growing up

Ephesians 4:13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, 14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

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Adults like to ask children what they'd like to be when they grow up.  Children like to fantasize about the exciting lives they will have as firefighters, doctors, astronauts or professional athletes.  We are eager for our children to grow up in every healthy way and find satisfaction and joy in work, in marriage, in life!

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But it is interesting that, on the spiritual side, even we adults are still growing up!  Our goal is no longer to become the fireman or the next pro football star.  As believers in Christ, our measure of 'growing up' is the "measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ".  I love the qualities that go with that.  From the passage above we see these characteristics that go with growing up:

-Unity with others who have come to faith

-Personal, intimate knowledge of Jesus

-Rock solid adherence to the Truth

-Truth speaking (from hearts of sincere love)

-Keen awareness that Christ is our head

-Awareness of our personal role in His body and acceptance of that role.

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The apostle Paul was certainly a mature man of God.  Here's what he said about his personal quest to grow up:

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Philippians 3:12 Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. 13 Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

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When it comes to maturing in Christ, growing up means growing up to become more like Christ Himself and the "up" points to the ultimate destination: Heaven!

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blessings,

Rob Smith 

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"Death is inevitable.  Life is a choice!"

John 11:25

Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live."

God is

Exodus 3:14 God said to Moses, "I am who I am." And he said, "Say this to the people of Israel: 'I am has sent me to you.'

Revelation 1:8 "I am the Alpha and the Omega," says the Lord God, "who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty."

John 8:58  Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am."

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If God is...that makes all the difference.  Perhaps the greatest challenge we, as believers, face is the daily choice of walking out this truth.  It is a 'choice' because every day, regardless of what we have come to know and trust of God in the past, we are tempted to live for ourselves and by ourselves.

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The absolute truth that 'God is' should be the starting point of the day, the mid-day place of refuge and the final focus before we surrender to sleep.

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If 'God is' then we must follow His commands, trust in His loving protection, repent of our sin, praise Him for all the blessings of life and the promises He stands behind regarding the future.

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Since 'God is' we can count on opposition from those who do not want to face God and from God's enemy, the devil.  And we must choose whether our attitude throughout the day will show His presence in our lives...or whether we will live as though God is something or someone we discuss or visit on Sunday mornings while the rest of our week we are ruled by our minds alone.

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But...God is!  So how will we walk out this day?

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blessings,

Rob Smith

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"Death is inevitable.  Life is a choice!"

John 11:25

Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live."

benchmark for love

Mark 12:31 The second is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'

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They say that it is good to have a benchmark...a standard...that can be used to measure performance.  In sports there are benchmarks for sprinting, distance running, yards run or passes completed in football, batting averages and earned runs in baseball.  The benchmark informs as to whether performance is fair or excellent (or deep in the 'needs work' department).

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As Christians we are given a benchmark to help us know if we are walking in love toward the people we interact with daily.  From the passage in Mark above we learn that our love for ourselves is that standard.  We all seem to live up to the benchmark of self-love.  Consider this phrase from Ephesians 5:29 "For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it".

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The Ephesians passage is wrapped up in a teaching on how husbands should love their wives.  The words immediately following in that verse show that Jesus follows this benchmark: "just as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body."

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We ought to love others just as we love ourselves because Christ loves us as part of His body.

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Now we know that the benchmark for loving others truly is Christ and we are motivated to obey the primary benchmark:

Mark 12:30 "And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength."

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If we ought to love others as we already love ourselves, we have a standard that we are very familiar with!

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blessings,

Rob Smith

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"Death is inevitable.  Life is a choice!"

John 11:25

Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live."

Fw: peace...an absence and a presence

Proverbs 16:7 

When a man's ways please the Lord,
    he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him.

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Mark 4:39 And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!" And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.

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Colossians 3:15 And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful.

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Peace...such a beautiful word.  To even say the word is refreshing and easy.  It occurs that peace has two aspects.  It is an 'absence' of strife, contention and turmoil.  And as believers in Christ, it is the 'presence' of the Lord.

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We need our hearts to be brought to rest before they can be filled as the Lord intends.  The anxiety and stress of living outside of the Lord defines a lack of peace.  But a life that has been brought near by faith to the very presence of the Lord represents the end of the innate conflict with God, and peace with God results.

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Peace...the absence of turmoil, strife and living on self-power

Peace...the very presence of God from a restored relationship

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blessings and peace,

Rob Smith 

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"Death is inevitable.  Life is a choice!"

John 11:25

Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live."

all of grace

Genesis 2:7 then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

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Without having anything to do with the fact of our lives on earth, we seem to take those lives for granted.  In fact, we hold our lives in the highest value (and that is a good thing).  But it occurred to me that, apart from the grace of God, there would be no lives.  From the verse above we know that the very first person, Adam, was directly formed by God, out of the soil.  And, later, God fashioned Eve from one of Adam's ribs.  The very name, Eve, speaks to God's grace in all of the generations to follow.  Consider this verse:

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Genesis 3:20 The man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.

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I suppose this is why many want to replace the wonder of grace with the conundrum of evolution...because it distracts from the reality that all of life is from grace...the grace of God's hand.  Every human life bears the imprint of Creation.

