What would you give up to show your Savior your gratitude?

She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for burial. (Mark 14:8 ESV)

In this story, a woman pours expensive perfume on the feet of Jesus and washes them with her hair.

If you don’t understand the nuance of the situation then allow me to make it clear: she would take the cleanest, most treasured attribute of her beauty and lay it down to clean the dirt and grime off the dirtiest part of Jesus’ feet.

He walked 10,000 steps that day and she brushed her hair 10,000 times that day. It was a sacrificial act of love.

What would you sacrifice to show love to the Lord who always saves? How do you worship God with your actions?

You do have a bigger purpose in life. Your life is not in vain. You are part of something greater than you have ever imagined.

I am the Lord; I have called you in righteousness; I will take you by the hand and keep you; I will give you as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations… (Isaiah 42:6 ESV)

Sometimes it’s easy to fall into the trap of insignificance.

We wake up every morning to the same routine and we slowly begin to think, “What’s the point?”

Our lives are mundane and nothing ever seems to change. Yet, it is in times like these that we should be reminded of who our God. Our God called us to be set aside by sending His one and only to walk among us in the mundane. Our “righteousness” (read: salvation) was given to us by Jesus’ life among people who had schedules to keep.

Jesus’ death and resurrection on the cross supernaturally makes our everyday a reason for being. Your daily activities, your coming and going, that is not for the sake of filling up void time. Rather, it is for you to display the purpose of your being: to be God’s light to a dark and lost world.

I know it’s easy for me to speak in such conjecture and in abstract theories, but the reality is this: people who interact with you every single day look forward to your mundane routine because you quite possibly may be the only positive interaction they have.

When you think about it this way, your routines, your activities, your life, are God’s conduits for His love to manifest into the world.

How can the wrongs of this world be righted? The answer is God. Only God can right the wrongs of this world. He does so by honoring those who honor Him.

And I will raise up for myself a faithful priest, who shall do according to what is in my heart and in my mind. And I will build him a sure house, and he shall go in and out before my anointed forever. (1 Samuel 2:35 ESV)

The prophet Samuel recorded this statement from God to Eli the priest. Eli, the priest, well his kids messed up and God was not upset that the adults sons messed up, so much as God was mad that Eli didn’t correct the two idiots he called his sons. I want to believe that if Eli did correct his wayward sons in some type of admonishment, God would have had different words to say to Eli. However, God essentially says, “you are a bad parent so there will be no more bad parenting from your family.”

I ask myself, “why would God say this and do something so harsh?” It’s because the world has an innumerable number of wrongs that need to be righted and the very people who needed to honor God, didn’t.

The purpose of their lives hinged on a simple concept honor the people whose wrongs need to be righted by God through honoring God in sacrifice and worship.

How many of us fail to honor God by taking the wrongs of the people around us and compound them before God and the very people you were created to honor?

Thankfully Jesus is the high priest that honors God eternally and we have hope in Jesus’ ability to right out horrible wrongs. We are that risk priesthood of believers, let us honor God with our minds, souls and body by righting the wrongs of people through faith in Christ our Savior.

God honors those who honor Him.

What if I told you that you can redefine your life? How would you do it? What would you do?

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20 ESV)

If you haven’t had time to be at church this past Sunday, then please click this link and listen to the sermon. Otherwise I want to continue the conversation we had this post Sunday. One key to redefining your life is to let your old self die.

It is to allow who you once were to die with Jesus Christ on the cross. Who you once were, what you once did, how you once acted is dead. There is no reason to keep returning to the reasons you died.

Some of us need to just do it and stop looking back because it only gets better from here. Believing that Jesus was raise from the dead allows you to live with him. You have a new chance at life because you believe God gives you that new opportunity when Jesus died for your past life.

The reason God gives you a new opportunity when you and I both know neither of us deserves one is because He loves us. Now you can argue that you were never too bad or despicable, but we know that it wasn’t because of despicability that we needed a new opportunity.

We need the new opportunity because we could never have reached our fully God given potential in our previous life before we believed in Jesus.

So, what will you do now that you have a life redefined by the love of God?

Ye are not straitened in us, but ye are straitened in your own bowels. (2 Corinthians 6:12 KJV)

If the old English surprised you, let me give you the more modern translation: “You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted in your own affections.” (2 Corinthians 6:12 ESV) Hundreds of years ago, when the original King James had translated the Bible, it was common place to make the statement: “hidden in the bowels.”

This was not a statement regarding your intestinal tract, if that’s what you are thinking. Rather, the “bowels” represented the inner most and the deepest recesses of one’s being– his or her heart.

The Apostle makes a powerful statement in this passage: people are limited by what we care for the most. At the end of the day, if we care about something we will do everything in our power and control to positively affect that thing. The value and worth of that thing may have great value to us, but the question we really need to be asking ourselves is, “is it really valuable?”

Moreover, we should be asking ourselves whether the limitations that are on our lives as a result of those precious things are even worth it. Let us flip the situation. If we would make Jesus Christ the most prized possession in our deepest recesses, what would our limitations be?

More importantly, how would the limitations affect our lives?

I, for one, believe that the limitations we have when Christ is our most prized possession would actually free us to be limitlessly faithful to pursue life in a way that God can only empower us and have designed us to pursue.

Today, let our limitations be that of faithfully keeping Christ as the most valuable in our lives.

