This is an updated edition of a post originally published on Ryan Johnson Ministries
“I don’t want to get involved”
How often do we sit back and watch as someone is slandered, gossiped about, or maligned?
Be it on social media, on the job, in the church, or in everyday conversations it happens far too often.
We sit back not wanting to “get involved” even when we know this behavior is in direct rebellion to The Word of God.
We choose to allow this because we don’t want to become the next victim.
We want to protect our reputation…yet Jesus made Himself a man of “no reputation”.
We allow this to happen to people we call brothers, sisters, and friends.
John 15:13,14 – Greater love has no man than to lay down his life for his friends.
We act cowardly to protect ourselves.
However, the Lord said, “Count it all joy when you are persecuted for my namesake.”
When we look to scripture, we see this very thing at Stephen’s stoning.
It wasn’t the killers who took off their cloaks and laid them at Saul’s feet.
It was the witnesses.
It was those who OBSERVED the stoning and yet did NOTHING.
They took off their cloaks (the proper translation would be mantle – would could go much deeper into this spiritually) because they didn’t want to get blood on their clothing….or their hands.
This made them equally as guilty.
If you can’t stand for a friend, you aren’t a friend.
You aren’t a brother.
You aren’t a sister.
You are simply an observer of the blood bath.
A spectator who did nothing.
Spiritual food for thought.
To learn more about Heidi and her Kingdom passion, visit Kingdom Come Home
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]]>I never know what I’m doing until it’s too late, and I don’t know where I am until my walls begin to shake; it always hurts when they come crumbling down.
Personal kingdom building isn’t purposeful, but somehow I always manage to find myself surrounded by pretty walls I’ve built by my own hands. A little kingdom in which I fashionably construct with all sorts of things. Good deeds, right choices, anger, ambition, love, envy, and desire are just some of the materials that I smash and muddle together to form bricks, which I then position neatly into walls around me. I apply layer after layer of understanding like cement, holding it all together as it hardens into resistance.
I don’t even know what I’ve done until my walls begin to shake and my comfort is disturbed. As I set on the task of keeping my walls from falling, I feel accomplished when I conquer the rattles and patch the cracks. The more the walls shake, the more I scurry to resist, thickening the layers and adding new bricks. Empowered by my efforts, I hold these walls up with my own strength and understanding, fortifying their glory with more reasonable cement. On it goes, building and resisting, pausing along the way to admire the work I’ve done.
When the walls begin to shake again, I realize how easily they could all crumble, and the cycle continues. Desire becomes my drink and potential becomes my bread. I grow full on myself, complacent to the point where bordered walls become the whole world. Disillusionment feels like clarity, and the intoxicating effect of my efforts keeps me addicted, but I’m never truly satisfied. Strangely though, I keep raising my glass to the kingdom I’ve built, partaking in the poison anyway and settling with its counterfeit version of peace.
It’s a place I hate and love all at the same time, a place I can’t seem to keep myself from wandering to. Though the journey of rebuild always looks different, its blinding effect remains the same every time.
Its familiarity feels homey and comfortable, but the truth is that it’s a cage. It’s not the life I was made for; I wasn’t built to live for myself.
I was made for more than my desires, more than my potential, and more than myself. I wasn’t made for my own kingdom, but God’s. A kingdom structured with perfect love, a kingdom of boundless peace, a kingdom rich in mercy and infinite grace, a life of freedom and true abundance.
Heaven on earth. Presence with God.
Why do I wander back when I know the full life outside of these walls I build? Why am I always tempted to resist their fall when true abundance is found through the crumble?
In short, it’s because I’m a sinner. On this side of heaven, I will always have a bent towards believing I know best, that more and better save, and that I can manage on my own. That familiarity of self-reliance will always beckon with comfort, especially when life feels uncertain.
And life feels uncertain a lot.
I may not keep myself from wandering, but I can stop resisting the walls from breaking when they begin to shake. Instead of fearing their collapse as a ruin, I can embrace their fall as a saving invitation.
