Tag: Jesus (Page 20 of 22)

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The Thrill of Hope

A-Thrill-of-Hope-titleThe other day I was listening to a popular local Christian radio station when a man came on and shared his testimony for how God used the radio station to give him hope. During his testimony the man quoted Jeremiah 29:11 and talked about how God showed him that He had a plan for his life. Whenever I hear someone use that scripture to support the claim that God has a plan for their particular life, I cringe a little inside. It’s not because I don’t understand the person’s sentiment; I do. It’s because the person saying it is using the verse out of context and when it’s shared on a grand forum, like a radio station, I think it relays an incorrect understanding of the Gospel to thousands of people and only perpetuates western Christianity’s mishandling of Jesus.

I’ve written about this before and addressed the difference between God’s plan versus His desire for our life. You can read it HERE, so I won’t go into it again, but I think this is the perfect time of year to talk about what God told Jeremiah to say to the Israelites.

SHALOM-sign-18mm-1024-x-768To clarify and set the foundation, when read in context, we can see that Jeremiah 29:11 is actually being said to the whole Israelite nation as the are being sent into exile. In verse 11 God is telling His people His thoughts toward them are one of, in the Hebrew, shalom, or peace. In some translations, shalom is translated into prosper, but the intent is the same. God’s thoughts toward the Israelites are thoughts of peace and goodness. His desire for them is that of goodwill. It has little, if anything, to do with material prosperity and more to do with peaceful growth as a people and nation. Then God tells them that those thought are not simply intangible well-wishing on His part, but are the catalyst His plan to give them a future and hope. These plans are two-fold and point to both a short-term and long-term plan.

In the short-term, God is telling His people to take hope in His promise to rescue them out of exile after 70 years. Imagine that promise. Imagine the thrill as you hoped for that day. That’s good news enough and might have been a good place to leave it, but God didn’t leave it there. Because God is a God of redemption and reconciliation and had continually told Israel that He intended to save the world through them, the long-term plan is why we will gather in churches and homes, tonight and tomorrow to celebrate and remember. God’s short-term plan was seen 70 years after Jeremiah spoke Jeremiah 29:11, but His long-term plan was seen 2000 years ago, in a Bethlehem manger, in the birth of Jesus.

Jesus is our future and our hope; He’s our now. He is the plan that God enacted long before He spoke to Jeremiah, Isaiah, Moses, or Abraham. I don’t want to discount the fact that the Holy Spirit may lead someone to that scripture verse in times of despair. Times when there’s no money in the bank and no food in the cabinet, when your child lays sick or worse in the hospital, when all seems lost. He does; He’s led me there. But when He does, I’m certain that the only reason is to point us toward Jesus. The situation may not go away, it may get worse, but our hope is still Jesus. Tragedy is not God’s desire for us, peace is and that’s only found in Jesus.

Our hope, who is Jesus, ought to continue to thrill us (Click to Tweet This). So as we head to our Christmas Eve services tonight and gather for presents and good food tomorrow (our tradition is CRAB!), let us do so in a way that glories Him and acknowledges the Good plan of God.

Merry Christmas

3 Reasons Why “Just give it to Jesus” Isn’t Helpful.

Without a doubt there are plenty of cringe worthy things that come from the mouths of well-meaning and good intentioned friends and family that if they paused, for even just a moment, would probably have never had said it.The same goes for Christians. There are plenty of Christians, me being one of them, that say or have said things to other Christians, and even worse said them to people that aren’t, that if said to them, would make them want to fight the person saying it. “Just give it to Jesus” is one of those things.

giving_hands_and_red_pushpin-640x420It isn’t that the person saying it doesn’t care what you’re going through, they do, but they may not know any other way to help. This has got to be one of the most misused and abused Christian phrases ever uttered by well-meaning Jesus followers. Unfortunately I’ve been on both ends of this misguided attempt to provide “wise council”. Somewhere along the way Christians turned King David’s song lyrics and Peter’s encouraging reminder into a witty, solve all, catch phrase that has often caused more frustration than help. Here’s three reasons why it isn’t exactly helpful.

