Because You Are His Child

The YouTruth in Galatians 4:6-7

“Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, ‘Abba, Father.’ So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.”

When you were born into this world, you entered it as a loved, cherished, creation of God. That’s no small thing! And yet, it is. Because, when you give your life to Christ as your personal Savior and Lord, you are elevated to the status of a member of God’s family. This is huge because your status as beloved creation is enslaved by the temporal, destructive nature of our broken world, whereas your status as a child of God breaks free of those shackles and reaches into eternity.

But it gets even better! As a child of God, you also share in the inheritance that is due to each of God’s children. Now, your earthly parents may accumulate enough assets that they can pass some on to you (and your siblings) when they die. The reason they leave an inheritance is that they can’t take the temporal assets they accumulate into eternity with them. Those assets are stuck here on Earth. God’s inheritance is fundamentally different. It is an eternal inheritance that you receive once you proclaim Him as your Savor and Lord and you can take with you into eternity. It is an inheritance of endlessly valuable love, grace, peace, and hope. It won’t run out no matter how fast you spend it here on earth. It won’t run out no matter how many people you share it with. And when you enter eternity, you’ll find you have no less of it than when you started. It doesn’t get any better than that!

So see today as a “break free” day with your pockets full of His inheritance. (A little hint: your pockets will be overflowing, so spread His inheritance around!)

Offer Your Bodies As a Living Sacrifice

The YouTruth in Romans 12:1

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.”

Worship can have many components and styles—singing traditional hymns or contemporary praise songs, silent prayer or reciting the Lord’s Prayer, liturgical responsive reading, reciting creeds, sermons or messages, audio-visual aids. There is one component that is often overlooked—sacrifice.

Paul cites that offering our bodies as a living sacrifice is true worship. Does that mean that all of our usual forms of worship are untrue and unpleasing to God? No, of course not. But what it does mean is that sacrifice must be included in the mix or none of the rest of it matters.

Corporate, Sunday-morning worship is a vital part of a life of faith, so much so that God designated a Sabbath day each week during which we are commanded to worship and rest. Without a Sabbath for this purpose, we are ships without a mooring, we are wanderers without direction. But Sunday worship that does not launch us into six days of sacrificial living, is not worship at all. The two must go together.

Remember that the key word is sacrifice. You know your Sunday worship is effective when Monday through Saturday contain regular instances of forgoing self-interest, experiencing inconvenience or even suffering at times, to love and help others in Jesus’ name.

Be a “sacrificing worshipper” today! (Don’t forget to go to church and worship next Sunday, too.)

You Have Been Called Into Fellowship

1 Cor 1-9 image The YouTruth in 1 Corinthians 1:9

“God is faithful, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.”

When you became a believer in Jesus, you also became a “fellow.” That sounds kind of weird, doesn’t it? But understanding your relationship with Jesus in this context, reveals the depth and closeness God longs to have with you. So let’s follow this through for a while!

It is easy to understand Jesus’ superiority. He is God after all! It is also easy to understand your inferiority to Him. You are not God after all. While these assessments are true, they can often create a sense of distance between you and Him. God does not, in any way, wish for this. Thus your status as “fellow.”
A fellow, is generally defined as a member of a group having common characteristics, like-mindedness, and a common mission or purpose. While God wants you to fully lean on Jesus’ superiority for leadership and wisdom, He also has called you into partnership with Him as He goes about bringing His Kingdom’s presence into the world. That makes you one called into fellowship with Him.

An earthly superior, let’s take a king for example, may exert his authority over his subjects from the distant confines of an unapproachable castle, demanding obedience with impunity. But Jesus is a King of a completely different order. Jesus is a faithful King that calls you into a deep, personal fellowship with Him! And His demands are intended to bless you richly, draw you ever closer to Him, and to give you amazing Kingdom work to do!

So enter today knowing that you are not a mere subject. You are a blessed fellow, in a blessed fellowship with God’s one and only Son, with a blessed common purpose. Carry it out today!

Whatever You Do

The YouTruth in Colossians 3:23-24

“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.”

Are you looking forward to just another mundane day at the office. Well God has an antidote for that. You inject it directly into your heart and it not only cures workday “blahs,” but returns a huge reward too.

