Tag Archives: Walking with God

Living Out Romans 1:16

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There is a major problem we have in our society today.  It has to do with our willingness to live out and boldly proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ and tell the world the Good News of Christ.  There are many that are out there day after day being bold in proclaiming the Word, but the problem that we have that are far too many of us, and I have been in this camp as well, that don’t live out what we believe and don’t share or talk about the Good News of Jesus with others.  The problem comes because many are too afraid of what people will think or are afraid of being looked down upon, ridiculed, or being trash talked and accused of “shoving their religion down someones throat.”

Since my rebirth, it has been astounding to many, since God opened my eyes to see this phenomenon.  We get so afraid of what others say and therefore, even though we believed, freeze when the chance to share that faith or our testimony comes around.  Like I said, I had this issue for a long time.  I’m still not always the best at going out and just striking up conversations about it, but definitely working on and will defend my faith fiercely if ever challenged.

Saturday night, I was up late with my family watching the Pacquiao-Mayweather fight.  I have been a Manny Pacquiao fan for a few years.  For one years, he is Philipino, which I am half Philipino.  Seeing where he came from and knowing where family has come from makes me a fan.  But something more hit me recently and that was Manny’s born again faith in Jesus Christ.  He is a man that readily admitted all the junk he had in his life, violently repented, and surrendered his life to Jesus.  He lives it out everyday.  I’ve watched many interviews where he talks about this and he makes that such a profound part of life and his driving force.  No matter the outcome he had trying to box a runner, he already won, because his life is now all in for the Lord.

Manny does something with his fame that is so huge.  He lives out Romans 1:16 where Paul states, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.”  Manny is not ashamed at all and you can see it in how he speaks, his whole demeanor, and the way he conducts himself now despite his success.  Remains humble and no matter what anyone may say he is bold about his faith and is not ashamed.

This many seem like a nobrainer for many, but the reality is that we are all called to boldly proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ.  This comes down just looking past what others may say.  Not caring about the secular opinions or those pick and choose what they like from the Word to advance their post modern ways of thinking and try to demonize the Truth when it does not agree with their agenda, which we see everyday now in our society.

As 2 Corinthians 5:20 says, “We are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” We as believers are all called to advance the Good News and God has gifted each of us with unique talents and abilities to be used to proclaim who He is and His love for all of us.

I have been so on fire for God and I can proudly say that I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  This is something we all need.  Not just to pay lip service to our faith, but to seriously live out our faith and proclaim it to the world.  “You also are the called of Jesus Christ” (Romans 1:6).  The call belongs to us all.  Brothers and sisters, lets stand and be bold.  Don’t be ashamed of who we are as God’s sons and daughters.  Jesus has made us new and lets all burn hotter and brighter with passion for God.

“The world needs to see Christians burning, not with self-righteous fury at the sliding morals in our country, but with passion for God.” – Kevin DeYoung

The Call of the Bible

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I absolutely love reading the Bible.  I began reading it daily about 4 years ago and it has been a great part of my spiritual growth as I have learned from God’s Word and read through the stories of history that laid out in the Word and the teachings from Old and New Testaments.  I firmly believe that The Bible is the infallible Word of God.  There is nothing on earth greater than the 66 books He has given us.  It’s amazing that each time I read it, that I learn something new.  I gain new insight or God reveals a new idea or peace of wisdom to me and often times it comes at opportune times.  That’s pretty cool when I read through something and then sometimes that same day something comes about that brings that whole message right back again.

With all of that said, in my reading and in some continued studies, I was given a realization about what it that God is really offering through His Word.  There are many that say the Bible is the source of God talking to us and they keep Him at at distance.  However, I firmly believe that what the Bible offers is an intimate relationship with God. He is calling us, through His Word to walk with Him and talk with Him, and yes, as I’ve said before, He talks back.  Not just in the words in the Bible, but to us, in our hearts.  Yes, God talks directly to us.  The thing is, do we listen.

For some this sounds crazy.  I used to often hear of people talk about God talking to them. God putting things on their heart.  When I would hear this, it made me feel like an infant spiritually.  I would wonder why God never had those conversations with me.  This goes right up to last year.  It never occurred to me the things He would put on my heart through different situations or that He even spoke back to me.  For one, my prayer life was not the greatest, so I didn’t understand this at all.  I know I’m not the only one who has had this or is still dealing with this issue.

I’ve learned a great deal about this though in recent months and I learn more each day.  The first time I ever remember hearing God speaking to me and really recognizing it was Him was while I was in Colorado.  I was out walking and reflecting on questions from a session we just finished.  I was first sitting and reflecting on myself.  Just doing a complete gut check on who I felt I had been as a man.  Then I got up and started walking.  While walking, I felt and heard God’s voice speaking to me.  He told me that in my life I had never allowed myself to venture off the path the world had laid out.  I had never fully trusted in His path nor been willing to take any real risk.  He said, “Don’t let fear lead you.  That’s the enemy.”  He said, “Let me lead you.  Trust me.”  

