New Year, New You. Why not?

It’s that time of year again, when the changing of the calendar stirs a sense of hope in new beginnings. We make our resolutions, gym memberships are purchased, diets are started and Bible reading plans are made. “This is the year! I’m really going to do it this time!” But it’s also easy to get very cynical about it all. We know that in the past we’ve set goals and failed. Two weeks into the new year we’ve broken every resolution: we’re behind on our Bible reading, breaking our diet and still not made it to the gym. I saw a funny tweet the last week of December, “According to my 2013 New Year's resolution, I have 72 hours to lose 30 pounds, learn to speak Spanish and play the banjo.”

I want to encourage you to not give up hope in starting over and pursuing new possibilities, or even restarting ones you’ve attempted in the past. If there is one thing that the gospel teaches us it’s that God LOVES new beginnings! We can even see it in creation: He gives us a sunrise to start each new day and His natural calendar gives us changing seasons that display growth, life, death and rebirth. These are all pictures of the new beginning He has given us in Jesus. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” 2 Corinthians 5:17 However, many of us struggle with believing that God wants to continue to give us second chances and new beginnings once we have put our faith in Christ. We know that we are forgiven of our sinful past, put what about our present sins and failures? You may remember this verse that is also used in the classic hymn, “Great is They Faithfulness.”

“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” Lamentations 3:22-23

He is faithful, even when we are faithless! (2 Timothy 2:13). His grace is for today! And He wants us to know His unconditional love that compels us to begin again... again.

Patiently, gently and kindly He leads us on. Sometimes one step forward, other times two steps back. And even though this process of transformation is something that we have a part in, it's not our own efforts that make us grow. We can't take credit for the progress.  However, it is often through our choices that we position ourselves to encounter God in a way that He changes us. Just as we can put a  plant in the sunlight, but we can't make it grow, we can position ourselves in His light and it is there that we are changed. We do the possible and He does the impossible. Through His Word, His presence and His people, He transforms our lives.

In light of this truth, I want to encourage you to make a resolution. Now this is not some outrageous grand goal to accomplish something monumental that you’ve never done before. I just want to invite you to do some simple things every day that lead you to a place of encountering God. These are seven common practices, that can have profound and uncommon results.

1) Pray (Ephesians 6:18)

2) Be Thankful (1 Thessalonians 5:18)

3) Worship with Song (Psalm 95)

4) Read God’s Word (Romans 10:17)

5) Listen For God’s Voice & Journal (John 18:37)

6) Surrender (Romans 12:1-2)

7) Seek Out Other Believers (Acts 2:42)

You most likely have done all of these at one time or another. If you think about it, this is what you do in a church service. Ever wonder why you leave feeling refreshed and encouraged? It’s because for one hour you practiced the disciplines that lead you into a transforming encounter with God. Why not seek to do this every day?

Here is a very practical suggestion for living this out. Make a list of these seven things. Look at it when you wake-up in the morning, revisit it at noontime and review it before you go to bed. Set up alerts on your phone if that is helpful. Each time you are reminded, respond to one or more of these practices. Talk to God, count your blessings, sing a song of praise, listen to God and journal, surrender your will to Him or reach out to a believing friend and share your life. As you do this, remember that the goal is not to simply check something off of your list, but to encounter the Father. When you get busy and forget this endeavor, missing a morning, a day, or a week, don’t be ashamed of starting again. This is what grace is for! The grace that saved you is the same grace that sustains you and transforms you. His grace is for today, everyday. There is literally NO condemnation for those who are in Christ! (Romans 8:1) Return to the Lord, and pick up where you left off. He’s patiently waiting and He is happy to meet you right where you are.

New year, new you... why not?

Receive His grace, encounter Him daily and be changed!

(a portion of this blog was inspired by and shamelessly somewhat plagiarized from the Antioch Dallas #drawnear27 devotional. www.antiochdallas.org)

Why MLK Day Matters to Christians

The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state.

            Martin Luther King Jr.

When Martin Luther King Jr. fought for the equality of all people, he wasn't just working for the transformation of America, he was working for the transformation of the Church.

A dying man's last words are often his most important, and in the 17th chapter of the gospel of John we read the last recorded prayer of Jesus before going to the cross. Our Savior could have prayed for a lot of things here. He could have prayed for the overthrow of the Romans, or the spread of the gospel, or for... himself. But He didn't. In some of His final moments on this earth, Jesus prayed for us and for the unity of His Church. Not just a church, but the Church: all believers on the earth.

“... I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one - I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me." John 17:20-23

Did you notice the "if/then" statement that this passage clearly makes? The Church should be unified "so that the world may believe that you have sent me..."and "Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me."

Jesus says the unity of the Church causes people to believe in Him. Unity is evangelistic! It is so evangelistic that Jesus made it His final prayer. I guess this means He actually did pray for the spread of the gospel. And, tragically, we must assume that disunity in the Church has the opposite effect.

Disunity in the Church causes the world to not believe in Jesus. 

Disunity is... anti-Christ? I'm afraid so, and you don't have to look far to confirm it. Because of this, I agree with author Philip Yancey that racism in the Church is one of the most vile sins of all.

"It took years for God to break the stranglehold of blatant racism in me - I wonder if any of us gets free of its more subtle forms - and I now see this sin as one of the most poisonous, with perhaps the greatest societal effects." Philip Yancey, Confessions of a Racist

Most of us think segregation ended long ago. But do you know which day is the most segregated day of the week? Sunday, of course. Obviously, segregation is no longer legislated; today it's voluntary. Even worse.
Now I'm not saying that this is just a white problem, or that we all need to go to the same church. Disunity occurs for many reasons. However, I do believe we all have the responsibility to somehow respond to the prayer of our Savior in John 17.

But how do you respond? What can one person do?  What can you and I do today? Pastor Beau Hughes address this in a recent blog post for The Village Church.

Of course, it’s too easy and ultimately unhelpful to merely point out the continued existence of racial discord in our midst, especially for Christians. As Pastor Frank Reid noted in an article for Christianity Today, “We’ve made a sport of pointing out racism, when what we should be doing is focusing our prayers and actions toward creating congregations that proclaim Christ’s lordship over his entire church.” We need to move past hopeless observations about racism and look to God for hope and direction.

You can begin the same way Jesus did, looking to the Father in prayer. Praying for other churches and pastors by name, praying for other ethnic groups, praying for racial unity in the churches of your city and most of all, for unity in your own heart. We never know what prayer will change around us, but we do know that it always changes us. Ask God to fill your heart with His unconditional love and compassion for all of His family, your brothers and sisters. Pray that you would be the Church Jesus prayed for, so that the world would believe in the Him.

Read the rest of Beau's article here: The Gospel and Racial Harmony