Category Archives: Sunday

Riches

Posted on April 2, 2023 | Leave a comment

It was kind of you to share my trouble. I’m thankful for your gift because it confirms our partnership in the beginning of the gospel.  I received your sacrifice as full payment and more because it came with the sweet aroma of the fruit of God to your credit and my benefit.  God was pleased, along with me, to accept your gift.  You are His riches in glory in Christ Jesus, and according to that He will supply every need of yours.  To our God and Father be glory forever and ever!

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ
be with your spirit.
❤️

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Rejoice!

Posted on March 26, 2023 | Leave a comment

Can I do all things through Christ?  Is it my strength or His? What have I learned?

I learneda a Greek word [αὐτάρκεια] which in English letters looks like “autarkes.”  According to Strong’s Concordance it comes from autos (“self”) and arkein (“sufficient”). It’s the word Paul used that is translated in Verse 11 as “content.”  The link I put at the end of the post is a good explanation of why Paul would choose a word that mentions “self” in relation to Christ, or being strengthened and being content.  The secret lies in three other words I want to share with you today that do relate to self — “I have learned…”   The Grace of God and daring to trust His Providence over every circumstance of life is the secret of being “autarkes.” 

The “secret” is the mysterious and wonderful reality that within myself God has placed HimSELF to help me learn “in whatever situation I am to be content”…because I am SELF-sufficient.  May it be so!

 a John Piper 

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It’s Personal [Full Stop]

Posted on March 19, 2023 | Leave a comment


It seems radical to edit Paul, but if I were his editor I might advise him to begin with “The Lord is at hand” and then carry on with his first truth that connects “rejoice in the Lord” to reasonableness.  Then I’d suggest he connect “Let your reasonableness be known to everyone” directly to “by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving.” Right there, after “thanksgiving” I’d ask him to place a big “.” [a full stop].  There’s something  holy about connecting rejoicing to our “reasonableness”…reasonableness to our “prayer and supplication with thanksgiving”…and “prayer and supplication with thanksgiving” to our belief. Those are the connections of holy truth that verify we do believe “the Lord IS at hand” in our life for his purpose .

Did you notice how personal everything Paul writes is, even without my editing?  It’s about your rejoicing, your reasonableness, your prayer, your supplication and your thanksgiving.  Today if you dare to believe that, use my “full stop” and take a moment to rejoice over the Godly reality that sometimes His truth really is about you!  Then read on.  Paul is going to make your rejoicing even more personal with God’s promise to “guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus“.”

That’s very personal for God too! “Again I will say, rejoice!” Take my dare! “Rejoice” over what He is making known to, and about, you.  Rejoicing is reasonable evidence that you’re practicing “what you have learned and received and heard and seen” in your personal relationship with Him“.”  He’ll love it!

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Imitating

Posted on March 12, 2023 | Leave a comment

Today is a word salad of definitions. I sometimes use definitions to help me see the truth of familiar words in a new and meaningful way.  Paul was not patting himself on the back when he said “imitate me.”  In fact his life was filled with circumstances no one would want to imitate.  These are the words that stood out to me that defined what Paul asked as the inspiration of his ministry, not his self-promotion.

Join: connect
Imitating: using someone as an example to follow
Keep: continue in a specified way
Example: characteristic of its kind
Citizenship: legal status and relation with specific rights and duties
Await: to be in the future of someone
Transform: a thorough or dramatic change in character
Subject: cause to undergo a particular experience
Stand: maintain a position
Beloved: cherished

Friends, connect with me to the truth I have shown you. Specifically continue to walk according to the characteristics of Jesus you have in us.  For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things. But our legal status in heaven comes with specific rights and duties that insure our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ is our future. He will, by a thorough and dramatic change in our character, cause our lowly body to be like His glorious one.   He’s the power that enables our heart to undergo the particular experience that draws it to Himself.   Therefore, maintain your position in the Lord, my cherished friends.

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One Purpose

Posted on March 5, 2023 | Leave a comment

There is no more important truth than the one Paul writes here: Jesus came to offer His own perfection, not ours, for one purpose — to make us His own.  It was God’s perfection that redeemed the imperfect faith of clay-footed heroes in the Bible.  It was God’s perfection that urged them to “press on.”  Could I have understood there is transformation and forgiveness for unwilling prophets, errant kings, guilty persecutors, and even for willing followers whose failures break God’s heart as well as their own without their stories?  The answer is so obviously no!  

My story begins way back in Genesis with an evil serpent who’s goal was to teach people how to curse themselves. Throughout both Testaments of the Bible I see how well mankind learned that lesson. Thank God for His never-wavering faithfulness to His one purpose — to make us His own.  Without reading of the redemption of those other clay-footed heroes, would I ever have recognized that “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to the promise of what lies ahead” is what I needed to “press on toward the goal…the upward call of God in Christ Jesus?”  The answer is so obviously no!  That is the prize!

