Faith

Hello again!

This is what God gave me today in His word:

The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” And the Lord said, “If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you. (Luke 17:5-6)

Now, real quick, it’s worth noting that this is not saving faith in God that Jesus is talking about here. Rather, He’s talking about faith that God can give us the power to move the tree (in this case) from point A to point B. Any Christian today, just as back then, can lift a real physical tree, and dump move it somewhere else, if they had the faith that it would happen. Sadly though, probably will never happen, as it is simply too ingrained into our brains that trees can not be lifted out of the ground by anything other than physical labor, much less by faith. However, there is something which even we are able to recognize as being possible, and that’s uprooting Spiritual trees in our life.

Be “Spiritual trees,” I mean sin struggles in our life which seem to have dug in and appear to have a firm grip on us. But Jesus can uproot anything, and if we ask Him to (and have faith that He will), He will indeed help us overcome the sin. That being said, we do still need to spray tree killer.-We need to cut off any chance of the sin gaining a hold on us again, but cutting off our access to whatever it is that’s causing us to sin.

Jesus is all-powerful, and because of His death and Resurrection for us, is more than capable of doing anything, regardless of how hard we believe the task to be. Our part in matters is to simply continue looking to the cross, and thinking on all that Christ has done for us. When we do that, we will gain faith, and God will work through us to will and to do.

You are Loved!

Joshua Cleveland

 

Older Brother Syndrome

Hello again!

This is what God gave me today in His word:

“Now his older son was in the field, and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. And he said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf, because he has received him back safe and sound.’ But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him, but he answered his father, ‘Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!’ And he said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.'” (Luke 15:25-32)

Older brother syndrome, as I like to call it, is easy for any Christian to get into. Older brother syndrome has three main causes: jealousy, pride, and hate. It typically displays itself, in jealousy of another’s gifts, in thinking that we are somehow better than another Christian, and in hate towards another Christian.

Older brother mode is easy for anyone (including myself) to slip into. When we think that, because we aren’t falling in an area that a fellow believer is falling in, we are somehow better, we experience a bit of the older brother syndrome. Likewise when we hate someone because something good happened to them that didn’t happen to us, or when we’re jealous because someone can do something better than us. We’ve all experienced periods, no matter how brief, of older brother syndrome. But how can we overcome it? Do we perhaps need some sort of medication for this “syndrome”?

No, what we need is Jesus. No one has more right than Him to act like the older brother in this parable, and complain that we should be allowed to enter Heaven. But He’s gone as far as possible in the exact opposite direction of playing the part of the older brother. (Which makes sense, as He is the one who gave His very life so that we may live.) And He can enable us to do the same. If we ask, He will give, if we knock, the door will be opened (etc.). So, let’s not grow into older brother’s, instead, let’s let Christ grow us up to be more like Him.

You are Loved!

Joshua Cleveland

 

Cleansed by Blood

Hello again!

This is what God gave me today in His word:

While Jesus was speaking, a Pharisee asked him to dine with him, so he went in and reclined at table. The Pharisee was astonished to see that he did not first wash before dinner. And the Lord said to him, “Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You fools! Did not he who made the outside make the inside also? (Luke 11:37-40)

Jesus has died to take our greed and wicked nature from us, and so what was said to this Pharisee can never be said of a child of God. However, it is possible, even somewhat common, for Christians to somewhat neglect their Spirit, in favor of attempting to earn “brownie points” with God by doing good works. Obviously “good works” in of them-self are perfectly fine, but it’s when we attempt to earn favor with God, and neglect to keep our Spirit pure (I’ll explain what I mean by that in a minute), that there’s a problem.

When we sin, it’s defiling to our Spirit. We could do a thousand good works, a hundred thousand, even a billion “good works”, and it still wouldn’t account for one sin.–Imagine trying to clean a stain with a dirty rag, and you’ll get a good idea of the effect that good works has on the stain that sin always leaves in our Spirit. Which is precisely why we cannot sin, and expect to be able to clean it up some how by doing good of any kind. There is only one thing which can overcome the stain of sin, and that is the blood of Jesus! Our efforts, our good works, are nothing. We can’t possibly hope to ever erase the stain of even one sin, much less the thousands that we’ve accumulated over the years. No, our only hope is in Christ.

