Today I’m going to put a new spin on an old story. Most of us have probably heard the story of the widow with the replenishing oil and flour in 1 Kings 17. A woman was on the verge of starving and Elijah told her that if she fed him then her store of flour and oil would be miraculously replenished and never run out. This took a huge amount of faith. To put this in more applicable terms to modern life, imagine that your car is so low on gas that the gauge is basically on empty. Jesus tells you that if you let him ride with you and drive him around, you’ll never run out of gas. This would take a huge amount of faith, right? You wouldn’t want to risk running out of gas on the road. So many things could go wrong. This is exactly what Jesus is asking us to do, though. If we let him into our lives and live for Him, He’ll keep us going. The Bible tells us that God will provide for us. Go check it out. God is faithful to those who love Him. Putting your trust in God isn’t easy, but it’s so worth it.
Lego Architecture
Since I’ve started up this blog, I’ve really come to see that inspiration can come from anywhere, even the places you would never expect. I often help out in the nursery at my church, and this past Sunday one little boy was playing with Legos. He kept becoming very upset because his tower always seemed to fall over just as it seemed that he was getting somewhere. Of course, being three years old, he has no understanding of even basic architecture. He didn’t understand that he needed to make the bottom of his tower large and strong in order to hold up the rest of it. He needed a foundation.
So often we go about making our plans, living our lives, building our towers if you will, in our own way and by our own power. When our tower starts to crumble, much like a young child whose Lego tower toppled, we get upset and throw our little fit and then blindly start building again. The thing is, our towers are never going to be stable until we start with a foundation. The perfect foundation for our lives is God. Another prime example is of the wise and foolish builders found in Luke 6:46-49. The man who built his foundation on the rock was able to withstand the storm, but the man who built his foundation on the sand fell apart. Unless we put God as our foundation, we will not be able to weather the storms of this life.
I encourage you to read the passage 1 Corinthians 3:9-15. In it we are told that we are God’s building. There is no foundation that can be laid except Jesus Christ. No other foundation will be strong enough, right enough, or give enough support. If we build on anything else, it will fall apart when times of testing come. If we build on God, it will be strong and enduring. In Isaiah 33:6 we are told that the Lord is a sure foundation for your times, a rich store of salvation and wisdom and knowledge. In short, there is no foundation like God!
This Year
Here it is, Thursday again. Another week, another post. Life is starting to speed up its pace again, as I’m sure is the case for many of you. School is either just starting or just about to start, sports and extracurriculars are headed into full swing, and you’re back under the stresses of social interactions. Today I’d like to speak to you all a bit more personally about what is on my heart currently.
Last night I went to church early for prayer time, and I really felt God’s presence. As I was sitting there praying and worshipping, I was bombarded head-on with a flood of memories of that very same night one year ago. It was the first day of school (just like yesterday), and I was praying to God, dedicating the school year to Him. I told Him that I wanted to grow deeper in my relationship with Him and let that year be all about Him. I asked Him to guide my actions and words to glorify Him, and I asked that he keep me calm and at peace in school, to keep my perspective and hold Him as my highest priority. I probably remember this so vividly because of how horribly wrong it all went just a matter of months later. See, even with the best of intentions in the beginning, I still fell way off course. I allowed the things of this world to cloud my vision and reverse my priorities. I rationalized and made excuses for the wrong choices I was making in terms of behavior, relationships, and morals. I completely lost touch with God. Of course, I got back on track eventually, but that’s a story for a whole ‘nother day.
I say all of this to say, it would be easy for all of us to slip back into bad habits and lose sight of what’s most important. However, I’ve seen how bleak life is without God. Trust me, it seems okay for a while, but eventually you’ll find a breaking point. It’s time to hold on to the promises we’ve made to God and ourselves. Hold on to God; He won’t let you go easily. You’ll have to try long and hard to escape what you know is right. Let this be a turning point. Decide now that you’re going to live life differently this year. Determine in your heart that you’re going to grow in Him.
