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Now we cannot…discover our failure to keep God’s law except by trying our very hardest (and then failing). Unless we really try, whatever we say there will always be at the back of our minds the idea that if we try harder next time we shall succeed in being completely good. Thus, in one sense, the road back to God is a road of moral effort, of trying harder and harder. But in another sense it is not trying that is ever going to bring us home. All this trying leads up to the vital moment at which you turn to God and say, “You must do this. I can’t.”

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (via set-apartgirl)

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Boldness Despite Insecurities

Knowing my audience, especially those of you on Tumblr, you probably don’t see yourself as a bold person. In fact, you probably see yourself in the opposite light. Certainly in the safety of your keyboard you can manage bold words, but put you in a public setting and you blend into the background. So if I talk to you about spiritual boldness you probably would not be able to relate. It’s because we have the wrong idea of boldness. Even the most daring and bold person you can think of has a whole attic of unspoken insecurities. Most likely they act as bold as they do to compensate for those insecurities, but that is not how spiritual boldness works. In fact, spiritual boldness has nothing to do with your confidence or insecurities and everything to do with belief and faith in Jesus Christ. All Jesus needs from you is to believe his promises apply to you and then faith to act on them. With these two things in place Jesus is able to accomplish great things through anyone, despite their shortcomings. Consider David. David had never fought against a man before facing the seasoned warrior, Goliath. His experience was limited to protecting the family’s flock of sheep from various predators. But David took the experience and knowledge he had gained about Yahweh and translated it to this situation with Goliath. His thinking was simple: If Yahweh makes it possible to protect these meager sheep he will also make it possible to protect Israel: “You come to me with a sword, with a spear, and with a javelin. But I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you and take your head from you. And this day I will give the carcasses of the camp of the Philistines to the birds of the air and the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel. Then all this assembly shall know that the Lord does not save with sword and spear; for the battle is the Lord’s, and He will give you into our hands.” (1 Samuel 17:45-47) How could Yahweh not respond to such a bold trust? Jesus told us time and again to have this same attitude when serving him. Ask whatever you need, is what he said to us. Ask, seek, knock are his instructions. Boldness and determination were the subjects of his parables. Read through the gospels again and look for it. You will be amazed how clear it is. The Lord doesn’t need anything you have to offer him so your spiritual boldness does not depend or your ability or inability. What he needs are more hearts like David; people who know and believe the promises and who have the faith to act on them. Boldness does not depend on who you are but on your willingness to act on who Jesus is. It is not “I think I can” that moves mountains but “I know he wills it”. Step out in the boldness of the promises; believe and act on it.

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“A billion galaxies will not satisfy the human soul.” (Ps 8:3) Your heart was made for God.

John Piper (via nonelikejesus)

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The love of God did not protect His own Son. The cross was the proof of His love – that He gave that Son, that He let Him go to Calvary’s cross, though “legions of angels” might have rescued Him. He will not necessarily protect us - not from anything it takes to make us like His Son. A lot of hammering and chiseling and purifying by fire will have to go into the process.

Elisabeth Elliot (via set-apartgirl)

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If you do not worship God, you worship something, and nine times out of ten it will be yourself.

Archbishop Fulton Sheen (via nonelikejesus)

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Rest is not a lack of action– it is a presence of an attitude. Rest is an inner reality that comes from a deep conviction that God is with us. When we are convinced that ‘it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me,’ we lose the pressure in life to rely on our own strength and efforts. Instead we find freedom to rely on His effort in and through us.

Phil Drysdale (via lotic)

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Your mind and heart were never meant to rule over you. They are servants of the Holy Spirit. They are always meant to be in submission to him. As soon as you turn away from him, they are going to run away on you and cause you a whole boat load of trouble. Keep in step with the Spirit and you will grow in strength, joy and peace.

