Month: January 2018

Faith is the evidence.  Hebrews 11:1

People act out of belief.  They don’t go skydiving with a chute they don’t think will hold think will hold them.  If I’m considering skydiving, and I watch another person jump, the fact that they jumped out of the plane and survived is evidence that I, too, can trust the parachute. When you’re confident in something that you know to be true, you act on that belief.  You move forward.  Sometimes you even stake your life on it.

Before I jump out of the plane, I’m going to ask some questions.  Is God who He says He is – the only God?  Can He make good on His promises – does He have the ability to do what He claims?  Will He do what He says He will do – what are His intentions towards me?

Christianity doesn’t ask you to blindly accept whatever you’re told about God. Instead we’re given a preponderance of evidence and invited to examine it carefully, in minute detail, and make up our minds.

First I predicted your deliverance; I declared what I would do, and then I did it – I saved you.  No foreign god has ever done this before.  You are witnesses that I am the only God, says the Lord. Isaiah 43:11-12

I told you ahead of time what I was going to do so that when it happened, you would believe in me.  Now you’re witnesses.  You’re people who can give testimony.  You can tell other people about what I did so that they can believe, too.

When Jesus began His ministry, He went to the synagogue and read a passage from Isaiah 61 – “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me, because the Lord has appointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to comfort the brokenhearted and to announce that captives will be released and prisoners will be freed.  He has sent me to tell those who mourn that the time of the Lord’s favor has come” (Isaiah 61:1-2).  He reminded them of what had already been promised, and then He said, What I said I would do is happening right now.  Get ready for the evidence. (Luke 4:21)

Later, John the Baptist was imprisoned by Herod and doubt began whispering to him in his cell.  He wondered if he’d made a mistake about Jesus, if he’d wasted his life. So he sent some of his followers to ask Jesus – are you really the Messiah?  And Jesus replied, “Go back to John and tell him what you have seen and heard – the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life, and the Good News is being preached to the poor” (Luke 7:22). I told you what I was going to do, and I’m doing it. Look at the evidence.

Thomas gets a bad rap – Doubting Thomas he’s often called.  But Jesus never chastised him for his doubts.  Instead, He showed up and gave Thomas permission to examine the evidence – “Put your finger here and look at My hands. Reach out your hand and put it into My side. Stop doubting and believe” (John 20:27 Berean Study Bible).

If what God said in the way-back past about the not-so-distant past is true, isn’t it likely that what He said about the future is also true?  This is the essence of faith.  Confidence in what we have yet to see, not because of wishful thinking, but because of the evidence we’ve already seen.  This faith is a strong and trustworthy foundation for your life.

We were not making up clever stories when we told you about the power of our Lord Jesus Christ and his coming again.  We have seen his majestic splendor with our own eyes… Because of that, we have even greater confidence in the message proclaimed by the prophets.  2 Peter 1:16,19

You must not have any other god but me.  Exodus 20:3

I used to think an idol was nothing more than a statue on a pedestal.  It would be silly to ask a little figurine to do anything for me, so I didn’t give them much thought.  But idols take on many forms.  They’re not just a physical thing you put on a stand to worship.  As a matter of fact, an idol doesn’t need a statue at all to become something that we devote our time, attention, and affection to.

How we spend our time shows what we value the most because it’s the only commodity we can’t replace.  Once it’s spent, there’s no getting it back.  What are we giving our most precious asset to?  Whether it’s watching the news, working out, following social media, eating right, or eating badly, even simple things can cross the line from being good things, to becoming idols.  All it takes is that we give them first-love status, make them our primary affection.

When you’ve had a bad day and run to something other than the Redeemer to be made whole again, you run to an idol.  When you invest your time with a person, food, work, drugs, exercise, entertainment, fill-in-the-blank, instead of with God, you’ve created an idol.  When we place our hope, our confidence, our longing, in anything other than God, we’ve created an idol.  If we’re living for ourselves, we’ve created an idol, an idol called ME.

God knows how we are made – He designed us for relationships, connection with others, love.  And He knows that when we love, our hearts get tied up to our beloved.  That’s why Jesus said, “No one can serve two masters” (Matthew 6:24).  We can give God first-love status, or we can give that place to something or someone else.  Whatever we value as more important than God becomes an idol.

Is there anything holding you back from knowing God intimately?  How about from having the desire to know Him more?  Is there a space in your life where you don’t want God to come any closer? We may start off saying, “This is very important to me.”  But if we don’t want God to have any part of it, we’re also saying, “This is more important to me than God.”  And when that happens, we’ve given our hearts away to another love. How can we fully experience God’s love and intimacy if we have another lover?

Idols are powerless. However, when we create and worship them, it produces a vacuum in our hearts that will be filled with something other than God’s goodness and His Holy Spirit. This vacuum creates a place for sin to grow and eventually infiltrate our whole lives.

Like any lover, God wants to be our first desire.  And because He loves us, He desires for us to be fulfilled, blessed, complete, whole.  He really does want good things for us, life-giving things.  If we truly want to live, we have to get rid of those things that we turn to to fulfill our desires instead of Him.  Nothing else will satisfy us.

When you open your hand, you satisfy the hunger and thirst of every living thing. The LORD is righteous in everything he does; he is filled with kindness. The LORD is close to all who call on him, yes, to all who call on him in truth. He grants the desires of those who fear him; he hears their cries for help and rescues them.  Psalm 145:16-19

God holds His hand out to you, and He invites you to take it. To know Him inside and out.  To walk through the woods with Him, watch the sunset with Him, listen to the ocean waves crashing on the shore.  These are all signs God loves you intimately and He desires good for you.  He offers fruit that will nourish and satisfy your every desire, that will fill you with life itself.