The point being this: let’s not grow to be like the Pharisees were.-Seemingly clean and spotless on the outside, but inwardly rotting away. Instead, let’s turn to Jesus, ask Him to take away our desire to sin, and cleanse us in His blood.

You are Loved!

Joshua Cleveland

 

A Look Into Sin and the Power of Christ

Hello again!

This is what God gave me today in His word

“A sower went out to sow his seed. And as he sowed, some fell along the path and was trampled underfoot, and the birds of the air devoured it. And some fell on the rock, and as it grew up, it withered away, because it had no moisture. And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up with it and choked it. (Luke 8:5-7)

I wonder just how many “Christians” have had this happen to them. In fact, the seed of the Gospel which has been planted in our own hearts, may be withered away, choked out by any number of things, even now. The problem is, everyone seems to have a tendency to consider just about everything as being more important than the Gospel: pastors stand up on Sundays and preach a bloodless “Gospel”-a “Gospel” where we save ourself by our own works, but where Christ doesn’t really play a part. Worse though, is it seems people genuinely enjoy hearing this. But, preaching which does not contain the Gospel, almost always chokes out the seed of the Gospel in a new believer. (The Devil, in this example, is actually working through a pastor that refuses to preach the Gospel).

More often than the above happening, though, is when the word of the Gospel fells upon rock. Where, though it tries to grow, it’s inevitably stopped by someone’s unwillingness to give up sin. (No one whose trying to stop the work of the Gospel in their life by holding on to sin will ever stand up in times of trail.)

Still more common than this happening, however, is when the seed of the Gospel is trampled, and then completely annihilated by the Devil. The worst thing about this, is that we are, more often than not, the ones doing the trampling! We trample our own seed of the Gospel when, after hearing and experiencing Jesus’ power at first, we then proceed to ignore it completely; we trample it when we try to limit the power of Jesus to something which makes someone a Christian, and nothing more, when in reality the Gospel not only save us (though that in of itself is huge), but also gives us strength and power to overcome the Devil. Which is why, after we trample the seed of the Gospel, we don’t have any strength to resist the Devil, which is why (like a bird), he swoops down and devours it.

But, how can we prevent those things from happening to us, and if our seed of the Gospel (which is the word of God) has already been devoured, how can we possibly receive it back?

We can prevent ourself from loosing sight of the Gospel, by, (simply put) never loosing sight of it. If we make Jesus, and His death and Resurrection for us the center of our thoughts and actions, we will never lose it. As for the second question, that has three separate answers:

In the first case, the Gospel has been choked out by the belief that salvation rests upon our ability to obey the law. In the second case, someone is unrepentant, and so the Gospel withers away. In the third case, the Gospel is trampled by an ignorant belief that Jesus’ death and Resurrection; his Power, makes someone into a believer, and nothing more.

To solve the first problem is fairly easy; one most only read the Bible, and discover that the Gospel is God’s free gift to man, and that we cannot earn our own salvation.

The solution to the second problem is somewhat harder, as it involves our need for repentance, and humans, as you and I both have no doubt discovered, have a very difficult time admitting that they have done wrong of any sort. And in fact, it is only by looking to Jesus, and seeing His utter perfection, that we can truly understand our own wickedness, and repent.

The solution to the third problem is hardest of all, because once we get into the rut of ignoring the Jesus’ power to help us in every matter of life, it can be difficult to get out. However, God has provided us a way out here too: by looking at passages like Jesus’ temptation in the desert, and how He resisted; and by realizing that if we are believers than that same Jesus lives in us, we can see that Jesus not only saves, but also sanctifies.

You are Loved!

Joshua Cleveland

 

Disobedience

Hello again!

This is what God gave me today in His word:

Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like: he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great.” (Luke 6:47-49)

Christians, just in general (myself included), have a problem, and a very important one at that: we hear (in the case of those listening to a pastor), and we read (the Bible), but we tend not to obey. Jesus tells us to love our enemy, but do we? Jesus tells us to give to everyone who begs from us, but do we? He also tells us to turn the other cheek when we’re struck, do good to those who hate us, and to give freely to those who would steal from us, yet I’d dare to say that we haven’t done any of those. We have a stunning obedience deficiency.