1. It isn’t Biblical.

We’ll at least the way that we’ve interpreted it isn’t. As I already mentioned, “Just give it to Jesus” most closely comes from David in Psalm 55:22 and Peter’s reiteration of it in 1Peter 5:7. The verse tells us to cast our burdens or, when Peter says it, anxieties on God. The problem isn’t with the word “cast”, that actually means “give” or “toss”. The issue is with the words “burden” and “anxiety”. People have taken these to mean any problems or negative circumstances that we experience, but what these words refer to isn’t that simple.

Each word means something far deeper. The original Hebrew translation of ‘burden” is actually “gift”. That’s a bit unexpected. In this case “gift” can mean affliction, trials, and troubles, but it can also mean things that are agreeable and pleasing to us. While that may be confusing, the purpose of why David says this is far more important and clear. David is telling us that no matter our portion from God, we “commit [it] to His custody, and use to His glory; and particularly commit the keeping of thy soul to Him.” It’s about our ability to trust God’s faithfulness in keeping His promises to us. Likewise, the word “anxieties” doesn’t mean that you aren’t concerned for our circumstances, but is about letting circumstance divide our heart between God and anything else. In those cases, we are to give over those things to God so that our heart would not be divided and we are not drawn from Him who sustains us. It isn’t always easy or clear how to do this, so at the end I’ll talk about that a bit more.

I know what you’re thinking, if “Give it to Jesus” isn’t exactly biblical, what is? In Galatians 6, Paul tells us how we are to respond to other’s burdens, so that we would honor Jesus. He says, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” The appropriate response to a brother or sister’s heavy burden is that you bear it with them. While Paul was in prison and in dire circumstance, he continued to have hope and comfort in Christ, but he still asked for people, like Timothy, to come be with him.  He still needed the comfort and encouragement of fellow believers to help bear the burden. While it may be hard to carry your burden by yourself, it becomes easier and easier with the more people who help carry it.

“Bearing other’s burdens is often far easier than bearing our own.” Tweet this!

2. It’s Dismissive.

It really is. It’s like asking someone, in passing, “Hey, how ya doing?” and they aren’t quite with the program so they offer more than the standard, “Good” or “Busy”, and actually tell you how they are doing and it isn’t all good. All of the sudden you’re left standing there, with no idea what to say, so you go to the other standard Christian “deflect and evade” counter-measure, “That’s tough, bro. I’ll pray for you.” While you might believe that they actually need someone to pray for them, you only say it as a means to indicate to the other person that you don’t know what to say and you want to leave. Once you’re out of there, whether you actually pray for the person is a different story. When you tell someone to “Just give it to Jesus” you’re telling the person that you don’t know what to say and have nothing to offer them. It communicates loud and clear “That sucks that YOU’RE dealing with that, but I’m not and I don’t plan to.” As I mentioned in number 1, if you’re a Christian, you don’t get off that easy. If you want to honor Jesus, you have to bear their burdens with them.

3:  It’s Not Tangible.

You’re not there to make the situation go away, although I would argue that real love does eliminate burden if it’s within their ability to do so, you know, Jesus’ whole “no greater love and a friend laying down his life” example. But just throwing out those four words and bouncing out isn’t very Jesus. The burden brother/sister needs comfort, wisdom, insight, encouragement, and the list goes on. You’re gifted by the God for the purpose of helping and serving others. There’s a whole list of gifts in Romans 12. Chances are you have one of them and it wasn’t given to you for your benefit. If we have the ability to lighten the burden of other’s, why are we so stingy?

It really has everything to do with our heart. If you’re seeking Jesus and allowing His Holy Spirit to transform you, your heart will change, you won’t have a choice in that. But we have to be willing to recognize that we make the decision to be like Him, because He never forces Himself on us. Sometimes, it’s a matter of not knowing how to respond to another’s difficult situation. That’s ok, but it’s not ok to never grow out of that.

Knowing how to respond isn’t always the easy. Here’s how theologian John Gill explained Galatians 6:2 and what bearing each other’s burden should look like,

“…by gently reproving them, by comforting them when over-pressed with guilt, by sympathizing with them in their sorrow, by praying to God for to manifest his pardoning grace to them, and by forgiving them themselves, so far as they are faults committed against them…”

It’s things like, praying with them in that moment, giving a word of encouragement, taking there kids for a couple of hours to let them have a moment to think, buying their groceries, making them a meal, just being with them, crying with them, hugging them… I imagine if you thought about it, you come up with better ones.