At this point, I was just blown away.  Completely blown away.  Here I was, by myself, unplugged and I heard God.  This was not the first instance that weekend either.  It came again and again.  When I was in my journal, words would just flow and I knew it was not just me.  Then the ultimate was when He told me, “Your are a son…You are My son!” It was an experience like nothing I had ever felt and I knew for certain that God does speak back to us.  Prayer is not just about a one way conversation as I mentioned last week.  God wants that to be both ways.  He wants to build a real relationship with us.

This is what is spelled out in the Bible.  Relationship.  God’s infallible Word tells gives us example after example of what having that relationship with Him like and how real and intimate it is and the life that is available in that relationship.  There’s also example after example of people who turned away from that relationship and from loving God and the consequences of that choice.  The Bible is not a cosmic rule book.  It is God’s revealing to us that He does love us and wants to walk close with us throughout our lives.

Now, since I’ve been home, there have been times where I feel like I just can’t lock in and hear God.  Sometimes I felt like I just was not committed enough to the relationship. Then I realized that in this the crazy of our everyday life and when we are under daily pressures, it can be difficult to lock in.  We get so busy and so cluttered that we can’t filter out the junk without work.  This takes time and work to get to where we can.  Where we can get to our quiet moments to just have those conversations with Him and build on that relationship.  It takes work and I know it will take time for me to get better at this.  Thomas A Kempis said, “Be humble and be quiet and Jesus will be with thee.”

So just remember that God wants relationship with all of us.  He desires this.  He wants to converse and walk with us in our daily lives.  He wants to converse with us and teach us to hear Him.  Isaiah 50:4 says, “He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being taught.”  Psalm 95:7-8 says, “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.”  This is the other critical point, we have to allow ourselves to be open to hearing His voice and not ignore what He is telling us.  Let our hearts be open to the fact that He speaks to us and be willing to hear His voice.  Allow your hearts to also hear Him when He uses situations and others to speak to you as well.  We don’t perfect this overnight and I learn more about this everyday and in how God speaks to me.  The important start is to now be tuned to Him and be willing to hear and see all He wants to reveal in your heart.

 

Do We Dare Stand Naked

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Everyone of us have had a poser side.  A fig leaf that we’ve hid behind for fear of allowing the world to see all of the hidden junk we may have in our lives.  It may not seem like it on the surface, but we go through motions each day putting on that facade that everything in our world is okay.  Sunday mornings at church can often times be poser city, when everyone puts on that happy face for those couple of hours before getting back to life as normal.  They may have troubles at home or doubts about life, but they don’t let that out.  In our jobs, we often hide.  Just take a ride on the elevator.  What do most people do, including me?  We stare at the floor counter, the ceiling, straight ahead.  We are afraid to be seen.  We hide ourselves from the world.  There are issues we all have in our lives that we can work on through many avenues.  Through prayer, counseling, fellowship, and more.

Even when we’ve repented of our sins and begin to work on those issues in our lives, there’s still something we hide.  As John Eldredge shares in Waking the Dead, we hide our own glory.  That’s the glory we receive from God when we are made new in our relationship with Christ.  There’s something fearful here and that is the fact that when we decide to live from this glory and the holiness that Christ offers, we stand fully exposed to the world.  For many, this still seems so risky, because it puts us out there fully.  As the book says, “It is an awkward thing to shimmer when everyone else around you is not, to walk in your glory with an unveiled face when everyone else is veiling theirs.”

When I was reading this, this completely stuck out to me.  There is a great deal of truth to this thought.  The world has become a post-modern mess where the idea of living out the Truth of who we are in Christ can gain a lot of down the nose looks.  Many will often turn their nose up at people who are just out there and confident in who they are in Christ and aren’t ashamed to let it be seen.  It’s exposing and for many and yes for sometime even me, it can be a scary.  So what do we do?  We go back to posing.  We are around our friends, families, and acquaintances and we go back to hiding.  We either bring back the poser or just shy away from our glory.

Reading this gave me a lot of food for thought.  As I wrote the other day, Jesus said ““Everyone who acknowledges me publicly here on earth, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But everyone who denies me here on earth, I will also deny before my Father.” (Matthew 10:32-33).  We are called to boldly proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ.  We are called to publicly acknowledge Christ to the world.  If we do, we will be acknowledged before the Father.  So the answer to this is simple.  We need to live from our glory and from our true self.  We need to be bold about who we are in Christ and no longer hide from this fact.

Eldredge says, “To admit we do have a new heart and a glory from God, to being to let it be unveiled and embrace it as true – that means the next thing God will do is ask us to live from it.  Come out of the boat. Take the throne. Be what he meant us to be. And that feels risky…really risky. But it is also exciting. It is coming fully alive.” 

We can now stand naked to the world.  It does not matter how the world looks at us if we are living in the glory of God and from that.  We are made new in Christ.  Romans 2:29 says, “A person with a changed heart seeks praise from God, not from people.”  We need to learn to live our lives seeking Gods praise and living for his glory alone.  “Put on your new nature, created to be like God…” (Ephesians 4:24:).  “Live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ” (Ephesians 5:2).