“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.” –Isaiah 43: 18-19
For Better AND For Worse
Why do bad things happen to good people? This is a question that people have wondered for ages. It just doesn’t seem fair, right? One piece of Scripture that really speaks to me on this topic is found in Ecclesiastes.
When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider: God has made one as well as the other. Therefore a man cannot discover anything about his future.- Ephesians 7:14.
Right off the bat we’re told that there are going to be good and bad times. It’s just a part of living on earth. Jesus told us in John 16:33 that in this world we will have trouble, but to take heart because He has overcome the world. I like how the verse in Ecclesiastes tells us to consider. To consider something goes beyond thinking about it; it means to take it into account as a part of your thought process.
*We need to take into account that God takes us through good and bad times, but He is with us regardless. We are promised that God will never leave us nor forsake us.
* We should also remember that God made the bad times and brought us there, so He must have a plan in it. We all remember Jeremiah 29:11, yes? We can’t count on good things happening to us because we’re “good” people. We have to count on God’s wisdom and put our faith in Him.
*Always remember that Romans 12:2 describes God’s plan as good, pleasing, and perfect. He’s got this!
God is with us for better AND for worse!
Into the Desert
Today I’m going to be sharing a unique perspective on the hard times we go through. I’m mainly going to be focusing in the very beginning of the first chapter of Mark, primarily on verse 12. To give a little background knowledge, Jesus had just been baptized, and it was a pretty amazing God experience, Heaven opened up, the Holy Spirit came flying out like a dove, and God’s voice spoke to Jesus and told him that he was pleased with him. But then in verse 12 we see something that we might easily skip over. However, if we stop to think about it, it’s kind of strange. “At once the Spirit sent him out into the desert.” (to be tempted).
I think there are two interesting points to be taken from this:
- AT ONCE…right after Jesus was baptized and had this amazing encounter with his father, he was immediately put in a dry spot full of temptation.
- THE SPIRIT LED HIM OUT…it was the Holy Spirit himself who sent Jesus out into the wilderness.
Therefore…
- Right after God moves in our life we can almost always expect opposition. I’m sure we’ve all experienced this. We go to a great service at church where we just got so in touch with God and it’s like as soon as we walk out the door everything imaginable comes against us. Maybe we go to a camp or something and when we get home, our circumstances are still the same or worse. That’s the thing: after God moves in us, we’re still going out into the same world, the same problems, the same temptations. What God changed was us, so we need to pray for the strength to operate in a changed way.
- Sometimes it’s God himself who takes us into the tough spots to teach and strengthen us. Sometimes we need to be reminded that we have to put our faith in God and turn to him. Or maybe God has a lesson and a blessin’ out there for us that we just have to go through the desert to get to. We may not fully understand God’s plans, but we can always trust that they’re good.
Unstoppable Faith
You know what it’s like when you first get saved or have an awesome experience with God and you’re just on fire for Him? Maybe you went to a special camp or trip with your youth group. Either way, you experienced something incredible and you are on a true spiritual high. When you get back and go back amongst your peers, at first it’s easy to stick to all your resolutions. After a while, though, adversity starts coming your way and the road starts getting rough and all too often the fire dies out quickly.
