…many are saying of my soul, there is no salvation for him in God. Selah But you, O Lord, are a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head. (Psalms 3:2-3)Before I even got a chance to finalize my new year plans and resolutions, I hit a big fat rut in the road. When I hit that rut; well, let’s just say it feels like getting a flat tire in the middle of nowhere with no spare tire or tools in the trunk and zero cell phone service at the twilight of the weekend.

That’s what the rut feels like, and it seems as though we hit it every single year around this time– three days. Being in a rut isn’t necessarily the problem. The problem really is that we already made promises we won’t be able to keep in 2013. Moreover, we know that any changes, policies we implemented over the past few days have more chances hitting the PowerBall than of actually sticking through the month of January.

But we knew that already. In fact, our friends and family ask us why we put ourselves through that junk again and again, year after year. The conclusion always being the same: because no matter how we ended the previous year, we hope that the coming year will be the year God has made specifically for our blessing.

You didn’t really come into 2013 thinking that some form of behavioral modification would alter your life in the long term. But you believe it when other people tell you that behavioral modification is the only way; and that slow and steady growth by the sanctification of your soul through the will of God is less than nothing.

Let me break that down to you: people everywhere, because it is human nature, want to sell you the lie that you have to earn some type of merit based grace from God through changing the outwardly actions you make — that’s right, they are selling you the idea that you control something external to yourself; and you, just like me, believe it wholeheartedly.

Then when we think about it, there is no salvation, that being “hope.” The rut you hit is that feeling you’ll never be blessed the way you’re going and that isn’t a lie. It’s absolutely true. We won’t be blessed given the way we fail to change our behavior.

“Selah.” If you don’t know what that means, it just means that we need to chew on a new piece of information and make it applicable to our lives. What I want you to “chew” on when you are in a rut is this: “but,” that is to say that despite my inability and iniquities, God gives me a “but.”

But God is still with me. But, despite the fact we don’t deserve it because we are in a rut, God answers when we call out to Him in our rut. It doesn’t matter what we are, how bad we failed, or our quickly we broke form from change, God lifts us out of the rut.

If you’re in a rut already, don’t give up on the year. This could still very well be your year. You need to cry to God and remember He is your shield and your glory. Let’s cry to God every time we hit our rut this year.

“I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up, and strengthen what remains…for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God.” (Revelation 3:1-2)

Why are we pretending? We have no more motivation left. We’ve been beaten. It’s easier to just go through the motions at this point rather than fight against ourselves or even fight against everybody else for the smallest gain or purpose. What we’ll tell ourselves is, “well maybe we’ll try again next year.” But we all know next year will roll around and we’ll be at the same place again.

We’ll be between here and nowhere, given up, broken, and going through the motions. Some of us have been going through the motions so long that we don’t even know what it feels like to actually do that thing. Just be honest with yourself, don’t you just go to work, almost on autopilot and park yourself in your cube and mindlessly keep busy until five? Maybe that’s the routine you have on Sundays? You mindlessly get ready for church and then come to church and sit down for a mindless service, lifting your arms up ever so high at the staccato of the very last song, then close your eyes really hard, word some things with your mouth, and sit down.

The writer of Revelation says to the church in Sardis (an ancient city in Turkey) that it’s time to stop being so faint hearted and soft. It is unacceptable to start things and not see them through. Worse than an inability to follow through, is following through half-heartedly. It is not acceptable to God.

It’s horrible worship. It is comparable to peeing your pants and walking around in public wearing soiled articles of clothing. With three days remaining in 2012, I want to challenge you: stop pretending life by going through the motions, but actually live life with the fire and tenacity latent within your heart.

You and I both know you have dreams you want to aspire toward. That you once imagined God to be leading you for something so satisfying that it made you drool in your dreams.

Forget trying again next year, there’s still time this year to work. Join me, and make this year a banner year and I guarantee that you’ll find yourself raising a banner even higher next year. Let’s do everything in the name of our Lord. Stop pretending life, wake up and live it.

Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid. (Proverbs 12:1 ESV) The proverb is simple: if you want to grow as a person, learn; if not, do nothing. When we look back on our 2012, I want you start jotting down a few things/people you learned from this year. I also want you to start writing down some things about situations or people you had wished you handled better. Let me give you some examples. This past year I learned a lot from my favorite person in the world. I was taught how to trust more like a human being, as opposed to like a robot. Likewise, a situation I could have handled better in 2012 was when a breakdown of trust happened on my end subconsciously. It’s not that I didn’t trust my favorite person in the world, I couldn’t trust myself with knowing that my favorite person in the world trusted me. Another example regarding my favorite person in the world would be how I had trouble, this was just yesterday, swallowing good advice. I could have handled the advice better, but I foolishly wanted to do my own thing even though I knew my own thing sucked. I’m telling you this not because I want to highlight my own very obvious character flaws, but because when we don’t think about our experiences to learn from them, we end up doing nothing about them and history repeats. We have the same problems we did when we were five when we turn fifty; we circularly hit the same concrete walls at thirty that we did at twenty. It is stupid and a lot of us would rather choose to live like stupid than discipline ourselves to learn. So start looking back on your 2012. There are people you want to indefinitely go back to in 2013 and learn from. Likewise, there are situations ad circumstances you do not want to repeat.

Thus the Lord has done for me in the days when he looked on me, to take away my reproach among people. (Luke 1:25 ESV) The mother of John, the Baptist, said this when she, in her old age, became pregnant with the herald that would proclaim the arrival of a new millennia. You see, Elizabeth’s reproach was that she and her husband had no children and this fact implied two things according to old wives tales and baseless religious superstition of that day: 1) the family is cursed and therefore no retirement plan was made available; 2) the family was hiding an atrocious sin and God was punishing them. Neither of those two things were true. In fact, God had a better plan for them. God saw this reproach of Elizabeth and decided He would turn those baseless lies everybody murmured beneath their breath at her family upside down by allowing her the miracle of life. Jesus later calls John, Elizabeth’s son, the great man birthed of a woman to ever live. This Christmas season may have winded you out and completely drained your life. But rest assured that it is only a reminder of how God has taken away our faults, failures, mistakes, and shame through the arrival of Jesus, our Christ. God may be working in your life right now to flip things upside down if we allow Him todo so. It doesn’t matter what you’re hiding behind closed doors; it doesn’t even matter who you are hiding it from. What matters is who you allow into your life to redeem those things. As we head into Christmas weekend and soon after Christmas, let us seriously consider the gravity of what God has done for us and be joyful. And if you can’t remember or think of what God has done for you, I ask that you look more closely, you’ll be surprised. I hope to see you at church on Sunday for our 10:30am or 1:30pm service and our Christmas Eve Service on Monday at 8pm.

He is our God; we are the people he cares for, the flock for which he provides. (Psalms 95:7 GNB) Around Christmas time, a lot of us, if not all of us, think back to our childhood; or at least we try to think back to our childhoods. But when we look back on those Christmas days past, we begin to wonder how we even got this far. If you haven’t thought about it, then start thinking about it because you will realize it was a far, long and sometimes hard journey here, from there. I think back to one of the first Christmases I can remember in vivid detail, it was also the first of six times I met my grandparents in my life. I had gotten the Nintendo Master System for Christmas and my grandfather and father had sit down to play duck hunt (they were more excited than my brother and me about it) and the traditional Kwon family trash talking between child and parent had commenced. “Jonathan, I’m going to how you and your father how to shoot these ducks on the TV screen!” My grandfather yelled. That’s when I saw him break into tears… That was the last time I would see my grandparents for another 10 years or so, but it made a lasting impact. The reason he cried, my father told me on the very last Christmas my brother and I had with him, was because he was amazed by how far my dad made it in life with little to no help from his parents, my grandparents. I think my dad told him, “God cared and provided.” So I tell you, look back on your past Christmases and thank God this Christmas, because He cared an provided every single year of your life. Through the financial struggles, divorce, breakups, deaths, and sleepless nights; you got through them by no power of your own. Let’s memorize this verse today: “He is our God; we are the people He cares for…” Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, He is our God and WE are the people He CARES for.

