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I’m not a Christian

February 13, 2012 in Family, Leadership, Life, Spiritual with 10 Comments

What comes to your mind when you hear the word… Christian? Is it positive, negative? I know plenty of people who say they are Christians, they really believe they are Christians ….how they talk, how they treat others or are known to treat others, how they respond in difficult situations, what they post to their facebook wall…well it makes it a bit more interesting of a topic. Maybe in a sense, living in a free country we are just so comfortable that we’ve forgotten the  radical teachings of Jesus. Some of us don’t memorize scripture or even read scripture daily. I heard someone say once, the Devil doesn’t take a day off in attacking you so why would you take a day off from prayer and reading his word? If I were hired to be on a NFL team, let’s say the starting quarterback  I am not sure I’d get far without reading the game plan every week, or learning the play book. You wouldn’t want to hire me to be your investment adviser either if i didn’t have a weekly subscription to the Wall Street Journal and followed the trends of the market place. How would I be learning and staying current?

I am no longer comfortable calling myself a Christian. I just honestly believe it doesn’t represent who I am trying to be, I am calling myself a Christ Follower instead. Being a Christ follower, tells me all I need to know every single moment of my day..FOLLOW CHRIST. Jesus said “If you refuse to take up your cross and follow me, you are not worthy of being mine.“(Matt 10:38). Did you get that? We aren’t even worthy of being his if we choose not to take up our cross and follow him. What does that mean, follow him, it means follow his word, follow his heart, his way of living, crucify your will and live God’s will, or in easier terms, pick God’s game plan everyday and leave YOUR game plan at home. This is pretty significant because the difference can be seen by others. The early church, the one talked about in the book of Acts was becoming known by their love for one another and because they were living lives, similar to Christ, they were preaching, teaching, reading God’s word daily, baptizing people, attending to the sick and poor….so people associated them with Jesus Christ and began calling them…”those Christians.”  We are talking about upholding the name of Jesus Christ by how we live. Let me add this here, we aren’t perfect, no one is…but we are being perfected by grace. My favorite Bible verse is in Phil 1:6, it’s God’s promise to continue improving our lives until we are ready to join him in heaven, the question is are we allowing him to perfect our lives, is there a sign of progress and improvement?

Jesus said “You can identify them by their fruit, that is, by the way they act.” Is Jesus judging a person? No. He is simply stating facts, when we hear the phrase, “don’t judge a person” we are trying to convey that we may not know everything about them, but based on what we DO know, here is the verdict. My desire is to live and glorify God in all that I do, with Jesus being my example, his word my guide and his spirit my strength. Yeah, I am a follower of Christ, radically saved, drastically obedient, I am a follower of Christ.

Which describes you best, Christian or Christ Follower?

It’s time to let go

January 27, 2012 in Family, Leadership, Life, Spiritual with 8 Comments

Deep inner strength is required to hold on in life. We take things as they come and some of them knock us over. We can prepare ourselves for trials and tests, making us stronger mentally. We begin to get used to pain after a while, becoming tougher emotionally and we acquire what some say is “thick skin.” I have discovered that some of us are stronger than we think, we can take some pretty tough blows from life. Sometimes we are so good at being strong, we actually form a bad habit, a habit of holding on too long. We never get past some things and end up keeping them very near our hearts. I heard this said once, “when we don’t forgive, we allow the people who have hurt us to live in our hearts, rent free.”

The same amount of strength required to hang in there is the very same source of strength that allows us to let go. Problem is, we forget how to let go well, in fact we might actually forget how to rid ourselves of emotional baggage sometimes. As the years of struggle, pain and testing pile on, we end up carrying things around with us, things that reside in our past but because we don’t heal properly, we carry them around in our present, making it feel and seem like the incident is happening over and over, when in fact it happened already, it’s in the past.

In order to be really healthy, we need to be able to sit alone, meditate, pray and clear our minds from some things that have kept us back from emotional maturity, some things that just aren’t worth carrying around anymore. Maybe we hold on because it just feels better to still have someone else to blame, maybe we like being the victim. Either case, only in silence, getting on touch with spirit that lives inside can we find these things, address them, bring finality to them and once and for all decide that it’s time to let go.

Have you learned how to let it go?

