Author Archives: Pastor Tommy

The life that Jesus purchased on the cross is abundant life in more ways than one.  To be sure, it is abundant because it gives us everything we need for eternal life.  But it is also abundant because it gives us everything we need for everyday life.  The problem comes in when we choose to live a life smaller than the one Jesus paid for with his own precious blood.  Jesus said, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.  I came that they may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). 

Now the “thief” is very crafty in executing his plan in destroying life.  It really doesn’t look like destruction at all.  In fact, on the surface it looks pretty good.  It is a life that is lived with the greatest goal of personal happiness.  We want our home to be loving, our health to be good, and our harvest to be plentiful.  And what is wrong with that you ask?  On the surface there is nothing wrong with wanting a loving home, good health, and a plentiful harvest.  These are good gifts that God is often pleased to give to His people.  But when these gifts are our greatest goals we are living lives that are smaller and narrower than they were ever meant to be.  You see, Jesus didn’t die on the cross to make you happy.  He died on the cross to make you His.  And in making you His you may find your home troubled, your health tested, and your harvest threatened. 

So what kind of life have you been living lately?  Have you been living in pursuit of your happiness or His holiness?  You were not blood-bought to accomplish your goals and meet your needs, but to pant after and partner with the Most High God in expanding the cause of His kingdom.  It is being driven to get up early and stay up late to know better, love deeper, and serve more faithfully the One who has promised to never leave you nor forsake you.  Now that is true happiness in both life and death.  That is the Gospel.  That is more grace for your race.  NEVER FORGET THAT…AMEN!!

When was the last time you contemplated what God in Christ really did for you?  To begin to fully grasp this incredible truth of the Gospel, you must be able to see what you were in need of before Jesus showed up.  You were not in need of rehabilitation.  You were not in need of restoration.  You were not in need of rejuvenation.  You were in need of rescue.  Nothing short of rescue would do.

“He delivered us from the domain of darkness” Paul tells us, “and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son” (Colossians 1:13).  This is the language of rescue…not rehabilitation, restoration, or rejuvenation.  It was only the rescue mission of God that freed Israel from slavery in Egypt.  It is only the rescue mission of God that freed you from slavery to sin.  In a word, you were rescued from yourself! 

By God’s grace you were rescued out of one kingdom and into another kingdom.  You were rescued from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light.  You were rescued from the kingdom of evil to the kingdom of good.  You were rescued from the kingdom of death to the kingdom of life.  You were rescued from your little kingdom where your heart is ruled by the pursuit of earthly treasures to His big kingdom where your heart is ruled by Jesus. 

So which kingdom have you been living for lately?  Which kingdom has meant more to you both in your personal life and your professional life?  Which kingdom has been shaping your life and the lives of all those you lead and influence?  The little kingdom of one, or the big kingdom of the One?  When you are pursuing your dreams, your desires, and your delights you are serving the kingdom of one.  But when you are pursuing His dreams, His desires, and His delights you are serving the kingdom of the One. 

This is the place where you refuse to pursue anything smaller than God.  This is the place where you refuse to use your God-given gifts, talents, and abilities in the service of your own little kingdom.  This is the place where loving God becomes your first priority and loving others is a close second.  This is the Gospel.  This is grace for your race.  NEVER FORGET THAT…AMEN! 

How rich are you today?  I am not speaking about the balance in your checking account.  I am speaking about your blessings in Christ!  If by the standards of this world you are not rich but you are in Christ, rejoice, for you are rich beyond measure!  From the pen of the apostle Paul we read, “To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.”

Jesus has riches that are beyond the measure of mathematics.  Jesus has riches that are beyond the reach of reason.  Eye has not seen, ear has not heard the riches of our Savior because they are simply beyond measure.  But you say, “I am a great sinner!”  I say, “Your Lord is a greater Savior!”  Jesus is more ready to forgive your sins than you are to transgress His laws and He proved it on Golgotha’s Hill.  Those who have been blood-bought by the Lamb of God are rich beyond measure. 