This is boldness that is needed for all followers of Christ.  I pray each day to grow in this way to stand not just on what I write, but in the way I live and in my actions. I have worked to continually get out from behind the fig leaf.  I tell you what, since I started to come out, God has had me on fire.  It takes work each day because of the world we live in, but it’s worth the risk to stand bold and naked in our glory for the world to see.  Jesus felt it was worth the risk to hang on that cross for us for all the world to see.  It is worth the risk to stand bold and naked to the world in the God’s glory as well.  Do we dare to stand naked?

The Power of Choice

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Currently, I am reading through the Gospel of Matthew.  It has been a great study so far as I take time to really dive in and see how Jesus teaches about the Kingdom that we can inherit.  That God offers for each of us as His children.  I’ve thought about this before, but something struck me today as I was reading through Matthew 10.  In verses 32-33, Jesus says, “Everyone who acknowledges me publicly here on earth, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven.  But everyone who denies me here on earth, I will also deny before my Father.” In verse 37 he says, “If you love your father or mother more than you love me, you are not worth of being mine…”

I was reading through this and something struck me again that I just had to share.  It all boils down to a choice.  We either choose to accept and receive Jesus Christ and all His works or we don’t.  We either choose to believe in God as our Father, or we choose not to.  We either love God and love each other or we choose not to.  Either we choose to accept the life and restoration that is offered in Christ or we choose to not.  It all boils down to a choice and the choice belongs to nobody accept ourselves.

God gave us something pretty miraculous when He created us.  He gave us free will.  He gave us choice.  It’s really a beautiful thing when you think about it.  God loves us that much to allow us to choose to love Him as well.  Simply being, He wants us to want to love Him and not be forced into loving Him.  The choice has always been ours.  Adam chose Eve first over God and the result brought evil into the world and man fell and Satan was given dominion over the earth.  The authority now belongs to Jesus now as He took it back.

Ponder this for a minute as well.  God had a choice too.  He made us in His image, so we bear that same choice.  What if God chose to not spare Noah and his family?  What if God didn’t promise Abraham that his descendants would number like that stars?  What if David didn’t kill Goliath?  What if God didn’t launch the biggest raid and rescue through the womb of young virgin raiding into enemy territory to rescue and restore the human race?  What if Paul remained the Pharisee he was?

All of these questions are very relevant to us, because they all hinge on choice.  Choices were made all through Scripture and today we have choices to make as well.  The same holds true in life today.  Looking at my own for instance.  What if I decided not to go to Wild At Heart in January, where I strongly feel that God was calling me too?  Sure, I may be going about my life, but I certainly would not be locked in the way I am now.  It all comes down to choice.

Dwight Eisenhower stated, “The history of free men is never really written by chance but by choice; their choice!” That goes for all of history.  None of it is by chance.  We have come where we because of the choices that have been made.  Our freedom in Christ is found because God made the choice to always pursue us, put on a robe of flesh, suffered and died for our sins, was raised to life to give us new life, and ascended to God’s right hand to take all authority and give us our freedom in Him.  God could have let this world go long ago, but He chose to love us.

I may sound repetitive, but I think this is a critical thing that we must remember.  God doesn’t want to lose any of us.  He will pursue our hearts as long as He can, but He knows we won’t all choose Him.  Hell was never intended for the human race, but for Satan and his demons, but if you don’t choose God, then as much as He won’t want to, we will denied to.  Think about it.  Why would you accept someone that continued to deny you as much as you try to pursue them?

So the choice is simple and it’s very powerful.  As Andy Dufresne says in Shawshank Redemption, “I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really; get busy living or get busy dying.” When we make that choice to live in Christ, the offer is life and life abundantly.  Life to the full.  If we choose to deny Christ, the consequence is being denied ourselves and death.  The choice is powerful and the choice is really simple.  What do you choose?  

Two-Way Conversation

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There are many people across the Christian faith that have talked about hearing God.  About God putting something on their heart and being able to hear that still, soft voice in their heart.  There are many that look at this as crazy, even in the Christian faith.  They either don’t believe converses with His children directly or only speaks through those in clergy positions.  I used to not be able to make heads or tails of this.  For most of my life, I either did not hear God, although I believe He did communicate, or I just was unwilling to listen.  I often wondered what it would be like to have God speak to me.  Low and behold, I realize, there are many instances I have experienced where I now know He was there, but I didn’t realize it until I was more willing to surrender and go all in, allowing Jesus to dive deep into my heart.

Did you know that this two-way conversation was the way God always intended things to be?  Dallas Willard points out this ongoing conversation with the examples of God’s visit to Adam and Eve in the Garden, Enoch’s walks with God, and Moses in his face-to-face conversations with God.  These are just ordinary situations.  Willard explains, “They are examples of the normal human life God intended for us: God’s indwelling His people through personal presences and fellowship.”  This is the way it was always meant to be.  We are meant to live in this ongoing conversation.

For many this sounds just too far fetched.  They see God as that distant cosmic sheriff in the sky and can’t bring themselves to accept the idea of God talking to them directly.  It just seems to far fetched.  Quite frankly, I blame the religious establishment for this. They have spent all this time trying to re-create the Holy of Holies even though God tore that curtain with His own hands.  They have put a barrier up between us and God that makes God seem more and more distant.  God ripped that curtain, however and for good.

