1-3-14

1-3-14
Ps 3
One of the first things that came to mind when reading this passage was evangelism.  I feel like there is always such a pressure in our society to not say anything confrontational (ie. the truth). But here we are told that The LORD is a shield about me.  What a comforting thought to have as we try to be lights in this world.
The Psalm ends with God getting the victory, thats all that matters, we need to trust Him for that.
Prov 1:8–10
“If sinners entice you, do not consent.”  Well said.
Matt 3:13–4:25
3:16-17 The Trinity exposed. Jesus being baptized. The Spirit descending like a dove. The voice of God from heaven.
Temptation must be battled with the word of God if there is to be victory.  “Your word I have hidden in my heart that I may not sin against you.”

Reading plan 2014

This year I am starting a reading plan through the Bible. I would like to post some thoughts and observations that come out of it.  I'm posting them here on the blog mainly to help keep myself on track and to stay interactive with the text as the year goes on.
Here were some of today's thoughts:

Matthew 2-3:12

The visit of the wise men is really interesting, I wish I had more time to look deeper into it.

-They came from such a long distance to honor a King they knew very little about.

-They showed great dedication and honor to Jesus, not just by the gifts they brought but by protecting Him from Herod.

- Fulfillment of prophesy is throughout this chapter, from the wise men to the flight to Egypt.  Even the decision to go to the district of Galilee instead of Judea.  God had it all planned out and no human will was going to disrupt it.  Then John the Baptist and all that he was prophesied to do.

-John breaks down the legalism of the Pharisees and Sadducees right from the start.

-What a great line “God is able to raise up from these stones..” Human ancestory and deeds are nothing to God, he wants the broken and contrite heart like those that were coming confessing their sins.

-The section ends with John giving praise and adoration to Jesus as well.

-First we have kings coming and bowing down to Jesus and now a man who wears camel hair and eats locust honoring him and Jesus hasn’t even performed on miracle yet.

The Gospel and the Christian Life Part 1

The Gospel and the Christian Life Part 1

I want to take a minute and look at the implications that the gospel bears on our daily life and our struggle with sin.  I believe that a correct understanding of the gospel and the proper application of the gospel to our life is crucial for walking in the spirit and not carrying out the desires of the flesh.

16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. (Galatians 5:16, ESV)

To apply the gospel to your daily life and more importantly to your struggle with sin is basically saying that, "I will think and live my life in the light of the fact that my life and identity are hidden in Christ, I will mentally agree with the facts of the gospel and then I will BY FAITH walk in light of that."

“I will think...”

As believers it is imperative that we have correct thinking about who we are in Christ and this right thinking should propel us into right acting.

I.  Dead and Alive

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins...(Ephesians 2:1, ESV)

Before Christ saved us by His grace we were dead in our sins and absolutely unable to do anything to cure ourselves of our spiritual bankruptcy.  But God pursued us by his grace and breathed life into our spiritually dead corpse.

4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— (Ephesians 2:3-5, ESV)

Now once we have been made alive to God we have to look at the other side of the same coin, which is the fact that we are now dead to sin.  We are alive to God and dead to sin.

6 We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. (Romans 6:6, ESV)

Sin no longer has dominion and control over us.  Your old self has been crucified with Christ.  When Christ was crucified our old self was crucified along with him.  If it was crucified then it no longer has the power over us that it once had.  You are a new creation in Christ, the old is gone and the new has come.  

We must have this truth solidified in our minds.  As believers it is imperative to have this reality consuming our thinking.  We must live and act in such a way that reflects our true standing and position.  This does not mean that we will never sin again but it does mean that we are never to be under the yoke of Satans rule ever again.  If we fall into a pattern of sin it is because we have lost sight of our treasure and have forgotten our position in Christ.  This is why Paul spends so much of his time in so many of his letters reinforcing the foundational truth that as believers our position and identity are hidden in Christ.

Take Ephesians for example, in the first three chapters we are hit with the amazing reality of who we are in Christ (next time you read through the book notice and underline every time Paul mentions the phrase “in Christ”, or “in Him”, or “with Christ” it is overwhelming to see.)  The book starts out in the indicative telling us and showing us where we are.  Then the book moves to the imperative, what we are to do in response to what we were just told about ourselves.  We are to live our lives in direct response to our position in Christ, the gospel.  This concept is made clear in chapter 4:

17 Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. 18 They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. 19 They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. 20 But that is not the way you learned Christ!— (Ephesians 4:17-20, ESV)

And in the following verses we see Paul go through a whole section about “put on” and “put off” because that is how we are to live and act as believers because that is how we learned Christ, through the gospel.  The gospel is not only for justification but it is for sanctification.  It is the gospel through the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit that changes our heart.  Applying the gospel to our struggle with sin is in essence tapping into the means God has given us through His Holy Spirit.

Next time I want to take a look at what those means are, and see how God has graciously allowed us to tap into the gospel.  It is the gospel that saves us and it is the gospel that will empower us to holy living through the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit.  If we are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ and we have surrendered by faith to him we are positionally completely different.  We are a new creation in Christ and now slaves of righteousness, no longer slaves to sin.  (I know this may bring some confusion in many peoples minds as to the reason why we still sin and I hope to build upon this and answer that question more fully as we progress.)  We have to start with this profound truth that we were once dead but now alive, we were once enslaved to sin and now slaves to righteousness.