Know this – your crucified Savior has crucified all of your sins…past, present and to come.  Every sin has been nailed to that dirty tree.  When Jesus said it was finished…it was finished indeed.  Once you have confessed your sins with a godly sorrow as Peter did when he went out of the camp and wept bitterly after looking into the eyes of his Lord and Savior, return and feed the sheep.  Also know this – your risen Savior has given to you a risen life.  The power of His resurrection has given to you all the power you need to rise up out of the ashes of any defeat.  Shed those grave-clothes of disappointment, discouragement, or defeat, because Jesus has made you rich beyond measure.  This is the Gospel.  This is grace for your race.  NEVER FORGET THAT…AMEN!    

How fitting to surround our National Day of Prayer with two posts about prayer and our Prince who unceasingly prays for His people.  Wednesday we looked at Preemptive Prayer and today we will focus on Protective Prayer.  “I do not ask that you take them out of the world,” Jesus prayed, “but that you keep them from the evil one” (John 17:15).

It is instructive to note that Jesus did NOT pray to God that His people would be spared from hardship, trials, and suffering!  His protective prayer was not for insulation and isolation from the challenges of daily living.  No, our Lord was praying for protection from Satan, the old master whom we once served.  Jesus knew that Satan would not give up his former servants without a fight.  Jesus understood that if Satan had his way with us, we would live little lives marked by self-righteous, self-reliant, self-absorbed, and sin-filled service of self rather than the Savior.   

What our Lord knows well—and what we often forget—is that disciples of Christ need to be fitted for heaven in the fires of hell.  The winds of trial . . . the storms of testing . . . the difficulties of discipleship are all designed to drive the roots deeper and deeper into the soil of the sanctified life.  If we are to be ready one day to wear a crown, it will be because God has given us the grace to carry our cross.  If our Lord, known as a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, the God-man who was perfect in every way, suffered on our behalf, should we who are sinful by both nature and habit shrink back from the struggles of this life?  May God forbid it!     

Mark this well, believer: if there be no devil to do battle with and no worldly enemies to fight, there is evil enough inside our own hearts that requires protective prayers from our Prince of Peace.  Steve Brown said, “God is bringing you to the end of yourself.” My beloved friend, Pastor Tullian Tchividjian, agrees: “The sooner God brings you to the end of yourself, the sooner you can begin living for God.”

Let us take sword to every enemy we must face today, knowing that we fight not in our own strength, but in the strength of our Lord.  NEVER FORGET THAT…AMEN

How has your prayer life been lately?  Regardless of your answer…spiritual and strong…worldly and weak…or absent altogether…I have good news for you from the lips of our Lord Himself when He said to Peter, “I have prayed for you…” (Luke 22:32).  In this account between Peter and Jesus, it is infallibly recorded for us that Satan was after Peter to “sift him as wheat.”  Satan set his sights on the disciples of Jesus then and he sets his sights on the disciples of Jesus now.  This will not end until Jesus returns.  Until then, find comfort in what Jesus is saying to all of us today…I HAVE PRAYED FOR YOU!

We will not know until we get to the other side what we truly owe to our Redeemer for His constant and never-ceasing intercession.  He is advocating our cause before our Father in heaven and notice with me this incredible God-centered, Gospel-saturated, grace-filled truth…

Jesus advocated Peter’s cause to His Father in heaven

BEFORE Satan advanced his attacks against him!

Beloved in the Lord find great comfort in this truth today regardless of the difficulties you are facing.  The Prince of Peace holds not His peace when it comes to preemptive prayer for His people…and that includes you!  Whatever difficulties you are facing today Jesus is pleading preemptive prayer on your behalf.  Could it be any other way when His nailed-scarred hands pressed together in prayer bear witness to the wicked wounds He welcomed on our behalf?  I think not!

It’s important to note that Jesus did not promise to pray for Peter.  He did not wait for Satan to “sift him as wheat” before he prayed.  He prayed preemptively for Peter and He is doing the same for all of us today.  Your Savior has pleaded your cause to your Father against every enemy you face…both seen and unseen.  There is nothing you cannot face today when this truth sinks deep down into your bones.  When you cannot but lift a sigh to heaven, our Prince of Peace is shielding you from Satan’s snare with supernatural supplications.

