JOYFUL EXPECTANCY!

Posted on February 10, 2018 by randscallawayffm

Romans – “Therefore”

With all three children Randy and I had, the pregnancy went past the expected due dates. This proves doctors really don’t know the time when a baby will actually come or I was just hanging on because I was too scared to give birth. The latter was true with the first one. Then during the second and third, we were ready for it to happen! Let’s get this show on the road! I did all that I could, within safety guidelines, to bring on the births but to no avail.

When the due dates came and passed, I would go the weekly visits with the doctor telling me, “I KNOW it will be this week, it has to be, you are ready.” Then another week would pass with no action. He told me the same thing with three more visits! Then he took action and got the ball rolling and the babies came. What joy to give birth at last to three beautiful children. This is joy expectancy! But the final waiting was challenging to say the least!

Paul uses the pregnant condition to explain our wait for the coming of the Lord. We think He is late in doing so, but only God knows the exact, right time. Our work is to wait in joyful expectancy, trusting and obeying. As we wait, the joyful anticipation deepens. God is getting all of us ready from the inside out. Let it be, Lord, let it be. Help us to wait.

Romans 8 deliveringRomans 8, The Message (Continued from yesterday)
And we know we are going to get what’s coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we’re certainly going to go through the good times with him!

18-21 That’s why I don’t think there’s any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times. The created world itself can hardly wait for what’s coming next. Everything in creation is being more or less held back. God reins it in until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead. Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation deepens.

22-25 All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it’s not only around us; it’s within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We’re also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don’t see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.

26-28 Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along.

Think about it…
–Our wait builds and deepens our faith in the One who created us and everything around us. He knows what He is doing. He knows the time. He knows us by name.
–“The Spirit of God is arousing us within.” We more we get to know God the more we want to be with Him, commune with Him, love Him and think like Him. His desires become our desires. His heartaches become our heartaches. God is on the move and we feel the earth shake and our emotions stirred with passion for others to know Christ because of Him.
–The longer we wait, the larger we become, (smiling, because I know how big I got with each pregnancy!) and the more joyful our expectancy!
–If we get tired in the wait, help is on the way in the form of God’s Holy Spirit. He lifts us up and helps us to stand on the promises of God!

Dear Heavenly Father,
Your Word speaks volumes to us this morning. Help us all in the wait for the final day when You will come and make all things good and perfect. Keep us close to You as we draw near to You. I love you, Lord, heart, mind and soul. I wait with joyful expectancy! The outcome of the birth of our final deliverance will be more than we can imagine!
In Jesus Name, Amen

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OUR MESS HIS MISSION!

Posted on February 9, 2018 by randscallawayffm
Romans – “Therefore”
 
Humankind was in a self induced, sinful mess. God knew that before sin came into the world through Adam and Eve. The messiness still flourishes for those who do not believe in Christ and His work on the Cross to save us and lift us up out of the mess. Sin’s mess continues to have a hold on those who are merely impressed with Jesus and think they can handle life on their own. Sometimes that is me.
 
We work hard to be good enough only to find out that all our efforts combined do not come close to the saving grace of Jesus Christ. Our efforts pale in the tremendous work of His Holy Spirit in us, giving us power to turn our backs on sin and the traps laid before us each day. We can only boast in Christ for our victory over sin each day we live. We cannot do it without Him. He is God and we are not. His mission was our mess.
 
Hallelujah, praise God! “This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike, ‘What’s next, Papa?’
 
Romans 8 power in usRomans 8, The Message
The Solution Is Life on God’s Terms
 
1-2 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.
 
3-4 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.
 
The law always ended up being used as a Band-Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. And now what the law code asked for but we couldn’t deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us.
 
5-8 Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God’s action in them find that God’s Spirit is in them—living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. And God isn’t pleased at being ignored.
 
9-11 But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won’t know what we’re talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of sin—you yourself experience life on God’s terms. It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he’ll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ’s!
 
12-14 So don’t you see that we don’t owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent. There’s nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. God’s Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go!
 
15-17 This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike “What’s next, Papa?” God’s Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what’s coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we’re certainly going to go through the good times with him!
 
