Author Archives: Richard Clinton

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About Richard Clinton

My name is Richard Clinton. I began a journey of learning about God in 2011, but did not fully surrender to Christ until January 2015. I began this blog in 2012 and it has evolved continually since then as my faith has evolved and grown and I’ve walked closer with God. My writing is through this page comes in a desire to seek the lost and provide inspiration through the Four Streams that are brought out in John Eldredge’s book, “Waking The Dead.”. As John laid out in his book, the Four Streams derive from the Four Streams through which Christ offered life in Discipleship, Counseling, Healing, and Warfare. I will continue writing in these areas of our faith and life. On the personal side, I reside in Georgia and I am married to my beautiful wife Amber and together we have 3 awesome kids. My life is all about my family and providing the best I can for them and also being there for each of them. 4 Stream Living came about as I was walking closer with God and I felt His Spirit calling me to do more with my life. I knew I was thirsty for more and God had a calling for me. I have spent my entire working life building a career in the corporate world toward what would be deemed as success. I was fully self focused on worldly successes. Standing on a mountain top in Colorado in January 2015, I completely surrendered my life to Christ and God has completely transformed my life. It has reflected in my writing and God has led me to awaken the desire to seek the lost through my writing and through counseling ministry, which I am now schooling for. Irenaeus declared that “The glory of God is man fully alive.” I am now coming alive as I have declared to live the unscripted life to follow God and live for Christ NO MATTER THE COST.

Daring To Risk

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There seems to be a theme that has been building in my life that has really began to come full circle as we begin this year.  I wrote about this last week when talking about living an adventure and that theme falls back to risk.  Throughout life there is the challenge to enter into risk or to avoid it.  To try things that are dangerous with an uncertain outcome or to play it safe and follow the straight and narrow.  There are good risks and bad risks.  When I was a kid, we didn’t think twice about stacking all kinds of junk and leaning a long board against it for a ramp to jump our bikes.  What was probably even less genius about it is that the ramp was on the driveway and the landing point was the road.  We certainly had our share of close calls with cars flying through.

There’s another type of risk that is good risk.  It may still be dangerous.  It can leave you with a lot of uncertainty, but the outcome in the end will be more wonderful than you can imagine.  That is the risk to follow Christ.  The risk to say to the world that I don’t belong to you and I am going to follow where God leads.  This may not seem like a risky thing on the surface to some, but this type of risk is more opposed than anything in this world.  There is so much spiritual warfare pitted against anyone that wants to follow God’s lead.

I remember this time last year.  I was just a couple of weeks out from flying to Colorado for the Wild at Heart Boot Camp.  As the day drew near, I came under attack, although I didn’t know it at the time.  Every single day for the weeks prior, I suffered continuous headaches.  It bothered me a random times of day.  When I was working out, when I was reading, when working, and other strange random times.  It continued so persistently that I was contemplating cancelling the trip.  I was worried about what was going on.  I had never suffered those kind of headaches and haven’t since then.

I fly out and it’s still bothering me.  I get to Denver and board the buses out to Crooked Creek Ranch, it’s still there.  Thinking this may also be altitude, I ignored it, but it still worried me.  Then we get to the first session on Thursday evening.  We prayed as a group.  Me and 400+ other men.  Then John Eldredge says, “Congratulations men, you made it.” The rest of the time there, the headaches were gone.  I came home, the headaches were gone.  I didn’t realize this until later that this was spiritual warfare.  The enemy was trying to stop me.  I took the risk however and followed God and life hasn’t been the same sense.  That was a good risk.

Risk is such a powerful thing and God calls each of us into risk.  Being willing to risk it all, no matter the cost, to seek out His will and allow Christ to come in and transform us.  Risk is always opposed by the enemy when we are following God, but God has been taking a risk on us from the very beginning, first in creating us, and now in his pursuit of us.  Then we see stories of people risking it all for the Lord.  All the way from the beginning.  Abraham followed God to Canaan.  Moses stood against Pharaoh to free Israel.  David stood against the giant, Goliath.  Jesus lived His life on earth following the Father’s will even to the point of His death.  Then we have the apostles, most of whom lost their lives in service of Christ Jesus.  Such amazing stories of incredible risk.

God is calling each of us into risk as well.  He called me to Colorado and is now calling me to do Kingdom work seeking the lost through counseling.  I pray about this change everyday.  I don’t know what God will have in store as this work truly begins.  He is using the gifts He granted me for His glory now and I have surrendered to that.  That is a big risk.  It’s going to bring about massive changes for my family, but it’s something having a renewed heart, mind, and spirit that we welcome wholeheartedly.

