’t bother to acknowledge God, God quit bothering them and let them run loose. And then all hell broke loose: rampant evil, grabbing and grasping, vicious backstabbing. They made life hell on earth with their envy, wanton killing, bickering, and cheating. Look at them: mean-spirited, venomous, fork-tongued God-bashers. Bullies, swaggerers, insufferable windbags! They keep inventing new ways of wrecking lives. They ditch their parents when they get in the way. Stupid, slimy, cruel, cold-blooded. And it’s not as if they don’t know better. They know perfectly well they’re spitting in God’s face. And they don’t care—worse, they hand out prizes to those who do the worst things best!

WHAT DO WE LEARN—HOW DO WE RESPOND?

Jesus often said, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.” (Mark 2:17, NLT) Read that statement of Truth again—as many times as needed—daily.  This knowing might keep the lid on our arrogance!

Paul reminds us, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 8:28) Those who think they “know it all” are falling for Satan’s schemes to trip them up.  They become as Paul described, “mean-spirited, venomous, fork-tongued God-bashers. Bullies, swaggerers, insufferable windbags!”  (Tell us how you really feel, Paul!)  Yes, Paul does not hold back! It sounds like he has debated this issue more than once—and he has!  But we need to realize that Paul’s passionate preaching comes from his gratefulness to Jesus who changed his life from being a wretched bully to preaching Jesus who came to rescue us from our falling for sin!

Paul wrote this letter to teach the Christian faith to the first believers in Rome. He taught that no one deserves God’s love.  “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8, NIV 

LIFE ALERT:  Yes, we’ve fallen but we can get up!  Look up to God, reach up for the hand of Jesus and believe what He has done for us and we are saved!  We rise up with Jesus in God’s resurrection power that is incomparable to anything or anyone on or below earth!  Jesus is our Hope.  Jesus is Truth.  Jesus is Savior and Lord.

Sin paints an ugly picture in people and in a culture. Without God’s intervention, we have no way to deal with sin.  I am grateful for the Way to Truth who give Life forever, how about you? (John 14:6)

Paul’s writings will later encourage us with practical ways to live for God along with the power and wisdom of God’s Holy Spirit helping us.  Keep reading, the best is yet to come!

Lord,

We live as a the fallen until you pull us up, dust us off, heal our broken places, and remove all our sins as far as the east is from the west!  You cleanse our hearts, renew our minds, refresh our souls, while continually restoring the peace and joy of you in us and us in you.  Oh, what a Savior!  Lead us, Lord, today.  You are our eternal, inexhaustible Hope—all because of your great love for us.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

In Jesus Name, Amen

It has been good and sweet, encouraging, and sometimes terrifying to read the Acts of the Holy Spirit through men and women called of God to carry The Message of Jesus to the world.  The movement is now well on its way, as many follow The Way.  Thousands are believing that Jesus is indeed the Messiah come to save us—The One and Only Son of God who the prophets told about through the centuries before He came to earth. Jesus is The Way, Truth, and Life—The Only Way to God.

Both Jews and non-Jews learn that Jesus redeemed us from punishment for our sins by laying down His life in our deserved place on a cruel cross.  They hear that God then raised His Son in resurrection power from death to Life eternal three days later.  God then honored Jesus as King of kings, and Lord of lords—forever!  This act of resurrection from death to life secures our hope of eternal life if we believe.  This gift of His Son is our salvation!  This gift is a result of God’s unchanging, relentless, unconditional love for us.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”  John 3:16-17, NIV

Although imprisoned for preaching Jesus, Paul does not hesitate in his assignment to proclaim The Message of Jesus.  He sends letters of love and encouragement to all the churches.  The church is growing in the numbers of new lives changed and transformed by Jesus as The Body of Christ.  Paul tells them how each one in the Body of Christ has been given certain gifts and abilities in order to build and encourage each other in healthy ways so that others may know Jesus by the love that is growing because of Jesus in them. 

It’s an ever-growing learning process!  Believers in Jesus are growing in His love and learning to walk in His ways but the church is made up of imperfect people who don’t always “get it right” and need help and correction.  Paul is the one assigned to carefully encourage and correct while still in chains.  He takes pure joy in seeing the church accept everyone, showing no favoritism, and love “like your lives depended on it”!  All people are drawn to those who love well.  Our work is to pass on The Message of Jesus in a spirit of love, Paul teaches.

