Author Archives: Pastor Tommy

How would you describe your walk with Jesus currently?  Hot?  Cold?  Lukewarm?  Jesus warned that it would be better to be cold in our faith than lukewarm!  “I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth” (Revelation 3:15-16).

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to find out what getting spit out of His mouth might be like!  “For we know him who said, ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay.’ And again, ‘The Lord will judge his people.’ It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:30-31).  So with the understanding that living above the level of lukewarm is a matter of more than casual interest, let’s take a look at what a lukewarm Christian looks like and ask a question: How do we bring the pot to a boil?

Lukewarm Christians look pretty good on the surface of their salvation.  They attend church regularly . . . unless they receive an offer for a day on the water or a round of golf or a trip to the stadium.  They give their tithe to their church and even additional money to charities . . . just as long as it doesn’t hurt their lifestyle in any way.  They understand the truths of Scripture and the call to be different from the world . . . but when forced to choose, they would rather blend in with the world than stand out for Christ.  

The lukewarm are engaged in service to God, but their motivation is rooted in what others think and say about them.  They absolutely love the stories of sold-out Christians who have impacted the world for Christ, but they are not willing to move outside of their pre-determined zones of comfort and security to do the same. 

• The lukewarm call “sold-out” what Jesus calls service.
• The lukewarm call “radical” what Jesus calls responsibility.
• The lukewarm call “drastic” what Jesus calls duty.
• The lukewarm call “fanatical” what Jesus calls faith.

With or without Jesus, life looks about the same for the lukewarm Christian because they are not doing anything that requires faith.

But this is not for you!  To be sure, we all lapse into “lukewarm” in our walk with Jesus from time to time. I did not write this to evoke feelings of guilt and fear in you; guilt and fear never raise our temperature for any sustained period.  Sure, we may run hot for a time when we are feeling guilty about our past or fearful about our future.  But not for long . . . and not in a way that pleases God.  Remember, God does not look on the outward appearance, but at our hearts (1 Samuel 16:7).  As David beautifully captured the heart that pleases our Lord in Psalm 51:17-17.

You will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it;

you will not be pleased with a burnt offering.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;

a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

So what is the antidote to living above the level of lukewarm?  The Gospel, of course!

The Gospel is the fuel that ignites the flame of faith and keeps it burning hot, regardless of the cost or circumstance.  The Gospel reminds us what Jesus has done on our behalf, and the love of Christ begins to compel us, replacing guilt and fear.  The Gospel turns obligation into opportunity, which is a fragrant offering in the sight of God.  The Gospel is the only force that can lift us above the level of lukewarm and keep us there. 

So if you feel yourself running a little less than hot for Jesus, the solution is not to “do more” or “try harder.”  And it certainly is not to make resolutions to “do better next time,” only to find yourself falling woefully short of the intended mark . . . again.  The solution is found in your Savior and in your Savior alone.  See His sacrifice for you.  Feel His forgiveness for you.  Hear His victory cry, “It is finished!” uttered for you.  And hear His decree of power in your life: “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts” (Zechariah 4:6).

This is the only way to consistently live above the level of lukewarm.  “For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13).

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

Many in the church mistakenly think their greatest problem is out there somewhere.  They think it is the environment . . . the culture . . . the government . . . the neighbors . . . the boss at the office . . . the list could go on and on.  I counsel many married men and women who are convinced that their greatest problem is located on the other side of the bed.  But the Bible has something altogether different to say about our enemy, and until we understand what is going on inside of us, there will be no measurable change outside of us. 

For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.  (Galatians 5:17)

The Bible makes it crystal clear that our enemy is not out there somewhere.  It lies within us, as the old man (the desires of the flesh) wages war with the new man (the desires of the Spirit).  Before Jesus showed up, we were content to honor the desires of the flesh, living to satisfy our sin nature.  But after Jesus showed up, the war began between the old nature and the new nature.  The enemy is not “out there.”  It is deep inside of us!  Our Lord warned:

What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person.  For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.  These are what defile a person.

(Matthew 15:18-20)

Jesus provided a penetrating and profound diagnosis of the root problem that lies deep within the soil of every one of us.  Years ago, a newspaper article invited readers all over the globe to answer the age-old question: “What’s wrong with the world?”  G.K. Chesterton, the great British writer and thinker responded succinctly, “I AM!”

He got it!  Do we?