A rescue from God himself, dismantling my self-reliance and calling me into his presence. It might hurt a little when all the bricks finally collapse, but if rescue were painless or easy, I would do it myself.
I can’t rescue myself. Believing I can only fuel the kingdom-building effort that keeps me striving.
The truth is, I need Jesus. I need him to shake these walls and wake me up. I need him to break these bricks and set me free from myself, again and again, and again.
So I let the stones crumble as they shake. I let God remind me of his kingdom that I’ve somehow forgotten. And I stand at the end of myself in a rubbled mess, broken again, but more whole. Because there in the breakage, he somehow turns ash into beauty and covers me with a grace that satisfies every longing, every desire, and every wound. Grace that renews my soul and restores my sight so I can behold his kingdom of true abundance through the unsettled dust still lingering in the air.
And I can see his mercy, his goodness, his faithfulness, and love again. And I know, exposed there in the rubble with my kingdom walls crumbled to ash around me, there is no place I would rather be.
Presence with God.
And I rejoice. I am set free.
Again.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood.
O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let that grace now like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.
[Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing]
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on Kristina Ward
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]]>Do what you can and do not hurry.
Trust God to help you walk through this day even though you feel weary.
Celebrate that He is with you despite how you feel.
Focus on Him as your overcomer and the lifter of your head.
Do not allow the pressures in your mind to negatively affect you.
Be joyful and expectant.
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]]>Living in the region that we do, we see an abundance of antique/modern car shows. As an individual who appreciates antique cars, I love the fact that I get to attend these shows. Recently I was walking around admiring the detailed work that had to go into the restoration of these machines. The amount of money, hours, and love that went into these vehicles is amazing to me. While looking at the vehicles, I began to notice something that I had never considered. Though it isn’t hidden, I honestly just never placed any focus on what I had then recognized.
The overwhelming majority of these vehicles are identified as a “Restored Car.” However, those vehicles are rarely ever restored to be what they once were…exactly what they once were. The cars are often restored with modern advancements. From brakes, to engines, air conditioning, power steering, and more. The majority of the time, a full restoration will include modern advancements of technology. That’s when it hit me, when we think of restoration, our minds immediately think of the moment in time in which we were originally. Here’s the point…God isn’t looking to restore you to the exact point in which you were before you failed, or the point you were at your weakest. God is looking to restore with MORE!
The biblical meaning of the word “restoration” is to receive back more than has been lost to the point where the final state is greater than the original condition. The main point is that someone or something is improved beyond measure. Unlike the regular dictionary meaning of “restoration”, which is to return something back to its original condition, the biblical definition of the word has greater connotations that go above and beyond the typical everyday usage.
Repeatedly throughout the Bible, God blesses people for their faith and hardships by making up for their losses and giving them more than they previously had before. God gives simple but imperative commands to his children during his declaration of restoration. These actions demonstrate compliance and faith in the God of restoration and our dedication to him. It is God, through restoration, that makes your name great and grants you a testimony and it will done while you behold his mighty hand in your life!
There are people who are sitting in our churches each week who are hooked into a sin or a circumstance, and although they pull hard to try and break free, they only tighten the chains themselves into the situation. Many times we want to help people out of a circumstance without identifying the spiritual root of the problem. But if the spiritual is the cause, the spiritual must be the cure. A snare is always rooted in a spiritual cause because the root of any snare is Satan, our flesh, or both. You can’t treat something spiritually simply by looking at the symptoms of the problem. You must discover the spiritual cause and treat it spiritually in order to restore someone. (Please Read 2 Timothy 2:14-26)
When we seek to restore one another, we must seek to address the spiritual cause of the snare because only then can we set the person free. Healing is restored by addressing the source, not the symptoms. To get to the source, we need to have a spiritual approach to restoration. A fundamental cause for people to become ensnared in the first place is pain. Today people focus so much on distracting themselves from pain rather than healing their source of pain. Because of this, they end up adding to the vices that bind them, rather than reaching true restoration. The worst thing they can do is to create one snare in order to get out of another.
