Name a Star

He determines the number of the stars; he gives to all of them their names.

His delight is not in the strength of the horse, nor his pleasure in the legs of a man, but the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love.

Psalm 147

Have you ever heard of those services that let you name a star? You give them $20 and they enter your star name into the "official star registry." So, basically you name a star after your girlfriend thinking it will really impress her, and then she looks at you like you're an idiot when you give her the "authentic certificate." Not that I'm speaking from experience or anything...

I can just imagine God having a conversation with some poor schlub when he gets to heaven. "Hey, Lance, so you know that star isn't named 'Stacy's Hot' right? I actually named that star a long time ago because... I made it. You don't really get to go around naming things that other people created. You get that right?" 

It's surprising the things we do to try to impress someone. We guys especially make idiots of ourselves trying to impress girls, but what about the things we do to try to impress God?  I think our attempts at impressing Him are often met with the same disappointment that those "authentic certificates" from the star registry are. I can just see God looking at me with a confused look on His face saying "You thought I would like that???"

It turns out that the things God takes pleasure in are not often talked about in our churches or small group Bible studies. According to Psalm 147:11 God takes pleasure in those who fear Him and in those who hope (or wait) on His steadfast love. These are the gifts God wants from us. He wants us to understand His authority and fear the awful consequences of rebelling against Him. This type of fear is proper for those who truly understand how big and great God is. This fear of God's wrath will keep us far from sin and enable us to serve Him faithfully. God also wants us to understand that He is our only hope of escape from the difficult circumstances in our lives. We fix our hope on Him by waiting patiently on Him even in the midst of our suffering.

So don't try to impress God by what you wear to church or by pretending to be better than you are or even by getting that cool new Christian tattoo. He sees through all of that and see your heart. Give Him what He wants. Fear Him and place your hope in Him alone. 

Worship Pop Quiz from God

"Hear, O my people, and I will speak; O Israel and I will testify against you: I am God, your God. I do not rebuke you for your sacrifices or your burnt offerings, which are ever before me. I have no need of a bull from your stall or of goats from your pens, for every animal of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills. I know every bird in the mountains, and the creatures of the field are mine. If I were hungry I would not tell you, for the world is mine, and all that is in it. Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats? Sacrifice thank offerings to God, fulfill your vows to the Most High, and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will honor me."

Psalm 50:7-15

 

 

Have you ever had that dream where you're back in school and you find out that you have a pop quiz or a test that you didn't study for? That kind of sinking, unprepared feeling is the worst. What’s really bad though is when this happens to you in real life! When it's a dream, you get to wake up and be relieved. In real life you have to deal with the consequences. In Psalm 50 God gives us a kind of pop quiz. It isn’t a math test or a history test or even a religion test. It's a test of our lives. It is a pop quiz to help prepare us for the final judgment, or life’s Final Exam if you want to think about it that way.

 

You will need to read the entire psalm to get the full pop quiz, but in verses seven through fifteen God focuses in on the kind of worship (sacrifices) His people offer Him. He finds fault with them because their worship appears to be just an outward show. Faith is absent. They offer sacrifices upon sacrifices but do so only as a ceremony to garner favor with God. They have an “I scratch your back, you scratch my back” sort of attitude toward worshipping the Lord. They think of their sacrifices as a way to “buy God off” or to make Him owe them in some way. But that is not how worship works! Worship isn’t just going through the motions in a ritualistic way without any faith. This isn’t pleasing to God; it draws His reprimand. God has already done so much for us that we could never pay Him back. You owe God so much that He could never owe you! So thinking that somehow by your worship that you could make God owe you something and earn gifts from Him is crazy.

 

But we do this too! We give money to the church, serve as Sunday School teachers or Deacons and then think that God owes us something. We think we have done God a big favor. We sing in the choir or play an instrument, attend church every Sunday, even read our Bible daily but do so only out of ceremony and ritual. We think that somehow God is pleased with us simply because we do these things. We don't do them from a grateful heart. We just go through the motions, because we think that the ritual is all that matters to God.
 

But this isn't the kind of worship that God wants. In verses fourteen and fifteen God tells us what He wants. He says that He wants us to give thank offerings and to fulfill our vows. Now these are two types of offerings that people offered just because they wanted to. The Israelites were never required to offer these sacrifices. So, God says in essence, “I want you to worship me, and serve me, and give me your tithes not because you have to but because you are grateful for all I’ve already given you and because you want to."

