Struggling Against Sin

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, 
let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, 
and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. 
Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, 
who for the joy set before him, endured the cross, scorning its shame, 
and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 
 Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, 
so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. In your struggle against sin, 
you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood."

Hebrews 12:1-4

When I reflect on my life, I often feel frustrated that I haven't grown as much as I hoped I would. I tend to do this at the beginning of the year, on my birthday, and other times that mark the beginning or ending of a season of life. I always hope I will be more mature than I am or further along in dealing with the issues in my life. With self-reflection it is easy to grow weary and lose heart, especially when one is a perfectionist like me. There are several principles in Hebrews 12 that enable me to "run the race" successfully and with joy. 

First, I am to get rid of everything that hinders my ability to live the Christian life. That could include people, things, and negative thoughts. It is good for me to stop and think about whether there are people in my life that steer me away from the life I desire to truly live. It is good for me to consider whether there are people I allow to influence me to not love people I know God has called me to love. It is good for me to honestly consider whether movies or TV shows I watch influence my view of holiness. Good to examine my thoughts to see if there are negative thoughts that plague my ability to see myself as Christ does. It is wise to look at my thinking to see if there are doubts creeping into my life that keep me from using the spiritual gifts that God has given me? Am I seeking after things of the world or the things of God? 

Secondly, I am to get rid of the sin that so easily besets me. Some commentators interpret that to mean personal weaknesses. Others interpret the "sin that so easily entangles us" as the sin of unbelief. I am thinking that they may be one in the same. At the root of besetting sin is the fact that I often have a need that I don’t believe God will meet. For example, when I am struggling with some behaviors it is because I am plagued with insecurities because I don't believe in my heart of hearts that I am radically and unconditionally loved by God. This can influence us in many ways. Women often struggle with gossip because we don't understand and full trust our acceptance in Christ, so we deal with our fear of rejection by damaging others reputations to insure our place among our friends.  

Next, He reminds me that I haven't resisted sin to the point I have shed blood. I believe this is a reference to Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. He wrestled with the desire to do His own will and to do His Father's will so hard that capillaries burst and blood tinged his sweat. When was the last time I wrestled so much with the desire to honor God in the midst of a temptation that I sweat drops of blood? I wish I could remember even one time I resisted to that point, but to be honest I can’t. To live a life that honors God, I must be willing to resist strong temptation that comes my way. I must accept that the Christian life may not feel easier as I grow in my desire to be like my Heavenly Father.  

          Finally, I'm commanded to keep my focus on Jesus. He is the one who is able to mature my faith. I can’t increase my faith apart from Him. I can only choose to trust God and His word in each circumstance I face. If I keep my eyes on Jesus, what do I see? I see His love-scarred hands that are open wide to me. I see the scars on His brow, reminding me He bore the curse for me. I see the stripes on His back, reminding me He came so that I could be healed. I see His love filled eyes that are full of acceptance rather than the condemnation I expected to see?

I am afraid I forget my name is on His lips, inviting me to spend time with Him. I forget that in His presence my fears and concerns melt into adoration and praise. I forget when I pour out my heart to Him, My bitterness is turned into perfect peace. I forget that I see in Him a power strong enough to overcome death. When I look at Christ and His glory, I want the path He laid before us. When I look at Christ, I can't be satisfied with any love, except His pure and holy love. When I think of His holiness I want to rid myself of anything hindering my relationship with Him. When I am focused on Christ, I desire to get to the place that I resist temptation to the point I sweat blood as Christ did in the Garden. 
Where is the focus of your eyes? Is it on the world, yourself, or Christ?  What entangling sin do you need to cast off? How deep is the root of unbelief behind that sin? The God who died for you designed the race you are to run – have you entered the race?  

Prayer:  Lord, You are holy good and You gave so much to reconcile us to Yourself.  Please help us to see all that hinders our relationship with You and give us the courage to get rid of it. Please help us see even the roots of the sins that entangle us and help us to resist the temptation in order to see Your strength manifested in us. Please help us to keep our eyes focused on You and to allow your perfecting work in us. Amen.