Think about it…
–God’s Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. NO ONE else can do that. WE can’t do that. God knows us better than we know ourselves.
–“Do it yourself”, spiritually, leads to a bigger mess. Have you ever had a time when a DIY backfired and led to more work?
–When God takes up residence in your heart, mind and soul, you think more of Him than yourself. Now we are free to move about life without the limits we place on our lives. God’s free open spaces of His will, work and plan for us becomes expansive and limitless! Wow!
–New life, new thinking, new behaviors. God in us, helping us. How can we lose?
 
“We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what’s coming to us–an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we’re certainly gong to go through the good times with him!”
 
Dear Heavenly Father,
We know Who you are. We know You saved us from our own mess. We cannot do life without You. That’s who we are. You knew that, so You gave us Your Holy Spirit to guide us, help us, and challenge us. Thank you for not only saving us but living in us who believe. I love you with all my heart, mind and soul. I will meditate on this lesson and live gratefully today because of the reminder of who You are and who I am. You are God and I am not. Continue your work in me. I’m listening.
In Jesus Name, Amen
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WE OBVIOUSLY NEED HELP!

Posted on February 8, 2018 by randscallawayffm
Romans – “Therefore”
 
Let’s be honest. We can look at a shiny object and think it is pretty and walk away. As soon as someone tells us we cannot have it, we WANT it…badly. We can pass by a new vehicle with admiration but as soon as we hear our best friend has purchased it, our gut tells we NEED to have it, too. Our neighbor cuts his lawn on a sunny afternoon and suddenly, to keep up, we feel the need to cut our lawn, too. (True story.) We begin serving from a desire to please God in our churches until we see others doing what we think is more important or better, and we say yes to everything wanting to please others around us. Serving then becomes a sport within the Body with wrong motivations.
 
There is never a more honest statement in the Bible than the truth Paul delivers about himself. “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.”
 
We ALL obviously need help. GOOD NEWS! Help came. There is an answer to our sin condition and our misguided motivations about following God’s law. Jesus Christ!
 
Romans 7 need JesusRomans 7 and the beginning of 8, 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.
 
Romans 8, The Message
The Solution Is Life on God’s Terms
1-2 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.
 
Think About It…
–Many times, over the years, young believers who repent, get up from the altar and say, “I will be good from now on.” I remind them quickly, “No, you can’t by yourself. But with the new power of Jesus Christ working in you, He will help you, like He helps all of us, make better choices. Tap into the power of His Holy Spirit and listen.”
–There is a “new power in operation”. Listen for Him. He will guide you into all things good for He wants the best for His children who believe, love with a desire to please Him alone.
–We can not do this on our own. I’ve tried. Paul tried.
–God’s Law kept us moral and safe. Jesus gave us relationship with the Almighty!
 
We obviously need help and help was sent. Trust and obey.
 
Dear Heavenly Father,
Paul, with Your help, delivers the basic honesty of our human condition. Thank you for explaining the intent of Your Law and the beautiful relationship with You that is possible because of the sacrifice of Jesus, Your Son. I tap into Your power in operation daily, almost hourly. I experience Your greater outcomes with renewed joy. I don’t want to serve as a competition but with a heart of pure joy, a desire to give back what you so lovingly sacrificed to give to me, the power of Your Help. Thank you for Your power that pulls us, like a magnet, from the influence of sin in all forms to Your best for us. Bless us and continue to help us to be all you intended for us to be. Then guide us to what YOU want us to do in Your Name, for Your glory.
In Jesus Name, Amen
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THE DELIGHT OF LISTENING TO GOD!

Posted on February 7, 2018 by randscallawayffm
Romans – “Therefore”
 
No one wants to be labeled as this or that. We “baby boomers” are famous for not liking labels. I really don’t think anyone likes to be assumed as someone they are not. No one wants another person to infringe on his/her freedom. If fact we will fight anyone who tries to take away one of our “rights” as we see it in our minds. It seems to be all about us.
 
Our world is very sensitive to what it means to be free. If someone questions our “rights”, we are quick to evaluate their right to question. We have developed a false sense of security about being free by our own standards. We feel we can say whatever comes to our puny, judgmental mind without thought of how it might make another person feel or how hurtful it might be to them and to who we say we are. (All have sinned and fall short…ALL.)
 