 

If God were to judge you today, what would He say about your worship? Are you only obeying God so He will owe you? Are you simply going through the motions of an empty ritual with no faith behind them and thinking that that is all God wants from you? Worship and serve God out of gratitude for all He has done for you. This is the kind of worship that is pleasing to Him.  

 

For further reading...

• Read all of Psalm 50.
• John 4:19-26- Worship God in spirit and in truth.

Feeling a Bit Puffy Lately?

But knowledge puffs up while love builds up. Those who think they know something do not yet know as they ought to know. But whoever loves God is known by God.

1 Corinthians 8:2-3



 

We all like being the one who knows more, right? Even as little kids, when we knew something that our friends (or even our parents) didn't know it made us feel good. The truth is that many of us are still like this as adults and it contributes to our conflicts. We care much less about our relationships with the people who disagree with us than we do about proving that we are right...that we know more than they do. Knowledge is a good thing, but it can puff up. This is the difference between simply being smart and being a smart aleck.

 

Today's passage reminds us that no matter how smart we are, none of us know yet as we ought to know. You can be the smartest person on the planet and still be humbled by the truth that you do not yet know all that you will know one day in heaven. Nor do you know anything now in the way you will know it there. You see knowledge is always understood within a specific context, or worldview. You can know a fact, but misunderstand its importance when you are looking at it from the wrong perspective. Only once all is revealed from heaven's vantage point will we fully and finally grasp God's plan in all its glory. Only then can we see how all the little factoids we have picked up along the way fit into His grand masterpiece.

 

Yet, all of this is surpassed by something else: love. Whoever loves God is known by God. What a promise! What a blessing. How many of our problems are based on the fact that we are striving for knowledge of God or of His creation at the expense of drawing nearer to Him in love? Even knowledge of God can puff up. For that reason, it goes unnoticed from God's vantage point. But love for God puts a person on His radar. We can be sure that a man or woman or child who is deeply in love with God does not go unnoticed. In a world of ungrateful rebels, souls that are lifted up in true heartfelt affection stand out in sharp contrast. So I wonder...have you been seeking after knowledge of God more than love of Him? Has your knowledge of God or of anything else caused you to get a bit puffy in your interactions with Him or with others? If so, choose to focus on love today. Love for God and love for others. And as you do, know that you will not go unnoticed by God.

 

 

For further reading...

• John 15- Abide in Him.
• Mark 12:28-31- The two greatest commandments.

What does God want from me?

The Lord says: “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught.

Isaiah 29:13

What does God want from you?

No, really. Take a moment and answer the question. What does God want from you?

I'm convinced that many "Christians" think that all God wants from them is to believe in Jesus. As long as they believe then they can go on living their lives however they want. But God wants so much more than lip service from you. He wants your heart. God has called us not to mere belief, but to discipleship.

Discipleship, as I understand it, is a way of life that helps you become more and more like Jesus. It is a 100% commitment to giving all of yourself to God and none of yourself to this world. God has commanded us, "Be holy because I am holy" (Leviticus 19:2).

Yet, many Christians are not holy today. We are no longer set apart from and different from the world. We no longer strive to keep ourselves clean and unspotted from sin. In fact, we love the things of the world. We rush home to watch TV shows that are filled with things the Bible commands us not to do. They turn sin into a punch line and we not only eat it up ourselves but we feed it to our children as well. We gossip, slander, and are jealous of what others have. We lust and engage in sex outside of marriage. We are arrogant and greedy. We are gluttons and liars. We use the Lord's name in empty ways. We  run after sin every chance we get, but struggle to spend five minutes in God's Word.

How often this is true of me! How often I just go through the motions. I parrot all the right words in all the right ways, but my heart is far from the Lord. We wonder why the church in America is in decline. More and more recently God has been showing me why my own ministry is not stronger. There is a lack of holiness in my life. There is a real lack of holiness in America. Choose this day whom you will serve (Josh 24:15), but count the cost first (Luke 14:25-33). God is not looking for any half-hearted lies. He wants your all. Will you give it to Him?

If so, what do you need to cut out of your life today?


For further reading...