It’s important to remember sin’s goal in this battle: to separate us from God.  We cannot be taken out of His loving hand (John 10:28-30), but we can be tipped over and buried under the weight of our sins.  Satan wants to do to us what he did to Adam and Eve—to make us believe that God cannot be trusted.  The devil brought Adam and Eve to an utterly insane conclusion: that God—the One who created them . . . sustained them . . . gave them everything good . . . walked with them in the cool of the day . . . their loving Creator and Friend—could not be trusted. 

The devil tries to make us believe the same thing each day.  “Has God really said . . .?”  Every time we sin and give in to the desires of the flesh, we prove we doubt the goodness of our great God.  That is why we need to keep the Gospel before us moment by moment.  The truths of the Gospel give us the necessary motivation to keep getting up every time we stumble and fall, because we know we are secure in Jesus.

Ultimately the victory has already been won for us on Golgotha’s Hill.  Now go out and walk in that victory!  

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

The truth that is to follow is to be a great source of comfort for you today.  Nobody knew this better than the apostle Paul.

I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.  Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it.  But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.  (Philippians 3:12-14)

Paul had every reason to believe he could earn the favor and blessing of God.  He was part of the “in” crowd at the Temple.  He was a Pharisee of Pharisee’s and lived his life to the letter of the law.  Yet in spite of all of his performing, Jesus showed up and made it clear that Paul was never going to be able to earn his way into God’s favor, no matter how hard he tried.  In fact, his focus on earning and performing was only driving him further away from God . . . not closer. 

What a comfort for those of us who are straining to keep running on the performance treadmill of life!  We do not have to perform our way into relationship with God.  And we do not have to maintain, increase, or improve on our performance to remain there.  It we were not good enough to get in, we certainly not good enough to stay in.  It is a prize that is to be won, not earned; and it has been won by Jesus.

The more Paul dug deep into this truth, the more he could focus on pursuing and finding pleasure in God, rather than performing for God.  Because of what Jesus had already done for Paul, he could live out practically what he already was positionally: a possession of the Prince of Peace.  Paul knew it was Jesus who took hold of him. and not the other way around.  When we understand this Gospel-saturated truth, we are free to be what we have been called by God to be.

This truth empowered Paul to rise even above a past that was littered with sin, even the wickedness of his involvement in the death of Stephen, the first Christian martyr.  A past like Paul’s would have paralyzed him if he was still stuck on a performance-based religion—the need to earn eternal life and God’s blessings in everyday life.  Guilt would have ground him into the ashes of defeat.  But Jesus freed him from that, and now Paul was indeed free to focus on the faith that had been won by Jesus on the cross. 

So for all of you recovering Pharisees (and believe me, I am the chief of them), let us rest in the truth that Jesus has done everything that needs to be done for us to have a relationship with Him.  We cannot damage that relationship or destroy it, no matter how badly we perform.  Resting in the truth that we are covered in the righteousness of Christ is reason to celebrate, and the more we celebrate this truth the more we will consistently live a life that is pleasing to God and beneficial to others.  As J.I. Packer rightly observed, “No need in Christendom is more urgent than the need for a renewed awareness of what the grace of God really is.” 

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

Because we are all made in the image of God, everyone matters.  Both believer and unbeliever alike are valuable, important, and needed in the kingdom of God.  Because God doesn’t make junk, every person has meaning and significance.  And that is why we should look at people—all people—as part of a “holy humanity,” created in the image of our Holy God.  To be sure, sin has twisted and corrupted this image, but the image still remains.  Every person bears the image of God, regardless of where they live, how they look, and what they have learned.   

Think about the people Jesus hung around with.  In the eyes of the “good” and “valuable” and “important” people like the Pharisees, Jesus hung around with the wrong crowd.  He spent time with the dregs of society: prostitutes, tax collectors, criminals, the marginalized, and the outcasts of society.  He would have lived a far more comfortable and convenient life if He had invested His time in the socially acceptable and politically correct.  But He did not!  He was here for the down and out, not the up and in, and He would not let the opinions of others keep Him from helping the hurting reconnect and recapture their true humanity as image bearers of the Most High God!