Too many people are complacent in where they are in life.  Especially many Christians.  God calls us into risk and into spiritual growth and maturity.  We can’t be stranded in stale adolescence.  David Wilkerson wrote, “Today, some Christians are content to merely exist until they die. They don’t want to risk anything, to believe God, to grow or mature. They refuse to believe his Word, and have become hardened in their unbelief. Now they’re living just to die.”  Don’t live life to just die.  As one of my friends, Jeff, wrote today on Facebook, live to live.  God has so much in store when we enter his Kingdom.  Be willing to risk now so that you can live life and not just live to die.

Let’s get out of mediocrity.  Let’s get out of stagnant and stale adolescence and risk it to follow Christ no matter the cost.  The enemy will oppose you.  His demons will oppose you. The world, even including people you love, will oppose you.  You, however, need to be willing to oppose all of that in order to live for the Kingdom.  To win for the Kingdom.  To be sanctified by Christ daily in your walk with Him.  To follow Him no matter the cost and if He is calling you to move, being willing to move into the unknown.  Dare to risk!

I want a lifetime of holy moments. Every day I want to be in dangerous proximity to Jesus. I long for a life that explodes with meaning and is filled with adventure, wonder, risk, and danger. I long for a faith that is gloriously treacherous. I want to be with Jesus, not knowing whether to cry or laugh.” – Mike Yaconelli

Willing To Live An Adventure

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What comes to your mind when you think of risk and adventure?  When I think of this, there are often images of being a kid, jumping on the bike and riding around town, through the woods down trails, and exploring everything.  When your a kid, everything seems to be an adventure as you are starting to try new things.  You’re willing to get out there and try new things, go new places unsure about what lies ahead, but still you want to go.  For my kids, they love to get out and explore.  We have a river that runs along our neighborhood and they will get out there and explore through the woods, even stretching the limits to follow the river to see where it goes.  That’s a part of being a kid.  God set in us the desire to explore and take on adventure. The desire for adventure.

Something happens though.  We grow older.  We become tainted by the world and we lose the adventure.  Some become stranded in adolescence and try to keep it going, while many of us grow older and begin to do what the world expects of us.  We begin to lose the adventure.  We fall into complacency in our lives and start to do ‘the right thing.’  For me, I know that is definitely the case.  I’ve mentioned this a bunch, but I went college have multiple degrees in areas I really didn’t have a passion for, but thought, “Hey, that’s how to make more money and be successful.”  I thought that was what mattered.

Sitting in our men’s study this week I was reminded of things I learned reading through Wild At Heart and at the Boot Camp last year.  We all have an adventure to live.  As I mentioned before, God set adventure in our hearts.  The desire to risk and follow the desires of our hearts.  I was listening to a recording with Bart Hansen from Ransomed Heart where he talked about the adventure and risk.  Something he shared with us a Boot Camp.  Psalm 37:4, which says, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.”

Life is meant to be lived as an adventure.  This comes with living with faith in where God is leading us and being willing to follow wherever He is leading.  I read this in Wild at Heart, but at first didn’t know what this meant to me.  Risk. That’s a scary word for many.  It was for me.  I was so complacent and comfortable for so long.  I felt I was doing what I was supposed to and was able to provide adequately for my family.  We started so young, Amber and I, and I wanted to prove I could do it.

I realized that God had another plan for me though.  I had been feeling this calling on my heart for a while, that there was something more I needed to do.  I didn’t know what that was.  I began writing on this blog.  I knew I was being called to help people in someway, but didn’t know how.  Ideas came and went.  Then it all happened last year.  I realized that God was calling me deeper to help seek the lost and help them find breakthrough and restoration as I did.  This led to counseling.

When this first came up, I really looked at it like, “Really God?  Counseling?”  He affirmed this, not only in my heart, but in the conversations I later had with Amber and then with my pastor and friend, Tim, as well as others.  So I did it.  I jumped in.  It was time to go on an adventure.

Bart Hansen shared something significant when it comes to adventure and risk.  We can risk all day long, but if we don’t follow God in faith through it, we will have nothing.  Also, we can spend our days trying to follow God and putting in the study and work, but if we don’t jump out and risk when He is calling us to adventure, then we are left with nothing as well. Delight yourself in the Lord; and He will give you the desires of your heart.  Follow God, no matter where He is leading.  Follow in faith. Be willing to risk it all, but to risk it all for Him and Him alone.  That’s the kicker.

In Wild At Heart, John Eldredge wrote, “Life is not a problem to be solved, it is an adventure to be lived. That’s the nature of it and has been since the beginning when God set the dangerious stage for this high-stakes drama and called the whole wild enterprise GOOD. He rigged the world in such a way that it only works when we embrace risk as the theme of our lives, which is to say, only when we live by faith. A man just won’t be happy until he’s got adventure in his work, in his love, and in his spiritual life.”

The drama that is playing out in front of us in God’s epic story is full of danger.  Risk is ingrained in our every being.  Every part of us.  We are meant to live a life in faith that is willing to follow God, to follow Christ, no matter the cost.

