The "S" Word

SIN! We don't like to talk about it. We like talking about the love of Jesus more than the presence of sin in our own hearts and lives. We as people do not like looking at our own sin. We avoid it and it makes us feel awkward and exposed. We don't like being exposed. Christian Science, a religion I grew up in, actually believes that sin is an illusion. Isn't that crazy?

I think it is, because sin is most definitely NOT an illusion. If you put a child in a room alone with a freshly painted wall with a sign next to it saying, "DO NOT TOUCH! WET PAINT!" I guarantee you that child will touch that wall.

Sin is real. It's in you, and it's in me. It's been in us ever since Adam and Eve deliberately disobeyed God by eating fruit from a tree. Some people call that a fairy tale, and I'm not going to lie, in a way it sounds like it. However the more I look at myself and my sin, the more I see the reality of what Adam did on that tree.

What's crazy about sin and how it affects us is that we not only do terrible things, but we encourage other people to do terrible things too. It's in our nature to make other people stumble. In Isaiah 53:6 it says, "We all like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way." Also in Romans 1:32, Paul says about us, "They know God's decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them." Remember though Paul says "they" in this verse, he is not discounting himself or looking at himself as being less sinful than them. The rest of his letter to the Romans makes that clear.

Now, you probably read in that Romans verse that "those who practice such things deserve to die." It sounds extreme, right? We deserve death? Why? What did we do?

It's funny because we say death is an extreme punishment for doing wrong against God, but have we ever wished death on someone who has done wrong to us? We love seeing justice and seeing people get what they deserve for the crimes they've committed. Someone does wrong against us and we demand that justice be served against them. We watch Law & Order, see the bad guy go down and we love it. However as soon as the justice card is flipped on us, we get defensive and say that it's too extreme. That is a flaw in our logic and it is a result of our sin.

So we're all sinners. It's in our nature and we're born right into it. God is perfect and despises sin, so by default God should despise us. Is there a solution? Are we just left to rot in the filth of our own immorality?

The second part of that verse in Isaiah 53:6 says this, "and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all." Who is this "Him"? It's Jesus Christ! God sent His only Son on a rescue mission to save our souls. So God should despise us, but in reality God loves us deeply and desires to restore us not only from our own sin, but also to Himself. The perfect God of the universe actually wants a relationship with us, the sinful people. So He sent Jesus to live a sinless life and then He died a brutal death on a cross, bearing not only the physical pain of His execution, but more importantly the spiritual pain of the wrath of God that we deserve.

So what should we do? I'll close with the chorus of a favorite hymn:

"Turn your eyes upon Jesus,

Look full in His wonderful face.

And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,

In the light of His glory and grace."

God bless,

Steve

Happy Happy Joy Joy

So lately times have been tough for me. And when I say tough, I don't necessarily mean horrible, like stuff is falling apart at the seams. Things have just been a little on the inconvenient side. For one thing, money has been tight. I just barely pay the bills, and when I say barely I mean BARELY. I start fundraising for Edgecorps in the fall, but to tell you the truth, I'm broker than an Edgecorps intern right now. I know God will provide, but this tight financial situation gets annoying sometimes.

I also drive A LOT. I drive 35 minutes to work at a pharmacy, get there and then drive around again for 2-3 hours because I'm a delivery driver. Then after that I either drive back home or drive 20 minutes to Willimantic to see people at Eastern. Even on Sunday, my day off from work, I drive because my home church is in Willimantic. Driving gets old fast sometimes, especially because it's my job.

Like I said I'm starting ministry in the fall and starting training and fundraising in June, but until then I'm just sitting and waiting. I'm not going to lie, I get a little impatient sometimes.

However who is on the throne? God is. Who has the best intentions for me no matter what happens? God does. The thing I love about the Bible is that it's full of flawed, real individuals who all fall short of God's standards. There are people in there who have no problem asking God, "Why is this happening to me?" They aren't disrespecting Him, they just want to know. It also has people who even though they don't even hear a direct answer from God on why it's happening, they continue to rejoice in God's provision and grace. It's amazing!

Now I'm also a music guy. God speaks to me a lot through songs and one of them lately has been a song by a hip-hop artist named K-Drama. The song has a clip from the classic Nickelodeon Show Ren and Stimpy and it's called "Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy." It's kind of a goofy song, but it's a good one to listen to for a good laugh if you're having a bad day. A good line from it that K-Drama drops goes like this:

"My car CD player broke, so did my portable.

My phone freezes up because of the car,

Guess it's no longer supportable.

Plus the screen on my TV cracked,

Call it a crack bail.

Rent's due next week, sometimes it's that scary!

Money's short, bills are high, dishes stackin' to the sky,

Toilet leakin' on the carpet, landlord leaves me and I want to cry.

