Self-help or God-help (Followed by a Note on Why Look to the Bible)

What is the power of humanity?

What is the result of our greatest thoughts? Atom bombs - destruction

What are the highest aspirations of our people? World power - Riches and Fame - Comfort - Pleasure

Is this the pinnacle of human thought? Is this the best we can do?

Yes, it is.

Man's ideas lead to Concentration Camps, Empty pursuits, and Selfish behavior at the expense of others.

And yet we want to look to man to save our souls. Be a better you! Think Positive!
What you need is a self-help seminar....more human wisdom and human ideas.

You need to puff yourself up in pride and in your abilities.

Yet you can't control tomorrow, you are gone with the wind, everything we so cherish is gone with the wind. What kind of trust do you place on sinking sand that washes away? Who would build on sinking sand? Who would base a life on dust in the wind?

As we step into eternity, money rots, fame is worthless, and human power is confronted with true power in our maker.

But yet, they say all you need to do is dig down deep and be a better person. This is the height of human wisdom. On what do we base this confidence in human wisdom? Because it has worked so well and because we seem to do such good things based on our human understandings?

The greatest empire on the planet today - what is so great - its guns, its bombs? Its wide-spread sexual perversion? Its do whatever it takes to get rich upon the shoulders of the poor and expendable? Idolizing of celebrities who offer us no character, no righteousness, no role models for young peole to look up to? And yet we reward them more than any other in our society?

How promising a prospect is it to look to the same wisdom of humanity on how to save himself? How hopeless a thought, that man can save himself? How ridiculous!

Even the church is chiming in on self-help. The faith becomes so watered down that God has no place in it. The faith is presented as all about us, all about what we get, all about what we do - empty of God. It becomes selfish. It becomes nothing more than self-fulfillment, how to have the best marriage, how to have joy, how to have peace in life, how to be a good person, how to live the life you've always wanted.

Thats not Biblical. Biblical faith is not focused on man - it is focused on God and what He is doing with man!

Biblical faith points to man's need for help outside himself. Man's inability to do anything that will stand. Man's wickedness cries out in the Bible and as we look around today. Even though the world will call sin good, sin is always evil and we reap what we sow.

Man needs help. A help found in God. We need God-help, not self-help. A help from God stepping down from heaven to take on flesh in Jesus Christ. To do for us on our behalf what none of us could do on our own.

We are totally dependent upon Christ. Upon the Cross. The Cross is the place our wickedness receives its due. And we receive forgiveness by Christ, not because we deserved it - by no means. It is the gift and goodness of God toward us.

And as Christ was risen by the power of God from the dead, He reigns today - forever. And He has begun to raise us to new life, as we accept the Cross of Christ, realizing what He has offered to us - salvation from our wickedness and our inability to free ourselves from our own follies - we accept His help and receive the Holy Spirit. In God's power, we walk in newness of life. We walk in a life of obedience to God, obedience to His Biblical revelation given to us, dependent on Him and no longer in rebellion against Him. It is His doing, His power, His intervention, His guiding, His new creation. A journey onward with God perfected as we enter glory prepared for life ever-lasting.

I am afraid for a people that tries to depend so much on man - and refuses to look to God. The answers to our questions, failures, brokenness is not found in ourselves, our help is only found in God.

And if you come to God for help, don't come to be a better you, don't come because you want a better life, if you come to Him, come to Him because He is worthy, come because you're desperate for the Living God, come because you know you need Him. Come because this world is empty without Him and He is everything. Come to him to die to yourself. Allow Him to rebuild you in His ways, in His plan, not looking to get His help in what your plans are - NO - looking to burn your plans and receive His in their place. A total rejection of trust in yourself, a total rejection of your wisdom, a total rejection of what you thought was good, or what you thought life was about - a death to self. Trust God as the answer, for the plan, for whats good, for what your life should be about. Because you desperately see that nothing in you can be trusted - only God is to be trusted. Its about Him and His willingness to show us!

Who are you counting on for eternity?
Yourself, what you've done.
Don't count on yourself and your goodness built on your own efforts, count on God.
What reason do you have to trust yourself? What have you done to prove yourself capable of creating your own tailored-plan of salvation?
We are hopeless in ourselves. This is the clear declaration of history. A history of human wickedness and rebellion against God and the result of sinful choices flowing from generation to generation.
Find your sole salvation in God and God alone - in His finished work on the Cross - in His promises to you found in the Bible.

Why the Bible:

Because over 40 men were inspired by God to write His story for us. Because over a 1,500 year time period these men were all coordinated to produce one consistent theme throughout the Bible. The need for Jesus Christ, Man's inability to do right without God, and God's passion to reach out to a rebellious mankind.

Because there is no other book that has such a large testimony of God's inspiration. Because you don't have to take my word for it, or the word of just one man who says he had an experience with God and expects us to believe it. Because over 40 men who didn't know each other over 1500 years were led to testify to the very same God and this God's plan for His creation.