Time Off

The time off has been such a blessing. Meeting my precious baby girl to hanging out with my awesome little boy to helping my amazing wife. The time of was well worth it and I'm going to miss all of them much as I go back to work.

What to Blog?

I think there are quite a few different things I will attempt to blog about. As an overarching theme I will do my best to give glory and praise to The Lord Jesus Christ. I never want to loose sight of our Lord and Savior and how He should be the center of every aspect of my life. So weather I post about some Scripture reference or some woodworking project I'm currently working on, I want my boast to be in Jesus Christ who has freely given Himself for me and is worthy of all praise and adoration.
Another goal of mine is simply to have a written record of thoughts and events from my life (not that there is anything special about me that's worth the time and effort it takes to document that) so that I can look back on different stages of my life and see where The Lord has taken me and my family. Also I would like this to be something my wife and children can look to as a source of encouragement now and in the future.
So in a nutshell; I want this ultimately to be a blog that is honoring to God no matter what topic or subject I talk about.

Why the name Now To Him...?

    The name Now To Him... was not difficult for me to land on because it comes from the beginning of my favorite verse(s) in scripture:

Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of His glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen. (Jude 24-25)

    This has been a staple verse when it comes to my walk with the Lord.  I don't think I have recited or pondered a verse more than this verse.  Whether in times of trial, sin, temptation, or joy this verse has alway been the one to float to the top and provide the peace and rescue my soul needed.  If you have ever spent any time memorizing scripture (or anything for that matter) what you will find is that you always (or at least for me) use some type of formula or "starter" to help you call to mind that thing in which you were memorizing.  Whether it be an acronym or some type of word association technique we all have something we use to help stimulate our mind into remembering whatever it is we want to remember. "Now to Him" was that starter for me, I knew that if I can just have those three words down it would be easy for me to recite the whole passage because it started the verse in my mind. We need these reminders in our life to point us "to Him". In times of trial, sin, temptations, or joy we need and must go "to Him" who is our comfort in trial, redeemer from sin, deliverer from temptation, and source of all joy.  

With my whole heart I seek you; let me not  wander from your commandments! I have  stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you. (Psalms 119:10, 11 ESV)

    I would encourage you all to hide Gods word in your heart, there is no greater use of your time or efforts. Jack Hughes said once in a sermon "Reading Scripture is good, studying Scripture is better, memorizing Scripture is best."
    Where to start? Many times we don't commit scripture to memory because we can't decide where to start. Pick your favorite book or chapter and take a verse out of there. Take a verse out of whatever book your studying presently, it will help you get a better understanding of the passage. I'm currently trying to memorize certain passages from the book of Proverbs because we are reading a chapter from Proverbs as a family every night after dinner. (I have found a deep need for wisdom in parenting recently and this is super helpful.) I also have an app on my phone called "Fighter Verses" put out by Desiring God Ministries that is super helpful and gives you a new verse every week to memorize (this is also helpful if you don't know where to start because it starts you off with a list already set up.) 
    Well I hope this has been encouraging and helpful. I hope that this blog can point you "to Him" who is the "author and perfecter or of our faith". That is my goal and I hope it comes out in my writings, because to Him belongs all glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.

Why a blog?

Wow, where to begin?
Well I never thought I would be hosting a blog, that's for sure.
First off, if you somehow stumbled across this blog and you are actually taking the time to read it your probably a family member or really good friend of mine and you obviously have the gift of patience and mercy.  I want to state a disclaimer right from the start: If you are reading this and thought to yourself, "I'm interested in reading something very profound and enlightening", you're at the wrong blog...or..."I'm interested in reading some well written material", again you are at the wrong place.  I would love to point you to countless blogs that will offer much more in quality and quantity than I could ever offer.
So if you are still reading (and I'm not sure why) I would love to explain my intentions a little more clearly.
Why a blog?
Well from time to time I have thoughts or ideas or studies (Biblical in nature) that I sometimes get the urge to share with people (so get a Facebook account and join the rest of the world).  Well first off I hate Facebook (yes I have an account and am considering deactivating it) and I don't like posting on it for multiple reasons, the biggest being that I don't like the fact that I have to sift through so much worthless junk (posts like "I'm bored, who wants to hang out" or "why do the Lakers suck so bad this year" etc.) to read something from someone I'm actually interested in hearing from.  So I thought to myself, "self, why don't you start your own blog that you can talk about whatever you want to so that people who actually care about what you have to say can take the time out of their busy schedule to check in and find out for themselves instead of having to sift through hours of endless boring jargon on FB" (and yes if you were wondering I do talk to myself like that quite often ((and if you were also wondering why all the parenthesis? That's just my style, I like to communicate that way.(((in fact one of my favorite authors writes books in a similar manner and I absolutely love reading him because he communicates so much like me even adding sarcasm throughout...his name is Jay Adams, he revolutionized the way Christians do Biblical counseling and his writings are amazing, I would recommend any and all of his books to you, well worth the read))) (ok i forgot where I was, oh...) So that's basically my intentions as to why a blog opposed to something else. (Maybe sometime in the future I will devote some time to expanding on the many aspects of why I dislike FB so much but we will save that for another time...)
That's it for now but I am currently working on my next profound post which will probably be titled Why the name Now To Him...? (probably should have made that my first post...oh well) so if you're still interested stay tuned and I will not only explain that but also share a little about what kind of content I will Lord willingly be posting about. Thanks