We haven’t truly considered what a delight it is to be free from sin, free from sin telling us who to be and what to do. We have sometimes forgotten what a delightful way of life it is to listen to the One and Only who created us and wants to have an intimate, loving, true, always and forever relationship with us. He wants us to be free from sin and all the traps sin has to destroy us, in exchange for His best for us…a life that is beyond our imaginations at the current moment! It is a life of peace, joy unspeakable and full of His glory reflected on our faces.
 
Freedom in Christ means we no longer walk in hate and selfishness with manipulation and lies that makes us tired and ugly, inside and out, at the end of each day. INSTEAD we walk in His freedom, bearing the gifts of His fruits of who HE is in us, always growing and developing love without conditions, gentleness, patience, bearing each other’s faults, humility, thinking of others before ourselves, joy, contentment, authentic affection for others, empathy and sympathy, compassion, excited about life, enthusiasm for pleasing God and feeling His Presence with us as we walk our short journeys on this earth. Ooh, NOW it’s all about Him. SEE the difference?
 
Romans 6 sin costsRomans 6, The Message
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.
 
I am reminded of…
 
Abraham walked with God and God considered him His Friend. That is true freedom from death to life with God who is above all and in all who believe in Him. Yes, that’s what I want. I delight in walking with God. I want to be known as His Friend, His child, in His Kingdom.
 
Romans 6 delightThe Psalmist cries out in delight for following God rather than evil that leads to death…(Psalm 119)
 
1-8 You’re blessed when you stay on course,
walking steadily on the road revealed by God.
You’re blessed when you follow his directions,
doing your best to find him.
That’s right—you don’t go off on your own;
you walk straight along the road he set.
You, God, prescribed the right way to live;
now you expect us to live it.
Oh, that my steps might be steady,
keeping to the course you set;
Then I’d never have any regrets
in comparing my life with your counsel.
I thank you for speaking straight from your heart;
I learn the pattern of your righteous ways.
I’m going to do what you tell me to do;
don’t ever walk off and leave me.
 
9-16 How can a young person live a clean life?
By carefully reading the map of your Word.
I’m single-minded in pursuit of you;
don’t let me miss the road signs you’ve posted.
I’ve banked your promises in the vault of my heart
so I won’t sin myself bankrupt.
Be blessed, God;
train me in your ways of wise living.
I’ll transfer to my lips
all the counsel that comes from your mouth;
I delight far more in what you tell me about living
than in gathering a pile of riches.
I ponder every morsel of wisdom from you,
I attentively watch how you’ve done it.
I relish everything you’ve told me of life,
I won’t forget a word of it.
 
Yes, let us DELIGHT in the freedom Christ has given to us. Follow what God wants and desires for us and we can never go wrong. There is only one way to be free.
 
In Jesus Name, and By His Power living in us and through us, Amen! I believe.
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YOU CAN’T GO BACK

Posted on February 6, 2018 by randscallawayffm
Romans – “Therefore”
 
There is a saying, “you can’t go back home”. I laughed it off as just a saying but it is true. When you move from a place where you grew up we must realize that we change and the place changes. Nothing remains the same. You can’t go back home and expect things to be just as you left it. People change and grow just as you have. We also have a tendency to “freeze frame” younger family members and are surprised that they have grown and matured so much we almost don’t recognize them.
 
Paul takes us farther in the saying “you can’t go back home” as he talks about our former way of life with sin directing our every move. We speak sin language. We move at the whim of evil’s direction. We dress in the way of sin. Everything about us is directed by evil’s desire to destroy us. We live precariously on the edge of death.
 
THEN we enter into real life with Jesus, guided by His Holy Spirit, baptized in His Name! We move from death to life…a new country of authenticity. We speak a new language of love, mercy and grace. We are loved, accepted and redeemed in a way that is like no other way…unconditionally. ALL our sins are not only forgiven but forgotten by the one who paid the debt for all sin for all people.
 
We have been set free to move to the rhythm of God’s grace, the One and Only who created us and knows us by name. He challenges us to grow and invites us to be His Friend forever. He also invites us to join Him in His work to help others find and follow Him. Yes, we’ve moved to a higher place with higher, nobler thoughts that are directed by God, our Creator. We are loved. We are not forgotten. We are significant. We count in His Kingdom. We are of so much value, Jesus, His Son was sent to die for us!
 
