"What Do You See?"

We all remember the story of the man in the Bible who was taken to see Jesus in Mark 8 vs. 22-26. When he met with Jesus, he was led out of the town by the Master. At the outskirts of the town, Jesus spat on his eyes and laid his eyes on the man. He then asked him if he could see anything. The man then gave the famous answer of "I see men as tress, walking." Jesus laid hands on the man again and his sight was fully restored.

There are quite a few things in that passage. The first was that for most people when Jesus met them they got healed immediately or delivered instantaneously. Yet here was a man who was walking with Jesus in the full glare of people and yet wasn't healed. Walking with Jesus doesn't guarantee that all will be fine and dandy. Anyone who says that is a liar. We will have our own share of troubles.


The second thing was that when Jesus asked the man if he could see, the man had a choice of trying to gloss things over or be pessimistic. He could have complained that he wasn't seeing well. We don't know how long he was blind or what caused it. However we do know he had an expectation of Jesus which was why he came to him. He could have expressed disappointment at the fact that he couldn't see well. "Is that all you can do?" might have been a valid question. But there are two things here. The man acknowledged that he could see but he also made it known all was not well yet. 


While we wait on God for something, the situation might not change at once. The change might be incremental. But we need to stop and thank God for the incremental changes even as we keep trusting and asking him for the total deliverance we are looking for.

 

Hope In God, Not Gold

"If I have made gold my hope, or have said to fine gold, Thou art my confidence; .....for I should have denied  the God that is above." Job 31:24-28

I have read a lot of John Grisham novels and one thread runs though most of them. There is this young struggling lawyer who wants to make partner at the law firm he works at. He therefore is ready to work 18 hours a day for 10 years or more just because he thinks that more money will solve their problems. Putting our trust in money, accomplishments and material possessions is tantamount to denying the existence of a powerful, loving God.

The global financial crisis has highlighted the fact that money can fail and will fail. There have been many who have put their trust in money and have found out that money cannot save. Money cannot save because it does not have the power to do that. Most people realise that money even makes you miserable. People are meant to have money to meet needs. When money has you, you end up being miserable.

The only one who we need to put our trust in is God. He alone cannot fail. Money was designed to fail. It has failed before and will continue to do so. But God has never failed. Put your trust in him. He wants to do great things in your life. Put your trust in him and he will come through.

What's Your Label?

"For we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves: but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise." 2 Cor 10:12


We have a tendency of looking at other people and asking ourselves and God why we aren't like so and so person. We all want someone else's life. We refuse to take into account the fact that the course of life we have been called to run and our purpose is different from the other person's own. We do not know what cross the person has been called to bear, we only see the "glory". To paraphrase the joke, "The grass is always greener on the other side, but you need to see the guy's water bill."

We also tend to compare ourselves with others based on the labels we put on ourselves or allow others to place on us. However, if the labels do not conform with the Bible, then they are not valid. I have looked at Bible from cover to cover and I am yet to find where it says that there is a "conservative" Christian and a "liberal" Christian. The fact is that you're either a Christian or not. As the famous quote goes: “Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile.”

Comparing ourselves with others mostly causes us pain. We most often come out worse from comparing ourselves with others leaving us feeling depressed. We therefore need to stop comparing ourselves with others whether they are friends, colleagues or siblings. We should be concerned about our own race, not theirs. In the end, we will give account of our own life and not theirs.

We should also not allow others to do the comparing no matter how much we respect them. Life is too short to be worrying about what the other person has and we don't. We should live our lives grateful for the things we do have knowing that God will provide what we need. If the things we think we lack are the things we need, God will give them to us in the course of time.


   

Quit Whining!!!

"Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ."

A soldier whether in days gone by or in the times we live in, is one who is trained to endure tough conditions. A soldier is trained to be able to survive extremes in weather, a hostile environment or whatever condition he faces. A soldier is not a whiner. A soldier does whatever is necessary to survive. He carries whatever he needs with him and even if he loses it, he is trained to forage for whatever he needs to survive.

The Bible is full of reminders that as long as we call ourselves Christians, we have been enlisted into God's army and are therefore soldiers. We however seem to have forgotten that or we seem not to be too interested in being soldiers. When adverse situations come our way, all we seem to want to do is curl up and cry and moan. We also seem all to ready to look for someone to blame when things go wrong.

Paul was speaking to Timothy and he told him to endure hardness. Hardness there is synonymous with suffering, persecution, criticism, hate; you name it. Because we are not of this world people will not always agree with the things we believe. And because we live in a fallen world, bad things will happen. Our response should not be moaning and looking for who's to blame. Our response should be that of the resourceful soldier. Take the hit but get the wound cleaned, learn from the situation and then move on. Or else we will be stuck in one spot moaning about how hard and bad life is instead of moving on to fulfil the purpose God has for our lives. Life is too short to be fixated on perceived wrongs.    

Same Difference

“Now therefore make confession unto the LORD God of your fathers, and do his pleasure: and separate yourselves from the people of the land, and from strange wives.” Ezra 10: 11

Sometime ago, I read an article by Kay Warren where she was talking about her new book, “Choose Joy”. The article was in the form of an interview and she told the interviewer how she had suffered from depression and how she was different from her husband, Rick Warren in their outlook to life. She talked about how she hoped the book would help those that suffered from depression. The article was lovely and enlightening. However what disturbed me were the people commenting. One and all, they were all complaining about “the church”. Their grouse was with how the church did not understand what it was to suffer from depression and how the church looked down on those that suffered from depression. Their complaints were enough to make anyone feel depressed since I assumed they were Christians themselves to be reading an article from a Christian magazine. I might have been wrong. One of my thoughts was that if Christians were complaining about the church so much, why then would anyone want to become a Christian? Another thought was that the people who were complaining about the church so much had forgotten that they were part of the church.

