Daily Manna (Coffee with Jesus)

Belief and Behavior…Can’t have one without the other

“Love and marriage, love and marriage, Go together like a horse and carriage, Dad was told by mother, You can’t have one without the other…” so the old song goes by Frank Sinatra. Yes, this song is so old the notion of falling in love first and then getting married is “old fashioned”. You just like each other for awhile, move in together and see if it leads to marriage…or not. Sigh. The world has changed. But do we change with it or continue to behave like we say we believe? Mm.

On a mission…

After living quite a few years on this earth, being the people watcher that I am because it’s fascinating to me, I have observed that what brings out the worst in we humans is criticizing others for the very weaknesses we have in ourselves. When we point our index finger at someone else, our thumb physically points back at us. What we abhor in ourselves, we see very critically in others and can’t understand why they can’t get THEIR act together. Weird, eh? But it happens. Maybe, this comes from the shame of not being able, most times, to get it together ourselves. Mm.

Paul helps us with this sin of seeing in others what we don’t see in ourselves. Passage 6 in his letter to the church people in Galatia helps us see that we need to be a bit more creative in our forgiving and a lot more helpful in coming alongside others in God’s restoration process. Why? Because we are sure to need the same encouragement throughout our imperfect lives.

Galatians 6, The Message
Nothing but the Cross

6 1-3 Live creatively, friends. If someone falls into sin, forgivingly restore him, saving your critical comments for yourself. You might be needing forgiveness before the day’s out. Stoop down and reach out to those who are oppressed. Share their burdens, and so complete Christ’s law. If you think you are too good for that, you are badly deceived.

4-5 Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.

6 Be very sure now, you who have been trained to a self-sufficient maturity, that you enter into a generous common life with those who have trained you, sharing all the good things that you have and experience.

7-8 Don’t be misled: No one makes a fool of God. What a person plants, he will harvest. The person who plants selfishness, ignoring the needs of others—ignoring God!—harvests a crop of weeds. All he’ll have to show for his life is weeds! But the one who plants in response to God, letting God’s Spirit do the growth work in him, harvests a crop of real life, eternal life.

9-10 So let’s not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the right time we will harvest a good crop if we don’t give up, or quit. Right now, therefore, every time we get the chance, let us work for the benefit of all, starting with the people closest to us in the community of faith.

What do we learn?
–Forgive quickly and completely. Come beside and be a help not a hindrance in the restoration process that will take time.
–Be creative in encouraging others.
–Be creative in the work God has given us to do…from the Creator Himself!
–Creatively evaluate our own lives. Make no comparisons. We are all created as “one of a kind” by God. We are his masterpiece!
–Creatively plan backwards…what do we want to see growing abundantly in our lives? Then let’s plant those seeds. Then let go and let God do the growing in us! Others will water the seeds of our restoration process, but ultimately God does the growing and maturing of our “crops”.
–SO, don’t quit now! God is still growing us! What a harvest that will be!

Dear Heavenly Father, In the middle of our growing and changing we get tired, discouraged and feel like quitting. But you lift us up with these words of encouragement, reminding us we are not alone. Thank you, Lord, for creating us, forgiving and restoring us…all because You loved us first. Continue to teach us…In Jesus Name, Amen

On a mission…

Paul is on a mission to set all of us straight about how to live freely in Christ. The first five chapters of his passionate letter to the Galatians takes careful thought for we are also indoctrinated by our world to carefully obey the man made rules of religion out of a desire to please our parents, friends, family and other church people, to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps (which is actually physically impossible to do by the way), to work your way up the totem pole at the workplace no matter who you climb on and over to get that higher position while looking down on others, destroying relationships in the process and to “have it your way” as the media demands. We don’t understand true freedom in Christ much less why we should relish and enjoy it. Paul explains.

Galatians 5, The Message
The Life of Freedom
5 Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you.

2-3 I am emphatic about this. The moment any one of you submits to circumcision or any other rule-keeping system, at that same moment Christ’s hard-won gift of freedom is squandered. I repeat my warning: The person who accepts the ways of circumcision trades all the advantages of the free life in Christ for the obligations of the slave life of the law.

4-6 I suspect you would never intend this, but this is what happens. When you attempt to live by your own religious plans and projects, you are cut off from Christ, you fall out of grace. Meanwhile we expectantly wait for a satisfying relationship with the Spirit. For in Christ, neither our most conscientious religion nor disregard of religion amounts to anything. What matters is something far more interior: faith expressed in love.

7-10 You were running superbly! Who cut in on you, deflecting you from the true course of obedience? This detour doesn’t come from the One who called you into the race in the first place. And please don’t toss this off as insignificant. It only takes a minute amount of yeast, you know, to permeate an entire loaf of bread. Deep down, the Master has given me confidence that you will not defect. But the one who is upsetting you, whoever he is, will bear the divine judgment.

11-12 As for the rumor that I continue to preach the ways of circumcision (as I did in those pre-Damascus Road days), that is absurd. Why would I still be persecuted, then? If I were preaching that old message, no one would be offended if I mentioned the Cross now and then—it would be so watered-down it wouldn’t matter one way or the other. Why don’t these agitators, obsessive as they are about circumcision, go all the way and castrate themselves!

13-15 It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don’t use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows. For everything we know about God’s Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That’s an act of true freedom. If you bite and ravage each other, watch out—in no time at all you will be annihilating each other, and where will your precious freedom be then?

16-18 My counsel is this: Live freely, animated and motivated by God’s Spirit. Then you won’t feed the compulsions of selfishness. For there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit, just as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness. These two ways of life are antithetical, so that you cannot live at times one way and at times another way according to how you feel on any given day. Why don’t you choose to be led by the Spirit and so escape the erratic compulsions of a law-dominated existence?

19-21 It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on.

This isn’t the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God’s kingdom.

22-23 But what happens when we live God’s way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.

23-24 Legalism is helpless in bringing this about; it only gets in the way. Among those who belong to Christ, everything connected with getting our own way and mindlessly responding to what everyone else calls necessities is killed off for good—crucified.

25-26 Since this is the kind of life we have chosen, the life of the Spirit, let us make sure that we do not just hold it as an idea in our heads or a sentiment in our hearts, but work out its implications in every detail of our lives. That means we will not compare ourselves with each other as if one of us were better and another worse. We have far more interesting things to do with our lives. Each of us is an original.

What do we learn?
–Freedom in Christ is a growing, loving relationship with Christ.
–Freedom to serve others because of our loving relationship with Christ. Loving and serving freely…without committees and mandates to tell us to love.
–Freedom celebrates our originality with equality.
–Freedom is faith expressed in love.

Thought?
Do we humans make up rules to feel safer, have power over someone else, or because it’s easier to follow rules that humans measure than to commit to a relationship that is limitless?
Limitless is scary stuff, eh?

Dear Heavenly Father, Oh Lord, how easily we are distracted by the rules of the day. Draw us ever closer to Your side and never let us go in our growing, maturing relationship with You. I love you with all my heart, mind and soul. Teach me more…
In Jesus Name, Amen

On a mission…

There is no greater blessing than to introduce my family members to my friends and acquaintances. I love them so much and I am proud of who they are. I am honored that they call me mom because I love them so much. Randy and I have three grown children who married wonderful people. They have given us crazy, creative, adorable grandchildren. We ARE family as the song goes.