resurrection power

I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection.… – Philippians 3:10

Christ’s resurrection graphically demonstrates the extent of God’s power.  The resurrection power of Christ deals with sin at our salvation.  We take part in and experience His resurrection at salvation. 

But to defeat sin daily, we need His resurrection power to be our constant resource.  We need His strength to serve Him faithfully, to conquer our temptation, to overcome our trials, and to courageously bear witness to Him in our lives.  In His resurrection we experience our own.  Only as we build our relationship with Christ and tap into His resurrection power will we have victory over sin in this life.

And if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit, who lives in you. – Romans 8:11

Strength and Honor.

Glory to God.

Jason

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We had a great week for Thanksgiving.  It’s been back to the grindstone for us this week.  The kids were slow moving heading back to school.  Tiersa and I are dragging a bit as well.  Looking forward to the weekend.  Tiersa’s got the tree up and all her Christmas things out in the living room, now it’s up to me to get the lights up outside.  I’ll get the kids involved Saturday and make it a family affair….

I finished my graduate class on Acts yesterday and have my Hebrew final on Monday.  Wish me luck!

my Love

When I begin to contemplate the history and story that is us, I picture your beautiful face and I smile.  I am so very blessed to have been present at the beginning of us.  That moment when an immature 16 year old boy who didn’t have a clue, said “hi” for the first time to the most beautiful girl in school.

What if in that moment we could look forward to today?  And yet somehow we both could, even if words could not depict the longings of our hearts.  Even today when I look into your eyes, I can see forever so very clearly.

I thank God that I am yours and you are mine.

You make my heart smile. 

Happy 17th Anniversary, my Love.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We went to Bernard’s in Tyler last night, our favorite Mediterranean restaurant.  The food and atmosphere was great as always.  Our three youngest kiddos are still in Mesquite with my parents, so Mason went with us to celebrate.  It was pretty cool to have him with us.  We had a great time!

what makes a Christian a Christian

God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. – 2 Corinthians 5:21

It wasn’t the Roman guards that nailed Christ to the cross. It was our sin.

It wasn’t the Roman spikes that held Him there. It was His love for us.

He who was sinless bore the weight of our sinfulness. The wrath of God incurred not on creation, but Creator.

And in the moment that we come to grips with this reality and are compelled to respond, it is then that the Gospel begins to take hold.

No matter how far we’ve fallen….

My sin – oh, the bliss of this glorious thought – my sin not in part but the whole, is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more, praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul….

When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; He took it away, nailing it to the cross. – Colossians 2:13-14

What makes a Christian a Christian is this profound reality.

Strength and Honor.

Glory to God!

Jason

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Looking forward to a good week. Lauren Grace spent the weekend with us.  She and the kids have had a great time!  Lacy is coming tonight to spend a couple of days too.  I’ve got no school work this week and am trying to get everything wrapped up early for next Sunday.  We’ll spend Wednesday and Thursday in Mesquite for Thanksgiving.  I’m looking forard to spending time with our family.  Kacey and I are running the Turkey Trot in Dallas Thursday morning.  That’ll be fun.  We’ll head back Thursday evening.  Mason has to be at work at 4:30am on Black Friday.  I’ll be sleeping in….

instant Christianity

I’m opposed to instant coffee.  It just doesn’t compare to the real thing.  Tiersa brought home some Starbucks Via instant coffee for me to try.  It’s not nasty like grandma’s Sanka, but it’s close….

AW Tozer writes against what he calls instant Christianity.  I like his focus on relational faith….

Instant Christianity tends to make faith in Christ terminal and so smothers the desire for spiritual advance.  It fails to understand the true nature of the Christian life, which is not static but rather dynamic and expanding.  It overlooks the fact that a new Christian is a living organism as certainly as a new baby is, and must have nourishment and exercise to assure normal growth.  It does not consider that faith in Christ sets up a personal relationship between two intelligent moral beings, God and the reconciled man, and no single encounter between God and a creature made in His image could ever be sufficient to establish an intimate friendship between them….

Strength and Honor.

Glory to God!

Jason

cognitive, experiential Gospel

So I tell you this and I insist on it in the Lord, you must no longer live as the pagans do, in the futility of their thinking. – Ephesians 4:17

Salvation is – first and foremost – a radical transformation of mind.

Christianity is cognitive before it is experiential. 

Think about it (pun intended): We first consider the Gospel of Christ.  We believe its historical facts and spiritual truths.  We then embrace the Gospel. 

