Love God and Love People

          As I reflect on my life and the lives of others, I see a world that is full of the word "love." Yet the world is not filled with love. Naturally, we view love as a reciprocal actions. For instance, when one person buys a meal for the other, the other person buys a meal to make up for it. But God does not say this is love. God says that love is action of giving with sacrifice. "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends." This is the proper view of love. 

         God calls us to love, but he doesn't expect us to be able to love apart from Him. In order to truly love, we must receive and understand the love of God found in the person of Jesus Christ. Apart from Jesus Christ, love cannot be understood. But, for everyone that knows Christ, they know that the love of Christ flows out of them into the rest of the world as God redeems this world. As agents of redemption, we must be agents of love. But it must not be the love of the world, it must be the love of Jesus Christ. God is offering His love today to all that ask! "If you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." God wants to pour His love into your life. He loves you so much!  

         When we receive the love of God, it enables us to love God and people! The two greatest commandments tell us to do these things.  "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'" This is the call of God! When we are seeking God in all things, He fills us with love that enables us to do that which he commands. Paul says in 1 Corinthians that without love, the gifts of God mean nothing! The gifts of God are temporary, love is everlasting!

          I challenge you to seek God's love and pray that you would be filled with love through the Holy Spirit. You will not be disappointed! God's well of love does not run dry no matter what the circumstances of life are. He is more than enough! God is waiting to empower you through the love He grants those who seek it. When we are filled with the love of God, we are able to allow participate in the process of redeeming the world! What a wonderful blessing we have in the love God. 

"In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." 1 John 4:9-11

"Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 8:37-39

"Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.  For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die.  But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:5-8

"...that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory..." Ephesians 3:17-21

"...that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head -- Christ...." Ephesians 4:14-15 

"And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ forgave you." Ephesians 4:32

"I have set the Lord always before me;
Because He is at my right hand I shall not be moved.
Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoices;
My flesh also will rest in hope. ...
You will show me the path of life;
In Your presence is fullness of joy;
At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore." Psalm 16:8-9, 11

God Bless!

Tyler

The Primacy of God

           During the past week, God has revealed to me how much I have forgotten to put God above all else. I always remember the countless lessons by church pastors and teachers that said, in essence, "read your Bible and pray daily." I tend to forget how important those things are. It is so easy for me to go a day and not read the Word of God. I used to cherish the Word of God. I carried it around wherever I went and would spend so much time reading it. Today, I find myself not cherishing the Word of God near as much as I used to. On top of that, I find myself spending minimal time in prayer. It's very simple to pray when I want something or when things are not going the way I would like.
           Yet, my heart is always begging for me to spend time in the Word and in prayer. For there is a void that is not filled when I try to go onward without the time that God would have me spend with Him. These past few days, I have began to cherish the Word and prayer once again. It's like being alive again. There is really no greater satisfaction in life than spending time with my Lord. My prayer is that I would never stop cherishing the Word and time spent in prayer.

"Your word I have treasured in my heart, that I may not sin against You"
-Psalm 119:11

"Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." 

-Philippians 4:6-7

God bless,
Tyler

Doubt and the Grace of God

         During these past few months, I began to really critically examine my faith in Christianity. With a love of apologetics, I have always taken the position (many times with little humility) that Christianity is far superior to any other idea about the reality of life. When I came in contact with many ideas that challenged my faith at the very core, I began to have some serious doubts about the validity of Christianity.

        My walk through this time of doubt was like walking in a desert. There was seemingly no joy to be found in life. My doubts led me to really ponder the nature of faith itself. While I never really stopped believing in Jesus Christ, I came the closest I have ever come in my entire walk of faith.

        I had to come to a decision about my doubts. At the fundamental core, my doubt stemmed from my trust of my reason above my trust of my God and Savior. Either Jesus was really God in the flesh, who died for my sins, and rose again on the third day, or life is really meaningless: there exists no such thing as universal objective moral values or purpose. At that level, I could never deny the resurrection of Christ unless there was proof that it did not happen (1 Cor. 15:12-19).