Only the power of the Gospel enables us to tear down walls of self-focus and self-protection, freeing us to see the image of God in every person we meet.  This is what empowers us to live beyond the borders of our own lives.  We begin living for the glory of God and the good of others . . . all others.  We begin caring about people and for people who in no way can care about and for us.  Certainly they are in no position to benefit our lives.  Fredrick Buechner hits this proverbial “nail” squarely on the head in The Magnificent Defeat…

The love for equals is a human thing—of friend for friend, brother for brother.  It is to love what is loving and lovely.  The world smiles.  The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing—the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor, the sick, the failures, the unlovely.  This is compassion, and it touches the heart of the world.  The love for the more fortunate is a rare thing—to love those who succeed where we fail, to rejoice without envy with those who rejoice, the love of the poor for the rich, of the black man for the white man.  The world is always bewildered by its saints.  And then there is the love for the enemy—love for the one who does not love you but mocks, threatens, and inflicts pain.  The tortured’s love for the torturer.  This is God’s love.  It conquers the world. 

We love because we have been loved and we serve because we have been served by the One who purchased us with His precious blood.  As Jesus told His disciples, “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28).  And don’t miss this: Jesus knew we could never pay Him back in any way for all that He did for us.  For this reason …

• Our purpose is built upon His will
• Our passion is structured upon His mission
• Our potential is connected to His power. 

At this level of living, every person matters to us because every person matters to God.  God is in the process of making all things new, and in that process He has called us to live for something bigger than ourselves.  Everything we have belongs to God; therefore we are to be using it all for the expansion of His kingdom, not our own.  When we care more about what God cares about, we will care more about other people.  Mercy and love will be the distinctives of our lives, and all those we touch will see a God who is both merciful and loving.  We make our God attractive when we look for and acknowledge the image of God in the “holy humanity” God brings into our lives. 

When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbors if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid.  But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed.  Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteousness.  (Luke 14:12-14)

I know this all sounds so radical and counterintuitive . . . but what would you expect from such a radical Savior who profoundly talked and personally walked such a counterintuitive message? 

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

A long time ago in a place far, far away . . .

We are all familiar with this timeworn opening line from many fairy tale stories.  Today we will look at another story—not a fairy tale, but a fact.  It started off well, went terribly wrong, and is now in the process of becoming the greatest story ever told.

In the beginning, God created all things, including our first parents, Adam and Eve.  They were special and valued above all other created things because they were created in the image of God.  God loved our first parents with all His heart and placed them in the Garden of Eden, the paradise He had prepared for them.  They were made by God for God, and God was the One who would meet their every need and satisfy their every desire.   

Before Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden, there were no mixed motives, selfish ambitions, or sinful pride.  They lived in a posture of loving God and serving others, and everything they did was done for the glory of the One who sat upon the throne of their lives.  Then, in one staggering act of cosmic rebellion, Adam and Eve turned all of creation in on themselves by looking for an identity outside of their relationship with God.  They no longer lived for the glory of God, because they were too busy living for their own glory.  They demanded that they occupy the throne of their lives, not God.  Everything they did was done to meet their own needs, accomplish their own agendas, and satisfy their own preferences.  They reduced their existence to a sin-saturated satisfaction of the self, losing all consciousness of God Himself, except for a fearful expectation of judgment.

We are no different; this is the existence we all live before Jesus shows up.  The only antidote for a sin-saturated life is the Gospel.  Only the Gospel has the power to incapacitate the snare of self-satisfaction and the seduction of sin.  Only the Gospel can put Christ back into what has become a Christ-less Christianity for far too many.  The Gospel, in all its glory, puts Christ where He belongs: at the center of our very existence, our Savior, Who is both our Source and our Hope.

SOURCE – Every good gift is from the hands of God (James 1:17).  Every gift, talent, and ability is rooted in our relationship with Jesus.  The source of our opportunities and possibilities is Jesus.  We are able to do what we do, not because of our strength, but because of His strength at work in us (Philippians 2:13).  When we want more out of life, we should want more of Jesus!  We will then invest our time in things that move us further in and further up into our salvation.  

HOPE – As Jesus is our Hope (1 Timothy 1:1), nothing in life is hopeless.  Jesus brings light to our darkness.  Jesus brings peace to our anxiety.  Jesus brings order to our chaos.  Jesus brings life to our death.  When Jesus is our hope, we can trust in His promises and count on His presence.  He will meet us in our place of deepest need and bring us to our place of greatest joy. 

When Jesus is your Source and Hope, He is at the center of your very existence.  This is the place where you live beyond the borders of your goals, your dreams, your desires, your needs, and your preferences.  All that you have, you give over for the glory of God and the expansion of His kingdom.  Your time is His.  Your talent is His.  Your treasure is His.  At this level of living, personal advancement and self-satisfaction are as far from your center as the east is from the west.  Just as Jesus did, you lay down your life and pour yourself out for others. 