And, the real problem about our obedience problem, is that, ever since Adam and Eve sinned, being disobedient to God is our very nature. When we are hit, our instinct is to hit back. As Paul says in his letter to Titus:

³ At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. (Titus 3:3)

But Paul doesn’t stop there, the next part tell us how it is we can live a life obedient, and in submission to God:

⁴ But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, ⁵ he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit,⁶ whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, ⁷ so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life. (Titus 3:4-7)

If we aren’t living lives obedient to God, we either don’t fully understand what Jesus has done for us, we are not saved at all, or we are not repentant. In most cases, it’s the last of those: we don’t want to do anything different, so we don’t. It’s only by repenting of our disobedience, and letting Jesus give us His grace, that we can live obediently to God.

You are Loved!

Joshua Cleveland

 

The Bible

Hello again!

This is what God gave me today in His word:

The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” And Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone.'” (Luke 4:3-4)

The Devil tempts Jesus, just as He will tempt any Christian, but unlike several of His followers, Jesus doesn’t run to a doctor for help. Neither does He use will power to “resist”. Neither does He look down a wrist band asking Him, “What would Jesus You do?”. And, He certainly doesn’t try to simply block out the Devil by turning on the TV, radio, etc.. What He did instead, was turn to Scripture. The Bible, the living word of God, is far more powerful than any anti-depression drug, wrist bands, and all the rest.

Jesus, who is the living word of God, is our defense against all of Satan’s attacks. We shouldn’t turn to things which cannot really help us (refer to the mentioned items), instead we should turn to the only one who was the power to help: Jesus Christ.

You are Loved!

Joshua Cleveland

 

Humanity, Divinity, and Death

Hello again!

(The following verses are, as you may be able to guess, where Jesus is being crucified.) This is what God gave me today in His word:

And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. (Matthew 27:50)

Now, there are several Christians, quite a lot in fact, that claim Jesus actually died. Now, I agree with this completely, I completely believe that Jesus died completely, and then three days later rose again. However, people tend to mix up “death” as we know it to be today, and the death which Jesus died. “Death” implies a forceful taking, some would call it a “stealing”, of life. (Of course for the Christian, life never ends, I’m using “life” in this context to represent our Spirit being trapped in flesh and bone. Thus, “dying” in the context which we’re looking at it, is releasement.) Jesus’ life wasn’t stolen from Him, rather, we see the verse says that He, “yielded up his spirit.” He gave up, willingly, His Spirit. Something which Jesus Himself tells us is true:

¹⁷ The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life —only to take it up again. ¹⁸ No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.” (John 10:17-18)

The main reason I bring this up, is to answer one of the arguments which those who don’t believe in the Trinity of God, the Son, and the Holy Spirit bring up, in order to attempt to state that the dual nature of Christ; that He is both fully God, and fully man, to be a contradiction. i.e. That God cannot die, yet Jesus did. The thing about this, is that Jesus did not die, as we think of dying. He lived, even after He died. Though it’s true His physical, mortal body came to the end of its service, His Spirit lived. It’s impossible to put God in a box, and say that He must always maintain a single form. No one really has any clue what God looks like, or what He consists of, or if He even consists of anything at all. God is so far out of our grasp of understanding, that we simply cannot look at Jesus, taking our sin nature onto Himself, and dying, and claim that the was His end. Assuming that Jesus really is God, and Scripture says that He is (i.e. John 5:7-8), physical death would not mean His being coming to an end, as death implies.

To put it more rather more simply: Jesus’ human self died, and along with Him died our sin nature, guilt, and condemnation. However, His divine self did not die, rather His divine self went on to preach hope and salvation to the captives in Hell, and then to rise again.

You are Loved!

Joshua Cleveland

 

Luck and Providence

Hello again!

This is what God gave me today in His word:

And leaving them, he went out of the city to Bethany and lodged there. In the morning, as he was returning to the city, he became hungry. And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And he said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” And the fig tree withered at once. When the disciples saw it, they marveled, saying, “How did the fig tree wither at once?” (Matthew 21:17-20)

`Sometimes we’re like the disciples: blind to the miracles going on in front of us. The disciples no doubt heard Jesus curse the fruit tree, and they obviously saw it wither. You’d think they’d be able to draw a connection, right? The people in Heaven probably ask the same questions of us, when we don’t bother to look at the cause of the miracle, but instead admire the miracle itself.