And yet then it is only once we draw near to God through Christ that we begin to experience the Gospel.  We begin to do more than to know about Christ, we begin to know Christ. 

And I believe repentance is a crucial facet in this journey of our experiencing Christ (stick with me for a second).  Repentance means that we begin to think differently.  We begin to think differently about ourselves.  Differently about our sin.  Differently about our lives.  We begin to see God and Christ and ourselves in a whole new light. 

And in doing so, the Gospel, and our transformative relationship encountered in the Gospel, is experienced.

And perhaps it is this disconnect that accounts for some of our inability to powerfully impact others for the Gospel of Christ. 

Strength and Honor.

Glory to God!

Jason

the first step after failing

Tiersa and I saw a woman at the game last Friday night with a t-shirt that we really liked.  The front asked, How shall I repay the Lord?  The back answered, I will celebrate my deliverance. 

I love that!

In Romans 8:27, the Apostle Paul quotes from the Prophet Isaiah writing, I will make this covenant with those who are mine when I take away their sins.

God does more than forgive our sins, He takes them away.  He removes and remembers them no more.  We simply reach for His hand to take them to Him.

Not only does He forgive the ones we’ve made, but the ones were making, and the ones we will make.  And it is during these moments of failure that our relationship with God is most clear.

The first step after failing God must be taken in His direction.

Strength and Honor.

Glory to God!

Jason

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Hope you have a great weekend!  Mason started working at Academy this afternoon (he had a flex day at school).  I’m proud of you Mason!  Tiersa will get home about 4 from school.  Mason gets off at 5.  ND made the play-offs last week so we’re all headed to the game later tonight.  Looking forward to a relaxing weekend.

light surrounded by darkness

You are the light of the world. - Matthew 5:14

Light in a world of darkness.  Right?  That is what we are.

We are light surrounded by darkness….

And yet how often do we dabble with darkness?  How often do we toy with evil?  How very often do we experiment with wickedness?

“How so?” Jesus asks.  “How is that possible?”  “Those things are characteristic of Satan, not of God.”  “How is it possible for the light of the world to participate in any way with darkness?”  It is a physical and spiritual impossibility.

“… a people belonging to God that we may declare the praises of Him who called us out of darkness and into His wonderful light” (1 Peter 2:9).

We are to be and to live wholly (and holy) different.

We have been bought, cleansed, forgiven through His life given for us.  His death given in order that we might have life. 

We’ve been given a new nature.  One that is holy and sanctified.  One that is light in a world characterized by darkness. 

Jesus calls us to live up to what He has granted us as we come to Him and follow Him – as we discard an old way of life for a new one – as we cross over from death to life – as we come out of the darkness and into His light.

Strength and Honor.

Glory to God!

Jason

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Pray for those affected by the tragedy at Ft. Bragg.  My friend and former Greek professor, Les Maloney, is an army chaplain there and is currently on active duty.  He’s been ministering day and night since the shooting.  Pray for God to heal and bless all of those involved.

fifteen minutes

Donald Miller, in his book Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality describes being outside of the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night, when he saw a man playing the saxophone.  For fifteen minutes Miller stood there while the man, so engaged in his playing, never opened his eyes. 

Miller admits prior to that moment “I never liked jazz music, because jazz music doesn’t resolve.”  But after witnessing the man’s love for his craft, Miller concludes: “After that I liked jazz music.  Sometimes you have to watch someone love something before you can love it yourself.  It is as if they’re showing you the way.”

Does God resolve for us?  When others look to us, do they see by our lives that we are so engrossed, so enamored by God?  Do they see how in love we are with Him by the lives we live?  Are they simply captivated by the relationship we share with our God?  Equally as important, are we?

Strength and Honor.

Glory to God!

Jason

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Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz is a good book, and a quick read.  I’m currently reading it – again.  I recently read a more recent work by Miller, Searching for God Knows What.  It is a must read!  If you haven’t read it, go out and get it right now! 

Off to dinner with Tiersa and the kids – Papasita’s maybe?  Then to the football game.  Nothing like 2A football.  They’ve only lost two games this season – one by 1 point and another by 2 points after 5 overtimes! but, in order to make the playoffs they not only have to win tonight’s game, another district team has to win their game too.  We’ll see….  We have 5th Quarter tonight at church after the game.  Everybody will either be in a great mood, or not so much….

why is it…?

