God is Alive in Your Nearby Movie Theater

After yesterday's post on the movie “NOAH,” it's starting to look like I'm a movie critic, but I must plug “God’s Not Dead,” (Altha and I saw it Saturday). Not a perfect film, but all in all, engaging and inspiring. The story of a college freshman who is told by his philosophy professor he will fail the class unless he denies the existence of God, or can otherwise prove that God exists, provides the backdrop for the movie’s multiple characters, each of whose commitment to follow Christ is tested, at great personal cost.

The thing that impressed me most about “God’s Not Dead” is that it communicates a significant and timely message to our prosperity-prone, easy-to-believe Christian culture: to be willing to suffer the loss of all things in order to gain Christ (Phil. 3:8). With anti-Christian sentiment escalating through pluralism, we who claim to have picked up our cross to follow Jesus are sure to be tested. Will our faith translate into power and action?  “It is a trustworthy statement: if we died with Him, we will also live with Him; if we endure [suffer], we shall also reign with him; [but] if we deny him, he also will deny us” (2 Tim. 2:11-12).

Legally Dead

Last year, a woman I used to work with was dying of cancer, and her friends sent out weekly updates that seemed to go on endlessly. But when doctors turned off all life support systems, she passed.

In light of this, the phrase “legally dead” recently caught my attention. It means a terminal patient, kept alive on life support, is dead “under the law.”  Paradoxically, the whole world is condemned to death under the law, only kept alive by this world's life support systems. But if we are in Christ, we are no longer under the Law's condemnation: we have died to the law of sin and death, and to this world—we are really “legally dead” (Rom. 8:2; 6:6). And now, having been raised up with Christ, we are alive (Rom. 6:11): Christ is our life support (Col 3:2). Given that, how gruesome the thought that any believer who had been disconnected from the world’s systems would want to go back and be reconnected?

Is this why Paul asks, with such incredulity, “How can you who died to sin still live in it? ... Don’t you know that that you were crucified with Christ?” (Ro. 6:2, 6). I can still remember when I first understood this (Gal. 2:20), the day I found out I was legally dead. 

Rest in Peace

He is our Sabbath Rest

Yesterday I wrote that the Sabbath is a state of rest, but there's more to it.  Specifically, the Jewish Sabbath looked toward a time of final rest.  Thus the writer of Hebrews explains by combining the words “sabbath” and “rest.” There remains a Sabbath Rest for the people of God, and a promise of entering His rest; therefore, let us be careful we don't fall short of it, by not making every effort to enter it (Heb. 4:1, 9,11 ed). In my experience, I've found that many people don't understand "Sabbath Rest," and are therefore unable to enter it!

The reason God rested is that His work was finished. The reason we are able to rest is that our ‘work’ to save ourselves is finished. Jesus finished it for us! We are free from self-effort. Quite simply, the Sabbath Rest means we are “dead to sin and alive to God” (Rom. 6:11). John says, “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on, so that they may rest from their labors” (Rev. 14:13).

Think of this. Under the Old Covenant, the "day of rest" was on the last day of the week. Under the New Covenant, the first day of the week became the "day of rest,” illustrating a principle: you must enter His rest before you begin to do His work; and you must enter His rest in order to do His work!  But in all truth, every day lived  in the power of Jesus' life is a day of rest!  May you "Rest in Peace."

THE PRESENT MADNESS by David Wilkerson

I am shocked by the present madness of the world. Government leaders are under God’s judicial blindness. You cannot explain the blindness of so many politicians and leaders. They grope about like the blind leading the blind. It seems like all restraint is being cast aside and a moral madness has hardened multitudes.

Seeing all this madness makes me rejoice all the more that Christ Jesus has quickened those of us who were dead in trespasses and sin. I rejoice that those who once walked according to the course of this world—who were under the spirit of the prince of the power of the air and the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience—who once fulfilled all desires of the flesh and of the mind, even dead in sins—are now raised from the dead, quickened by the Spirit—sitting in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.  Today, as you grieve over the present madness, give God praise that you have been saved out of it all. God be praised!

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As I [Greg] reflected on David's article today, the Lord brought to my mind the following verse:  “He died for our sins, just as God our Father planned, in order to rescue us from this evil world in which we live” (Galatians 1:4).

"I wish I were dead!"

Of course, “I wish I were dead” is a horrible thing we say to ourselves during times of hopeless despair! But the Bible says before we can live as overcomers, we need a revelation of our death with Christ—that we are dead to sin and Satan’s power. In other words, we don’t have to wish it; we are dead!

When we were born the first time, Paul says we were born “dead IN our sins” (Eph. 2:1). Paradoxically, when we were born “again,” we were born “dead TO sin” (Ro. 6:4, 11). It is ‘out of’ our death that we begin a new life. If we don’t know that, Satan will have an advantage.

A Spirit-infused revelation of this truth is essential! We cannot fight our "giants," or pull down strongholds unless we have a revelation of life “in Christ.” No matter what your emotions say, or how guilty or condemned you feel, you must know, without doubt, that Satan and sin have no power over you.