Evan as I write this, I find the enemy on my heart trying to tell me that people won’t accept this.  I know there are many of you out there that won’t for one reason or the other.  The only thing I can offer, however, is my own personal experience with this.  Like I said, I never fully felt God speak to me directly.  I have felt the presence of the Holy Spirit in different times, but never took the time to listen what I was being told.

When I was in Colorado, God opened me up.  When I was fully away from the world I know, my heart was fully open.  God gave me, I believe, just as Solomon prayed for, a hearing heart.  He enabled me to be fully locked into what He was telling me.  I would ask questions and the answers about myself, my wounds, my identity to Him, and so much more just began to flow.  It was the most amazing experience I have ever felt and I know it was God.  It came with gentle authority and were things I never thought about before.

I at first felt I would have a hard time discerning what was really God or other things.  When it came, however, it was unmistakable to me.  One way I found to know the difference is that God is not going to put things on your heart that will cause conflict.  It comes in that still soft voice with a gentle authority, not antagonizing and not conflicting.

It’s been amazing to learn this in the last many months.  I’ve learned to find different ways God speaks to me through different circumstances and through conversations I’ve had with people.  It’s truly a two-way conversation, not just us sitting here talking.  He truly does talk back to us in many ways and I can definitely testify to this.  Now that I have learned to discern this more in my own life, I look forward hearing from God more and more.  I’m accepting of this fact and know that I can hear Him if I can cut out the noise of the world and just focus on Him.

Don’t Let Worry and Fear Run Your Life

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Every one of us has worry in our life.  Worry about bills, worry about our jobs or finding a job, worry about money, worry about family and friends, and many, many other things.  A part of our nature causes us to worry about things.  We know, whether we accept it our not, that our world is fallen and full of trials that bring heart ache into our lives.  Sometimes, it can come from the craziest or most minute things.  For example, if my wife is out somewhere, and maybe I had not heard from her for a bit, I start to get worries about what may have happened, even wondering if she was in a bad accident or something.  Crazy things that I know the enemy and his cronies are flooding my mind with to try to get me to panic in fear.  The problem is, that no matter how hard we try, because of our nature, because of our experiences in life, we are going to have those worries.  Maybe we are not sure if we’ll have enough money to feed our family or keep a roof over our heads.  These things come with life.

This past week, the Lord prompted me to begin a deeper dive into the Gospel of Matthew.  In part to really get a deeper understanding of Jesus’s teaching on God’s Kingdom and our place in His Kingdom.  It has been cool so far to read through the book at a slower pace and meditate on Jesus’s teachings.  Right now I am in the Sermon on the Mount.  In Matthew 6, Jesus teaches about worry and anxiety starting in versus 25.  Here is what Jesus says…

“For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? and who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life? And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. But much more clothe you? You of little faith! Do not worry then, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drive?’ or ‘What will we wear for clothing?’ For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” (Matthew 6:25-34)

Bottom line here from Jesus, is do not live a life of worry, but seek the Father first.  We have a serious struggle with this in our lives.  I know I have and my wife has struggles with this as well.  She comes from a long line of what we call ‘worry warts’ in her family.  But isn’t this teaching so simple.  Don’t worry, but seek God first.  Seek His kingdom and righteousness.  That’ the bottom line for anything in our lives.  If we learn to truly, and I mean truly seek God, what is there to worry about?  As the song we sang in worship Sunday morning said, ‘There is no one higher than our God.’  This rings out so true, if we just learn to remember it and live our lives in this way.

 I know I write this and it all sounds so easy, but the reality of it all is for us is that it’s not that easy for us.  Because of our fallen states and who we are and because we are in constant war with the enemy, worry and fears just seem to overtake us constantly.  For some the worry become so great that it’s crippling.  It literally enslaves them and overtakes their lives to the point where it’s all they think about.  It then leads to worrying about the next thing and then the next.

Seek His kingdom and His righteousness.  This something that becomes difficult for so many because we get gripped in doubts and fear.  The enemy finds those fears and then establishes a foothold where he can then camp and continue to pull at you.  It is however, something that we all can do, if we are willing.  We can choose to seek God’s kingdom.  Seek Him in all we do.  Learn to walk with Him.  Learn to talk and converse with God.  Not just where you are praying to Him, but where you are filtering out the noise and listening to Him as well.

Hebrews 13:5 says, “Don’t love money; be satisfied with what you have. For God has said, ‘I will never fail you. I will never abandon you.'”  This is in reference to Deuteronomy 31 where Moses was telling Joshua to be strong and courageous, “For the Lord your God will personally go ahead of you. He will neither fail you nor abandon you” (verse 6). God is with us through every aspect of our lives.

We can’t let worry and fear run our lives.  My challenge here is to seek God everyday just has Jesus tells us.  Don’t worry about the petty things and don’t let us get so caught up in worry that it runs our lives.  God will never fail us or abandon us.  I believe this with my whole heart.  Dallas Willard says in his book ‘Hearing God,’ “God is able to penetrate and intertwine himself with the fibers of the human self in such a way that those who are enveloped in His loving companionship will never be alone.” We must choose to surrender though and let Him in.  If we choose to do so, there’s nothing, and I mean nothing in this world that we need to worry about.  Jesus took on more than we can ever imagine and He did it for us because the Father loves us enough to take all of that away, if we will choose to surrender and put our faith and trust in him fully.