But no matter the depth, and no matter the length,

The joy of the Lord is my strength!

HOLLA AT YA BOY!"

So sometimes things just get frustrating, things just get annoying, but in coming to God as we are, He gives us that joy and that strength to make it through. One of my favorite verses goes like this:

"Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign LORD is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights. For the director of music. On my stringed instruments." -Habakkuk 3:17-19

So God's got my back and He's on the throne. I wouldn't want to have it any other way. HOLLA AT YA BOY!

God bless,

Steve

Easter Sunday Reflections....

This Easter Sunday morning I found myself with that same hardness of heart again.

It's funny how sometimes we can get so caught up in the tradition of Christianity sometimes that it really can harden our hearts. We find ourselves going through the motions. Even in service this morning I found myself struggling with that. You know, sometimes I really tend to focus too much on the blood, guts and gore of the crucifixion. The whole method of it is very intriguing, I'm not going to lie. And it was really an extremely brutal death that Christ faced for us, but the resurrection of Jesus Christ is what makes the Christian faith totally worth it.

What was even more amazing than the crucifixion was Jesus' resurrection because He didn't have to come back, but He did. It showed that God is a God who keeps His promises. Jesus said He would die a brutal death and then rise again and He did just that. It also was the exclamation point on Jesus' sacrifice. He didn't just die, but He beat death!

So what does that mean for us? In 1 Corinthians 15:16-19, Paul writes to these people on the value of the resurrection from the dead: "For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men."

Whoa, did you read that? Maybe you should read it again. The resurrection of Christ brings faith in Him to a whole new level because according to that verse, it doesn't just give us hope for this life, but for the life to come. It shows that eventually we who are in Christ will also have brand new glorious bodies like Christ. That is amazing!

The resurrection of Jesus Christ gives us a reason to live. It gives us a reason to lay our lives down for Christ and live for something greater. We don't just "get by" by "pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps", but we abundantly live the life that God desires for us to live. This is, of course, when we decide to lay our lives down before Him saying, "I'm yours."

Will that be you? I hope so....

God bless and Happy Easter,

Steve

Good Friday Reflections....

I know it's been awhile.....

So today is Good Friday. This is the day where we remember Jesus' selfless sacrifice on the cross. As like what it says in 2 Corinthians, Jesus Christ "who knew no sin became sin for us".

Isn't it hard sometimes to truly reflect on this truth? I know that may sound crazy, but I really woke up this morning with a hardness in my heart toward the power of the cross, treating it like it was "old news". Of course it's not old news!

In hopes of getting out of this "funk" I was in, I sat down this morning and read through some of the popular passages of the Bible, starting with Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53 in the Old Testament. Something that caused me to pause and reflect on was what Jesus' reactions must have been as He read from these passages during His time on earth. In the 30 years before His ministry, He spent a lot of time growing in wisdom and stature, and one of those ways was reading and analyzing scripture. We see this in Luke 4 as He stands and reads from Isaiah in a synagogue in His hometown. Jesus would not have been able to do something like this back in those days unless He was an avid scholar of the scriptures, so it shows that He did spend a lot of time analyzing them.

So anyways, as Jesus' eyes were edging toward these passages, I almost picture His heart racing. Maybe He was even sweating in anticipation. Since He was and still is God, I know that while reading those passages He knew that this would be Him. I can imagine that He was especially moved by the graphic language and depictions in Psalm 22 with phrases like "all my bones are out of joint" and "they have pierced my hands and my feet". He was not only moved because He knew it was about the upcoming Savior of the world, but because He WAS that Savior!

I'm sure that during His time reflecting and praying in the garden, sweating blood from extreme emotional distress, those passages were the ones He was reflecting on. This was because He was about to LIVE out those very passages. His hands and feet were going to be pierced. Or as it says in Isaiah 53, "He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities" (v. 5). Jesus was that man whose "appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any man and His form marred beyond human likeness."

That was Jesus on the cross. He knew it the entire time going up to that hill to be nailed to that cross and He did it freely. He did it for us. He did it for Him.

It was a rescue mission for mankind, that many witnesses at the time thought had failed, but really it was at the pinnacle of its success. Jesus bore the wrath of God that all mankind deserved on that cross with those metal spikes in His wrists and feet. He was up there for six hours just barely trying to breathe as people there were mocking Him incessantly. The pain of that was nothing compared to the true pain that He experienced of the loving Father of His turning His face away. Jesus Christ actually experienced the true scorn of God that we deserve.

I encourage you today to really take a moment today and linger on the thoughts of the power of the cross. Don't just shrug them off. Reflect on what the Wondrous Cross means for you.

God bless,

Steve