I still look at the work that lies ahead of me.  I don’t know what God will have in store as time moves forward and as I complete my studies.  I know there is a tremendous amount of risk and change that will come our way.  The difference however, and Amber and I both see it this way, we are now following what God’s call is for us.  We are willing to go on this adventure, because we know following Him is what we are meant to do.  It’s what all of us are meant to do, but sadly only a few do it.  It took us until our mid-30s to figure it out, but that’s how He worked it out.

If you trust Him, He will lay the path before you.  Jesus calls us to follow Him.  Living a life that is unscripted and lived by faith, is the only life worth living.  As John Eldredge wrote in Fathered by God, “This is the time for a young man to stop saying, ‘Why is life so hard?’ He takes the hardness as the call to fight, to rise up, to take it on.”  

It’s time to stop standing still.  Time to stop letting the world dictate what you do and how you live.  Rather, it’s time to start following the desires of your heart which is where God is leading.  Follow Him on the adventure that is being laid out in front of you.   Be willing to risk it all for Jesus.  It won’t always be easy, but the cost will be worth it.

Humility So Genuine

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Humility.  This is a word that has been on my heart for a number of days now.  As we started the New Year, I’ve continued to dive deeper into Scripture and working hard at walking with God deeper with scripture, prayer, and journaling my thoughts as I role through the morning.  On Saturday, as I continued my read through Philippians.  Something big stood out to me from Philippians 2.  The humility of Jesus.  Paul tells us to be humble, thinking of others over ourselves. In verse 5 that he writes that we must have the attitude that Jesus had.  Verses 6-8 from the NLT read:humility

“Though He was God, he did not think of equality with as something to cling to.  Instead, He gave up his divine privileges (emptied himself); He took the humble position of a slave and He was born as a human being. When He appeared in human form, He humbled Himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross.”

This thought has crossed my mind before, but God really spoke this into my heart this week.  Humility.  The true humility of Jesus is something that we should look to have in our own lives.  I just found this so powerful to think about.  Here is Jesus.  As Paul writes, He is God, yet, Jesus came as fully man.  In his book, Beautiful Outlaw, John Eldredge, lays it out this way…

“The eternal Son of God, ‘Light of Light, Very God of Very God…one substance with the Father, spent nine months developing in Mary’s uterus.  Jesus passed through her birth canal. He had to learn to walk. The Word of God had to learn talk.  He who calls the stars by name had to learn the names of everything, just as you did. ‘This is a cup. Can you say cup? Cuuup.'”

It’s so fascinating to think about how this man, Jesus, humbled himself so much to walk on even playing field.  But think about it.  In order to open the way for us all, He needed to.  We were lost before Jesus, but the Father had us in mind from before the foundations of the earth and has been pursuing us since.  Jesus walking as the perfect lamb of God, fully human, although He was God showed us what we were always meant to be as God’s sons and daughters.  Our story did not begin at the Fall.  It goes way before that, to what we were created to be, inheriting a kingdom created and set aside for us.  Jesus came to restore us, so that we could once again claim that inheritance if we choose to follow Him.washing-feet-statue-2

As this was on my heart, it was very cool to hear the teaching Sunday morning, which went into John 13.  When I learned we were going there, I was floored, I knew God was really speaking this to me.  Here, Jesus gives us an example of his humility as he washes the feet of his disciples including Judas, even though Jesus knew he would betray Him.  Jesus humbled himself to serve others in this manner.  He says in verse 14 and 15, “And since I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to was each other’s feet. I have give you an example to follow.  Do as I have done to you.”  Jesus is showing us the humility that we should have in our lives.  Not putting ourselves above others.  Not striving for position or title, but rather living as who we are in Christ.

When I look back on my life, there was a time when I was all about striving for my own successes.  Making it to those high positions.  Striving for higher success and thinking that this was what mattered in life.  More degrees, greater position, higher salary, etc.  I have been humbled so much though in realizing that all of that led me to nothing.  This is because none of my efforts were done with the motives of serving Jesus and serving others, other than my own success and supporting my family.

God has shown me another way and is leading me in a way to serve others, serve Him, and seek the lost for His kingdom.  How humbling that all becomes.  I was reading and journaling yesterday morning and I came up with this.  “A life of self-reliance leads to emptiness and death. A life reliant on Jesus leads to a life of freedom, breakthrough, restoration, and coming fully alive.”  If we put our own self-centered ambitions above everything else, we will be humbled very quickly in the end and will be left with nothing.

I think God put this on my heart to remind me that I all I am doing needs to be done with Him as my motive.  Helping me to remember to not put myself above others. As Tim shared on Sunday, to seek God, not titles or position.  Even as a developing counselor and with the work God is leading me toward, it can be so easy to exalt myself in that and seek position, whether in a counseling practice, church, or wherever simply to make myself standout.  God’s reminding me that my efforts need to be only to seek His glory and advance His kingdom, not my own.

