Looking to Jesus

Before getting into this post, I’d like to preface with: I’m not a writer, theologian, or pastor. I don’t have a seminary degree and I’m certainly not an expert on the Bible. There’s nothing particularly special about me other than I love Jesus. I felt led to share what He’s been teaching me -that’s it. And if I’m totally honest, I fought sharing this. But God always gets His way, thankfully.

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There’s a common misconception among Christians that you should be “fine,” even when you’re not, if you want to demonstrate holiness. We conflate holiness with happiness.

You are NOT demonstrating holiness by only demonstrating happiness.

I’m sure there’s a lot of reasons we do that and expect that from others.

Maybe it’s more convenient for us if others pretend to be fine so we don’t have to deal with their burdens.

Maybe we don’t want others to see us as weak or know that we don’t have it together.

Maybe we feel unworthy to ask for others’ help.

Maybe we’re afraid of rejection.

When being “fine” becomes how you demonstrate your faith, you end up in a state of inauthenticity that leaves you feeling isolated.

When being “fine” becomes how you demonstrate your faith, you become performative with your faith.

You begin to feel lonely – feeling disconnected from the body and fragmented in spirit. You begin to exist in a constant state of drowning within an internal sea of grief, guilt, confusion, and pain. Further perpetuated by your performance, feelings of hopelessness creep in. Sorrow seemingly clings to you like an anchor as you’re just trying to stay afloat.

You don’t have to live this way.

In the seasons and moments when we find ourselves drowning like this, look to Jesus. When we look to Jesus, we are taking our eyes off of ourselves and recentering them on our Savior. We don’t hear the words of the enemy telling us we just need to work harder, be better, or do more. We don’t hear the lies that we aren’t loved, that we aren’t seen, or that we aren’t worth being around.

We find ourselves looking at our Savior that says we’re worth everything, that He is with us, and that He knows what we’re feeling. When we look to Jesus, we don’t see a man void of emotion. Jesus experienced the full spectrum of the human experience, including anger, sorrow, and pain (Heb. 4:14-16). Jesus lived on earth fully God, but also fully man. He experienced the ache of betrayal, the sting of rejection, and the agony of grief (Is. 53:3). He understands what it feels like for suffering to remain, no matter how earnestly you pray and plead for it to be removed. (Mark 14:32-52)

When life doesn’t make sense, Jesus demonstrates that pain and belief can coexist. Feeling the emotions of our pain isn’t sinful. We don’t have to choose feeling our emotions and having a relationship with God.

Rather than hiding our pain behind a self-protecting performance, we can use our mourning as an act of worship. Each honest tear as an offering of trust to God, an admission of our shortcomings, a moment of death to self, and submission to His will.

Give up the self-protecting performance. Live authentically within the body of Christ.

We aren’t designed to shoulder life alone. We aren’t designed to always be “fine.”

We’re designed to live in community, not just when it’s convenient or easy. Being part of a gospel community means bearing one another’s burdens as well as being vulnerable enough for others to help bear yours as well.

In our call to love others lies an inherent call to live self-sacrificially in community. This means giving all of yourself-strengths and weaknesses-as you live authentically as part of the body. Living in this kind of community is God’s design for us. When we submit to His design for our lives, we’re no longer concerned about if we’re adequately demonstrating holiness and how others perceive us. Suddenly we are solely focused on Him. This is where we find that it’s not about us demonstrating holiness but reflecting His holiness.

No matter if you’re feeling the pain of something that happened to you in the past, the pain of present trials, or the painful anticipation of hardship to come, look to Jesus. Prayerfully and honestly come to him. Surrender it to Him. Submit to His design and allow your brothers to help bear your burdens. We aren’t made to do life alone and we don’t have to.

Good Friday

This Friday, March 29th, is Good Friday. I’ve been in church for forty years and I’ve never been a part of a church that had Good Friday services until I church planted in Greenville in 2011. God put in on my heart to have Good Friday Services to meditate on the suffering of the Son of God. All the churches I was a part of on my grace journey put a lot of effort into their Easter Services, which I’m all for. But before we celebrate the glorious resurrection of Jesus on Easter Sunday, let’s remember his glorious death in our place, for our sin.

Propitiation. This a word that is found only 4 times in the New Testament (Romans 3:25; Hebrews 2:17; 1 John 2:2; 4:10). It’s interesting that this word appears twice in 1 John, the beloved apostle who speaks more of God’s love than anyone.

But, you can’t speak of God’s love apart from the cross.

This is the Greek word Hilasmos. It is a fairly controversial word when it comes to translating it into English. Most English translations translate that word as expiation, or sacrifice of atonement.

The ESV gets it right. They translate Hilasmos - propitiation, which means the wrath of God is absorbed; satisfied; pacified; appeased. Many translators think translating this word as propitiation makes God look capricious in nature, and no different from the Roman and Greek gods of that day. But, Scripture speaks of God’s anger against sin. God’s anger, however, isn’t capricious in nature, because God’s nature is not changing or subject to change based on circumstance. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He is immutable; unchanging.

