One of the great lessons God has taught me teaching
children this year as both a bible study leader and volunteer with our church’s
children’s program, is that you have to make things simple. Big words like faith, symbolism, and
grace…might get lost on young ones without stopping to teach them the meaning
behind those words. There is power in simplicity.
The Holy Spirit guided me into truth with two of the
greatest questions I had in all of
scripture these past couple of weeks.
The first had to do with when Christ talked about John the Baptist BEING
Elijah. The second was the verse
in 1 Thessalonians 5:23.
Jesus
the Teacher
Christians symbolically eat the bread and drink the blood
of Christ in Holy Communion or the Lord’s Supper even today. When Jesus spoke of being The Bread of Life from heaven, and that
no one who doesn’t eat his flesh or drink his blood will receive eternal life,
many of His disciples left him---why do you think that is?
53So
Jesus said again, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of
Man and drink his blood, you cannot have eternal life within you. 54But anyone
who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise that
person at the last day. 55For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true
drink. 56Anyone who eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in
him. 57I live because of the living Father who sent me; in the same way, anyone
who feeds on me will live because of me. 58I am the true bread that came down
from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will not die as your ancestors did
(even though they ate the manna) but will live forever.”… 66At this point many of his disciples
turned away and deserted him. (John 6:53-58;66. NLT)
If you take what Jesus was teaching and His words
literally, then I probably would be right there with the rest of those that
deserted Him at that time so long ago, walking away from Him in my sandals down
some long dusty road just as fast as my little feet could take me---thinking,
I’m outta here dude!
But
watch what happens when you take the same passage and think SYMBOLICALLY about
what The Son of Man had to say…? I
encourage you to go back and read it now, praying to God and Jesus to what the
truth is BEHIND His words…?
I believe that when Jesus spoke of John the Baptist being
Elijah that he was speaking symbolically.
United
with God
When you surrender your life and trust in God and His Son
Jesus Christ, you are UNITED with God! God is with us when His Holy Spirit is united
with our own soul when we believe.
There is just something so convicting in my heart when I see the truth
that God’s very Spirit is living in each of His children. How would you act differently in your life if
you fully realized that truth? If you
really took in that God was living in your spirit? Would you act differently? Would you try to listen to Him more?
So many of God’s ways are revealed to us in the average
everyday life that we live…
My In-laws were just here from out of town and my 5 year
old son Brody wanted to show them how he could hit the T-ball off the tee out
in our back yard. Pop Pop (grandpa) and
I were trying to teach Brody to swing all
the way through the ball, then
drop the bat before he runs off to first base.
Brody insisted that he knew how, “no, no Dad…I know what to do….no, no
Dad I can do it!” I went back skeptically
to sit down to watch if he really knew the lesson…but alas, he continued not to
swing all the way through the ball. I turned to my In-laws and smiled at them saying,
“Isn’t that just like what God our Father does to us. He knows what is best for us and tells us
what to do, but instead we don’t listen to Him doing our own thing.”
Just
like when I was with my son there that fun afternoon, so to God is always with
us. As a follower of Christ, we are
united with God forever! Use that
knowledge well and think about it the next time you are swinging at the ball in
your own life?
For
all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For his Spirit joins
with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children. (Romans 8:14, 16 NLT)
Now
may the God of peace make you holy in every way, and may your whole spirit and
soul and body be kept blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ comes again. (1
Thessalonians 5:23 NLT)
Sharing
our Faith
I have been trying to share my faith more lately. Recently, I had a great conversation with one
of the guys at the gym. He asked me, “What
makes your God any better than this guy’s God, or his God? Why is your God the right way?” I told him, “That no other religion has
changed the world like Christianity. I
asked him if he thought that was just by chance or was it that way because Christianity
is the truth.” I then told him the story of Elijah from the
Old Testament. Some of the spiritual
leaders of the time (pagan worshippers of Baal) were challenged by the prophet Elijah to demonstrate to the people of Israel who the One True God really was. The pagan worshipers danced
around the alter for hours and hours trying to get it to ignite, using all their ways to try and make the wood burn--to no avail. That is when the prophet Elijah called the people over and prayed to The One True God and immediately The Lord sent fire from heaven,
igniting the fire on the alter. “How do you know that is true, that story was
just written in some book,” he said. “No
book in the entire history of man has been shown to be more accurate or has received
as much scrutiny as The Bible. I told
him that he can trust what he hears in The Bible if for no other reason than
for the past 2,000 years, people have been trying to discredit the book, and
not one person has!”