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Seeking

Posted on February 26, 2023 | Leave a comment

This is the topic of the day…seeking!  [Use an exclamation mark at the end of a strong command, an interjection, or an emphatic declaration.]  Seeking has come up over and over these last couple of weeks in my own study, in Bible study and in external reading.  When that happens I know this is not coincidence or an accident, it’s the Holy Spirit putting an exclamation point on the word of God so I’ll pay attention. 

Paul hasn’t used that exact word but it’s surely implied in this passage.  Isn’t the usual response to losing something to seek or replace it? He’s had his own exclamation point on the Damascus Road that has changed his focus from what he already knew from the Hebrew code of Jewish law that those who don’t believe in resurrection have no share in the world to come. His spiritual pedigree was beyond question but that has become “rubbish” to him now.   What he had lost has become his personal desire to seek — to “gain Christ and be found in him with “righteousness from God that depends on faith.”  Paul has reminded me seeking is much more than an other worldly goal, it’s “the power of [Christ’s] resurrection” at work in my everyday life, here and now.  [see Galatians 2:20]

How tragic that we in this dark day have had our seeking done for us by our teachers. Everything is made to center upon the initial act of ‘accepting’ Christ . . . and we are not expected thereafter to crave any further revelation of God to our souls. We have been snared in the coils of a spurious logic which insists that if we have found Him, we need no more seek Him. This is set before us as the last word in orthodoxy, and it is taken for granted that no Bible-taught Christian ever believed otherwise. Thus the whole testimony of the worshiping, seeking, singing church on that subject is crisply set aside. The experiential heart-theology of a grand army of fragrant saints is rejected in favor of a smug interpretation of Scripture… [A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God]

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The A), B), C)s of Faith

Posted on February 19, 2023 | Leave a comment

Here’s an  interesting commentary explanation about Epaphroditus’s illness that is worth sharing: ( Philippians 2:25-30 )

“There is a word in this passage which later had a famous usage. The King James Version speaks of Epaphroditus not regarding his life; the Revised Standard Version uses risking his life; we have translated it hazarding his life. The word is the verb paraboleuesthai ( G3851); it is a gambler’s word and means to stake everything on a turn of the dice. Paul is saying that for the sake of Jesus Christ Epaphroditus gambled his life. In the days of the Early Church there was an association of men and women called the parabolani, the gamblers. It was their aim to visit the prisoners and the sick, especially those who were ill with dangerous and infectious diseases. In A.D. 252 plague broke out in Carthage; the heathen threw out the bodies of their dead and fled in terror. Cyprian, the Christian bishop, gathered his congregation together and set them to burying the dead and nursing the sick in that plague-stricken city; and by so doing they saved the city, at the risk of their lives, from destruction and desolation.” a

That insight into Epaphroditus is an interesting commentary because of the information about his risk, life and faith.  I share it because it’s worth to me is the one Greek verb the Bible mentions associated with gamblers.  Faith is a definite gamble.  There’s a risk involved with believing a) there is a God, b) Jesus as God walked the earth as a man with a specific purpose —  to reveal His truth about dealing with the risks of life and finally c) at the end of His earthly life God/Jesus left an internal helper for those who believe; the Holy Spirit. The main evidence we have to support those risky truths is the Bible, but there is risk there too.  What if some, of many, translators got their words wrong?  You might gamble and be wrong…but are you willing to the risk your life on betting God couldn’t get it right? 

Everything about mitigating that risk depends on learning the truth about a) accepting, b) believing and c) confirming truth for yourself.  It’s a calculated risk.  No one else’s investigating really matters.  It really is all about you!  God/Jesus/Holy Spirit does not demand — He reveals Himself to those willing to risk investigating.  When that revelation happens you begin to understand the risk/benefits of personal faith.  Read on!  If you read/hear something from your investigation once, it’s information.  If you read/hear the echo of that truth again, it’s confirmation and finally if you read/hear it a third time, it’s affirmation that you’ve just experienced the Holy Spirit, personally!  God really is teaching you!  May it be so!

a William Barclay

 

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Working Out

Posted on February 12, 2023 | Leave a comment

 

Salvation is a reality that “God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” so you will become a “blameless and innocent” child “holding fast to the Word of life.”  It’s not always convenient and sometimes it’s downright uncomfortable to learn  something of value.  OK I’m calling this experience an inconvenient confession.  I think you’ll recognize my discomfort at hearing myself say — “I spent four hours looking up the eight cross references from a single passage and then the many cross references of each of those cross references some of which had cross references of their own and then I threw it all away because it didn’t seem to be about the lesson at all any more and I’d wasted my time” — out loud, in a Bible study!  I am not a newbie at this and to be honest I felt guilty and frustrated before going in to this study because in those 240 minutes I hadn’t had some moment of revelation.  I learned from this experience the something of value it takes to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” is the uncomfortable confessing of an inconvenient truth.  

