Author Archives: Pastor Tommy

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  (Matthew 22:37)

Here is a great question that every Christian should be able to answer: Is Christianity a “reasonable” faith? Or is it a “blind” faith? What is your answer? Let’s take a brief look and be both comforted and challenged. As Francis Bacon once said, “God has given us two books as sources of truth: the book of God’s works (creation) and the book of God’s word (the Bible).

Within the pages of the Bible, we see the inspired importance of the pathway to reason as we pursue truth, for ourselves and for others. For the person who is willing to look through clear lenses, God has revealed Himself in every aspect of creation. And for the person who is willing to look through clear lenses, God has revealed Himself on every page of the Bible. And within the pages of sacred Scripture, we find God driving us to study both of these books:

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will (Romans 12:2).

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correc5tly handles the word of truth (2 Timothy 2:15).

In our verse today, we are reminded to be thinking Christians. We are to love God with every fiber of our being, including our mind. Sadly, for many who profess the name of Christ, their minds have not been transformed through consistent and diligent study. They have the same basic worldview they had before becoming Christians. But this is not for you. Make no mistake, the proper use of reason is essential if we are going to share the truths of the gospel in ways that connect deeply with our audience and this will only happen when the mind is renewed.

Here is the single most important key to renewing the mind: KNOWLEDGE – “This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds” (Hebrews 10:16). A. W. Tozer once said, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” Our love for God grows as our knowledge of Him grows. The more we grow in our understanding of God, the more our heart beats for Him.

Remember, the Bible makes it clear that faith in God is built upon substance rooted in real evidence, “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible” (Hebrews 11:3). Our faith is indeed a “reasonable” faith that, while renewing the mind, it also recalibrates the heart, and realigns the will. Let that truth comfort and challenge you to pursue God’s call in your life regardless of the cost or circumstance.

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

To the one who does not work but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness.  (Romans 4:5)

Seems like a strange statement having grown up in a culture that says if you want anything in this life, you have to “earn it!” Well, there is a work that doesn’t work and knowing that truth brings with it a deep peace that can be found in no other way.

The work I am speaking about is the work of salvation. Today, in the church of Jesus Christ, there are millions who are trying to work themselves into God’s favor. They believe God is keeping score in their lives and the ultimate goal is to have more points under the heading of “good” than “bad.” They have sat under the preaching of a false gospel that says salvation comes to those who “earn it” by the spiritual sweat of their own brow.

Listen, in this life, we do indeed need to work for what we get. You work a job and you get paid. You exercise and you get fit. You invest in a relationship and it grows. But when it comes to eternal life, there is no amount of work that can gain anything. When Jesus hung on the cross and said, “It is finished!” He meant what He said. To be sure, we are saved by works, but not our works. It was the cross work of Christ, His sinless life, His sacrificial death, and His supernatural resurrection that has earned for us the pathway to Paradise.

Paul tells us in our verse today that God the Father credits to us the righteousness of God the Son. This is not a righteousness we possess. Rather, it is a righteousness that is alien and must be given to us from above. On the cross our sin was imputed to Jesus and His righteousness was imputed to all those who trust in Him.

So, the question is this: in what are you trusting? Do you believe you were saved by grace but need to stay in that grace by your good works? Remember, the Scriptures tell us that He who began this good work, will complete it Himself. What God began in you He will finish. Instead of trying to work yourself into God’s favor, simply rest in your redemption and you will experience that peace that passes all understanding, now and forever more.

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

God is love.  (1 John 4:16)

There is someone who knows you fully and still loves you completely. This, of course, is our Lord Jesus Christ, so read on and be greatly encouraged today.

The term used for God’s all-knowing power is omniscience. God knows everything . . . the past, the present, and the future. And that includes your past, your present, and your future and in knowing you fully, He still loves you completely. Only when we have a sense of just how broken and sinful we are does a truth like this begin to change our lives. Think about it this way: God knows your every thought, past, present, and the ones that you will think in the future. You may have secret thoughts that you keep to yourself, but they are not kept from God.

