Author Archives: Pastor Tommy

My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. (John 10:27)

Did you know that before Jesus led others, He first led Himself? We must all remember that we must first lead ourselves in order to lead others, because we will never lead others beyond the point to which we have led ourselves.

Here are three important areas of self-leadership that I hope will encourage you to follow the Leader.

Prayer

Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. (Mark 1:35)

Jesus was in constant communion with His Father in heaven, and Scripture makes it clear that He made no important decisions without first consulting with God the Father. You might remember that an unnamed disciple asked Jesus this crucial question: “Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1). Why did he ask Jesus to teach him? Because he saw Jesus often in prayer.

Bible Study

Jesus answered, “It is written …” Jesus answered him, “It is also written …” Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written …” (Matthew 4:4, 7, 10)

When Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to do battle with the devil, He conquered Him with the Word of God. Every temptation was hurled back by a response from sacred Scripture. It’s important to note here that both Jesus and the devil quoted Scripture, but there was a difference: They were both in the Word of God, but the Word of God was only in Jesus.

Church Attendance

He went to Nazareth, and on the Sabbath day he

went into the synagogue, as was his custom. (Luke 4:16)

Jesus knew the importance of showing up for weekly worship. Here are just two reasons why you should too: First, God has commanded that we gather together each week to worship as a family of faith (Hebrews 10:25). Additionally, it bears a wonderful witness to the watching world whose side we are on. Christians are to be “doing life together,” and that life should center on the corporate worship of our Creator God.

It has been well said that “What you do speaks so loudly, I can’t hear what you say!” Regardless of where this message finds you, someone is watching and looking to you for leadership. The key to leading them in the right direction is to follow the Leader!

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

Do not give the devil a foothold. (Ephesians 4:27)

The definition of the word appease means to pacify or placate someone by agreeing or giving in to his or her demands. When it comes to our adversary the devil, we appease him every time we give in to his temptations. The Bible is filled with examples of those who appeased the adversary, whether by a word, a look, or a deed. Abraham appeased the adversary with a word when he tried to pawn his wife Sarah off as his sister to save his own skin. David appeased the adversary with a look when he lusted after Bathsheba and sent for her to be brought to his bedroom chambers. Peter appeased the adversary when he withdrew from eating and associating with the Gentiles for fear of the Jews.

So how do we keep from appeasing the adversary, refusing to give him even a foothold? We do what Jesus did. When Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to do battle with Satan, He used the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. The devil cannot gain a foothold when we focus on God’s Word. Jesus met every temptation by saying, “It is written . . .” and you and I must be ready, willing, and able to do the same, lest we appease the adversary. And the only way we can be ready, willing, and able to effectively use the Word as a weapon against the wiles of the evil one is to become students of Scripture. We must make it our pillar of cloud by day and our pillar of fire by night and be willing to follow wherever it leads us.

It is the Word of God that will strengthen the people of God through the ministry of the Spirit of God. When we neglect the Word, we find ourselves living according to our old nature more than by our new supernatural nature. We all know from personal experience that our old carnal nature loves to appease the adversary. We shrink from struggle; we cower from challenges; we pull back from pain . . . all the while giving the devil a foothold that weakens our faith.

Appeasement is the confession of a life that surrenders to sin and self-deception and says, “Just this one time and no more.” Know this: giving in to the temptations of the adversary only weakens us for the next assault. To keep from appeasing the adversary we must go on the counterattack with the Word of God. The more we are in the Word, the more the Word will be in us! As students of Scripture, we will be able to withstand the attacks of the adversary rather than appease them, and we will find ourselves saying with the apostle Paul, “We did not give in to them for a moment” (Galatians 2:5).

Remember, life always presents us with two choices; we can appease the adversary or please the Almighty. The first choice shrinks our lives down to the size of our lives, where we are living for the self. The second expands our lives to the edges of God’s kingdom, where we are living for the Savior. What is your choice today?

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

This I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: 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 3:21-23 ESV)

Memory has a way of messing with our lives. By nature, we have a tendency to remember more clearly all the burdens of life rather than the blessings. We remember in far greater detail all the stuff that didn’t work out rather than all that did. And, of course, the devil delights in assisting us in this downward spiral. Satan wants us to remember all the “bad” times and all our failures, and to forget all the blessings and the glorious victory won for us by Jesus Christ.

