Adopted by God

John 1:12-13 (NLT)

¹² But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. ¹³ They are reborn—not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God.

This verse tells us that all who believed and accepted Jesus Christ were given the right to become children of God; that is they became adopted by God to live as His children in His kingdom.

The other day I listened as my wife told a story of a man who was about to marry a woman who had a child. The father of the child had deserted them and had no interest in them.

Seeking to marry this woman, the father of this man, being a Godly person, told his son, “If you marry this woman, you also assume responsibility for her girl as she has no one of her own.”

The man carefully listened to his father. He married the woman and later adopted the girl. She was treated as she was his very own. She was always considered the first child in their family; even as they had more children. This girl learned the love of a father who adopted her without question, who loved her and respected her as one of her own.

My wife said the girl turned out to be a woman who understood the accepting love of another and never had a problem accepting the love of God the Father.

Give thanks to God who out of your belief of His Son takes you to be one of His adopted heirs.

Light of the World

Matthew 5:14-16 (NLT)

14 “You are the light of the world—like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden. 15 No one lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket. Instead, a lamp is placed on a stand, where it gives light to everyone in the house. 16 In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father.

Jesus reminds us that we are the reflection of God’s light in this world that like a city on a hill top or a light on a table so that our good deeds can be seen for others to know our love of God.

Rick Richardson, writes in Reimagining Evangelism: My friend Sam works at Einstein Brothers Bagels, where I write my books. Sam has a Muslim dad and a kind-of-Baptist mom. Recently, as I was going through the line, Sam waved me over. "I've lost my wallet again. I don't know where it is!"

"Sam, I will pray for you," I assured him.

"I guess it can't hurt," he replied (I get that response a lot).

Ten minutes later, he came over and told me he had found it. "All right!" I rejoiced. "Hey, you can ask me to pray for you any time." He laughed.

The next week as I went through the line, Sam let me know his ulcer was acting up. "Sam, is there anything I can get you?" I asked. He sent me over to the nearby Cub Foods to pick up some medicine. When I came back, I told him I would pray, too. This time he welcomed my prayers a little more enthusiastically.

Ten minutes later, he approached me and said he felt much better and hadn't needed to take the medicine. That was very unusual for him. "Man, I wish I had prayed for you before I went and bought that medicine!" I exclaimed. He laughed again.

These days, he doesn't wait for me to ask. When I see Sam, he often asks me to pray for him without any suggestion from me at all.  [Rick Richardson, Reimagining Evangelism (IVP, 2006), p. 20-21]

Let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father. For you are the light of the world.

Jesus Wept

John 11:35 (NKJV)

35 Jesus wept.

This verse comes from the story of Lazarus who had died. He was the brother of Martha and Mary, all of which were friends to Jesus. The shortest verse in The Bible, yet it has great importance. The words, Jesus wept, shows the humanity of Jesus as tears fell down His face for His friends. It shows Jesus understood grief and He could weep as one who loved another.

My Mother-In-Law passed away last Monday around 3:30PM at the age of 86. We know her life was slowly stolen by either Alzheimer’s or Dementia.

For over a year had not been able to walk. For months she had not been able to get out of bed. For months she was only able to take small bites of food, and then she stopped eating. She was not able to communicate clearly. She had trouble breathing. She was in constant pain and she was only able to take drops of water at a time. We watched her decline, we had done all we could do without prolonging agony and suffering. Naturally we grieved for her as the disease was taking her life.

She left behind a husband of 61 years, along with a son and his wife, a daughter and her husband, 5 grandchildren, and 3 great-grandchildren.  We were all deeply grieved by her death. Her husband especially feels the emptiness and the loss of her presence; even though he knows she is in a better place; it is still difficult for him.

Jesus understands our grief. He saw the pain of the family after Lazarus had passed away. Jesus wept as He mourned with them. I believe Jesus also wept because He planned to perform a miracle that would take Lazarus from a beautiful place of eternity and place him back into this harsh world.

Remember Our Savior loves us and understands the pains of life. Jesus is always listening to our prayers and feels our tears. Know that His love, grace and mercy can sustain us through the most difficult of times, because Jesus faced the most difficult of times. Jesus faced those difficult times for our sake, so we could spend eternity with Him in heaven.

Alzheimer’s is a horrible disease. I personally have lost family members to Alzheimer’s and I know others who have loss family dear to them because of it.