Oh, one final point.  You will remember that Satan in some sense did indeed “sift Peter as wheat” as Peter denied Jesus three times on the night he was betrayed.  So what was the result of this preemptive prayer?  It was the enabling power of the Holy Spirit for Peter to “turn back” and feed the sheep of the Good Shepherd after he had turned away.  If this finds you groaning under the weight of the conviction of sin…do what Peter did and “turn back” to Jesus.  The preemptive prayers of our Prince provides both the enabling grace to turn away from sin and to turn back when we have sinned.  NEVER FORGET THAT…AMEN!    

What have you been living for lately?  If you are living for anything less than your Savior you are committing what I call “spiritual suicide”.  When you live for self, choosing to do what you want to do rather than what God wants you to do, you are actually dying a slow death.  When you hold tightly to the advancement of your agenda, your cause, your story, instead of His agenda, His cause, and His story, you are slowly shrinking the size of your soul.  The promise of having it all when you are living for yourself is actually a promise of ultimate death.  To be sure, achievement and acceptance may give you what seems like “life” for a while, but in the end you will be engulfed, enslaved, and ultimately extinguished by them.

“For whoever would save his life will lose it,” writes Mark, “but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it” (Mark 8:35).  Here we are confronted with the truth of the Gospel that says the only way we can be assured of life is to die.  We must die to our preferences.  We must die to our priorities.  We must die to our privileges.  We must die to our possessions.  We must die to our purposes.  To live for these things is to live for something smaller than Christ.  It is seeking living water from dry wells. 

The Gospel calls us to be willing participants in the death of the personal claims we have to our lives.  So powerful is the pull of desire in the direction of living for the self, death is the only way to life.  Christ calls us to die that we might live because there is no life outside of Christ.  Seeking life outside of Christ is simply shrinking life slowly into a downward spiral of ultimate spiritual suicide.  Die to self…live for Christ.  This is the Gospel that gives you all the grace you need to run the race set before you.  NEVER FORGET THAT…AMEN!

“Be strong in the grace,” Paul exhorts Timothy, “that is in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 2:1).  The grace you need for the race set before you is without measure because it flows from within the Master.  Like a fountain, grace flows from the Prince to His people in abundant supplies.  Grace to recapture your heart.  Grace to renew your mind.  Grace to restore your soul.  Grace to rehabilitate your marriage.  Grace to resurrect your parent/child relationship.  Grace to refresh your single life.  Grace to re-start your church service.  And this grace is not reserved for a few super “spiritual” saints.  It is poured out on every blood-bought child of God regardless of the station in life for two reasons…God’s everlasting glory and your eternal good. 

You see, grace does more than give eternal life.  It gives “every day” life and it gives it in abundant supply.  Moment by moment, God has given you all the grace you need to do all He is calling you to do.  Yet many Christians forsake the grace of God and instead choose to live lives built upon the twin pillars of self-confidence and self-sufficiency.  Self-confidence is really no confidence at all.  Self-sufficiency is really not sufficient.  These are enemies of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ which demands we depend upon Him and not ourselves for all that we need in both life and death.  When Jesus told His disciples, “Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5) He was making it clear that we are dependent upon His grace for everything. 

So what have you been depending on lately?  Have you been living portions of your life apart from Christ?  Have you been working in your strength or in the strength of our Lord?  Have you been depending upon your wisdom or the wisdom of the Word of God?  DON’T BE FOOLED into thinking that you don’t have a problem with relying on yourself rather than His grace.  Paul would have never exhorted Timothy to be “strong in the grace of Christ” if our natural tendency to rely on ourselves was not so powerful and pervasive.  Paul knew by way of personal experience that it is woven into our DNA.  Paul told his spiritual son Timothy that the only real source of true strength to shape his life was to be found in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.  God-confidence, not self-confidence is true confidence.  God-sufficiency…not self-sufficiency is all sufficient for everything you need in both eternal life and every day life.  NEVER FORGET THAT…AMEN!  

Our message on God Replacements from Monday was well received.  Today, by God’s grace, we are going to drive the roots a bit deeper into the soil of the sanctified life. 

The heart of the believer is the battleground where all our fights are fought.  God replacements (idols of the heart) battle for supremacy of the heart and in the heart there is only room for one supreme ruler.  Make no mistake, whatever rules your heart runs your life.  Moment by moment, either God or one of your God replacements will be on the throne of your heart exerting inescapable influence over every area of your life.         