In the beginning of the book of Acts, Jesus goes back up into Heaven and the apostles are filled with the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. This is their incredible experience that truly sets them on fire. They go out and start preaching and spreading the word and performing these incredible miracles in Jesus’s name.However, as is almost always the case, the apostles were almost immediately met with opposition from people who wanted to stop them. Peter healed a crippled beggar, and the religious leaders (or the Sanhedrin) heard about it. They called them Peter and John in to talk to them. They may have expected the apostles to be afraid and back down, but they just ended up receiving a sermon. The apostles told them that they “cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.” (3:20) The Sanhedrin couldn’t figure out how to punish them, so they threatened them and let them go.After they left they prayed for more of the Holy Spirit and were filled. After they went out and preached some more, the apostles were thrown in jail! An angel came and let them out, and they preached again. When they were brought before the high priest to be questioned they told them, “We must obey God rather than men!” (5:29) They were flogged as punishment. They were beaten with a rod or a cane. And yet, as they left afterwards, they were “rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name.” (5:41)
These apostles had an unstoppable faith that should be an example to all believers. No matter what opposition they faced, they never quit seeking opportunities to carry out God’s will for their lives. (A sidenote on opposition: If someone or something is trying to stop you, this means that you are being effective in your work.) These men were dragged before elders, threatened, put in jail, and flogged, and still they continued to live for Jesus. Why do we let fear of the opinions of others or the lack of convenience stop us so quickly?
I greatly encourage you to read from the book of Acts yourself! It’s truly an amazing book.
Costly Worship
In 5th grade I had this one friend who was my very best friend. I bought her this friendship bracelet and I had one myself that matched. Now all these years later I had nearly forgotten about it; we’re not even friends anymore. Recently however, I saw on a social networking site that she had given that bracelet to some random guy. Besides being slightly offended, it got me thinking. What if the guy knew that she had regifted, that the gift she had given him had cost her absolutely nothing? This then led me to think: God always knows when we’re giving him something worthless.
In 2 Samuel 24:18-25 we see a story from the life of David that displays this lesson perfectly. A plague had come on the land and God told David to go find this guy named Araunah and to buy his threshing floor to build an altar on. When David found Araunah, he offered to give him everything he needed for free. I mean David was the king. That sounds like a pretty good deal, right? But David said no. In verse 24 we see that David says, “No, I insist on paying you for it. I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.” David had made a lot of mistakes recently, so he could have chosen to say that one more compromise couldn’t do any more damage. However, David saw the truth: Worship that costs nothing is not worship at all.
True worship is costly. It doesn’t mean anything to offer up something that wasn’t valuable to us. If we give God the scraps and leftovers of our time, attention, money, talents, etc. He’s going to know, and it won’t be pleasing to Him. Think about Cain and Abel, way back in Genesis. Abel gave God the best of his flock, the very best that he had to give. Cain just gave something though, whatever happened to be the easiest to grab. If we give God whatever happens to just be laying around for convenience, it is of no value. God will honor worship when it is a true sacrifice on our part. One thing I struggle with personally is time. My time is very valuable to me. I got to the point where I just had to decide that God was worth setting aside some of my time intentionally. I needed to choose to spend time with Him on purpose rather than giving Him a couple minutes when it was convenient for me. Worship of convenience is not true worship. So I leave you with this question to think about: What is most valuable to you that you need to give God more of?
Being an example of The Example
Before I even get started, I’m just going to go ahead and say: this post may step on some toes. Get up in your grill. However you want to say it, this may make you uncomfortable. But if it does I ask you to consider: does it make you uncomfortable because you know it applies to you? I think this is something we all need to be reminded of sometimes.
Today I’m going to be talking about being an example. As Christians we are called to set an example for non-Christians, and if we want to be an example, we have to base ourselves off of The Example. Yeah, you guessed it: Jesus. The whole WWJD (what would Jesus do) thing has become somewhat clichéd in recent years, but it still holds truth. Here’s something I like to go by. Whatever it is that I’m doing or thinking about doing, I put it into this phrase to see if it makes sense: “In the name of Jesus, I…” As Christians we should be living and dedicating our lives as an act of worship to Jesus, so it doesn’t make much sense when you say, “In the name of Jesus, I cuss. In the name of Jesus, I talk about people behind their backs. In the name of Jesus, I talk back to my parents and disrespect them. In the name of Jesus, I act just like everybody else because it’s easier to go with the crowd.” When we pick up or hold onto behaviors that resemble the life that we’re claiming to be set apart from by Jesus, we have no credibility whatsoever. Being a Christian doesn’t mean anything. You may never know who is watching you. If an unbeliever sees that you claim to have the answer in Jesus but your life looks just like theirs, how will they ever come to know the truth?
