You need to Lose Everything

Jesus is the ultimate. Jesus is the only thing that will satisfy. The pleasures and joys of this world are fleeting (just ask the Alabama Football team: their rival, Auburn won the national title the year after they did). The cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of wealth choke us to death in our spiritual walk.

And we let it. We let it....

I feel like I say the same thing in every post but this is what the Spirit is instructing me to do. I can't call myself a man of God if I am only concerned with what man wants me to do:

"For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were trying to please man, I would not be a servant of God."
                                  ~Galatians 1:10~

We are so obsessed and concerned with the things of this world! Don't get me wrong though, it is OKAY to have things. But we miss the bigger picture. In Philippians 3:8, Paul says:

"Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ."

Some words we can replace with surpassing:

• outstanding
• superior
• exceptionally greater
• better
• exceeding
• beating
• bettering

Listen, Paul counts EVERYTHING, money, cars, computers, family, friends, fame, clothes, good looks, and toys, AS LOSS!

These things ARE WORTHLESS....in comparison with the knowledge of knowing Jesus Christ.

But Paul doesn't stop there. He even ADMITS his struggle to let go of those things. He says he has SUFFERED the loss of all things. But he goes EVEN FURTHER: in order that I may GAIN Christ.

But when God blesses us with things, we are to SHOW the world that money, cars, computers, family, friends, fame, clothes, good looks, and toys, are given to us so that we can show the world that money isn't our treasure....CHRIST is.

Is this true in our lives?

Don't Waste Your Life

Lecrae- Go Hard feat. Tedashi

DiscipleNow: Be Holy and Intimate

Wow.

It's amazing.

It's amazing how God orchestrates our lives. Not only that, but replaces the desires of the flesh with desires of his Spirit.

This past weekend I attended Disciple Now with the FBCW youth. Brad Fogarty was the teaching Pastor. The weekend, starting Friday night at 6:00pm and ending 12:00pm Sunday morning, involved fellowship, a service project at the JAARS Center, and most importantly food!

That was not a joke. For many, including myself, we were starving for the Spirit of God to give us living bread and the living water.

Our main focus for the entire weekend was Holiness. I highly misinterperted this topic. Maybe you may have had some of the same thoughts.

You see, it is a LIE from the devil, that if we have been born again, not of water but of the blood of Jesus, that we are still INCAPAPLE of having VICTORY over sin everyday.

It is a LIE from the devil, when we think that we are DISQUALIFIED to inherit the things that God has ALREADY promised us, and ALREADY given us.

It is a LIE from the devil, when we try to fight facts with truth:

The facts are:

1. We are sinners
2. Sin seperates us from a Holy God
3. The penalty for sin is death
4. We can't fill the requirement

The truth is:

1. God still loves us
2. He sent his perfect son to die for us
3. His perfect sacrifice defeated death
4. Jesus filled that requirement
5. He came to give us life and life more abundantly

Truth is reality. We always ask God, "Please God, would you just hear me and meet me here and come get me and come into my world!?" And God must be like, "Really? Are you serious? Don't you realize I ALREADY CAME! Your reality has been conquered! In fact, I came to YOUR reality so that I could give you LIFE, and LIFE like MINE, and  a way to come to MY reality NOW DO IT!"

Truth is reality. They are interchangable. GOD'S reality is the TRUTH. So what does this mean? That means that if God's reality is the truth, and there is no other truth than God's truth, than any other reality we live in, a.k.a the reality of the flesh, we are living a lie.

When man sinned, we lost our ability to be Holy and walk with God, a.k.a. the Spirit. When Christ conquered death, and gave us the ability to recieve his Spirit, our identity is now the same as Christ's identity.

If fact, Christ tells us we will have POWER, and the power that the Holy Spirit will give us will be even GREATER than that of Christ's. (John 14:12)

"Brendon. You can't be saying we are GREATER than Jesus," you may be saying or thinking right now.

But you are missing it! That's not what I am saying! I am saying you are SO MUCH MORE than what the DEVIL tries to tell us!

Christ tells us, in John 10:10, "The thief comes only to steal, and kill and destroy. I came that you may have life and have it abundantly."

He gives us the power...Life doesn't start in heaven. Heaven is the after-party. Life starts when we start LIVING for Jesus the way that He originally CALLED US TO LIVE!

Jesus calls us to be Holy and walk in the Spirit. In the next blog or two, we will take a deeper look at how we can do this.

Christian's Must Suffer

Take up your Cross

A boy in the Middle East named Andrew Miman, was shot 5 times in the chest by Muslims and left bleeding on a sidewalk. He was shot simply because he didn't want to die, but he was unwilling to deny Jesus as Lord.

He gave his life for Christ.

And we talk about being Radical Christians because we wear a tee-shirt??? Or we go to a conference. Let's talk about HOLINESS!  How about GODLINESS??