Not only does God know our every thought, He knows our every word before we can say them, “Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord” (Psalm 139:4). God knows what you ate for breakfast today and what you will eat for dinner tonight. He knows where you were last night and who you were with. He knows every aspect of your coming and going and that includes every part of your life story . . . the good, the bad, and the ugly. Now that would be reason for despair would it not, except for the fact that in spite of being fully known, God still completely love us.

I often speak with people who have a hard time getting over something in the past. They say, “I just can’t forgive myself.” Listen, we have all done things we wish we had not done. But through it all, God has never once withheld His unconditional love from us. And the best way for you to be convinced of that truth the next time your past tries to paralyze you from doing what God is calling you to do in the present, picture the cross. Jesus hung on that cross and died for your sins because He loves you.

Do you know this truth? Now I am not asking if you know it intellectually. I am asking if you know it deep down in your heart in such a way that it transforms the way you see yourself and live your life. Remember, back in the Garden of Eden, before sin, Adam and Eve were naked and unashamed. Well, after Jesus shows up in your life and covers every sin, past, present, and those still to come, with His precious blood, you are to experience that incredible feeling of being naked and unashamed because you are fully known and still completely loved.

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

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. (Ephesians 4:14)

Because God’s greatest goal for us is to conform us into the image and likeness of our Lord Jesus Christ, we are to live out the importance of growing up, not just growing old. Think about it this way: I can’t imagine anyone saying they want to be the same person today that they were a year ago. Those who are not committed to growing up in the faith are stuck in perpetual spiritual infancy.

What we need to remember is spiritual growth is not automatic after Jesus shows up and raises us from death to life. Spiritual growth demands our desire to want to grow, decide to grow, do the work to grow, and continue persisting in growing. This, of course, is a life-long process and will not be completed until we are brought into glory. And inasmuch as it is all of grace, it will not be completed without our commitment. Now we all know about commitment. We are all committed to somethings. The question is are we committed to growing and maturing in the faith? Identifying our commitments will make the answer crystal clear. Here are a few things to consider: your prayer life; your Bible reading plan; your weekly church attendance; your generosity; your service to the expansion of the cause of Christ; your thought life.

To grow up and become more like Jesus, we have to desire developing the mind of Jesus. We have to think His thoughts and there is no better example of this than these words from Paul: whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, or praiseworthy, thing about such things (Philippians 4:8). That means we must be careful what we are putting into our minds. We must be on guard to fill our minds with the wisdom of God’s Word, not the wisdom of this world.  At this level of living, we will be certain that we will not only be growing older, but we will be growing up. 

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

Let us not give up the habit of meeting together, as some are doing. Instead, let us encourage one another. (Hebrews 10:25)

Once we understand that we have been saved to be part of a family of faith, we must answer the question, “How do we cultivate community?” The answer is, “Frequency!” In order to grow our relationships within our family of faith, we must frequently make meaningful contact in genuine fellowship. Growing any relationship takes time which is why we are encouraged with our verse today to keep coming together.

Here is something we must keep in view if we are serious about building community. It is not built on convenience, but rather, commitment and conviction. We can’t just get together when we feel like it, because truth be told, most often, we simply don’t feel like it. We must be intentional and purposeful in setting aside time out of our busy schedules because we know just how important it is to be growing in community. Solitary saints are the number one target of the evil one. He is always on the prowl looking for those who are living outside of community, seeking to devour them. This, as you know, is much harder for him to do when you are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses.

One of the keys that unlocks the door to building community is forsaking the self and focusing in on our Savior, who died to give us a relationship with Him and with all those who are His. We must be willing to jettison . . .