In the Bible, the word “heart” describes the inner person or your “spiritual” self…“that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being” (Ephesians 3:16).  Inasmuch as we are caught in a world that looks at and overemphasizes the outer person (physical self) at the expense of the inner person, the heart is the “real” you.    

Because the heart is the source of all that we think, do, and say only a total transformation of the heart will lead to lasting change.  If you are facing external pressure, internal guilt or great incentive…A change in attitude can be a good thing.  A change in language can be a good thing.  A change in behavior can be a good thing.  A change in circumstance can be a good thing.  But without a change of heart done by the Great Physician through what I call “Open Heart Surgery” all change, as positive as it may be, is only cosmetic and temporary. 

Jesus by His death on the cross, sought it, caught it, and bought it with His precious blood.  Forgiveness alone was not enough.  Jesus had to fight His way into our hearts.  Through the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus enters the heart of every believer, claims it as His own, and racially changes it for His glory.  How?  Not by rehabilitating the desires of our heart but by recapturing our heart and reorienting our desires to love and serve the One who did for us what we could not do for ourselves.  NEVER FORGET THAT…AMEN!

We were designed by God for God so why do we so often exchange our Creator for created things?  In a word…sin.  Sin has seduced us into believing that created things, idols of the heart, can give to us what only our Creator can give.  They promise what they cannot deliver and when we seek to find our identity in things smaller than God, we eventually become smaller than God has called us to be.  “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:25).  Sin has sent all of humanity into a downward spiral of serving an endless supply of God replacements. 

Sin has driven us away from the Creator and toward the creation..away from the spiritual and toward the physical.  In exchanging the truth for a lie, we have exchanged our vertical relationship with all things horizontal.  The problem is not that all things horizontal are evil.  Relationships are good.  Jobs are good.  Hobbies are good.  Service projects are good.  They only become evil when we use them as replacements for our relationship with God.  We are never to find our identity in created things.  We are only to find our identity in our Creator.  As my pastor Tullian likes to say, “Good things become bad things when they become ultimate things!”    

So what have you been using as God replacements in your life lately?  Your work?  Your mate?  Your children?  Your church service?  Your physical attractiveness?  Your finances?  Created things were never designed by God to sustain us in this life or the next.  They were never designed to do what only God can do…provide eternal meaning, purpose, and significance.  Let us examine our hearts today and take all of our God replacements, lay them at the foot of the cross, and replace them with God.  This is life.  This is the gospel.  This is grace for the race.   NEVER FORGET THAT…AMEN!   

In Matthew 5:13 Jesus said, “You are the salt of the earth.  But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?”  When I served in the Hollywood Fire Rescue Department I was given the privilege of cooking for the men at my station.  Salt was an important ingredient during the preparation of the meals to enhance the flavor of the foods.  It never ceased to amaze me to watch many of the men vigorously shaking the salt shaker all over the food I had labored hours over preparing and cooking before even taking the first bite!  Yet, the primary importance of salt was not so much to add flavor but to act as a preservative.  So what is Jesus talking about in this verse?    

Jesus was telling His disciples that their lives were to be poured out in faithful service to others to hinder the corruption in their sin-stained, self-centered, and spiritually-dead world.  He is saying the same to us today.  When Jesus laid His life down for sinners, He was giving us the model of what a disciple is to look like.  Being a disciple is not about living a life of self-protection, self-absorption, and selfish ambition.  It’s about living a life marked by self-sacrifice. It is trading a life of ease for activity, consumption for contribution, materialism for the Master.   So are you a “salty” saint or have you lost a bit of your saltiness?

Oh, one final point about this “salt” Jesus is talking about.  Salt is a singular ordinary ingredient that makes an extraordinary contribution to the whole.  Every grain of salt is as important as every other grain of salt which means…YOU ARE AS IMPORTANT AS EVERY OTHER SAINT!  You have gifts, talents, and abilities that are uniquely yours, given to you by God to be used for His glory and the good of others.  Never underestimate or under value the transforming impact God is calling you to have in the lives of all people living in this hurting and broken world.  NEVER FORGET THAT…AMEN!