He kept talking more and more about things, and I
listened to all that he had to say. At
the end, I asked him, “So, we started all of this because you said you have a
question….what is your question I asked him?”
He continued to talk more, but never got to the heart of what his question
was. “I asked him, I think the answer to
your question is FAITH brother, what is faith?”
He told me, “believing in something.”
I told him, “Faith is believing in something you cannot see. God, though he has ultimate power, chooses to
have us come to him by faith. Though He
could come down to us from heaven, showing us His ultimate power and glory, he
chooses instead to be invisible. Why do
you think that is? Perhaps God doesn’t
want the only reason we believe to be because of His power, but rather something
else…?”
The Holy Spirit led me to tell him a story. I told him that God has never revealed
Himself more in my life then when I was dealing with my own mistakes. I told him I had a sin that I was constantly
dealing with in my own life and how God did something pretty amazing. I prayed to God for help, and tried to put my
eyes to heaven, but was not strong enough.
I fell into my temptation and literally just as I was going to sin, God immediately
used the circumstances in my life to rescue me. The Lord did not come in power or glory to
answer my prayer, but instead the invisible God used the everyday
things in my life to shape my life so that my prayer was answered. He rescued me!
The guy from the gym then shared with me a story in his
own life. This was a dude that looked
like he had it all. He was very
charismatic, the typical frat guy, always the jokester and seemed to be liked
by everybody. He told me that before, he
had come to a really bad place in his life, losing his job and his house, and
actually loaded the gun to end his life.
That was when he heard a sermon by Joel Osteen on T.V. that spoke to
him. He said when he heard his words, it
was like he was speaking directly to him.
I told him, “You should remember that time and how God helped you, use
that experience to seek him…”
I still see him almost every time I go into the gym, I
don’t know if he will come to know the Lord, but I hope & pray that he does…
God’s
Greatest Power
Perhaps the enemy's greatest power is tempting us into DEATH.
Not only a spiritual death but also a death inside our hearts when we fall into
sin.
God revealed to us His greatest power which is LIFE!
Jesus taught us there is no greater love than to lay down one's own life for
your friends. So, the enemy's greatest power of death was defeated for ALL TIME by
the greatest act of love one can give in sacrifice, so that all who believe in
Jesus and The Father may have ETERNAL LIFE!
The Holy Spirit guided me to this truth as I was studding
the scriptures on when Jesus spoke about being the bread of life. The Spirit guided me into seeing that from
the very beginning, God revealed to us his greatest power of life with
creation--and the enemy showed us his greatest power in tempting us into death
through sin by eating the apple. Does
satan really cause us to die? Or does he
tempt
us to fall into death?
I ask you to think about your own life. When you make mistakes, how does your life
feel? When you look beyond all the fake
exterior that we all put on for the world, and you get inside your heart, what
do you see there? What does the inside
of your heart look like when you fall into sin?
That is the death I’m speaking about when I’m talking about satan
tempting us into the death of our heart.
God shows us His greatest power of life, not only by
giving us this incredible gift that is life, but by transforming our lives here
on earth when we come to faith, and later the awesome hope and good news of
eternal life in His eternal Kingdom of Heaven.
May the peace of Christ guide us all into a brighter
tomorrow! Thank God that He is greater,
may He be a shield and a fortress to our beloved land and a bright light to
shine in the hearts of all His people.
Amen!
See
“My Lighthouse” by Rend Collective here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPtIv2lnkTY
