Nobody listens? What’s new? – John 4:36-38

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16204616_s Frustrated teacher 2Do you have a burden for the lost, but feel you are talking to the wall when you try to share your faith? Perhaps you teach a Sunday school class, but feel lucky to get two people to show up. Or maybe you faithfully prepare good lessons, but the class takes up half of the class time with announcements and plans for upcoming events. You have so much to share, but nobody is listening.

Don’t feel alone. The entire Old Testament shares the story about how God tried to teach his people, the Israelites, to follow him, yet they continually turned away from God to seek their own pleasures. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden broke the one and only rule God gave them. In Noah’s day the people had become so wicked that God sent the flood to destroy all except those on the Ark. After King David’s rule, the kings and the people of Israel continually turned away from God. Only a few good kings encouraged the people to follow God during their reigns, but when they died the people again went their own ways.

Even when God sent Jesus to become one of us so we could see with our own eyes and hear with our own ears what God was truly like, he was rejected by those who should have recognized him for who he was and exalted him. Instead they crucified him, and Jesus demonstrated the full extent of God’s love to mankind, by taking our sins to the cross. At the time of his crucifixion, you could have counted his faithful followers on your fingers. In God’s time, some people were ready to call him Lord, but never all of them.

My point is this: if Jesus has laid a ministry on your heart, your role is to plant the seeds or do what he enables you to do, and know that God will reap on his own time table. In John 4:36-38 Jesus shared with the Disciples that some sow while others may reap the harvest, but the sowers and the reapers will rejoice together.

Forget about numbers and crowds, minister to those the Lord gives you, and pray for the harvest to come in God’s time. It is possible that one of your small number of students will become a dynamic leader who will reach many for Christ Jesus.

Father God, help us to not become disheartened when we don’t get the results we hoped for. Encourage our hearts and clarify our spiritual vision that me may understand and follow your leading day by day. 
Image credit: wavebreakmediamicro / 123RF Stock Photo

 

Rooted in Christ – Colossians 2:6-7

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tree-branches-and-rootsAnd now, just as you accepted Christ Jesus as your Lord, you must continue to follow him. Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness. Colossians 2:6-7 NLT

Trees and plants get all their nutrition through their root systems. The roots also keep a plant or tree upright. Colossians 2:6-7 teaches us to let our roots grow down into Christ Jesus and to build our lives on him. Just like the tree, what we feed on makes us who we are.

If a tree is planted in the right kind of soil, it will grow properly and live a long life. If the soil becomes contaminated, the tree is likely to become poorly or die. When some trees become flooded because of a beaver dam they die. If a tree thrives in acid soil, but you pile lime on the ground over its roots, the tree may die. Also a mature tree may die if you raise the level of the soil over its roots.

Just as a good horticulturist will provide the right kind of soil and nutrition for the plants and trees in his care, our Heavenly Father has provided what we need to thrive under his care. God, our Creator knows us through and through. He knows what makes us tick and what will give us fulfilling lives.

God gave us the gift of his Son to show us true compassion and sacrificial love. Not only did he send Jesus for us to copy, he sent him to die for us so our sins could be forgiven. And he sent him to live inside us making it possible for us to regain fellowship with God and to receive eternal life.

There is a choice to be made. Either we agree with God that sin is sin and accept Jesus as our redeemer, or we choose to try to make it on our own without Jesus. Rejecting Jesus is the ultimate sin against God.

The decision to follow Christ Jesus is the starting point for eternal life. But this decision is more than a ticket to poke into our back pocket. If we are going to thrive in this life, we must stay rooted and grounded in Christ. He must be the focus that defines us, the focus that everything else in our lives revolves around. If Christ is truly our focus, thanksgiving should naturally spill out of us at every turn. (as in verse 7)

We choose every day what we feed on for strength. We choose between the TV, newspapers, magazines, books, the Internet, Facebook, and Twitter – or time in God’s Word and in prayer. What we take in is what will spill out when we are jostled. If we are to grow Godly lives we need Godly input on a daily basis. Christ Jesus is life itself, don’t settle for less.

Father God, help us to fine tune our focus and to fix our eyes on your Son Jesus. Help us to recognize how full and complete he truly is so that we won’t foolishly fill our lives with lesser things. Help us to be truly thankful for every blessing that is ours in Christ.

 

Christ is not Jesus’ last name

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TheChristPeople are used to people having first, middle, and last names, so it is easy for us to assume that Christ is Jesus’ last name.

The name Jesus was not new when the Christ child was born. Many people were called Jesus at that time. Jesus had brothers and sisters, but they did not have the last name Christ, nor did Mary and Joseph. The name Christ can only fit one person in the entire human race. The name embodies the definition of the true Messiah.