My inheritance

January 25, 2012 in Leadership, Spiritual with 7 Comments

For those who may not know this, my father raised me in a Christian home, I spent my whole young adult life in a churched environment. I wasn’t saved by it but became a born again Christian when I was 17 years old. Every morning, I literally mean every single morning that I can remember waking up early and walking around the house I recall seeing my father, kneeled down praying on our sofa. I could be cooking up breakfast, using the microwave, he’d be deep in prayer on our sofa, focused on talking with God. It took me years to incorporate his spirtual discipline of morning prayer or even to realize its benefits. There are things I wish I had done with my father growing up like, teach me baseball, teach me driving, show me how to play football, these would have been really nice, but my father left me a rich inheritance that I cherish beyond all of these. He showed me God.

He LIVES the gospel, he LIVES a life that exemplifies Christ and still to this day I see God through his life. HE is an example of God’s grace and demonstrates it all the time.
When he was insulted by people, he trusted and served well, he remained humble and only prayed for those who hurt him, when he suffered a family loss one after the other after the other, he prayed to God for strenth, peace and even performed the funerals himself. Never blaming God but honoring and worshiping God through the pain.
His legacy, my inheritance from him  is…God deserves all the glory, no matter what we endure here on earth. I have learned, Got a problem? Pray about it. Got an opportunity? Pray about it. Feeling angry or hurt? Pray about it. In and through all things, pray about it. My father left me an inheritance that is eternal, a life that points to Christ, what else could have more value? Nothing. I realize this has been the greatest gift I can leave my kids, I am working hard to help them in their future, sure, who wouldn’t want that? If I can demonstrate that Christ is alive and he lives in me, they too can inherit and share eternal life with others.

What inheritance has a family or friend left for you?

We are Transformers

January 16, 2012 in Leadership, Life, Spiritual with 4 Comments

 I have been aware of God since I was a small child,  I grew up in church, I grew up in a christian home, I was taken to church every week, even before I knew how to walk. I would sleep under the church benches and play with my toy soldiers as my father preached week after week. I was not aware of Gods work in my life until much, much later.  At age 17, I prayed the salvation prayer, I prayed to accept Jesus as my savior and asked him to save me. I really didn’t understand what that meant, but as years went on, as I kept seeking God and reading his word, being in fellowship with other believers I began to understand and enjoy the life changing decision I made.

I LOVE the fact that I am saved but there is one thing that still disturbs me, it burdens me in fact, it’s the number of believers I run into these days that are so busy, so focused on doing God’s work that the actual work Jesus did on the cross is harder to see in their lives then what they are trying to do with their lives. I became a victim of this myself, when I first started in ministry it was all, go, go, go but my time with the Lord was less, less and less. The power of the good news is life transforming, our lives should be changing into the likeness of Christ but it’s not always visible these days, it seems in many who proclaim to know him that they look less like the one they are working for. Jesus death was so that we could find a new life in him, who we were before should be dissappearing daily, we should be transforming into a new purified, sanctified and redeemed life. Here is a scripture that comes to my mind when talking about transformation:

Romans 12: 2 “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.” Our behavior, thinking and choices should be different right? Our attitudes and actions should be transforming right?

I think for many believers, the call to do the LORDS work seems more important than the WORK that LORD must do in them.  There is work to be done, God chose us for a purpose but our relationship with him has to remain priority. When you see me, the work I am doing  shouldn’t be what you see in my life, you should be able to see the work that Christ is doing in my life. The testimony I get to share in heaven before all the saints and angels is that I have been redeemed and transformed by the power and blood of Christ. I can easily tell you the “before” and “after” story of my life in many areas, and some that are still being improved, matured and transformed by God’s word and grace. I can stand and testify, I am a NEW person, I am a different person than I was years ago, and that work continues, read Ephesians 1:6 (my favorite verse).

In Matthew 7:16 Jesus said ”You can identify them by their fruit, that is, by the way they act.” Jesus is talking about the fruit of our lives, what is happening in us would be much more visible or evident than what is happening through us. Are the fruits of the Spirit evident in us? Or have we chosen to move down such a busy, hectic and cluttered path that the people around are not able to the see the joy, peace, love, kind, forgiving, likeness of the God we serve?

What transformation is more visible? The Lords work or is the work of the Lord? 


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