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You can be dependent— even “needy” for the Lord. Society would look down on men and women who would need something or someone else to stand, but I’ve learned that people who are so honest on their need and their dependence on the Lord are actually strongest. They who know that they can’t make it on their own, and decides to lean on the Lord draws their strength and sufficiency from His abundant, never-ending well.

journal entry // p.c. (via lotic)

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I've been so spiritually dry for the past few years. I don't know if I believe in God anymore. Trying to hold on to someone invisible seems useless.

You have already stated the problem. It isn’t with Jesus but with the fact you have allowed yourself to become dry. You stepped back from Jesus, disconnected, disrupted the flow of the Spirit and lost God’s input. Jesus warned about this when he spoke about the vine and the branches. He stated that he is the vine and we are the branches and as long as we remain in him there will be life, but if we remove ourselves then we will become dry and useless. He said we can’t do anything without him. 

It is an easy thing to do. We get distracted. We get busy. We get lazy. We get down. We get tired. Relationships take work and it is no different in our relationship with Jesus. It takes time and effort. It takes purpose and understanding. It takes love and desire.

There is no quick solution. You have to decide for yourself if there is value in Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension. Is their value for you in eternal life with the one who died for you? Is there value in the joy and peace he gives?  Is there purpose in the mission to which he has called you?

There is no time to be gentle about this because there are eternal consequences to your decision. Don’t base your decision on your current condition because you are too dry to have any sensitivity, you are in a lot of danger. Instead, base your decision on what you have known and experienced in the past, on what you know about Jesus and what he has done for you.

You need to re-establish the connection. You have to get intimate with him again. You need to seek his face because in doing so you will again discover the joy of the relationship. Take your pastor out for coffee and have a real heart to heart and ask for help. If you don’t have a pastor I would be willing to be a substitute until you can establish a relationship with a real flesh pastor (not that I am a not a real flesh person, but you know what I mean). You need a person of spiritual maturity speaking into your life.

Jesus is anything but invisible. If he is invisible to you it is because you have been too long disconnected. My God manifests himself every day in my life. He does not want us going it alone or thinking we is some distant God. He is very intimate and personal. I am praying for you right now, that as you read these words you will feel the conviction of the Spirit and turn back today.

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It is easy to love those who live far away. It is not always easy to love those who live right next to us. It is easier to offer a dish of rice to meet the hunger of a needy person than to comfort the loneliness and the anguish of someone in our own home who does not feel loved.

Mother Teresa (via hislivingpoetry)

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No Compromise

This weekend while on Summer Camp, I started reading Keith Green’s biography, which is called No Compromise. I actually started reading it because I’m going to be moving into my church (which is a massive, 11 bedroom house called the White House) in March and it’s required reading. Being as excited as I am about moving into the White House, I was keen to read the book. By the way, Keith Green’s life was incredible. If you haven’t read the book I highly recommend it.

What I didn’t realise was just how much God was planning to use this book to emphasise some of the things we had been talking about and praying about at Summer Camp. We’d been talking about the journey from law to grace to relationship, and what that looks like with regards to different aspects of the life of a Christian. It’s an interesting and yet somewhat confusing topic, but I found that relating it to the way we rear children (or the way I imagine I would rear my children- as well as seeing the example of those with children around me) made it easier to understand.

When you are a child, you are told what is right and wrong. Your parents make those decisions for you and if you break the law you are disciplined. As you get older, you begin to understand a little bit more about what is good and what is bad. You begin to understand the concept of ‘do unto others as you would have done to you’. Then, as you begin to journey into adulthood, you begin to understand the concept of choice. As a Christian, it means that you decide to do what you see the Father doing. You live in relationship with him.