God’s church today still leans on this wisdom God produced through Paul’s writings for the church.  Jesus is the Cornerstone of His church and Jesus is the Head of the Body of believers.  Jesus began this work with Peter and many other committed disciples. Later we will read and meditate on their letters, too!  But for now, let’s dive into the letter to the Romans!  Commence to learn so we can pass on The Message as “clearly as we should” so others will know and follow Jesus!

Romans 1, The Message

I, Paul, am a devoted slave of Jesus Christ on assignment, authorized as an apostle to proclaim God’s words and acts. I write this letter to all the believers in Rome, God’s friends.

^2-7 The sacred writings contain preliminary reports by the prophets on God’s Son. His descent from David roots him in history; his unique identity as Son of God was shown by the Spirit when Jesus was raised from the dead, setting him apart as the Messiah, our Master. Through him we received both the generous gift of his life and the urgent task of passing it on to others who receive it by entering into obedient trust in Jesus. You are who you are through this gift and call of Jesus Christ! And I greet you now with all the generosity of God our Father and our Master Jesus, the Messiah.

^8-12 I thank God through Jesus for every one of you. That’s first. People everywhere keep telling me about your lives of faith, and every time I hear them, I thank him. And God, whom I so love to worship and serve by spreading the good news of his Son—the Message!—knows that every time I think of you in my prayers, which is practically all the time, I ask him to clear the way for me to come and see you. The longer this waiting goes on, the deeper the ache. I so want to be there to deliver God’s gift in person and watch you grow stronger right before my eyes! But don’t think I’m not expecting to get something out of this, too! You have as much to give me as I do to you.

^13-15 Please don’t misinterpret my failure to visit you, friends. You have no idea how many times I’ve made plans for Rome. I’ve been determined to get some personal enjoyment out of God’s work among you, as I have in so many other non-Jewish towns and communities. But something has always come up and prevented it. Everyone I meet—it matters little whether they’re mannered or rude, smart or simple—deepens my sense of interdependence and obligation. And that’s why I can’t wait to get to you in Rome, preaching this wonderful good news of God.

^16-17 It’s news I’m most proud to proclaim, this extraordinary Message of God’s powerful plan to rescue everyone who trusts him, starting with Jews and then right on to everyone else! God’s way of putting people right shows up in the acts of faith, confirming what Scripture has said all along: “The person in right standing before God by trusting him really lives.”

WHAT DO WE LEARN—HOW DO WE RESPOND?

Letters to imperfect people of the perfect forgiveness of Jesus!  Paul has a definite writing style and position.  In his letters, he begins by going over who we are as believers.  If we know who we are, we will begin to know why we exist, live, and breathe as believers of Jesus. This is the “secret,” he will write to the Colossians, “Christ in us!” (Colossians 1:27).  In the middle of Paul’s letters, the word therefore will appear and change the direction of thee letter from who we are to what we are suppose to do given who we are in Jesus.  “Therefore” is there for a reason an signals the shift! 

Romans is a life-changing letter for people who are willing to admit they are sinners.  “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” Paul writes to the Romans and as a reminder to us.  In this Holy Spirit inspired letter, Paul explores all the wrong options and takes us to the only correct one. The wrong solutions are pleasure and pride (Romans 1-2); the correct solution is Christ Jesus (Romans 3:21–26). According to Paul, we are saved by grace (undeserved, unearned favor) through faith (complete trust) in Jesus and his work.

Paul’s letter concludes with practical instruction for a growing church, including thoughts on spiritual gifts (Romans 12); genuine love (also Romans 12); good citizenship (Romans 13). The final chapters provide brilliant instruction for dealing with everything from church division to difficult brethren. 

Even though Paul cannot physically visit the churches, God has given him the gift of powerful, Spirit filled wisdom; writing from his imprisonment to those who are imprisoned without Jesus.

The Message: “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8.

Lord,

Thank you for Paul who was believed and was fully committed to you.  Thank you for teaching us through Paul’s letters to the Body of Christ.  Thank you for forgiving us when we get it wrong with loving correction. Thank you for encouragement when we get it right as we you lead us. Give us wisdom to live daily in Your Name for Your Glory in ways that please you. 

In Jesus Name, Amen