Have you ever found a five dollar bill lying on the ground somewhere, and thought how lucky you were that you found it before anyone else? Well Christians have a word for that: providence. There is no such thing as good or bad luck, those are just figments of our imagination that we humans created in an attempt to dumb down God’s supreme providence into something we can more easily understand. We tend to do the same thing with miracles; dumb them down into “luck”. For example, a car crash that everyone would think to be fatal, but which leaves everyone involved alive, might be seen as luck, rather than God’s hand at work.

Likewise, we see the disciples attempting to understand why the fig tree withered as quickly as it did. You can almost see their minds taking into account rain fall, irrigation, the current temperature, and trying to fathom a reasonable explanation. Yet there is no reasonable explanation for some things, aside from God’s providence.

When Jesus was dying for everyone’s sins, people may well have thought it was simply “bad luck” that this poor man had been caught. Yet even then, even when He turned His face away from His own Son, and allowed Him to die for all of our sins, He was working out everything for our good and His glory.–We need to stop focusing so much on “good luck”, and start praising the one, God almighty, whose hand of direction, guidance, and protection is on us even now.

You are Loved!

Joshua Cleveland

 

Spiritually “Bipolar”

Hello again!

This is what God gave me today in His word:

They brought the donkey and the colt and put on them their cloaks, and he sat on them. Most of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. And the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” (Matthew 21:7-9)

Now, the question comes, are we like this crowd? Before we answer that, its important to note that though these people were praising and worshiping Jesus today, we see them later shouting for Jesus’ crucifixion. So again, are we like this crowds? Are we “bipolar” Christians, who one day are shouting, “Hosanna!”, and the next shout, “Crucify Him!”?–Who one day are praising God, and the next are cursing Him (to put it extremely)?

It’s fairly easy to get into the mentality that this crowd was in; praising, and then crucifying. All it takes is trying to make Jesus king over your life, without first letting Him annihilate your sin nature. Someone can start off praising God, but once that person discovers that it’s necessary to give up sin, they’re gone. Even real, true Christians can fall prey to Spiritual bipolarity, if they refuse to give up sin.

There is only one known cure for this horrible disease, and it’s not a drug. It’s Jesus Christ, and a realization of all that He’s done for us; the realization of the Gospel. Spiritual bipolarity; going from praising to crucifying Christ, is caused by, more than anything, guilt. We can praise God, and worship Him day in and day out with false praise, up until someone puts their finger on, and exposes what we’re doing wrong. Then our guilt causes us to try to retreat from God. Guilt, along with its child: Spiritual bipolarity, is only cured by the Gospel; by understanding and accepting that Jesus has died for us. It’s only when we understand that Jesus has taken all of our guilt unto and into Himself, and died, that we can truly live guilt free lives.

You are Loved!

Joshua Cleveland

 

Mockery and Sympathy

Hello again!

This is what God gave me today in His word:

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. (Matthew 16:24)

What Jesus means when He talks about taking up our “cross” is rather self-evident, in context.–it’s denying what we want that is wrong, and doing what Christ wants. Most people understand this, but not all that many understand what it means to do that today.

The cross made Jesus an outcast. He was spit on, taunted, and who knows what else people did to Him. This is, in essence, what Jesus is telling us to go through for His sake. He doesn’t want us to carry literal, physical “crosses” around, but rather to be willing to endure scorn for the sake of the cross. Perhaps you’ve noticed, but Christianity isn’t exactly all that popular; at least, people who actually act what they believe, aren’t the most popular people in the World. Thus, we can well expect to possibly be mocked for Christ.

But it’s not all bad. (For the record, not all Christians actually are social outcasts. However, Jesus does want us to be warned, and to be willing to be mocked for Him.) Whenever someone doesn’t decide to practice “toleration”, and begins throwing insults, Jesus gives us grace. Our High Priest isn’t an unsympathetic one; He’s gone through whatever we may endure, only multiplied by a hundred, He’s far more than capable of helping us. So let’s turn to Him with our troubles.

You are Loved!

Joshua Cleveland