I’m grateful for this reminder God gave me.  I pray that it helps you as well.  Look at the humility of Jesus.  He is the example to follow.  Don’t think yourself above others.  None of us are are greater than the other.  We are all fallen. We are all sinners given a chance to be restored in through the finished works of Jesus Christ.

“The sufficiency of my merit is to know that my merit is not sufficient.” – Augustine

Don’t Let Busyness Kill The Soul

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As we start the New Year, I was reminded this week about something that is very critical for all of us in this day and age.  I have been blessed to spend these last couple of weeks home with the family to enjoy the Christmas and New Years holidays  and some good down time from work and between semesters in my counseling studies.  What I was reminded of is the need to unplug from the matrix.  The need to slow down, be still, and spend time away from the chaos and noise of this world and what often encompasses our lives.

I was listening to a recording from Ransomed Heart Ministries the other day called “The Spirit of the Age.”  John Eldredge talked about how each age, each period of time is defined by something.  The spirit of this age we live in now, of this world, as John says, is drivenness or busyness.  We are in a world of now, now, now…go, go, go.  We are constantly plugged into social media and the news.  We spend our days trying to fill time with things to keep going.  We always feel like we have to multitask everything. Multitasking by the way, is the ultimate myth.  You cannot be fully present in any situation at any time to two or more people or tasks.  As the Christian musician Propaganda says, when multitasking, “You ain’t doing anything good, just everything awful.”  Lot’s of truth here.

We live in a very driven world.  We are always on the go.  I’ve been guilty of everything I’ve listed and more.  I have grown to believe that this driven nature.  This need to always stay busy is soul killing.  It is pulling us away from the priorities in life.  Not just in our families but also in our walk with God.  In our ability to have a real conversational relationship with the Father.  In our ability to really dive into His Word and study and get to know all that God has revealed to us.  busyness-01

Why do we always feel like we have to be so busy?  Why are we so driven to go, go, go?  Why can’t we unplug from the matrix?  Why can’t we put our phones down and just be present?  I believe it’s a scheme of the enemy.  He uses this need for busyness to keep us distracted.  Then when everyone else is always going, we feel like we have to do more and more to keep up.  It’s soul killing and it’s just what the enemy wants.

Look, I’m not saying it’s bad to be busy, but what I’m saying is that when it runs your life, and this day and age it does, with so much noise all around, that becomes a problem.  Like I said, this is something I’ve been guilty of.  I’ve been out at a restaurant with Amber and often times I have my work phone and my personal phone sitting right there.  How many of of you do the same?  It’s called a lunch break for reason, yet we never fully take a real break away.

I look at the life of Jesus when I think of this.  Jesus constantly had crowds following Him.  People wanted to be healed and have demons cast away.  Jesus could easily have just spent his time healing non-stop, but He didn’t.  Look at Mark 1.  Jesus heals Peter’s mom and then more and more people come for healing.

In verse 35, Jesus did something many of us don’t do.  It says, “In the early morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went away to a secluded place, and was praying there.”  Jesus left to be alone.  To be in solitude and pray.  Peter and the others find Jesus and tell Him everyone is looking for Him.

Now at this point, Jesus could have done what many of us do.  Do what others expect us to do.  Do what the world wants us to do.  Stay plugged in and keep busy.  Not Jesus.  You see He did not conform to this world and showed us that we don’t have to.  In verse 38, Jesus says, “Let us go somewhere else to the towns nearby, so that I may preach there also; for that is what I came for.”  Jesus left.  He was not going to let the demands of others control what He was doing or deter Him from what the Father sent Him for.busyness-the-thief-of-prayerblog

You see, busyness and constantly doing what the world expects will drain us completely.  It will take us away from what really matters in life.  This culture we live in will suck the life out of us if we allow ourselves to let the world consume us.

Paul tells us in Romans 12:2, “do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”  This is so important.  We cannot live a life driven and controlled by the demands of this world.  Part of coming to faith in Christ is allowing our hearts and minds to be transformed.  We need to be renewed daily, as well, so there is a real need to find time away from the busyness of this life to just be present with God.

Just think about this as you start the New Year.  Think about the priorities of your life.  It is so vital that we find time to unplug from the matrix.  It is also vital to understand that you do not have to maintain the crazy pace the everyone else thinks you need to.  Slow down and live.  Be still and find time to be with God.  Find time to be completely unplugged.  Find time to converse with God daily.  Find time to be fully present with your family.  Don’t be conformed to this world and don’t let busyness kill your soul.   You will miss so much if you stay plugged in and let the busyness run your life.

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2015 – Transformed and Free

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We are closing the books on what I have to say has been the biggest year of my life.  There’s been some big years and events that have occurred over the years.  Getting married after graduating high school and having our first child all in 1997, our second child in 1999, our third in 2002, graduating college in 2003, and so on.  Some big events, some big moments.  Some moments that have been great and some like in 2009, that brought me down.  This time of year, we often look back on the year that was and then look ahead to the year that will be.  All I know, is that after the year I’ve had and the work God has done in my life, whatever He has in store next, I stand ready for it.

