It's All About Love!

I don't understand how it is so difficult or why it is so difficult for many of my brothers and sisters in the church have such a hard time realizing the simplicity of the Christian life.

Living the Christian life is not a matter of getting everything right.  It is the right of a Christian to be the best he can be, forgiven!  God did not make imperfect beings to live perfect lives.  God created imperfect beings to rely on a perfect Savior. 

You and I, being imperfect, are going to make mistakes and some of them horrific at times.  We need to feel bad and carry the guilt of that mistake, sin, or mess up to our Father and truly seek forgiveness.  However, we spend so much time worrying about the negative thoughts of Matthew 10:38-40, "He who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me". 

Why is it that we only see the negative aspects of this verse?  God is not expecting an "unnatural" response to this verse.  It is true that we need to be concerned when we don't mentally and spiritually carry the cross of Jesus in our lives, but we need also to be just as concerned about the positive aspects of this verse that we many times fail to see.

What is the positive?

We, as the children of God, are asked to carry a message that is life saving to a world that only sees the bad coming out of their lives and out of many of the religions of today. 

What man, or woman, gets up in the morning and decides that "today I am going out in my car and I am going to have a wreck."  Yet, we talk about how difficult it is to live the Christian life.  It is almost like we wake up and say, "Today, I know I am going to sin so here I go."

We leave our church buildings and homes thinking about the death sentence we carry in us because we know we are going to mess up in our lives and hurt God with our sins.  We just can't see the beauty of living the Christian life because we dwell on the negative life, the sinful side of our spiritual lives so much so that it consumes our thinking.

Just like you don't think about going out and wrecking your car, you shouldn't think about going out and worrying about messing up your spiritual lives because of the temptations you face.  Don't give up striving to live a good life, just know we aren't perfect and we are going to sin.

God promised us forgiveness if we lay our burdens down and ask for help.

I believe it is possible that we have overstepped and forgotten to look at the opportunity we have to live the positive side of this passage.  We get to be the children of God and carry the cross of Jesus to share with the whole world.  We can only do that with the love that has been given to us to choose instead of the negative aspect of "what I have to do to be right."  Just do what Jesus would do. 

What would Jesus do? 

Love, pray, share and give!  Change our attitude about having to live a good life for God to wanting to live a good life for God.  It is time to focus on the opportunity we have to take a different look at how we view living our lives.

"God, please bless my brethren and me to live lives looking forward to loving, caring and giving.  Let us carry the cross, not as a burden, but as a privilege." 

I'll see you later!

Celebration to Come!

When I was 11 years old, my baseball team won the City League championship in Longview, TX.  We were the Colonels and my brother Andy was the bat boy and was so excited about the win that he did a flip on the pitcher's mound.  The celebration for a group of  11 year old boys and their parents was so exciting that I have considered that year to be one of my favorites memories and my favorite age.

That one championship became one of my accomplishments that I cherished in my heart.  One of my teammates passed away as a result of a car wreck he suffered later in his teens.  Bruce Fisher was a friend and I have been thinking about him and the rest of the team who I wish I could see again.  We grew up, and now as men we have our own lives that were all shaped by the events of that summer.

However, several years later, I became a Christian by being immersed for the forgiveness of my sins and there are several people who were there as a part of that are no longer living in this world. I have lost my mother, several of my close friends who became a part of the team that I knew at that time as a result of my decision, and the preacher who immersed me, J.D. Lancaster and many who encouraged me to become who I now am in life.

Today, I live and work with a team of Christians who are living to win the championship of life.  Heaven is our goal, the celebration will be sweet, and I know that my brother Andy will do a flip for me at the thrown of God as a celebration of being home. (Well, maybe!) My Christian team was and is my favorite team and many memories have surpassed those baseball memories some 40 years ago. I have lost many of my friends and church family to death, but I know that they are waiting for the final celebration to come in eternity.  I too, with my physical and spiritual family, can't wait to celebrate with Jesus who "pitched a perfect game" in this life and is waiting for us to come home.

I hope you are ready for that celebration.  I would love to see you Sunday at the West Freeway church so that we can worship and praise Him who was perfect in this life so that we would have the chance to join Him for that celebration.  He lived the perfect life to be the perfect sacrifice for us.  "Come, now is the time to worship." 

God bless you.  See you Sunday so that I will be to possibly see you in heaven.