Having placed everything in the context of location the passage that really speaks to what our response as disciples should be is this one:

“Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory…

What Is Your Longitude and Latitude?

Navigation on the ocean depends on knowing your location and a measuring instrument like a sextant is used to determine our latitude (horizontal lines) and longitude (vertical lines). Where those lines cross is our position. It certainly is important to know your physical location whether you are on the sea, the land or in the air. But there are also other locations. As the real estate agent says, “Location, location, location” which points to a…

He's Bringing Us Out of the Darkness

The traditional reading for Christmas Eve worship obviously centers on the birth of Jesus in the manger at Bethlehem (Luke 2:1-20). The first seven verses give us the political, social, physical and personal context in which His birth took place.

But is it ever mentioned that the bulk of the passage, vs.8-20, concerns shepherds, the shepherds living nearby, watching their flocks at night? How much it speaks to us right where we are. Let's…

Prophecy

When dealing with the idea of prophecy we immediately recognize we are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience which means 100% of our life is motivated by what can't be seen. Prophecy by its very nature is spiritual. Spirituality deals with everything that can't be seen. “What is seen is temporary and what is unseen is eternal (2Cor.4:18).” The whole Bible, while visible, references the invisible, the spiritual…

The Longest Trail

When I worked in New Hampshire one of my favorite hikes was on the Lion's Head Trail up the side of Mt. Washington. It was strenuous but the reward was not only making a successful climb but also the view from the top. What I came to learn was the appreciation of the trail itself with its beginning through beautiful woods, then emerging at the timberline and crisscrossing the boulders to reach the summit. Even though the trail remains the same the weather changes,…

Romans 14-15

We start again with the last verse of Ch.13, “Rather clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature (12:14).” This verse sets the pace for what he will say in the next three chapters.

How do we clothe ourselves with the Lord? Chapters 14 and 15 begin with the similar concern about weakness, uniqueness and cliqueness. “Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters”…

It's 100% or Nothing

In one of the replies to my '3rd World War' article the question of percentages (my 99 to 1 ratio) came up as well as time spent in our working career and the Lord's 100% obedience factor to His Father's will. Fair, very fair, I thought. Let me say first that for us as disciples of Jesus the bottom line is faith vs. fear. That's the basic theme behind not letting world issues distract us from our primary purpose as disciples. The whole percentage thing was an…

The New War, Terror

Terror, political terror dressed in religious garb, confronts us right now. We are hammered every day with its reality. What do we do about it especially as disciples of Jesus?

There are three questions that hold the answer to what it means to be a disciple of Jesus in a fear driven world. Now that the media; TV, newspapers and magazines; actively swamp us with stories of terror, crime, riots and chaos, our world has become a tidal backwash of survival…

Romans 13 Living 100% in a 99% World

The context for this chapter is the answer we give to the following question: Where did Jesus spend 99% of His time?

The issues Paul addresses here are based on reshaping images of God who believe in Jesus. It's all about attitude, the style we allow to shape our mind, heart and spirit. That's what Chapter 12 was about. The mindstyle in 12:1-2, the heartstyle in 12:3-8 and the spiritstyle in 12:9-21 combine to be like that attitude Jesus had…

Romans 12 Why This Chapter is So Important

I had a rabbi ask me once, “Why can't Gentiles have Jesus as their Christian Messiah?” Fair question I thought. Then the answer came to me, “Because Jesus was a Jew.” But not only that, see what Paul says. He states strongly that for those who do evil there will be wrath and for those who do good there will be glory, “first for the Jew, then for the Gentile (Rom.2:8-10).” Also, through Jesus, our Jewish Messiah, we have been grafted onto the…

Why Jesus? Who Are We, Anyway?

One thing we can say about living in this world is that we have become attached to our body. Lots has been written about it and the whole realm of science is absorbed in its place in the universe. One song carries a futile quest for its meaning, “You and me, we sweat and strain, bodies all aching and wracked with pain, tote that barge and lift that bale, get a little drunk and you land in jail. I gets weary and sick of living. I'm tired of living and…

Romans 9-11 The Hinge Chapters

Another way to get an overview of Romans is to divide it into three parts: chs.1-8 the past, chs.9-11 the present and chs.12-16 the future. In this session we deal with chs.9-11, God’s answer for the present. Here is presented the cross-generational issue of the place of the Jews in God’s plan and our attitude toward them. Should they be evangelized? Are they lost? Just what is their place in the larger spiritual picture? What about the nation Israel…

The World is a Spiritual No-Fly Zone

As we said previously the Lord Jesus brought us a relationship not a religion. The obvious reason is we are created to be relational by the fact of our being an image of God. God is relational; Father, Son and Holy Spirit relational; mind, heart and spirit relational; belief, trust and faith relational. Jesus came to restore our relational existence, our relational need, our relational experience. We have a relational church which is the Body of…

Why Jesus? Beyond Gender

OK, so we talked about gender identity. But that is not what really identifies us. There is something more basic and that is being an image of God. When we operate from that premise, every human being takes on significance beyond their nationality, gender, ethnicity and cultural identities. It is those lesser identities that can cloud the way we are seen and the way we are treated. Each of those have their own legal, social and economic demands which are both…

Romans 8

Logic, trust and action, they are the sequence that activate our humanity. We think, we decide and we act. This is the process for all human behavior. It is this humanity Paul saw exposed in himself as saturated with sin and he saw in Jesus God's perfection. What gave him that insight was the Law, particularly the 10th Commandment, that said, ‘Thou shalt not covet (Ex.20:17).'

Up to that point he was consumed in getting his life (and everyone else’s) right through the…

In order to really answer this question we have to look at the individual human condition. Three things standout about the common human condition, aloneness, our perceived needs in that aloneness and how we deal with them. For now we’ll look at aloneness. From here on we will deal with needs and how we meet them.

The human condition is one of being born into a growing awareness of individual self-conscious aloneness, the needs arising from that aloneness, and facing the fact that the…

Why Jesus? It's About Who We Claim to Be

Who told you who and what you are? Who and what gave them the right? Who or what do we choose to define ourselves and others? Everyone has a lens through which they view themselves and the people around them. What principles of thought and behavior do we use to size up those in our family and the people we meet? What goes on inside us that we want the world to see whenever we are among others? What do we want to be like when we are in the midst…

Romans 7 Think of It this Way

As we have done before we start with the last chapter's closing verse, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ (6:23).”

We need to keep that verse in the larger picture of our lives. Death is the devil's dark night. Sin and its evils thrive on darkness. Eternal light is the presence of Jesus in His Kingdom of life, love, honesty and openness. What sin through fear drives within, love through faith…

On Being Number One

When you watch almost any sports game and the winner emerges you'll see a vast display of fans with their hands reaching up with the index finger extended to signify they are number one because the team won that for them. But what does it really mean to be number one? For few moments a team made us feel that we were backing a winner which made us more right than those who were backing a loser. Perhaps it was representing a town, school or region we identified as…

Watch Out for the ‘A’ Word

“Your tongue plots destruction; it is like a sharpened razor, you who practice deceit. You love evil rather than good, falsehood rather than speaking the truth. You love every harmful word. O you deceitful tongue (Ps.52:2-4)!”

The object of this cutting psalm is Doeg the Edomite who, while David was on the run from Saul, informed Saul of David's location to gain Saul's favor. The dynamic of betrayal to gain favor with someone in power is seen…