Without getting into a debate about WHY we do good, let’s start with the premise that God is good and He has commanded us to perform good works for Jesus’ sake. (Ephesians 2:10) Before you and I were even born, God prepared for us some acts of kindness that we can perform for Jesus’ sake. So start looking for someone—it might even be a stranger—who needs a cup of cold water.
THE GREATEST NEED The reason we even have Christmas is because of sin. Joseph heard it straight from angel’s mouth–God is sending Jesus into this world because there are sinful people who need their sins forgiven. Had there been no sin, there would have been no need for God to send a Savior.
Christian harmony is like a piano, we don’t have to all sing the same note, but we have to be tuned into the same pitch. A piano tuner told me that if you lined up 100 pianos and tuned the first one to a tuning fork, then tuned each piano to the one beside it without the fork, the 100th piano would be terribly out of tune with the first one. Why? There are such minor variations in pitch that it would be impossible to precisely duplicate each piano’s pitch. But if you tuned each piano to the same tuning fork, then all 100 would be in perfect tune. The same is true if you try to tune your life spiritually to mine, even if I’m tuned in to Jesus. Church people get out of tune with each other when we start comparing and criticizing each other and using anyone else other than Jesus as our measure or standard.
Some people read their Bibles like a tax attorney reading the IRS code looking for loopholes. But God wants us to read and study His Word like a love letter He has written to guide us through our daily lives. When you’re asked a question that involves morality or ethics, is your first response, “What does the Bible say?”
We live in a culture that promotes greed. Everyone wants more and more, but the truth is LESS is more. The Bible says “godliness with contentment is great gain.” You live in one of two tents; either you’re content, or you’re discontent. We’ve all met people who are never content—things are never the way they want them to be.
Money can be a monster if you love it more than God. There’s nothing inherently evil about money—it’s just a measure of value. Money can be used for good or evil. Money can be used to buy drugs, or it can be used to buy bread for a hungry child. Money can be used to buy missiles, or it can be used to send missionaries around the world.
If you are serious about becoming debt free, then you must call an absolute halt on any new debt. If the faucet is running, it doesn’t do any good to mop up the floor until you turn the faucet off! Find out what debt is, where debt comes from, and how you can develop a plan to start living debt free.
In our consumer-driven culture, we tend to work harder to accumulate possessions than we do friendships. But people matter more to God than anything else. Have you discovered people are much more valuable than things? When you do you’ll cherish friendships and relationships and do anything you can to maintain them, and to repair the ones that are broken.
Experts are saying this crisis affects the global economy—every nation. Do you think God is worried? Instead of listening to all the pundits and so-called experts, maybe we should listen to God’s Word written 3,000 years ago found in Psalm 2:1, “Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain?” There’s plenty of raging going on, and there are more bailout plots and rescue plans than we can handle. But I love verse 4. It simply says, “The One enthroned in heaven laughs.” When we try to scramble around to fix a problem that is the symptom of the greedy, sinful human heart, God must surely chuckle. Maybe God is using this to remind us that happiness and security will never come in stocks, bonds, and possessions.
The current problem is that most of us don’t seem to be as excited about going to heaven. I think one of the greatest tragedies of the modern church is that we have either ignored heaven or we have robbed heaven of its wondrous joy to the point that most Christians are apathetic about the idea of heaven.
Do you have an episode of failure in your past that you can look back to and say, “I blew it there. I was a flop, a failure. But I got back up and God has blessed me since.”? If you’ve had a midnight basket escape of your own, it equips you to deal with the next time you fail. That’s a great promise of God from the Bible: We will fail, but failure doesn’t have to define us. God can still use failures like Paul and like us.
Anyone has a right to be an unbelieving fool, but I am disturbed when a tiny percentage of aggressive atheists work with evangelistic zeal to try to remove every mention of God from our public life. God who created us, loves us so much that He gives us the ability to choose to believe in Him. Life is full of so much sin that suffering that people often look around and ask, “How can there be a God?” But they must remember most of the suffering we endure is created by the sinfulness of humanity.
Ehud was left-handed, but he didn’t allow his disadvantage to stop him from being God’s servant. What’s your excuse? You may think your weakness is that you aren’t educated enough to teach children, or that you’re too shy to stand at a door and greet people. But God is looking for people who turn adversity into advantage. God delights in using people that the world thinks are unfit.
Four hundred prophets were saying, “Go to war and you’ll win.” Micaiah had the courage to stand up and speak God’s truth. He had to go against the crowd. He faced peer pressure just as we do today. Peer pressure starts when we are young. We want to “be like” everyone else and we want to “be liked” by others, so we tend to go along to get along.
There is a law of cause and effect woven into the fabric of our universe. It basically says the small choices you make now can have enormous consequences down the road. In hindsight, the bravery of Puah and Shiphrah NOT to kill the boy babies saved an entire generation of Hebrew men. Included in that generation was a man named Moses—God’s deliverer. If Puah and Shiphrah hadn’t displayed the bravery to defy Pharaoh’s order, Moses’ mother may never have placed Moses in a basket in the river to be discovered by Pharaoh’s daughter.
There are so many things I admire about Abigail. She was married to a fool, yet she was willing to defend him. Just imagine, when she had heard that David was on his way to kill Nabal, she could have said, “God moves in mysterious ways His wonders to perform! Good riddance!” But instead, she chose to defend her foolish husband. She didn’t defend Nabal because he was good and deserved it, she did it because SHE was good and it was the right thing to do.
