Backpack God-Part 2

Backpack God-Part 2

 

The short excerpt is by Tim Keller, and the Scripture is Galatians 6:7 Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.

 

Imagine living your whole life with backpack God and then one day dying and meeting the real God.  There is going to come a time in our lives when we realize how foolish that is.  If life is going great for you; and you have a backpack God, when life falls apart and little backpack God will not come out, I have some great news for you.  Broken people call His name, and He answers.  That is why most people come to faith in Christ through brokenness because the façade of life and being in control is broken apart and you realize that you were never in control.  Here is what you can expect from God every single time.  Grace and mercy in your time of need (Hebrews 4:16).  Surrender is not something to fear, but it is where the peace and purpose is.  It is where your faith intersects with God s faithfulness and suddenly you are going to have your heavenly Father coming alive in your experience.  But anything short of that you are just playing games, and you are just insulting your Creator.

 

Not my will be done, but your will be done on Earth as it is in heaven.  What would life look like if you surrendered your life?  Get in or get out.  Who are you fooling?-only yourself.  Your gracious Heavenly Father has invited you into a relationship characterized by trust, and trust translates into surrender and that is where the life change takes place.

 

If you are not willing to surrender your life to God, then just try a season without Him at all.  Maybe that will be the thing that God will use to bring you back into the relationship of grace and mercy to which we have all been invited.  Great faith is great surrender, and great surrender is simply living our lives as if God is who He says He is and that He will do everything that He has promised to do.

 

Have a great week!-David Vining

 

Backpack God

Backpack God

 

The short excerpt is by Andy Stanley, and the Scripture is Luke 9:23 Then Jesus said to them all: Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.

 

I like it when I say, God I have some things that need to be done, and I need you to help.  That is not faith, but it is backpack God.  I take God wherever I want to take Him, and I also leave God wherever I want to leave Him.  I am going to do something this weekend, and I really do not want Him to be apart of it.

 

Most Americans treat God like He is a manageable thing.  I am not inviting you in every area of my life.  I want you to heal Aunt Martha, and then I want you to get back in the backpack, and then I will decide when and where that I want you to be involved in my life.  What an insult to God!  If you are not going to live your life like you can trust Him for everything, then why do you get frustrated with God when He does not come through in your life in the one little area that you invite Him into?  If you are going to live like there is no God, why are you going to get upset when God does not show up as God?  Who do we think that we are, and what have we done? 

 

The ultimate insult is to come up with some new part of philosophy or religion and invite Jesus into it.  We want to take bits and pieces of Jesus and bring Him into this new way of thinking to help me get what I want out of life and feel better about myself.  It is an insult, it is ignorant, and you have not read the full story.  He came as the Savior that bled and died, but He did not even have His own agenda but just came to say and do the will of the Father.  Now you may not like that or follow it or believe it, but at least have the courtesy then of leaving Him out of your life and do not insult Him by trying to pick Him apart and treat Him like someone He never came to be and does not even present Himself to be.

 

Champions, have a great week!-David Vining

Great Faith-Part 3

Great Faith-Part 3

 

The short excerpt is by Andy Stanley, and the Scripture is John 14:13-14 And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.  1 John 5:14-15 This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.

 

Jesus will do anything you ask Him to do.  If you have faith and believe in His name, you just believe, and then you can receive.  It feels and sounds so good, but you have not listened to the whole deal.  When Jesus talked about receiving and doing it was about receiving and doing the will of the one who sent Him.  This is about surrendering and saying, God, what do you want me to do with my life, with my career, with my son, or with this relationship?  How do you want me to manage my morality and my sexuality?  How do you want me to manage and handle my finances? What do you want me to do with this debt?  What am I supposed to do with my parents? What am I supposed to do with my prodigal daughter?  God, I will do anything that you want me to do because I believe that you can do anything that you want to do, and I want to be in alignment with that, so I am surrendered.  I am here to do what you want me to do and to say what you want me to say.  I am like the one I follow, Jesus, and I am just a vessel and a jar of clay or a pipeline.  I am here to do your will, and I am not trying to get you to do mine.

 

You are to be like the Savior.  You are to spend your life trying to understand whatever it is that God wants done in the world.  Who does God want taken care of or loved, or what does He want accomplished?  What organizations need to be accomplished, and what kinds of people need to be hired?  This can go in every single direction and is not just about ministry.  You are to spend your life trying to discern and understand God s plan for you and for the world and then get in line with what God wants done. Then God is going to do what He does and wants to do; and if you are in alignment with Him, then He will do what He wants to do in this world through you. 

 

Champions, have a great week!-David Vining

Great Faith-Part 2

Great Faith-Part 2

 

The short excerpt is by Andy Stanley, and the Scripture is John 5:30 By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me.  John 12:49-50 For I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me to say all that I have spoken.  I know that his command leads to eternal life. So whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say.  John 6:38 For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me.

 

Jesus will is the Father s will, and the Father s will is all about other people.  Jesus only does and says what is His Father s will; so it appears that He has no life of His own, yet here we are 2000 years later gathered in His name.  If you are wrestling with the authenticity of Christianity, how did this kind of stuff ever get out of the 1^st century?  Why would you even write this stuff down or follow anyone like this?  Jesus wakes up everyday and does the will of the Father and says what the Father says and accomplishes the Father s agenda.  If you ever try to intersect with Jesus words, you have got to know where He is coming from.  If at any point you are going to try and leverage the words of Jesus for your own benefit, you need to know where He was coming from.  It was not about that for Him.  Great faith resulted in great surrender.

