1. Message:  1 Corinthians 12 introduces the spiritual gifts and for years I have read this as a how-to guide for being a spirit filled Christian. Today I read this from the perspective of the Greeks Paul was speaking to at the church of Corinth. Greeks were polytheists so when they were introduced to another god, they simply added it to their collection of gods and worshipped them all. Yesterday we talked about how the gospel of Jesus Christ was different from anything they had ever heard before because it demanded that if they choose salvation through Jesus, that they abandon all other gods. At the beginning of chapter 12 Paul is telling them that it’s impossible to follow the other gods and Jesus at the same time because the truth of Jesus is revealed only by the Holy Spirit.You can’t hear from the Holy spirit and still be led off to worship other gods at the same time. I don’t believe it was random that this was his introduction into the gifts of the spirit. We have to be Holy spirit led to operate in these gifts, but if we are still off chasing other gods we won’t hear from the Holy Spirit. Other gods for the Greeks were idols they worshipped and performed ritualistic sacrifices to in order to receive blessings or to curse others. They didn’t have to love these gods. They were paying an obligation in the hopes of getting their needs met.
2. Command: Stop acting like a polytheist by offering God parts and pieces of myself as a sacrifice. He requires full surrender and full control. This means abandoning the other “gods” in my life that I have continued to run to and make sacrifices.
3. Promise: We only know the truth of Jesus by revelation from the Holy Spirit, so when we are fully surrendered, we will hear the Holy Spirit not only for salvation, but also in the gifts of the Spirit.
4. Warning: We can’t fully know God without the Holy Spirit revealing him, but if we are still chasing other sources in our lives, we won’t hear the Holy Spirit leading us, guiding us or revealing truth to us. If he is not leading and guiding us into truth we won’t hear him lead us into spiritual gift ministry either.
5. Application: We may not feel like we are polytheists, but if we examine our own behaviors and the types of sacrifices we make in the hopes of receiving blessings we might see this differently. Most of us are guilty of acting as our own gods so when we got saved we simply added Jesus to our lives and gave parts of ourselves to him without fully surrendering or giving him full and exclusive reign in our lives. We pat ourselves on the back for offering him pieces of control, but he requires all of it. We read about the spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12 and wonder why we aren’t seeing that in the church. According to the first verse here, we can’t hear the Holy Spirit if we aren’t fully surrendered. We have to renounce the other “gods” in our lives and give ourselves exclusively to Jesus to even be called his children. Instead we are like the Greeks Paul is talking to here about being “led off to the idols that cannot speak”. This challenges me to really evaluate the areas in my life that are not surrendered. It also challenges me to take notice when I pat myself on the back for offering God parts of myself because he requires all of me.

1. Message:  1 Corinthians 11 contains some of the most misunderstood passages written about men and women and their behavior for corporate gatherings. It begins with instructions about head coverings and is compared with proper cultural understanding about men and women during their time. There is so much to know about their back story and their culture in order to understand why these two things were relevant to each other. I read the footnotes in my bible to gain some understanding of the background because I’m definitely not a bible scholar or a historian. The church of Corinth was located in Greece so the believers there came from of background of pagan religion where they worshipped tons of different gods. It was common to learn of new gods and add them to their list of deities without ever turning from one to serve another because they were polytheists. The gospel of Jesus Christ was new to them and unlike anything they had ever heard because it was exclusive and the only one to demand that they forsake the other gods and acknowledge that there is only one God. Many had probably accepted the gospel, but had not yet let go of the other gods or pagan practices of worship. The head covering for the men was in reference to a pagan practice where men wore a toga and covered their heads in worship, and the women shaved their heads as a pagan sacrifice. It seems they were using these pagan rituals to worship God and this is why Paul was addressing this. He seems to be using their cultural understanding of men and women to relate to this point. Women wore long hair and it was culturally shameful for her to shave her head. Her long hair, beauty and behavior was seen as a direct reflection on her husband and he held complete authority over her. This cultural reference was not so much a directive point. It was an understood cultural way that Paul used as a comparison to the way a man should be with Christ. From there Paul moves right into communion and he is calling them out once again for pagan and cultural practices. Instead of coming to together in unity and as equals for the Lord’s Supper, they were selfishly observing the cultural classes where the rich ate first and the poor ate last so there was probably nothing left for them. Paul was calling them out on this selfish behavior where he said they weren’t really observing the Lord’s Supper at all because “each one eats his supper ahead of others so one person is hungry while another gets drunk”. He asked them “don’t you have homes to eat or drink in or do you look down on the church of God and embarrass those who have nothing”.  From here Paul talks about taking the Lord’s Supper unworthily. I had always been taught that this passage was about unforgiveness. Communion is addressed with unforgiveness in another passage, but the context of this passage suggests that the selfishness and failure to “recognize the body” is what caused them to take communion unworthily. His “therefore” statement in verse 33 was that they wait for each other when they come together for communion. In other words, no more demanding their cultural rights to be honored above each other based on financial or any other privileged class. They were instructed to eat at home and come together as equals which meant they were to lay down their cultural rights of demanding honor and privilege ahead of each other.
2. Command: There is no place for selfishness or status in the body of Christ.
3. Promise: We are all co-laborers and Jesus even shares
4. Warning: In any culture we have to fight the tendency of seeing ourselves above or beneath each other because we are culturally trained by what we experience.
5. Application:  I don’t think it was any coincidence that the previous two chapters we read were about laying aside our rights. Out of context it appears that Paul was randomly addressing multiple different topics but reading this with some of the cultural and historical things in mind I can see how this was all one smooth fluid thought that despite cultural views and beliefs when we come together as the body of Christ we lay aside our cultural rights and privileges and treat each other as equals. Jesus set this example for us when he layed aside his rightful place of honor to live among us and be crucified. After he was raised he made us joint-heirs with him in the inheritance of heaven. We live in a very different culture in this day and age, but also in this country. We live in a country that recognizes “all men are created equal” in our constitution because the forefathers of our country were Christians. This is not the cultural way in many other countries and even with this constitutional belief in America, we have a history marked with so much failure in this very belief. I believe this applies to us just as much today as it did then. In the body of Christ we are all equals and need to treat each other with honor and unselfishness. We are not to carry an expectation of receiving anything ahead of anyone else. There are no celebrities, leaders, rich people, talented people or educated people who carry any higher status than anyone else. We are all co-laborers in the body and there is no such thing as “my ministry” when we are all co-laborers of one ministry.