Living Expectantly

"Joseph and Mary took Jesus at eight days old to Jerusalem 
to present him to the Lord. Now there was a man in Jerusalem 
called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting 
for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. 
It had been revealed to him before he had seen the Lord's Christ. 
Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. 
When the parents brought in the child, Jesus to do for Him 
what the custom of the Law required, Simeon took Him in his arms
 and praised God, saying: Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, 
you now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen 
your salvation which you have prepared in the sight of all people, 
a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel…"

From Luke 2:21-38.

I love this story about Simeon. God had promised him that he would not die before the Messiah appeared. He was living a righteous life and was devoted to God as he waited expectantly for God to fulfill His promise. The day Mary and Joseph took Jesus to be circumcised the Holy Spirit prompted Simeon to go to the temple and he saw the baby, Jesus, and he took him in his arms, declaring the Messiah had come. 

We celebrate Christ’s birth as Christians. We celebrate His resurrection on Easter. We believe Jesus came and lived a perfect life and died on the cross as a sacrifice for our sin. During communion we look forward to His coming back for us. But, I believe God wants more. He wants us to live expectantly in the same way Simeon did. There are several ways we can live expectantly. 

First, we can live expecting God to work in our lives and our hearts. This means we expect Him to purify us and finish the work He began in us when we accepted Him as our Savior. Second, we live remembering our real citizenship is in heaven and eagerly await Jesus' return and His transformation of our lowly bodies into bodies that are glorified. Third, we remember we will be caught up with Him to live with Him forever. Fourth, we remember Christ is preparing us a place to live. 

We can get glimpses of heaven by reading through Revelation. It is a hard book to understand, but there are some beautiful descriptions of heaven, the songs that will be sung and the Savior's glory and power. The Bible talks about Him wiping away our tears and tells us we will be forever free from the pain of sin and the pain of death. This means that there will be no more sadness, despair or depression. There will be no more colds, flu, or pneumonia. There will be no more loved ones dying of cancer or heart failure or accidents. There will be no more internal struggle with the desire to do right and wrong at the same time. We will no longer suffer due to sinful choices of others–no more terrorists’ attacks, no murders, no molestation or rape, no theft, no gossip or slander, no addictions, no eating disorders, and no physical, emotional, or spiritual abuse. We will live in heaven with the Lord forever and be able to love the way we long to love. We will not only be surrounded by God's love, but by the love of those, who like us, will have been forever changed to be like Christ. 

I confess in my everyday life, I don’t live expectantly. I know Christ is active in my life, but I don’t live expectantly looking for His work in and through me. As a result, I miss out on the joy of watching Him work. I also tend to lose sight of the ways He is refining me. As painful as His refining process can be, it is one of the biggest proofs that I am His. When my mind wanders, I long for it to it wander to Him. I want to live in anticipation of His return in the same way Simeon looked for His Messiah. I know His return is a sure thing, just as His birth was and I desire to be like Simeon, holy, devoted, watching! I look forward to having this aging, aching body changed. I look forward to losing this deceitful heart with which I was born that so often believes the enemies lies. I look forward to living in the presence of His perfect love and His perfect righteousness being manifested in and through us. I can't wait to live under His benevolent Kingship. I can’t wait to be away from the sin and the hatred that is so prevalent today. I can't wait to escape this life where people love so imperfectly love and deal with conflict so destructively.  
He is coming back! If I live expectantly, my life will surely take on new meaning. I will witness more of God's handiwork in my life and in the lives of others. I will experience His love more consistently. I will love more deeply, forgive more readily, and rest more often in His peace, and experience more joy that transcends the yucky circumstances of life. God's promises are just as sure now as they were in the days of Simeon. Oh, I want to be a Simeon--faithfully awaiting my Lord!

Prayer:  Father, thank you for sending Your son to live among us to reveal Your love. Thank you for the promises that you will purify us and that He will return again to take us home with Him. To sing praises in heaven with people from every country, race, and economic level is something we look forward to. Help each of us to live in anticipation of your return in the same way that Simeon looked for his promised Messiah. Amen. 

Sharing Who We Know

"But the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto Him."