• Self-absorption
• Self-centeredness
• Self-rule

Remember this, because we are going to be together forever with our family of faith in the new heavens and the new earth, the more time we spend with them here and now, the better we will be prepared for the there and then. The church as a whole is far more important than any individual. As my friend Steve Brown likes to say, “All those who belong to Jesus, belong to all those who belong to Jesus.” Let that truth set us free to cultivate community.

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

What if some were unfaithful? Will their unfaithfulness nullify God’s faithfulness? Not at all! (Romans 3:3-4)

The more time we spend in the Word of God, the more familiar we become with His promises. Now the evil one likes to sow seeds of doubt in our minds when we are messing things up to cause us to shrink back from the life God is calling us to live and pressing into God’s promises. But today’s passage makes one thing perfectly clear, nothing we do can nullify any of the thousands of promises God has made to His people. Here are just a few to encourage you today in both the Old and New Testaments:

God has promised . . .

To be near us when we pray – Deuteronomy 4:7

To be with us wherever we go – Joshua 1:9

To be our peace – Judges 6:24

To turn our darkness into light – 2 Samuel 22:29

To fill our dry valleys with water – 2 Kings 3:16

To direct our steps – Proverbs 3:6

To bind up our wounds – Hosea 6:1

To be our refuge in times of trouble – Nahum 1:7

I will make you fishers of men – Matthew 4:19

I will give you rest – Matthew 11:28

I will ask the Father, and he will give you the Holy Spirit – John 14:16

I will come back and take you to be with me – John 14:3

Remember, what God has promised, God will do. He has never broken a promise in the past and He is not about to start now. As I have said many times over the decades in training athletes and life coaching others, if you can see the PROMISE, you will pay the PRICE. Look to the promises of God and let them propel you into the perfect plan and purpose He has for your imperfect life.  

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

The Lord is good to all; he has compassion on all he has made.  (Psalm 145:9)

Our God is in the blessing business and I can assure you He wants to do more than bless your food. Yet, for far too many brothers and sisters in our family of faith, that is as far as they go when it comes to seeking the blessings of God. Because we serve a BIG GOD, the Creator and Sustainer of the universe, we ought to be looking to Him each day for BIG BLESSINGS.

You see, God wants us to come to Him with open minds, open hearts, and open hands, ready to receive all that He has in store for us. God wants us to trust more, seek more, believe more, wait more, expect more, pray more, and depend more. God wants us to pour out our lives in service to Him for His glory and the good of all others. As we engage in advancing the cause of His BIG Kingdom rather than our own little kingdom, God will bless our efforts beyond our wildest imaginations.

Now, perhaps you are facing a challenge that seems impossible to overcome. It will serve you well to remember, with God nothing is impossible. Hudson Taylor, a missionary from the 1800’s said this about God doing the impossible in our lives:

“There are three stages to every great work of God; first it is impossible,                        then it is difficult, then it is done.”

Remember, even when circumstances argue against all hope, we are still to have hope. Because Jesus is our Living Hope, we have a hope that nothing in this world can affect.

So, what would you like God to bless in your life right now? Come into His Presence and share what is on your heart and prepare to be “Blessed by the Best” because He who began a good work in you has promised to complete it and there is no greater blessing than that.

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

Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?  (Matthew 6:26)

In this portion of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is teaching about worry. The reason He makes it clear why we are not to worry is the fact that He has promised to meet our every need. Now don’t confuse the word worry with concern. To be concerned is to be moved to action through the leading of the Holy Spirit. Worry, on the other hand, keeps you from moving at all. It simply paralyzes any meaningful forward progress.

Jesus is pointing to the birds and their lack of any worry whatsoever for their daily needs to be met. The birds neither sow, reap, or store away in barns, yet their heavenly Father feeds them and meets their every need. And because we are much more valuable than the birds as image-bearers of the Most-High God, worry simply makes no sense at all. Here is something to think about from an anonymous writer:

“Said the robin to the sparrow,

‘I should really like to know,

Why these anxious human beings

Rush about and worry so.’

Said the sparrow to the robin,

‘Friend, I think that it must be,

That they have no heavenly Father

Such as cares for you and me.’”

