These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. John 15:11 (ESV) When was the last time you were ambushed by joy? Perhaps you were engaged in a heart to heart conversation or driving home from work at sunset or out for a […]
A legacy is a gift each of us has the opportunity to leave behind. It is typically thought of as anything of value that is handed down from one predecessor or ancestor to those who remain. There are many dimensions to a legacy both spiritual and natural.
The theme of legacy is interwoven throughout the Bible. The patriarchs were very conscious of the legacy that they would leave behind and sought to pass on the gift of God’s promises to their succeeding generations. Both Isaac and Jacob gathered their offspring to their side and prayed God’s blessing upon them, gave prophetic predictions and granted them their respective inheritances.
Jesus entire life and ministry was focused on leaving the greatest legacy ever granted, the gift of eternal life. The last supper, when He gathered His disciples the night before He died, is unquestionably the most poignant and powerful gifting of legacy every recorded.
Since legacy is meant to be something of enduring value, a spiritual legacy, which has the potential to be a blessing for all eternity, is of course the most valuable legacy anyone can leave behind. For followers of Jesus Christ, our spiritual legacy is salvation and resurrection life which we receive from Him, secured through His sinless life and death for all human kind.
Such a spiritual legacy is a very unique gift because it promises the continuation of our relationship with those we love beyond this life into eternity. It guarantees the blessed reunion in heaven with Christ one day of all who share that same life of faith in Him. What greater gift can anyone give than the assurance that they will be in heaven waiting for those they love? That their goodbye is not “goodbye forever” but simply a “goodbye until we meet again.”
The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. Deuteronomy 6:4-5 (NIV)
The biggest deterrent to sin in the life of the believer is the love of God. Everyone sins – that is a fact of life. (1 John 1:8 & Romans 3:10-12, 23) And everyone has access to the forgiving grace of God through Jesus Christ His Son. (1 John 1:9) Unfortunately however, at times some who receive God’s forgiveness find it difficult to break free from sin’s grip upon their lives. Forced to continually go to God for mercy because of a besetting sin has them trapped in a seemingly endless cycle of guilt and shame. Having been caught in that downward spiral myself I can testify with so many others that only the love of God, His love for me and my love for Him, was powerful enough to break me free from the vortex of sin and keep me free from being pulled back in.
God’s merciful love for us is imbued with a transforming power to elicit from us a liberating love in return. There is a spiritual principle that the greater the debt of sin for which a person is forgiven the greater the potential to love God in return. Those who have been forgiven much, which really includes all of us, are like the grateful woman who crashed a dinner party to wash the feet of Jesus with her tears. Such gratitude for God’s love unleashes a reciprocal love for Him that triumphs over sin. (Luke 7:36-50)
John, often referred to as the apostle of love, wrote: “This is love not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (1 John 4:10 NIV) This verse reveals that it is the intention of God’s love to free us from sin. God is the creator and initiator of love. That is why John states emphatically that we can love God only because He first loved us. He goes on to say that our resultant love for Him is meant to naturally lead to us to saying no to sin because we want to please Him.
Obeying His commands and resisting sin is an indication that God’s love has truly found its place and been perfected within us. (1 John 2:3-5) That is why we are admonished elsewhere in the scriptures to “keep [ourselves] in the love of God.” (Jude 1:21) Doing so will also keep us from the deceitfulness of sin.
When an expert in Jewish law came to Jesus and asked Him “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?” Jesus replied “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.” (Matthew 22:35-38 NIV) Jesus was quoting here a well known Old Testament Scripture spoken by Moses to Israel. (Deuteronomy 6:4-5) And He was also underscoring the preeminence of the very first of the Ten Commandments: “I am the Lord your God . . . you shall have no other gods before Me.” (Deuteronomy 5:6-7)
True freedom from sin is ultimately rooted in wholeheartedly loving and worshipping the one true God. All sin and its bondage are ultimately rooted in forsaking the love and worship of the one true God in favor of loving and worshipping other gods. Those “other gods” typically are created things rather than the Creator. The other gods are essentially our self and our ideas, but also include other creatures and their ideas and every inanimate object on earth and in the heavens.
There are some very practical things we can do to unleash the love of God in our hearts that can enkindle our wholehearted love and worship of Him and break the bondages of sin in our lives. It begins by acknowledging that every sin we commit is idol worship and a breaking of the first and greatest commandment. Coming to grips with that reality, that every sin is an adulterous love affair with something or someone other than God, is both sobering and sorrowful. It is heartbreaking to realize that we have been spurning God’s gracious love by faithlessly lavishing our love on other gods. Asking God’s help in seeing it and then confessing our sin for what it really is, idol worship, enables us to cut off sin’s power over us at its root.
Here is a prayer you can use to transfer your affections from sinful idols to God.
Lord show me how I have put other things and people before you. . . how I have loved and worshiped creation rather than the creator. I confess that I have chosen sinful behavior and created things to worship rather than You. . . that I have bowed my heart, my eyes, my hands, my body, my mind and my very soul in worship of other gods. Please forgive me and turn my full attention and love toward the worship of You. Thank you for your amazing love and tender mercies. I choose to worship you as my Lord and have no other gods before me.”