1. Message:  In 1 Corinthians 10 Paul was talking to the church of Corinth about some of the stories we just finished reading in Numbers. The children of Israel followed God by a cloud and he fulfilled their needs when they drank water from the rock. Even though they followed like this 23,000 were struck down because of their unfaithfulness. Paul was warning the church not to partake in sexual immorality because we can’t drink from the rock of Jesus and also the cup of satan at the same time.
2. Command:  Obey out of maturity, not because there are rules holding us in place.
3. Promise: When we choose obedience out of maturity we deepen our relationship with God.
4. Warning: “Everything is permissible but not everything is beneficial.”
5. Application: Further along Paul acknowledged that everything is permissible but everything is not beneficial. This doesn’t mean that it’s ok to do what we want. It just means we no longer have the law to hold us accountable. We have a conscience that guides us to choose right for the benefit of ourselves and others instead of a fear of the consequences of the law. This is maturity just like giving up our rights. We choose well because we can’t drink from both cups and maintain a real relationship with God. It’s permissible for me to eat whatever junk food I want. There is no law against it, but my maturity advises me to make healthy choices because there are consequences to poor diet choices.

1. Message:  In Acts 9 Paul continued talking about all of his rights, and the fact that he gave up those rights in order to reach more people. This is what Jesus did when he came to earth and it’s the difference between being a victim and laying aside our rights by choice. Our maturity is revealed by our willingness to lay aside our rights.
2. Application: The gospel is full of scripture urging us to give up our rights and scriptures about turning the other cheek and giving up your robe also is easily misinterpreted to suggest that we tolerate abuse or manipulation. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Everything that Jesus sacrificed was for the good of the people, but not for the selfish desire of anyone. Everything he did was according to the father’s plan and when people came in trying to divert him he didn’t allow it. As a person with people pleasing/co-dependent past issues I really leaned into this as I have studied God’s word. Everything changes when you make a sacrifice for the good of someone, rather than out of a fear of rejection. This kind of sacrifice opens doors that our Americanized views don’t understand. We celebrate soldiers who paid the ultimate sacrifice for the freedom of Americans.  Unfortunately many Americans claim our rights for the benefit of ourselves and don’t consider the good of others. This is immaturity at it’s finest but there is a huge difference in giving up your own rights, and having them taken from you. This is the difference between being victimized and surrendering our own rights by choice. We aren’t called to be victims. We are called to stand up maturity and surrender our rights in situations that benefit someone else, or open an opportunity to show someone the generosity of the gospel by living it out.

1. Message:  In 1 Corinthians 8 Paul was talking to the church of Corinth about how they used their knowledge. Eating meat that was offered to idols was offensive to people who had lived their entire lives in idolatry and had turned to follow Jesus. To these people there was a deep spiritual significance because they used to practice these rituals and had turned from it to serve the one and only God. Paul was talking to people who understood that since idols aren’t even real and have no actual power, the meat offered as sacrifices to them was no different than any other meat. Since they understood this, eating the meat didn’t cause any doubts or any guilt, but they needed to be aware that other people who didn’t feel this kind of freedom might see them eating it and either be offended by it, or partake in it with guilt in their hearts. The act of eating the meat was not the problem. The guilt in their hearts is what made the act wrong for them.
2. Command: Pursue love over our rights.
3. Promise: When we choose love over our own rights we increase our intimacy with God.
4. Warning: If we are unwilling to lay our rights aside to free the conscience of someone else, we are acting selfishly. We may not wrong in what we’re doing but we are now wrong for violating the conscience of someone else.
5. Application:  In the old testament people obeyed the law as an outward act and it didn’t seem to change or affect their hearts. Everyone was responsible for themselves. In the new testament, everything is about the condition of our heart, and how we treat one another. God is talking to us all individually about the condition of our own hearts and if we do anything with guilt in our hearts shame comes in and destroys our intimacy with God. We are also responsible for how our lives affect the people around us. We aren’t allowed to say that our relationship with God is only about ourselves because we are now responsible with how our lives affect the people around us. If we violate the conscience of someone else we are accountable for that.  We don’t struggle with meat offered to idols, but we struggle when we see other people freely enjoying things that cause us guilt. We also cause other people to struggle when we try to convince people that something they feel guilty about is ok. It’s common to hear people say “is it wrong if I ______?” I might have an understanding about what they are asking that gives me complete freedom, but I have learned that this is usually a loaded question and has more to do with the state of someone’s heart than what they are wanting to do. Nobody else can answer this for me, and I can’t answer it for anyone else because it stems from an attitude of “how much can I get away with doing before God gets mad at me”. This attitude pushes away from intimacy rather than toward God with a heart to please him. I love the way Pastor Andy Stanley puts questions like this. He says “What does love require of me?” This is what we need to ask ourselves when we are tempted to put our rights ahead of the good of someone else.