Only by pressing into the presence of our Lord Jesus each day, will our lives begin to reflect the attitude of the birds. Worry will be as far as the east is from the west as we look to Jesus knowing that He has promised to meet our ever need and He has always made good on every one of His promises. You have His Word on it! Oh, let the next bird you see be a reminder that God cares for you completely and you will never be left with any unmet need. You have His Word on it.

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

Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. (Philippians 2:12-13)

The Bible tells us that we play a vital role in deepening our faith. I call it fitness for your faith, or “Faith That Is Fit!” Did you ever wonder why the Word of God contains so many athletic metaphors for growing and maturing in our faith? It’s because our faith is like a muscle, the more we use it the stronger it becomes. And the opposite is also true – the less you use it the weaker it becomes.  

D. L. Moody of the Moody Bible Institute shared profound insight into this truth – “I prayed for faith, and thought that some day faith would come down and strike me like lightning. But faith did not seem to come. One day I read in the tenth chapter of Romans, ‘Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.’ I had closed my Bible and prayed for faith. I now opened my Bible and began to study, and faith has been growing ever since.” Spending time in God’s Word was the key that unlocked the door to Moody’s ever increasing “faith fitness.”

Every time we read a passage of Scripture, we gain greater insight into both the Word of God and the God of the Word. As we read the Word, the Word reads us. This process strengthens our resolve to put into practice what we are learning. Remember, faith without works is dead. Jesus said, “If you love me, you will obey what I command” (John 14:15). Fitness for your faith is the desire to do what Jesus wants us to do, when He wants us to do it, and how He wants us to do it. And when we mess things up, we need to remember, we are secure in our relationship with Jesus not because of our faithfulness to Him, but His faithfulness to us.

When the apostle Paul tells us to “work out your salvation” he is not telling us our salvation is in jeopardy. Once saved, always saved. Paul is encouraging us to actively pursue . . . work out . . . our obedience by going to the supernatural source of our salvation and our sanctification – the Word of God. Daily doses will give you a “Faith That Is Fit!” You have His Word on it!

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

You also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession – to the praise of his glory.  (Ephesians 1:13-14)

Perhaps you have heard the phrase, “The only things in this life that you can count on is death and taxes.” Inasmuch as history seems to suggest Benjamin Franklin is not the first to come up with this phrase, below is quoted from his letter to Jean-Baptiste Le Roy in 1789, considered by many as his last great quote:

Our new Constitution is now established, everything seems to promise it will be durable; but, in this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes.

This fatalistic proverb draws on the certain and inevitability of death in this life as the only way to avoid the burden of paying taxes. Inasmuch as I agree about the certainty of death and taxes (unless you live off the grid), there is much more we can be certain about in this life and we need look no further than today’s passage of Scripture. Paul is telling the Ephesians that the Holy Spirit is God’s “seal” of approval, that we in fact, by grace through faith, are members of the family of faith. Believing in Christ means we belong to Christ. The Holy Spirit Jesus promised to believers is like a down payment, a deposit if you will, guaranteeing our inheritance that nothing in both life and death can take away from us.

I like to say it this way – God has “SEALED THE DEAL” by way of His gift of the Holy Spirit. We have the first fruits of a promised future beyond this life that no circumstance can disrupt or dislodge us from. And it’s important to make sure we understand that God’s Revelation contains no fine print that God will spring on us when we come to the end of this life. We can rest assured that the good work God began in us He will bring to completion. No weapon formed including our own sinful rebellion can cause our God to “revoke the warranty” of His Revelation.

So, thinking about your life right now as this finds you, is it not a great encouragement to know that you have been set apart for all eternity and the deal of your divine destiny has been sealed by His Holy Spirit? May our hearts be griped by God’s amazing grace. Because Jesus has “SEALED THE DEAL” of our divine destiny by the shedding of His precious blood, may the lives we live be always and only to the praise of His glory!

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