 

Jesus is like a vehicle or a pipeline that God is just doing His work through.  What His followers understood is that as you surrender to the will of your Father; God is going to do extraordinary things through you, but they are not going to be for your benefit but for the benefit of other people.  This is not about you coming up with a list and saying, Okay, you promised. This is about getting on your knees and saying, Okay, What is next?  What do you want me to do, and where do you want me to go?

 

Champions, have a great week!-David Vining

Great Faith

Great Faith

The short excerpt is by Andy Stanley, and the Scripture is Mark 14:38  Abba, Father, Jesus said, everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.

Jesus was a man of extraordinary faith, yet His faith was not something He leveraged to get the world to work His way or to get God to do His bidding.   This man of extraordinary faith was also a man that was extremely surrendered to the Father.  Great faith is great surrender. 

 

Faith is confidence that God is who He says that He is and that He will do everything that He promised to do.  If you really believe this, then the logical response is not what can God do for me, but how can I serve God?  Great faith is not leveraging it for your own benefit, but it is absolute and total surrender.  Jesus does not leverage His faith or power for His benefit, but it is always for the sake of His Father in heaven. 

 

If you are considering becoming a follower of Jesus a big part of following Him is surrender.  Biblical faith is that we can ask God anything that we want to ask Him for; and sometimes He says Yes, and sometimes He says No.  What He has promised is that every time you come to Him you can experience His presence, grace and mercy in your time of need.  Where you have the most pain and trauma in your life is the arena where God wants to do His greatest work. 

 

Faith is not about getting out of pain and escaping the circumstances of life although that sells big in America.  It is simply saying, God, you are great, and I trust you.  My great faith is going to be manifested in this world as extraordinary and great surrender in your direction.

 

Champions, have a great week!-David Vining

 

What is Undeniably True

What is Undeniably True

 

The short excerpt is by Andy Stanley, and the Scripture is 1 Corinthians 15:3-6 . . . Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas,and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time . . .

 

What is undeniably true is that a Jewish carpenter that Rome and the religious system tried to destroy is someone we know more about now than any other ancient person that ever lived.  Why do we even know His name, and why did these stories about Him survive?  Why did these people give their lives for a dead man that rose from the dead?  That is undeniable evidence!  It is not an American thing or a Jewish thing, but it is a universal thing.  The son of a carpenter, Jesus, said I am the light of the world; I am the Lamb of God that lays down my life for the sins of the world.  No one should have taken Him seriously; but they did because He rose from the dead, and 2000 years later we still worship and celebrate that fact in history.

 

It is also undeniable that there is a thirst in a man or woman that cannot be quenched by the stuff of this world.  There is a thirst that no relationship or amount of stuff, success or money can quench.  People generation after generation have tried to get themselves in position where they can lay in bed at night and everything be well with their soul and at peace in their heart apart from God.  They have tried and tried, but it is an unquenchable thirst.  There is something in human beings that desires something more, and it is undeniable that the thirst is never quenched apart from the creature being connected to the Creator through His son Jesus Christ.

 

There will always be pieces that are unexplainable, but there is so much that is undeniable.  The wise person shifts his or her focus from what is unexplainable to what is undeniable.  If you still are waiting and have more questions, know that you are not smart enough or have enough insight, or are not infinite enough to understand it all.  It is okay to ask and to investigate, but at some point you need to make up your mind and know that you do not have to understand everything in order to believe in something or in someone.

 

Champions, have a great week!-David Vining

 

When I Doubt

                                                            When I Doubt

 

Dear Champions,

 

The short excerpt is by Andy Stanely, and the Scripture is from Hebrews 11:1  Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.

 

When I doubt is when I am focused on the pieces that are missing.  I doubt when I get all hung up on what is unexplainable and lose sight of what is undeniable.  I doubt when God does not act the way that I think that He should act.  When God gets outside of my little omnipotent box that I have crammed Him into, when He lets things happen that I do not think He should allow, when He does not answer a prayer, when He is unexplainable to me, or when He does not do what I would do if I was God, then I begin to doubt.  But when I shift my focus from those things that are unexplainable to those things that are undeniable, my faith soars even in the face of unanswered questions and mysteries in God that will not fit or stay in my little bitty box. 

 

What is undeniable is that we are here, that the only alternative to creation is that something came from nothing.  It is undeniable that there is a Creator, and there is a creation and all of the Earth shouts of His glory and presence and existence.  There is a God, and that is the starting point.  What else is undeniably true is that 2000 years ago a man showed up on the earth named Jesus.  He was a carpenter s son, a nobody that should have come and gone like everybody else of that age, but He began to teach strange things and perform miracles.  From Roman history this man died on a Roman cross, and He rose from the dead.  The eyewitnesses wrote about it and gave up their lives not because of what they believed or because of what Jesus taught but because they believed that a dead man rose from the dead.  What also is undeniably true is that this message spread throughout all of Europe and all over the world.  Today one third of the world s population believe that a Jewish carpenter rose from the dead; and the reason that they believe it is that at some point in their life they placed their faith in his death on the cross as the salvation for their sins, and they changed from the inside out.  You can go to every continent on this whole globe and you can find Christians in all kinds of different cultures speaking all kinds of different languages.  If you pressed them as to what happened they will tell you the same story.  I needed the forgiveness of sins and when I received Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior something happened on the inside and it has revolutionized how I have lived my life.  I have peace and joy, and my fear has disappeared.

 

Champions, have a great week!-David Vining