What We Are Made For

What We Are Made For

 

The short excerpt is by Steve Chesnee, and the scripture is John 10:10. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

 

How do you decide whether a watch is a good or a bad watch?  You have to know what it is made for.   For example, it is terrible at hammering nails, but that is okay because it is very good at telling me the time.  Therefore, until I know what it is built and designed for, it is impossible to even talk about whether it is a good or a bad watch.

 

We are told very clearly in the Scriptures that God made you like Himself somewhat like a glove is made in the image of a hand.  It is not a hand, but it reflects a little bit of what a hand is like.  God put His print on you to reflect at least a little bit what He is like; and in all that He has made, the only thing that He made in His image is you and me.  God not only made you like Himself, but He made you for Himself just like a glove is made for a hand.  Now a glove could sit in a drawer for 10 years, but it would always be a glove-Sort of.  You see, it is only when a hand comes inside a glove that a glove really becomes what it was made for.  It is a hand that gives the glove its purpose and meaning.  Like a glove is made for a hand, God made you for Himself.  That is to say, He built you, and He made you with this God shaped vacuum on the inside so that He and only He could come inside and show you what you were made for and what you were meant to be.  God made you so that He could come inside and satisfy you, fill you up, set you free, and show you all that life was meant to be.

 

Champions, have a great week!-David Vining

Your Advocate

Your Advocate

 

Dear Champions,

 

The short excerpt is by Tim Keller, and the Scripture is Hebrews 7:18,27 Therefore Jesus is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them . . ..  He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself.

 

 

What do you look like in court?  You look like your advocate (attorney).  If you are in court and your attorney is brilliant and skillful, then all of that comes to you. It is his performance, not yours that will make or break you.  If your advocate is eloquent or brilliant, then quite literally you are eloquent and brilliant.  All of the benefits of that eloquence and brilliance are going to be imputed to you.  If your advocate wins, then you win.  If your advocate loses, then you lose.  You are in your advocate, and he is your substitute.  This is what it means to be a Christian. 

 

To be a Christian is not simply to have Jesus as your example but to be in Him.  It is union with Christ; and it is to have Him be your substitute.  A lot of people believe that they are Christians because they come to church, they try to obey Christ s teachings, and they have some general understanding that Christ died for their sins.  That is not the same thing as understanding Him as an advocate.  Jesus Christ is the ultimate advocate; He stands as your representative before the ultimate throne in the ultimate trial before the only court that counts.

 

Jesus intercedes for us.  He says, Father, you demand justice, and you are a just God.  My friends here, the people on whose behalf I am speaking, are guilty.  But I have made payment, there is my blood, and it would be unjust to get two payments for the same debt.  Therefore, because I have made payments for them on this debt, I am not here asking for mercy for my brothers and sisters.  Instead, I demand justice.  Your very justice, your very righteousness demands your complete embrace and acceptance of them throughout all eternity. 

 

Champions, have a great week!-David Vining

Evil and Sinful Yet Accepted and Loved

Evil and Sinful Yet Accepted and Loved

 

Dear Champions,

The short excerpt is by Rebecca Pippert.  In this excerpt she is counseling a woman that could not forgive herself over aborting her unborn child.  The Scripture is Matthew 9:12-13 Jesus said, It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: I desire mercy, not sacrifice. For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.

I cannot forgive myself!  I have confessed this sin a thousand times, and I still feel such shame and sorrow.  The thought that haunts me the most is how could I murder an innocent life?

 

I took a deep breath and said what I had been thinking.  I do not know why you are so surprised.  This is not the first time your sin has led to death; it is the second.  She looked at me in utter amazement.  When you look at the cross, all of us show up as crucifiers.  Religious or nonreligious, good or bad, aborters or nonaborters-all of us are responsible for the death of the only innocent who ever lived.  Jesus died for all of our sins-past, present, and future.  Do you think there are any sins of yours that Jesus did not have to die for?  It does not matter that you were not there two thousand years ago.  We all sent him there.  So if you have done it before, then why could you not do it again?

 

She stopped crying.  She looked me straight in the eyes and said, You are absolutely right.  I have done something even worse than killing my baby.  My sin is what drove Jesus to the cross.  It does not matter that I was not there pounding in the nails, I am still responsible for his death.  Do you realize the significance of what you are telling me?  I came to you saying I had done the worst thing imaginable.  And you tell me I have done something even worse that that.

