There’s this little verse in 2 Corinthians 8 that I’m just loving today. The Christians of Macedonia were under intense pressure (a “severe trial”), yet the apostle Paul writes that the combination of “extreme poverty” and “overflowing joy” welled up in “rich generosity.” Who on earth would put those two things together and expect much of anything but a pitiful potluck? The cool thing is that even if somebody had been pressuring or manipulating them toward “rich generosity,” they were kept free of that by doing something unexpected. And here’s the verse—verse 5:

“And they exceeded our expectations: They gave themselves first of all to the Lord, and then by the will of God also to us” (2 Corinthians 8:5). Hallelujah!

Think of that. If Jesus had left the planet years earlier via the Divine exit strategy of the resurrection, yet “They gave themselves first of all to the Lord,…” then how did they do that? Jesus wasn’t there, serving coffee or an aperitif. Jesus didn’t suddenly show up or fall afresh on them. Jesus was IN them, and they counted upon His ability to get His will done through them. They believed the gospel and were attracted to Christ, who had made them His beautiful mobile homes. How great is that?

Giving themselves “first of all to the Lord” became the pattern for bringing to “completion this act of grace” (2 Corinthians 8:6), which began with God—and where was He? In them—and welled up and out of His people. How great is that? They were knowing God, and that’s the grand prize; knowing Him. I think it’s the same pattern today for us. And it’s not just about giving—it’s for everything.

So tune in to the One who lives in you—you’re together now, and He keeps you free from outside pressures to do good works with Him. That’s the pattern, and that’s the way of God’s grace in you.

If God is a good leader, how is He doing with you?

“But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of Him” (2 Corinthians 2:14).

Here’s a starting point question: How often is God leading you? How regularly and in what condition is He bringing you forward? If your response is something like, “Um, whenever I pay attention to Him and do what He says,” then you probably ought to rethink that. Why?

God knows that He’s leading you at all times triumphantly. You may ask, “How can that be when I do lousy things, and things around me look so lousy?” Here’s how: God thinks of where you are, in Christ, and where He is, in you, in terms of leading you. He’s not so much ahead of you, hoping you’ll follow. That’s worldly thinking, not Christian. You’re always together, never separate. You don’t have to ask Him to make you “a good follower”, because He’s already got you in Him. You’ll never be in God’s rearview mirror! He’s not relying upon your ability, He’s working to get your attention—in other words, your faith—that you’re together in everything. Everything. You might as well get used to that and enjoy it.

You’re growing in believing that God’s leadership with you is perfect and triumphal, but you don’t make His leadership happen by your perfect following. You’re in Him and He’s in you. That’s your every day, every moment starting point.

Romans 8:15 The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.”

There’s a big plague of hopelessness going around. Have you felt it? And did you know that the word, “hopeless,” when referring to Christians, never occurs in the New Testament? How can that be?

Hopelessness occurs when the future you have is camouflaged by the present you see. Think about what you’ve been seeing lately. Isn’t it stuffed full of the trials and turmoil of this world? Even the briefest glance at people involved in ugly riots and the authorities commissioned to restore order forces you into a judgmental view. “Who’s to blame? Who will fix this? Someone make it stop!” It’s so hopeless.

Here’s the thing. The god of this world is a pro at inciting an evil that springs from the hearts of those who are spiritually dead, and therefore without hope and without life in this world—the life of Jesus. (See Ephesians 2:11-13) He is “the God of hope.” And He doesn’t have just a dose of it, He is the original source. Once you receive Him, He works and attracts you to know Him. Why? Because you will trust Him and set your mind upon Him as the result. What will happen then? He will fill you with what He is!

Romans 15:13 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Your future—even tomorrow—is with Him, who lives in you. No matter what goes on around you—as ugly as that may be—your life and hope lives within you. Jesus told us this before He left so we would remember it after He left.

John 16:33 I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.

No matter what you see, your future is with Him, and He is your hope.

See you later.

Around here, summer is breaking out all over the place. It’s often hot, kids are rampaging all around, and goals for the summer months have changed from winter and spring. We do different things when the seasons change, and experience seasonal pressures and seasonal ways by which to judge how we do.

So I’m offering a reminder of something that does not change like the seasons, something that’s already established no matter what. It’s in a few verses that Paul intends should support the importance of the faith you now have—the faith that changed everything for you and became the way for every day.

Romans 16:25 Now to him who is able to establish you in accordance with my gospel, the message I proclaim about Jesus Christ, in keeping with the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, 26 but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God, so that all the Gentiles might come to the obedience that is faith – 27 to the only wise God be glory for ever through Jesus Christ! Amen.

Did you catch that? Because of the new covenant and the grace of God given to us, the “obedience” that’s most valuable is that you believe. In other words, believing God IS obedience. It was Jesus’ obedience that secured everything for you for always, and it’s your believing it that is your obedience. He did the acting, you did the believing. Jesus became your representative, and by believing in Him and what He did, you are put into Christ where everything is secured and provided for always!