God wants to help us through the struggles of our lives and does not want us to worry.  He knows we will have them in this life.  Jesus told us this in John 16:33.  But we have to choose to surrender and so that we can overcome through Him.  As Watchman Nee said,“He can only keep those who have handed themselves over to Him.”

When you feel yourself beginning to worry, try to stop and seek God.  When you start your day, seek God first.  This will definitely help set the pace for the day and help you cover yourself with the Armor of God to take on all the enemy has in store.  Let God lead you.  Let His will envelop your heart in a way to where the fear and worry gets overshadowed by His mere presence.  There is no one higher and nothing greater than our God.

Seeking Real Holiness with Jesus

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I just finished another John Eldredge book this past weekend, ‘Free to Live: The Utter Relief of Holiness.’  I took my time with this book as I really wanted to let it sink in as I read through it, reading and meditating on little bits at at a time.  It’s been another big part of my study and growth as I grow in my walk with God.  I look forward to the next book I’ll be starting by Dallas Willard ‘Hearing God’.  I’ll get into that later as I read through it.

In reading through Free to Live, God really opened my heart to something new, that I never really thought about.  The idea of living Holy and the joy that comes with being able to live a life filled with the Holiness.  Now what do you think about with the word Holy?  Do you think of a state of being that is out of our reach here in this life?  We often think of the greatness of God and how good he is and being in his presence in the Kingdom.  Put it this way, John Eldredge changed the name of this book from just “The Utter Relief of Holiness,” and added ‘Free to Live.’  A big reason would be that the original title, alone seemed a bit of turn off to some.  Holiness is looked at as he states, as “hard, perhaps; boring….a level of spirituality we might attain one day. But a relief?”

There is a relief I’ve come to learn through holiness and what walking with God and seeking Jesus each day can bring.  Henry Emerson Fosdick stated, “The steady discipline of intimate friendship with Jesus results in men becoming like Him.”  Jesus is Holy and choosing to receive the renewed and restored life that He offers leads to holiness in ourselves and being more like Him.  I’ve mention this verse before, but Paul states in Ephesians 4:24, “Put on your new nature, created to like God – truly righteous and holy.” Putting off the old man and being reborn in Christ and seeking Christ each day leads to holiness.  That’s pretty serious and very profound.  It’s something that we can choose to live in each day.  Will we always get it right?  No, of course not, but through Christ, we can choose to seek it out each day.

This leads to thinking of what the nature of holiness is for us.  What does it mean to seek holiness, shedding our old and sinful nature each day and choosing to walk with God.  First, because of our sinful nature that we are born into, we can’t do it on our own.  With the fall of man, everything that was given to us when created as taken away.  This world no longer belonged to us.  But because of the finished work of Jesus Christ, because of his death on the cross, which we remember today, Good Friday, because of his resurrection, which we remember and celebrate on Sunday, and because of his ascension, which put all authority in heaven and earth under him.  Because of that, we now have God’s undeserved and unmerited grace.  Augustine tells us, “Nothing whatever pertaining to godliness and real holiness can be accomplished without grace.”

So now what? We live under God’s grace, what is that we can do in order to live a life filled with holiness.  For this, we have to look at the life of Jesus.  In Free to Live, John points to Jesus’s baptism and then His trials during his 40 day sin the wilderness when Satan tested and tempted Him.  What happens after this, Jesus, whose life is completely surrendered to the will of the Father begins to change the world in ways never seen before and never seen since, from His healings and miracles during His ministry, His direct confrontation of the religious establishment that was out for its own glory, not God’s, and then his full works through the cross and his death, his resurrection, and ascension.  His life was in full surrender to God’s will.  He walked with God every single day and followed where He was led.

For us to live in holiness, requires the same kind of living.  Living a life of surrender to God and walking in close intimacy with Him every single day, just as Christ did.  Now I know what many of you are thinking, this is just so hard to do.  For many of us this is true.  We are so locked into this world, into our sinful nature, into our wounds, that many just can’t find a way to do do this.  Dallas Willard points out, “I fear that many people seek to hear God solely as a device for obtaining their own safety, comfort, and sense of being righteous.” He then quoted Frederick B. Meyer who wrote, “So long as there is some thought of personal advantage, some idea of acquiring praise and commendation of men, some aim of self-aggrandizement, it will simply be impossible to find out God’s purpose concerning us.” We have to shed our own worldly selfishness and self-reliance.  Shed the old man, our old and sinful nature, and we have to do this every single day.  As John points out, this is not easy thing and it will often lead to a higher degree of loneliness as people shy away from this kind of living or want it.  You’ll experience the loneliness that Jesus lived with.  But He felt is was worth it. 