The Bible never tells us how many possessions Benaiah accumulated; instead we’re told about his mighty exploits, which is another word for his experiences. I can just picture King David sorting through the résumés for a bodyguard. One says, “I majored in security at the University of Jerusalem. Another one says, “I worked for Brinks Armored Chariots.” He laid those aside, and picks up Benaiah’s. “I ripped a spear from an Egyptian giant, and killed a lion in a pit on a snowy day.” David said, “That’s the man with the kind of experience that I’m looking for!” Later he gave him the job of leading his entire army! Have you ever considered that God allows you to go through tough challenges because He is simply building your spiritual résumé? Every lion you go after is preparing you for bigger and better challenges.
The same serpent who deceived Eve is actively trying to deceive believers today. And in our age of advanced technology, we have even more ways to believe lies. Abraham Lincoln said, “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” But it seems that Christians are some of the most gullible people around these days. We’re prone to believe anything that someone emails us.
There is a kind of arrogant boasting that destroys good relationships. Nobody really likes being around someone how is constantly talking about how great they are. Truly great people don’t brag about themselves. The English philosopher Francis Bacon said: “The less people speak of their greatness the more we think of it.” There are three kinds of boasting that should be avoided.
The security of our liberty is only guaranteed for every generation. Is this generation going to step up, like that greatest generation did and say we must have a revolution—not a revolution against a foreign tyranny—but a revolution of righteousness against those forces in America that would try to divert us from the road of righteousness that has brought us to this place?
There are three comparisonitis myths that enslave us. (1) I must be like everyone else to be happy. (2) I must be liked by everyone to be happy. And (3) I must have the things everyone else has to be happy. Comparisonitis is psychosomatic, because it’s all in your mind. You start believing Satan’s lies rather than God’s truth.
There are as many possible stronghold as the wicked creativity of Satan can devise. If you are honest with yourself, you’ll admit there is an area in your life in which you seem to fail over and over. Your desire to live right is there, but it seems as if someone evil is perched on a high wall and like a sniper, he keeps taking pot shots at you when it comes to those areas. If there is some weakness, or recurring sin in your life, you should consider the possibility that it is a spiritual stronghold. But coming to the realization that it is there is good, because only when you identify your target can you prepare to do battle against it!
When you give to God, are you giving grudgingly and reluctantly? Or do you find yourself giggling as you give? If you want to be a giggly giver, understand that your attitude is more important than your amount. You’ve got to recognize God’s law of the harvest and start joyfully, extravagantly planting seeds. And you’ve got to give out of a sense of gratitude for the grace that God has given to you.
There is a deep-seated need in the human heart to seek forgiveness. For those of us who know Christ, we find our forgiveness in God’s amazing grace. But what about the millions of people who claim to have no relationship with Jesus? They are still desperately seeking ways to find forgiveness and to unload their sense of guilt. Because of this need to confess and seek forgiveness, there are a number of “apology websites” in cyberspace where guilty people can go and anonymously confess their sins.
The amazing thing about God’s power is He can convert our troubles into joy. When the world does it worst to us, that’s when God can do His best for us! Do you think I’m making this up? Here’s a quick reality check. Joseph in the Old Testament—beaten up by his brothers—trouble. Sold into slavery—double trouble. Spent time in prison for a crime he never committed—triple trouble. Through it all, Joseph kept his focus on God, and he found joy in the midst of his troubles. So that in Genesis 50:20 Joseph said to his brothers, “You intended this to HURT me, but God intended it for GOOD, for the saving of many lives.” Joseph did look at the thorns, he looked at the rose. He never focused on the black clouds, he looked for the silver lining. He never stopped making lemonade with the lemons life game him.
There are three great promises of God that should motivate us to want to avoid the dangerous radioactive relationships that are possible. Now, you could approach this by emphasizing the negative: I will keep away from the wrong kind of people. But a much better approach would be to focus on the positive: I will desire to have a dynamic relationship with my Father. As you desire to love God more and more, you’ll find that the desire for the wrong kinds of relationships will naturally fall away.
I suspect there are some people whose hearts are so closed to the truth of the resurrection that if Jesus literally appeared in our midst right now, some would claim it was a hologram or done with smoke and mirrors. If you don’t believe by faith, I doubt you would believe if He stood before you with His wounded hands extended.
WPaul warns us about receiving God’s grace in vain, because there is the possibility that we can actually waste God’s grace. Grace has been defined as “God’s unmerited favor.” But that definition isn’t enough. To say that God’s grace is “unmerited favor” is like saying Niagara Falls is a trickle. It’s like saying the Grand Canyon is a ditch. It’s like saying the Amazon is a creek. Grace is so much more than unmerited favor.
We are Ambassadors for Christ. We are the only exposure to Jesus many people will ever see. That’s why we should live lives of loving kindness toward others. To show them that Jesus loves them. That’s why we should always try to live in such a way that no shame or dishonor is attached to the name of Jesus.
Every Christian should wear a sign around our neck that says, “Under New Management.” What used to happen inside our lives has changed. I have a new purpose for living; a new attitude toward others; a new identity in Christ; and a new nature that’s changing me. I’ve had an extreme makeover—on the inside.
One of the greatest life changes you’ll ever experience is when you allow God to change you to become a truly generous person. Are you generous? A truly generous person is too humble to admit, “I’m a generous person.” But when someone is talking about you to others, does the word “generous” come out of their mouths?
The church of the Lord Jesus Christ must change the way we share God’s message. Notice I didn’t say we need to CHANGE the message, I said we need to change the WAY we share God’s message. There’s a saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Well, the way we’re sharing the gospel must be broke, because it’s not working as well as it once did. We need to wake up to the sobering fact that we aren’t doing a very good job of reaching people in our own nation.
Have you become old and unimpressed? Maybe it’s time for a change of you to become like a little child. Look into the eyes of a child when they see a rainbow, or a butterfly, or a caterpillar, or a mud hole—that’s joyful wonder. Most of us have lost and need to recapture that sense of fun and joy kids have.