Will the obedience of faith lead you to do things? Of course. It’s your new normal life. There’s still that aspect or result of Christ’s obedience and your belief. But remember the starting point that Jesus gave you: He did everything needed, so you can believe and rest in what happens because you’re in Him and He’s in you. That’s it, no matter the season.

See you later.

Does your imagination ever run off and go wild? Mine does. And it’s not always easy to grab it and bring it back home. “Are you kidding me? Get back over here and behave yourself.”

Fortunately, I’ve found that my imagination—that part of my mind that explores for me what could have been or could be—is often a fertile place for faith and encouragement when I offer it to the Spirit and what Jesus did with me. The exercise of offering my imagination to God engages and involves me with Him in a way that He uses to refresh and strengthen me. I’ll give you an example from yesterday.

I began thinking of Jesus bringing me close and hugging me as He went through His crucifixion and burial. I could see it, and in my imagination, He said, “I’ve got you, Ralph.” And after a bit, He said, “Wake up now.” In that same embrace, we rose together in His resurrection into a new life, established and revealed in heaven, where I was alive for the first time. “There now; we’re all done with that,” He said. “Look around you, because there’s so much to know and enjoy in this life with me that will dramatically affect you and your days. And we’ll always be together.”

You may know how very scriptural that is. In the truth found in the spiritual and eternal realm (2 Corinthians 4:18), I was brought into Christ, and crucified and buried with Him. It happened. The former me died. (See Romans 6:3-9) Further, I was raised with Him into heaven and new life, where every blessing is mine. (See Ephesians 2:1-7) It’s true. The new me was born, and lives at this very moment—in heaven and on earth. While I navigate this world, I’m humbled and thrilled to know that I have a unique and purposeful way of involvement with it. So I’m living by faith, thanks in part to my imagination.

How’s yours? See you later.

Aren’t you glad you’ve already got the antidote, the cure for what ails this world? I know there’s a lot going on that’s wrong and sick, but there is one essential cure from God’s perspective. Jesus announced the very reason for His coming—that we should have life, His life, and have it to the full! (See John 10:10) He knew our impossible condition—spiritually lifeless, dead—and did something full-strength about it. He’s been proving this for a long time.

Through the use of laws and rules for behavior, God diagnosed for us and proved to us that our condition was terminal. We cannot get ourselves right. But in the fullness of time, He provided our cure—Jesus, the Son of man. He invited us to believe and accept Him as our representative with God, and thereby included us in His crucifixion, burial and resurrection—in other words, His life—and seated us in the heavens with little to do but marvel. Think what that will look like. There will be dancing! And in my case, that means I might actually look decent at it.

So think of yourself in Christ, full of life. There, in Him, you cannot judge yourself according to your color; there is only His. In Christ, you cannot judge yourself by your ability, you cannot judge yourself by your faithfulness, your righteousness, your practice or your history; there is only His. And that’s why and where it’s all perfect—and you are too.

The new humanity that Jesus created in Himself is the end of sinful and lifeless, separate and self-centered humanity in favor of a glorified, Jesus-centered, new creation, full of life, his life. (See Ephesians 2:11-22)

That’s what we celebrate; God’s full-strength cure.

See you later.

The winds of the world are blowing fiercely and chaotically. Even friends burst out with a gale-force of angry words at each other, thinking their outburst will surely conquer and quiet the rage of the other. It’s madness.

But this is not our wind. This is not what moves us. This world’s wind is lifeless. Can you tell?

A particular meaning of the name, “Spirit of God,” has always been (whether Hebrew or Greek) the “wind” or “breath” of God. In Genesis 2, the wind of God breathed life into man, who “became a living being.” That same wind was removed from mankind when Adam and Eve died spiritually after eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. No one had “the breath of life” within them from that day and all through the Old Testament. But God had a plan for His return, which Jesus proclaimed to Nicodemus in John 3.

Essentially, Jesus tells Nicodemus that unless he is born again, he could not enter the Kingdom of God. Jesus tells him that he had to be born of the Spirit, because only “the Spirit gives birth to spirit” (John 3:6). And soon after Jesus’ resurrection, the Holy Spirit, the original wind of God, makes a grand re-entrance into the believers gathered in the upper room!

Acts 2:1 When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit (literally, the holy breath or wind of God) and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. (Parenthesis mine.)

What a day! What a moment. What a time—right on time. Because where was the wind? Where was the life-giving and life-moving Spirit? He was in! He was in again, full of life and movement. Why are we looking at this today? Because if you don’t know this, you might grow accustomed to the winds of this world and think they’re your winds. You might have no expectation of the inside wind, the wind of life for you. And you’ll suffer.

This breath of life, this wind of God is mysterious, I know. But paying attention to Him in you means life for you and freedom for you. That’s what He’s all about because that’s who He is! He doesn’t just do it as a choice; it’s who He is. And He’ll convince you that you’re not in charge because He is, so you can stay in step with His leading or His movement for you. And He’s pretty good at producing fruit, you know?

So if you haven’t been talking about what God is doing with you lately, consider the wind you’re paying attention to: the wind of God in you, or the winds of this world?