1. Message: In 1 Corinthians 7 Paul was talking about celibacy and marriage. It seemed he was addressing people who were on one extreme or another and because they were setting rules there was a lot of sexual immorality going on. Paul was setting the record straight that married people need to stay married and single or widowed people should stay that way as long as they have the ability to do it without struggling with sexual temptation. Otherwise they need to just get married. He acknowledged that it’s easier for a single person to serve God without distraction, but we shouldn’t leave a spouse in order to serve God without distraction. Married people need to serve God as if we were single, but also commit to the sexual needs of our spouse so that sexual immorality doesn’t creep in.
2. Command: Serve God and don’t allow our current life situations to become a distraction from our devotion to God, but also don’t neglect the needs of a spouse.
3. Promise: View our status as a blessing regardless of what it is, and we can have intimacy with God without distraction.
4. Warning: Having a spouse can distract us from serving God just as easily as a sexual desire in an unmarried person can. We shouldn’t try to solve either distraction by changing our current life status.
5. Application:  Reading this made me realize that whether people are married or single there will be a struggle. I’ve noticed that married people think about their freedom while single dream of being married. For married people the distraction is to get so caught up in the desires (or frustrations) of a spouse that our time and obedience to God is divided. For the single person the struggle may be in a desire for intimacy and partnership. We need to embrace the situation we are in and serve God as if we have no distractions while also making ourselves available for intimacy if we are married.

1. Message:  Numbers 22 is one of my favorite stories to read simply because I’m amused that God made Balaam’s donkey talk to him, and I’m even more amused that he carried on a conversation with him with no mention of it being unusual. This story is so much bigger than this though. Israel was traveling through to the promised land, but God had them defeating people in several other lands in order to take their promise. Kings were catching wind of them and nobody wanted them to pass through their land. They saw their enormous number and were fearful of them because of what God had done through them. I had always read about Balaam with the assumption that he was a prophet of God because of his encounters with God and the angel of the Lord through this story, but after reading this story again and reading the footnotes in my bible I see he was actually a diviner. He consulted spirits of all kinds and put blessings and curses on people for a fee. This is exactly what the king of Moab was trying to pay him to do to Israel. I find it interesting that even though he consulted with all kinds of other spirits, he consulted with God before giving an answer. I could go in circles through this whole passage trying to figure out Balaam, but what I really took notice of, is that God protected Israel to the point that even a diviner obeyed him, and when he tried to travel toward Israel God literally sent a warrior angel with sword drawn to intercept his path.
2. Application:  What I really got out of this is that God will work through and speak to anyone to fight on behalf of those he has called blessed. The enemies of Israel had plans to destroy them, but God interrupted those plans. Even the plans of darkness will fall in line when God speaks. Their plans will not be carried out. This also means that have to be careful too that we don’t find ourselves fighting against something or someone that God has blessed. The Israelites weren’t blessed because they were good. They were blessed because God chose to bless them. Anyone fighting on the wrong side of that blessing will find themselves face to face with an angel of God and we may not even know it. Balaam may have been a diviner but he had the wisdom to inquire of God and heed to the warning.

1. Message:  In 1 Corinthians 5 Paul was still correcting the church of Corinth. They had a man in their church who was sleeping with his father’s wife. This was not his mother but was sexually immoral and the church had not addressed it because they were proud of their nonjudgmental ways. Paul told them this sin was so bad that even the gentile unbelievers were disgusted by it. Basically he was telling them that the sin inside the church was worse than the sin outside the church. He told them to kick this guy out and allow satan to destroy his flesh so that his spirit could still be saved. This is such a difficult passage because we want to accept everyone and help people grow and change. We can’t just throw out everyone who has sin their lives, but we have to be aware of the danger for people who continue in their willful sin while staying in church. The longer they stay this way the longer they harden to their issues and refuse to change. They feel safe because they are in church but they are further away from God than ever because they are unwilling to allow God to change them. Throwing them out of the congregation is not a punishment. It’s a way to wake them up by disrupting their comfort of hanging onto their sin and allowing the rejection and separation of fellowship to reveal the destruction and separation it truly causes. Paul told them not to even eat with believers who were living in sin. Eating with people was (and still is) a form of intimacy so he was telling them not to spend time investing in people who were living in sin. He made sure they understood he was not talking about the unreached people in the world, he was talking about people who claimed to be in Christ but were living contrary. This is both for the sake of the one living in sin, so they have an opportunity to see their sin as a problem and repent, but also for the sake of the church because the church is supposed to be doing life together and influencing each other for growth and change. If the church has someone who is living in rebellion and resisting change, they will also influence others who are weak. As a church we are supposed to grow together and hold each other accountable. I love that Paul said “What business of mine is it to judge outsiders?”
2. Command: Change happens from the inside out and it begins with ourselves. We hold ourselves accountable first and we challenge the believers around us.
3. Promise:  When wehold each other accountable we grow and change together. When we grow and change together we become unified and influential. This is how we influence the world.
4. Warning: If we try to change the outside first we will not fool anyone and we will not reach the world. They won’t believe anything we say because they can’t see it in us.
5. Application:  As believers we tend to get this backwards. We tend to tell the world how they should believe and act. We fight politically or with social media rants and memes to try to get our nation to live as a godly nation, but we often won’t even deal with the ungodliness in our own churches, in our own homes or our own lives. We want our nation to recognize public prayer, but many believers are not even praying privately. We can’t change the world from the outside in, we have to change it from the inside out. When we hold ourselves accountable for our sin, we will be able to look fellow believers in the eye and help influence them to hold themselves accountable and each other. When the church is growing, changing and holding itself accountable, people will take notice and be inspired by it instead of repelled by it. This is how we change the world.