1 Corinthians 2:14

One of the most exciting nights I experienced as a volunteer youth worker was when I turned to a new girl in our youth group and asked her if she knew Christ as her Savior. She said she didn't know Him, but really wanted to. I shared the gospel with her and she accepted Christ and we both cried tears of joy. Having someone that ready to receive the Lord is unusual. The verse above tells us why that is true. People without Christ don't have the capacity to understand the things of God. This is because it is the Holy Spirit that enables us to understand the things of God. Without the Spirit's presence in our lives, the things of God can seem foolish. That means a person who doesn't know Christ often doesn't even know he needs Him. That seems like an odd statement, but let me give you an example. We did not give our children very many sweets when they were little. However, one of their grandmothers brought ice cream for them. She even gave our 8-month-old daughter strawberry ice cream. At first she shook her head and pulled back from the spoon because it was cold and she wasn't use to it. She sat there for a moment and licked her lips and tasted the ice cream for the first time. All of a sudden, her face lit up and she desperately wanted more ice cream. That's the way it is with God. We are called to share His gospel with people who in all probability aren’t even asking for Him and don’t understand what they’re missing. Hopefully, when we build relationships others will get a glimpses of Him through us and begin to desire a relationship with the God we love and serve.  

I wonder sometimes why we don't witness more. It could be that we are too busy, we are simply disobedient, or we are uncaring in regard to the plight of people who don't know Jesus. There could be another reason, which is what I want to focus on now. One is that in our own life we haven’t moved past the initial relationship that began when we accepted Christ. Like every love relationship, our relationship with Christ must be nurtured and developed. 2 Corinthians 5:15 says that when we come to understand Christ’s love it will compel us to share the gospel. (2 Corinthians 5:14). Do we comprehend His love? Does it compel us to share the gospel?

I was recently writing a letter to someone who doesn't know Christ personally and the perceptions the person has about God are very far from the truth. As I was writing, I was overwhelmed with a passion that they come to know the God I know from the scripture. I want to share some a part of that letter with you: 

"I wish you could know the God I have come to know. His holiness is terrifying and yet beautiful. His love is overwhelming and incomprehensible. His compassion and kindness always present and inviting me into deeper relationship. His comfort and peace indescribable no matter what the circumstances are. His mercy and grace are free even in the reality of my sin. I wish you could know what it feels like to have the burden of guilt taken away for good. I wish you could know what it feels like for peace to flood your heart, where there has been only anxiousness and terror. I wish you could hear His voice whisper love into your heart as He has mine. Most of all I wish you could know what His redemption means. He redeems my mistakes and the time I wasted running and trying to fill my needs apart from Him. He freed me from the guilt I felt. I wish you could have your heart healed like He is healing mine – the holes and the rips are being delicately mended and the ache is lessening and the emptiness is being filled. The process of growth is bittersweet because the more I have come to know Him the more I have realized that I need Him. Knowing God wakes up emotions of love and joy and brokenness that are deeper than any I have felt before, but it feels so good to be alive. As I grow in Christ the things of this world and the sins with which I have struggled are losing their power and their grip on my heart and I am finding myself in the grip of God's grace. There is such sweet peace and such exploding joy in His grip! I want that for you"

I encourage you to stop and write down who God is and what He has done for you. Next, think of someone you would like to come to know Christ. Maybe it is someone you know who is hurting or someone who is struggling with sin. Maybe it is someone you know who seems empty and lonely. What would you want to tell him or her about God if you knew it was your last chance to share about Him? Or maybe in reading this you have realized you don’t feel compelled to share Him because you haven't experienced His love at a personal level and His love seems like it is only something you have been reading about. If that is the case, read His word, meditate on it, and ask Him to open your eyes to the work and love He is showing you. He is always present and always loving, but sometimes we are so focused on the world we don't realize He is continuously revealing Himself to us and He is constantly inviting us into a deeper relationship. Are we listening? Do you long for others to know the God who loves you so radically?

Prayer: Father, you are so gracious. When we were your enemies You sent your Son to reveal your heart of love to us. Help us to never lose sight of your holiness and goodness. Most of all help us to experience Your all consuming perfect love and be constrained by it to share our faith with others. Amen.

The Boxes I No Longer Own

"For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous 

for the unrighteous, to bring you to God."