I recently read another article via a link on Michael Hyatt’s Twitter feed that got me disturbed. The link was to an article by Joel Miller (I think). Mr. Miller was flabbergasted at the comments by Christians who saw nothing wrong with the pornographic content of the book, 50 Shades of Grey because according to some of them, “they got married in the end”. There were other comments by "Christians" along the lines of how the book could help married couples with their sexual lives.

These two things got me thinking about how there seems to be no difference between those who say they believe in Christ and those who don’t believe in anything. Christians now swear and use the F word because we think it cool, drink alcohol, dress provocatively in the name of fashion and looking good, we think the Bible is a story book filled with recommendations at best and totally old fashioned. We have as much divorce and extra marital affairs in the church as out of it. In fact, there is practically no difference now between those that say believe in God and those who curse God.

I believe the problem is that instead of letting the Word shine through us, we have allowed the world into our hearts. Because we do not know what the Words says and we are not living it, we have allowed the world to tell us how to live. Instead of being like Jesus and reflecting him, we have become like the world. Because we reflect the world and are like the world, the world sees no reason to change. Like the verse of scripture above and several other verses of Scripture in the Bible, God has always called us to be separate and not to be unequally yoked. We have not done this and therefore we are not expect from the upheaval that is in the world.

Over the next few weeks and months, I hope to share the ways in which the church has refused to give the world an alternative and had refused to reflect Jesus and has become like the world around it.

In your opinion, in what ways has the church become like the world around it?     

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.”
― G.K. Chesterton

JC Cruz is the author of DECEPTIO, a novel published by WestBowPress, a division of Thomas Nelson Publishers:

http://bookstore.westbowpress.com/Products/SKU000194087/Deceptio.aspx

He is also the author of LOST, BUT FOUND, a story of love and redemption:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DPLLEUQ/

Let Christ Be Preached!

The Apostle Paul said that there were those that preach Christ out of strife while he did it out of love. But he said that either way, whether Christ is preached out of love or out of strife, the important thing to him was that Christ was being preached.

Thanks to people like Tim Tebow and Jeremy Lin who have not been shy about their faith, a lot of commentators have said a lot of things about God and Jesus and Christianity, most of it bad. There have been rude and downright insulting things said about them and Christ. However if we are to apply Paul’s statement here, then the important thing is not what they are saying about Jesus, but the fact that they are even speaking about Jesus. These are people who on a normal day would not even deign to talk about faith or Christianity but because people like Tim Tebow are not afraid to speak about Jesus, they also talk about Jesus. These are people who a lot of people listen to and even though they speak about God and Jesus derisively, in the end some of the people listening will take the step of wanting to know more about Jesus. I pray they find out the truth.

Paul prayed that God would help him not do anything that would bring shame on the name of Christ. We will all have an opportunity either today or sometime in the future, to speak about Jesus either verbally or by our actions. I think that should be the foremost thing on our minds. Not to do or say anything to bring shame to the name of Christ or to misrepresent him. This is because in the end, people will look at us and what we say or do and want to “preach” Christ. The least we can do is to put forward the truth so that people can make up their minds.  

JC Cruz is the author of DECEPTIO published by WestBow Press (www.westbowpress.com), a division of Thomas Nelson Publishers. You can follow him on Twitter @Cruz_JCReal

The Big Picture

I remember buying the MercyMe album, Almost There with a sense of excitement. I had just discovered a love for Christian rock thanks to "Worlds Apart" by Jars of Clay. I loved the album (I still do) but I think the thing that touched me the most were the testimonies of people who were blessed by the songs on the album, especially by the song "I Can Only Imagine". Personally, I think that is one of the greatest songs ever written. I remember the story sent in by someone who said that her grandmother who was dying of cancer had the CD playing in her room with that particular song playing repeatedly. And she had a smile on her face. This was a 70-something year old woman who was supposed to be feeling sorry for herself because of what she was going through. Instead she was dying with a smile on her face. I will always remember that story. If only we could all face life the same way she faced death. With a smile.

It seems that we all get through life with an expectation of the worst happening. I remember reading Ted Dekker's The Slumber of Christianity and he was saying that we seem to be living joyless lives here on earth because we have lost sight of the joy that awaits us in Heaven. We seem to be living lives encumbered by the sheer hard work it is going through life here that we seem to have no time for joy. Everyday when we turn on the news, we are bombarded with stories about disasters. Disasters which though happen on a large scale, seem to mirror the chaos in our own lives. If only we could see the bigger picture like Jesus.

The Bible says that for the joy that was set before him, he despised the shame on the cross. I think the major problem we have is that we think that we are human beings with spirits who have a spiritual experience when we go to church or pray. However we need to understand that we are spiritual beings having an earthly experience. Life may be hard but we should rejoice that one day, we will go back home to our Father. The book of Proverbs says that we are pilgrims, travellers in this world and that one day we will all go back home. That is the bigger picture. That is our goal. The Bible says that God sees the end from the beginning. He sees the end and then He starts the process. We are more like him than we really know. We also need to see the bigger picture. Visualise the end from the beginning. And then run towards the end.


JC Cruz is the author of DECEPTIO published by WestBow Press (www.westbowpress.com), a division of Thomas Nelson publishers. You can follow him on Twitter @Cruz_JCReal