Please remember these people in prayer. If you are able to give, please donate to www.alz.org or other charitable organizations such as http://www.leezascareconnection.org/ and even read more about this disease at http://www.alzheimers.gov/ which informs and guides families. May God bless you and ease any grief you may be experiencing.

Run the race with endurance

Hebrews 12:1(NLT)

12 Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.

Here observe what is the great duty which the apostle urges upon the Hebrews, and which he so much desires they would comply with, and that is, to lay aside every weight, and the sin that did so easily beset them, and run with patience the race set before them. [Matthew Henry Commentary]

If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next … Aim at Heaven and you will get earth 'thrown in': aim at earth and you will get neither.

—C. S. Lewis, Irish professor, author, and apologist (1898–1963)

Set your mind on heaven and concentrate on what would benefit God’s heavens the most. There are many witnesses to confirm the testimony of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The problem is we let too many burdens of this present world weight us down and we lose sight of the eternal life waiting for us. We get tripped up by sin and sin tries to destroy anything good we could accomplish. Do not let the weight of sin hold you back, but instead remember the love, mercy and grace of Our Lord. Run the race of life with patience knowing there is an eternity of life awaiting at the finish line for those who have placed their faith in The Lord Jesus Christ.

Let your Yes be Yes and Your No, No

James 5:12 (NKJV)

12 But above all, my brethren, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or with any other oath. But let your “Yes” be “Yes,” and your “No,” “No,” lest you fall into judgment.

But let your yea be yea, and your nay nay; lest you fall into condemnation; that is, "let it suffice you to affirm or deny a thing as there is occasion, and be sure to stand to your word, an be true to it, so as to give no occasion for your being suspected of falsehood; and then you will be kept from the condemnation of backing what you say or promise by rash oaths, and from profaning the name of God to justify yourselves. It is being suspected of falsehood that leads men to swearing. Let it be known that your keep to truth, and are firm to your word, and by this means you will find there is no need to swear to what you say. Thus shall you escape the condemnation which is expressly annexed to the third commandment: The Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain. [Matthew Henry Commentary]

In his book When Life Is Hard, pastor and author James MacDonald shares a valuable lesson he learned during his days as a basketball player. He writes:

I played a lot of basketball back in the day. I sprained my ankles many times, and I learned too late that the best way to handle all that black-and-blue is to fill a wastebasket with ice and top it off with water. Then, while the injury is fresh, put your wounded foot deep into that cold water and leave it there.

If you can last for one minute, it's just crazy painful. But if you can keep it in there for two minutes, the injury and its recovery time will be cut in half. … If you can hang on for two and a half minutes, you can be playing basketball again by Thursday, but the pain of holding your foot in that arctic water will have you crying out for someone to bring you a sharp object. Even with my worst injuries I seldom made it two and a half minutes.

But here is the amazing thing about "remaining under the pain" of having your foot in that cold bucket: If you can hang in there for three minutes, you'll be walking on it tomorrow. The pain will be consuming those last thirty seconds, worse by far than the injury itself now. But you will walk tomorrow.

MacDonald concludes: "It is just that way with trials. You can come to the place where the circumstance itself is less painful than the commitment not to give up."  [Van Morris, Mount Washington, Kentucky; source: James MacDonald, When Life Is Hard (Moody, 2010), p. 63]

It can be painful to give a truthful answer, especially when you have done something wrong. I use to watch the TV show COPs. So many times a person would get caught where it was clearly seen what they had done for the camera doesn’t hide many facts. Yet when the person was asked if they had committed the crime their answer would be “No.” It wasn’t until they realized they had been watched, the person next to them was an undercover officer, or they were just tired of lying would they finally admit the truth.

Also there are times in our life when we don’t want to commit so we say things like “I think”, “I guess”, “I’m not sure, but … .” You probably know those type of answers. If you need to say yes or no, follow God’s word and answer honestly and truthfully without swearing.  

Be not Ashamed

Romans 1:16 (NIV)

16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.

There is a great deal in the gospel which such a man as Paul might be tempted to be ashamed of, especially that he whose gospel it is was a man hanged upon a tree, that the doctrine of it was plain, had little in it to set it off among scholars, the professors of it were mean and despised, and everywhere spoken against; yet Paul was not ashamed to own it. I reckon him a Christian indeed that is neither ashamed of the gospel nor a shame to it. [Matthew Henry Commentary]

John Stott shares the following story from 1958 when he was leading a university outreach in Sydney, Australia. The day before the final meeting, Stott received word that his father had passed away. In addition to his grief, Stott was also starting to lose his voice. Here's how Stott describes the final day of the outreach:

It was already late afternoon within a few hours of the final meeting of the mission, so I didn't feel I could back away at that time. I went to the great hall and asked a few students to gather round me. I asked one of them to read … "My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness," (2 Corinthians 12:8-9). A student read these verses and then I asked them to lay hands on me and … pray that those verses might be true in my own experience.