Jeremiah was quick to remember all his afflictions and wanderings and the bitterness and gall; when he did, his soul was downcast. Oh, how the devil delighted in that! But Satan’s ungodly glee didn’t last long, because Jeremiah refused to stay down. He lifted his thoughts to the throne room of heaven and called to mind the great love of his great God.

Can the same be said about you today? Is this the confession of your life? Or perhaps you’re like so many of us, who by nature not only call to remembrance the dark days of our past, but sharpen our focus on the darkness of the present. Can I get a witness?

There is a better way forward for you and me today, thanks to the call to mind that ministers. When the sky turns dark and the waves of challenge wash over you, remember the Lord’s great love for you. You are so loved that your God purchased you with the precious blood of His beloved Son. No price was too great for God to pay in order to redeem you from your bondage to sin and death and bring you into relationship with Him. And as if that isn’t enough, there is unending compassion rooted in His love for you that brings a comfort that defies description.

To be sure, each one of us has a past littered with the ashes of defeat. But our gracious, loving heavenly Father has promised His adopted children that He will—

Bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes,

The oil of gladness instead of mourning,

And a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. (Isaiah 61:3)

One great promise after another has been given to you, Christian, but it is your responsibility to call them to mind. No matter how dark the days became for the prophet Jeremiah, he would shift his focus away from gloom and fix it on his God, and that opened the doorway leading to hope. We must be intentional about what we choose to call to mind. We cannot allow the evil one to ruin our recollection.

So . . . what have you been calling to mind lately? The way forward is to remember the Lord’s great love for you. And never forget that His love and mercy was poured out upon you while you were still a sinner and at enmity with the God who refused to wait for you to get “cleaned up” and come to Him . . . He ran to you with outstretched arms and embraced you for all eternity!

As you rest in your redemption, let your mind be filled with memorials of the mercies that God has poured out upon you—mercies that are new every morning.

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. (Hebrews 1:3)

How encouraging to know that the song many of us sang as children is absolutely true: our God has the whole world in His hands. Not even a bird falls to the ground apart from His will (Matthew 10:29). There is no such thing as “luck” or “fate” or “chance” . . . only a sovereign Lord who sustains all things by the power of His Word. So what do you have to fear today? Why would you be harboring any doubts?

Is there some part of your life where are you dealing with a sense of uncertainty and feeling a bit out of sorts? Just know that Omnipotence is not only holding the whole world in His hands, but the entire universe as well and everything in it . . . and that means you too! Omniscience is guiding, governing, and directing your every step. Omnipresence goes before you, behind you, beside you—and, most importantly, inside of you.

Behold this truth today, Christian, and be blessed: the Lord Jesus Christ has the whole of the divine Godhead yoked, not only to the chariot of your salvation, but to your sanctification as well. God is changing you and conforming you into the image of His beloved Son, and He will not stop until He has finished His work and ushers you into His glorious and eternal kingdom on the other side of the Jordan. Until then, know this . . .

• His Word is your instruction.
• His wisdom is your direction.
• His power is your protection.
• His presence is your perfection!

You have been given everything you need to do everything God has called you to do. The One who owns the cattle on a thousand hills has made every resource you need available just for the asking. Divinity is in complete control of your destiny. But God is calling you to do your part by putting all of your gifts, talents, and abilities into service to expand the cause of His kingdom for His glory and the good of all others.

Let me close today’s message with a question: What could you do today to convince the watching world that you actually believe your God does indeed hold the whole world in His hands? Why not do it . . . Why not do it right now?

Remember, you cannot fail. You could fall over and over again, but falling isn’t failing unless you fail to get up.

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. (Philippians 1:6)

No matter how strategically I select bananas before buying them, one or two inevitably seem to go from ripe to rot overnight. And that got me thinking: As a believer, the other side of ripe is rot, so we ought never see ourselves as ripe. Rather, we should remain in a perpetual state of growth all the way into glory. The only time we are to be ripe is when we are in heavenly glory, where there will be no more rot!