 

I grimace because I knew this was true.  Then she said, if the cross shows me that I am far worse than I had ever imagined, it also shows me that my evil has been absorbed and forgiven.  If the worst thing any human can do is to kill God s Son, and that can be forgiven, then how can anything else-even my abortion-not be forgiven?

 

I will never forget the look in her eyes as she sat back in awe and quietly said, Talk about amazing grace.  This time she wept not out of sorrow but from relief and gratitude.  I saw a woman literally transformed by a proper understanding of the cross.

 

Tim Keller puts it this way.  The gospel message is that you are more sinful and evil and weak than you ever dared believe, but you are more valued and accepted and loved than you ever dared hope. 

 

Champions, have a great week!-David Vining

 

Trust Him

Trust Him

The short excerpt is by Lee Burns, headmaster of the Presbyterian Day Schoo (PDS) in Memphis, TN, and the Scripture is at the end.

Lady Vols basketball coach Pat Head Summitt, the winningest coach in college basketball history, announced recently that she had early-onset dementia, a precursor to Alzheimer s disease.

By all accounts, that cruel disease will, at some point, rob her not just of her mental sharpness, but of her memory. The winningest coach of all time will have snatched from her the recall of eight national championships and all the sweet moments and relationships she forged and all the ways she mentored countless players and coaches along the way. She will likely forget the work ethic and drive she consistently demonstrated, the integrity and character she displayed no matter the circumstances and pressures, and the fact that 100% of her players earned their college degrees. She will forget that she was a pioneer for womens athletics. But most sadly of all, she will probably forget who her family is and what they have shared together.

What do we do when we reach a season in our lives when life seems to be taking more than it is giving? Who are we when we do not have our jobs, our health, our identities, when we are stripped even of our memories?

We teach boys a lot of things at PDS, though we know that much of it will be forgotten. But the most important thing we teach, and the thing that I hope is never forgotten, is that we are all children of a loving God, who created and knows us, who has lovingly redeemed us through His Son, who has conquered death, who will restore our forgetful minds and decaying bodies—and even this broken world—to a perfect state.

It is difficult to believe in God amidst such pain, suffering and loss. It is challenging to trust in God when we are so accustomed to trusting in ourselves. It is hard to find our rest and identity in Him when we are such a restless people so often obsessed with our own performances and achievements. It is challenging to put faith in that which we cannot see. But that is Gods call to us, His command. And it is one done out of His love and grace, giving us more than we deserve, promising us more than we can imagine.

Psalm 62:5-8  My soul, find rest in God; my hope comes from him. Truly he is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will not be shaken. My salvation and my honor depend on God; he is my mighty rock, my refuge. Trust in him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.

Roots

Roots

The short excerpt is by Ron Hutchcraft, and the Scripture is in the excerpt.

One day I went on a nature hike.  There was the river bed; the desert section, and so on, and the guide showed us two kinds of trees: First, there were these beautiful White Alder trees. They grow lushly by the river bed, and he said they can evaporate up to 400 gallons of water a day!

Now, the roots of the White Alder are very shallow. They get plenty of water and therefore they have shallow roots. But when the floods come, we have got a problem. He showed us the desert zone trees, and the ones in the desert survive on 40 gallons of water a year sometimes. How come? They use everything they get, and their roots are deep. Guess which one is still standing after a violent storm? Yeah, the one with the roots.

Colossians 2:6-7   So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in Him rooted and built up in Him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.

In many ways, we American Christians, are the White Alder tree that I described earlier—the one that has all that nourishment that evaporates up to 400 gallons of water a day, lives by the river bed, saturated but with weak roots. We are saturated with Christian resources. We have got Christian radio, websites, books, TV, Bible studies, seminars, and conferences.  But we are depending on meetings and feelings, and events, and miracles, and experiences. We have got weak roots, and we are vulnerable to the storm.

Now, you talk to Christians in the desert places like China, for example, and they know where their roots are: consistent, personal Bible study every day; fervent prayer; deep roots in the church; always learning...always growing. But we get lazy here in our spiritual rain forest. It takes a heavy hit to show us that what we have is broad but not very deep, and maybe then it is too late.

You know, maybe it is time now for us to see that our roots need to be growing, not just our leaves. You could be saturated but not strong. You have to build your roots; so that when the storm or the drought comes, you will stand tall through it all.

Champions, have a great week!-David Vining