There is a great difference between work done for the Lord and work done for others. Here’s the typical workplace chain of command: you work for your boss, who works for upline managers, who work for executives and shareholders, all working ultimately for your company’s customers. You get paid for the work you do, your boss gets paid, the executives get paid (much more!), and so on. God has a different authority structure and payout plan.

God’s idea is to replace the word “work” with the word “serve,” and the word “boss” with the name of Jesus. When you adopt an attitude of service to the Lord in your work, two incredible things happen. First, your work becomes a “heart thing” instead of just an obligation and a paycheck. Second, because your heart is behind it, you become more effective at the work you do. Jesus gets right in the middle of work that is done whole-heartedly for Him. The work becomes less about what your company pays you to do, which can be very limiting, and becomes more about the eternal reward the Lord promises you and the glorious purpose for which He has you in your workplace.

Work today, as working for the Lord, with the assurances of compensation far beyond a paycheck and effectiveness supplied by Jesus Himself. See what a difference it makes!

He Who Began A Good Work In You

No matter where we are in our lives, no matter what lessons we’ve learned, no matter how faithful we’ve been to God, one thing shows up in every honest self-assessment – we’re not perfect; God still has work left to do in us. But progress in this work is not automatic. In order for the work to continue, we’ve got to let God in to do it.

“…being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”

Philippians 1:6 (NIV)

When Paul wrote this letter to the Philippians, he was confident that God was in the middle of something big. A good work was underway. If Paul were to come to us today we would hope that he would see the same work happening in us. Let’s ask a few questions and use Paul’s evaluation of the Philippian situation to do a spiritual checkup of our own.

How do we know God is at work?

Because we share in God’s grace (Philippians 1:7) If we have secured eternal life by God’s grace through faith in Jesus, God is automatically at work, changing us from the inside out by the power of His indwelt Holy Spirit. (If you’re not sure about this part in your own life click here to read “For God So Loves You.”)

Because our love abounds (Philippians 1:9) Abounding love, love that spills out of Spirit-filled hearts onto anyone and everyone around us is the greatest evidence of God at work. Paul prayed that the Philippians’ love “may abound more.” This tells us that abounding love was present (God had begun a good work) and that God would work to produce even more (God was continuing this work). Paul’s prayer also makes clear that the Philippians have to open themselves to the work God is doing. It works like this—car repairmen asked to repair a rough-running engine can do nothing without being allowed to work on anything inside the car itself. Likewise, God can do nothing in us unless we allow God access to the internal parts that need the work.

What is the work that God has started?

First, it is important to understand that there are two types of work being done – the work being done in us and the work being done through us. In God’s masterful way, work He does in us always results in work He does through us. Let’s go through some of the work done in us Paul mentioned.

Increasing knowledge and discernment (Philippians 1:9)

The more we know the truth, the more we will be able to figure out, from all the options available to us, which ones are God-initiated and which ones aren’t.

Reducing fear when others oppose us (Philippians 1:28)

The more we remember that the cause of Christ is sure, the more peace and security we experience when we face opposition.

Increasing humility (Philippians 2:3)

Humility is the key to following God. Increasing humility forces out pride, keeping us from supplanting God’s plans with our own.

The work God does in us accomplishes one central thing. It makes us more like Jesus (Philippians 2:5-10). When we become like Jesus, we become brightly shining lights (Philippians 2:15). This is where the work done in us becomes the work done through us. Here’s how it works. The Holy Spirit that dwells in the hearts of believers is a brightly shining light that reveals God’s grace and truth to the darkened world around us. The dark filter of indiscretion (lack of knowledge and discernment) dims this light. The dark filter of fear in the face of opposition dims this light. The dark filter of pride dims this light. With light that is dim, we look like everyone else in the world and have no real testimony to offer. When these filters get cleared away, we shine like stars!

Shining in our boldness; preaching the Gospel without reservation (Philippians 1:27).

Shining in selflessness; considering the needs of others before our own (Philippians 2:3-4).

Shining in abounding love (Philippians 1:9).

How do we know God will carry on and complete His work?

Because His work is done for His good purpose (Philippians 2:13). God has only eternal purposes that last forever and are never changing. His good purpose is that all would come to know Him and enter into eternal life in His Kingdom. He will continue to work to this good purpose until Christ returns to rule over the New Heaven and the New Earth.