1 Peter 3:18

I've heard many sermons on 1 Peter 3:18. But I don’t think I have ever the time to contemplate all that the verse says. I understand at a cognitive level that Jesus died so I could be reconciled to God. The part I don’t fully grasp is the middle of the verse: “the righteous for the unrighteous." To begin to grasp the fullness of the verse I have had to wrestle with the concepts of righteousness and unrighteousness. In light of those concepts I begin to grasp the huge amount of grace contained in that little phrase. 

Scripture makes it clear that Christ is righteous. It blows my mind that righteousness is one of God’s character traits. That means He didn't just act righteous, He was righteous in every thought, word, attitude, and deed. He did the right thing every time at exactly the right moment. Every word He spoke was spoken at the right moment in the right way to rightly, unselfishly meet a need. His silences were also purposeful and governed by His righteousness, not passive aggressive as we so often are. He never lied or spoke words with a motive of wounding someone. When He confronted sin it was never done out of hurt or pride, but was done with the pure motive of reconciliation. If He healed someone it was right and if He didn't it was right. When He judged, His judgments were right. His commandments were right then and are right today. When Christ walked this earth, He never made a wrong decision, never had a bad attitude, never made a bad choice, never had regrets, and was never too late to do His Father's will. Unlike me, He never went to bed sorry for how He had treated someone nor did he regret nor reaching out to someone. 

To more fully grasp the truth of His righteousness, all I have to do is think of all of the sins I've committed over my lifetime. A pastor I served under suggested we journal our prayers. One of my young friends mentioned how much more serious her sin looked when she confessed it by name and wrote it down on paper. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, "For He has made Him, who knew no sin, to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." It is like being able to put all of our sin in boxes and being able to carry them to the cross where Jesus is hanging and placing them at His feet so God cam place them on Him. I can’t imagine how many boxes I would have! I am pretty sure those boxes would full. I am sure more than one box would be full of words I wish I could retract--words that were lies, hateful, spoken in haste, gossip, slander, disrespectful, and chosen purposefully to wound. Some of my boxes would be full of compromises that eat at my soul, because I can’t believe I gave in and compromised on issues so clearly spelled out in His Word so I would be accepted by those offended by my faith. Some of my boxes would have been filled with sins caused by all sorts of lust. Some would have been filled with self-destructive sins like binges, starving, or abusing my body with compulsive exercise. Some boxes would be filled with harsh judgments of others and some would be filled with harsh judgments of self. I would have some boxes full of toxic pride, angry outbursts, hatred, bitterness, and of self-centered selfish choices. I am sure there would also be lots of boxes filled with sins of omission. This would contain things like the withholding of love, kind words, compassion, forgiveness, and even Christ.

My purpose in writing this is not to take back shame for which I have been set free nor to trigger toxic shame in you. I understand that because Adam and Eve were our first parental types we have been born with the propensity to fill up boxes with sin--that is what it is to be a child who is a descendant of Adam and Eve. The truth of grace is that Christ took our sin and gave us His righteousness. I am writing this to help myself see just how much He loves me and to make sure that I know that as the Righteous One, He was truly qualified to bear weight of my sin and shame--He had none of His own to bear. When I was a child I was terrified of God. I was afraid not to come to Him because I feared that all of my sin would be displayed on a movie screen for all to see! However, the truth is He already became sin for me! Every sin in every box was put on Him. He bore my sin and shame so I can let go of it. He gave me His righteousness. I am free of accusation. When I'm face to face with Christ, there will be no big screen TV displaying my sin. Nor will I be given some kind of banner to wear that has my sin printed on it. Christ already bore it publicly for me. When we get to heaven we will be there on His merit and because of the sacrifice He paid on the cross. That means I have been given His truth for the lies I once spoke, love for the hatred that once dwelled in my heart, kindness for the unkind things I did, purity for my lust, self-control for my addictions, patience for my impatience, compassion for my bitterness, and passion for my complacency. Christ died so I might become the righteousness of God in HIM! 

What a precious gift God has give believers--righteousness for unrighteousness. I don't need to hang my head in shame; I can now live as a beloved child who has the opportunity to become like my heavenly Father. It hurts to think of Christ bearing my sin so publicly! The way for me to deal with my current sin is to face it, call it by its rightful name, and confess it to Jesus. When I began to look inside and asked God to search my heart, I realized that He wasn't surprised by the number of boxes. He knew that they were there. Yet, He was compassionate, gracious, and kind, taking each one from me. 