1. Message:  In Numbers 20 the Miriam had just died and the Israelites were settling in Kadesh. This is the same place they had been when Moses had sent the scouts to check out the promised land. All but two had complained that even though the land was fertile and produced an abundance of things, the people there were giant and they didn’t believe they could take it. They complained and asked Moses why he brought them to the wilderness and wished they were back in Egypt. They even wanted to appoint a leader to take them back.  Since they refused to take the promised land God led them all the way back to the Red Sea where they started, and then once again they were back in Kadesh. Once again they were also complaining, asking Moses why he brought them there to die, wishing they were back in Egypt and this time they blamed him because they were not in the land of promise. They complained once again that there was no water and once again Moses and Aaron got on their faces before God. God gave them very specific instructions to speak to the rock  and provide water but Moses in his frustration called them rebels and said “must we bring water out of this rock for you?” and then struck the rock twice. I found it interesting that the instructions were given to both Moses and Aaron so they were both accountable even though Moses was the one who acted. Aaron was accountable too and because he didn’t intervene they were both punished. God said that they didn’t trust him to show his holiness to the people. They didn’t convey the heart of God when they stepped into that position of God’s power and authority. They conveyed their own frustration instead of God’s heart and stepped into a place they didn’t belong because they did it while operating under the power and authority of God. We can easily understand why Moses was frustrated. They had complained and accused him over and over and over for years. God wasn’t angry when Moses voiced that frustration to him, but he carried that frustration outside of that sacred place and he carried it into a place where he was trusted to represent God. His actions were the same as speaking falsely on God’s behalf. Not only did he misrepresent God in his words, he also took the solution God gave him and he altered the plan to his own version.
2. Command: Take our frustrations to God, but listen for his plan of action and then obey it. Don’t hang onto the frustration and don’t alter the plan.
3. Promise:  God will demonstrate his power and his grace if we follow the plan he gives us. We will also be relieved of the frustration even if the situation doesn’t change right away.
4. Warning:  Our flesh wants to hang onto that frustration and we also have the tendency to believe that because we vented our frustration to God that his validation means he is on our side and against someone else. We also have a tendency to take part of what God tells us to do, and alter the plan into our own. This is not obedience.
5. Application:  I see myself in so many parts of this story. I have complained and complained about some of the same things in my life and failed to access promises because I wasn’t willing to trust God in the process. I have even continued to complain and indirectly blame God for my lack of progress. I have also been frustrated with other people and complained to God about them, and I have also stood by while someone else misrepresented God. What I got out of this is that it’s ok to be frustrated but that frustration needs to stay between us and God. God will give us a solution to our complaints but if we ignore the plan and go off and vent our anger instead, we are in the wrong. I’m not talking about the times we pray about a frustration with someone and then have an honest and maybe even a bold confrontation with intent and purpose to solve something. I’m talking about when we hang onto our frustrations and mistreat someone instead. Whether we do it in an angry and dishonoring way, make sarcastic remarks or act with passive-aggressive behavior. We might be justified in our frustration but we are not justified in that kind of response. We are also wrong when we come to God for a solution, and after he gives us the plan we either ignore it or go and alter it into our own version and try to call that obedience. This chapter convicted me! I have done all of these things and I’m still stumbling through it!

1. Message:  In 1 Corinthians 3 Paul told the church of Corinth that he was unable to speak to them as spiritual people but only as carnal people because of their immaturity. He referred back to the way they had latched on to a leader of choice and missed the fact that each leader was pointing to Jesus and had the same mission and purpose, just different functions. Some people plant, and some water but Christ does the growing. If we don’t have a mature view of the people who have planted and watered us with their leadership and influence, we will not pass that on in maturity either. I think we each do some planting and also some watering depending upon who we are ministering to, but what really caught my attention in this chapter was when he spoke about the quality of our work being tested through fire. If we are not authentic and genuine in our work, we will build a facade out of what we see instead of a foundation and it will not hold up.
2. Command: Live a life of real relationship with God and with people.Check our motives in everything we do with the understanding that our work will be tested.
3. Promise: If we are mature and authentic in our own relationships, both with God and others, we will point people to Jesus. When our work is tested it will be found to be sturdy and authentic.
4. Warning: If we allow immaturity to guide our motives, we will do ministry as a show-off of ourselves and what we know instead of out of a desire to lead people to an authentic experience with God. The work will be tested but it will not stand up to adversity. It will be a decorative facade with no real function.
5. Application: This word is very timely for me because all week I have been talking to God about my heart. I want to minister to people in a real and genuine way and I want to make sure that everything I do comes from that kind of heart and not out of a desire to be admired, noticed or seen as spiritual. This is a huge part of maturity and is what helps everyone to grow together. We all have a desire to be admired and honored and our hearts can be so deceitful in our motives. My prayer and my goal is to push my selfish desire to impress out of the way so people can see Jesus in a real way and not an empty facade of spirituality.

1. Message:  In 1 Corinthians 2 Paul is talking about wisdom, but he is reminding us that there is a natural wisdom that comes from maturity and experience, and there is a spiritual wisdom that only comes from the Holy Spirit. We know Paul as bold and persuasive so it was interesting to me how he described his first encounter with them as fearful, weak and without persuasion. He was telling them that the power of his testimony came through the Holy Spirit and not from him. He spoke further about how spiritual wisdom will only be revealed to those who are looking for it. Nobody knows the mind of God. We know the things he reveals to us by his Spirit, but the unbeliever is resistant and does not accept spiritual things because he sees it as foolish. Our own wisdom is like water in a reservoir. It’s helpful, but it has been sitting a while and really only benefits ourselves and those we share it with. God’s wisdom is like fresh rain. It’s refreshing, clean and pours out on anyone who wants to receive it.
2. Command: Seek the wisdom of the Holy Spirit before we draw from the wisdom we have obtained through our own personal experiences.
3. Promise: If we seek God for wisdom he will reveal it to us!
4. Warning:  If we don’t seek God first, we have a tendency to draw from our own experiences and assume we are acting in wisdom. We can’t see God’s wisdom if we aren’t looking for it and our own pride will actually resist the wisdom of God if we think we already have the answer.
5. Application:  As I read this I thought about how quickly we tend to develop an opinion or insert our own human wisdom about important matters. Everyone has an opinion these days and wants to share it loudly. Even as believers we have to be careful about what kind of wisdom we are drawing from. We can all speak from our personal experiences and perspectives, but what is GOD speaking, and have we even stopped to ask him? During my walk this morning I was praying about this feeling I have been having like there was an obstruction between me and someone I care about. I had been rolling around all kinds of thoughts and ideas in my head about what I should say to communicate this, but instead I asked God to evaluate my thoughts and shed light on them so that any imaginations would be exposed and dissipate, and anything that was really there would be exposed and handled. I’m so thankful that God stopped me from drawing on my own “wisdom” because I am often wrong in my perceptions of a situation when my feelings are involved. Things like this can’t be seen with human wisdom. These are things that can only be revealed by the Holy Spirit and we can do a lot of damage by assuming we have the answer. No matter how much natural wisdom and relationship experience we have, we need the Holy Spirit to navigate us through everything. My challenge to myself is to stop before I give an answer to anyone (including myself) and ask God what he would want to show me about situations. Natural wisdom that we have gained through experience is important and we need it, but before we draw on our own tank of wisdom we need to seek the wisdom discerned by the Holy Spirit because it is life giving!