I’ve been studying Colossians with a group of women, and we came across a passage of scripture that speaks to this this very well. See Colossians 1:15-19. This passage helps to point out some key parts of this definition.

The first part of verse 15 tells us that in Christ we see the visible image of God who is invisible. We can’t see God because he is like a Spirit or like the wind. We know the wind is there because we feel it and see what it does. But people could see Jesus when he was on the earth. They could hear him talk, see him perform miracles and show love to people, hear him forgive sins and so much more. Wouldn’t you like to peek through a window and see him now? God gave us such a window in the Bible. We can learn about what Jesus said and did. Through learning about Jesus we see what God is like.

The second part of verse 15 and verse 16 tell us that Christ is supreme – above and beyond everything in the heavens and on earth, above all the things we can see and even the spirit world that is invisible. Not only is he above them, he created them. He was around before the earth and the heavens were created. He created them. (That’s another reason why Jesus birth as a baby is so awesome. After he made such a wonderful universe, he chose to give up everything and to become a tiny helpless baby so he could also be one of us. Wow!)

Verse 17 says that Christ existed before anything else, and that he holds everything together in creation. He keeps the planets going around the sun, all the stars in the right place… He keeps our bodies together and growing and keeps the true laws of science in working order so we can understand the earth better.

The first part of Verse 18 tells us that Christ is the head of the church, and that we the church are his body. It is very important that the churches make every effort to thoroughly understand and know Jesus as the Christ so he can lead us the way the true church should go.

Verse 18 continues to repeat that Christ was the beginning of everything, and that he is supreme over all – even all who rise from the dead. He is the first of everything that is and ever was and ever will be. He is first of all and above all.

Verse 19 adds that all the fullness of God lives in Christ. It pleased God to put it there. All of the wonderful things about God are also true about Jesus the Christ.

We might be wise to choose to say Jesus the Christ instead of saying Jesus Christ to help get that concept across to others including out children. The name Christ is so much more than just a last name.

 

Janice D. Green
author of The Creation and The First Christmas

A prayer for fellow Christians – Colossians 1:9-12

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7752233_sWith all the turmoil going on in our country and around the world, if there were ever a need to pray for fellow Christians, it is now. One of the most powerful forms of prayer we have is that of praying the scriptures over one another. Colossians 1:9-12 is one passage that serves this purpose very well. If you click on the scripture reference it will open several translations so you can select one or more of them and read the passage.

How can you pray a scripture verse over someone? Simply fill in the pronouns with that person’s name. Or pray it over a group of people with they and them, or if you are one of the group use we and us. You may need to re-word some other parts to get it to make sense, but it isn’t hard to catch on.

I have a burden for Christian youth, so as an example, I am going to re-write the prayer with them in mind. I’ll follow the New Living Translation format here…

Father God, may I never stop praying for Christian youth in my community and nation. Father God, grant these special teens complete knowledge of your will and give them spiritual wisdom and understanding. May the way they live before their friends always honor and please you Lord, and may their lives produce every kind of good fruit. May they continually grow as they learn to know you better and better.

I also pray that Christian teens will be strengthened with all his glorious power so they will have all the endurance and patience they need in this troubled world. May these special teens be filled with joy and always giving thanks to the Father because he has enabled them to share in the inheritance that belongs to his people, who live in the light. Amen.

 

Bible Bites 4 Teens

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Bible Bites 4 Teens header 2I recently started a new blog called Bible Bites 4 Teens. My heart has been burdened for the teens in my small town for some time. Our churches are small and their teen youth programs, with only a couple of great exceptions, are generally small and limited or non-existent. I would love to start up a multi-denominational youth group to benefit all of the churches, but the odds seem against me considering my age. I’m still praying about that.

But meanwhile, I’ve discovered that there is something I can do. I can blog for teens about the Bible. I am aware that teens aren’t out there looking for lots of reading material, so I’m keeping my posts short, focusing on only one or two verses from the Bible in each post, and tying it into the situations they face every day.

I may run Bible stories as well – if I do, they will probably run a little longer or be broken into smaller bites and made into a series for each story. Again, I will tie them into their life situations. I believe in telling the stories in a matter-of-fact kind of way trusting that teens really would like to know what the Bible says, though they might appreciate a few explanations here and there for understanding. I’m not into sugar-coating it as if it were intolerable without jazzing it up. Appropriately selected and placed questions should help youth to apply the stories to their lives – which is the reason for teaching them in the first place.

Some of the posts were written before this blog started. They are teen-oriented and came from my other blogs. For this reason they may not fit exactly into this plan, but they give the blog a little more content to start up with.

I covet your comments and suggestions on how to improve my blog. Please check it out at www.biblebites4teens. And if you like the blog, I would appreciate it if you would let the teens in your world know about it.