I wonder how many of us are still carrying those sin boxes around with us. Maybe we have been to ashamed to confess the sin to Him. Yet, He already knew when He went to the cross for us. Maybe it is because we think we haven't paid a high enough price to make up contents of our boxes. Yet, He paid for all of our sin, with His own blood. Because He loved He gave us the gift of grace--the act of exchanging His righteousness for our unrighteousness. The boxes He bought with His own blood are the boxes I no longer own!

This is Love

"This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another…we love because He first loved us."

1 John 4:10, 11…19

What is love? Is it an emotion or a choice? I used to wrestle with this question every time I heard a pastor say that love is a choice or an action. A while back I was attending a Bible study in which we were asked if it was okay for Christians to fake love. The discussion was so lively and thought provoking that I came home and searched the Scripture. As I read through Colossians, I found that Paul said some interesting things that really resonated with my heart. First, we were loved by God and we were reconciled to Him. Because of this, we are free from the penalty of our sin. Someday we will also be free from even the presence of sin in our hearts as well as our surroundings. But, in the here and now we live in human bodies and we have human emotions and very human thoughts. The only way we can be free from the power of sin is to choose to live by faith. That faith includes the belief that God is powerful enough to help us to do His will. In Colossians, Paul called it putting off the sinful nature and clothing oneself with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. He also said that we are to bear with and forgive each other. Because Paul chose to use words like "put on," it seems to me that we do have a choice to treat other in a loving way, maybe even a choice to love or not to love. That implies that love is in part an action. This fits with what the verses above say. Let's gleam what we can about God's love and see what kind of love He is calling us to demonstrate

.

First, God was the initiator of the love relationship that we have with Him. He chose to do this when we were His enemies and were living independently of Him. We see this by His decision to send His son, Jesus, who in love took on the form of human flesh so that He could demonstrate the depths and the riches of Both the Father’s and the Son’s eternal love to us. Were we lovely in our rebellion? Were we lovely in our selfishness? I seriously doubt it. Nothing about us would have caused God to do what He did. He did it because He chose to.

God chose to because it was His desire for us to experience love, and to be drawn back to the life He created us to live. Secondly, God paid a huge price for our benefit -- His Son. He placed him in the hands of one of His creations and made the Son who had no needs dependent on His creation for survival. He sent Jesus from glorious heaven to humble circumstances. He sent Him from the presence of His perfect love to a place that is full of hatred. He sent Him from a Holy sinless place to a place surrounded by all sorts of perversions and selfishness. He sent Him for a place where eternal life is the norm to a world in which all creatures are moving towards a physical death. It was in His death that the sinless Christ atoned for our sin and our selfishness and imputed to us His perfect goodness. Was it easy? I don't think it was. I think it was painful for God to watch His Son die. We know there is great joy and celebration in heaven for every sinner who repents, but I can't help but also wonder if there isn't grief when a person reaches the point that his heart is so hard that all of heaven know that he will never repent.

We are called to love like Jesus loved. What does that mean? It means that we will initiate love relationships with others. Our natural tendency is not to seek people to love, but to get people to love us. However, in Christ our supernatural tendency is to be lovers. As we learn to bask in the truth of God's endless sacrificial love we will be able to initiate love to others and invite them into relationships, not only with us, but the One who enables us to love as He loves. In Him, we will be filled so that we won't wait for other's to invite us, we will seek them out. It means that we will make sacrifices to show love to someone else. It may be monetary sacrifices; sacrifices of time or a sacrifice of something like our pride. For example, what will your friends think if they see you talking to certain people God calls you to love? If your friends assume the worst, will you choose to love anyway? Lastly, the motive of our love will be for the benefit of the other person rather than for us.

In closing, there will be times in our humanity that love will be warm and fuzzy and easy to do. There will be times where we will have to choose to put it on in the form of patience, forbearance, compassion and kindness. There will be times we may have to fall on our knees before our God who so lavishly demonstrated His love for us and confess that we don't have it in us to love someone and ask Him to shed His love abroad in our heart. I don't think that is fake, but it is the reality that we face as human beings living in bodies that are affected both by sin and a fallen world.