When time came for me to give my address, I preached on the [broad and narrow ways from Matthew 7]. I had to get within half an inch of the microphone, and I croaked the gospel like a raven. I couldn't exert my personality. I couldn't move. I couldn't use any inflections in my voice. I croaked the gospel in monotone. Then when the time came to give the invitation, there was an immediate response, larger than any other meeting during the mission, as students came flocking forward …

I've been back to Australia about ten times since 1958, and on every occasion somebody has come up to me and said, "Do you remember that final meeting in the university in the great hall?" "I jolly well do," I reply. "Well," they say, "I was converted that night."

Stott concludes, "The Holy Spirit takes our human words, spoken in great weakness and frailty, and he carries them home with power to the mind, the heart, the conscience, and the will of the hearers in such a way that they see and believe."  [Michael P. Knowles, editor, The Folly of Preaching (Eerdmans, 2007), pp. 137-138]

The gospel is the “Good News” of the salvation for sins that can be found in The Lord Jesus Christ. God sent Jesus first for the Jews and then the Gentiles, which in reality is everyone else. God had a special place in his heart for the Jewish population, but God also loved all people and extended His Mercy, Grace and Love to all. Do not be ashamed of the gospel for it brings salvation to all who have faith.

Ignoring the warning signs

James 1:21 (NLT)

21 So get rid of all the filth and evil in your lives, and humbly accept the word God has planted in your hearts, for it has the power to save your souls.

We are called upon to suppress other corrupt affections, as well as rash anger: Lay aside all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, v. 21. The word here translated filthiness signifies those lusts which have the greatest turpitude and sensuality in them; and the words rendered superfluity of naughtiness may be understood of the overflowings of malice or any other spiritual wickednesses. Hereby we are taught, as Christians, to watch against, and lay aside, not only those more gross and fleshly dispositions and affections which denominate a person filthy, but all the disorders of a corrupt heart, which would prejudice it against the word and ways of God. [Matthew Henry Commentary]

In his book Over the Edge: Death in the Grand Canyon, Michael P. Ghiglieri chronicles the nearly 700 deaths that have occurred in the Grand Canyon since the 1870s. Of course most people aren't shocked that fatal mishaps occur there. After all, the Grand Canyon is 277 miles long, up to 18 miles wide, and attains a depth of over a mile (6,000 feet). The extreme temperatures (which often exceed 100 degrees) can quickly lead to heatstroke and dehydration.

So how did most of the deaths occur? Air crashes account for the largest number of deaths at the Grand Canyon. Floods have claimed the lives of some of the river rafters. Other despondent souls have taken their own lives. But according to Ghiglieri, a number of people have gone "over the edge" and fallen to their death through their own carelessness. Specifically, they ignored posted warnings and confidently walked out on to dangerous precipices.

For example, in 1992, a 38-year-old father jokingly tried to frighten his teenage daughter by leaping on to a guard wall. He flailed his arms as he pretended to lose his balance. Then he comically "fell" on the canyon side onto a ledge he assumed was safe. But sadly, after ignoring numerous warning signs, he lost his footing and fell 400 feet into the void below.

Then in 2012, an 18-year-old woman who was hiking on the North Rim Trail decided to venture off the beaten path to have her picture taken at a spot known as Inspiration Point. As she sat down on the ledge of the 1,500-foot deep canyon, the rocks gave way, and she plummeted to her death.

These deaths were not just tragic; they were also completely avoidable. Does anyone truly want his or her last words before "AAAAHHHHHH" to be, "Look at how close I can get to the rim without fall …. ?" Call me overly cautious, but without a hang-glider or parachute attached to my body, I can see the Canyon just fine 10 yards back from the precipice.

And yet many of us approach sin by asking the question, "How close can I get without crossing the line?" We avoid God's warning signs and then edge right up to disaster, confident that we—unlike other people—can avoid the crash. Like the child who listens to a parent's warning and then does everything to push the boundaries, we rush to the edge of sin with a false sense of security.