Look around.

Are there those around you who do not know Him? Then there is still bright shining work to do. Has Jesus come to rule over the New Heaven and the New Earth? (At this writing the answer is no.) Then there is still bright shining work to do. God’s faithfulness is great (Lamentations 3:22-23). He will be faithful to complete this work in us and through us if we will let Him. That’s the truth.

You can be confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will continue that work in you so that He may do ever more good work through you that you may become a bright shining light for His good purpose.

That’s the YouTruth – He Who Began A Good Work In You.

You Are God’s Workmanship

When we look at a little baby, we often marvel at God’s workmanship, how He can put together tiny little fingers and toes, bright eyes and precious smiles. It is beautiful and wonderfully made by God indeed! We need to remember that this is only phase one of God’s workmanship. Without phase two, phase one dies.

“For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus, to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

Phillipians 2:10 (NIV)

When we look at a little baby, we often marvel at God’s workmanship, how He can put together tiny little fingers and toes, bright eyes and precious smiles. It is beautifully and wonderfully made by God, indeed (see Psalm 139:13-14)! The marvelous work we see in a newborn is only the first of two phases of God’s workmanship, and sadly, the first phase faces eventual destruction if the second phase does not take place. It is this second phase of God’s workmanship that Paul refers to in our passage above. You see, as innocent as the gurgles and coos of an infant can be, there still underlies a sinful nature that will have to be dealt with if God is going to do any true, lasting workmanship at all.

I’ve got some bad news and some good news… (see Ephesians 2:1-4)
This is a true bad news/good news story. The bad news is that when we are born, we not yet God’s true workmanship. We are simply the physical raw materials God will use as instruments of His love and peace once He has crafted us into the people He plans for us to be. And there is a problem. In Paul’s letter, he shares a harsh reality with the Ephesians – they were all dead. This may have come as a shock to many of them. It may come as a shock to many of us if we hear such an evaluation of our state of being. Having a pulse, breathing, moving, thinking, feeling has nothing to do with life from God’s perspective. To God, if we have sin we are separated by that sin from Him. If we are separated from God, we are dead. Pure and simple. If we accept breathing and thinking as life-defining measures, we disqualify ourselves from becoming God’s workmanship. God can’t do His workmanship on a dead person, whether they think they are dead or not. This is the bad news.

Enter God’s Grace (see Ephesians 2:4-9)
Here’s the Good News: God knew that we would be born sinners, so He planned right from the beginning, out of His great love for us, to make a way for us to become alive. It is by His Grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Paul was careful to explain an important fact about God’s Grace: it does not come from us; it is a gift. We accept His gift through faith in Jesus, and in this gift, we are made alive. Now God has something to work with. This is the very Good News!

(If you are not sure that you have accepted the gift of God’s Grace, see “For God So Loves You” now!)

The Potter, the Clay, His Workmanship (see Isaiah 64:8)
When we become alive, we become like softened clay to a potter, pliable and yielding to the work of the potter’s hands. Have you ever watched a potter spin his work on a potter’s wheel? It is precise work that takes a great deal of kneading and pressing to shape the formless lump of clay into the shape the potter intends. It is hard work. It takes a lot of force, especially in the beginning. So it is with our potter, God, and His clay, us. When we become God’s workmanship, we are subjecting ourselves to sometimes uncomfortable molding and shaping, especially as God begins His work. But as we continue to yield to the guidance of His hands, we will become more and more the useful implement He intends for us to be. Think about it – a lump of clay is of no use in it’s original form. But after the lump is formed, glazed, fired, and finished it is a vase, a bowl, a cup, it is a beautiful, purposeful piece. So what is God forming us to do?

Good Works (as in our passage, Ephesians 2:10; also see Romans 9:21)
Paul further explains that God’s workmanship is about good works. Not any good works. Not good works we may choose for ourselves. Not good works done with ulterior motives in mind. No, we are God’s workmanship to do those good works God has prepared in advance for us to do. You see, God is an all-seeing God. Before we were even born, God had works in mind for us. He knew exactly what good works would advance His Kingdom in the place we would be at the time we became His workmanship. He’s got it all worked out. He’s had it all worked out for a long time. That’s the truth.