Healing occurs and freedom from sin occurs when people recognize the root cause of their pain and turn to God. Restoring others begins when we help them identify the source of their pain. Healing of the soul must occur before they can experience any improvement in their painful symptoms.
To help us a little more, let’s look at what David meant when he asked God to ‘restore to me the joy of your salvation’. That moment in time came after the incident of David committing adultery with Bathsheba. The prophet Nathan confronts David with his sin, and David confesses. The story involves not only adultery but Bathsheba’s pregnancy, an attempted cover-up, and David’s eventual murder of Bathsheba’s husband.
“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight; so you are right in your verdict and justified when you judge. Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb; you taught me wisdom in that secret place. Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity.”
Verses 10–12 are perhaps the most famous of Psalm 51:
“Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.”
In verse 11 David asks that the Holy Spirit not be removed from him. We have to understand that in the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit usually came upon a person to enable the performance of a certain task. If the Holy Spirit were removed from David, it would mean that he would be rejected by God as king in the same way that God had rejected Saul and removed His Spirit from him (1 Samuel 16:14).
David asks God to restore the joy of his salvation. The time between David’s sin and Nathan’s confrontation was some months because the child had already been born. During that time, David suffered inner torment, as he describes in Psalm 32:3–4: “When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy on me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer.”
Despite the steps David took to stop the news of what he had done, he did not experience joy in the cover-up. However, once he confessed his sin to God, he received forgiveness, and his joy returned. Psalm 32 begins this way: “Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord does not count against them and in whose spirit is no deceit.” Psalm 32 ends with “Rejoice in the LORD and be glad, you righteous; sing, all you who are upright in heart!” (verse 11).
When David pleads with God to “restore to me the joy of your salvation,” he is asking that he would again have the fellowship with God that he once knew and enjoyed. David could not enjoy God’s fellowship while he had unconfessed sin. We can lose the joy of our salvation.
We will not lose salvation—sin will not separate the believer from God—but it can rob us of joy and the enjoyment of close fellowship with our Savior.
We cannot restore ourselves but must be restored by God. David recognized God as his shepherd or caretaker. Because God watches over him, he does not find himself in need of anything. Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul; He guides me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You have anointed my head with oil; My cup overflows. Surely goodness and lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life, And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
Pay attention to how the last portion of Psalm 23 shifts to a different scenario. David sits at a table among his enemies, likely at a royal banquet. David has no fear of his enemies, he is anointed (set apart as special), and his cup overflows (meaning he has plenty to drink). He feels blessed with goodness and mercy and will live in God’s house forever (v. 6). How powerful is it to know that you can be seated at the table, and there is no shame from your place at that table? David is at rest when he composed this Psalm. This was not a song to prepare for battle or celebrate a holy day, but rather to enjoy a time of relaxation in God’s presence.
Restoration involves reflection. David’s soul was restored as he looked at life from God’s perspective. He felt protected, safe, and secure under the leadership of God. Restoration includes replenishment. Both rest and reflection lead to a renewed vigor to live for God.
With this perspective, David could live with a restored soul, prepared for the problems of the day. He knew God was with him, cared for him, and would never leave his side. There was no battle too big for him to face with God in his life. The same is true in our own lives. If we sincerely desire to see God restore our soul, we need to make time to rest, reflect, and replenish. We cannot expect to live with a fresh sense of God’s presence in our lives if we constantly rush from one issue to the next. To be restored takes time, focused on God and His greatness, to renew us with hope and joy regarding this life and anticipation for eternity.
Why? Because the Lord is Restoring You to be Better than Before. You aren’t being restored to the exact moment in which you failed, or the moment you were weak. You are being restored better than ever. The increase is coming. The advancement is coming. The Lord is Restoring You for His Glory, His Purpose, and His Honor. You get the benefits, the upgrades, and the seat at the table prepared by The Lord.
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on Ryan Johnson Ministries
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]]>Many are the plans in the mind of a man,
but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.
Proverbs 19:21 ESV
“Surprise!” My mother’s kind blue eyes and toothy grin met me as I opened the door to her home. I surveyed the room and noticed the balloons, flowers, cards, and gifts displayed throughout. And what was meant to be a celebration felt more like a memorial service to me. It was my fortieth birthday, and instead of abounding joy, I was filled with sorrow.
