Archive for February, 2025

Internalizing Your Love for Jesus

“But now He (Jesus) has obtained a more excellent ministry, inasmuch as He is also Mediator of a better covenant, which was established on better promises. This is the new covenant between God and man.

In the Old Testament era the Lord established a covenant with His people and instructed them to build an ark symbolizing it. That was a good covenant for the time, but there came a time for a new covenant to be implemented. Things change.

For example, in an anthropology class the teacher was talking about how ideas of beauty change. He said seventy years ago the winner of the Miss America Pageant was only five feet tall, weighed just over 100 pounds and her measurements were 30-25-32. Then he asked, “How do you think she would have been regarded by the judges of this year’s contest?” One student replied, “Not very well!” “And why not?” queried the teacher. “She would be too old,” said the student.

For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second. In that He says, ‘A new covenant,’ He has made the first obsolete. “Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away” (Hebrews 8:6, 7, 13).

Jesus is depicted as “Mediator of a new covenant” between you and God the Father.

A covenant is a type of contract. In a covenant, the person making the promise (Jesus) is the covenantor, and the person who is benefitting from the promise is a covenantee, the individual believer.

A contract is invalid when one of the involved parties violates it. On the other hand, a covenant remains intact even if one of the parties breaches it.

It is considered immoral to break a covenant—it is a betrayal of trust. There is never a sense in which it is morally upright for a person to break a covenant.

God is a covenant-keeping God, and Christians should be covenant-keeping people. The new covenant established an intimacy between God and the believer. God remains faithful even when we are faithless. “If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself” (II Timothy 2: 12).     

Question: “Does that mean we can do whatever we want?” Augustine answered that well: “Love God — and do what you please.” Jesus was even more direct: “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching” (John 14:23).

Love is the bonding element, His love for us and our love for Him. If you love Him there will be a desire to please Him.

The concept of a covenant is all about the believer and Jesus. He arranged for it on Calvary and for an individual to be a part of it they must at a point in time, divorced from time embrace Him as Savior and Master to be obeyed and followed.

Frequently consider your covenant relationship with Jesus and enjoy the relationship. Repeat, ENJOY.

Benefits of Public Worship

“And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also He said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.’” (Revelation 21: 5)

The text noted is prophetically addressed to the church regarding the end times. However, it is relevant today. The dawning of a new year is an ideal time to make a course correction. A distinct change is needed by Christians related to public worship. Empty pews indicate some believers are running on empty. Low worship attendance can’t in totality be blamed on COVID. Attendance had started declining before that. In the 90s the average church member gave three hours a week to the church. Now if at all an average is about 30 minutes.

There are several reasons for this. Foremost is that church has been placed as a lower priority for families with children. Crowded playing fields on Sunday confirm this. Children as players and parents as spectators have a new priority. Some youth are even on travel teams. Sports and school activities no longer defer to church time.

A second reason for a decline in public worship is people can stream a worship service in casual attire while enjoying a beverage. This too, began before COVID but has dramatically increased. Now, however, even that has declined.

Yet another reason is people have become insensitive to the need for public worship and have no conscience in missing. God is not responsible for guilt. Personal insensitivity to the urging of the Holy Spirit is the cause.

Some might simply say, “I don’t get anything out of church.” A lack of urgency and relativism is at times lacking. However, there is a great deal of Bible related preaching still offered.

However, even if worship did absolutely nothing for us, we still should gather to worship God for no other reason than He deserves it. A. W. Tozer said, “Sometimes I go to God and say, ‘God, if Thou dost never answer another prayer while I live on this earth, I will still worship Thee as long as I live and in the ages to come for what Thou hast done already.’ God has already put me so far in debt that if I were to live one million millenniums I could not pay Him back for all that He has already done for me.”

In addition to worship being an act of devotion and dedication there are spiritual/science benefits. In his book “How God Changes Your Brain,” Dr. Andrew Newberg provides evidence that worship can positively affect brain structure.

Even health science has taken note of this phenomenon. Newberg explains that faith placed in a loving God can prolong our lives, lower feelings of depression, anxiety or grief and give greater meaning to life.

Independently of its effect on the moral principles of the race, it tends to peace and order, it humanises and civilises, it strengthens the bonds of the social relation and brings out the best that is in persons.

Ministers would do well to rethink the form of public worship. Worship means to humble yourself respectfully before God. Emphasis on certain forms of music add little to this. Praise and worship music stresses praise, but adds little to worship.

In the dawning hours of this new year this is a grand time to renew your commitment to corporate worship.