L

1. Message:  Once again today there is an interesting parallel between what we read in the old and new testaments. In Numbers 17 there was jealousy and rebellion going on over who was chosen to lead the people. There had already been a few episodes where rebels accused Moses of appointing himself to lead them and God had swallowed them up in the ground. This was even after he had anointed 70 elders with part of his spirit to help share the load. The accusations had continued so this time God had them each bring a staff to the tent of meeting with their names on them and God caused Aaron’s staff to not only sprout and produce leaves and flowers, but it even produced almonds overnight. So much could be said about that sign, but this was a sign to the people that God chose him and this was intended to stop the jealousy and complaining. In 1 Corinthians Paul called out the church of Corinth because they were divided in rivalry about who they were following. Some claimed Paul, some claimed Apollos, Christ or Cephas. Paul challenged them by asking “Is Christ divided?”. His point is that they were not supposed to be following a man. They were supposed to be following Christ.
2. Command: Don’t put any person on a pedestal and don’t let anyone put us on one either.
3. Promise: If we point the way instead of stand in the way, we ourselves and those we are leading will grow together.
4. Warning: Jealousy and rivalry come when we want to stand in a place of God, or when we place someone else in that place.
5. Application:  In both the old and the new testament reading the people were distracted by the position of leadership and missing the point of who they were being led to. In both cases the leaders were not exalting themselves, but the people were elevating the status of their leaders to the point of jealousy and rivalry. When this happens the mission gets lost. I have personally seen plenty of unfortunate situations where people put so much focus on the person leading them that they stumble over them. When that leader makes a mistake, or something happens to that leader it shakes their faith and damages their relationship with God. I have seen people walk away from God because they weren’t actually grounded in God. They were committed to a leader or a personality. The footnotes in my bible talk about the divisions in the new testament church being similar to common phrases and slogans used to either affiliate themselves with a political party, or slaves identifying their masters. It’s important to note that this was not caused by manipulation from these leaders. It was the people looking to their leaders inappropriately in the place of God. Leaders have such a deep responsibility to make sure everything they say and do is pointed to Christ, and don’t allow people to flatter them with comparisons. Followers of Christ need to take personal responsibility for their own spiritual growth and never put a leader in the place of God no matter how inspiring or wise they are. Leaders are way-pointers. We are all influencing or leading someone, and we are all influenced by someone. We can all be caught up in this comparison trap and we have to keep our focus on Christ alone. If we point the way instead of stand in the way, we ourselves and those we are leading will grow together.

1. Message:  In Romans 16 Paul greeted and affirmed several people by name for their work in spreading the gospel. After he greeted them all he gave them a strong warning about people who caused dissensions and obstacles contrary to the gospel they had learned. It occurred to me while reading this that I forget so easily that they didn’t have a bible to refer to and read like we do. The gospel was preached to them and these letters were carried from place to place. Copies were made but they didn’t have the access that we have to study and read it. They were living it out together and dependent upon each other to keep themselves aligned in truth. We have the whole gospel in the form of letters not only from Paul but from other trusted sources in the early church. We are able to compare them and study them, but even with that availability we still have to be careful about who we listen to and who we allow to influence our lives. I have heard the gospel skewed in such sneaky ways that it amazes me. Scriptures taken out of context to align with a personal agenda can sound true because there is a familiar element of truth in it.
2. Command: Be faithful in sharing the gospel, and watch out for those who would try to manipulate or teach anything contrary to the truth.
3. Promise: If I read the word I will be faithful to share it, and able to discern anything falsely conveyed.
4. Warning: If I don’t know the word for myself it’s easier for me to fall victim to a contrary teaching. I am also more likely to spread that contrary teaching or make my own misinterpretations.
5. Application: What really hit me today is the privilege we have to be able to  read and study the word for ourselves. If we read it in context without a personal agenda, and we stay connected with other believers that are grounded in truth we will not be fooled by someone with smooth words and an agenda. If we don’t know the truth for ourselves, we will fall for a lie, and if we fall for a lie, we will spread that lie. My challenge to myself is to approach my daily bible reading with a heart to learn something new and free of any pre-formed ideas, but also stay connected with other people who are grounded in truth. I have seen how easy it is to use Scripture to back up our own desires and ideas-even without an intent to manipulate. I’m asking God to show me what I need to hear and not what I want it to say, and I’m asking him to give me discernment when someone uses scripture with the intent to divide or manipulate.