Here is the best way I know how to explain the lifelong process of sanctification, and I hope it will underscore my assertion that we are always to see ourselves in the process of growing and never as fully ripe. None of us has ever loved the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength for a single moment—let alone a day, week, month, or a year. To learn to love God at this level does not happen because we memorize a few Scripture verses, complete our daily devotions, and enter our prayer closet on a regular basis. It is only by living in intimate relationship with our Triune God every moment of our lives that we even begin to plumb the depths of what it means to truly love our God.

This too must be kept in view: Our ability to love God is always according to the grace He has given to us, and God’s grace is not delivered according to any schedule of ours. We are in His process and on His timetable, and we must always remember that we will never “arrive” on this side of the grave. We must never think, even for a moment, “I’ve made it!” There will always be another twist or turn in the road that we do not expect and are not ready to navigate, so we must never allow ourselves to think that our lives are on some kind of cosmic cruise control.

Let me encourage you with this final thought: The most important thing for the disciple of Jesus to consider is not the distance that has been traveled since the day salvation. Rather, it is about the direction in which we are heading. To measure a life well-lived coram Deo (before the face of God), we never measure its duration; we only look at its donation. Every day we are above ground, we are to be donating our lives to something. The question we need to ask ourselves and answer is, “To what or to whom am I giving?”

I heard a man say, “Either you’re green and growing or ripe and rotting.” Those who believe themselves to be ripe stop growing, and from that point on, rot rapidly begins. But the committed disciple of Jesus Christ will always remember the truth that God is not finished with us yet . . . and for that we are to be eternally grateful!

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

Do not be like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding but must be controlled by bit and bridle or they will not come to you. (Psalm 32:9)

The warning given to us by the Spirit of God in today’s verse also offers a wonderful word of encouragement. We are admonished not to be like the beasts of the field, which must be controlled, coerced, and corrected by the bit and the bridle. The horse and the mule respond obediently to their master only because of the restraints that have been placed on them. But as Christian believers, we are to render obedience to our Master—not because we have been restrained, but rather because our new and growing understanding freely responds with thanksgiving to all our Master has done for us—and will do for us in the future.

Before we were saved, we were like the brute beasts of the field. We were wild like the horse and obstinate like the mule. We were ruled by the appetites of the flesh and driven to satisfy self in every possible way. But when God in Christ gives us the gift of salvation and the indwelling of His Holy Spirit, our new nature leads to a new understanding, which leads to new desires. We desire to live for our Savior rather than self; we desire to satisfy the will of God rather than our own will; we desire to expand the kingdom of God rather than our own little kingdom of one. Understanding now guides us into God’s perfect purpose for our lives. We are the bride of Christ, and we will one day stand before Him in glorious, spotless wedding clothes.

The horse and the mule are forced to accomplish the will of their master and guided by the bit and the bridle to go in the direction the master desires. But the disciple of Jesus does His will out of devotion, not duty, and the guiding principle is love. As new creatures in Christ, our hearts begin beating for nothing smaller than Jesus. We no longer resist His instruction, as we once did, but instead we respond with a sense of newfound freedom and joy that leads ultimately to living a life of faithfulness. This certainly doesn’t mean we will live a life of perfect obedience! That won’t happen until we are received into glory. What it does mean is that we will live with the desire of pleasing our Lord perfectly, even as we live it out imperfectly.

The duty of every believer is obedience. But the more our understanding of who God is and what He has done and is doing for us grows, the more this duty becomes a delight.

So . . . are you growing in your understanding of your redemption and all your Redeemer accomplished on your behalf? Have you been adding knowledge to your faith since your conversion? Have you been living in the shadow of the cross—not only daily, but moment by moment? Make no mistake, the believers “bit and bridal” is a growing understanding of what it means at the deepest level to be unconditionally loved and completely forgiven, and because of that love, we strive to live in such a way that we will one day hear our Bridegroom say warmly, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your lord.”

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. (John 1:3)

What a powerful truth to encourage us today! The humble carpenter from Nazareth was also the Architect of the entire universe. Fully God and fully man, Jesus came into the world that He had created “by the word of the Lord” (Psalm 33:6) to destroy the works of the devil. In Jesus we have not only the Creator of all things, but He is also the Re-Creator of all things.