Do you feel it would be difficult to live a life fully surrendered to God.  For us, is our fallen state, it certainly is.  However, Jesus walked among us.  He endured trials and struggles to a degree we can’t fathom, yet, He was fully locked on God.  He was was after His heart and lived this way.  He did not compromise His faith in anyway.  While this can be challenging, just think of life that can come from seeking holiness everyday.  Seeking God’s heart and will and letting Him fill our hearts each day.  Giving ourselves entirely over to God.  As John states, “One life totally given over to God is far more powerful than a hundred with gifting and expertise. Look at whom Jesus choose to change the world: fisherman, tax collectors, prostitutes.” Many areas of the church is about expertise, training, principles, etc.  Living a life totally given over to God sets in us freedom like we’ve never seen.  Freedom to live for God and walk with Him the way we were meant to.  Freedom to love God every part of our being and the freedom to love others (the greatest commandments).

This is not an overnight fix, but it is something that we can choose within ourselves to begin to more toward.  God knows our hearts and he wants to use each of us for his Glory, but we first have to choose to let Him into our hearts and begin that transformation.  Transformation takes a great deal of prayer, repentance, forgiveness, and healing.  It takes being awake to the the fact the spiritual warfare and facing it just as Jesus did, when God calls us to.  Seeking God.  Surrendering to His will and choosing to live in His grace.  Holiness is within our reach.  It is something I am learning more each day and seeking to live in and seek everyday of my life from hear on.  We won’t always get it right, but it’s an offer God has for us and freely available through God’s grace given through Jesus Christ.

What Happened to the Adventure?

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Life is a busy cycle that has so many turns, peaks, and valleys.  When we are kids, it is all an adventure.  I remember when I was growing up in Lilburn, GA, life was an adventure.  My brothers, buddies, and I spent lots of time exploring and finding ways to discover new things, try new things, and even get ourselves into trouble from time to time.  We loved to jump on our bikes and ride around town or down old trails through the woods.  We had creeks flowing through our neighborhoods and we would venture through there looking for craw-fish or just seeing how far we could follow a creek to see where it went.  It was always an adventure for us.

Fast forward to today.  We’re grown men in our 30s.  Most of us are married now with families of our own.  We’ve all been taken on all of our own adventures through life as we’ve grown.  Many struggles and many good times.  Something happens to many people however as we “grow-up” though.  We lose that sense of adventure and lose that connection with who we are and getting out and exploring the world.  We get bogged down into lives and careers that often times we are not happy with.  Our lives become almost routine from day-to-day and in the midst of it all, we often lost something in ourselves.  We think to ourselves, how did this happen?  How did I get here?  For some this sense of missing adventure causes to hit a point where we start looking for new avenues.  We hit what some call, the mid-life crisis.  We are out there looking for something, not realizing it was always there to begin with, but never stopped to pay attention because of the noise and chaos of everyday life.  When we’re kids, there’s not a care in the world.  Now there is our families, bills, careers, and so much more we deal with.

So what happens?  All too often, we’re told we need to take a certain path in life.  College, career, then family, and so on. For me, it came family, then college and career simultaneously as my wife and I married right out of high school.  Lot’s of challenges for certain, but we endured and now going on 18 years strong.  Many of you can relate to this, but over time, it started to feel like something was missing.  Had I made the right career choices or did I go through years of schooling for the right areas of study?  What is that I am missing?  I didn’t know the answer to those questions.  Then as I watched my kids grow I began to see there sense of adventure in them and wanting to get out an explore the world.  It’s dawned on me that this is a great part of it.  That sense of exploring the world around us and drawing into the beauty of God’s creation.  As kids that’s what we do, but many of us lose that when we grow-up into our adult lives surrounded by the world.  Our hearts get jumbled in all the chaos and business that we don’t take time to take care of it.  Spiritual Battles ensue and we get lost in our small stories and forget the larger story that we are all a part of.

Our hearts need a sense of adventure.  A great part of this adventure is our growing closeness with God. We also need that time out in the wilderness to draw in closer to God.  Where did Jesus go often to pray?  Into the wilderness and away from people.  Moses encountered God in the wilderness.  Out there, we can escape the chaos, take in all that is around us and just listen.  Why do so you think so many of are drawn to the beach or mountains when we take vacation?  There is something that restores us in those locations.

When I was in Colorado for Wild At Heart, I had an experience like I could have never imagined with God.  I didn’t touch my Bible, but rather had my journal with me and just listened to God.  Listened to all He wanted to reveal to me and show.  I prayed often that He would open my heart to everything and as I’ve shared many times, He opened my heart like never before.  I came to realize that what I was missing was the Larger Story.  I was focused on the wrong things.  On what I thought I was supposed to do, according to the world and not on what God was leading me to.  He gave me as Solomon prayed for, a hearing heart.  I was able to finally realize that it was not about my small story.  The adventure lies in the God’s larger story; The Story.  As John Eldredge states in his book, Epic, “There is a Story that we just can’t seem to escape. There is a Story written on the human heart.”

This accounts so much to why we get to points in our life where something may be missing.  We feel this, but then we don’t know what to do with it.  This is where an essential part of walking with God can really help.  People that don’t do so, often search themselves for the adventure, and the enemy begins to lead them. They get led to affairs, addiction and idolizing things that don’t matter, they get to that mid-life crisis.