You want to know what a move of God is? If everyone reading this, and I writing this, if we FELL ON OUR FACES AND WEPT, because we watch the things that God HATES! We wear the things that God HATES! Because we ACT like the WORLD, LOOK like the WORLD, SMELL like the WORLD!

Even though we acknowledge and claim that the Scriptures are the WORD of God, basically all we get is illustrations and stories.  But what would happen if we let God MOVE us, and we would TURN AWAY from our fleshly desires and turn away from the things of this world and turn to God?

We have this American SPIN on CHRISTIANITY. AMERICANIZED Christianity tells us to get a job, get lots of financial security, a nice house, a beautiful wife, and have a family....

We don't believe that Christ can call us to sell everything we own and give it to the poor.

We don't believe Christ has called us to give a DYING world a SAVING GOSPEL.

We don't believe this.

We put our own little spin on Christianity and make it so it is convenient and useful to us.

Jesus never said it was convenient. He never even talks about convenience. In fact He says in Luke 9:23:

 "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me."

If you want to follow Jesus, he says to DENY YOURSELF, and pick up your cross DAILY! Not just when it is convenient for you! In the same passage he goes on to say,

²⁴For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. ²⁵ For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? ²⁶For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.

What would it really profit you to gain the whole world? You die and the things of this world are useless.

"The Prosperity Gospel will not make ANYBODY praise Jesus, it will make people praise PROSPERITY! Of course we will take a Jesus who will give us a car! Who wouldn't want a Jesus who will give us good health, a car, money, a fine marrige? I'll take your Jesus if the PAYOFF is right!

"It's not the way we are going to win our campus' or workplaces'. Dressing the coolest...driving the coolest...typing on the coolest...It's not going to get any praise."

He calls us another way...He calls us to take up our cross.

From John Piper "Christians Must Suffer"

Radical Suffering

Under biblical doctrine, suffering is an essential part of Christian discipleship, but especially for those called to be church leaders. Jesus said, in John 4:34, "My food is to do the will of Him who sent me and to accomplish His work. If we are doing God's will, we are happy and fulfilled. But for Jesus (as well as born-again Christians) doing God's will INCLUDES the Cross.

In an letter from Sri Lankan pastor and evangelist Ajith Fernano, we come across an interesting truth:

"Young Christian workers who come back to Sri Lanka after studying in the West struggle with this (suffering). They are highly qualified, but our poor nation cannot afford to give them the recognition they think their qualifications deserve. They cannot use their gifts to the fullest because we cannot afford pure specialists.

"They struggle with frustration. Some end up leaving the country after a few years. Some start their own organizations so as to fulfill their "vision." Others become consultants, giving expert training and advice in their specialized field (apologetics, theology etc.). Others pay the price of identifying with our people and ultimately have a deep impact on the nation.

"I try to tell these students that their frustration could be the means to developing penetrating insight. I explain that people like John Calvin and Martin Luther (made the Protestant church possible) had a dizzying variety of responsibilities (Calvin a catholic priest before reform, Luther a monk), so that they could only use their gifts in the fog of fatigue. Yet the fruits of their labors as leaders and writers still bless the church today."

Okay, so if you read through all that, great, if you didn't, that's fine too because we are going to talk about it. Here's the issue:

Christian leaders/workers get all their degrees and training, but when it gets hard, they sometimes flake out and no fruit results in it. If John Calvin and Martin Luther didn't suffer, the Protestant church (baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, Calvinist etc.) would most likely not exist.

In the new testament, the apostle Paul emphasizes the need to "endure frustration patiently as we live in a fallen world awaiting the redemption." Paul said that we groan because of this frustration (Romans 8:18-27). I believe we fail to include this frustration in our understanding of pastoral fulfillment.

A church that has a wrong understanding of fulfillment for its workers will become infected. This may be one reason why the church contains so much shallowness. We have measured the success by the standards of the world and fail to challenge the world with the RADICALLY different BIBLICAL way towards fulfillment.

With all the new gadgets out to make life easier and more convenient, and the focus on efficiency and measurable results has really made frustration for this generation even harder to endure. Now, things once considered luxuries, became not only a need or necessity, but became rights! In today's society, even the Christian idea of commitment has been negated.

We call our churches and Christian organizations "families," but families are very inefficient organizations. In a healthy family, everyone stops when a member has big needs. We are often not willing to extend this commitment to our Christian "family."

The BIBLICAL model of community life is Jesus' command to love one another as he loved us-that is, for members to die for other members (John 15:12-13).

When God calls us to serve him, He calls us to come and DIE for the people we serve. We don't discard people when they have problems. We serve them and help them come out of their problems. We don't tell people to find another place of service when they REBEL against us. We labor with them until we either come to agreement or agree to disagree.

At least, that's what we should do.