“What’s wrong with those people?” “How can people be so stupid?” “How can people be so uncaring?”

When my interaction with people reveals comments like these are at a sort of flood-stage, a torrent of angst and vitriol, I’m tempted to raise my voice with a perfect tonic of comments that will end the self-righteous floods. “Ha! Sure, Ralph. Good luck with that,” you might be saying. Fortunately, the Wise One living in me pointed out my foolish attempt at flood control (which would only add to the flood), by reminding me that He and I are all about Something Else. It’s not something that stops the flow, but something that rescues those caught up in it. The apostle Paul was also caught up in Something Else centuries ago, and what he wrote catches my attention this today:

Colossians 2:1 I want you to know how hard I am contending for you and for those at Laodicea, and for all who have not met me personally. 2 My goal is that they may be encouraged in heart, having been knit together in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, 3 in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. 4 I tell you this so that no one may deceive you by persuasive arguments.

Did you catch that? Did you notice those sequences, each phrase building off another, so that we may know Christ? Let me put it another way. If you’ve been reborn into Christ, but have been deluded into looking for “wisdom and knowledge” outside of where you are, then what you’re finding is false treasure. How can you tell? The evidence will be that you’re not “encouraged in heart, having been united in love,” because you’re not knowing “the mystery of God, namely, Christ,…” The unity you’re looking for in the world has been given to you in Christ alone, but the deception of the world’s “persuasive arguments” has beguiled you toward making another one that He didn’t. The Spirit is calling you off of the flood abatement team because you’re not part of it; you’re part of Something Else.

I’m not saying that Christians shouldn’t be mindful of the water. I’m saying we should be mindful of what the Spirit is doing with us and in us, so that we know Christ, “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” From knowing Him, will come our reach to those who are just now carried away. So, live your life in Christ, and He’ll see to your reach.

Colossians 2:5 For though I am absent from you in body, I am present with you in spirit and delight to see your orderly manner and the stability of your faith in Christ. 6 So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, 7 having been rooted and now being built up in him and established in your faith, as you were taught, and overflowing with gratitude.

See you later.

What’s going on? Why do we make choices and act so differently from one another? Can’t we all agree and get together? There’s a “together,” another “together” we have to think about first, because it affects everything else.

Christians have been given the eternal life of Jesus Christ and been put into Him (John 3:14-16). They, we, are all together there. Naturally, none of us will ever be viewed or treated by God as separate from Him, let alone each other! He did the giving and the putting! (See Romans 8:35-39.) In Him, all of us have all things already (Ephesians 1:3-14), and God provides the grace and power by His Spirit to His body (that’s us) for His purpose and glory. Let’s agree on that. We are together. We are in unity there, because of our union with Christ. He did it! He was successful.

And that’s why we look, choose and act so differently from one another. From that beginning, we’re gifted and motivated by God according to His perfect design of His perfect body (1 Corinthians 12:12-27). We’re all good! We’re together at the same starting place. Heaven isn’t so much our finish line as it is our starting point (Ephesians 2:6-7). We’re from the same place, having the same God-given DNA. But like a single, beautiful, heavenly fireworks explosion, we won’t do the same from that place.

We’re not supposed to. The best we can do for each other is not gripe and grumble at each other and try to change each other’s trajectory, but to remind each other of our shared starting point. In other words, to build each other up in Christ, where we are together, so that the Spirit’s influence may be our primary influence. That’s where our health is—with Him. We’re all suffering from worldliness—some of us more than others—so let’s apply the gospel of God’s truth and grace to each other’s wounds. That’s how we help each other. We don’t tell each other to “Heal yourself! Get better!” We serve the truth of God’s grace—what He did and where we are, in Him—to each other. That’s what saves us every day.

Let’s remember and remind each other about the grace of God that starts and continues the work of God in us. In Him, we’re together and safe—we’ve simply got some different things to do.

See you later.

Imagine Jesus suddenly walking into the little room where you’re sitting all alone. What happens? Think about it. Turn on your imagination.