Why is it that we never see a NT author give us a systematic approach to faith?

Why is it that Jesus never gives us a structured hierarchy of theology?

Why does the Apostle Paul never write a letter that just lines it out for us precisely what our churches should look like?  Exactly how we respond to the Gospel?  Oh sure we find a few instructions here and a few guidelines there, but why doesn’t he ever write the church at Rome or Ephesus or Corinth and say “these are the ’steps to salvation’ – hear the Gospel, believe in Jesus as the Christ, repent of sinfulness turning toward God, clothe yourselves in Christ in baptism, live a faithful life.”  Maybe we’re missing the point.  Sure we develop our thinking by bringing these concepts together, but I mean it would have taken Paul a paragraph or two, maybe just ten minutes of his time, and he could have just lined it all out for all of humanity for all of time.  But that wasn’t the approach.  And I think this reality is significant.

Perhaps these are crucial facets of faith, but have you ever seen anywhere where Paul pens the words “steps to salvation”?  No (although we hear this terminology all the time).

Why is that?

Why didn’t Almighty God through the NT writers set everything up for us like dominoes ready to be knocked down?

The reason I think is this….

Although we are called to respond by faith and study Scripture and seek to understand through the Word precisely who God desires for us to be and how he wants us to engage Him, to approach faith in a systematic manner negates what God is after: relationship with us.

What’s the goal of Baptism?  Salvation?  We’re selling ourselves (and God) short if all we’re after is salvation.  The goal of Baptism is relationship with God.

What’s the goal of Communion?  To follow Scripture (certainly), but more than that, to engage in powerful relationship with God and the universal church?

How shallow is our faith (How shallow are we?) if all we want from God is salvation?  When He desires so much more from us and for us. 

Our goal in everything we are about should be, must be, relationship with God.

The Gospel by very definition unveils and calls for transcendant relationship with God.

Too often we approach faith like it’s some chess game we’re trying to win, or a science fair project we’re trying to get an A on, or a rental car agreement that we’re trying to make sure we fill in all the boxes correctly on.

I believe it is only when we begin to approach faith as relational rather than systematic that the eyes of our hearts truly begin to open to the wonder and majesty of covenantal relationship with God. 

Strength and Honor.

Glory to God!

Jason

crazy, life

Crazy.  Things have been just too crazy lately.  Simply busy.  My Hebrew class has been super time-consuming.  The class I have on the book of Acts has been constant (I’ve got a 20 page project due next Friday).  Ministry has been great.  I got into ministry to impact the lives of others, not to solely preach and teach, but specifically to minister in peoples’ lives.  And so ministry has been great –  but again, time-consuming.  So between family, ministry, and grad school (and in that order) – needless to say, I haven’t blogged in two weeks (obviously). 

To catch up a bit… we had our annual family retreat for Graceton last weekend.  All went extremely well.  We centered spiritually upon our own individual families and upon the context of the church, our priorities, and our dedication to who God has called us to be. 

Last week Kacey’s 7th grade volleyball team at NDMS won the district championship, winning the final two games back to back.  Kacey scored 12 points between the two games!  Mason and Kacey have gotten started on basketball this week as well.  Mason has been wiped out.  He gave blood right after a two hour practice yesterday, which was probably not the best idea .  He’s at a dual-credit college class tonight with Hayley.  He has a Speech class on Thursday nights and a History class during the week on campus at NDHS.  At this pace he’ll do away with his freshman year at Abilene! 

Jacob and Bowen are doing fine.  I had lunch with Jacob today and I’ll go have lunch with Bowen on Monday.

Tiersa is great!  She loves me more than I could ever deserve.  But… get this… when I was on campus at LCU last May I called one night and couldn’t get in touch with her.  So I recorded myself singing “You Are My Sunshine” on my phone, then sent it to her.  Sweet right?  Well how sweet is it when your lovely wife lets all of her friends hear you sing “You Are My Sunshine” when she’s at the church retreat???  Yea.  And of course I had no idea.  Until… I walk into an after-church fellowship deal two days later and everyone starts to sing “You Are My Sunshine” to me!!!  Just  take away my man-card why don’t you?  Ha.

I’m headed to Dallas tomorrow for lunch with the Four Horsemen.  These guys build me up and challenge me daily. 

I hope to get back to blogging more consistently on Monday (yes, I said that two weeks ago but………………….).

Strength and Honor.

Glory to God.

Jason