day no. 13,112: authority's Author‏

Romans 13:1

Everyone must submit to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist are instituted by God.

Everyone.

Must.

Submit.

Each and every single person

Ought to

Place themselves under the authority structures God has designed.

The fundamental issue is one of acknowledging the authority the governing authorities rightly have over you. They have a God-given right to be in authority over you.

So drive the speed limit, pay your taxes, get the proper permits to work on your home, etc…. 

It costs you no compromise of conscience to conform these behaviors to what the authorities have determined.  It may cost you time and money, but everything costs something and some things are not worth the cost and crisis of conscience of being confronted with verses like this. Better to be in compliance with God’s Word and out a few bucks and hours than broke before God with a few dollars and minutes to show for it.

day no. 13,111: a simple matter of amount and type of water

Isaiah 8:6-7

6 Because these people rejected

the slowly flowing waters of Shiloah
and rejoiced with Rezin
and the son of Remaliah,
7 the Lord will certainly bring against them
the mighty rushing waters of the Euphrates River—
the king of Assyria and all his glory.
It will overflow its channels
and spill over all its banks.

People easily reject and dismiss the gentle, slow flowing waters of the way of grace through faith that God demands.

It is easily set aside as quaint or pie-in-the-sky. 

It is fairy-tale and daydreams.

It’s too good to be true.

So we rejoice in the fleeting help of resourcefulness.

We place faith in our ability to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.

We find confidence in contriving and conniving.

We have courage fueled by an unfounded optimism that bad things could never happen to us the way they do the people on TV.

God’s response is to send mighty rushing waters our way.

Instead of the lazy river on which we could have rested and enjoyed His provision, we are given the raging river of flood stage catastrophe.

We are drowned in the sorrows of our own choosing.

We reject grace and receive wrath.

And we do it to ourselves.

But there is hope.

The offer of gentle waters yet remains as long as it is called, “today.”

Do not harden your hearts and choose the easy way of self-satisfaction and self-reliance. 

Do the tough work of denying yourself and resting by faith in His grace, that lazy river of God’s love and provision.

Psalm 23:2b

He leads me beside quiet waters.

day no. 13,108: faith alone never falls

Isaiah 7:9b

If you do not stand firm in your faith,

then you will not stand at all.

That is such a tough statement. 

There is only one way to stand at all and that’s firmly by faith.

The book of Isaiah is relentless at pointing the reader to faith in God and His provision as the only means by which we can be forgiven, freed, redeemed, saved and rescued.

If you do not have faith, you will not stand AT ALL.

Not even a little bit.

Isaiah’s message was clear: life is dangerous and scary, but if you fight it by merely relying upon your own courage and confidence;  you will be leveled.

By faith in God we stand. 

day no, 13,107: is it worse to disregard God's Law or His Grace?‏

It makes sense to you that the Law would stone you to death if you disobeyed it.  The Law is kind of stodgy and grouchy and old-fashioned like that.

For the same reason you suspect that Grace will let you walk scot-free even if you take advantage of it and disobey it.  I mean Grace would never stone me to death like the Law would, right?  That’s why I like Grace better than the Law.  Grace let’s me do what I want to do.

Nope.

Scripture says the exact opposite.

Hebrews 10:26-31

26 For if we deliberately sin after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, 27 but a terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire about to consume the adversaries. 28 If anyone disregards Moses’ law, he dies without mercy, based on the testimony of two or three witnesses. 29 How much worse punishment do you think one will deserve who has trampled on the Son of God, regarded as profane the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and insulted the Spirit of grace? 30 For we know the One who has said, Vengeance belongs to Me, I will repay, and again, The Lord will judge His people. 31 It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God!

Disobeying Grace incurs an even greater punishment than disobeying the Law.

Why?

Jesus took the stones the Law chucked at you.

If you reject Him as the only sacrifice by which you can be saved, you are rejecting and disobeying the One who took your bullet.

The Spirit of Grace is even more enraged and furious by this rebellion and refusal to obey His revealed righteousness in Jesus than the original offense.

How much worse punishment do you think one will deserve who tramples on the perfect, spillled blood of Jesus?

It will be worse than being stoned to death.

It will be dying forever without ever finally being entirely dead.

Corpses don’t suffer.

Those who reject Jesus will suffer forever.

Don’t reject Jesus by assuming His grace requires nothing more than acknowledging it exists.

Hebrews 10:35-39

35 So don’t throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. 36 For you need endurance, so that after you have done God’s will, you may receive what was promised.

37 For yet in a very little while,

the Coming One will come and not delay.38 But My righteous one will live by faith;and if he draws back,I have no pleasure in him.

39 But we are not those who draw back and are destroyed, but those who have faith and obtain life.

Hold on to the One who holds on to you.

Listen to the One who speaks to you.

Obey the One who is your Lord and Savior.

day no. 13,106: two heart attacks

You cannot fix your own heart - even if you are extremely talented and gifted.

No matter how good you think you are.

No matter how good others think you are.

No matter how impressive your credentials are.

You cannot do heart surgery on yourself.

Even the best heart surgeon in the world is not so good that they could perform their own open heart surgery.

…

Your heart is not sick beyond fixing – even if you’ve done everything wrong.

No matter how bad you think you are.

No matter how bad others think you are.

No matter how damning your rap sheets are.

You are not beyond restoration.

Even the worst and most broken heart in this world is not so bad that it could not be renewed and regenerated by the Great Physician Jesus Christ.

day no. 13,105: saved not by works but to works

Salvation is not “of works” but “unto works.”

B. B. Warfield helped me understand this distinction a little more the other evening while reading Zaspel’s, Warfield on the Christian Life: Living in Light of the Gospel (Theologians on the Christian Life).

Ephesians 2:8-10

⁸ For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift— ⁹ not from works, so that no one can boast.¹⁰ For we are His creation, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time so that we should walk in them.

The Apostle Paul is very insistent that our good works accomplish nothing with respect to our salvation.

He is, however, equally as insistent that the saved life lives to the end of accomplishing good works.

We are not saved by our good works.

We are saved by God to do good works.

You can’t justify unrepentant rebellion by appealing to worksless salvation.

Your salvation is justified by works.

Easy killer, let me explain.

Jesus said it this way,

Matthew 11:19

…Wisdom is justified by her deeds.

Jesus is not here saying that wisdom is made righteous by what it does, but rather that wisdom is proven to be wisdom by what it does. 

Saved people produce good fruit from their new, reborn, regenerated hearts.

Like a grain of wheat, they die, deny themselves, fall to the ground and raise up again to produce a harvest of fruit.

We are not saved because we produce.

We produce fruit because we are saved.

Jesus summarized it this way,

Matthew 7:17-18

¹⁷ In the same way, every good tree produces good fruit, but a bad tree produces bad fruit. ¹⁸ A good tree can’t produce bad fruit; neither can a bad tree produce good fruit.

day no. 13,104 continued... new beginnings

First things first, I’m the realist!

It is exactly one year since Candeo Church had its first service at Central Middle School in Waterloo, IA

AND...

Today is officially my first day as the Administrative Pastor at that same Candeo Church.

Here's to today and many more like it to come!