Most people don’t like to talk or think about God’s anger and wrath. But Scripture speaks some 400 times of God’s wrath and some 200 times of His anger. But His anger is good. It reveals His holiness. It reveals His character, His nature, and His Justice. And the Cross reveals His love. That’s what 1 John 4:7-12 tells us.

Good Friday is about meditating on these truths, praying and acknowledging the holiness of God, the grossness of sin, and the beauty of justice and mercy kissing at the cross when Jesus appeased the wrath of God so we might go from being children of wrath (Eph. 2:3) to children of God (John 1:12-13; Eph. 1:4-5). Only those in Christ are truly God’s children.

Good Friday is about prayerful meditation and fasting, and for some, penance. There is a group of people in the Philippines every year on Good Friday that scourge themselves and hang themselves on a cross to try to identify with Jesus and somehow punish themselves for their sin. This is folklore superstitious religion. Jesus took our punishment, in our place, for our sin. No sort of minimal or maximal self-punishment can begin to compare to the gruesome scourging and sacrifice of the spotless Lamb of God.

Isaiah 52:14

[14] As many were astonished at you—

his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance,

and his form beyond that of the children of mankind—

Most people think Jesus got 40 minus 1 lashes. That was Jewish law. Jesus was tried and convicted of blasphemy by the Sanhedrin which is punishable by death, but they had no authority to exercise that because they were under Roman rule. The Romans had their own laws. That’s why they brought Jesus before Pilate- the governor of Judea. He could not find fault in Jesus so he delivered him over to be scourged. This was certainly unlike the Jewish flogging. This was where they beat you for sport, until they got tired; then they’d rest and beat you some more. Jesus was beaten beyond human semblance; to the point of flesh being ripped from his body and vital organs being exposed.

Churches and Christians don’t do enough to commemorate Good Friday. We rush to get to Easter so we can put on our new outfits, do Easter baskets, and go to our all-out Easter services shouting and celebrating the Resurrection. I’m all for celebrating the Resurrection of Jesus which is the crowning moment of Christianity and the sealing proof of the deity of Jesus.

But we need to give His suffering the same energy. His glory and power is also seen at the cross, in his death. When he shouted, “It is finished!”

And that is what I’ll preach on this Good Friday - tetelestai - It is Finished!

Faith in the Midst of Suffering

In the Christian life there are many ups and downs, and it’s essential to maintain our faith through it all. Absolutely all of it. Throughout the hard times and rough seasons we go through, we have to keep our faith in the one who deserves it, God. It’s easy to have a lot of faith when everything is going our way and when it feels like we are killing it for the kingdom. It’s a whole different story when things start to take a turn downward. How can you say that you have strong faith if it is not tested?

Look at the life of Job. He lost everything-his kids, his land, and his body was in constant agony. Even still, he never lost his faith through all this suffering. After everything was taken from him, he said “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” (Job 1:21). Job worshipped God in the midst of it all. When is the last time that you have thanked God for allowing you to suffer? Job didn’t curse God or get mad at him for what happened; he simply surrendered to his Lordship and worshipped him. Job had strong enough faith to know that no matter what happens, it is for my good and God’s glory.

We see the same faith in Matthew 14:22-33, where Jesus walked on water to the disciples’ boat. It was storming outside, and the disciples were terrified. Peter saw Jesus walking on water and said to him, “Lord if it is you command me to come to you on the water.” Jesus said come. The amount of faith that it would take to take a step out of the boat is something to think about. Peter knew who Jesus was, and he had confidence in him. Peter had strong faith.

Recently in my own life, God has shown me what strong faith is and how it drastically changes how you are in tough seasons. A family member of mine was dead on arrival at the hospital. They were able to get his heart to start beating again, but he was without oxygen to his brain for around 2 hours, which is very bad. He was considered brain-dead and the doctors basically told us that he was only here for us to say our goodbyes. Through all this, I was frequently asked why I seemed so okay. My response was always, “Because I know that whatever happens, good or bad, is always for our good and God’s glory.” Having faith that whatever God’s plan is; trusting that it’s greater than my plan or what I think should happen.

Fast forward, to the night before we were going to let him go, he woke up! He is able to talk, walk, look around, and he’s making a really good recovery. God wasn't finished with him. We have such a big God and I feel that often we try to limit God with a worldly mentality when God is not of this world. God performed a true miracle right in front of all of our eyes, including all the nurses and doctors at that hospital.

Having faith in Christ is having confidence in him.

Having faith in Christ is knowing without any doubt that he is with you and for you.

In the seasons where things aren’t going well, it can be so hard; but your faith will produce a joy and a peace within you that can only be obtained through Christ Jesus.