Deep-End Discipleship

“Therefore, I say to you, don’t worry about your life, what you’ll eat or what you’ll drink, or about your body, what you’ll wear. Isn’t life more than food and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds in the sky. They don’t sow seed or harvest grain or gather crops into barns. Yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you worth much more than they are? Who among you by worrying can add a single moment to your life? And why do you worry about clothes? Notice how the lilies in the field grow. They don’t wear themselves out with work, and they don’t spin cloth. But I say to you that even Solomon in all of his splendor wasn’t dressed like one of these. If God dresses grass in the field so beautifully, even though it’s alive today and tomorrow it’s thrown into the furnace, won’t God do much more for you, you people of weak faith?” Matthew 6:25-30 It's May! That means finals, stress, looking forward to summer, and an extra dose of stress about everything we still have to ...

 “ But Peter ran to the tomb. When he bent over to look inside, he saw only the linen cloth. Then he returned home, wondering what had happened.” - Luke 24:12 CEB - Often we feel like we need to get it. We need to get it quickly. The pressure is on. The test seems to be in front of us. And yet sometimes it just doesn’t make sense. Often when we talk about God, it feels like we have to have all the answers now. We need to know exactly what God is about, exactly what God is doing now. And yet this is why I love Peter in the Gospel of Luke! Jesus dies, the disciples mourn, and then suddenly something happens that third day when the women go to the tomb. They come back and tell the disciples that Christ is risen but none of them believe them. It feels as if they are talking nonsense. Peter even decides to run to the tomb himself. And even then he returned home wondering. Sometimes I think that at times this is all God wants or needs of us. God just wants...

“But you aren’t self-centered. Instead you are in the Spirit, if in fact God’s Spirit lives in you. If anyone doesn’t have the Spirit of Christ, they don’t belong to him. If Christ is in you, the Spirit is your life because of God’s righteousness, but the body is dead because of sin. If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your human bodies also, through his Spirit that lives in you.” Romans 8:9-11 If we live in the Spirit and the Spirit lives in us, our bodies will receive life. Christ, who lived in flesh restored it. Christ came to bring salvation and salvation is life giving! Therefore our flesh, originally made good, has been restored by the one who embodied flesh perfectly. Jesus truly was 100% divine and 100% human, and Paul does indeed affirm this. Jesus was absolutely of total humanity, but without sin. We know that we were not created sinful, and so sin is not necessary to gen...

"It’s not that I have already reached this goal or have already been perfected, but I pursue it, so that I may grab hold of it because Christ grabbed hold of me for just this purpose. Brothers and sisters, I myself don’t think I’ve reached it, but I do this one thing: I forget about the things behind me and reach out for the things ahead of me. The goal I pursue is the prize of God’s upward call in Christ Jesus."  -Philippians 3: 12-14 CEB Goal setting is an important process that can help us grow in numerous ways. When we set goals we are motivated to accomplish something, or reach a new level in something. This could be a goal in academics like a grade on the STAR test or the SAT. Maybe your goal is in your sport like trying to beat your fastest time, or personal records. Goals help us decide what we want in the future, and gives us aspirations to get there. So if we set goals in aspects of life like school, sports, music, art, or work… Do we set goals for our...

“So then, if anyone is in Christ, that person is part of the new creation. The old things have gone away, and look, new things have arrived! In other words, God was reconciling the world to himself through Christ, by not counting people’s sins against them. He has trusted us with this message of reconciliation.” – 2 Corinthians 5:17, 19 – Friendship is a truly special yet sometimes complicated thing. As small children, friendship seems easy. As we grow, friendships tend to get more complicated. As we grow up, friendships tend to become more complicated. Sometimes a friend can do something to us that’s truly painful, or, perhaps we do something painful to a friend. It’s sadly so easy to hurt, intentionally or unintentionally, those closest to us. Reconciliation is when two parties choose to forgive past hurt or grievance and come up with some kind of resolution in how to move forward in the relationship. According to the Bible, we were separated from God because of our s...

Just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my plans than your plans. so is my word that comes from my mouth; it does not return to me empty. Instead, it does what I want, and accomplishes what I intend.  - Isaiah 55:9, 11 (CEB) - We’ve all been there. We feel exactly like a dead cell phone - drained, useless, practically dead weight. We wonder what on earth God could do with us. We hear talk of God’s purpose, but without some spark beyond ourselves we will never be more than what we feel. This is exactly why I love reading the prophets sometimes. Sure there are times when they are hard on God’s people, but there are beautiful places when they also remind God’s people that their goodness is not determined on what they think. God is ready to work in us before we even know what to do. God’s plan is so much bigger and larger than any of our own doubt, self-pity or uncertainty. God’s plan does not r...