What’s the expression upon His face as He approaches you? How’s His body language? Is He uptight? Does He hurry up and get past the greeting because He’s preoccupied with His To-Do List? Or is He lit-up with delight to be with you, knowing as He does that He is your Lord and Benefactor, having all things for you, His friend and confidant?

In that little room, you’d have the day of your life. And all you want—in that room and outside of it—is shaped by who He is and how He is with you.

This is life with Jesus. This is life by the Spirit. This is why it’s so good to think about, read, write, pray and talk about the goodness of God to us in Christ. There is no burden to it, no responsibility for our performance, and no judgement about the quantity and style of our enjoyment. Enjoying God with you is the thing! You know it’s true by what it does for you, and what it does for others through you. How better to display God’s grace than to enjoy Him?

That little room is in you. There’s no where you have to go. No mountain top or valley low that’s a better place to enjoy Him. No mood music or lighting by which to provide a better atmosphere for Him to show up. You’re it. God’s plan of the ages has come to pass in you. Growing in that grace, growing in believing and knowing that is maturing in the faith. That’s not much of an effort, is it? No. So enjoy.

See you later.

Are you a good dancer?

What if the world’s best dancer were to call you, a fumbler, out to the dance floor and take you in arm? What’s the one thing you’d want to do?

Would it be to tell him how bad of a dancer you are, and talk him out of it? Would it be to pre-apologize because he’s not going to get anywhere with you? Knowing that you’ve got nothing to offer, would you try to drum up some confidence and put on a happy face to put the crowd at ease?

No. I don’t think so. It would be to give all of your attention and hope to him. You would look away from your feet and the test they were about to go through, and look at his face and in his eyes, and find your confidence in him and his ability to lead you where you could never by yourself. He is Perfect, and the dance—from beginning to end—would be to prove it to you and with you. And everyone would know that you’d found your step and movement in the grace of His.

Philippians 4:11 I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.12 I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. 13 I can do all this through him who is my strength.

See you later.

What’s one of the most evil and persistent strategies against you today? It’s this: to get you to move away from or doubt foundational, starting point truth, so you can’t get anywhere well. You’ll be offtrack from the start.

So, God gave you the Holy Spirit and the apostle Paul the grace and power to warn you by writing about three things: the changes God made to you, the threat to deceive you about them, and how to not be moved away—and avoid suffering the results.

Colossians 1:21 Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. 22 But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without fault and free from accusation— 23 if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.

How incredibly well-off you are with God! How wonderfully practical it is when we think of each other in keeping with how God thinks of us. (That’s living by faith.) He’s right about us: He’s made us holy, without fault and free from accusation—so don’t be moved away from that. It’s when we’re lured away from the awesome truth of how God has made us (holy and faultless) that demonic and fleshly accusations begin to find their mark in our minds. (“You can’t be that good. Look at your behavior and thoughts. You’re going to suffer for that!”) Nothing has changed concerning our condition; we remain holy and flawless in Christ, but everything begins to change in our believing…and we’re not free from accusation. That’s the strategy against you.

Remember: since Christ moved into you, you also moved into the new realm of the body of Christ. In that place, in Him, your new way of living is to believe and enjoy the truth about what God did for you, which means you’ll reject and defeat the lies that tell you anything less or anything else.

The point? Don’t be moved away from the gospel of God’s grace to you in Christ. Start there—or restart there!—and think about it. That’s how you won’t be moved. For you and me, that’s reality.

2 Corinthians 10:3 For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. 4 The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

In other words, what He did for you, how He started with you, and how you remain in Him! .That’s how you won’t be moved away from God’s starting point, and how you can help others remain anchored in the truth.

See you later.

Here’s the question: as we move into the new year, what’s your hope? If you had to sum it up, what would it be?

Many of us have a good, long history of making promises on December 31, and why not? It’s right there, big as anything on the calendar. And because it follows the common practice of feasting and celebrating during the month of Christmas(!), we often have extra reasons to start over. Start new. Start again. Start fresh. There’s no harm in that…unless you scrutinize my success rate too closely. How about if you watch after yours, and I’ll watch over mine. Deal?

