On "Not the Jesus I believe in"

There is common reminder that Jesus was not the messiah they expected to see, but not much has changed in history. So many people have an idea of what they think a king, a god, a messiah should look like and do.

Even while Jesus hung on the cross in Matthew 27, people passed by "hurling abuse at HIm, wagging their heads and saying, 'You who are going to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save Yourself! If You are the Son of God, come down from the cross." So when Jesus is doing all those things in a different way than they think He should, they deny Him as king and true God.

IT is still the same today. They mock and ridicule Jesus for not being what they assume He should be. We do not get to define what Jesus should be or do. Yet, this is what believers and non-believers alike will consistently do. We need only accept Christ as He has presented himself to us in Scripture.

Let me love you

There are days when it seems God just wants to love me. There are days when I sit with open Bible and heart, and I wait....and wait... There are days when God does not speak to me in His Word, even when I come faithfully to it. There are days when I will sit and stare at the pages, reading a text without affirmation of any message or lesson. There are days when I will sit silently awaiting God and all I will receive is a challenge to my heart to close my Bible and let God love me.

There are days when I am ready and prepared to discover God in his Word and I am challenged to sit and let God love me. Searching the word of God will not prove necessary every single day. There are days when my heart truly needs to be still and rest in God's love; to sit and pray, "Abba, I belong to you. Please love on me today."

Some days bring my heart to a place where God has a different challenge than I realize coming into it. I cannot depend on the word speaking to me every single day I come to it. If someone desired to know me, they can only ready my journals so many times before they would need to step away from them a little while and let me love them, get to know them, talk with me, get a cup of coffee with me and let me relate to them. There are days when I need to step away from the word and sit with God and allow him to love me...to accept his love.

There are days when my mind has soaked up all the love God is pouring on to me, leaving my heart and soul a little dry. There are days when my heart aches to know the love of God and engaging my mind just will not cut it that day.

Some days God desires to lavish his love upon me. If I would only but receive it. It is on those days I have to really test my faith and abide in Abba's love. Because studying is easy when the words are there to understand and dissect, but my heart and soul operate on another faith which simply allows itself to be loved. There are those days when God desires to pour his love out on my heart, and I need to willingly receive that tender love. Today is just one of those days.

Magnify

Have you ever read certain terms in scripture or used certain terms in your Christian speak without knowing what they mean?

Me neither...

Except all the time.

Have you ever had moments when those terms just open up to you in meaning?

'Magnify' is one of those words for me. We are to magnify the Lord, and the Lord shall be magnified. It is one of those words that are vague until you put such a simple understanding to it.

It made so much since when I thought about a magnifying glass and its purpose. Now suddenly, magnifying God makes plenty of sense.

As with a magnifying glass, I would make anything within its focus BIGGER.

Everything else is smaller. God should be and is made so much bigger when he is in focus.

I magnify God when He is made bigger than all my other things...

bigger than my stress bigger than my problems bigger than my deadlines bigger than my deficiencies bigger than my accomplishments bigger than my...

Lessons of Levi

Scripture, unlike our attempts at active reflection today, shows Jesus going to Levi at Levi's tax-collecting booth.  Jesus actually went to Levi's place of sin.

Then Jesus asks Levi to follow him.  I do not recall a sinner's prayer or even a Roman's Road.  Perhaps one of Jesus' bonehead disciples had a huge wooden sign that read, "God hates tax collectors!  The kingdom of God is near.  Repent or die!"

But I do not recall that in scripture either.  Anyway!  Jesus calls Levi, and Levi follows very willingly.  Oh!  It doesn't end there.  Going to one tax collector's little booth was not enough.  Jesus goes to have some dinner with Levi and a bunch of other tax collectors.  Jesus sat and hung out with them. I read that he sits with them; eating.

This was not the guys getting together for some food and cards either.  Scripture tells us it was a large crowd of tax collectors.  Jesus went to a huge tax collectors' dinner conference to hang out with them.

Oh, and possibly the most accurate reflection of today's Christian culture in this passage happens outside the "Hyatt Regency by the Sea" were Pharisee picketers with sings and megaphones.  The signs complained, "Why DO YOU eat with tax collectors and sinners?"

Now, let's not overlook something here.  The real thing worth noting is the Pharisees are the ones who first call the tax collectors "sinners".  They are never referred to as sinners until the Pharisees come on the scene. They were quick to place a branding on these people. Jesus goes into the margins of the marginalized and sits with them; the Christian elite sit outside branding tax collectors with titles.

Something About Jesus: I heard this was good

Studies show that more and more people know less and less about the Bible. Less and less people read Scripture regularly enough to form even an elementary sense of what the Bible contains. Each generation knows less than the one before it, and that is unnecessary. What is more, there are less and less people who have a true and accurate understanding of who Jesus Christ is.

I do not want to be a part of that group.

So I am embarking on a challenge to read through the gospels in 1 month. Would you take the challenge with me and defy the growing statistics of people with little understanding of Scripture and our Jesus?

BEGIN TODAY, DECEMBER 1

3 Chapters, 4 Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John), 30 days

Check in here for my reflections and please leave your reflections as comments.

Challenge others to engage with us!

Who's in?