All too often we grow up listening to others around us in order to build our concepts about our self worth and identity.  The world builds the idea of their identity and self worth measured by what they look like or what they can accomplish and this produces a terrible platform for building self-esteem and identity. Christians should be developing their identity and self-worth from the word of God and why he made us. Mind you, I have heard some really twisted ideas in sermons about a persons lack of value.  It makes me wonder if these preachers ever read the bible as a whole because they paint the picture that people have no redeeming value in themselves at all and God only saved us because he felt sorry for humanity, not because God valued humanity even with our brokenness.  

Receiving Jesus into our lives was always meant to be a transformative experience, not just a transitory one or a one-time experience. With that in mind, Jesus ultimately came to set the sinners free by revealing the Father’s heart for humanity. Scripture says that all of us are being ruled by the spirit of this age that is working in the world.

So many professing Christians know that real life is found in an intimate relationship with Father God and yet all too often we exchange our loving relationship with Him for rules and memorizing verses or portions of scripture. We exchange our intimacy with God himself for God’s word, which is filled with God’s thoughts rather than God himself. The pharisees of old are a good example of this exchange. For Christians today, we do the same thing by becoming more loyal to a book than to the one who wrote the book. 

If a person reads the four gospels at face value, they will quickly see Jesus was not trying to get big crowds by using some fancy teaching or preaching method, but rather by making the truth simple and accessible for the common person. He did share stories to illustrate biblical truth, but often he would explain God’s blessings were tied to a person’s obedience. If a person did decide to follow him he would explain that being a follower was more than just coming to hear a weekend message. Following Jesus meant that he expected his disciple would be 100% committed to him and not just acting like it was a part time job.  To follow Jesus meant you were becoming a “Radical Person”.

God designed us to have and desire good relationships with others but finding good friends can often be a challenge. Unfortunately, when we are young many parents don’t teach their kids what to look for in friends and so we tend to find or make friends based more on our geographical location rather than being selective about who we invite into our inner circle of relationships. Finding good friends can be a real challenge!

Many Christians today believe that if they pray and have faith then God is obligated to preform a miracle or give them what they ask for in prayer.  However, this mindset often fails to take the whole of scripture into account when trying to understand when and if God will move on our behalf with a miracle. I believe Christians today have a patch work understanding of scripture and not a cohesive understanding of what God is communicating in his word.

How often does Jesus say something that you say you agree with and yet you don’t understand what he meant by what he said ? I want to say this happens more times than we want to admit, yet we gloss over our lack of comprehension. Why do you think we miss so much but don’t dig for more understanding? I hate to say it, but it’s all about how much time and effort we give to the words of God.

As we grow in our trust of God in our daily walk there are some  things he may choose to hide from us. The reasons for such actions I’m sure are many, yet to understand the basic reasons would be helpful to us so that we can know if God is withholding truth because we are not prepared for it, like the early disciples who walked with Jesus in ministry.

The Church has been wrestling with the concept of grace for ages. In fact, ever since the reformation of the 1500s when Luther, Calvin and Zwingli helped usher in the start the reformation from the corruption of the Catholic church, theologians and pastors have wrestled with the simply awkward definition of Grace as “Unmerited Favor.” To be honest, many doctrines the church has embraced and taught today came out of an over-correction of errors that the Catholic church was steeped in. When there is an over-correction of concepts often the new “Version” is flawed as well. The word and concept of “Grace vs Works” is one of them.

We live in a strange time in history because we live with so many images of people who are “Inauthentic” and just pretending to be genuine.  For example, news commentators and politicians continually craft an image or narrative instead of being authentic about who and what they believe about God and life in general. It seems that modern culture has increasingly traded good character for a good image.  The really sad thing is that can be expected from the world but many pastors have gotten in lock step with the world when it comes to working on their image more than their character.