Some of us will not allow our past be our past. In fact, some of us, will not allow our mistakes, shortcomings and follies die. I simply do not know why. Honestly, I don’t understand how some of us will take what we did previously in error and beat ourselves over and over for it, again and again, thus creating a present reality that really isn’t a present for us. But then again, there are those of us who will not let our past be in our past because we’re presently doing nothing. Nor do we hope to present anything in the future. Both are horrible habits and they should die today. And do not presume to say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our father,” for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. (Matthew 3:9) John the Baptist, as he was baptizing people in the Jordan River warns his listeners of this exact thing! You see, the people of the day were holding long and hard to some legacy like it defines them in the current moment. Obviously, the big problem here is that their legacy did not define them as individuals in the present. Sure, one cannot argue that the apple falls far from the tree without being thrown far away; and likewise, without the context of history, the trajectory of a person cannot really be understood, but John the Baptist isn’t talk about either of those things. What he is talking about is simply the fact that we cannot blame or rely on our past legacy or history to secure any type of present in reality. Let me give you an example of what John was saying to his listeners: Just because you won a football championship last year does not mean you’ll win it again this year. Likewise, just because you choked and lost the football championship last year does not mean that you will choke again this year. Likewise, just because you’ve made some mistakes, had shortcomings and messed things up in a serious way previously, doesn’t mean that you are not above those things. We need to get this straight in our heads and our hearts: God is NOW. What I am saying is: God is about your actions at this moment, not the last moment. At this very moment, are you choosing to be God’s child; or are you choosing to allow your past dictate some false sense of security about who you choose to be?

There was tragedy in Boston yesterday. Keep the victims and the family of the victims in your prayers– that they may once again get up and strive. As I watched the news coverage on the Boston attacks, I came to the conclusion that some group will come forward and claim this horror in the “name of God”. To those who already don’t believe in the idea of a loving God, this will just harden their hearts even more. And those of us who are looking for answers from Our God, we are left just as bewildered. Allow me to say it: No god, and definitely not Our God condones or takes pleasure in senseless violence. As such, this act of terror in Boston is an act of rebellion. An act of rebellion against any notion of god, and of course the Our God. Rebellion against God is as bad as witchcraft, and arrogance is as sinful as idolatry. Because you rejected the Lord’s command, He has rejected you as king. (1 Samuel 15:23) King Saul of Israel rebelled against God during his reign. He had sacrificed a lamb because God was supposedly not working fast enough, and decided to do the work of conquering and unifying the nation on his own. That is to say that the king performed what he believed was a religious rite and then went out to do detestable things in the name of God. (Many of you may have caught this in the “Bible” miniseries on the History Channel). The Prophet Samuel confronts the king and condemns him for his actions. Samuel says to Saul in conclusion, “God wants obedience over sacrifice.” You see, rebellion is every act short of complete obedience– even sacrifices to God can be rebellion, as they are in this case. Therefore, we are all called to obey the Word of God; that is, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul and to love your neighbor (even if you don’t agree politically, ideologically, religiously with him/her), as you would love yourself. Let’s stop making excuses in the name of our God and completely obey His Word. Let’s then see how our world changes.

You looked for much, and behold, it came to little. And when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? declares the Lord of hosts. Because of my house that lies in ruins, while each of you busies himself with his own house. (Haggai 1:9 ESV) Here’s the more plain translation of this passage: “You had all this ambition and you failed. The reason you failed was because you were too self absorbed and stingy. Ultimately, you forgot about the God who gives.” The question we glean from this passage is: how can we (in an over secularized 21st century federalized state) be expected to remember God when things are good or bad? That’s simple: build God’s house. I’m a professional Christian and it’s hard for ME to remember God. These Israelites were living in a partial theocracy, and they had a hard time remembering God. The excuse I give is that I can’t do God’s “work” without being able to take care of my stuff first, and when I think that, I take away from God what He has been doing for me all along. Here is what is implied in this passage: God took care of you and me, why in the world would we think that we are somehow more responsible for what God always did now? I’m not saying, nor is the Scripture saying that we shouldn’t work hard, nor is it saying that we should not be ambitious. Rather it is saying that when we start off in our professional or personal careers, we trusted God, and brought to God, the respect and honor due to Him by loving other people and caring for them. In essence, our ambitions were for a greater purpose than to fill ourselves up. This is why we had success in the beginning, and this is probably why we are having difficulties now– we are working and living for all the wrong reasons. I’m not talking about making profits, it’s not wrong to make a profit. What is wrong is for you to live an unfulfilled life; and moreover, its wrong to think that you are the most important person in your life. I don’t know where you are in life. But I do know where you should be. You should be chasing God by loving the very people around you, building them up with your life and ambitions. You should not be trying to seek some self-absorbed vanity that leaves your life empty. I dare you to see what happens to our lives when we try build God’s house today.