2015 was a year of complete transformation for my life, in so many ways.  I have written about so much of the journey and the changes over the past year.  There’s so much I could cover.  Just looking at what I have written on this site alone, I’ve written more posts than ever before.  This will be my 108th post for 2015.  In 2014, there were just 39.  It’s like the Lord took a hold of my life and my heart and drove me to continue sharing the journey with you all.  Just hear alone, it has been amazing to see the Lords work.  I take what I write very seriously and definitely don’t just post to post.

I look back over this year and I just think….WOW!!!!  I never imagined that my life would undertake the changes it has.  I never knew what it was like to live a life that is Spirit led.  I never knew I would be looking not just at a transformed heart and mind, a transformed family, a transformed walk with God, but also a complete transformed profession.  I took a major leap this year to follow God into the unknown and enrolled in counseling studies.  I knew God had been calling me for some time to help others and then once I surrendered to Him completely and opened my heart to the restoration of Jesus, He said it was now time.

As I have shared many times this year, this all began to take root last January as I stood in the mountains of Colorado realizing that I had let my sin and wounds run my life too far.  I realized I could no longer walk through life alone and needed to repent and surrender it all to Him.  Jesus took a hold of my heart like I never thought could happen.  He came into my heart and my wounds.  Exposed my false self and broke me down.  I hadn’t wept like that since my Dad’s passing.  It was raw exposure, men I didn’t know prayed with me and over me and I experienced restoration like I never thought possible.

With all of the changes this year from that point, going back to school, getting more connected and invested in my church family, being baptized, and on from there.  I now follow God into the unknown.  My pastor once said, that the unscripted life is the only one worth living.  I have now found that to be very true to life.  God knows the path, we have to follow Him. Psalm 16:11 says, “You will make known to me the path of life…”  God will show us the path if we just choose to follow Him and let Him lead.  In his book ‘Waking the Dead,’ John Eldredge wrote, “There are too many twists and turns in the road ahead, too many ambushes waiting only God knows where, too much at stake. You cannot possibly prepare yourself for every situation.”  I learned I have to stop trying to figure it out on my own and let Him lead.

2015, the year of transformation.  What’s so awesome know, is that going into 2016 and beyond, I know the Lord will continue to work on my life.  The transformation and growth does not end with the end of the year.  My heart will be perfected with passing day as I am progressively sanctified through following Jesus and walking with Him daily as a disciple for the rest of my life.  I am justified now to seek Him and will be sanctified and restored daily.

There is so much to look forward to.  The funny thing is, I don’t know what that will be.  What I do know is that I will follow Christ as a disciple from here on out NO MATTER THE COST.  There is so much in this life that is poised to pull us away from a relationship with Christ.  The enemy is prowling around looking for someone to devour.  That includes followers of Christ.  I stand armed with the whole armor of God to defend my heart, and to fight for my family daily.

If you have not felt the call of Christ on your life.  If you have not surrendered every aspect of your life to Him and found the freedom that comes from walking as a disciple of Jesus Christ, it’s not too late.  I did it at 36 and I know many that did it even later.  The offer stands for us all, if we choose to open to it.  Start somewhere and get to know Him in His word and by conversing with others.  It’s not all sunshine and roses, but I can tell you, the unscripted life in Christ is the only one worth living.

I wish you all a very blessed and Happy New Year!  See you in 2016 as we move forward to continue winning for the Kingdom!

 

Thankful For God’s Pursuit – Christmas Reminder

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Here we are, just two days from Christmas.  Such an awesome time of year and has always been one of my favorites in terms of traditions with family now and in years past as a kid.  As I wrote last week, I’ve also gained  new perspective on Christmas and one that I realized last year and now more than ever as I see the turmoil our world is in.  I am given a stark reminder of God’s willingness to pursue our hearts and restore us by invading this world, sneaking behind enemy lines through the womb of a teenage girl.

If you think that Christmas was is not part of the spiritual war that takes place, you have not read enough into the Christmas story.  It’s far more than just a manger, shepherds, wise men, animals, and gifts.  It is war.  This part seems to always be overlooked, or if not overlooked, minimalized.  Read Matthew 2 and really soak that in.   Starting in verse 13, Matthew shares of an angel coming to Joseph and telling him to take Mary and Jesus into Egypt until they are told to return.  Herod was coming to kill Jesus.  Starting in verse 16, we learn of the ‘massacre of the innocence,’ when all male children under the age of 2 were slaughtered by Herod’s soldiers.

The real  and true story of Christmas is an invasion, a great battle, and the demonstration of God’s love for us that he was willing to leave his thrown put on a robe of flesh and become fully man so that we may be restored and come fully alive in the holiness we were meant for.