To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure; but both their minds and their consciences are defiled. – Titus 1:15 It’s incredible how dirty a person’s mind really is. You know what I’m talking about? I can just look at the conversations happening around me on the train and twist every single conversation around into a perverted, sick and twisted concoction. I know you just chuckled thinking about that. The kids in the room, wouldn’t have a clue, but that’s only because they haven’t been around us perverted folks long enough to get the subtly dirty messages. Let’s be honest, just because we’re culturally Christian, doesn’t mean that we’re any less perverted either. In fact, because the Bible has 365 or so (thou shall not …) we tend to have figured out, at least if we’re an adult, about 1,095 different ways around the “thou shall not” and this perverted those nots which were supposed to help keep us good. But just like we pervert the “not” to keep ourselves subjectively justified; we often take God’s promises to a new level of perversion in order to leverage a personally self seeking agenda. If you never have, that’s wonderful; if you have, because I know I have, it’s not the end of the world. If you’re unsure, let me give you an example of perverting God: if you have been rebellious, BSed (even on a paper), lied/conned/made excuses, for the sake of saving face or in the name of religion, and even worse, as you were “prompted by God”; then are part of this club of perversion and are working to deny the very power of God that saved you from eternal perversion– not fulfilling God’s call to Himself for your salvation and eternity. When we profess to know God, in relationship, we don’t work so hard on our own to deny His power and glory in our lives. But the problem really is that we spend most of our lives unwilling to yield ourselves to His power in some crazy denial. We profess to know God, but we deny him by our works. We make ourselves detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work when we have a working denial of God for our lives. Purity of mind and conscience is when we stop the working denial of God’s grace, love and mercy in our daily lives (trying to figure a way around Him). Have we tried to just love our family, friends, co-workers lately? Or have we been too busy working hard trying to get around them? As a result, my challenge for all of us is to become pure of thinking and doing: that is, to intentionally do in love how God showed us.

For I have derived much joy and comfort from your love, my brother, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you. (Philemon 1:7 ESV) Allow me to translate that for you: “the way you love people by encouraging them, makes me so elated!” How many of us love people in such a way that people who are only witnessing the love feel warm and bubbly on the inside? Better yet, how many of us love the people around us in a way that is refreshing, that is– not burdensome ad weary? So, if I’m correct, not many of us love people in a way that is not burdensome or at all weary. Most of you will email me saying that’s what being in love or having love really means and the reason I don’t get that is because I feel like other people’s love is burdensome and weary. If you agree to that, I’m going to say that you are the most burdensome types of loving people and that most people you “love” actually are so burdened by your need to find out if you burdened them or not that they’ll appease your need just so they can stop being weary of hurting your loving feelings. This brings me to say, we all need to stop loving in a burdensome and weary way. Likewise, we all need to help others love in a refreshing way. To do this we have to seek out models of refreshingly loving friends and be comforted and enjoy witnessing how they love and find a similarly refreshing approach in our own “loving.” You hippies who think I am advocating a “let’s pretend to be somebody else so that other people will find me refreshing” need to stop making your faces ugly on your screens reading this. What I want you to do is learn how people can be refreshed and contrast that with how you are refreshed by others and use the hybrid to formulate a method to refresh others in your love. Paul was in prison writing about how he hears of the way Philemon was loving the other Christians. How all the storms of these people’s lives were being lifted and the burdens of said life storms were being quenched by Philemon’s refreshingly encouraging love to them. It made Paul joyful and brought him comfort through his own prison sentence. That is powerful love. That is the effect of refreshing love that comes from the heart of God. This is exactly the opposite of a selfish love which burdens others to reciprocate and acknowledge. The love Philemon had for people was godly and an example of what faith in Jesus leads people to do– giving to others without expecting or wanting a return. We return to the premise of today’s quiet time: are we faithfully becoming friends that are infectiously refreshing with our love toward others; or are we unfaithfully burdening our friends with so-called love?