No one remembers what has happened in the past, and no one in days to come will remember what happens between now and then. (Ecclesiastes 1:11) No, this isn’t a post about riding bikes, nor is it about Lance Armstrong. This is about the cycles of our life histories that seem to always come back, over and over. Here’s what I mean: you know that mistake you keep making, and this mistake, you made, you did last year, and last month, and last week, and yesterday. It might be spending too much on eating out, being mean, or even being too nice. Whatever it is, you keep doing it. You tell yourself, “never again.” Then you forget and in the spur of the moment, do it again. It’s a ruthless cycle that always comes back. Societally, we have horrible cycles of genocide, poverty, bigotry, etc; and despite resolutions, executive orders and policies, society just keeps the cycles going. I’m going to be honest here, our “cycles” carry consequences far greater than I can write about and much more internalize than you ever wanted. Yet, we do nothing to end these cycles– in ourselves and in our world. The one cycle that was broken through all of this was the cycle of death. You may spend most days not thinking or remembering about how sin and death were broken by our savior, Jesus; but you and I both know, nothing was ever the same because of it. We may not be able to fix ourselves enough to break the cycles of bad habits, but luckily for us, God did all the work and put us in a place where the cycle was already broken. I bet, if we would just remember that Jesus broke the worst cycle in our lives, that all these other “unbreakable” cycles in us will come apart and stop happening as well. Don’t believe me? Just give it a shot. I challenge you to remember Jesus’ death on a cross and resurrection from the dead every single day for the rest of the month and see what other bad cycle fell out of your life.

So she set out from the place where she was with her two daughters-in-law, and they went on the way to return to the land of Judah. (Ruth 1:7 ESV) Here is the backfill on this story: Naomi emigrated from her homeland to another country and finds ruin, so she decides to head back to where she came from. But the interesting thing here is that Naomi is ready to face everybody she left behind after failing to make a better life for herself. This begins the story of King David. His great, great grandmother is Naomi! Without Naomi going back to Judah, there would be no David, there would be no Solomon, there would be no Mary and Joseph, there would be no Jesus. Moreover, we may never have gotten a chance at salvation had Naomi decided not to go back home. Most of us, if not desperate, cannot possibly face our failures and the jeering of our peers at the same time. “Why did you come back?” they would say sarcastically. And what answer would we have for them? We would hang out heads low and not make any eye contact. But that’s not what Naomi did. Rather, she “set out”, that is, made plans for her return from failure. It is amazing that God, after our failures, allows us to make plans to start again. In fact, it’s more incredible that God, after we disqualify ourselves and return as failures blesses us enough to provide redemption for ourselves and for other people. Don’t sulk in failure, set out from it, even if that means starting over.

But Jephthah said to the elders of Gilead: “But you hate me. You kicked me out of my home. So why are you coming to me now? Because you are in trouble. Right?” The elders of Gilead replied, “That’s it exactly. We’ve come to you to get you to go with us and fight the Ammonites. You’ll be the head of all of us, all the Gileadites.” (Judges 11:7-8 MSG) Jephthah, if you don’t know, was a Judge over Israel for a period of six years. In fact, if you looked at what he did in his six years as judge, you would think that his life was primed for such an occasion of heroism. I mean, how many people lead their broken and wasted countries into war with invading guerrilla marauders in a relatively short time period and succeed? Our 21st Century American Congress can’t even solve a sequester, just imagine if they had to lead a beaten and conquered nation, do you think they could do it? I wouldn’t count on it, but that’s a different story for another day. However, before Jephthah was judge, he was the illegitimate son of a prostitute that was thrown out of his home by his half-brothers. (Yeah, your families aren’t as bad in comparison.) Jephthah didn’t choose his mother, he was just faulted for who his mother was. As a result, he is “driven out” and then finds himself as the leader of a gang that hunts, pillages, and in all likelihood, storms other towns and villages for goods and supplies. This “reject” of an Israelite man was called by God to rescue the very people that abandoned him. Sounds familiar doesn’t it? It sounds like the story of Joseph, Moses, David and even Jesus! They were all driven out and rejected by their own people only to redeem their ejectors. Sometimes this is the predicament we find ourselves. We didn’t cause the hatred, we just were happened upon it, like ill-fate. How often have you been told that you did not belong? How many times have you been outcast? Shamed? The irony in Jephthah’s story and that of Joseph, Moses, David and Jesus is that they were “the stones that the builders rejected which become the cornerstones” (Psalm 118:22). I’ll tell you right now that Jephthah became the leader despite his obvious disadvantages and circumstances. In fact, he became the leader because of his perseverance through those disadvantages and circumstances. We, in our rejections, are primed just like Jephthah. We may not have control or any ideas over why or for what reasons we are driven out of favor by the rest of the world; but, do not think that because you are driven out that you were not created to be called by God to conquer.