WHY in the world would we want to visit the old country of sin, much less go back and live there in misery?
 
Romans 6 waterRomans 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 at sin’s every beck and call! 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.
 
Remember, we are redeemed! Don’t go back!
 
Dear Heavenly Father,
When we think of You and what you have done to save us from sin and selfishness we fall to our knees in grateful praise. I love you with all my heart, mind and soul. There’s no turning back. I don’t want to go back to where I used to live in sin. There is only darkness there. Lift me higher and higher with You. Thank you for saving us.
In Jesus Name, Amen
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GRACE…AGGRESSIVE FORGIVENESS!

Posted on February 5, 2018 by randscallawayffm
 
Romans – “Therefore”
 
A person who is drowning, just beyond the shore, is usually in a panic and becomes quickly confused about where they are. When rescuers leave the beach with a mind to save them, most drowning victims will fight them in this confusion. So the first words from the rescuer to the one drowning is, “Calm down, I’ve got you.” “Let me help you.” “Trust me.”
 
The drowning victim who listens is saved and brought back to the shore. Panic is gone when they feel the sand beneath their feet. Life is restored, confusion and panic is gone. What a gift to be saved! When the victim comes to their senses, they are grateful to the rescuer who gave them more days to live.
 
Our word for today brings this image to mind as Paul writes of the rescue of Jesus Christ. He gives the historical background from the first sinner, Adam, who said no to God, to the Messiah who set things right by offering His life for our sin in an act of “aggressive forgiveness, we call grace.” The Messiah is our rescuer from the waters of sin that overwhelm and confuse us, keeping us separated from God. He comes with the same words…”Calm down, I’ve got you. Trust Me. Believe in Me and you will be saved.” What a gift!
 
Romans 5 graceRomans 6, The Messaage
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, sovereign 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.
 
Amazing Grace.
Our rescue.
Our Savior and Lord.
Life Forever.
Aggressive Forgiveness.
Amen.
 
Dear Heavenly Father,
First, we thank you for your aggressive forgiveness, forgetting all confessed sins in our lives. Thank you for your grace that is amazing and gives life to our souls forever. Thank you for the joy and peace this rescued life brings to daily living. Thank you for this precious gift offered only by our Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ. Forgive us for fighting you before giving in to your rescue. Thank for life and more life “that goes on and on and on, world without end.” Thank you for loving us that much.
In Jesus Name, Help us to help others who are drowning and confused, Amen.
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AT OUR WORST…

Posted on February 4, 2018 by randscallawayffm
Romans – “Therefore”
 
We will have family coming over to celebrate Randy’s birthday to day after church. So we clean up the clutter and put the house in order so that they will feel comfortable. We will prepare the food they like so they will feel loved and welcomed into our home. We get ready for their arrival and wait with anticipation because we love them greatly.
 
We do not want to be at our worst. We want to be ready. Some people feel that is what they need to do before coming into a relationship with Jesus. “When I get cleaned up from the mess I’m in, I’ll come.” or “I’m not ready because…” THERE IS GOOD NEWS…Jesus came for you and for me IN our unpreparedness. We will never be ready, clean enough or good enough. That is not the prerequisite for salvation. Jesus came AT OUR WORST, while we were all deep in sin to save us. Why? Because God loves us and wants us to be set right with Him. His Son, Jesus Christ came to do just that.
 
There is no longer the excuse, “I’m not ready.” He knows that and yet He came to save us…at our worst. Hallelujah! What a Savior! “We sing and shout our praised to God through Jesus, the Messiah! Think deeply about this miracle of “at our worst, He came” as we worship corporately today!
 
Romans 5 8 darkestRomans 5, The Message
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!
 