There is no mid-life crisis, however, if you seek God’s intimate counsel and walk with Him. If you follow His lead, and really open your heart to hear Him, you’ll be amazed at what He will reveal to you.  Ask Jesus to come in.  Invite Him into your heart and to search you, as I was taught to do and just listen.  Be still and listen.  He will show you who you are and will show you the adventure that you are meant to go on.  He will lead you to adventure and risk that will often times take you out of what you know, out of your comfort zone.  Let me tell you, God is taking me on an adventure I never thought I would take.  It’s so different from anything I knew, but you know what, He has been prompting my heart on this for years, but I never listened to Him and was never willing to make any risky moves that might take me out of the security this world has me in.

God created everything, including adventure.  The adventure of our story lies in His Story.  It depends on our willingness to follow and be risky.  Remember those times as a kid, where you just didn’t care and you were all about getting out and explore all you could.  You can get all of that back again, shedding the old man, and our self-reliant, compromising, and capitulating.  Seek God.  Walk with Him and hear all He wants to reveal to you.  You’ll be so amazed.  It’s not without risk and often times, it won’t be without pain and it will force you to seek healing from your wounds and sin to walk closer to God, but Jesus overcame all, so that we could be free and be made new to seek all God has for us from this life and then into eternity.  There is still an adventure to live.

What To Do With Our Gifts

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We are all gifted with some talents.  Every one of us.  Could be in sports, business acumen, leadership, creativity in arts, writing, speaking, or any of a number of other talents. We all get those talents from one source.  From our God.  He created us as his image bearers and gifted us with something that in some way can be used to glorify him and used to show his work in our lives and this world.  We get such an awesome opportunity to do great things with those talents.  Some gifts may not seem like a big deal, but put it to use for God’s glory and watch him work.

For many people in this life, we lose site of our gifts.  We may show those talents as kids, but through our wounds and brokenness over time, those talents may begin to take a back seat to the world, to sin, to capitulation, compromise, and more.  We either hide our talents and gifts or we just don’t make the right use of it.  We don’t walk with God and don’t seek his counsel and the counsel of others with regards to our spiritual giftedness.   For the longest time, I was guilty of this.  One of the gifts I was blessed with was to write.  I would write stories when I was little, but then stopped.  I was too distracted or too broken to bother with it.  Then in my 20s, I began to get some inspiration to write again.  I would write opinion blogs off and on, but only in short cycles.  Then I started this site and same thing, it came and went in cycles.  Then this year, God opened me up.  He led me to understand the gift he had given me and other gifts.  He used conversations I had with others to really help me to see how I can glorify him through my talents and use what he gave me the way it was intended.  Since then, the inspiration has been like a river.

I write this as I was reminded this morning of the ‘Parable of the Talents’ Jesus used in Matthew 25.  This is where the master is going away and gives talents to servants he trusted according to their ability and then left.  When the master returns, he comes to see what they had done with his talents.  Two of the servants made use of the talents to gain more and the third had buried his talents.  The two that gained were rewarded by being put in charge of many things and invited into the joy of the master.  The third servant who buried his talents was rebuked and called wicked and lazy and was cast into outer darkness where this weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Many of you may know this parable.  You see, Jesus is making a strong point here in his teaching.  We are all gifted with talents by God, the Master.  It is up to us to glorify him by making use of those talents.  If we don’t we are stuck in our sin and in our own small world and story.  By our faith in Christ, we have a tremendous opportunity to do so much for the Kingdom.  Not because we are saved by good works, but because he has given us so much as his image bearers and we come alive and glorify him best when we make the most of our gifts.  As I said, many of us lose site of that as we grow up and get lost in the small story of our own little worlds and don’t hear God or see where he is leading us.

I think of my kids as I write this.  Each of them talented in so many ways.  I can just see the gifts that God has blessed them with and pray that they will realize those gifts and use them for his glory as they grow-up.  It’s my responsibility to lead them to the Father in this way so that he leads them to fully come alive as adults and not lost in this world.  I’ll use my daughter, Ashley, as one example.  She has such a gift for writing and especially story telling.  It’s so cool to see how she writes and the creativity she is blessed with.  She loves God as all my family does, and I just pray for her growth in how she uses these spiritual gifts.  It’s so amazing to see.

For those of you with kids, encourage your kids in their giftedness.  Don’t just worry about yours, but lead them to God’s glory and watch him work in their lives in everything they do.  Seek counsel from God and others and be that counsel for your kids well.  Don’t sit by and let the world and the enemy take you or them out.  Let God lead you.  Walk with him.  He will lead you to where he wants you to be.  He will guide your giftedness to come to its full glory.  This isn’t feel goodism.  This is real.  So many don’t realize their gifts and talents and the world take them out.  So many don’t come alive by seeking God for counsel and healing to wage spiritual warfare and the world takes them out.  Don’t squander what God gave you. He wants to restore all of our hearts through Jesus.  If we we allow him too, there is so much we can do for his Kingdom.  Watch him work!

Diving Deeper – Walking With God

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Over the last couple of years since the first version of this blog, the writing and the overall goal and direction have continually shifted.  What started as a site writing about finding freedom in life and work and looking for overall purpose and direction began to really shift.  I have learned a lot these past couple of years about life and about my God and the restoration that is offered to us through Jesus.  If you look at Isaiah 61, this is the Scripture that Jesus uses to proclaim his purpose.  To comfort and heal the brokenhearted and to set the captives free.  This offer and purpose to restore each and everyone of us.  We were all captives and all have been the brokenhearted in some way.  From this I began to really shift focus in my writing.