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The biggest deterrent to sin Read More »
So Pilate, wanting to satisfy the crowd, released Barabbas for them, but
he had Jesus whipped and handed over to be crucified. Mark 15:16
Who was Barabbas? All we know about him, with any historical accuracy, is the corroboration of all four Gospels in documenting his eleventh hour release from death row on the day Jesus was crucified. In piecing together the accounts we learn that Barabbas was a well known “notorious prisoner” who had been jailed for leading an insurrection against the Roman state and committing murder. That fateful day, while three crosses were being prepared as instruments of execution, he was sweating it out on death row with two other prisoners who happened to be condemned to death for thievery.
During the night, while Barabbas and the two thieves were tossing and turning, another prisoner had been arrested and in a rush to judgment was on trial in the early morning hours. No doubt, the commotion of a boisterous, gathering crowd, outside the prison, had already roused them from their fitful attempts at sleep and had become the focus of conjecture and rumor ridden conversation.
Who can imagine what went through Barabbas’s mind when he was shocked to hear the crowd begin shouting his name, “give us Barabbas.” And then moments later a ground swell of “crucify him, crucify him” was being chanted by the angry mob for the mystery prisoner. And just that quickly, Barabbas’ sentence was commuted by Governor Pilate, Jesus Christ was sentenced to death, and the cross prepared for Barabbas, became the cross of Christ.
In order to fully understand, Jesus’ crucifixion for the sins of the world, we must come to grips with the fact that the cross upon which he died was really meant for another. It was a cross prepared for a person who had been lawfully tried and found guilty of deeds deserving death.
“For a wide door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many adversaries.” 1 Corinthians 16:9 (ESV)
Adversity is a fact of life, even in the best of times. I love this verse penned by the Apostle Paul when he was in Ephesus, because it encourages us to keep things in perspective. Just when things seem perfect the phone rings, it starts to rain, something breaks, someone is disgruntled or you have a health scare. Open doors of blessing are often accompanied by adversity. But in spite of the opposition Paul ran into there in Ephesus, he was unshaken in his resolve, made the most of his opportunity, actually stayed there two years and planted arguably the greatest church in all of his journeys.
The Apostle Peter who had the amazing opportunity of living with and observing Jesus’ handling of adversity wrote “since Christ suffered physical pain, you must arm yourselves with the same attitude he had and be ready to suffer.” (1 Peter 4:1) Dealing successfully with adversity, especially when it seems to come at the most inopportune times, requires having an attitude or mindset that is always prepared to overcome it. Jesus himself said “in this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33 NIV)
That kind of overcoming attitude is absolutely essential if we are going to navigate the winds and waves of life. And no where have I learned that more graphically than as a neophyte sailor. Less than a month ago I was in the Caribbean on a sailboat. My cousin and I rented a thirty-two foot boat for eight days and set off for the bucket list adventure that even Jack Sparrow would envy. Our dream was to spend sun-kissed days sailing and snorkeling while exploring the history rich British Virgin Islands. Columbus discovered them on his second voyage in 1493 and they are where all the infamous pirates roamed and raided ships for centuries in the Sir Francis Drake Channel.
It did not take me long to realize however, that even though I was on vacation I had better not lay aside my overcoming attitude because being in paradise does not necessarily guarantee paradise being in you. Navigating a sailboat in unfamiliar waters, six foot rollers and steady 15-20 knot winds has a way of bringing that reality home very quickly, especially for an inland water sailor. In spite of wide open seas there are still pirates of adversity lurking there to despoil even the most virtuous sailor of his dream vacation.
One stark realization was that spring break makes March the busiest month of the year for sailing in the BVI. There were sailboats, catamarans and huge yachts of all sizes and shapes everywhere and that made for stiff competition in claiming a mooring ball to anchor at night, no matter which island cove you choose as your destination. Unfortunately it made everyday a race to the next island anchorage, because if your boat had not tied up to the rope floating from a mooring ball by 11 am you were out of luck.
The first day, with a late start from the marina we arrived at Norman Island, where Robert Lewis Stevenson, cast his novel Treasure Island, at five o’clock. God had mercy on us and heard our prayers and we found one mooring ball unclaimed, it was literally a miracle. The next day we did a short sail to another side of the island and claimed a ball by 10 am in a beautiful setting right near a reef for snorkeling. Praise God.
The third day was a different story. We had mapped out a long sail, half-way up the channel to a picturesque spot on Cooper Island. Leaving at day break we hoped to arrive by eleven, sailing conditions were favorable and we reached the Island as planned. But by then the weather had taken a turn for the worse with dark cloudy skies, pouring rain and 20 knot winds blowing off shore. We immediately began the hunt among all the anchored boats for a mooring ball. We were waved off the first two mooring balls we found by someone on shore shouting that they were reserved.
After a somewhat frantic search we finally found one ball unoccupied. As I approached it my one man crew was on the bow with a six foot aluminum pole ready to hook the rope. Somehow the pole got wrenched from his hand and started floating away. With no pole we could not secure a ball. He made his way back to the stern where I was and we decided he would have to take the dinghy to chase it down. In the rain, wind and panic of the moment the dinghy rope got caught in the prop of the dinghy outboard. Before long the dinghy was floating away with him in it, the pole was floating away with our chance for a mooring and my hope was floating away as I sought to keep the sailboat from running aground or hitting another boat.
Adversity – don’t be surprised! Read More »