Dear Heavenly Father,
THANK YOU, thank you, thank you for saving my soul and making me whole before you. Thank you for dying for my sin while I was still a sinner. Thank you for the gift of your salvation. I believe. I give you all my praise. I give you my love. I give you my life. I’m yours, Lord. Thank you for calling me friend. Thank you for our relationship that was built in the middle of my mess.
In Jesus Name, Amen
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RISKY FAITH MAKES US FIT

Posted on February 3, 2018 by randscallawayffm
Romans – “Therefore”…
 
We are a people of faith who believe that God can do anything. Nothing is too hard for God. So we trust in His promises. We don’t bargain with God or sign contracts as in the business world. We just believe and trust God to be who He says He is. Our faith is built on the foundation of what Christ did for us on the Cross. He died for us. He rose again. He gave us a part of Himself to be with us always, His Holy Spirit. He will return. He is preparing a place for us in heaven to live with him forever. In the meantime, we trust in what He has done, is doing and will do because of His promises to us. We are standing on the promises of God. Yes, indeed.
 
Paul explains the risky faith-embrace of God’s actions in Abraham to the Jews in Rome who are questioning tradition and religion versus being made right by God through Jesus’s work on the cross so that we can have a relationship with God. Abraham was called “father” of the Jewish nation. Paul, a great student and teacher of the Law, skillfully began his witness with what they already knew and then introduces the new way of relating to God because of Jesus sacrifice for them.
 
“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.”
 
“Abraham believed deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn’t do but on what God said He would do.”
 
“…trusting-Him-to-do-it is what get you set right with God, BY God. Sheer gift.”
 
We cannot save ourselves. We cannot set things right with God by working hard or trying to do everything right. We can never be good enough on our own. Christ is enough. Sheer gift of God’s grace. Jesus is the only perfect one who could be the sacrifice for our sin. Only Jesus. Sheer gift.
 
So trust God. Read Romans 4 as the sheer gift that it is to us. Be set free from world thinking to the higher thoughts of God. God gave His Only Son as a gift to us. Receive this Gift and cherish Him. Let God set things right through Jesus Christ. Trust God. He knows what He is doing.
 
Romans 4 20Romans 4, The Message
Trusting God
4 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 carted off,
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.
 
Dear Heavenly Father,
You brought us back to yourself by sending Your Son to save us. You set us right with you, made us fit by the blood shed by the sacrifice of Jesus. Thank you, thank you, thank you for Your “sheer gift” of your amazing grace. I believe. I will simply praise you all day long at the thought. I’m standing on your promises. I love you, Lord.
In Jesus Name, Amen
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GOOD MORNING, SAINTS! GOOD MORNING, SINNERS!

Posted on February 2, 2018 by randscallawayffm
Romans – “Therefore…”
 
Many years ago Randy and I attended a convention of workshops for pastors. There were many great leaders we are interested in hearing and gleaning from their experiences. One, in particular was Max Lucado. The room filled quickly to overflow into the hallway. Pastor Lucado came into the room after all were settled in seats and shouted a hearty, “Good Morning, Saints!” An equally hearty response by all gathered was, “Good Morning, Pastor!” Then, without hesitation, Lucado shouted, “Good Morning, Sinners!” The crowd was taken aback and slowly responded with a quieter “Good Morning.” Randy and I smiled at each other. We know we are sinners saved only by God’s grace. We are saints only by the grace and generosity of Jesus Christ, His Son who died for our sin.
 
I think of this when I come to the passage where Paul explains the phenomenal grace of God. Some are flippant and irreverent and say that Paul is telling people to sin more so that God can give more grace. He sets them straight with what God intended. Read carefully, thoughtfully and prayerfully. Let’s see what we learn so God can help us and we can help others.
 
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 bad words don’t even make a dent in his good words, 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.
 
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.
 
Romans 3 He chose the nailsWhat do we learn?
–We are all sinners.
–God is generous with His love for us. So He sent His Son to save and redeem us as His own.
–By believing in Jesus as Savior as the Truth, Way and Life, we are saved. Jesus becomes Lord of our lives from a heart of gratefulness for His gift of eternal love for us. We love Him because He first loved us…and laid down His life for us.
–We are humbled, not proud, of what God has done for us.
–Our lives should confirm what God has done in us. We trust and obey His Word with a heart to please God in grateful praise for what He has done in us.
–We are saints, made holy by God…only God. We are not saints because of anything we do or say, only because of God’s grace through the sacrifice of Jesus, His Son.
 