We need to remember that what rules our hearts shapes our lives.  For Jesus, the love of the Father ruled His heart and ultimately shaped His life into the shape of a cross.  The vertical love He had for His father spread out horizontally for a multitude of redeemed souls that no man can number.  This is the life we have been called to live.

So is Jesus your source and your hope?  If He is, you will know it, and so will everyone who comes in contact with you.

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

Upon your first glance at the title of this blog, you might be thinking about another kind of “hurling,” like the time when the great fish vomited the prophet Jonah from its belly onto the shoreline.  I think we can leave that topic alone!  In today’s blog, I’d like to discuss holy hurling: one of the most magnificent pictures of the love, grace, and mercy of our heavenly Father, which is provided for us by the prophet Micah.  

You will hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.  (Micah 7:19)

Micah’s magnificent metaphor is a tremendous source of comfort and hope to all Christians.  We can all picture someone tossing something over the side of a boat into the depths of the sea, such as a net or an anchor.  For me, it was my car keys; the hook on the end of my fishing line snagged them just right as I was casting into the sea.  I will never forget watching them slowly descend toward the bottom of the sea and wondering sourly how I would get home that day.   

But Micah’s picture is quite different and much more dramatic. Our God “hurled” our sins—all our sins—overboard into the depths of the sea.  Not dropped . . . not tossed . . . not pitched . . . but “HURLED” overboard, never to be seen or heard from again.  God’s justice was satisfied on the cross by His precious Son, so God finds great delight in putting away our sins forever.  David rejoiced that “As far as the east is from the west, so far does [God] remove our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:12).

 Jerry Bridges paints a wonderful picture of God’s holy hurling in The Gospel for Real Life.

God is not a reluctant forgiver.  He is a joyous one.  His justice having been satisfied and His wrath having been exhausted, He is now eager to extend His forgiveness to all who trust in His son as their propitiatory sacrifice. 

Because Jesus paid the penalty for all our sins—past, present, and future—God is pictured in a posture of “HOLY HURLING”—forcefully expelling every single transgression to the bottom of the sea . . . all forgiven, all forgotten.  Not because of anything we do, but because of everything Jesus has done on our behalf. 

Corrie ten Boom, that remarkable Christian survivor of the Holocaust, put the exclamation mark to Micah’s declaration of what God, in Christ, has done for us by casting our sins into the depths of the sea.  She wrote, “And then God put up a sign saying, ‘No fishing allowed.’”  God is no longer our Judge.  He judged Jesus for our sins and poured out His wrath on Him.  Clothed in the perfect righteousness of Christ, we no longer stand guilty before a Holy God in His heavenly courtroom.

It is Satan, our enemy, the accuser, who wants us to keep dredging up old sins so we can live under the weight of guilt and shame.  And if he can’t get us to do that—if we heed the “No fishing allowed” sign erected by Scripture—Satan will do everything in his power to incite us to dredge up old sins of others.  Does any of this resonate with you?

The more we live in the truths of the Gospel, the better we can see and embrace the holy hurling of our heavenly Father.  The next time you are tempted to live in the paralyzing guilt and shame of past sins, picture your God hurling them overboard and watch them plunging into the bottom of the sea, never to bob to the surface again.  Christian, your sins are forgiven . . . forgotten . . . and you are never forsaken.  What a friend we have in Jesus!

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

One of the great gifts we receive from God, as He leads us further in and further up into the grace of the Gospel, is in going from referee to coach.

A referee is in the position of ultimate authority on the field of competition.  A referee has two primary tasks: the first is to enforce the rules; the second is to enact the consequences for violation of the rules.  A referee is vital for ensuring that the game is played in a way where chaos does not reign supreme.  Everyone can utilize their gifts, talents, and abilities because order is maintained and managed.

But when it comes to the game of life, the Gospel empowers every Christian to go from referee to coach.  The church is in need of more coaches . . . not referees.  Coaches encourage, inspire, and motivate their players to perform at the peak of their God-given abilities.  Coaches remind their players of what they have already learned as they are performing on the field of competition.  And how do they do that?  They get their players to focus on the Gospel and all Jesus has done on their behalf.

In a word, coaches get others to focus on the blessings of redemption:

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.