I concluded yesterday’s quiet time by saying that we can die with Christ and effectively lose the bonds of the law that hold us slaves to death and sin. (Check out yesterday’s quiet time). But how do we deal then when we are supposedly dead to the law (that is old time religion) and redeemed to be a like Christ in that we are raised from our dead-selves and continually failing in epic proportions? It’s a legitimate question that causes us to give up our pursuit of godliness simultaneously to our spiritual awakening. The problem always seems to be that we’re being set up for failure, so why try at all? Let me give you an example: You go to a revival, change your heart and give up personal super egos, giving yourself wholly to God again and you tell yourself that you will not lust after your friend’s brand new job. Instead, because you’re telling yourself not to covet your friend’s brand new job because really you’re proud of him/her even though you know that you deserve such a job more than he or she, you start plotting in all sorts of ways because you’re thinking about how not to covet. The Apostle Paul said it like this: “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” (Romans 7:14). When we try not do something by thinking about how not to do it, we actually do the opposite and think more carefully on how we are going to do that thing we know we don’t want to do; and in the end, we end up doing it. True story, ain’t it? The moment we sign up to die with Christ so that sin no longer controls us, we find ourselves in epic failure mode where we sabotage ourselves. Hopefully making us realize that we can’t be “Christ-like.” Now, what if I told you that none of what I just said really matters once you’re dead to the law in Christ? Yeah, the way you live would change, wouldn’t it? We would take our “epic fail modes” in stride and still produce fruit from our lives, wouldn’t we? I’m not talking about bad, rotten fruit, I’m talking about the fruits of God type of fruit. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. – Romans 8:1-2 There is only one way we fail in an epic manner– we condemn ourselves for being unable to fix ourselves. Here’s the bottom line: we will fail, sometimes it will be more explosive than other times. However, it is inevitable; because we’re wretched most of the time (just think about your coveting problem), so let’s not down play the enormity of the situation by saying we have some type of handle on ourselves to pick ourselves up from our bootstraps and conquer the evil that is set up to make us lose, and really trust the relationship we have with God, who through Jesus changes us slowly but surely. If we allow ourselves, not in a rigid religious manner, to be influenced by Jesus personally, we would bounce back faster from our shortcomings. The only way to be influenced by Jesus is to trust Him to influence you. You will still experience epic failures, but it won’t destroy you like the law would. The law shames us internally and externally flogs us. You’d forgive yourselves for being imperfect and cling more to Jesus, who is perfect, and who forgives you, and that is influence! There would be less epic failings and people around you will recognize it because those are the fruits of being raised to life with Christ. We’ve died to the law in Christ, let us be raised from our deaths to bear godly fruits instead of going into an epic fail mode.

Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. (Romans 7:4 ESV) I remember an analogy my father used to tell my brother and I but never ever explained. He used to say, “boys, you can only get fruit once you bury the dead seed.” And naturally my brother and I would take the seeds from watermelons that we would spit at each other and bury it next to the trees lining our sidewalk and watch nothing happen. But that’s probably because the dead watermelon seeds we buried underneath the shards of glass and garbage along the sidewalk were never agriculturally “raised from the dead.” When we look at our passage here in the Romans, the Apostle Paul makes a similarly interesting analogy about how we live in a way that is holy and acceptable to God– we have to first die. Then, and only then, can we be raised from the death we just died to bear any type of fruit for God. Let me explain this. Humans institute a thing called religion. In religion, there are things you can and cannot do. For example, you can turn the other cheek; or you can honor your father and mother. Likewise, you cannot kill your brother; and you cannot steal. If you do one of the things on the “cannot do” list, then you can make up for it by doing things on a third list that we can call “penance.” It’s like the BestBuy “buy back program”, where you pay them to “buy back” your old stuff for less money than you gave them to “buy it back.” Am I right? These are the fundamental tenets of all religions. Paul understood this. In fact, what he is saying to all of us here is that the traditional tenets of religion suck and only leads to death because it’s impossible to be perfect. Further, these traditional tenets of religion should only lead to our despair because the “laws” make it clear that we are the furthest you can get from perfect. Now the good news is that the “law” is only applicable to us until we die. Just like student loans that condemn us our entire lives means nothing to us when we’re dead, the law means nothing once we’re dead. Except some of us don’t want to die and would rather get ripped off the rest of our lives by living under the tyranny of a condemning law code. Let me make this clearer: it is stupid to think we can one day get ahead of the law because you can never “buy back” as much as you owe. The recommendation then is to die “in the body of Christ.” Jesus makes it clear in the gospels that the perfect lamb of God fulfills the law. The penalties are satiated through his sacrificial death. We can join in that sacrificial death, that fulfills the payments we presently owe and theoretically will owe in the future, by having a relationship with Him. That is not having a religion (a list of do’s and dont’s) with Him, but a relationship (trust and reliance) with Him. In doing so, we die to ourselves because we are not trying to live for ourselves. We have died and the law, that is religion for the sake of do’s and don’ts, means nothing because we are dead. More good news: when we die, we are then raised back to life. This time, when we live, we live not to lose pieces of ourselves to pay back religion and be taken away, but to give away the “fruit” that being in relationships free from worry produces. We’ll get more into this tomorrow. For today, I want us to meditate on whether we’re playing the fruitless game of religion or emphatically in relationship with the God that raises us from the death caused by religion.

So, I have this recurring nightmare– it’s that when I die, I go to the place of judgment and I fail to fully account for what I did while I was alive and I am thrown to the place where people gnash their teeth. Then, while I am there (at the place of gnashing of teeth), I spend all eternity on “what if”? When i wake up from the cold sweat in the morning in mid-alarm panic, I reflect on the past days and find missed opportunities and errant passes and over analyze the situation, trying to play back scenarios that will never be. In futility, I spend the rest of that day trying to compensate for the lessons I learned from my unpleasant dream and miss more obvious opportunities for that day. I know you’re not as shallow as I pretend to be, and this describes you on any given bad day, too. However, there’s a big problem with us and it’s because we say, “what if…” To this end we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power… – 2 Thessalonians 1:11 Written pseudographically by the Apostle Paul, the question of “what if” is settled right here in this passage: if we pray for God to make us worthy of His calling, we will undoubtedly glorify Him; and we will also pick up some glory by riding God’s coattails. If you don’t believe me, just read verse 12 in conjunction with the verse you read above. If you notice in our Scripture passage for today, nowhere does it mention that Paul is praying for you to do anything in terms of making you “worthy” or becoming something to fulfill the purpose of your life. Rather, what you see is Paul’s prayer for God to make is worthy and for God to fulfill our lives by His power. The only thing we do for ourselves, or rather for people like us is pray for God to do that. If we pray to become, then God will fulfill that we need to become for His glory. Therefore, the question of “what if” becomes null and void. It is an unnecessary obsession that will always end with the gnashing of teeth and so we should stop torturing ourselves with it. We should, instead, be continuously praying to God for each other and ourselves so that God makes us worthy for His calling on our lives. Here’s my challenge today: I want you to find somebody or some people and pray that God gracefully makes them become worthy. Then you can watch or reassure that somebody or people that God is moving to fulfill them so very worthily and they should be ready to receive it.