Anyway, before you put together your new start ideas for success, think about how successful Jesus was at putting you together for your new start with Him. Before you move a muscle or take a first alert breath on January 1, 2025, consider what Paul wrote:

Galatians 2:20 The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

There are a lot of reasons why this is such a good passage, but a big one is that God always begins with what He has done for you. That’s His starting point with you every day, throughout the day. That just might make a difference for you in those days, don’t you think? You’ve been made new and live by faith; faith that Jesus was successful with you, that He is successful with you, and that He will be successful with you. You live from His success. In every day and in everything, He is perfect with you and perfect for you. He is your starting point.

Consider also Colossians 2:9-10 For in Him all the fullness of the Deity dwells in bodily form, and in Him you have been brought to fullness.

“Fullness.” What’s missing from fullness? Nothing. Not a thing. That happened at the start He made for you. He was successful, which means you’ve got no room for more because you have everything already. You’re starting full up! He did it.

With Jesus, you don’t ever start incomplete, you start complete. You don’t start empty, you start full. You don’t start wounded, you start well. You don’t start broken, you start whole. From your new birth in Christ, your mind is catching up to the truth of who you are as a new creation—a perfect son, a perfect daughter of God already (See Hebrews 10:10,14). That’s your starting point! If you’ve been thinking or speaking differently, consider the truth, especially when confronted by your feelings. They’re not always your friend—they can lie—and the Holy Spirit will strengthen and help you with the truth. That’s what He does. He’s rather good at it.

Fortunately for you and me, the Spirit won’t rely upon our promise to remember all of this! And it’s not because we’re so bad at remembering or keeping our promises, it’s because teaching us and reminding us of the truth is what He does! In other words, He likes it, and it comes to us with an added benefit:

John 14:26 But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. 27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

These are promises He made and keeps; He never takes them back! He’s going to be perfect with us in 2025, and we’ll have 365 days for Him to show us. Now that’s the making of a Happy New Year!

See you later.

Here’s good news: If you’re fighting a big fight against sin so you can have a good life, you may well be fighting the wrong fight.

Sometimes we are tricked into fighting in an ineffective and immature way. For example, if we struggle with anger, we assume we should fight against it. If we’re prone to lust or covetousness or envy, “Well, stop it! Fight it, man!” Then we make up ways to fight. But that’s not the main fight.

The apostle Paul helped a young Christian, Timothy, to fight the right way, the one way by which God’s life prevails for us.

1 Timothy 6:12 Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses. 13 In the sight of God, who gives life to everything, and of Christ Jesus, who while testifying before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you 14 to keep this command without spot or blame until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, . . .

Paul knew what we must know if we’re going to mature in Christ. The fight, the one main fight, is to take hold, to enjoy, to be fascinated with the life that has no beginning or end, “the eternal life” of God Himself—now given, now shared with you and with me. “Keep this one command of faith. Fight for this—the gift of God’s life in you.”

The thing is, Colossians 2:20-23 tells us that you and I have died to the way this world does things and fights to be effective. Christians are not of this world, having been placed into the new world, the new creation, the new existence of the body of Jesus. Romans 6 tells us that there, in the new reality and existence, we have died to sin and become free of it already!

How crazy is it, then, for us to be lured into fighting sinful cravings and sinful ways in the same way that everybody else does? We don’t do it that way! That’s not our fight. That’s not the one command to cherish and to keep: “Take hold of the eternal life of God.” That’s the fight for the immature Timothy and for the mature Paul. And for you. And for me.

In his last letter to Timothy, Paul writes this: “. . . the time for my departure is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Timothy 6:6-7). And that good fight of faith meant God’s life kept Paul.

How do we really live? How do we resist the sinful and crazy stuff that clamors for us in this world and wars against our souls? We fight to know and believe that God’s eternal life is our reality NOW. That’s the way by which God’s life prevails for us.

Let’s help each other take hold. Amen?

(What if you believe you have to do something to “break through” into Christian maturity, but God knows He’s already accomplished it for you? How can you live by faith when you’re wrong? Here’s the truth that will encourage you!)