You see, when I awoke that morning, all the unfulfilled plans that I had made for my life––the plans of motherhood, financial freedom, and a thriving career––slapped me in the face. Instead, my days were filled with constant pain and fatigue due to chronic illness. The pitter-patter from little feet had never filled my home, and although our financial needs had been met, there was no cream on top to live the life of luxury I had imagined in my younger days.
But I had it all wrong.
This world seeks to convince us that contentment and joy are found in how far up the ladder we climb. Our enemy wants us to think the numbers in our bank account, the plaques on our walls, and a picture-perfect family equals success. Yet in Proverbs 19, we find the characteristics of a good life are to listen to instruction (vs. 16, 20), extend kindness to the poor (vs. 17), acknowledge the sovereignty of God (vs. 21), possess the understanding that love and integrity bring true happiness (vs. 22), and to fear the Lord above all else (vs. 23). This is the divine purpose and good plan God has for our lives.
I am now several years past forty, and as much as I remember the beginning of that difficult birthday, I also recall the ending. It closed with laughter ringing from the family who loves me, a special love note from my husband, and a quiet prayer of thanksgiving to God for the gifts that I had failed to appreciate.
Hindsight reveals that too often I have viewed my life from an earthly perspective rather than through a spiritual lens. Reading these scriptures realigns my heart once again to the will of God and reminds me to trust that He is a loving Father whose desire is to give me the best things in life. And the best things come from walking in the ways of wisdom and by laying up treasures in heaven rather than on earth (Matt. 6:19-21).
Dear friend, are you seeking a good life? Let’s remember to grow in wisdom from the Word, be kind, submit to God’s will, love boldly, and revere the Lord above all else. These are worth more than all this world can afford.
Prayer
Father, sometimes it is difficult to see past the things that I feel are missing in my life. Open my eyes to the blessings that You have given me. Thank You for Your presence, Your will, and Your Word. Help me trust that You are working out Your perfect plan for me. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
Ponder
The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps. ~ Proverbs 16:9 ESV
Think of a time when disappointment came from failed plans. How does knowing that God is working a divine purpose for your life release you from the pain? How does this change your perspective on future plans?
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on Leaving a Well
Featured Image by Michael Skok on Unsplash
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]]>Are you wearied by our culture of contempt?
Are you exhausted by being in a continual state of outrage?
If you answered yes, maybe that’s why you listen to or watch the Gospelbound podcast. You also might want to pick up the new book by Irwyn Ince, because he asks these three questions at the outset of Hope Ain’t a Hustle: Persevering by Faith in a Wearying World (IVP).
Ince is the coordinator of Mission to North America, which is under the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). Previously, he was a pastor at Grace DC Presbyterian Church. He’s also the author of The Beautiful Community.
“Christian hope seems unreasonable,” Ince writes, “because very often we will not experience victory in this life. Christian hope informs this life by being a forward-facing and upward-gazing perspective as our great high priest intercedes for us.”
Indeed, Christian hope is countercultural in the world, and even sometimes in the church. Ince wrote this book in part because he wanted us to know that faithfulness to Christ isn’t the same thing as waging culture wars effectively. At the same time, Christian hope doesn’t guarantee coasting above the storms of this life. “When you reject the world,” Ince writes, “the world often wants to eject you.”
So why do we endure? Because of Christ, of course. Ince writes,
If the arc of the moral universe does indeed bend toward justice, that arc will never be smooth and straight from a human perspective. It will have twists and turns, ups and downs, starts and stops. Our hope, if it is to be enduring, must be rooted in the glory of Jesus Christ.
Ince also serves on the Board and Council of The Gospel Coalition. He joined me on Gospelbound to discuss where he finds hope, how we can hear the voice of the Lord, and why telling the truth about injustice is a friend to hope.
]]>The post New Book Releases – Week of 25 March 2024 – N.T. Wright, more… appeared first on The Englewood Review of Books.
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