Because a dozen men witnessed the resurrection of Jesus Christ first hand, because over 500 saw Him risen from death. Because in any court of law, this many first-hand witnesses would be enough to make a decision. Because Christianity is founded on historical realities, concrete realities. Jesus is a historical fact and the power of the Cross stands forever. Pointing to us the only way of man's salvation found in God stepping down from heaven to take the suffering sin deserved and His promise to forgive us in accepting what He has done in our place.

Not self-help, God-help.

Begging at God's Table

I sit and wrestle with divinity
my little mind wrestles with the mysteries of God
so much you have taught me
so much you have shown me
little scraps from your table
back I come begging
searching
wondering
what a foolish endeavor
to think I might understand you God who is beyond all human comprehension
God who made all that is and stands apart from everything I know and see
God who interacts with Creation
Apart from anything I know
Apart from anything I see
Untouchable
Wisdom beyond measure
Love never-ending
Yet I come back for more
More scraps at your table to savor
I come back because you have been so generous to me
so generous to share with me, just what I needed, just as I needed it
to serve you
At times, I thought I might fully grasp you
In my arrogance, I thought too much of myself
Can I be at peace, in knowing in part but not in whole?
Can I rest in what you've done? and what you've shown?
Your Holy Spirit convicts me and moves me
Your truth burns in my soul
Love, justice, mercy, joy, peace, and patience
they point beyond and assure me of what is
That you God, you God stand behind it
You move me, you guide me, in your paths of righteousness
You move me where I desire to be, where I love to be
In your goodness, in your grace, with purpose and joy supreme

even when it doesn't make sense,
even when its hard times
this I know, you have been good to me
scraps I've savored from your table
by no merit on my own
but because you are good, and you desire to share with me

misundertood word: gospel

When you hear the word gospel, what do you think of?

It is the most important part of the Christian faith. Do we know it?

Gospel literally means, good news.

Why don't we just say good news...? Maybe then it won't sound like such a foreign concept to people who have never heard the word gospel.

Good news.

We all like good news.

Good news, even though we have all messed up and done bad things in our lives, God wanted to provide a way to cover all our bad choices and remove them from his sight. He did this by coming in the flesh as Jesus Christ, and took on the penalty, Himself, for all of our bad decisions. God chose to do this for us. God chose to sacrifice Himself on our behalf. None of us deserved it. None of us earned any favor with God. It was a free gift given by God, the same God who gave us life in our mother's womb.

Good news of a forgiven past.

It is belief in the good news that can purify a heart, after all Jesus loved you enough to die for you. It is belief in the good news that can cleanse a conscience, after all it was all of your wrong choices that required Jesus to be crucified. It is belief in the good news that can break through idle talk, after all there is a world that needs to feel the good news. The good news brings our dead souls to life. Fully alive, in God.

Good news! You have been forgiven, so forgive others. Good news! You have been helped, so stop and help others. Good news! You have been loved by the greatest lover of everything that exists, so love others.

Observations from 1 Tim 6:11-21

God alone possess immortality.
He was in the beginning, He is now, and He will be in the future.

God dwells in inapproachable light.
Just as light removes darkness,
God's presence cannot stand spiritual darkness.
Just as light pierces the dark,
God's truth pierces our consciences and illuminates the true path.
God's light is inapproachable, His goodness is beyond our highest thoughts of Good, His goodness is blinding to our eyes,
eyes that are used to and grow accustomed to darkness.

God gives life to all things.
God gives, its his nature.
He is a giver and generous with what He gives to us.
He gives the most precious of gifts, life.
Not because He had to, because He chose to.

God is the only sovereign.
There is only one King.
Every person who thinks they rule anything by a title or by force,
they are deceived.
There is only one who truly rules over this universe and this Earth.

So believer in God,
pursue righteousness (v. 11).
righteousness: being as we ought to be; the condition acceptable to God
Be full of integrity, virtue, purity of life, and seek correctness of thinking and acting.

Be who God made you to be.

Hour of Devotion

Good morning room.
Let's fix you up a bit.
Let's see.
Open the blinds just a little,
the light of the morning beams through.
The clouds and blue sky greet me with a smile.

Hello chair, may I have a seat?
Plop down and gaze out the window,
wonderful.
Pause.
Inhale, exhale,
What a peaceful morning.

What treasures does the Word of God have today?
Open Her up.
Ahhh. David, what do you have to say?

That verse, I can't move past that verse.
It sticks in my mind,
It grabs at my heart,
It stirs my soul.
How wonderful is your Word!

God, you speak of things so true,
Its as if you are calling to something deep inside me.
In this moment, I would like to sit
and hold onto you forever.
That your Word would not leave my attention,
that your voice would linger a little while longer.

But it is time to go now,
the day awaits.
Thank you for speaking with me,
and may I honor You with what you showed me
this morning.