1. Message: In Romans 15 Paul was speaking to those who considered themselves strong in the faith and he urged them to “bear the weaknesses of those without strength.” To give up some of their freedoms for the sake of those who might be offended by them. He used Jesus as an example when he took the insults thrown at him by people who didn’t understand what he came to do. He didn’t fight back and he didn’t put them in their place even though he was certainly strong enough to do so. In verse 7 Paul encouraged the Jews and the Gentiles to accept each other. Being a born Jew himself he led this by example by affirming the legitimacy of the Gentiles and he even quoted several prophecies from Isaiah that confirm the Gentiles in their place with the Messiah.
2. Command: Lay aside my right to be right and don’t fight battles that I already know I have an advantage in just for the sake of winning.
3. Promise: We will win people in our graciousness, not in our battles.
4. Warning: Our pride wants to get the best of us in these moments but if we follow it we will look silly even if we are right. Even worse, we will alienate people who probably need what we have.
5. Application: What I really saw in this was a call to pull ourselves out of ourselves. In America we are obsessed with our rights. Our rights are important, and other people fought and paid the ultimate sacrifice for those rights, but I think we dishonor that sacrifice when we elevate or abuse our rights and use them to crush someone else. Everyone values our freedom of speech, but it saddens me when someone uses that freedom to verbally tear someone else down. We can disagree with people and discuss the facts about laws and situations, but when we make it personal and attack the person we are in disagreement with we are wrong and we are abusing our freedom. The Jews and the Gentiles were struggling with each other because of beliefs. The Jews were struggling with embracing the new covenant. They were raised with the law since birth and were proud of their generational heritage as God’s chosen people. Now the Gentiles were invited in and they were enjoying their salvation with freedoms that the Jews didn’t understand. Because of this they struggled to accept each other or understand where each was coming from. Paul was appealing to them both asking them to lay aside whatever each felt was their advantage on each other in order to accept each other. I once heard a woman at a bible study start to debate about rapture and tribulation. This was a room packed with women and she went off-topic asking questions and quoting scripture to fight her cause until the woman leading the bible study kindly and gently interrupted her. This woman was in her 80s and had entire books of the bible memorized! She understood the bible like nobody I have ever known personally and she surely could have put her to shame without even trying. She probably could have pulled truth from both sides and dismissed the misconceptions. Instead she kindly but firmly told her that these arguments are interesting but they don’t change salvation. She was focused and she was kind and she was not going to let a theological dispute derail anyone in the room from the message of salvation. I believe there is a time and a place for debates and apologetics. There are some very humble and very smart apologists that I admire for their ability to debate with people and defend truth while preserving the dignity of those who are in disagreement with them.  I have learned so much from both approaches, but most importantly, the importance of yielding to other people and treating them with dignity and not condescending in my perception of their weakness. I emphasize the word “perception” because I have learned and seen so many times where once person believed they were speaking from a place of authority or higher understanding but in reality, they were speaking to a humble person who was graciously listening to a person in weakness with a whole lot to learn.  I’m a talker and I tend to ramble on so my challenge and my goal is to be like both of these examples. I read the word daily and study with diligence, but I can never assume I have a deeper understanding than anyone that I might encounter. Not only do I need to appeal to people in what I might perceive as weakness, but if I shut up and listen, I just might learn something valuable from even the most unlikely source!

1. Message:  In Romans 14 Paul told the church not to argue about “doubtful issues”. I don’t believe the context here is that the issues themselves were doubtful, but more so that the issues in question caused doubt in their salvation. He told the church to welcome weak believers and explained the importance of loving them well by not engaging in these arguments or doing things that might be considered wrong in the eyes of the weaker believers. One of the major topics of their time was food items. Paul was clear that nothing was considered unclean to eat, but because of the background some of these believers came from they felt convicted about certain foods and because of this conviction, their consciences would have been violated if they ate them. A violated conscience causes doubt and destroys intimacy with God. Because our walk with God is about the condition of the heart, we have to be careful that we don’t violate our own conscience and that we don’t knowingly damage anyone else’s either. This is the love that is required of us that we read about yesterday.
2. Command: Don’t make a taboo sin list or argue with anyone else about their own personal convictions. Pay attention to the things that take my heart in a negative direction and use wisdom.
3. Promise: My personal convictions are between God and me and God will talk to me about them as long as I surrender my heart.
4. Warning: Making a taboo list causes me to revert back to a law system where I no longer pay attention to God speaking to my heart. Instead I focus on a set of rules where I am sure to violate my conscience and find loopholes for myself.
5. Application:  In today’s culture food is not so much the taboo topic of Christians, but there are plenty of other things that might violate our consciences depending upon our own background. When I first got saved, I wrestled with secular music initially because I had some misguided teaching that listening to any secular music was wrong. I felt convicted of this and I really struggled with letting go of secular music because it had an emotional hold on me. I believed that there was a spirit behind all music and that if that spirit was not God than it was evil and it carried over to the listener. This is very similar to the issue that these weaker Christians Paul described had with food. Many of them had an issue with eating food that was offered to idols because they saw it as tainted. I grew past my general judgment that secular music is sinful and though I feel free to listen to it, my preference is usually worship anyway because of what it does for my heart. I still believe there are certainly some spiritual influences behind all kinds of things and we should be careful not to open ourselves up to them by playing around with sin, but I no longer carry a fear of catching evil spirits. Looking back I can see where it was probably good for me to separate from secular music for a while because of the emotional hold it had on my heart. I have since identified now that certain songs can take me back to moments of my life. These memories can cause my mind to emotionally dwell on places of my past that are not beneficial to my life now, so I pay attention to this. The songs themselves are not sinful or wrong, but for me these certain songs can cause an emotional response that has the potential to take my heart somewhere it should not be. There are lots of things in my life that I have shut the door to for the sake of my own heart, but I now understand that we all have different things and there is no particular taboo list that applies to us all. We can’t hold anyone else to our personal convictions, and nobody else should hold us to theirs. I have never had an issue with alcohol so walking into a bar or having a drink does not cause any kind of a temptation for me, but it could really cause problems for people who have had past or current struggles with alcohol addiction. Loving the people around me means being mindful of things that could cause an internal struggle for someone else. I don’t talk anyone else out of their own convictions and I don’t hold anyone else to mine.