So here’s a question that has been bothering me for a while: If God opens a door (opportunity) and because of anxiety, intentionally leave that God ordained opportunity, what happens? Am I being disobedient to God? Or am I being coward? Or am I closing myself off from new experiences? Perhaps, you may even conclude that in doing so you may never again have an opportunity present itself as momentous as the one that you walked away from. When you think about it carefully, all of the above are true; and concurrently, all of the above are not true. What do I mean by that? Let’s look at 2nd Corinthians 2:12-13 where the Apostle Paul writes, “When I came to Troas to preach the gospel of Christ, even though a door was opened for me in the Lord, my spirit was not at rest because I did not find my brother Titus there. So I took leave of them and went on to Macedonia.” To sum up what the Apostle was saying: he was preaching like a madman and people were experiencing and witnessing things that would do any preacher and evangelist proud. But despite this great success, he was uncomfortable and anxious. He did not find himself where he wanted to be even though he knew it was God who brought him there and was doing the work. So he got up and left. The implications for us today are tremendous in light of this passage. Let’s look at what Paul says immediately after in verse 14.

But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. (2 Corinthians 2:14)

When Paul writes, “triumphal procession” he is not talking about getting a ticker tape parade in honor of his abandoning the opportunity God gave him because he was filled with anxiety about his friend not meeting him there. In fact, when he is writing that phrase, here’s what our minds and hearts should really understand: that God will use that spectacle of walking away from an opportunity ordained by God to bring people to witness what God can still do despite me. You know as well as I do, that you and I have a number of episodes where we intentionally walked away from God’s calling. Maybe it’s not even walking away and more like disqualifying ourselves from it. Just think about your decision and why you made that decision. All of that is okay because I’m telling you that the decision to walk away or be disqualified may be a reality, but it is not a finality! God will lead you through the “triumphal procession” (embarrassment, spectacle, noise, etc) in Christ. That is, people will hear and know your history but God will still use that to bring them and you to Christ. That is a promise, so don’t regret anymore because God redeems.

Over the weekend, I was told a story about Terri. Just after losing her mother to cancer, Terri is diagnosed with a terminal form of lung cancer. In the midst of exhausting treatments, Terri decides it’s time to bring Jesus into her life. Friends, family and Christians joined in prayer with Terri, until one day she receives an amazing report — her lungs are totally cancer free on Good Friday! That’s great, but what about everybody that didn’t come out cancer free? You know, the people we all know, like my dad, my youth pastor, my uncle, my aunt, my grandparents, my kid’s friend’s parents, and the list continues. Are their prayers going unheard? Is there no mercy for them? What if the mercy was living through affliction? The Apostle Paul believed that there was effectively a blessing through our afflictions! Lets look at 2 Corinthians 1. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. (2 Corinthians 1:3-4) You see, don’t write this off as a cultural suffering, like most of us 1st world Christians do by saying– “oh there was no diet coke or artisan water bottles in the fellowship hall and so lunch was hard to swallow with all that MSG.” What Paul was talking about was a burden of affliction so great that their waning life blood was hard to sustain them– that is to say that they saw death as the better option! Your affliction, whether its your distaste for your job, persecution from family, health concerns, financial issues, or relationship problems may in fact be a blessing to those people watching you persevere through them. The blessing is not your inspirational strength and know-how, but your slow and quiet move to rely less on yourself and heavily and totally on God “who raises the dead” (v9). I want you to look at your affliction today and find God’s life giving blessings through them. He delivers His children and we can hope that He will deliver us in His way, when we pray.

Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him. (John 3:14-15) God healed the Israelites of serpent-venom as they looked at the bronze serpent on the pole. In the same way, if we believe in the death of Christ as He was lifted up on the cross for our sin, we will be spiritually healed from the disease of death. Jesus literally became the curse for us. We believe in His life, death, and resurrection for our salvation. We look to Him, we follow Him as our Lord, and God saves us! The serpent story points us to the cross. If you are not yet a follower of Jesus, please know that the only way to deal with your guilt, get rid of your shame, and be forgiven of all your wrongdoing is through the gospel. God has done all the work. We simply look to Jesus Who died for all of our sin, Who has risen from death, and Who now reigns as King. We turn from our wretched sin in repentance, and turn to our Lord Jesus in faith. If you are already are a believer but are losing a battle against sin, looking to Jesus is still the only way out. Pursue Jesus on a daily basis so that He becomes all the more compelling and sin becomes less appealing. The same way that we are saved from our sin is also the way we are sanctified despite our sin: the gospel. Grow deeply in the good news. Pray in its strength. Live according to its truth.

Peter said to him, “You shall never wash my feet.” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.” (John 13:8 ESV) Would you get on your knees to wash the dirty, dirty feet of somebody who didn’t deserve it? I mean, would you really get on your knees to wash the feet of somebody who didn’t deserve what was coming to them because you were going to take the fall for that person and pay for it with your life? Honestly, would you be able to do what Jesus did? The answer probably is “no.” At the same time, we are incredibly blessed because God did that for us already. We just need to accept it and grow into it. When we think upon the incredible sacrifice of God, we have no other choice but to posture ourselves into the same type of unflinching humility. I mean, just think about the possibilities and repercussions of this type of action in our lives. How many bad relationships would be reconciled? How many people would come to peace? How many people would be saved because they saw you follow Jesus? Read John 13:1-20 and understand what this all means.