• Mark 7:1-23- See what Jesus had to say about this passage. 
• Luke 14:25-33- Jesus says that if you don't give up everything, you can't be His disciple.

A Life Permanantly Marked by God

“Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven...Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it."

Matthew 10:32-33, 37-39

It wasn't that long ago that carnivals in America featured tattooed ladies in their so-called freak shows. While many people landed in carnival sideshows as a result of a birth defect or some physical abnormality or exception, this wasn't the case with tattooed ladies. They chose their physical abnormality and even endured pain to make their bodies permanently different. Now I am not trying to hold these women up as examples to live by, but if nothing else you have to respect their resolve. There were literally covered in tattoos in a culture that disapproved. They were permanently marked by their love of this lifestyle and they made no attempt to hide it.

In an odd sort of way, this reminds me of Christ. I know it is an unorthodox comparison, but stay with me. Like these ladies, Christ was permanently marked by His love. Even now as He sits at the right hand of God the Father in heaven, Christ still bears the scars in His body that prove His love for you. He made no attempt to hide this after His resurrection (John 20:24-29). On the contrary, His scars are trophies of His great victory over sin. These precious scars proclaim His glory to the whole world. In the same way a Christian's life ought to be permanently marked by his or her love for God. A person that is truly changed by the dumb-foundingly amazing love of God that he or she encounters in Christ should be irreparably changed. "Like a tattoo that can be seen at all times,"* Christians should be permanently marked by a changed life that is constantly visible. 

In the above passage of Scripture Christ is sending his twelve disciples out to minister. He has already told them that He is sending them out like "sheep among wolves" (Matthew 10:16) and that they will be beaten and arrested on His account (Matthew 10:17-19). He even says, "Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell" (Matthew 10:28). He isn't speaking of the Devil here, for only God has the power to cast into Hell. So Jesus makes clear that neither beating, nor threat of arrest, nor even death is a reason for a disciple of His to deny his commitment to Him. So imagine what He will say one day when you stand before Him and admit that you claimed to follow Him but were too scared to acknowledge Him publicly because you didn't want to be labeled a "freak" by your culture. What I wouldn't give for Christians today to have even half the backbone that these tattooed ladies had! Christ wasn't ashamed to be permanently marked by His love for you. How dare you be ashamed for your life to be publicly marked by your love for Him? Stop leading a double life. You should be as obviously Christian everyday of the week in every situation as you are on Sunday in church. 

But there is good news! Repentance is still available. Peter himself, the rock of the early church denied Christ, but was restored after repenting (John 18:15-26 & John 21). If today, the Lord has convicted you that you are leading a double life, examine your faith, repent, and proudly wear the marks of the Christian life. A public confession of Jesus is required for salvation (Romans 10:9 & Acts 2:38). If you are unwilling to claim Christ publicly, then He will not claim you as His own either.

For further reading...

• Matthew 10- Check out the entire passage. It is a challenging read.
• John 18:15-26 & John 21- Read Peter's story of redemption.

*The title of this post and some of the rough concepts in it were loosely inspired by a youth Bible study series that I received for free entitled Inked: Marked for Life. You can learn more about this study here.

Who Do You Live For?

Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. Simon and his companions went to look for him, and when they found him, they exclaimed: “Everyone is looking for you!”

Jesus replied, “Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.” So he traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons.

Mark 1:35-39

Jesus has just healed a great many people the night before. He is beginning to gain momentum and build a name for himself in this town, and what does he decide to do? Leave and go to the next town, because "that is why I have come." Jesus could have stayed and been famous! But He doesn't do that because He knows that isn't what He has been sent to do. You see right at the very beginning of Jesus' ministry He has a chance to grab at personal glory, but He walks away. Jesus decides that He will not settle for personal notoriety and success. He will live His life for God's glory, not His own. Now this may seem like an odd thing to say about one of the most famous people in the history of the world, but you must remember that in His lifetime Jesus was not considered that significant. He never married. Never had kids. Never owned a home. He traveled, but not really very far. (Paul traveled much further than Jesus did.) Yes, at times Jesus had a large following. But this wasn't God's ultimate purpose for Him. This is evident from stories like the one we find in John 6:22-71 where Jesus loses many of his followers because of a hard saying. Jesus didn't shy away from saying difficult things for the same reason He found it so easy to move on from town to town. His purpose wasn't to build Himself up, but to announce the coming of the kingdom of God to the people of God. His greatest desire was obedience to God not increasing His own following.

