Posts tagged: faith

John 7:37 Now on the last day of the feast—the great day—Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me, and let him drink, The Last Day # So, today obviously isn’t the last day of a feast Jesus is speaking at, I don’t mean to impose anything beyond a trivial relationship between “the last day” and today being New Year’s Eve. The reflection is for reflecting, not education and so today I pray the Lord be good to me in meditating on this text this morning. Jesus Cried Out # Yahweh longs for all people to be reconciled to him. It’s a fact that that won’t be the case because of the degrees of wills that can coexist even though the mechanism of their relationship is hidden from us - The Hidden Things Belong To Yahweh. However, a clear truth here is that “Jesus cried out”. His voice goes out, loud and all around, to all people within ear-shot - “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me”. Warning If anyone is thirsty Jesus gives no qualifiers on who his message…

Deuteronomy 29:29 The hidden things belong to Yahweh our God, but the revealed things belong to us to know and to our children forever, in order to do all the words of this law. Here is a truth every Christian should meditate on and remember whenever they find themselves so sure of a biblical teaching. There are things not meant for us to know - not that we cannot enjoy the musings, but we need to rightly understand that there are mechanisms in the world that are only known to Yahweh. Just like my daughters have no actual understanding of how they became my daughters, or how money shows up in our account every month, or how water comes to our house… These things are beyond their scope of existence to be honest, and there are analogous things that we fully-grown mature adults need to recognize are beyond us and are for the Lord, only. This is not an excuse or encouragement though to never be sure of a conviction… there most certainly are “revealed things [that] belong to us to know”. So…

Galatians 2:19-20 19 For through the law I died to the law, in order that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ, 20 and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me, and that life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. This is one of the most common verse-memory verses I think. Probably there’s good reason for that - Paul has a lot to say to the Galatians, and these 2 verses summarize one of the simple truths of the Gospel - the life a Christian is given is freed from the law of death and make alive to Jesus. The gospel truth is that the law is no longer the thing we answer to - everyone will, certainly. There’s no mistake to be made that every human has accountability for their own agency. In our “free” will, bound to sin and death and to the law for approval, we aren’t free at all but slaves to an oppressive overlord. Jesus frees the Christian to live a life free from that oppression, in the life-giving security…

1 John 4:17 By this love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because just as that one is, so also are we in this world. Confidence # I’ve definitely written about confidence before outside this blog, it’s a key Christian theme. John mentions here in the middle of a bunch of stuff about love as he is wrapping up this letter. Love is beautiful, and over this Advent season I’ve reflected a lot on verse 19 “We love, because he first loved us”. Because of God, his original love for you and me, his own power and majesty, his own right to rule and reign - because of all of that I am to “have confidence in the day of judgement”. Christmas isn’t so much about looking forward to a future time, it’s remembering that the time we look forward to is already here in part. Jesus has already come, once. He brought heaven to earth and undid much of the curse of separation placed on humans at Eden. It’s because he’s already done it, because he loved me first, that…

Luke 6:35 But love your enemies, and do good, and lend expecting back nothing, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Love Your Enemies # I was once an enemy of God, and even today still make choices that highlight enmity in my heart towards him. It’s what’s left-over, what will continue to persist (though I hope be minimized as much as possible) while waiting for Heaven to come to earth. Knowing and recognizing my own position - as a former enemy, makes it somewhat easy to read these words to “do good” and “expect nothing in return” from my enemies because God was good to me, and continues to be. So, I am the ungrateful and the wicked that he is kind to. How do I feel about that? Honestly, grateful but also a little ashamed. I know who I am, and sometimes I choose to be who I was before. But God still loves me and my heart is glad to be in his favor.

Mark 12:29-30 29 Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Listen, Israel! The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 And you shall love the Lord your God from your whole heart and from your whole soul and from your whole mind and from your whole strength.’ The Most Important Commandment # Deuteronomy 6:4-5 4 “Hear, Israel, Yahweh our God, Yahweh is unique. 5 And you shall love Yahweh your God with all of your heart and with all of your soul and with all of your might. Jesus quotes the Shema as the most important commandment - not really surprising… Yahweh’s authority and divine kingship is the most important reality to affirm. Along with recognizing the authority and Oneness of Yahweh is the command the love him. ie. Not loving him is not recognizing his authority… Again, not a surprising thing to hear a king say. So he says the most important thing is to love Yahweh Elohim (the Lord your God) with everything. This calls Paul’s words about transformation to mind - Romans 12:1-2 Therefore I…

Romans 15:13 Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. The last 3 weeks of Advent are summarized right here in verse 13. Yahweh is the God of hope, of expectation, he brings Joy through redemption, and Peace to the believer through faith. That Joy and Peace lead us to “abound in hope” ourselves, by the power of the Holy Spirit. What a dense sentence… The last several days and months have been heavy, and praise God for Christmas and Advent right now, which is daily reorienting my eyes to Jesus. I’m waking up everyday thinking about work, the next thing to do, my next project, retirement, why am I so sweaty in the morning?… But after a few deep breaths, eventually making my way to my desk with a cup of coffee and a sense of direction to start my day, I’ve been sitting down and reflecting not just on some random passage from a devotional, but through this Advent season regularly, daily, reflecting…

Matthew 5:11-12 11 Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and say all kinds of evil things against you, lying on account of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets before you. Context # To drop some context that I’m familiar with, this is from a famous section of Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount” called “The Beatitudes”. A little unknown fact in a lot of Christian circles is that these phrases from Matthew 5:3-12 are derived from some ancient Jewish wisdom (esus didn’t come up with these on the fly). Most of these saying come from something called “The Book of Wisdom” and they had a history of being used as a way of defining who was close to God and who wasn’t. Jesus takes the ancient and perverted pseudo-wisdom here and turns it on its head. He’s not giving instructions, he’s giving correction to people who have been abused by civic and religious powers at be. Reflection # So I know Jesus is not sa…

John 15:10-11 10 If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. 11 I have spoken these things to you in order that my joy may be in you, and your joy may be made complete. This is a beautiful couple verses about love that have only made more and more sense to me as I get older and I have become a dad. Commandments are not necessarily about control. I see this illogical line of thinking EVERYWHERE - that advocating for rules and boundaries in life can quickly get conflated with “you want to control me/them!”. I think the general population really fails to understand that the lack of boundaries doesn’t make you free, it turns you into a slave of your most powerful desire. It is literally in the human-nature. Random boundaries though are not helpful or loving… Restriction without purpose, or for the wrong reason, can put you into a situation you weren’t designed to be in. I believe humans were created according…

Luke 2:10-11 10 And the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring good news to you of great joy which will be for all the people: 11 that today a Savior, who is Christ the Lord, was born for you in the city of David.