Sometimes, I find myself just longing to be with the Lord, knowing that His presence will once for all perfect His love in me. But, until I am face to face with Jesus I will at times only be able to love in His power and strength. So, how are you doing in the love department? Have you initiated any friendships lately? Have you made any sacrifices to demonstrate His love? Have you done a loving act solely for the recipient’s benefit, not your own?

Prayer: Father, Thank you for initiating a love relationship with us. Thank you for Your sacrificial love and for atoning for our sin with the blood of Jesus. Please help us to bask in Your great love and fill us with the desire to walk in Your love and to love the way You do. Help us be bold in initiating relationships and put it in our hearts to sacrifice our time, energy, and our pride so that others might know they are loved not only by us, but by You as well. Amen.

Valued by the Creator

"Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows."

Matthew 10:29-31

What is it that I really value? I know I tend to value things like my home, my car, and anything else I consider to be a big budget item. I also tend to value sentimental things like a ring given to me by loved ones, family photos, or letters from friends and relatives that have passed away. I value people with whom I have relationships. However, I have struggled with my own value and worth as a woman. I work in a ministry that has support groups for eating disorders and survivors of childhood abuse and sadly many of the women in those groups struggle as well because they suffer great shame and self-condemnation. There are a lot of different reasons women don't see themselves as valuable or precious to anyone, even the Lord. A while back I heard a lady make a statement that drove a God's truth deep into my heart. She said, "The way we measure the worth of someone is by the length that someone will go to for them."

I thought long and hard about that statement. Most of us know we are precious to God because we are a part of his creation. We have all heard that, but sometimes it just goes in one ear and out the other. Now in light of the lady’s statement, we can also deduce that Christ went to great lengths to show us how much He values us and loves us. The first thing that Christ did was to leave the comforts of His heavenly home and take on the confinement of a human body. It’s hard to imagine how God who has limitless creativity, power, and knowledge would want to inhabit a human body with all of its needs, limitations, and aches and pains just to reveal His Father’s heart to His creation. Secondly He was beaten, mocked and then died a cruel death on a cross so He could solve our sin problem. Psalm 103:10-12 says, "He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us." He died a horrible death so He could remove sin and shame from us. When we really think about that we can't look at ourselves in a negative way. For whatever reason and with all that we have done wrong, God valued us enough to send His Son to earth. Christ valued us enough to submit to His Father's will by taking on flesh, suffering pain, persecution, death, and shame for us and paying the ultimate price for us to be reconciled to God–amazingly we can’t do anything to make Him value us more than He already does.

It’s important to realize we can do nothing that would cause God to value us less. Isaiah 49:15-16 says, "Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me." Nursing is one of the most precious, tender, and intimate acts between a mother and a child and it’s neat to see that God uses that to describe His care for us. Humans are fallible and often pain is caused when a child's needs aren’t met. Yet, God promised us that He will never forget us and that we are ever before Him. We can't help but wonder if the engraving He is talking about in the passage was a reference to the future suffering He would go through on the cross. Even after He was raised from the dead His scars remained. A God who has power over death or who could heal a man of leprosy could have healed His body without the scars--yet He chose to leave the scars–maybe as a reminder of the value He placed on us. We aren’t worthless–He bought us with His life!

I can’t help but wonder if you struggle with self-worth as I did. I hope you have a deep understanding of your value as a child of God. I wonder if those of you who don’t value yourselves have been deeply wounded by another. I wonder if some of you were like me and struggled with such strong perfectionism that you despised yourself because you fell so short of the standard you set. Or maybe you struggle to believe the God who created you can get past your sin or imperfection to love and value you. Can you grasp that His value of you was shown in the death He died for you? Can you believe He holds you near and dear to His heart in ways no other person can? Can you let His truth transform your negative worth into a healthy self love?

Prayer: Father, we thank You that when we were sinful and enemies of Yours that You still loved us enough to send your Son to earth. We thank You that He valued us enough to live among us and to suffer pain and even death for us. When we are getting knocked around in this life and tempted to believe the lie that we have no worth help us to remember what lengths Christ went to so He could demonstrate to us how much You valued us. Apart from You we are depraved and hopeless. But in you we have purpose and eternal value. In You, we can rejoice because we are being molded in to the women you designed us to be. Amen.