What is your greatest desire? Better yet, what are you living life for? If you are anything like me, each week feels like a marathon. You barely make it day to day, getting done all that you have to do. You just make it to the weekend...a weekend which rarely affords you enough rest to feel ready to head into the next marathon week. How true God's Word is when it says, "Each day has enough trouble of its own!" (Matthew 6:34) If you are living like this, expending all this effort, what are you living like this for? For more money? For a bigger office? To hear your kids say thank you one day? Or are you doing, whatever you are doing to obey God, to enlarge His glory, His name, and His pleasure. Or let me put it this way, who are you living life for? Are you trying to make your parent's proud or your spouse happy? Are you trying to provide enough stuff for your kids so they don't feel out of place at school? Or are you living solely for the One who created you and who loves you (even when you rebel against Him in sin), the One who took on flesh and experienced the pains of everyday living in order to save you from your sin, and the One who is drawing you to Himself even now? Who are you living for? Choose today. Will you live for yourself, for other people or for God? (Hint: you should really choose God!)

For further reading...

• Philippians 2:1-11- Jesus didn't consider equality with God something to be grasped.
• John 6:22-71- I love Peter's line, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life."
• John 12:42-43- Two of the saddest verses in all of the Bible. These men chose to live to please other people.

Little Sins: Lying Lips

The Lord detests lying lips, but he delights in people who are trustworthy.

Proverbs 12:22

We have a bad tendency of thinking that some sins are small. "They don't really hurt anyone, so they don't matter as much. These are just minor character flaws," we tell ourselves. We even justify our actions by arguing, "We can't be perfect on this side of heaven anyway." The problem is that Scripture often makes a big deal out of our "small" sins. What is more, Scripture tells us to pursue the perfection of our Father in our everyday lives (Matthew 5:48). Over the next few weeks we will be looking at some of these so called "small" sins. We will see what God has to say about them, and we will see some Bible characters that incurred some pretty major consequences for these sins. Today we talk about lying. 

The truth is that God hates lies (even the little white kind). They may seem harmless to us, but the reason God hates them really ought to be obvious. They are contrary to His very nature. John 17:17 says that the words that God speaks are truth. In fact, the Holy Spirit is even called the "Spirit of truth." (John 15:26). God speaks truth. He reveals truth. He enlightens the mind so that it can understand and receive truth. Lies conceal the truth. This is not the work of the Father but of the enemy. The Devil is the "father of lies" (John 8:44). Lies are his native tongue, so when we lie we are reflecting Satan's character, not the Father's.

Even more telling is how this basic character difference works itself out in our Father's and the enemy's strategies for capturing the hearts of this world. II Corinthians 4:4 tells us that Satan has blinded the minds of unbelievers so that they would be unable to see the truth of the gospel. Revelation 12:9 says that Satan "leads the whole world astray." But God "reveals the deep things of darkness and brings utter darkness into the light" (Job 12:22). In fact, "God is light, in Him there is no darkness at all" (I John 1:5). So the image we get from these verses is that Satan is attacking our world with darkness and deception, hiding the truth of the gospel behind a thick veil of half-truths and outright lies. Our God responds to this strategy not with the sword or a legion of angels, but by beating back the darkness with the light of the truth of the gospel of glory in Jesus Christ. This is God's work. This was Jesus' work. He is "the light of the world" who sets people free from the darkness forever (John 8:12). And we know that the darkness "has not overcome" Jesus' light (John 1:5). So you can imagine His frustration when His children, whom He has set free from the darkness of deception, willingly choose to return to it for their own benefit. When we do this we are willingly reflecting the nature of the Devil and have joined with him to spread confusion and deception. We literally find ourselves opposite of God in the great cosmic battle for the hearts of mankind, and our God does not take it lightly. 

For further reading...

• Acts 5:1-11- Read the story of a couple who decided to try to lie to God.
• Genesis 12- Read about how Abram's weak new faith in God and his half-truth nearly caused a catastrophe.

