Breakthrough

If you've ever been in the ocean, you've more than likely experienced waves knocking you down, being held under the water.

If  you've never had that happen to you, I can only explain it as what it must feel like to be in a large washing machine. You're being tossed and thrown in every direction all at once. You have no idea which was is up until the waves push you down so far that you hit the sand beneath you. That gives you some point of reference, but you still have to fight through the weight of that water pushing you down just to get a breath. It can be scary, multiple memories come to mind where I wasn't sure if I was going to come back up at all.

Isn't life like that sometimes? Things push us down, and hold us underwater. We can't breath, and we get overwhelmed by all of the pressures around us. We're all familiar with the feeling of being held down on the bottom, trying so hard to get a break in life. I think a lot of us are even there right now, today. We need a breakthrough. 

Ephesians 2:14 says, "For He Himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility"

The "He" in this verse is speaking of Jesus Christ. Before you dismiss this as another Sunday school message about how Jesus can solve our problems, hear me out. 

This verse doesn't say Jesus brings peace, or even that Jesus offers peace. It says that Jesus IS peace.

Think of the most peaceful situation that you can imagine. I think of lying in my hammock way up in a tree, I have my headphones in, relaxing in the sun. Those peaceful situations give us a chance to take a deep breath. To let go of the struggles and pressures around us, even if it's only for a moment, and breath. In a way, those situations are small breakthroughs for us. 

Jesus IS our peace. 

In Jesus, we get that deep breath that we need, we get that breakthrough from the struggles of life. Our relationship with Jesus is the most important factor to our breakthroughs, because in Jesus, we're made right with God. That verse from Ephesians says that Jesus broke down the wall of hostility between us and God. That's the gospel! Our sin had put up this wall between us and God, and we couldn't cross it or go around it or get over it. We were stuck. We were being held underwater by our sin. Jesus saw this, and He came and broke through that wall. Jesus didn't show us a path around it, or build a bridge over it. Jesus broke down the wall. Jesus removed all of the separation. We have full access to God through Jesus.

This is huge, and it is a complete game changer. We don't have to be overwhelmed by the struggles around us, or held down by the pressures of life. We have the same power that raised Jesus from the dead living inside of us! We have the promise that we will spend eternity with God. Our God is alive and loves us. The peace that comes with that will overwhelm every circumstance or pressure that could ever rise. 

Our relationship with God is a vertical relationship. The things going on around us today are just horizontal, and Jesus promises to be our peace, not just in the vertical, but in the horizontal as well.

When our vertical life is right, our horizontal life is doable. 

No weapon that is formed against you can prosper, God has promised to reveal His goodness through every circumstance that comes your way. Waves will come. Life happens. We will all be held under at some point or other. This isn't a promise that life won't be tough, but it is a promise that we have a breakthrough in Jesus. When the vertical is right, the horizontal is doable.

Plugged In

I think that every single one of us has wondered, we have all asked the question... What am I here for?

We all want to know what God's purpose for our life is, where we fit in the grand scheme of things. People tell us verses like Jeremiah 29:11 which says, "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope."

We take this verse, and others like it and decide that it is future tense. We go through all of our lives waiting for "the plans I have for you" This might come as a surprise to you, it might not. But either way I pray that you consider this.

God's plan for your life is today.

God knows everything that will ever happen in your life, and He has set works ahead of you for you to walk in them. Ephesians 2:10 declares, "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them."

That verse excites us. God has plans for me! God has good works for me to walk in! Wahoo! It's true, and it is exciting, but I think we're all guilty of wanting to be at the exciting parts today. We want to fast forward the boring dialogue and get to the action.

However, we can't do that. We need to start at the beginning. This calling on our lives, on my life, on your life, it's a lot like a building. We have to start on the first floor, then we can build off of that. We can't remove it, we can't ignore it. Every part of our calling must flow through that.

As Christians, the first floor we must tackle, where our calling begins, is in abiding in Christ.

John 15:4-5, "Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing."

Abiding simply means to remain in, to continue in, or to dwell in. We need to take up residence in Jesus, because without Him we have nothing.

It's kind of like a cell phone. You can do a whole lot of things with phones these days, but if you don't charge them, they're useless. A cell phone with a dead battery doesn't accomplish anything. The more that you do with your phone, the more often you will need to charge it, and there is no other way to charge it than by connecting it to a power source.

A Christian who isn't plugged into God is useless. There's no way to get recharged other than getting with God, connecting to the Source. You have to charge the phone before it becomes effective, and we need to be charged in the same way. Without the constant refilling of the Holy Spirit in our lives, we get burnt out, we wear down, and we become inneffective.

We all want to know what God has planned ahead of our lives, but we need to start with being plugged into God, abiding in Him. As we remain consistent in that, God will bring us into what He has for us. When we remain faithful in the general calling He's put on our lives, He'll be faithful to lead us into the specific calling on our lives.

White Washed Tombs

In the second chapter of Joel, God commands Israel, "Yet even now," declares the LORD, "return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments." Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster."

I was reading this in my quiet time the other day, and it just got me thinking. God is calling Israel out on their sin of rebellion and idolatry, and He says, "stop trying to look like you care, and let this hit your hearts." Notice, God doesn't see their outward show as repentance.

Repentance is an inward turn of our hearts towards God, which is followed by our actions. Our hearts will define our actions, not the other way around.

Jesus said something similar in Matthew 23, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness."

Jesus calls out the spiritual leaders of Israel for the same thing. His rebuke is even harsher! He tells them that they look great, but they are DEAD inside.

That's the real problem with religion if we think about it. It looks awesome, we do all this stuff for God, we make sacrifices, and we tithe, and we serve, but inside we're dead.

Jesus knows that. That's why He came to die on the cross for our sins. Jesus came to defeat religion, and bring it back to relationship. Before the law even existed, Adam walked in the garden with God, Abraham was considered a friend of God. God has always been about relationship.

God has always been about getting deeper than the surface of our actions to the heart behind them.
God is more concerned about your relationship with Him than your tithe check.

Those verses in Joel might look a little bit different today, they might say something like "stop tithing your money and start tithing your hearts!"

Tithing isn't wrong. It wasn't wrong for Israel to show that they were upset with their sin, but the problem rises when it never goes deeper than the show.

We can end up in a worship service singing things like "break my heart for what breaks yours" or "I surrender" But then we leave church and the words become empty. They were nothing more than words we sang during the song.

Those worship songs weren't intended to stay on the projector screens. God's Word wasn't written to give us lots of books that we only use so our bookshelf looks more full.

Those words were inspired by God, so that we would take them and let them change the way that we live, and mold our hearts.

Ephesians 2 tells us that God, being rich in mercy, took us from being dead to being alive.

God brought us to life in Him. That isn't just an outward show of life that looks cool. It's a life that takes root in our hearts, light springs from the darkness and consumes us with the Spirit of God.

There is nothing fake about it, when we have the new life in Christ, we aren't white washed tombs, but resurrected men and women, living and acting in the power of God.

We have the opportunity to be more than mediocre, we can be part of the greatest community, the greatest cause, the greatest Kingdom ever. It all begins with going to Jesus and allowing those words to become real to us, allowing those words to change us from the inside out.