1. Message: Romans 13 is a challenge like no other and a true test of our trust that God really is over all. Right off the bat we are challenged with the word submit. Women struggle with this word as we read it in the context of marriage but in this context Paul is talking about submitting to the authorities of our government. This goes against the grain of our American culture where we all decide for ourselves who and what we will submit ourselves to. The definition of submit is “accept or yield to a superior force or to the authority or will of another person”. I think we get mixed up because we assume that means we have to agree with everything the person in authority says or does. The challenge here is that we live our lives submitting to these authorities, no matter how corrupt they may be, knowing that they can’t touch our souls. Our souls are submitted to God so we can trust that he will take care of us in every circumstance. Even when they aren’t the circumstances we wanted. This does not make our authorities right, but it makes us right before God, who is our ultimate authority and our covering. In verse 8 it almost seems that Paul is changing the subject by speaking about love, but he is actually taking our obedience a step further. He says that the one that loves fulfills the law. This means instead of following the law of Moses to know how to treat our neighbor, we are bound by love. This means we are commanded to do what is best for our neighbor with the understanding that everyone is our neighbor. When we live by this instead of a list of rules we will not be able to find loopholes. This is a matter of the heart and when we do this we fulfill the law at an even higher standard than what was written.
2. Command: Obey authorities, love people and make no plans to satisfy our fleshly desires.
3. Promise: When we do this we leave ourselves open and vulnerable to man, but also place ourselves in the hands of God without limitations.
4. Warning: Submitting to authorities and doing what is best for people who don’t return the favor seems like a dangerous and vulnerable place to be so our tendency is to fight it. When we fight it, we remove ourselves from the protection of God, and put ourselves in the position to fight our own battles. We often do this and then try to get God to bless it.
5. Application:  This chapter is challenging for all of us. We all want to be in control and nobody wants to be the fool. God wants us to trust him by becoming completely vulnerable and trusting that he will do what is best for us, even when it doesn’t look or feel like what is best. Our submission authority, and our obedience to do what is best for our neighbor is actually submission to God. When we do this, we take our hands off the controls and instead of fighting against God, we find ourselves in a position for God to fight for us. It feels counter-intuitive just like most things in the gospel. If you want to save your life, lose it. Die to yourself, submit to authority, look out for others first. My challenge to myself in this is to pay attention to the inner struggle where I pick and choose the areas of life that I want to hang onto control. It shouldn’t be hard to follow the turmoil. When I find that turmoil, I will ask myself what is required of me in this situation and ask God to help me in my surrender.

1. Message:  The reading today had a pretty strong parallel in meaning and it convicted my heart! In Numbers 12 Moses’s siblings, Aaron & Miriam started criticizing him because of his Cushite wife. Then they said “Does the Lord speak only through Moses? Does he not also speak through us?” What really stuck out to me was this next line “and the Lord heard it”. This whole interaction started off by some sibling criticism that had nothing to do with anything and and the next thing you know they were questioning the legitimacy of Moses and elevating themselves to something God had not called them, nor equipped them to do. Moses didn’t hear any of it, but God did and God was angry. I think often times we rattle off and say things out of a complaining or critical spirit and because of our familiarity we question what God is using someone else to do because we know things about them that maybe nobody else does. I’m not necessarily talking about sin issues. I’m talking about human issues. Vulnerabilities, insecurities, back stories and flaws. Who knows us more than our immediate family or our close circle, and who do we know in our immediate family or close circle that we might feel comfortable criticizing?  Aaron knew more than anyone that Moses was self-conscious about public speaking because he was used to speak what Moses heard from God. Aaron & Miriam probably felt safe speaking this way together and it caused me to think about how easy it is to feel safe speaking critically in certain company because there is agreement. We forget that even if nobody else ever hears it, God has heard it all. Not only has he heard it, but he knows the attitude it came from and he is literally the only one who can judge that motive. Ouch! In Romans 12 this couldn’t have been tied in more perfectly because Paul is warning us all that we are not to think of ourselves more highly than we should. Instead to think sensibly. From there he begins to describe how we are all one body with many parts and many different functions, and according to the grace given to us we have different gifts.
2. Command: Humble our hearts before God and speak sensibly.
3. Promise: We all have an important part to play and a different gift that we have been given.
4. Warning: Criticism leads to arrogance and arrogance elevates our flesh to desire things we were not equipped or anointed to touch.
5. Application: As I read this I cringed as I thought about even recent conversations I not only partook in, but I instigated with my sarcastic mouth. Some of it began in witty humor, but most of it is stemming from an ugly attitude and a complaining spirit within my own heart. It’s especially bad to criticize those who lead us because they have been given a task that includes a responsibility for those they are leading. It seems easy to criticize the way someone else is managing that responsibility when we aren’t the ones who carry the weight of it. It’s also true that how we treat those who lead us directly affects how we will lead others. My heart was completely busted reading this so my self-application here is to first pray through the attitude withing my own heart, and then pray for those that lead me in a way that I would want someone to pray for me. This week I need to have a conversation with those I have infected with my words, and I need to tell them openly that I was wrong and will not be initiating or partaking in any more conversations like it.

1. Message: In chapter 11 Paul explains that God temporarily hardened the hearts and blinded the eyes of the Jews to make them jealous and to open salvation to the gentiles first. Jesus actually gave a parable about this in Luke 14 when he described a man who prepared big feast and invited an A-List of guests, but when the feast was ready the A-List guests all made excuses for why they couldn’t come. The host sent his servants out into the streets to invite the poor, crippled, lame and blind. When there was still room they invited everyone else. As gentile believers, we are the “other people” that were invited because the “A-Listers” didn’t show up. Paul was warning the gentiles not to become arrogant or conceited over the blindness of the Jews because the Jews were the promise and the intended guests. God had intentionally blinded them after generations of their unfaithfulness to him but this is not forever. Paul used an example of a native olive tree with unnatural branches grafted in and some of the natural branches removed. He warned them that they (and we) could be removed just as easily as the natural branches if they (we) become arrogant like they were. I think it’s also important to note in here that not all of Israel was blinded. Verse 3 references back to the prophet Elijah crying to God that he was the only one left after King Ahab and his wife Jezebel had turned the people to Baal worship and were trying to kill Elijah. God told Elijah “I have left 7000 men for myself that have not bowed their knee to Baal”. In all of the generations of Israel that were described as rebellious in general, there were always a remnant of faithful ones. The disciples of Jesus who became apostles were leading the remnant of Jewish followers of Jesus during the time Paul was writing this. I believe the point of this is to remember that the Jews took for granted that they were the chosen ones and God blinded them and made an example out of them because of their pride and unfaithfulness. We have to be careful too because we have been given a gift of grace. We are not supposed to take that grace for granted or live in defiance of change. We can just as easily become blinded and our hearts hardened just like the Jews if we take for granted the gift of grace by living on our own terms. The Jews were temporarily blinded by God and we were invited in, but God has not stopped loving them and he will not leave them out of the promise.
2. Command: Salvation was expensive and God does not treat it lightly so we need to treat it as a gift and not a right.
3. Promise: God didn’t leave us out and he will not leave out or give up on his promised ones.
4. Warning: After a while salvation can feel like a right instead of a gift. WE have to be careful that we never treat it like it was owed to us.
5. Application:  I don’t believe God wants us to doubt our salvation or live in fear of losing it, but he does expect us to honor the extravagant gift of grace that he gave us by living extravagantly for him.