God's Way

This is what the Lord says—your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: “I am the Lord your God, who teaches you what is best for you, who directs you in the way you should go. If only you had paid attention to my commands, your peace would have been like a river, your well-being like the waves of the sea. Your descendants would have been like the sand, your children like its numberless grains; their name would never be blotted out nor destroyed from before me.”

Isaiah 48:17-19

I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. Praise be to you, Lord; teach me your decrees. With my lips I recount all the laws that come from your mouth. I rejoice in following your statutes as one rejoices in great riches. I meditate on your precepts and consider your ways. I delight in your decrees; I will not neglect your word.

Psalm 119:11-16

Did you know that the longest chapter in the Bible is essentially a love song written about God's commandments and decrees? In Psalm 119 the psalmist goes on and on about how perfect God's commands are. How he loves to study them and meditate on them and how they bring him life. The Bible regularly extols the virtues of God's commands. It speaks of them as a precious treasure given to Israel to show them how to live the blessed life. We don't speak about God's commands like this anymore. It's easy for us to look back at the Old Testament commands and think they are outdated, out of step with today. 

This is made easier by the fact that not all of these commands apply to the New Testament church. We are allowed to trim the edges of our beards (Leviticus 19:27) and wear clothes made of a mixture of cloth types (Leviticus 19:19). In the Old Testament, God was creating an earthly kingdom. He was setting aside a nation as His own, and this physical people required absolute holiness from the rest of the world. God dwelt among His people literally. His literal presence rested on the tabernacle. So sin had to be dwelt with swiftly and severely, lest His holy presence strike out at the whole people or worse, lest His presence be removed from the people altogether. In the New Testament God begins a new work with Jesus. No longer is He creating an earthly kingdom, instead, He begins creating a spiritual kingdom. It can be hard to determine which laws in the Old Testament are specifically related to the program of nation building, which God is no longer doing and thus no longer apply to us. The New Testament helps us out by repeating a bunch of the most important laws that do still apply. plus, God makes clear shifts in His dealing with man to help us understand as well. In the New Testament God deals with sin not with stoning after stoning but with a single crucifixion. All of this can lead us to think that the Old Testament law, and even rules in general, aren't important. In fact, quite the opposite is true.

God does not change. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. So the type of behavior that pleased Him in the Old Testament, pleases Him still today. God has set our world up a certain way. Sin brings death, obedience brings life and peace. God's commands are the path of life. When we choose to ignore them, we do so at our own peril. While it is most certainly true that being good won't earn God's favor or your way into heaven, it is equally true that God has told us that those who keep His commands bring peace and blessing into their lives. Obeying Him is "what is best for you" and "the way you should go." So how do you look at God's commands? Are they a worrisome chore or a precious treasure intended to bring blessing and life to you?

For further reading...

• Read all of Psalm 119. It's an acrostic poem with a stanza for each of the letters in the Hebrew alphabet.

Please God!

So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.

2 Corinthians 5:9-10

For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God.

Colossians 1:9-10

For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord.

Ephesians 5:8-10

These verses present a simple truth of the Christian faith: we can please God. Because of His love for us, God has given us the power, by our choices, actions and attitude, to bring a smile to His divine face. What a precious truth! After all that God has done for us by sending His Son, how wonderful it is to know that through faithful service and sincere worship we can be a blessing to Him. We can please Him! How effectively this motivates me to serve Him.

To many believers this sounds too much like legalism; but these verses don't speak of trying to earn God's favor, or His love, or our salvation. We are helpless sinners. There is no way that we could ever be good enough to deserve God's love or favor or anything else from Him. And yet, miracle of miracles, in Jesus He has given us the ability to be a blessing to Him and to please Him. This does not earn us anything before the Lord, for we know that "it is God who works in us to will and to act in order to fulfill His good purpose," (Philippians 2:13).

The flip side of this is also true, however. You also have the ability to cause God displeasure. Scripture tells us that God is a jealous God and it makes it very clear that He is unhappy when His children go astray (Exodus 34:14). It also makes clear that although we cannot harm the all-powerful God in any way, we can certainly grieve Him (Ephesians 4:30). So remember, the choices you make today matter to God. Choose wisely.

For further reading...

• Hebrews 11- Check out the "Hall of Faith," especially verse six which discusses how vital faith is to pleasing God. If a person is not in Christ, his actions do not please the Lord.