Jesus and his followers came into Jericho. As Jesus was leaving Jericho, together with his disciples and a sizable crowd, a blind beggar named Bartimaeus, Timaeus’ son, was sitting beside the road. When he heard that Jesus of Nazareth was there, he began to shout, “Jesus, Son of David, show me mercy!” Many scolded him, telling him to be quiet, but he shouted even louder, “Son of David, show me mercy!”  Jesus stopped and said, “Call him forward.”  They called the blind man, “Be encouraged! Get up! He’s calling you.”  Throwing his coat to the side, he jumped up and came to Jesus.  Jesus asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?”  The blind man said, “Teacher, I want to see.”  Jesus said, “Go, your faith has healed you.” At once he was able to see, and he began to follow Jesus on the way. Mark 10:46-52 CEB The Gospel of Mark is full of healing stories, to the point where the gospel glosses over some of them because there are so m...

“The truly happy person doesn’t follow wicked advice, doesn’t stand on the road of sinners, and doesn’t sit with the disrespectful. Instead of doing those things, these persons love the Lord’s Instruction, and they recite God’s Instruction day and night! They are like a tree planted by streams of water, which bears fruit at just the right time and whose leaves don’t fade. Whatever they do succeeds.” -Psalm 1:1-3 CEB- Have you ever had to make a really difficult choice? It can be very difficult to decide between multiple options for a situation, and decide which one you are going to choose. Sometimes these choices are between multiple good things, and sometimes it’s between good and bad. There are so many things that influence the things that we do every single day. TV shows, friends, parents, social media, peer pressure and many other factors come into play everyday as we decide how we act and operate in our daily lives. It is sometimes crazy, and scary to me how influenced w...

1  Have mercy on me, God, according to your faithful love!   Wipe away my wrongdoings according to your great compassion! Wash me completely clean of my guilt;   purify me from my sin! Psalm 51:1-2 CEB Have you ever had a moment where you found yourself overwhelmingly upset at something you've done? Perhaps you knew the thing was wrong at the time or you realized it later, but you got to a point where you felt so sad, perhaps angry, at yourself for doing it. We all have these moments. Perhaps the regret comes in the moment of getting caught for the wrong thing we did or perhaps seeing the negative consequences of such an action created remorse with us. The weight of our sin is incredibly burdensome, but the good news is that God always forgives us when we confess our sins. Today is Ash Wednesday which is a day that begins the season of Lent which is the season that leads to Easter. Lent has often been associated with giving something up for a period of time. Th...

  “ Listen, I’m telling you a secret: All of us won’t die, but we will all be changed.” - 1 Corinthians 15:51 CEB - Secrets are so great and so awful! We love to be the one with knowledge to share with someone else. But we hate to be left out of the loop. Often we are afraid that secrets shared without us are designed to hurt us or are about us or we simply do not want to be left out of the loop. Yet we can’t help but draw in close for someone whispering into our ear. Yet some secrets are so important that they need to be shared with everyone. Instead of being told in quiet corners and subtle conversations, they need to be shouted for all from the rooftops. Of all secrets the message of Jesus is needed to be told to all! Jesus lived, served, died and rose again to bring us new life. Just as Christ died, so we die to who we think we need to be and instead are allowed to be transformed into who God created us to be. Both now and forever more! The best part is t...

Jesus responded, “If you recognized God’s gift and who is saying to you, ‘Give me some water to drink,’ you would be asking him and he would give you living water.”  The woman said to him, “Sir, you don’t have a bucket and the well is deep. Where would you get this living water?   You aren’t greater than our father Jacob, are you? He gave this well to us, and he drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks from the water that I will give will never be thirsty again. The water that I give will become in those who drink it a spring of water that bubbles up into eternal life.” John 4:10-14 CEB As I’ve noted before, the Gospel of John stands out among the gospels. One of the ways that John is different is found in this chapter and the story of the Samaritan woman. From the beginning of this story in John 4:4 to the end in John 4:42, the Samarit...

“ Jesus came down from the mountain with them and stood on a large area of level ground. A great company of his disciples and a huge crowd of people from all around Judea and Jerusalem and the area around Tyre and Sidon joined him there. They came to hear him and to be healed from their diseases, and those bothered by unclean spirits were healed. The whole crowd wanted to touch him, because power was going out from him and he was healing everyone. Jesus raised his eyes to his disciples and said: “Happy are you who are poor,   because God’s kingdom is yours. Happy are you who hunger now,   because you will be satisfied. Happy are you who weep now,   because you will laugh.” Luke 6: 17-21 CEB There is a lot of pressure in life to be perfect. This pressure can often add up to a very heavy weight to carry. Somehow we are taught to measure our life by the length of our resume, AP classes, or our GPA. This high level of success can motivate us to reach ...