Forged By Faith

Luke 17:32 NIV Stuck. Frozen. Cemented in this eternal middle ground where all we have is a reminder of a doomed past we’re not going back to and the dream of a hopeful future that we’ll sadly never experience. You see, that’s what we get by wasting all this time worrying about all these feelings of unworthiness. We get stuck in the middle. We find ourselves being led to the hopeful realization of a salvation we don’t deserve, but still somehow unwilling or unable to let go of the disaster that we’ve created behind us. It’s like we have this innate sense of responsibility to clean up the mess we’ve made of our life so far. We feel this responsibility to maybe fix it somehow so that we feel better about the gift we’ve been given through the cross. I guess we don’t want to feel humbled by God giving us a gift that our old lives clearly don’t deserve. Or maybe we don’t want to feel obligated to feel grateful. Or maybe we still just don’t understand how all those mistakes we’ve made can tr

Isaiah 6:5 NIV "I stand in front of the mirror, and I don't like who's looking back at me." That opening line to Ben Fuller 's song Who I Am hits pretty close to home. As we began discussing yesterday, I think it's something that hits home for a lot of us. We see the flaws. We notice the weaknesses. We remember all the mistakes. We look into the mirror and see nothing but a reflection of a person we never thought we'd become. Even though we've heard of this freedom built within salvation bought by the precious blood of Christ, we still carry the scars of our mistakes and, like it or not, we've sadly learned to listen to the reminders of who we've been rather than learning to tune our ears to the cross telling us who we are now. I'm afraid that the diagnosis just isn't good my friends. Looks like we've all got Stockholm syndrome. We've formed a bond with our captor. We've built a relationship with the wickedness that has held

Luke 5:8 NIV This past week we've been discussing the more difficult side of the story of Christ and how, albeit really tough to look at and think about, we need to take all of it in in order to grasp the fullness of the message and truly understand the gravity of the gift that we've been given. If we don't witness the suffering then we can never equate our sins with misery. If we don't behold Christ's death then we may miss fully understanding why He died. If we look away when it’s hard to watch, then we’ll not be able to testify that we know what He did. If we don't see what should have been done to us then we can't fathom the kind of love that would take our place and endure it all for us. But in light of all these posts about the crucifixion throughout the past week, there's been one single question, a single word in fact that has plagued me: Why? Why would He do it? Why would He willingly go through that? Why would He do it for me? Why am I worth su

Galatians 4:6 NIV You know what's amazing? We still didn't get it. We still managed to walk away unchanged. We still turned our backs on the cross, turned back to our old lives, and completely failed to see the gift that we'd been given in the death of Christ. We still carried the same hardened hearts that knew only how to live how we'd always lived following the desires we'd always had. We were still who we were the day before we saw the cross. We still didn't get it. We've been talking a lot about Christ's crucifixion and the reasons that we need to look at it from every way possible, but how we often either fail to do so or simply choose not to do so. We either don’t or won’t because it is hard to look at. It is hard to think about. It’s something that we'd all prefer we not really witness. But the fact is that it can only begin its work in us if we allow ourselves to watch every terrifying moment and seek the reasons and purposes for the pain we

2 Corinthians 5:16 NIV We thought He was just a man. We thought His story would end with the cross. We thought that stone sealed not only His tomb but also His fate. We thought that we could just go back to doing as we pleased without this random stranger always warning us to change our ways. We thought that it was all just another flash in history that would be forgotten. We thought wrong. You see, God's never been persuaded by our arrogance. He has never rewritten His plans in order to appease our fallen sense of pride. He has never bent, never wavered, never stopped, never relented upon that which He has ordained from the very beginning of time. And He never will. His will will be done and the Gospel paints the most vivid reminder of that fact. There is nothing we can do to stop, alter, or avoid what God has planned to fulfill His purposes. All we can and should do is realize that it's all meant to change our perspective. Perspective is a very important thing in life. It def

Galatians 3:13 NIV The message of the cross and Christ's crucifixion upon it is so easily missed/ignored, and for one very simple reason: It's hard. It hard to look at. It's hard to think about. It's hard for us to wrap our minds around that kind of graphic violence and somehow manage to equate it with love and mercy. It's hard for us to envision that it was our death that He endured. It's hard for us to comprehend the entirety of the Gospel because it just goes against everything we know, everything we think, everything we've been, and everything this world does and teaches and pushes and accepts. We live in this very feelings-centered world. Everything is done in this attempt to make folks comfortable. Can't hurt anyone's feelings. Can't go too far trying to get a message across. Can't push our opinions too far. Can't offend anyone. Can't risk doing anything in any way that anyone may disagree with or dislike hearing and/or seeing.

1 Peter 2:24 NIV You know, I'm afraid we get caught up seeing the Gospel as someone else's story. We think of it as Christ's story. We see it as a tale from the past lived out by people in a culture and place that is radically different from our own, and when we see it in that light then we struggle to find the personal connection. We fail to put ourselves in His sandals and realize that it was truly our cross that He carried up that hill to die our death. We see the Gospel as the story of Jesus Christ, and while it is His story, it is also our story. It is the story of our salvation. It's the story of our redemption, our adoption, our renewal through rebirth brought about by our death to self and all we've been before. It's not just about some ancient person being beaten and tortured. It's the truth of what we did and still fully deserve being taken by Someone else on our behalf. It's our atonement purchased by a perfect Savior. That’s the part I fear w

John 3:36 NIV The fear of death only exists if we’ve not yet found the gift of eternal life in the Son of God. We fear it because we know the final judgment it brings. And no matter how long or how hard we’ve tried to convince ourselves otherwise, we know in our hearts that our sinful lives and all the mistakes we’ve made within them cannot withstand that judgment that will be leveled upon our souls when our time on this earth is done and over. What’s really sad is that the answer to all of this is found in Christ’s words from John 5:24 where He told us point blank that, “Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life.” We will not be judged if we are in Christ because Christ already satisfied that judgment. In Him there is only life. But to us, death means destruction. It’s the destruction of all we’ve know, of every hope we’ve had, of every dream we’ve imagined. It’s the final tick of our clock, and o