I for one, am ever thankful for God’s continuous pursuit of my hearts.  No matter how far I ran, He never gave up on me.  His Word shows that He would never give up on me and I see that now as I see the story of my life played out.  Because of Jesus, I can now live.  As Paul writes in Ephesians 4, I can now put on my new nature and leave my old self behind, and now begin to pursue living as God created me and all of us to be as His image bearers, imago dei.  

I know I have written about this before and even some last week, but I think it is so important to remember.  Don’t get so caught up in the commercialized and traditional side of Christmas that you forget the true story and what is, in fact, going on.  The story goes a lot deeper and God is showing us that He is willing to go wherever we are, even to sneak in and walk among us in order to restore us to Him.

With that, I want wish you all a very Merry Christmas from my family to all of you.  I pray God’s peace, love, and joy to fill your hearts and your homes.  I look forward to my final post of 2015 next week as I go through what has been an absolutely amazing year of transformation for my heart, my life, and that of my family.  God Bless you all!

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Unending Pursuit – A Changing View of Christmas

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Well today, we are 1 week away from what has always been one of my favorite days of the year, Christmas!  I’m reminded each year of Christmas’s gone by.  Times when I was a kid and the excitement of Christmas morning.  The time we had as a family when all was good and there were no worries in the world.  The trips to my grandparents each year to spend the day with the rest of our family. Then as I was married and had a family, seeing the same joy of Christmas in my children as they have grown.

Something changed, however, in the past couple of years.  I’ve always know that we Christmas was meant to mark the birth of Jesus.  We always see those nice manger scenes all over and the signs that say happy birthday Jesus.  But to me, as I have grown in my walk with God and have grown to know Him more, I know it is so much more than that now.  It is now a reminder each year, despite all of the distractions we have, of God’s endless pursuit of our hearts and His desire to restore us to who we were always meant to be as His children and image bearers.

I wrote about year ago about The Great Invasion that Christmas symbolizes.  God’s willingness to pursue us behind enemy lines and sneak in through the womb of a teenage girl.  It was exactly that.  Jesus’s first coming was a covert action that invaded a world that had been handed over to the prince of this world, Satan, in order to win back the hearts of man.

With that, I see Christmas a reminder each year, that God has been willing to go through some extraordinary lengths in order to restore our hearts to Him.  There are so many that this has been lost on.  Christmas is much more than what we have made it out to be.  There is this one commercial that come on that drive we crazy, where a lady sings that Christmas does not happen without her.  Every time I see it, I say, ‘I beg to differ.’  This secular world has skewed us from what Christmas is.  Because of Jesus’s coming and because of His willingness to live as man and to ultimately die for us, we can be made alive like never before.  We can now freely pursue God and live to glorify Him and be sanctified as saints living for Him.

We have to look at God’s great and epic story to really appreciate this.  It is laid out in His Word, Genesis to Revelation.  His 66 book love story of His desire, after we jacked it all up, of wanting to restore man.  Through all of the failures and trials that man suffered, God was always there with a desire to restore us.  With the coming of Jesus, God gave us the example of who we were meant to be and now we can live alive in Christ.

I love this time of year.  I love the time I get with my family to celebrate the season.  I love old school Christmas songs.  All about the classics.  But now through it all, I recognize and we should all recognize the absolute significance of what Christmas symbolizes.  A God that loves us with out end and was willing to go through extraordinary lengths to win back our hearts.  Something I am ever thankful for.  To have a God that loves me that much that He was wiling to become man, sneak into this world, live as man, and die to set us free.  Heavens invasion of this world, some 2,000 years ago, was just the beginning.

Test Everything

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If we ever want to know Truth, there is one source to learn this Truth.  That comes from the infallible Word of God.  The 66 book love letter that has been God breathed and inspired and given to us as the blueprint of life and the unveiling of God’s pursuit of our hearts and His desire to restore us to what we were meant to be.  This pursuit is laid out page-by-page and verse-by-verse.  If you truly get into the Word, to start studying it and knowing it, it’s life changing and give you a whole new perspective on things.  As Paul says in Romans 12:2, your mind will be renewed and you will become a new person.  That is the person you were meant to be all along as a child of God.  Trust me when I tell you that it is transformational.

It is also the source for which to test what people teach and say in this world.  Jesus warns us in Matthew 7:15, to be aware of false teaching in this world.  The difference here is that God’s Word is infallible, where as man is fallible.  It is our responsibility in the faith to truly get to learn what people are teaching and test what is being taught.  Test it against the Word.  This includes what I write here, any books that are written by man, and the teachings you get from church pastors on Sunday mornings.  I don’t care how great their sermon may be, how great the book is, or even how awesome my latest blog post is :).  You have to get to know the truth for yourself.

Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5:21 to test everything that is said.  Anything that comes from this world must be tested against the Truth laid out in God’s Word.  If they don’t past the test.  If it contradicts teaching, then you need to steer away from it.  Get to know the Truth for yourself.  One thing that I do is, after a Sunday sermon, I take all my notes and the notes for the sermon.  Then over the course of the week, I study it deeper and I look in the Word and pray on it and meditate on it and journal about it.  I get know what for myself what the Word says.

We build up a level of trust for people and believe everything they may teach in sermons or in writings in true.  Remember, however.  This is all delivered from man.  Yes, it may sometimes be inspired by the Holy Spirit, but it is still delivered by man.  We are not infallible, so we can just as easily make a mistake in teaching and writing.

1 John 4:1 says to not believe everyone that claims to speak by the Spirit, and that you must test them to see if the spirit they have comes from the God.  This is the other thing.  Just has Satan deceived Eve in the Eden, so to He will try to deceive man.  All with the goal of turning us away from God.  Test the spirits.  Test the fruit of what is teaching.  Just because something sounds great, does not mean it is Truth from God.  Take the prosperity gospel that some speak.  That is complete distortion of the truth of God and does not pass the test.  It is deceiving, yet people follow because it sounds great and do not test it for themselves.  I almost fell into that trap.

So I challenge you.  No matter what you hear on a Sunday, no matter what you read in the latest blog post, or latest book, test it.  The measuring rod is God’s Word.  Learn the Truth for yourself that is only revealed through His Word.  Then you will know the Truth that God has revealed.

Stripped for Battle

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Our world is wandering into a very scary place and nearing the tipping point for something huge to happen.  If you’ve ever doubted the existence of evil, it stares us right in the face every single day.  There is evil perpetrated across this country on a daily basis by people who place very little value on human life.  Across the globe we have brothers and sisters in Christ who are facing a greater evil and being martyred because they refuse to renounce their faith in Christ and turn to Islam.  A month of ago, we saw that evil stretch out into western Europe as Paris was hit and then last week, it came back to US soil again in San Bernardino, CA.  This comes from a group that is bent on destruction and killing anyone who does not share their religion.  So much suffering and violence everywhere.

With all of this, there are many questions on what we should do.  How do we as the body of Christ, as the church, deal with this evil and how do we go about our lives as disciples of Jesus Christ and continue to declare the Good News to the world.  I’ve heard talk of people in this country…In the United States of America that are starting to go underground with their faith so as to hide themselves and out of fear of possible attacks.  Is that the place we’ve come to in this country?  We have people across the world dying and put in prison for declaring the faith in some of the most dangerous parts of the globe and people here in this country are hiding.

As I wrote last week, following Jesus comes with a cost.  We have a responsibility and  privilege and brothers and sisters in the faith of Jesus Christ to continue to stand strong with the armor of God in the face of the evil of this world.  Satan already knows that his days are numbered.  Because of this we are coming under constant attack in this world spiritually and physically, as we see play out on the news everyday.  Christ has already claimed victory, yet we continue to fight until His final return because we still live in a fallen world.

So what do we do?  First, there is a real necessity for each of us to stand strong and defend our lives and that of our family.  I challenge you, if you have not done so, to obtain the right training and arm yourselves so that you can protect you, your family, and those around you in the face of evil.  It’s become a necessity.  First we never know when someone may go off the handle around us, and we also have a growing army of people (ISIS) that has declared war on us and our faith.  We have to fight, not just spiritually, but physically if it comes down to it.  As for me I, I will stand and fight.

I shared previously, the King, that’s Jesus, is striped for battle.  He is not here to hang around in peaceful harmony.  He isn’t, as John Eldredge points out in his book “Desire,” “quite like the pictures we have in Sunday school, Jesus with a lamb and a child or two, looking for all the world like Mr. Rogers with a beard,  The world’s nicest guy. He was something far more powerful.  He was holy.” He is stripped for battle.  Exodus 15:3, “The Lord is a warrior; The Lord is His name.”  Matthew 10:34, “Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” The world was lost to Satan.  After the fall of man, this became his world.  All-out war has been waged to win us back from Satan and from the fallen world.  To restore us to who we were meant to be.  To restore our hearts.  Jesus was full of passion in his life, not apathy.  “Zeal for your house will consume me” (John 2:17).  He knew his purpose and mission in this world and was not to walk around carrying lambs.  It was an all-out war to win back the human race from the prince of this world and restore our hearts to the glory that God created us for.  He was poised for warfare with the enemy.

Also, I wrote before that spiritual warfare is very real folks.  It is on-going everyday.  We have to arm ourselves to be able to take it on and not let it take us out.  Ephesians 6 tells us to put on the full armor of God, “Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm in the faith” (vs 13).  The armor is the belt of truth, breastplate of righteousness, shoes of the gospel, helmet of salvation, shield of faith, and sword of the spirit.  This is real and very necessary.  As Paul said, it’s so that you will be able to resist.  We have to resist the devil.  Going back to 1 Peter 5, we as believers are called to resist the devil and stand firm in the faith.  This is not Old Testament.  This is after the ascension of Jesus.  Meaning, the war is still ongoing and still is today.