As our level of maturity grows, the way we are raised changes. The law isn’t bad- in fact it is quite relevant at certain stages of your journey towards God. But you can’t be saved through law alone, for Romans 3:23-24 says

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

Why then, was the law given? it was given alongside the promise to show people their sins. But the law was designed to last only until the coming of the child who was promised… Galatians 3:19

Let me put it another way. The law was our guardian until Christ came; it protected us until we could be made right with God through faith. And now that the way of faith has come, we no longer need the law as our guardian. Galatians 3:24-25

The law was for us as children! God never intended that to be where we stop. He just wanted us to know that we couldn’t save ourselves. When you’re in a relationship with someone, you want to do things for them, love them, serve them. That’s where faith without works comes in, for a faith without works is also without love, and without love you are just a noisy gong (James 2:19-20, 1 Corinthians 13:1).

We also talked about how we often try to introduce people to the law or the church but often neglect to actually introduce them to God. We talked about how important it is to live a life that reflects God’s glory, as is repeatedly stated in 1 Peter. 

When I look at Keith Green’s short life, I am overcome by his incredible passion to share the love of God with as many people as possible. Keith and his wife Melody began to share the gospel with people as soon as they made a commitment to follow Christ, often welcoming recovering drug addicts or young, pregnant teens into their home. Keith was burdened with a passion to share Christ with everyone he came across, even going as far as giving away thousands of free CDs and doing heaps of free concerts because he believed that all who had ears to hear should be able to hear and not be restricted by their financial status. His constant struggle with humility astounded me. The journal entries his wife has shared in the biography show a heart distraught by its pride, and yet it is obvious that Keith was incredibly humble and eager to serve the Lord in any way he might ask. I looked at my life and I didn’t see pride. How large the log in my eye must be!

God spoke to me and to most of my community at camp about the need to reignite our passions both for him and for the lost. Keith’s life spoke to me about this too, and I have come away from the last few days feeling as though there is no more time to waste. Keith Green died in a plane crash at 28. That’s only five years older than I am now. God has spoken to us about the harvest that is plentiful, and has called us to be the workers. I don’t want to spend my life being lukewarm, for God says in Revelation 3:16

…since you are lukewarm water, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth!

God has called me. Am I willing? I am. But it means that there is no compromise. I have to be completely willing to sacrifice anything that comes between me and God. Right now, that’s staying where I am work-wise, even though I often feel undervalued and disrespected. God wants to use me there. Right now, that’s my desire to get married. I’ve wanted to have my own family ever since I was a child, but I realise that right at the moment I need to put that dream aside. Forever, if God asks me to. I don’t think that he is asking me to give this up forever (I hope not!), but for now it is a hindrance to what God wants me to do- whatever he wants me to do, and so I must be willing to give it up. I don’t want to be a vine that doesn’t bear any fruit.

Right now, God is teaching me to be humble. To put aside my pride and relinquish control over my life to him. He is teaching me what it is to be in relationship with him, what it looks like to spend time in prayer and in his word. He is teaching me to be joyful in the sacrifice.

I will not compromise. My life is not my own. I have died to myself, and have been made new in Christ. I am nothing without him.

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********MISSING ALERT********* This is my cousin Alex Davis. He is 17 and will be 18 next week. He has been missing since Monday August 18, 2014 around 1 pm. Last seen leaving with Jacob Deiter who is believed to be 17 ( possibly lives in Orlando) if you have any information or have possibly seen him please contact the Pinellas County Sheriff’s office at 727-582-6200. Please share this he could be anywhere. This is not typical behavior… his family is really worried and misses him greatly. Again please please please share this!

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I’m glad that Ferguson is getting attention, seriously I am, but I haven’t seen ONE post about what is happening over seas. Not even one post about the pictures above. Children are being beheaded and dragged into the streets where they are then shot because their families are Christian. Women are being raped and murdered. Men are being murdered. PEOPLE are dying. It’s a Christian Holocaust. And I haven’t seen anything on Tumblr.

Why aren’t any of you furious about this?! Where’s the “social justice?” ISIS is murdering people who don’t convert to Islam (yes, I know they’re extremists and not all Muslims are like that. Save yourself the rant) but I really want to know why this hasn’t been given the attention it deserves.

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