(Galatians 3:13)

God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons.  (Galatians 4:4-5)

You were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers.  (1 Peter 1:18)

Jesus gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.  (Titus 2:14)

Those who are truly in love with Jesus receive both the referee and the coach, knowing that God uses both to grow them up in Christ.  To be sure, we all are in need of holy confrontations from time to time, like the one that David received from Nathan.  This was one of God’s great graces in the life of His king.  David was trapped in a season of sin, and his conscience was not bringing appropriate accusations against him.  King David was clearly numb to his own sin and was snared by it.  If you don’t have a Nathan in your life right now, pray that God will send you one!

But I am convinced that we all need more coaching in our lives than we do refereeing.  We need to be continually reminded that we are freed from the curse of the law.  We need to be continually reminded that we have the full rights of sons of the Most High God.  We need to be continually reminded that we have been saved from an empty life and delivered into an abundant life in Christ.  And we need to be continually reminded that Jesus poured His life out on the cross that we might be His very own. 

Coaches provide reminders that stir the heart and strengthen the will to live a life that is pleasing to God . . . not because of what we hope to gain, but because of what we have already been given. 

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

If you have been following this blog, you’ll remember that back on July 6^th we took a look at the idea of shrinking our salvation.  On July 17^th my beloved pastor and friend, Tullian Tchividjian, gave me the privilege of standing in for him in the pulpit at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church.  The title of my sermon was “Don’t Shrink Your Salvation.”  I received so much positive feedback from folks at that service that I decided to expand on that message a bit and unpack a little more of our shrink-wrapped salvation and God’s supernatural solution. 

By nature we want life to be all about us.  Just a glance back to the Garden of Eden shows us that this is exactly what Adam and Eve did.  They weren’t satisfied with having been made in the image of God; they wanted to be God.  They wanted to be the center of life.  They wanted to be the focus of life.  They wanted to be the purpose of life.  They wanted to be the ruler of life.  Instead of continuing to enter into their personal relationship with God, they exited out by putting themselves in the place of God.  And we do the very same thing!

We shrink our salvation when we focus the cross-work of Christ on us and the personal concerns of our lives such as . . .

• A better job
• A happier marriage
• Less rebellious children
• Good health
• Great friends

Make no mistake, when Christ is at the center of our lives, we can expect to make progress in all of these areas.  BUT THESE THINGS ARE NOT WHAT OUR SALVATION IS ALL ABOUT.  Our salvation is all about Jesus and what matters most to Him.  We shrink our salvation when we work harder at making our kingdom come, rather than His kingdom come.  We shrink our salvation when the dominating focus of our lives is centered only on those things that directly affect and address us.  We shrink our salvation when we reduce it down to the size of our lives.  We shrink our salvation when the consequences of our sin matter more than the offense against the One we sin against.  We shrink our salvation when the self is at the center of life, rather than our Savior.     

Jesus is on a rescue mission of restoring everything that has been marred so dreadfully by sin.  When Jesus said, “I am making all things new” (Revelation 21:5), He was telling us to expand the borders of our salvation beyond the borders of our lives.  If we are disciples of Christ, we must be concerned about the things that concern Him.  And make no mistake; Jesus is concerned about more than making life work out the way we want it to.  The grace of the Gospel is far greater than the good it brings into our individual lives!

The salvation that Jesus won for us brings with it more personal blessings than we could ever imagine.  But we must look beyond our blessings to salvation’s greater goal, which is to align ourselves with the goals of God’s kingdom.  He cares for the lost; we need to care for the lost.  He cares for the broken hearted; we need to care for the broken hearted.  He cares for the widow and the orphan; we need to care for the widow and the orphan.  When we are focused more on what we are getting out of our salvation, we stunt our growth and shrink our salvation. 

Because shrinking our salvation is woven into our sin-stunted DNA, we need to be intentional about expanding the borders of our salvation beyond the borders of our individual lives.  We need to align our goals with His goals . . . our desires with His desires . . . our plans with His plans . . . and our purposes with His purposes.  When we do, we can be assured that we are living for a greater glory than the glory of the self.  We are living for the glory of the One who purchased us with His precious blood and calls us into living a life that truly matters and will live on long after we are gone.   

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

How have you been spending your time lately?  When you have time to do whatever you want to do (as infrequent as that may be), how do you spend it?  Now, let me quickly assure you that this is not an article about time management and three steps to effectively managing your time.  It’s about prayerfully considering how you are investing the 168 hours the Lord gives you each week.

Studies tell us that the average American Christian spends less than ten minutes per day alone with God, while spending nearly four hours each day watching television.  Ten minutes with Truth . . . four hours with trash.  It’s no surprise that the church in the United States is having very little effect on the surrounding culture and failing to impact the world for Christ. 