You see, after Jesus raises us from death to life, He begins the lifelong process of recreating us into His image and likeness. As I remind you so often here, man was made in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:27), but after Adam and Eve rebelled, that image was marred, stained, and broken. Our first parents had denied the very humanity that God created in them!

You and I still possess God’s image, but only a fraction of what it originally was. However, after Jesus saves us, He begins to sanctify us and conform us to His image; we are twice born of Jesus because our Creator God is also our Re-Creator God. Jesus is our Cosmic Carpenter, hammering away at us on the sanctifying anvil of the Almighty, and He will not stop until we have ultimately been perfected.

Here is something to consider as you go about your day. Jesus came to pay the penalty for your sins in full, but He also came to take away sin’s power and its pleasure as well. Jesus is working on your new nature with every tool in His toolbox to create new desires in you, new disciplines, new directions, and a new destiny. He who began this good work in you has promised to complete it (Philippians 1:6); and in the end, when you cross the Jordan, the image of God in you will have been recreated to perfection. The beloved apostle encourages us, “When [the Son] appears, we shall be like him” (1 John 3:2).

The Cosmic Carpenter is at work in you right now. He is busily engaged in sanding away all your rough spots and chiseling away those hard edges. He is filling those areas that are a bit hollow and empty with His healing balm of Gilead. Jesus loves you more than you could ever know, and wants only the absolute best for you right now, which means that He refuses to leave you as you are. And so your Cosmic Carpenter will keep on hammering . . . keep on sanding . . . keep on chiseling . . . keep on filling . . . until you are recreated into what you were originally created for: to bear the image of your Creator, the One who is also your Re-Creator.

Let the apostle Paul bring this word of encouragement to its most appropriate close:

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

The Cosmic Carpenter is making everything new (Revelation 21:5). And that includes you and me!

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

[Jesus] said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” (John 21:17 ESV)

We all know what it means to grieve God. When we seek to accomplish our will rather than His will, we grieve God. When we seek to expand our kingdom rather than His kingdom, we grieve God. When we store up for ourselves treasures on earth rather than in heaven, we grieve God. But did you know that the God we grieve also grieves us?

On the night Jesus was betrayed, He was also denied. All the disciples, who had promised never to disown Him even if it meant death (Matthew 26:35), fled the Garden of Gethsemane, leaving their Lord alone with the crowd that had come to arrest Him. Just a few hours later, Peter denied ever knowing Jesus—not once, but three times, just as Jesus had said he would do.

However, after His resurrection, Jesus was intent on making sure that all the disciples, especially Peter, knew that they had been forgiven and restored to sweet fellowship with Christ. Jesus asked Peter if he loved Him—not once, but three times—which made it clear to Peter and the other disciples that He had completely forgiven Peter. Each time Peter said, “Lord, you know that I love you,” it was is if Peter was wiping away the guilty stain of one of his three “I don’t know the man!” denials. It was a glorious demonstration of God’s amazing grace, and yet Peter was also grieved in that moment, and for good reason: our Lord was doing “heart work” in the life of Peter. The grief God delivers to His people is designed to lay bare the deepest, inmost secrets of the heart that cannot be touched in any other way.

Jesus intentionally grieved Peter to grow him, and He does the same thing for us too. You have heard, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend” (Proverbs 27:6). Well, the wounds that God inflicts on us in the form of grief are not only faithful, they are faith-building. To be sure, they hurt, and they expose deep-seated fears and failures in our lives. But the Great Physician has ordained that some soul surgery can only be accomplished by grief. And so our God leads us into the valley of grief when He knows that grief is the very best way to develop our faith.

So . . . where in your life has God been grieving you lately? Where has grief been gnawing at your heart? I say this to encourage you: those who know not the grief of God know not the God of grief. Far too many in the church today have been sold a bill of “easy believism” goods. They hear endless messages about God’s grace, but they are never taught about God’s chastening, correcting, rebuking, and restoring. Yet this is the promise for all disciples of Christ, and Scripture tells us to endure it because “God is treating you as sons” (Hebrews 12:7). The grief God brings into our lives is a good grief, because it is delivered to grow us and to prepare us to live in His loving presence for all eternity.

Today, Jesus is asking all of us, “Do you love me?” Our faithful, trusting response to the God who grieves us is one way that we can sincerely reply, “Lord, you know that I love you.”