When we were born again, God didn’t change “us”—He put “us” to death. And He didn’t just give us a new identity. He gave us a new address. It’s like the FBI’s “witness protection program”—they give you a new identity and move you to a new city where your enemy cannot find you. For all practical purposes, the person you used to be is dead. Ray Stedman said: “It is a new self-image that delivers us. When we begin to think of ourselves as God thinks of us, we will find we have the power to say “No” to sin.

Don't Drink the Water

Two million children a year die for lack of clean water. After a disaster, like a flood in Bangladesh or the earthquake in Haiti, it is common for people to get sick or die from water & sanitation-related diseases like diarrhea & cholera. But finding fresh, clean water has been a problem throughout history.

That significance should not be lost on us in Psalm 23 where David pictures a shepherd leading his sheep to “still waters.” He must do so because 1) sheep will not drink from a moving stream, and 2) if not moved daily, they will continue to drink long after the water has been contaminated by mud and parasites, and their own waste. And they will die.

Jesus promises to satisfy our need for clean water, from a well of living water springing up from inside of us (John 4:14). Where do we find this well? And how do we draw from it? Through our daily quiet time—a quiet and still place with the Lord where we are refreshed by 'drinking in' his Word.

Trying to live in a state of continual fellowship with God without a dedicated time and place to fellowship with Him will not work (Amos 3:3). How quenching it is to the Lord when we ignore our time with Him but drink from the world’s watering holes. But all the time, our Shepherd is trying to lead us to the clean, cleansing water of His Word (Jer. 31:9; John 15:3; Eph. 5:26.) How sad that there are Christians (like water-deprived ‘third-worlders’) who don’t realize they’re drinking fouled waters. The result is deadly.

"I see dead people"

Who can forget this line by Haley Joel Osment’s character in "The Sixth Sense"—a story about a troubled boy who is able to see and talk to the dead, and an equally troubled child psychologist (Bruce Willis) who tries to help him. Well, guess what! I see dead people too—and so do you. They are standing behind you in line at Safeway, sitting in the cubicle next to yours at work, and even parked in the back pews of your church. They are dead in their sins (Eph. 2:1): deeply troubled people.

But unlike the Bruce Willis character [spoiler warning] who cannot help because he is one of the dead, we who are alive in Christ can see things other people can’t see. And we can hear too (John 10:27). Of course if you tell this to the ‘dead’ people, they will think you are crazy. But we who have been made alive with Christ (Eph. 2:5) have these supernatural powers—of seeing and hearing. Having “God’s eyes,” we see people and circumstances as God does.

But (paradoxically) to exercise these powers, you must be dead to this world—crucified with Christ. Only those who are dead to their own ideas, opinions and assumptions can really see and hear His. This is why Jesus spoke in parables: “I am using these stories to conceal everything about it from outsiders, so that the Scriptures might be fulfilled: `They see what I do, but they don't really see; they hear what I say, but they don't understand.” (Luke 8:10 NLT) So to us, Jesus says: “Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear?...He who has ears to hear [and eyes to see], let him hear [and see]" (Mark 8:18; Matt. 11:15).

The Best Friend is a Dead One

In David Wilkerson’s daily devotional today he asks this question: Have you ever thought about what it means to truly lay down your life for your brothers and sisters? (1 John 3:16) My immediate answer would be: “it means to give up your own agenda to serve the needs of another.” Or in Paul’s exact words: “thinking of others as better than yourself” (Philippians 2:3). But in order to truly do that, you have to be dead to your ‘self.’ Therefore, the only kind of Christian who can lay down his life for a brother is one who is already dead.

Some years ago, I went through a period of intense breaking. As the Spirit revealed to me how much of self-life had been in control, I asked for forgiveness of those I had hurt because of it, I repented of not laying down my life for those I called brothers and sisters. Though for years I had been teaching others to die to self, I needed a deeper death to my own. Before I could go genuinely consider others’ needs as more important than my own, I needed to die a deeper death to my own.

Of course, the word 'dying' is in the present continuous tense, isn't it! And today, I need to be broken again. As new opportunities require more breakings! Serving others requires selflessness and humility, daily! God help us!

People Who Attend a “Youniversity” are Trying to be Better

People go to college to be better educated, get better jobs, have better homes, and enjoy a better life. But is that what God wants for us, a “better” life? The word “better” can result in awful theology, whose core premise is this: “if you just try harder, you can be a better Christian.” “Better” is ‘code’ for self-improvement—which stands in opposition to the gospel of grace and mercy. (And, by the way, the word “TRY” never shows up in the New Testament!)

“Better” is Youniversity’s core value, as seen in such course offerings as: “This is Your Day,” “The Life You’ve Always Wanted,” “Your Best Life Now,” and “Become a Better You.” But the Youniversity offers nothing on the supremacy of Christ. You won’t find any classes on: “Dying with Christ,” “Christ in You; the Hope of Glory;” or “It is no longer I who live but Christ.” To learn these, you will have to drop out of the Youniversity and enroll in the School of Christ, where classes are not about you, but Christ.

Think about this: Jesus didn’t come to make bad people good. He didn’t come to make good people better. He came to make dead people alive.