1. Message:  In Romans 10 Paul had just been talking about Jesus being the rock that God placed for the Jews to stumble over. He was talking about his concern for their salvation because they had a zeal for God but they disregarded his righteousness and attempted to establish their own because they failed to submit to him. This spoke so loudly to me because I see this so strongly in the Christian culture. We have developed a whole bunch of unwritten rules that we believe make us “Christian” and we hold others to those unspoken expectations. We have aligned Christianity with politics to tell the world who they should be without submitting our own hearts before God to change us. Because of this we have become a stumbling block to the world seeing the gospel. The rest of the chapter talks about the call to share salvation and explains why the ones who were not looking for him or calling for him found him.
2. Command: Don’t mistake a life full of religious activity as a surrendered heart.
3. Promise: If we draw near to God he will draw near to us.
4. Warning: Obedient activities do not surrender our hearts. We can get easily find ourselves living a life of Christian activities but find our hearts are actually far from God.
5. Application: Even though most of us are technically gentile believers. So much of the behavior of the Jews is mirrored in us too. I have caught myself so many times just going through the motions and living on auto-pilot. Because my life is filled with so many things that fit the Christian lifestyle, it’s difficult to realize when I’m falling asleep at the wheel. When I’m living life business as usual I can fool myself into believing that I’m doing well because I’m doing a lot of activity. I have an appearance of “zeal for God” because my life is full of church activities and I listen to worship music and I don’t say bad words and I read my bible every day and post scriptures but what God is really asking me is “how is your heart?” My question to myself today is What does God want to show me about my heart today? What am I withholding from him, or ignoring? What is making me bitter? What does God have to say to me today?

1. Message: Romans 9 is a really difficult chapter. Paul was grieving for the Jews because they had rejected God. It seemed so wrong to him because they were the physical ancestors of Jacob and they carried the promise of the Messiah. The Messiah had been born out of their own blood line and yet they rejected him and missed out on the most important part of the promise. Paul even went as far to say that he almost wished he could trade places with them because that was how strongly he grieved for them. He went on to question our ability to judge what is truly just and fair. Abraham had two sons but only one of them carried the promise. The one who carried the promise had twin sons and God chose the younger brother over the older before they were even born. This again seemed unfair, but generations later the ones who carried the promise were missing out because they rejected the Messiah, while the unchosen ones (the gentiles) were the ones enjoying the promise because they received it. This was no surprise to God because he knew this is what would happen. Paul quoted old testament scripture where God said “I am putting a stone in Zion to stumble over and a rock to trip over, yet the one who believes on him will not be put to shame.” Jesus was that rock that tripped the Jews and provided a foundation for the gentiles. Paul reminded them (and us) that we are in no position to judge what is fair because only God is perfect and he has the freedom to bless whomever he chooses. He doesn’t owe any of us anything. What appeared to be a disadvantage to the underdog proved to be an advantage in the long run. What appeared to be a privilege and a leg up also proved to be the disadvantage in the long run.
2. Command: Don’t try to judge what is fair or right. We don’t have the mind or the understanding of God.
3. Promise: God is fair and just.
4. Warning:
5. Application: As I read this I thought of so many situations where it seemed like someone had an unfair advantage, but because it was given to them without any kind of proven or earned character it was taken for granted and wasted. Someone else who seemed to be at the disadvantage found an opportunity and worked hard because they had no expectation that anything should ever be handed to them. We’ve often heard the term “silver spooner” describing someone who was born into wealth and handed unearned wealth/and or opportunities provided by wealth. While there are a lot of wealthy people who have taught their children to work hard and develop character, we also see many who were handed wealth they did not build and it ruined their lives. We also have seen many who appeared to grow up at a disadvantage, but they developed character and/or tenacity because of their disadvantage and became successful because of it. I’m not trying to compare salvation to wealth, but since money is measurable it was an easy comparison. Some people are born with physical disabilities and they accomplish things that most able-bodied people are too lazy to even try. We all believe that having supportive parents gives kids the confidence to succeed, but I have known kids who grew up in challenging situations that were far from supportive but they developed character and a tenacity that gave them a different edge of experience because they allowed their circumstances to motivate them instead of becoming a victim. Each of these scenarios has the potential to go in either direction and in some families you literally see kids who grew up in the same home take completely opposite directions in life. This is true of all kinds of other success/failure stories. I don’t want to make this political, but we live in a country that is trying to push in the direction of socialism because the perception is that if everyone has the same opportunities it makes things fair. I’m definitely not about oppressing anyone but as we have evaluated in just these few scenarios, there is no way for any human to determine what an equal opportunity looks like. We don’t have the mind of God to recognize all of the contributing factors. We all have different advantages and disadvantages and we could never possibly create an equal playing ground. Only God understands how these checks and balances work for and against us and his judgment is perfect. This challenges me to evaluate some of the things in my life that I have perceived as unfair or as a disadvantage. This also really challenges me to pay attention to the things that I have that should be working as an advantage for me, but I have taken for granted. Opportunities I have wasted because I didn’t recognize them for what they were.