Before you think you’re “off the hook” because you don’t watch much television, give some thought to the other things you do with your free time.  Is there a hobby or recreation that consumes that time?  Does a sports team consume that time?  Your job?  Is there a relationship that consumes your time?  Anything smaller than God that consumes our time is simply a waste of time!  And we need to remember that for every hour we spend, we have one less hour to spend!

Jesus spent every hour centered on the will of His Father in heaven.  His meat and drink was to do the will of the Father (John 4:34).  In one of His darkest moments, just hours before His crucifixion, sweating drops of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus said, “Not my will, but your will be done.”  Jesus knew what He was here to do, and He refused to let anything distract Him from it—not the devil, not even the religious leaders who dogged His every step.  Every confrontation He had with them was another opportunity to do the will of God by teaching those who had ears to hear what was wrong with the world and what God was doing about it.   

I recognize that none of us will never use all our time as wisely as Jesus did.  I just think a little self-examination will go a long way in helping us use the precious, un-repeatable time we have been given more wisely.  It’s important to note that Jesus never wasted a single moment, and yet we often find Him retreating from the crowds—retreating even from His disciples—to spend time alone with His heavenly Father.

So time well spent is time invested in service to our Lord and sitting before our Lord.  You remember the story of Martha and Mary, don’t you?  Mary, “who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching,” was commended by our Lord for choosing “the good portion, which will not be taken away from her” (Luke 40:39, 42).  

The only way to begin maximizing our time investments in the things that really matter in life is by keeping the Gospel before us each day.  Remembering what Jesus has done for us is the key that unlocks the door leading to a life of meaning, significance and purpose.  Like Lazarus lying dead in the tomb, we could not see, hear, smell, taste, talk, or walk.  We were dead.  But at the call of Christ, like the one He spoke that day—“Lazarus, come out!”—we too were raised from death to life, a life that is to be lived coram Deo—before the face of God.

Remember, when you spend an hour you have one less hour to spend . . . so spend it wisely!

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

What do you long for?  A better job?  A nicer home?  A happier marriage?  Godlier children?  A longer vacation?  A plusher retirement?  If what we are longing for is not Jesus, then we have substituted a lesser lover in our lives, and it is a lover that will never truly satisfy. 

If Jesus is at the center of our lives, we will live with a sense of deep longing for the day when we will be in His presence forever.  Lesser loves will not have the power to possess our minds, capture our hearts, and direct our wills when we love Jesus more than anything else in life.  When driven and directed by a lovely longing for our Lord, we are able to keep things in their proper perspective.  We understand that there is room for only One on the throne of our lives—and His name is Jesus Christ.  When He occupies His rightful place in our hearts, our lives point to Him and everything we think, do, say, and desire becomes a hymn sung to His glory.  

When we long for Jesus more than anything else, all that we have is viewed in light of eternity.  We see beyond all that we have been given to the One who has given it all for His glory—not ours.  Now, instead of viewing every good gift as a means to “horizontal happiness,” we are captured by His “vertical vision.”  We expand the borders of our lives beyond the borders of our lives.  We hold loosely to . . .

• Our plans
• Our dreams
• Our goals
• Our schedules
• Our agendas
• Our wants
• Our preferences

We hold loosely even to our lives, as we hold tightly to Jesus.  We see our story in the context of His story, and we acknowledge Jesus as the Author and Finisher of our story.  We dare not take the pen to write any portion of our story, because any segment we write will be stained by our sinful desires (see Jeremiah 17:9).  Instead, we are always looking for ways to connect what we are doing with what Jesus is doing—right here and right now, both personally and professionally. 

We were not made and remade to live simply for ourselves.  We were created and given new life that we might live our lives for Jesus, and this is the only way that life will have eternal value—when we live for Him and in Him.  We live in the present moment, but we long for that future moment when we will pass from this world into the next, where every moment will be filled with the presence of our Prince.  As Paul wrote to the Corinthians:

Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him.  (2 Corinthians 5:8-10)

So . . . are you living with a lovely longing for the Lord Jesus Christ?  If yes, praise Him.  If no, prayerfully consider what changes you need to make . . . because when you make them, it will make all the difference in the world for you.  Robert Murray M’Cheyne provided great counsel for all of us who long to long more for Jesus, “For one look at yourself, take ten looks at Christ.”   

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