        Apart from Christianity, I do not believe that there is a belief system in this world which can explain the reality of life with such incredible explainitory power: the nature of man, the beginning of the universe, the evil in the world, the moral law, and the meaning of life (just to name a few). There is so much evidence for the existance of God: the textual evidence for the entire New Testament is far greater than any other work of antiquity with over 2,000 different manuscripts, the cause of the universe as God seems to be the most logical explanation, the drive of the soul to seek that which is beyond (transcendent) aka God, the moral law found in humanity, and the workings of God in my life and the lives of others.

         In the end, I can say that this time of doubt has brought a new passion and life that had once been forgotten. Just like the church at Ephesus, I had forgotten my first love (Rev. 2:1-7). I now consider it pure joy that by the grace of God I was carried through this time of a crisis of faith. I can only praise Him again and again for being faithful when I was unfaithful  (1 Cor. 1:8-9).

        My prayer for anyone reading this is that they would realize that many of us go through periods of doubt. You are not alone! I pray that God will reveal more of Himself that you have ever seen! If there are doubts in your mind, go ahead and pray and cry out to God! God is faithful, and He will pull you through any doubt that you are going through. Keep fighting for joy! There is really no other joy in life that burns in the hearts then that which comes from God (Luke 24:32)!

God bless!
Tyler

Love (the right way)

In the Works of Love, Kierkegaard states,

"A man should love God in unconditional obedience and love him in adoration. It would be ungodliness if any man dared love himself in this way, or dared love another person in this way, or dared to let another person love him in this way."

God has called us to give all of ourselves to Him.

Jesus said in Luke 10:27:

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself."

Where is your love?

Is it first and foremost for the Heavenly Father, for Jesus Christ, and for the Holy Spirit?

Do you ever consider loving everyone else as yourself?

Those who dislike you, maybe even hate you?

God has equipped you and called you to love Him above all else.

He wants you to show love to all people!

Ephesians 4:16-17:

"Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 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."

There should not be this grand debate about whether or not Christianity is good for man or not. The love of myself and other Christians should be so evident that no one can dare say that Christians fail in the area of love. I know we are broken and fallen people, but Christ is renewing our minds and hearts (so long as we let Him). Please stop letting the devil divide and conquer not only those in the church with others in the church, but also those in the church with those outside of the church. God will equip you to love in every circumstance. I know that it is impossible to have this love on our own, but the depths of God's love is infinite.

Ephesians 4:25-32:

"Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you."

You and I are called to love!

Will we do that which Christ has called us to?

Or will we sit here and continue to be devoid of God's love in our lives?

It's All About Jesus

         There are so many times that I try and just figure things out in life. I want to know what kind of job I'm going to have. I want to know who I'm going to spend the rest of my life with (if that's what God wills). I want to know what is going to happen after Berry College. But I've come to realize that these things are unknown for a reason.
         So many times I have tried to plan my own life out in all of these areas, only to have my plans completely destroyed. I have persistantly tried to draw the roadmap to my life on my own, but God always has made them fail (and thankfully so). He has given me what I need: a roadmap which is beautifully drawn in the past, but is completely blank in the future.
        All I need to know is that God is in control and has a plan far better than anything I can imagine. All I need to do is to love Jesus every single day of my life and stay sensitive to Him in all that I do. That is the best plan for life that anyone can have. I know this is so much easier said than done, but there is no better way to live a life that glorifies God. There is no greater joy than trusting in Christ on a daily basis for both the present and the future.
       My prayer is that you will live a life of daily trust in Jesus Christ. Keep perservering in your faith! There is no better way to live! I know that my way is completely unfullfilling and will leave me miserable. I don't want what I want, I want what Christ wants for me!

Remember,
This is God's story, it's not mine or yours.

Fishers of Men

I came across this blog post a week ago and have been pondering it since:

http://www.desirespiritualgrowth.com/proclaiming-the-gospel-what-we-learn-from-casting-nets/

The implications of the analogy of fishing for people go far beyond what I've ever seen anyone talk about. For instance, when a fish is caught by the truth (the net), it has no choice but to submit to the Grand Fisher. After the fish is pulled up, it is made clean (justified). There is so much more that could be learned from this simple, yet so complex analogy of witnessing to those lost in the world.

I hope you have a blessed day and please feel free to leave a comment!

Tyler

The Word is So Good!

Psalm 23

¹The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.

²He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

³He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

⁴Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

⁵Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

⁶Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.

How Great is our God?

Indescribably great!