You are beautifully and wonderfully made by God’s first phase of work. Without God’s second phase of work you are dead in your sinful nature. If you are dead, God can’t complete His work in you. If you come alive by His grace through your faith in Jesus Christ, God will complete His work in you. You will then become His beautiful and purposeful workmanship, created in Christ Jesus, to do good works which He prepared in advance for you to do.

That’s the YouTruth – You Are God’s Workmanship.

If You Have Not Love

Did you ever think that you could do a kind thing and not be doing the will of God? Me either. But Paul taught in his first letter to the church in Corinth that God’s will is not found in the act, but in the love behind it. With God’s love behind it, our kindness is God’s kindness. Without it, we’re just banging and clanging.

“If I speak in tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.”

1 Corinthians 13:1

If you’ve been to a Christian wedding ceremony, you’ve probably heard a reading of some or all of 1 Corinthians 13. Understanding Paul’s focus in this chapter requires the context provided by chapter 12. When reading the two chapters together, we discover that chapter 13 is not a discussion about love in the marriage relationship as is often thought. It’s really a discussion about putting spiritual gifts to their proper use and the depravity of intentionally, or unintentionally, using those gifts improperly.

(Be sure, citing Paul’s description of true love from chapter 13 in a wedding ceremony is not improper at all. It speaks into the narrow focus of the relationship between God, husband, and wife—one of the many relationships the passage can be applied to.)

Paul’s list of spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians includes working of miracles, prophecy, speaking in tongues, interpretation of tongues, and the power to heal. Other spiritual include hospitality, administration, giving, and mercy. Most of us would immediately associate such things with God. If we experienced someone using these gifts we would assume that God was behind it. But that is not always so!

Understanding that spiritual gifts can be misused (or worse, hijacked by Satan for his misuse) is very important. Consider a chain saw. In the hands of a skilled lumberman it can be used to quickly create a stack of perfectly formed logs. In the hand of an untrained, inexperienced user, it can maim or kill operator and bystanders alike. The same is true with the spiritual gifts God gives to people of faith. They are tools designed for a purpose and they are to be used in accordance with that purpose. Whatever gifts God has entrusted to us, we can’t take these gifts or the responsibility for using them lightly. We do great damage when we do, many times without even knowing it.

Thankfully, God’s Word gives us the simple, direct way to measure the use of a spiritual gift. Start with asking the question, “Which came first?” Now we’ve heard the similar, paradoxical question, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” This is not a question like that. This is a question with a clear answer. Let’s use two basic truths to examine the use of spiritual gifts:

Truth One: The two imperatives

When asked, Jesus boiled all of the Jewish Law down to two commandments:

Love God.

Love others.

Therefore, any use of spiritual gifts that does not accomplish one of these two objectives falls outside of God’s will, tumbling into the category of misuse. So our evaluating question must always be, “Did love come first?” We can’t assume that the act of using a spiritual gift is automatically righteous. We must ask the question, “Was there sincere love for the other person first, and was the act that followed performed in response to that love?” An affirmative answer to this question is required. If not, we don’t do the will of God, we bang gongs and clang cymbals instead.

Truth Two: God is love, Satan isn’t

Satan longs to convince as many people as possible to reject God’s offer of an eternal, love relationship with Him by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Satan uses loveless application of spiritual gifts as a method of deception to this end. Using the gift in our passage as an example, if we speak in ‘tongues of angels’ without love, we confuse. No one can understand what we’re saying. Those confused by our actions will turn away from our witness. If we speak and interpret tongues in love, we edify and inform. Those informed by our actions will experience God’s love and be drawn to it. Satan loves loveless miracles, loveless healing, loveless prophecy because he knows God is not in them! They contribute to the confusion he thrives on. The more phony, loveless, God-less acts there are, the easier it is to convince non-believers that God is really not necessary, not real, not important. . .

There are two paths a believer can take in the use of spiritual gifts, and as much as we would like, there is no neutral territory for their use—they are either used as a means of expressing God’s love to others or they are used in a way incompatible with God’s purpose for them. That’s the truth.

If you speak in tongues of men and of angels but you have not love, you are only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If you have not love as the central motivation for using any of your spiritual gifts, you do not use them in accordance with God’s will. If you have not love, Satan is surely nearby, ready to use your gift for his purposes.

That’s the YouTruth – If You Have Not Love.