Endurance

"Endure hardship with us like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. 

No one serving as a soldier gets involved in civilian affairs—

he wants to please his commanding officer.

Similarly, if anyone competes as an athlete, he does not receive 

the victor's crown unless he competes according to the rules.

The hardworking farmer should be the first to receive a share of the crops."

2 Timothy 2:3-6

Have you ever wondered what you would tell your family or friends about Christ if you knew you were never going to see them again? That is what the book of 2 Timothy is about. It is Paul’s letter of encouragement and exhortation to Timothy to live fully for the Lord. I remember having the same urgency in wanting to express all I knew about Christ to my children as they were leaving home. Desperately wanting them not only to know and understand how much the Lord loves them, but also wanting them to know how to honor God with their lives. In this passage Paul gives Timothy three examples to follow.

The first example he gives Timothy is that of a soldier. He told him that a good soldier is willing to endure hardship and will stand firm in the face of opposition, hatred and discomfort. These were all things that both Paul and Jesus had endured. He also reminded him to keep his focus and not let everyday things draw his mind away from the things God called him to. We often think the stage in life we are in is what is making it difficult to focus on God, but the truth is every stage of life has its distractions. Students are distracted by school, young men by their careers, couples by wedding plans, moms of preschoolers by the never-ending demands of young children, moms of school aged children by everyone’s busy schedule, middle aged parents are distracted by the burden of college expenses, and then there are the grandchildren. In each stage of life we have to choose to let Christ to be our focus for all we do. Lastly, a good soldier chooses to live so that he pleases his commanding officer. Every decision we make needs to honor God.

Paul also suggests that we follow the example of athletes. We know an athlete trains and prepares for the race. A part of the preparation is learning the rules and boundaries of the race. If an athlete doesn't follow the rules completely, he can't win. That means as Christians we need to live consistently and always ready to give an answer for the hope in us. We also need to realize everything is sacred for us and that means it is important to our relationship with the Lord that we maintain integrity at all times -- even when nobody is looking. Our culture is a culture of relative values and we need to remember partial obedience isn’t obedience and sin is sin even when everyone is doing it.

Most of us, as Christians, love to talk about the gospel with other believers. However, we are usually unprepared and sometimes not even aware of the opportunities we have to share Christ or to at least cultivate "the soil" for future sharing by loving and building relationships with unbelievers. If we want to partake of the joy of sharing Christ, we need to live as farmers do – fully focused on the job of preparing the soil, planting the seed, watering and feeding the plants, and plucking the harvest. That means we would be constantly busy loving and building relationships as we allow others to observe our lives. It means we are busy sharing the Scriptures, our testimonies, and opening discussions about God. Lastly, it means we are discerning and ready to "reap the harvest" by inviting others to make a decision about Christ.

Again, we have to accept that the Christian life is not a life of ease, but a life of discipline and of intentionality. Sharing Christ sometimes includes enduring hardship while remaining focused on the Lord and choosing to live a life pleasing to Him. We are called to constantly be in the process of sharing the gospel. The questions are: Are we really will to live obediently? Are we focused and diligently working to build relationships so we can share Christ? Last, what are we willing to endure so that others may gain freedom from sin, death and hell? Are we willing to endure a dirty look, physical discomfort, loneliness, hardship, pain, or even death? We need to mature to the place that we’re willing to endure what Christ endured for us? I hope that we never forget to that Jesus for enduring the cross and the shame of our sin for us. I hope we never take it for granted. When we find ourselves tempted to do that it would be wise for us to begin to name each of our individual sins – the sins we commit with our actions, thoughts, and our words as well as the sins we commit due to our inaction, lack of loving words, or neglect to think on Godly things. He desires to help us develop endurance in us, will we yield to His work?

Prayer: Father, Christ was such a wonderful example of the life that you want each of us to live. He was focused, full of integrity, obedient, and willing to endure hardship so that You might be glorified and honored and so that we might be saved. Help us to follow His example. Help us to live lives that are pleasing to you, obedient and constantly busy doing your will. Help us stand firm and strong and to endure until you call us home. Amen.