What do you think of the term, “dependence upon God”? Is it important to you and your Christian life? Has anyone ever urged you to “give up your independence from God so you can become dependent upon Him”? If so, you’ve been urged to do something you cannot do. It’s impossible. But if you try anyway, you’ll be magnificently frustrated in judging your own level, your own quality of success, because independence from God is an illusion for the Christian. An impossibility!

You will never be independent from Him in any way—not for one moment—since He lives in you and you live in Him—forever together, united. One in the Spirit of God, One in the body of Christ Himself. You know, God. What you want is to believe you are not independent and never will be, and to enjoy and trust in that new life, that new existence with the Spirit. Hooray! He did it! And He’s going to wake you up to it every day. He’ll be saying in effect to you, “We’re together! Let’s go, into our day together!”

1 Corinthians 6:17 Whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit.

See you later.

What happens when your thinking goes off wandering into things that are not true?

A tiny, early in the day post of mine from several years ago was this: “Good morning! God is with you – and what if He’s actually happy about that? What if being with you is His big time plan for today?”

Well that’s nice. However.

My first-moment thoughts of the day are not always clean and sparkling, shiny and noble. Sunshine! Sometimes they are heavy and foreboding, dark and twisted. Fortunately, I have another Thinker, Who doesn’t always wait for my thinker to get thinking in the right direction.

Just this morning, as I was being lulled into reasons for being downcast in the day ahead (“I won’t succeed.” “I’ll never get it done.” “It won’t be any good…because I’m not any good.”), the following words appeared in my mind as though my own: “My yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:30). “Aha! There you are!” I thought. “You’re here, right here with me. And we’ll be together today, just as fruitful as you intend. Thank you for thinking for me, Lord. Will you think with me throughout the day?” His response was, “What do you think?” I loved it.

Now those are good thoughts.

If your thinker goes screwy sometimes, you’re not alone. And oftentimes the way through it is to rethink what you’re thinking: “Wait! Why am I thinking lies? I know the truth, I live by the truth, and the truth is . . .” That’s guarding your thinker. That’s important. (See Colossians 3:1-4.) But sometimes the Perfect Thinker Himself thinks for us, proving Himself in us and for us, guarding us. Oh, how I love that. I like being guarded by the Spirit, don’t you? We’re not alone. We’re not the only guard. And He proves again that being with us is His big time plan for the day.

Philippians 4:7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Who’s peace is it? It’s His peace. It’s Him guarding you.

2 Timothy 1:14 Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you – guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.

I’m glad that He is my Perfect Thinker. See you later.

Why be thankful?

“Thankfulness” has been taught for many years as a tool to be nicer and feel better. And I can say that when I’m thankful, I do feel better. But I think true thankfulness comes from enjoying my favorite four letter word, “WITH.”

Yes, we rightly make a big deal out of the four letter word, “love.” But love doesn’t happen unless there’s with. The most valuable and influential “with” I know is the with I enjoy with God. From Isaiah to Matthew, God has been telling us about His delight to one day be with us through the birth of Jesus, which means, “Immanuel; God with us” (Matthew 1:23). That was the beginning of what would become God’s favorite, current and ongoing miracle, the birth of Jesus into us—The Ultimate With.

The Ultimate With—Christ in me—has become the miracle influence of every other with I’ve known and will ever know. As soon as God made Immanuel personal with me, my relationship with this world took on His nature. In the early days of with, my relationship with school, alcohol, women, opportunity, friends, enemies, money, judgments, appearances, all changed—sometimes dramatically—because I knew He was with me, influencing me, proving we were compatible and together inside.

I knew love Himself for the first time. And it was all because of with. Am I thankful? Dear God, yes. Every day. All the time.

So as we enter a season of merry-making and feasting, I want to remind you that God isn’t asking you to have an attitude of gratitude, as if that’s most pleasing to Him. He’s proving the grace and power of with, because that’s most pleasing to Him. And He’ll do it as you go amongst family and friends, enemies and supporters, shoppers, drivers, neighbors, servers, politicians and publicans, left and right. That’ll mean “with” all over the place! In case I haven’t made it clear enough, this is Christianity—God with us; The Ultimate With.

See you later.