Wait On the Lord

“Wait on the Lord; Be of good courage, And He shall strengthen your heart; Wait, I say, on the Lord!”

That verse contains one of the major challenges in Christendom. It is counter to our microwave mentality, our search for instant gratification. I even saw a prestige car tag: “HTE2WTE”.

Even in one’s prayer life there is impatience. We ask and wait for an answer. An affirming answer is a blessing. However, the time between the request and the answer often draws us closer to the Lord than the answer.

“Wait” translates the Hebrew “kiwah.” It is a word that draws a picture for us. It describes starting with one thread and weaving it with sequential threads until a strong rope results.  Every experience with the Lord is a thread in the tie that binds you closer to Him. The time of waiting is a school in which faith is developed and exercised while waiting for all things to work together.

We are instructed to “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.” (James 4: 8) There are many ways to do that. I am going to focus on one. He said, “Be still and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46: 10)

Solitude is the incubator in which the fertile Word of God has time to develop Christlike characteristics. Fenelon, a voice from yesteryear wrote: “How rare it is to find a soul quiet enough to hear God speak.”

We are indeed in His keeping, under His training FOR HIS TIMING. His timing is always the right time. Often our timing and His timing are not always in sync.

God’s Word speaks often of time. Consider. “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens…” (Ecclesiastes 3: 1).

GIVE GOD TIME TO BE GOD.
Faith that is willing to wait on God is assuring, insuring, and enduring.

Sorrow looks back, worry looks around, and faith looks up.

Faith helps us walk fearlessly, run confidently, and live victoriously.

The Lord wants to enable you to stretch yourself spiritually and expand the circumference of your faith. The time spent waiting expectantly on His action is a means of doing so. While waiting on Him “be of good courage.” The English word courage comes from the Latin “cour” which is a reference to the condition of the heart. Those who wait on the Lord find He does indeed afford strength. This is a metaphor for confidence and composure.

The prophet Jeremiah got it right when under the guidance of the Holy Spirit he wrote: “For since the beginning of the world Men have not heard nor perceived by the ear, Nor has the eye seen any God besides You, Who acts for the one who waits for Him” (Isaiah 64: 4).

“Wait on the Lord; Be of good courage, And He shall strengthen your heart; Wait, I say, on the Lord!”

The new year will afford us many occasions to wait on Him. Patiently do so and be blessed.

Happy New Year 2025

Hopefully your new year is off to a very good start. If not and assess what you can and will do to make it the best possible.

The mask came off of the City that Care Forgot, New Orleans. It revealed the face of evil. Resultantly people who anticipated a new year experienced its abrupt end and others entered the new year through the portal of pain and suffering.

Hopefully America will begin the new year with a new commitment to the virtues that have traditionally made it great. The election of Donald Trump as President gives cause for optimism. His task is formidable. Expectations are staggering. Hopefully the best will result.

New Year’s resolutions are not a panacea, neither are they new. But they can be helpful. They go back over 3,000 years to the ancient Babylonians. Now it is your time.

The dawning of a new year makes many people concerned about changes in their lives. Do you? If so, how do you fit in the following?

The Forbes Health/One Poll survey found some resolutions to be more common than others, with the most popular goals including:
Improved fitness (48%)
Improved finances (38%)
Improved mental health (36%)
Lose weight (34%)
Improved diet (32%)

Men are slightly more confident (82%) than women (79%) in their ability to reach their goals.   

Optimism abounds depending on how a person is able to drop the last year into the stealth limbo of the past. Let it go, for it was imperfect, and thank God that it can go. Remove “shoulds, woulduhs, coulduh” from your vocabulary this year.

Some people had such a bad old year they are going to stay up late New Year’s Eve not to bring in the new year, but to be sure the old one leaves.

Don’t pull the dark clouds of the pass over the joy of potential better things to come. You will get out of it more than what you put into it.

God made us with the ability to change the course of life. With His help you can change for the better.

“With the coming of the new year you can open a new record book. Its pages are blank. You are going to put words on them yourselves. The book is called “Opportunity.”

Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering “I will….”

Start your journey with a “what now, Lord….”

Of the top 15 most popular resolutions not one has a spiritual component. Your new year can be better overall if every page has His finger prints on it.

Pray as David prayed, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me” (Psalm 51: 10).

This is a grand time “To put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:22-24 ESV).

Reconsider any new resolution you might make. Is it’s reason to honor God? If so, go for it with your whole heart. Get ‘er done for His glory.

May you have a HAPPY NEW YEAR.