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If we grasp that all of life is all by grace we return to the One who gave us life and seek His solution to the barriers that have blocked our close relationship with Him since the Garden of Eden.

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For, the grace that lies behind every human life beckons to an eternal dimension of living as well.

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Here is a great promise about eternal life:

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John 6:40 "For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day."

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Life is all of grace, but eternal life calls for a response to grace!  Have you responded?  Consider the proper response.

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blessings,

Rob Smith

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"Death is inevitable.  Life is a choice!"

John 11:25

Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live."

humility

1 Peter 5:6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you.

I think we can have an incomplete understanding of the important concept of humility.  We may think of it as a noble attitude of selflessness, and that is good, but there is more.  Why is it important to be emptied of self?  I think it is so we can be filled with something else.  You might think of humility as "the emptying that fills".  Our nature is to live for self first.  They say that survival is the most basic instinct....personal success may be the second.

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But, if we would desire to be a conduit of the Lord's love in the lives of others, we must place self on the shelf and others as brothers.  Humility preserves all that is uniquely gifted to us individually that we might use those gifts appropriately and effectively to help others and to shine with His light alone.

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Peter says, in the verse just ahead of the one above, "Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble."

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We are to be humble for purpose...emptied of self that we might be filled with pure motive and a passion for others...emptied of self that we might be filled with God.

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Colossians 3:12 Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

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blessings,

Rob Smith

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"Death is inevitable.  Life is a choice!"

John 11:25

Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live."

Fw: seasoned with salt

Colossians 4:6 Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.

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"The word "salary" was derived from the word "salt." Salt was highly valued and its production was legally restricted in ancient times, so it was historically used as a method of trade and currency. The word "salad" also originated from "salt," and began with the early Romans salting their leafy greens and vegetables."  from the History of Salt / Saltworks

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There is a delicate measure of salt that is beneficial to improve taste.  Its presence must be modest because its role is to enhance and satisfy without dominating.  The verse in Colossians exhorts believers in Jesus to have a certain mindset about speaking with those who have not come to faith.  It seems that our speech should be winsome and pleasant, extending care and making a sincere connection.  The majority of words are given to establishing that interest.  We are motivated by the passion for another person to come out of the cold and into the warmth of Christ.  Interestingly, most people are generally satisfied with their lives, even when those lives are outside the saving knowledge of our Lord and even when those lives are built on the fractured foundation of self.

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So, to reach others we must establish a connection of trust that shows real interest and empathy...for that is our real attitude.  And the salt of truth from the Word of God will gain entrance as it rides on the highway of care that we have fashioned.

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A little salt makes a big difference.

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Mark 9:50...Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another

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love,

Rob Smith

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"Death is inevitable.  Life is a choice!"

John 11:25

Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live."

Fw: past and future

Colossians 3:3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

Colossians 2:12 having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God...

Ephesians 2:4-6 But God...made us alive together with Christ-by grace you have been saved-and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus

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We all have a past and we all have a future...but we can't escape living in the present!  We would like some certainty...some assurance that our future is secured but we tend to fret because every day is a new adventure and full of mystery and the unknown.

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So, recently, I was struck by the past tense that is used in scripture to describe our salvation.  We who have trusted in Christ are already with Him in a very real sense.  From the verses in Colossians above we see that we actually have already died, been buried with Christ in baptism, raised through faith and now have our lives securely hidden with Christ.  And Ephesians tells us that our salvation has been secured and, in fact, the reality of being raised and seated with Christ in heaven is described as a past action.

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So, as we move through a continual progression of 'present' living experiences, we can be sure that our life with the Lord is established.

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Consider the words of the apostle John:

John 5:24 Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.

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I hope you see that the Lord is extending the certainty of eternal life to you, if you will admit your need and welcome Him in.

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love,

Rob Smith

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"Death is inevitable.  Life is a choice!"

John 11:25

Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live."

Fw: Workshop of the King

Philippians 2:12 Therefore, my beloved... work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

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So often it is our perspective that drives our purpose.  In the brief passage above we see the word 'work' or 'works' three times.  The first time it appears, it refers to the Christian life, the period of time remaining after one has placed faith in Christ and become saved and the time of departure through death to Heaven. "Work out your own salvation" shows that, just as we have come to faith individually, so we have challenge and purpose to be found in our daily lives.

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But verse 12 is followed by verse 13 and this is where our perspective can drive our purpose.  As we live through our days, we don't work by ourselves to find fulfillment and life satisfaction.  We don't live for ourselves to provide self satisfaction.  We are bearers of the active presence of the Lord, who is working within us.

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And He is not at work solely to provide a satisfying life experience for us...He is at work to accomplish and complete His plans and to give Himself "good pleasure".

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Once we have trusted in Christ and renounced self as center, the Lord enters and, as we learn to listen and obey, something beautiful on the eternal stage is produced.  No wonder Paul describes our attitude as one of "fear and trembling".  We don't fear the problems of living, we are in awe of the true power of God within our very lives.

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blessings!

Rob Smith

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"Death is inevitable.  Life is a choice!"

John 11:25

Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live."