See you later.

Christian, there are many ways by which the evil one and the kingdom of darkness seek to influence you. Fortunately, the Father has broken your relationship with both of those, having rescued you “from the dominion of darkness and brought you into the kingdom of the Son he loves” (Colossians 1:13-14). However, the attempt at influencing and confusing you with lies goes on. Your weapon against it is the Truth and the words that go with it.

Here’s the truth against one of those lies.

You’re likely familiar with the comparatively recent attempt to promulgate and support gender confusion in every arena. We know this does not come from God, who created us in His own image, “male and female” (Genesis 1:27). There is much more to say about the darkness of this deception (including the essence of procreation itself), but I hope to alert you to a tool being used to sell this lie, one you’ll want to be prepared for.

It’s a single word: “Empathy.” It’s being used as a hammer to get you to go along with people’s feelings, even while those feelings, real or imagined, are wrecking people’s lives. “Empathy” has taken the place of “compassion,” and we need to be clear as to why.

Empathy is imagined and postured, while compassion is real and felt. The word, “empathy,” has only been around for a hundred years or so, while “compassion” is an ancient word. In the last decade or so, “empathy” has been used and demanded increasingly as a way of leveraging societal change. A person can virtue signal by imagining another’s stress and then going along with their course of alleviating it. That’s empathy. Someone who is genuinely compassionate can feel that stress without agreeing with their course of alleviation.

Someone might say, for example: “I have the DNA and body of a man, but I feel like I’m a woman and want to go into women’s locker rooms and bathrooms, and play on women’s sports teams. Have you no empathy for me? I should be allowed to do what I want.” Compassion is free to respond, “I have compassion for your confusion and don’t want you to suffer, but I have a different course for your health because I cannot enter into your delusion.”

Compassion actually cares, and has a course for health that’s based upon the truth—Biblical, god-given truth—while empathy has no foundation. It’s made up, on-the-fly, we might say. It’s man-centered, exalts feelings over truth, and results in lunacy and harm; lots and lots of harm. That’s why people who are disregarding Biblical truth try to leverage you into agreement or silence (at least) by using the word, “empathy.” But you have a foundation for caring that insists upon the truth—God’s truth—which results in health, spiritually and physically.

Of course, we know that walking in the truth is a challenge, especially in a world of suffering and darkness. But the One who is the way, the truth and the life, has given us the Holy Spirit, who leads us in truth and freedom. After all, God is “the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort” (2 Corinthians 1:3-4). And that’s why we care the way we do. And we do.

See you later.

Genesis 1:27 So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. 28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

Hebrews 2:14 Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— 15 and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.

Colossians 1:13 For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

2 Corinthians 1:3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.

Hebrews 4:15 For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things just as we are, yet without sin.

If you’re bothered and burdened with problems and the troubling baggage of bad habits and sin, has it occurred to you that you’re probably working way harder than Jesus is? It’s time you gave Him something to do for you. He’s been waiting and He’s ready.

The Jesus I know seems relatively unconcerned and rarely talks with me about “my baggage,” the stuff that stumbles and plagues me concerning how I want to be and what I want to do. You know, my frustrated desire for self-righteousness, my work on getting myself right, so that I’ll finally make myself work right. That. Obviously, He sees and knows another way and another me, the real me—the me that He made a new creation. And He focuses His attention right there. Perhaps today I will look there, too, and let Him handle the baggage. He seems pretty good with it.

Do you let Jesus handle your baggage, or are you still too caught up in it to let it go? Are you not done working on it yet? He really is perfect with our trash and sin and baggage that sticks with us because we insist upon handling it and doing something with it—at best, moving it around, from here to there.

But Jesus picked you, baggage and all, because He has a plan to be great with you—to handle your trash and baggage and sin, and the stuff that plagues you. So whether it’s drinking too much, swearing too much, sexing too much, being angry and mean too much, or WHATEVER too much, Jesus is really amazing right there—with you and for you so you can let it go, look away from it and look at Him.

He knows all about it anyway. He has been an expert baggage-handler for a long time. It’s part of His plan. The Spirit of God moved the apostle Paul to write a letter to the baggage-overloaded Corinthians.

1 Corinthians 1:26 Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, 29 so that no one may boast before him.

Reading it now, does this reveal a little bit of why you are so appealing to God and His choice? Do you ever look around at your trash and stuff and baggage and think, “What am I gonna do with this?!” Well, that’s part of His plan to look good in what He does for you. See?

1 Corinthians 1:30 It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, He has become your righteousness, He has become your holiness, and He has become your redemption. 31 Therefore, as it is written: “Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.”

And why wouldn’t you boast in what He has become for you so you don’t have to try? See? It’s all a set up for Jesus. Have you thought of your baggage, your particular brand of trash or sin or fleshly stuff in that way? That it’s something for Him to deal with and to carry so you can do something else? It’s true. It is.

So look at Jesus and how He is for you and with you, and let go of controlling your baggage. He can handle it. He can carry it for the rest of your days.

See you later.