Author: merittmusings

I've been in ministry in the Christian Churches/ Churches of Christ for 20+ years. Finished my doctorate in Biblical Studies in 2015. Serve today as a Hospital Chaplain.

Character

www.bible.com/1713/col.3.12.csb

What does a Christian look like? Certainly, a Christian can look like anyone, right? Because anyone can be a Christian. But let me put forth another idea. You can better tell a Christian by their actions than their appearance. I would say people judge you more based on what you do than how you look. So that ”how can you tell if a person is a Christian?” is based on how they act, not how to dress.

Note the verse above. Three things that come from God are being chosen, holiness, and being dearly loved. Because of those three things, things which we have no power to do ourselves, we acquire and practice the following character traits. These traits help define our character, and we do not achieve them all at once. It takes time and practice to go develop compassion. It takes effort to develop kindness and gentleness. We have to work to suppress pride to humility. Patience, well, you learn through experience. All of these things are within our power to do. But we also have the power of the Holy Spirit to help us be more Christlike. A good person might have one or more of these qualities, but all of them? No. A Christian needs the peaceful contented presence of the Holy Spirit to be able to hold all of these at the same time, to practice to a greater or lesser degree each in turn.

How can you tell a Christian? It’s not by the words they say or how they dress. Watch what they do. Watch what you do. Are you a Christian?

It’s About What You Know

www.bible.com/1713/2pe.1.3.csb

Everything that you need for life and godliness comes from the knowledge you’ve acquired regarding your calling from the Lord. So in this manner, your needs for life and your needs for godliness are met insofar as you have knowledge of God. You cannot exceed your own knowledge of God to meet your needs. Your knowledge must precede the meeting of your needs. I know, it sounds complicated.

Thankfully, it is not merely your own knowledge that is the supply, but it is God’s divine power that does the heavy lifting. But just as you weren’t saved without knowledge of Jesus Christ, so your ongoing needs cannot be let without knowing about your need for them. Your true life, your eternal life and its character of godliness are met and fed by God’s own power, but you need to know that you need them, ask for them, and He will help you grow to maturity. We work before Him with fear and trembling. He works His good work in us to His own good pleasure.

God will not work in you without your knowledge of consent. In this sense, God is the perfect gentleman. So for us, we are not passive recipients of God’s power. We are and must be actively working every day to grow in our knowledge of Him so that we may open the channel so to speak, to widen the stream of His power, to increase the bandwidth so that He is revealed in us.

So that’s why I spend time in this blog every day, and I hope this is why you take the time to read. May God bless you as you seek Him.

Perfection

www.bible.com/1713/mat.5.48.csb

Do you know what perfection is? Can you define it? Would you be able to recognize it? Could you achieve it? Ugh.

When Jesus makes this statement in the Sermon on the Mount, it would have shaken and challenged them as it still does today. However, as I’ve studied this passage, the word translated ”perfection” might be better translated as ”maturity” or ”complete.” It might be more achievable to be mature or complete as God is because it would be impossible for us to achieve the perfection of God.

But again, this returns me to the initial question. Could you recognize perfection? Do you know what perfection looks like?

When I think of perfection, it is, everything is where it’s supposed to be. There is an order and design. There is beauty and awe in perfection. It is often something we recognize intuitively. We don’t have to be taught what it is because even small children can be in awe of perfection, and only more so as they understand the effort required to achieve it.

In the same way, we notice imperfections, flaws and details that don’t look right. So where does this come from? I put to you that this is part of our design. We were built to recognize such thing s because our Father and Designer is divinely perfect. We are built with His sensibility for perfection. So when Jesus challenges us to be “perfect” as God is perfect we are understandably overwhelmed. It is too much. It is beyond us. We are automatically inclined to disagree with Jesus on this point, or out this off to the super-Christians or the Saints. We can’t be perfect.

But we can. If we have accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, been baptized into water for the cleansing our souls by His blood, we are justified before God in our faith and receive the grace and forgiveness for our sins. We are perfect before Him. We are perfectly sinless. We are perfectly loved. We are perfectly justified. It’s an awesome moment. I say moment because we are still human. We will not receive a permanent sinlessness until the moment we die and our struggle with sin is over.

We have this hope in us, that each day we strive to obey this command from our Lord, He too is working in us to help us achieve it. Praised be the Name of the Lord.

Which One Are You?

www.bible.com/1713/rom.8.6.csb

Paul divides people into two broad categories with this text. On the one hand are those who are led by their flesh and its desires. They are motivated by the world and what pleases themselves. On the other hand are those motivated by what pleases God and they follow the desires of the Holy Spirit. These he says are fundamentally incompatible.

For the one led by the flesh will find himself on the path to death. I’ve seen this in heroin addicts. As an extreme example, the heroin addict is addict to a substance that gives them extreme pleasure, but consumes the rest of their lives. Everything else is forfeit, family, relationships, job, personal health, everything is sacrificed for the sake of heroin. It is that powerful a god. But the god being served is self, because self demands the pleasure that comes from the substance. And often these end in overdosed and death. To a greater or lesser degree, every addiction to self, whether it be substances, lifestyles, work, and even family and church, all of these are pale imitations of what we really need, and this fail to satisfy.