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. (Hebrews 13:8)

You’ve probably heard the phrase, “The only one who likes change is a wet baby.” It seems like one of those proverbial truths doesn’t it? We are creatures of habit; we like to live our lives within the zones of comfort we create for ourselves, which provides us a measure of control in our lives . . . and we all like to be in control!

But for the disciple of the unchanging One, change is a way of life all the way into glory. Here are just a few examples:

• The change from natural living to spiritual living
• The change from living by sight to living by faith
• The change from living for self to dying to self
• The change from serving ourselves to serving others

These are just a few of the many changes that take place in the upside-down world our Lord Jesus created for those who answer His call. If we are going to be true followers of Christ, every aspect of what we once were must be changed.

The challenge for many Christians today is that they have an erroneous view of the goal of the Christian life. God did not save us to make us comfortable; He saved us to conform us into the image of His beloved Son, and that process involves a great deal of change . . . and that change is not comfortable! I have learned from personal experience that the greater our resistance to the change God is working in our lives, the greater the pain we will experience.

Yes, change can be painful, but it is also profitable. God is bringing us to the end of ourselves, and that end is the place where we experience true meaning and purpose in life. If we follow our natural, sinful nature, we live meaningless and purposeless lives; we live for nothing bigger than self and our own glory. True, we may help some people along the way, but we are doing it to expand our own kingdom, not the kingdom of God. But thanks be to our loving heavenly Father, He will not leave us in the condition He found us in. He will not stop short of conforming us completely to the image of Jesus, regardless of how much pain each change creates.

Have you been dealing with the pain of change lately? Don’t shrink back from it! Embrace change and be enlarged by it, because the Great Physician is working every change in your life for your good and His glory. Remember, the pain of change is the power of redemptive restoration, where our marred and scarred image of God is being restored, polished, and ultimately perfected on that day we enter into our eternal rest. Until that day, receive each change as a gift from God, who is making you just like the Unchangeable One.

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

I will proclaim the name of the Lord. Oh, praise the greatness of our God! (Deuteronomy 32:3)

As a pastor who stands in the pulpit every Sunday, I am acutely aware of the difference between proclamation and persuasion when it comes to preaching the Gospel of Christ. The model that was set before us by Jesus Christ could not be clearer: proclaim the Good News to all the world and leave the results to God. Proclamation—not persuasion—is the call on every Christian.

Now, that certainly doesn’t mean that we aren’t passionate about the message we are delivering to a fallen and broken world. Could there have been anyone more passionate about preaching Christ than John the Baptist? On the day of Pentecost, Peter preached a stirring message of salvation with every bit as much passion as there was power. After his Damascus Road Experience, the apostle Paul would plead with unbelievers to receive the truths of the Gospel. Yet each one of these men knew the difference between proclamation and persuasion.

There is a role for persuasion, but that role is played by the Holy Spirit. Our calling is to simply proclaim the Good News to every creature; it is God the Holy Spirit’s job to do the persuading. You see, the Holy Spirit persuades from the inside out. He renews the mind, recalibrates the heart, and realigns the will. Salvation is all of God, and it takes place in the inner sanctum of the soul. But we have the great and powerful privilege to be instruments of salvation in His mighty right hand when we live out the Great Commission in our interactions with a fallen world.

Here is how I like to explain it when I teach others how to share the Gospel: we are not “selling” Jesus to anyone. We simply set Him before them—His birth, His life, His death, His resurrection, His ascension, and His promised return. It is not uncommon for those who are trying to sell Jesus to their audience to produce an emotional response to the “sale” and not a conversion to the Savior. Days, weeks, or months later, when the storm winds begin to blow, many fall away because they were converted to a person’s presentation, not the promise of Christ.

When you look at our Lord’s ministry, persuasion was as far removed from His words as the east is from the west. At times, it almost looked as if He was intentionally driving people away, because He never shied away from proclaiming the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Often His proclamation was couched in phrases like “Count the cost,” because He was not interested in emotional responses to the Good News. When Jesus said, “Follow me,” He was telling His true disciples that they would have to die to self in order to live for their Savior.

You and I must be willing to proclaim this truth when we share the Gospel. We practice proclamation, not persuasion, and we leave the results up to God.

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!