Yours Is Not a Timid Spirit

Satan loves it when we are too timid to witness to others. It makes his job so much easier when we choose not to share the Good News with someone who does not yet know Jesus as their Savior and Lord. Satan knows that God did not give believers a Spirit of timidity and fear. And it makes him shudder. What empowers Satan is when the believers themselves forget that.

“For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love, and of self-discipline. So do not be ashamed to testify about our Lord.”

2 Timothy 1: 7-8a

God did not give believers a spirit that is timid or fearful. Satan knows that. When believers remember that they have been given a spirit of power, love, and discipline, Satan shudders because he knows what he’s up against – Fire!

Fan the Flame

In our passage, Paul encouraged Timothy to ‘fan into flame’ the gift of God. Paul did this because he knew Satan fights with fire. So we must fight Satan’s fire with a fire of our own. God’s gift was delivered in a mighty way on the day of Pentacost. With the sound of a violent wind and the appearance of tongues of fire, the gift of the Holy Spirit arrived. This fire turned Jesus’ disciples from discouraged, shaken men into powerful witnesses who poured into the streets preaching the Good News in many languages. Thousands were saved (see Acts 2:1-41)! It is this same fire that we too as believers have received. This fire contains the power, love, and discipline that strikes fear into Satan. But only if we use it!

When firefighters are battling wildfires, they often have to set ‘backfires’ to stop its progress and ultimately extinguish it. So it is when we are fighting the fires of disbelief, apathy, and untruth set by Satan. Our backfires are our testimony to the truth, empowered by the fire of the Holy Spirit. And Jesus commanded us to light them, “Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations…” (Matthew 28:19a)

The Spirit of Power

The very power that created the universe, that raised Jesus from the dead, that empowered His disciples to witness to crowds in languages they didn’t even know, is the same power that dwells in each believer in the person of the Holy Spirit. (see Ephesians 1:19-22, Acts 2:1-41) Enough said!

The Spirit of Love

Witnessing to non-believers is an act of utmost love. Though we may hear many arguments to the contrary, such as “who are you to tell me what I believe is wrong?” or “who are you to force your beliefs on me?” Christian believers who take their call to witness to others seriously, may often be called out as intolerant, bigoted, narrow-minded—not descriptions associated with a loving nature. Let’s clear this up by using this analogy: If we were to see someone running toward the edge of a cliff, what should we do? We should do anything we can to stop them. That would be a loving thing to do, wouldn’t it? Of course! Simply standing by while they run off the edge and plunge to their death would be a hateful thing to do. Would it matter that this person did not believe that a cliff edge was there? No! Should we allow them to continue along in their belief or should we tell them the truth before it is too late? A Christless eternity separated from God is a horrible, terrible fate. Jesus Himself described it as ‘outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth (see Matthew 24:51).’ It is like running of an eternal cliff edge. We are called to use the Spirit of Love to warn non-believers that the cliff is there and that Jesus is The Way to keep from tumbling over its edge. To do anything less would be hateful, indeed!

The Spirit of Discipline

Witnessing is not often easy. Christian witnesses face skepticism, confrontation, and hate. Some witnesses in extreme situations are ostracized, face violence, or even death. Jesus told us it would be so (see John 15:18-19). It is much easier to avoid such unpleasantness. Thus, we can see that the easy way out is the way of timidity. Discipline is the ingredient that allows us to do what is loving and right when easier, more expedient options are available. Even better is that the spirit of discipline God gives us allows us to draw upon His very power to do what is loving.

“A” vs. “The”

God did not give us a spirit that is timid. So let’s not act like He did! God not only gave us ‘a’ spirit of power, love, and discipline to witness with, He gave us ‘The’ Spirit of Power, Love, and Discipline. And let’s use it to fulfill all that we are called to do in our time on this earth: “Love God, and love our neighbor.” Our testimony to the truth we have come to know is our loving gift to a dark and hurting world, filled with dark and hurting people. That’s the truth.

I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God. For you have not been given a timid spirit. You have been given the Holy Spirit! You have been given the Spirit of Power. You have been given the Spirit of Love. You have been given the Spirit of Self-Discipline. You are called to use this gift of God to testify about your Lord.

That’s the YouTruth. Yours is Not a Timid Spirit.