So what were we made for, if none of these other things bring us life? We were made for God, and only God can satisfy our deepest needs. We need belonging. We need relationship. We need satisfaction and contentment. We need trust. We need truth. It’s not your typical needs list, is it? But imagine your life without them.

Every one is offered to a greater or lesser extent by the world. And the world fails to deliver, always demanding more. Yet God delivers on these needs from day one. When you have faith in Jesus Christ, the path of life become clear, and Jesus fills your heart with what you really need, the satisfaction you’ve longed for from all of earth’s pale imitations. With God you belong. With God you have peace and contentment. With God you have genuine, honest, loyal love. God will never lie to you. You may not like what He has to say, but God will always tell you the truth. It’s a powerful thing.

The path of following your own desires leads to death. The other path, following what God wants, leads to real living. There really are only two paths. Which one are you?

Keeping in the Love of God

www.bible.com/1713/jud.1.20-21.csb

That’s the real trick, isn’t it? Because if we can master that one, then the rest is easy. Funny how Jude tells us that the key this whole thing is keeping in the love of God. That sounds like that’s something in our power to do, as if we must be doing something in order to stay within the love of God.

Christianity is no passive effort. It is a faith that must remain active, be active, and be proactive. Note the things that Jude suggests we are to be doing: building yourselves up in faith, and pray in the Holy Spirit. Building up can be anything that involves doctrine and instruction, as well as the practical exercise of that faith, living out the principles of Jesus life and work, stepping out in faith in all areas of life. This is trusting the Lord for the outcome, putting in our best efforts as unto the Lord.

Praying in the Spirit, or even, according to the Spirit of God, means that we pray in the confidence of His work, His power and ability. But we also pray according to His will, For while His power is limitless, He determines those things He will do, not us.

Why go through all of this? As Jude offers, it is for the mercy expected from Jesus to invite us to eternal life with Him. And it will be worth it. All the suffering we endure for the Name in this world will be worth the glory and mercy we will experience then.

So let us live day to day in the love of God, seeking His will, speaking to Him, strengthening our relationship with Him so that one day we will see Him face to face. God bless you in your walk today!

From the Beginning

www.bible.com/1713/2jn.1.6.csb

You ever have those little proverbs from your parents of grandparents floating around in your head? For example, ”Clean your plate. There are starving children in Africa.” Or maybe, ”This hurts me more than it hurts you.” These are simple, short proverbs that regardless of how old you become, they are never far. With just a little effort, you can recall them even if you haven’t thought of them in years.

So it is with this commandment which Jesus told us from the beginning. John rephrased it here, since Jesus’s original command in John 15 was to love one another, “as I have loved you,” meaning He gave up His life for us, so we ought to be willing to do the same for our brothers. John furthers this by saying our lives ought to be characterized by this kind of love, so that we walk in love in every step.

How do you express this love? Do you offer little sacrifices here and there? Do you give up your own right to be satisfied when someone else can be blessed? What does this love look like to you?

Just some thoughts for a Wednesday. God bless you today.

Feeling Old

www.bible.com/1713/psa.23.3.csb

If you aren’t younger than 25, you’ve probably felt old. If you are over 40, you’ve definitely felt it. Feeling old is feeling out-of-step with today’s culture. The fact that today’s culture changes by the day doesn’t help. It takes a lot of effort to feel up-to-date and caught up with the modern “lingo” and jargon of emerging society. Sometimes I care, like when I’m trying to communicate with my kids, and other times I just let it go. I’m getting too old for this.

Thankfully, we don’t have to feel old. While the culture may leave us behind, we are not dead. In fact, we are more alive today than ever thanks to the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit. By Him we are being renewed day by day. By Him we are emboldened to make right choices that please God and not ourselves. We can find life in Him if we seek it.

So what are you chasing today? The “rat race”? The “golden goose”? Or are you chasing after God as He leads us into life renewing service every day? It seems we have choice to make on this Monday. God bless!

Faith and Hope

www.bible.com/1713/1pe.1.3.csb

Not sure what you all make of this, but it seems pretty simple to me. Start first with the indisputable fact that the grave was empty that held the body of Jesus. Start there and digest that for a moment. The grave was empty because Jesus rose from the dead. It’s not just for Easter anymore. The grave is still empty. Jesus Christ, the prophet from Nazareth, died and returned to life long past the point an effective ER team could save Him. Jesus was dead. His body flatlined. He was dead for three days. And then He wasn’t. Upon this bedrock, the church is built.

As this verse says, the resurrection of Jesus came from the hand of the only One who could do this. Man could not do this. Medicine could not do this. God did this. And because God did it, and validated the message of Jesus by raising Him from the dead, the promises He gave us are guaranteed by the power expressed in the resurrection. Our new birth through burial in water gives us a hope for eternal life. We rise as He did.

This is the hope for every believer, and I pray is your hope this morning as well. God bless you today.

For Your Edification

I just wanted to link you to another site that I have found helpful. It is called Psycho-Heresy Awareness ministries. I have found it provides necessary balance to all of the other Christian Counseling and Psychotherapy tools that I have been taught over the years, especially in my role as a Chaplain. The site can be found here:

http://www.psychoheresy-aware.org/

On the site you will find ample materials to keep you reading for days. I find it very helpful and I hope you do too!