The Bible tells us to:
-set an example for unbelievers (Colossians 4:5)
-always be prepared to tell someone about Jesus, which includes living your life as a testimony, so that no one has a good reason to talk bad about the way you act (1 Peter 3:15-16)
-watch the way you live your life because by doing so you save yourself and the people who listen to you (1 Timothy 4:16)
-set an example by doing what is good (Titus 2:7-8)
-follow in Jesus’s steps (1 Peter 2:21)
-watch your mouth! Yes it really is in the Bible, look it up (Ephesians 4:29, Ephesians 5:4)
I encourage you to look up these verses for yourself and read the whole thing! Using Jesus as your example you can’t go wrong. I’m praying for my readers:)
Avoiding Spiritual Sleep
Today’s post comes from the book of Luke. In chapter 22 verses 39-46, Jesus went out to the Mount of Olives to pray. His disciples went with them and he asked them to pray too, but they fell asleep. I’m going to mainly focus on verse 46- “Why are you sleeping?” he asked them. “Get up and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.” I’m going to be looking at this in a less literal sense and discuss avoiding a state of spiritual sleep.
Let’s look at it this way: you just got home from school and whatever practice you may have had afterwards. The school day was long and it pushed you mentally, and then practice was physically taxing. Unfortunately, as is often the case, you have that dreaded thing called homework, which you really should do, but…the temptation to take a nap is strong. It’s the same with our spiritual walk sometimes. With the busy lives we lead it’s so easy to just bypass our daily time with God. We skip out on reading our Bible here or miss some prayer time there. The problem with spiritual naps is that very frequently they turn into comas. The more you skip out on God the easier it becomes. No growth can happen in your relationship with God when you’ve fallen asleep. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Coma patients experience this thing called muscle atrophy. Lack of use causes their muscles to waste away. The longer you stay in a state of spiritual sleep, the more damage you have to recover from and the more setback you experience.
Spiritual sleep can be combatted with prayer. The Bible promises us that prayer is powerful. Ask God for the strength to continue in your walk and to avoid the temptation to fall asleep. Having and maintaining an active relationship with God is so much better than anything else you could spend your time doing. It’s worth it! If you now realize now that you have been asleep, consider this your alarm clock going off. Please don’t hit the snooze and roll back over!
Burying the Hatchet
There are few things more humbling than being the one to try and resolve an argument, particularly one you feel you didn’t start. There are few things more difficult than resisting the urge to get in an argument. Every fiber of your being is screaming at you to respond, to defend yourself, to correct this ignorant person who is so wrong but is so convinced that they are right. The thing is, the Bible is very clear about the way we are supposed to react.
“Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not quarrel; instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful.” -2 Timothy 2:23-24
The thing about even the shortest arguments, even the ones that don’t seem like a big deal, can turn into a huge lasting fight. We’ve all seen the memes: “Well that escalated quickly.” In this case, though, it really isn’t funny. Friendships can be ruined, and worse, your ability to effectively witness to unbelievers. An argumentative person is a less credible person, especially when trying to promote the love of Jesus. If you allow yourself to get roped into an argument with them, you will drive them away from Christianity.
If you feel that God really wants you to correct them, do it gently and kindly with love. Refer to verses 25-26. Here’s a rule to go by: if you enjoy doing it, if you’re getting pleasure from it, you probably shouldn’t be doing it. Your heart isn’t in the right place. Pray for wisdom and self-control! God is well able to help you out!
*Note: Being the one to take the first step towards reconciliation is a great way to show Christ’s love!
Remember, in Romans 12:18 we’re told that as far as it is in our control we should do our best to live at peace with everyone.
Thursday Thoughts for Christian Teens 