In the face of evil, armored with God’s Word (the sword of the spirit), and His full armor, we need to stand strong and unashamed of our faith and of the Gospel of Jesus Christ (Romans 1:16).  We will be tested over time.  In our personal battles with the enemy and in the face of this evil.  The ultimate goal of the enemy is to pull us away from our faith.  He is relentless on those who draw nearer to God as he is trying to separate us from God.  He started that in the Garden with Adam and Eve and continues that pursuit now.  The closer we draw to his end, the harder he will fight us.

So arm yourself.  Don’t sit back waiting for things to happen.  Don’t let the enemy sink his claws into you.  Don’t walk through life alone and let the enemy push you away from from the Truth and Love of God.  Stand firm in your faith in Christ and stand unashamed of your faith. Don’t let the attacks of the enemy deter you.  We are victorious because of Jesus Christ.

“There is a war going on. All talk of a Christian’s right to live luxuriously “as a child of the King” in this atmosphere sounds hollow — especially since the King himself is stripped for battle. ”  John Piper

Following Jesus Comes With A Cost

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I’ve been doing a great deal of contemplating over the past week as I dove into deeper study of our latest series at church on following Jesus.  It’s easy to say that we are going to follow Jesus.  That we will turn to Him in our lives.  How many of us, however, ever stop and think about the cost of following Jesus.  For some time, I certainly didn’t think about this.  However, to really turn to Jesus and to really become a sold out follower of Christ comes with a heavy cost.  It’s life changing.  The moment you decide that you are all in, your life is completely changed forever.

To truly follow Jesus requires us to leave where we were and never look back.  In Luke 9, starting at verse 57, it states:

“As they were going along the road, someone said to Him, “I will follow You wherever You go.” 58And Jesus said to him, “The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.”59And He said to another, “Follow Me.” But he said, “Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father.” 60But He said to him, “Allow the dead to bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim everywhere the kingdom of God.”61Another also said, “I will follow You, Lord; but first permit me to say good-bye to those at home.” 62But Jesus said to him, “No one, after putting his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”

For the first man, Jesus is giving him a warning, almost.  That he has no place to sleep.  No home.  It’s not going to be an easy road.  The next man wants to first go bury his father and the third man wants to say good-bye to family and friends.

At first it is easy to think.  What’s wrong with going to bury your father first or to go back to tell people good-bye.  The point is this.  Once you make the decision that you will follow Jesus, you cannot go back.  You cannot look back.  First, why would you even want to.  Jesus is out to teach us what has been told to us from the very beginning.  To have no other gods before our God.  He is to come first above all things.  He is out to dethrone all those things in our lives that we are so easy to elevate to a position ahead of God.  This includes our own families and our friends.  Jesus + Nothing = Everything.  His desire is that we return to Him and that we make Him first in our hearts.

This is not easy for us to do.  There are always things in this life that are competing for our hearts and desires.  It could be the keeping up with the Jones to give your family the best of everything, that next job promotion, that new car, that boat, that lady you saw at the gym, that porn site, that next drink, that next fix.  It could be anything.  That’s just the surface.  No matter where we are in our faith, we are always going to be tempted by the enemy as those things in this world, those thorns in our flesh (2 Corinthians 12:7), continue to compete for our hearts and try to come in ahead of Jesus in our lives.  To true follow Jesus, we need to leave those things behind.  Shed the old man and put on our new nature (Ephesians 4:24)

This past Sunday, our student ministry pastor talked about being a fan or a follower of Jesus.  Being someone that just wants to admire him or someone that is all into following where He leads.  Many are just fans.  Jesus knew this as it shows in Luke 14:26.  He put tested their willingness to follow him by telling the crowd that, “If you want to be my disciple, you must hate everyone else by comparison—your father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even your own life. Otherwise, you cannot be my disciple.“

That sounds hard doesn’t.  I must hate my family, including my wife and children?  No, not hate them, but as the NLT says, we must hate everyone by comparison to loving Jesus and following Him.  He must not be diminished below anyone or anything in order to follow Him as a true disciple of Jesus.  This is the challenge that we all must make to ourselves as we evaluate our lives and our faith.  What in our lives do we elevate above Jesus.  What are those idols that have taken precedence over following Jesus.

I have had to reassess all of this in my life.  How I lived as a lone ranger, where I put my priorities in life, and overall how I lived.  I allowed Jesus to do a complete work-over of my heart to where I know now that He has to come first over everything.  I have made the decision to follow Him unconditionally – NO MATTER THE COST!  Even it costs my life or costs me friendships and relationships, I will follow Him.  That invitation is open to everyone willing.  Follow Jesus!

God over everything!

“To be converted to faith in Jesus Christ is to return to the worship of the true God, and to dethrone all rivals to his authority.” – Graham Kendrick