“Nails didn’t hold God to a cross. the sinless one took on the face of a sinner so we sinners could take on the face of a Saint” – Max Lucado.
 
Dear Heavenly Father,
Thank you for saving my soul. Thank you for your grace. Thank you for loving me so much that you thought I was worth dying for. I give you my life. Continue to transform me to be more and more like you intended for me to be. We praise You as the One and Only who can give life eternal. Help me. Help those around me. In Jesus Name, Amen
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CHURCH GOING VS CHURCH BEING

Posted on February 1, 2018 by randscallawayffm

Romans – “Therefore…”

Be careful when you hear words like, “I have been going to this church since my parents and grandparents, it is my church.” “No, I don’t attend, but my parents were Baptist, so I’m Baptist.” “We will not consider moving the building or us, it’s always been here and always will be.” “We should call all the people who left our church and beg them to come back.” “We will consider those for office in the church who have proven themselves to follow all our rules and have become like us.” “Come to our church, we have the greatest band in the community.” “Come and see what we have done to improve our building and parking lot.” “I attend every chance I get because my mom goes there, it’s our family church.” “We send money to poor people in third world countries…after the church bills are paid.” “Let’s send those worn out resources we don’t use anymore to the mission field, I bet they could use them, then our mission outreach is checked off our list for this year.”

Be cautiously wondering when your hear board members’ comments concerning finances or the work of the church…”We made a profit this year, look at our bottom line! We made money.” “Our pastor deserves a boost in income, let’s send him to a workshop.” “Why doesn’t our pastor visit more? I have a cousin in the hospital and he didn’t know to visit her.” “Pastor, you need to speak on the topic of tithes, we need to raise funds for new carpet and windows.” “When are we going to pave the parking lot?” “My family has gone here for three generation, no we are not going to repaint the youth room. It was good enough for our kids, it’s good enough for your kids.” “It’s too costly to raise money to send people to build something on foreign soil when we need to keep up the building here.” “No, just no.” “If others want to come, they know we are here.”

Be prayerfully evaluating a pastor who makes comments about church. “Wow, we fooled them again! We raised enough money to pay off the van we already purchased. Thanks for hiding it in your garage, Steve, until the church came through with the funds!” “Tell the band to rev it up when I walk on stage.” “Make sure the plants don’t hide the view of the worship leader or me.” “Follow the script and say what I told you to say or you’re out.” “We are good at smoke and mirrors.” “What a performance, band!” “Don’t look better than me!” “My sermon is the main event, don’t forget that.” (Yes, yikes!, but I’ve heard all of these statements and more in God’s church at some point in my life.)

Paul reminds the religious elite, the Jews, that their religion won’t save them, either. Let’s listen in…

Romans 2 mark of GodRomans 2, The Message
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 are down 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?
–It’s because of us, as God’s church, that others are down on coming to worship with us. Many are not down on God…just His church. We are judgmental, unholy and sometimes unkind.
–Motivations of our hearts is key and must be evaluated daily. WHY do we do what we do? WHO are we in Christ? WHAT are we doing when He asks us to join Him in His work? Do we respond quickly or wait for a committee meeting?
–Are we tired OF the work or IN the work? Are we giving up? If we are, we are probably doing the work on our own steam.
–Do we do what we do because it makes us feel good? Is God’s work done so others will think more highly of us as a noble people?
–Be the church God requires of us as individuals with his mark on our hearts. Then do what He asks when His invitation to join Him in His work is given. We will only hear His invitation when we first spend time being with Him. Ask, what do YOU want, Lord.
–Do we have the mark of God on our hearts?

Dear Heavenly Father,
We repent of times when it was all about us not all about You. Being the church means being with You first, understanding Your love, then acting on that love. Our hearts ache for those who say hurtful, unkind things in Your church as we strive to be Your church. Help us to quickly see the danger from the evil one who plants evil thoughts of selfish indignation in church people who have missed the mark…the mark of You on their hearts. Help us to see when it is us and repent quickly. Thank you, Lord for inviting us to BE your church before doing anything of value or significance as Your church. Do not let us become complacent or habitual doing church. What a sin that is! You have made that clear throughout the ages! Help us, Lord.
In Jesus Name, Amen.

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