If we stopped assuming that the bible was written for other people, maybe we would be able to live it better ourselves. It wasn’t written for you to quote it to others as a means of getting out of doing life with them. Yes all scripture is “profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness and so that we may be equipped for every good work“. It exists as a means of encouraging others and as the foundation for providing wise counsel, but if we try to apply it to others’ life before we apply it to our own, it becomes lifeless and heavy.

“When we can accept that the bible is written to us first, then we can better followers of Jesus.” Tweet this!

I would love it if you clicked one of the share buttons down there and sent it further into the interwebs. Thanks.

What If Thomas Wasn’t Always a Doubter?

8d6f0ab291db108482931a1c67e01e81_Doubting-Thomas-863-430-cThe Apostle Thomas gets a pretty bad wrap. I mean, you ask for proof that Jesus resurrected from the dead once and BAM… labeled a doubter for two millennia. To be fair all of the disciples abandoned Jesus and all of them sat around after his death throwing a pity party, even though He told them it would happen like this and He planned on resurrecting. I mean, they all just saw their beloved Lord die on a cross. Why wouldn’t doubt creep in. To be even fairer, we doubt A LOT more than Thomas and we know Jesus conquered death, but no one is going around calling me Doubting Bruce (or other names that are probably more appropriate, i.e. Selfish Bruce, or Prideful Bruce. Maybe we should start that as a thing and see how it pans out.).

But what if Thomas wasn’t as doubtful as we first thought?

I heard a sermon the other day where the Pastor was chronicling Thomas’ life of doubt and he referenced John 11:16 as one of Thomas’ instances of doubt. I’ll get to what Thomas said in a second, but first let me set up the context. In the previous chapter Jesus and His disciples were in Jerusalem for the Feast of Dedication. As was common, Jesus began to teach and told the Jews there that He and God were one. As you can imagine, any really good Jew would get furious at this notion and would deem it blasphemy, so they did what anyone would do and picked up rocks to stone Him. Ultimately Jesus and His disciples escape the crowd, but then a messenger comes and tells Him that His friend, Lazarus, is dead. So Jesus decides that He is going to go to Bethany (basically a suburb of Jerusalem) and bring His friend back to life. After deciding that, the Disciples remind Him that they almost stoned Him to death, to which Jesus tells them He is doing it so that they would believe.

And that brings us to John 11:16. In that verse, in response to Jesus’ potential forthcoming stoning, Thomas says to the other disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

There are a couple different thoughts on this. One is that the “him” that Thomas was referring to was Lazarus and that Thomas’ doubt so overshadowed his life that he just assumed they were all going to die if they went to Bethany.

The other thought, many think more correctly, is that the “him” was referring to Jesus, but that it was still grounded in doubt. Although he might have been talking about going and dying with Jesus, because many Jews had just tried to stone Him, many scholars believe that this statement by Thomas just revealed his doubt in the miracle that Jesus told them He was about to do with Lazarus.

What if neither of those were the case? What if Thomas statement was actually a declaration of commitment to Jesus because he saw who Jesus was?

It’s possible that Thomas, after seeing Jesus perform miracle upon miracle, was actually, in his heart, willing to follow Jesus to death. I experience this all the time. My heart is completely sold out to following Jesus; the intent of my heart is to be obedient and follow Him, even unto death. Then, out of nowhere, my head (or pride, or selfishness) gets in the way and I don’t follow through. It’s altogether possible that Thomas was so committed to following Jesus, that in his heart he was completely sold out to dying with him, but when the time came for him to resolute in his commitment, he faltered (as many of us do).

I’m not convinced that a moment of doubt, in the face of extreme tragedy, qualifies you for a lifetime title of doubter. What I am convinced of is this: in the face of intense doubt, Jesus will always present His hands and side to you, that you might declare “My Lord and My God.

Doubt isn’t the same as rejection. Doubt signifies struggle and Jesus doesn’t shy away from struggle. God’s grace is sufficient for your doubt. Jesus died and resurrected to redeem you regardless of and in the midst of your doubt.

How have you handled doubt in the past?

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