What started as 4 Pillars has now evolved into 4 Streams.  The streams that Jesus walked in to offer our restoration.  Discipleship, Counseling, Healing, and Warfare.  I adapted to this teaching after reading the book Waking the Dead by John Eldredge.  I believe this teaching is a central part of restoring our hearts and in drawing closer to God in our lives.  It enables us to come alive.  Since coming into the 4 Streams, I have learned a great deal.  The issue now is putting that all into practice in my life.  I believe this is critical teaching and as I walk in the 4 Streams, I want to share that with you to help you apply it further in your own lives.  So what I am going to share now is deeper dive into each of the streams.  This first post will be on Discipleship, or more specifically, Walking with God.  I want to provide teaching that I’ve learned from John and others, confirmed in Scripture, and from my own experiences walking with God and building that intimate relationship.

So, what do you think of when you think of discipleship?  Many things that come to mind are around our christian growth.  Learning to be more responsible, connecting with people in fellowship, connecting with our church families, and much more.  There’s one key aspect that is often overlooked in discipleship and that is walking with God.  Conversing with him and seeking him in our lives for counsel.  Making him an intimate part of your life.  Not just knowing about him, but allowing him into  your heart on a deeper level and really hearing him and getting to know more about him.  This goes beyond just reading Scripture too, as I’ve come to find out, and includes our prayer time and learning to hear him in our hearts and discerning what is really God, the enemy, or our own selves.

John points to Mark chapter 1 and when Jesus encounters the first disciples.  His invitation to this rag tag bunch is to hang and to walk with him.  “Come, follow me, and I will show you how to fish for people” (vs 17 ).  Follow me, walk with me.  That’s quite an invitation.  ‘I will show you how to fish for people.’  That tells me that if we follow Jesus, he will lead.  Walk with God and he will lead us in our lives and on a deep and intimate level.

Again, what does Jesus offer.  He offers restoration and life.  Our hearts our made new through Jesus.  The path to life can be a rocky path, however.  We encounter so much warfare and attempts by the enemy to take us out.  Happens all the time.  Has happened to me.  Walking with God in discipleship can be key in traversing this path.  “You will make known to me the path of life” (Psalm 16:11).  If we walk with God he will reveal the path he wants to lead us on.  “For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it” (Matthew 7:14).  So we have a path to life and restoration in Jesus.  It is narrow path, but God offers to show us the way.  He knows each and everyone and desires for us to lean and trust in him to lead us.  “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5).

So in walking with God a key aspect is being able to hear him.  Being able to decipher his voice when he speaks to you in your heart.  Not around you, but down deep.  You need to be able to decipher his voice from the clutter of the world and the enemy and your thoughts.  Learn to figure out what’s really from God.  This is something that definitely takes practice and I am working at it everyday.  Still don’t have it down and God still continues to amaze me in they way he speaks and leads me.  We need to be able to turn to him for counsel and ask him into everything in life.  John Eldredge used many examples in his audio session talking about seeking God with even the smallest things and the big things.  It’s important and we need to be more reliant on him and not ourselves.

In seeking his counsel though, we have to be able to accept it even when he tells us, NO.  If we don’t listen we he says no, then we are still trying to be self-reliant.  We are still trying to trust ourselves, “lean on our own understanding.”  You can’t be self-reliant and walk intimately with God.

God will definitely start to stir us in the way he encounters us in trying to restore our hearts.   What does God do to begin restoring us?  He reawakens desire.  He disrupts and stirs our lives and hearts and he intrigues, all to stir us to walk with him.  God has worked this heavily in my own life.  This started over two years ago when I began to write on the first version of this site.  Something stirred in my heart.  Didn’t know what it was at the time.  I just knew I was being called to something more than what I had been in.  I began to write, but still spent much of my time very self reliant and not opening my heart to hear God in any of it.

What happens this year? As you all know, God sent me to Colorado to the Wild at Heart Bootcamp.  He intrigued me in what would be there and disrupted my world completely unplugging me from my regular life and allowing me to completely plug into him.  Allowed him to dive deep into my heart and to hear God speak to me like I have never heard before.  He began to Father me and he was inviting me to walk with him.  Since then, he has lead me on a whole knew adventure these last few months.  I believe God is leading me to take the stories and experiences of my brokenness and restoration to counsel and help others through my own testimony and through this teaching.  It all begins with being able and willing to let go and walk with God.  Hearing God and talking with Jesus is a fundamental right of every christian.  Something that no other religion or cult in this world can ever offer you.  They just can’t.

I hope this was helpful.  I will also be dive deeper into the other streams next.  To help give you all a deeper understanding of where I am going with my writing and teaching.  I have links on the front page of this site and my About me page to will lead to some resources at Ransomed Heart that dive deeper.  I will be diving in and learning more myself as we go along.  I hope you join me on this journey.

“The dullness that overshadows a passive person is increased by the mounting number of times one doesn’t respond to the promptings of God.” –Greg Manalli