What is the one thing you would give everything up for? Do you have a goal that defines your life? Is there a legacy for you to leave behind?

But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. (Acts 20:24 ESV)

The Apostle Paul makes the statement above to the church leaders at Ephesus before he starts his long journey to Jerusalem. He says this knowing that his life’s work will ultimately cause his demise.

He says all that his life has become in the name and power of the gospel will be worth it as long as he could continue to give his life as a testimony for Jesus Christ, his Savior. I wish that on a good day that I could say something in the likeness of what Paul said to the leaders at Ephesus.

However, I know that I can’t, but I long so hopefully that one day soon I could. Nothing else in life really matters besides our testimony of faith in our Savior, I just pray that you and I can not only realize it, but live it out fully.

Live like nothing else matters but the good news of God’s grace in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is where our hope lies and the person by which we our lives are fulfilled in anyway, shape and form.

Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full. (John 16:24 ESV)

I love what Jesus says to his disciples here. I’m sure the disciples asked Jesus things over the last three years of his life, but the implications are that they asked nothing requiring faith in who he is. Jesus says to his disciples to ask him something hard and difficult that they couldn’t have done otherwise.

This begs the question: have we, as followers of Christ, asked Jesus for something  that could only be done in believing in the power of God, under the authority of Jesus?

Jesus is speaking from the position of power and authority. It is important for disciples to know that when asking in Jesus name, we are asking for difficult and impossible things that can only happen if asking in the name of somebody with power and authority.

Today I want us to practice asking and believing in the authority of Jesus. It is only then that we can find true joy in the ask.

Appointments are large obligations and warrant your utmost care. When you are appointed by somebody to do something, it is a big deal to the person making the appointment. For example, if the president of the United States appoints you to an office, it is a big deal. Likewise, if you are appointed to bring the food to the dinner party, it is a big deal to the host who appointed you.

But rise and stand upon your feet, for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and witness to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you… (Acts 26:16 ESV)

The Apostle comments (above) on his appointment as a witness of God as the purpose for which his life took its course. Meaning that everything he accomplished, endured, and experienced was for the sake of this one appointment. The totality of his life was to bring him to his knees and interrupt his plans so that this appointment could happen.

Paul’s history began as a pupil of a conservative, but well known teacher of Jewish law. He had the pedigree to become a lawyer, and a successful one to boot. Then he joined the radical movement and went off persecuting and terrorizing Christ followers who were doing good work for people overlooked by Saul and his ilk.

Then in one fell swoop, he is appointed by God as a witness…

What if our lives began where it culminated, just like this apostle’s? What if everything we saw and did resulted in our appointment to witness what God does in our lives and in the lives of the people around us?

Would we be brave enough to get up and stand to the appointment? Would we focus our energies toward this appointment of witnessing?

I have decided that I can and I hope you will join me in talking about what you’ve seen God do in your life and the lives of others.

Unveil my heart and mind so I can be free to experience Your glory. Amen.

But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:16-18 ESV)

The symbolism of the “veil” is powerful in Jewish tradition.

The Apostle Paul uses the symbol of the veil as a metaphor for being unable to experience God the way God intended Himself to be experienced by humanity– in His greatest glory.

That being the case, how often do we use a veil to limit God in our lives? Moreover, how often are we keeping ourselves from truly experiencing God the way He intended us to experience Him.

I know for a fact that when we go on retreats, attend conferences, pray, sit at church, we unveil ourselves to God’s great glory, but how often do we allow ourselves to be unveiled other than those short intervals of time?

Referring back to the times of the Exodus, the Apostle Paul says Moses used the veil to cover his face because the Israelites were afraid of what they might see on Moses’ face. This is exactly what we do.

We use the metaphoric veil as a way to hide behind our fear of what God may do; but we know this to be bondage from the passage above. In faith, we are free because God had unveiled himself directly to us through His Son, Jesus Christ that we may not be limited or hindered, but free to experience life the way God intended and designed.

Be part of an unveiling today.

I can use a little more courage in 2016–can you? Define this year with a commitment to praying for courageous faithfulness.

…for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance, as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. (Philippians 1:19-20 ESV)

I want all of us to define 2016 with words and actions which stand unashamed and unabashedly courageous.

To define 2016 with unashamed courage we will need to seek the answers for two questions presented by our scripture today. The first question we must answer today is: What is “this” that Paul is referring to? Secondly, why does “this” require unashamed courage?

For the Apostle Paul, “this” is his imprisonment. He is in jail and awaiting trial for supposed “crimes” against the empire. The accusation being that Paul is preaching Jesus’ good news. Talking about the birth, life, death and resurrection of your Lord and Saviour some how became a crime against the empire in the first century if and only if you upset the status quo.

Paul disturbed that status quo for people adhering to a broken system of sacrifice and ritual. Our lives, if we faithfully follow Christ, disturbs the status quo, we will be accused of changing the world and may find ourselves imprisoned and pigeonholed into a no-win situation.

So “this” which Paul speaks of, that “this”we feel because of our commitment to be a Christ follower in the 21st century, requires unashamed courage so that Christ’s grace and glory shine forth despite where we may be.

Paul knows that everything else in life falls short of the love of God and nothing could ever shame us away from receiving God’s love. In 2016, we must remember our Savior having unashamed courage in dying for us on the cross, and so we too, should have unashamed courage living our lives worthy of the seal pressed upon us with our salvation.