Happy New Year!

Well, here it is - 2015! We're almost half way through another decade. As I look back over the past year, there were some great highlights. However, there were also some moments I don't want to re-live either. 2014, though, is in the can. We can't go back and re-do anything, we have to let it go.

As I go forward, I'm not going to mess up my new year with regrets of the past or even doom myself to failure by making promises I can't keep. I've never been a proponent of "new years resolutions." They are promises you make to yourself that you are going to break. That will only lead to shame and guilt and those are poor motivators for self-improvement.

A lot of my mental energy last year went toward counseling and helping to write a discipleship book. As I looked back to see how many times I posted on this blog page, it was only five times. Now, I'm not going to sit here and beat myself up, however tempting that might be! Nor am I going to promise to you or to myself that this year will be better. Greg Brezina, the founder of Christian Families Today, tells us to submit our wills to the Holy Spirit in everything. That is my desire for 2015. I only want to do what He wants to do, nothing more, nothing less.

So, having laid that foundation, I want to change how I even write for this blog page. In the past, I would wait for some great profound spiritual/theological/inspirational thought before I would write. (5 post doesn't indicate I only had 5 profound thoughts in 2014!) This year I want to write what is on my mind, whether it is a spiritual thought, or how to season cast iron. Living Life is about living. Living is done daily and it is done at home, at work, at church, at the grocery store, at the bank, at the beach, at the mountains, wherever I am, wherever you are.

The enemy is always tempting us to believe we are bad because we did something wrong or we didn't do something right! And, we make the mistake many times thinking this is the work of the Holy Spirit! He (the enemy) is a tricky one. The Holy Spirit wants us to remember how holy, righteous, and perfect we are. This truth hangs up in the throat of many a Christian because it sounds too good to be true.

So, for 2015, I want you and me to enjoy our freedom in Christ. Let's not spend our time being an instrument of the enemy beating our own selves. Let's listen to what the Holy Spirit says about us and be safe in His opinion of us. If we do this, it will be a banner year.

Made For Relationship

“… Apart from Me you can do nothing.” John 15:5b

The Bible is very clear that we are vessels or containers who contain the glory of God.  He designed us to contain and express His glory.  If I had a lamp with a light bulb, that lamp still needs power outside of itself to produce light.  It can’t produce the power, but it can receive the power and display that power through its bulb.  We are like that lamp.  We need God’s life in us to produce the fruit of His life.

When Jesus said we could do nothing apart from Him, He is saying we need Him to be our power.  Just as the electricity has a relationship with the lamp that produces visible light, we too have a relationship with Christ that produces His light.

Let’s not stop there, though.  By God’s design and purpose He wants to display Himself in and through us.  Just as the lamp needs the electricity, the electricity needs the lamp.  It’s not that God needs us - He wants us.  He said He could make the rocks cry out, but He would rather use us as the vessel of His glory than a rock!

We are the vessel and Christ is the power.  Our relationship with Him reveals the light.  What the darkened world needs is the light.  Going back to the lamp analogy, we tend to focus on the outward appearance of the lamp.  There are nice looking lamps, bold looking lamps, plain lamps and ugly lamps, large lamps and small lamps.  The one thing they all have in common, when the electricity is flowing into them, is light.  It is not the appearance of the lamp that overcomes the darkness, but the emanating light. 

I grew up believing that God wants to help me live a good life.  So I would pray, “God, please help me to be patient,” or “God, help me stop committing this sin I know You don’t like.”  Then I would continue to struggle with impatience and sinning.  This defeat would cause me to either question whether God was listening or if I was sincere enough in my prayers for help.  I suspected He was listening, so ultimately the focus was on my “depravity.”  In other words, I saw myself as broken, not good enough, and inferior.

Christ came to set us free from our depraved sin natures.  He did this by remaking us into a holy and righteous creature with new desires.  Our truest desires now reflect the very nature of God.  Our hearts soar with the desire to behave in a way that mirrors God’s behavior.

Too many prescriptions for victory involve making the vessel look better and act better.  Victory doesn’t come from the outside; it comes from the inside.  Paul said in 2 Corinthians 4:7, “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves…” (NASB) 

God made us for relationship.  The reason we can’t do anything apart from Christ is because we were made that way, just as the lamp cannot produce light apart from the power.  Our inability to behave righteously apart from Christ is not proof of a sinful nature; it is proof that we are totally dependent on Christ for life.  

We are now free to focus on expressing Christ’s life in our everyday life.  It doesn’t matter what our circumstances look like, Christ is able to navigate every condition, every temptation, every thought, emotion and choice.  If we could walk in victory simply because we desire to, we would not need Christ.  We were made for relationship and in that relationship with Christ His light (glory) is displayed.

Trust your godly desires; God put them there.  With those desires, He supplies the power.  You don’t have to manufacture strength, you get to rest in His strength!