Note to self: working out my salvation is NOT like going to the gym where I exert myself with the expectation of achieving some desired goal.  Yet when those words came out of my mouth I realized that’s exactly how I’d reacted.  I’d said exactly what I “didn’t” want to say — out loud!   There I was among a group of women I trust and admire, who all want to effectively learn how to be better image bearers of Christ and I spoke the ugly reality of just what I hadn’t learned. 

Confession often seems to include fear and trembling because it’s the hidden truth of the places we hide.  I think God was probably rejoicing at my confession.  I just wanted to take every word back and protect my seasoned citizen image so I’d look better than I am.  The reality of what it means to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” is not about performance or goals or study or guilt or frustration. “It is God who works in [me], both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” “Holding fast to the word of life” IS my salvation.

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Posted in Confession, New Testament, Philippians, Sunday

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Moment of Obedience

Posted on February 5, 2023 | Leave a comment

I think I must have subconsciously remembered that the Feast of Dedication was also known as the Feast of Lights.  That got my attention. Don’t miss that timing here because I don’t  think Jesus did. The Feast of Lights is observed during the Winter solstice when the day with the least hours of light happens. The Light of the World choosing to be at the Feast of Lights during the darkest time of year to celebrate enduring light. Do you see where this is heading?

The Jews had been through a terrible time in their history when this feast first began. They’d endured nearly 200 years of wars, massacres, their faith being outlawed, the Temple in Jerusalem being desecrated and no new prophets raised to reveal new truths about God to them.  They were blinded by that loss until the Temple was recaptured and they were called to rebuild it and refocus themselves on the worship of the One true God, as instructed by Moses. The first Feast began as a commemoration to rededicate the Temple and themselves to God and to relight the menorah that was meant to provide light every day and night in the Temple.  The Jews knew they only had oil for one day but they chose to give that one day to God out of obedience.  And in that moment of obedience God gave them the miracle of enduring light that lasted eight days that they continued to celebrate each of the following 200 years.

Jesus is the new moment of obedience for them at this feast.  The same Lord they’ve honored every year since that first beginning has come into their midst.  Jesus, the Light of the World, has chosen to reveal the bold declaration of His identity: “I and the Father are one” and then later in verse 38 “the Father is in me and I am in the Father.”  At this point in time they’ve lived through a nearly 400-year period between the Old Testament ending with Malachi’s speaking of a new coming of the Lord and the New Testament’s beginning with John the Baptist’s testimony about Jesus as the Messiah. Now God has proven His silence is over…and they’ve missed the moment.  

Reading John’s scripture passage is like reading a familiar pattern of daily life. The recorded wisdom of history and the reality of life are all rolled into the two Testaments of His Word. The Bible doesn’t put a pretty face on every experience of life.  Sometimes it includes the reality of how easy it is to miss the moment of obedience.  And then it speaks of a new moment of hope in Galatians 2:19 TLB…for it was through reading the Scripture that I came to realize that I could never find God’s favor by trying—and failing—to obey the laws. I came to realize that acceptance with God comes by believing in Christ.

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AND

Posted on January 29, 2023 | Leave a comment

This “cliff note” idea is not meant to be a definitive commentary of these verses. What I see now is just that — what I see now,  I spend each day between posts reading and re-reading the current verses.  I’m concentrating on looking for what catches my interest enough to make me ask “is this the truth I believe?”  My confidence is in one important thing; the Spirit of God is at work.  He’s the door opener. AND I want to get it right.  When I “ink” what I think I know, in plain sight for you to read, it’s a risk of obedience. I know the Spirit’s work is to teach AND correct.  That’s not an either/or it’s an AND.

Today’s notes are about the Shepherd, the Gatekeeper, the Father and the sheep that recognize them. The Gatekeeper is the guard, the Shepherd manages the sheep and His charge from the Father is to find the “sheep that are not of this fold…so there will be one flock, one Shepherd.”  That’s spot on!  However, I wondered why I’d ignored the last three verses of this chosen passage and realized I didn’t want them to mess up all that lovely truth-teaching with the hard fact of division and doubt. That’s when the “teach AND correct” kicked in. Sometimes it’s the ugly Words that remind me how much I need the Shepherd, the Gatekeeper and the Father to open my own eyes so I can recognize division is the thief and robber who will never “open the eyes of the blind.”

 

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Posted in John, Light, New Testament, Sunday

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