Much More to Life

“Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?” Matt. 6:25

When Jesus spoke these words 2000 years ago, His original audience was just worried about having food to sustain their lives and clothes to put on their back.  Most people reading this article today don’t worry about going to bed hungry or having something to wear, but worry  about eating at nice restaurants or having a closet full of fine clothes.  To put it another way, we worry about our standard of living not about living.

America is past the point of becoming a materialistic society, it is a materialistic society.  Today most Americans are immersed in materialism from birth--so much so that it seems normal to us.  Materialism drives our economy.

When Jesus asks the rhetorical question “Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?” the assumed answer is an obvious yes.  Life is much more than food and the body much more than clothes. Material things never satisfy the soul. You can have all the food you want and not be fulfilled. You can own many wardrobes full of clothes but your heart will not be content.

In Luke 10:38-42, Martha busied herself with much serving. Mary spent her time sitting at the Lord’s feet.  According to the Lord, Mary chose wisely. She chose what would not be taken away from her. Clothes fade and the pleasure of food is momentary, but a relationship with Jesus is truly satisfying and is eternal. 

Only in a real relationship with God will your heart truly be satisfied and content. Instead of pursuing material things, pursue spiritual things. Pursue Jesus.

Where’s Your Treasure?

¹⁹ “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; ²⁰ but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. ²¹ For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also… ²⁴  No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. Matt 6:19-21, 24

Do you long for Jesus’s return? If not the reason may be that you’re too busy building your own kingdom and not the Lord’s. Are you so busy acquiring treasure, or so preoccupied with your own hopes and dreams that you’re not thinking of the Lord’s return? Perhaps you prefer He wait a little while. It’s not that we don’t want the Lord to come back, we’d just prefer Him to delay His coming until we’re done acquiring and enjoying our treasure.  

The wealth and luxury of America can be a trap. We spend our lives chasing treasure. When we get it, the treasure starts to rust. If rust doesn’t get it, thieves will. Even the threat of our treasure being stolen causes us to live in a state of paranoia.  For some reason, though, we never catch on. Instead, we pray to God for the money to rust proof our treasure, or we pray that He will protect our treasure from thieves.  This is no way to live.

Jesus tells us to store up our treasure in Heaven. In doing so our hearts will be where they belong--with Him. How do you store up treasure in Heaven? You can either seek to serve the Kingdom of Heaven, or you can serve your own kingdom. In serving your own kingdom you acquire treasure for your pleasure on Earth. In serving Jesus, in dedicating yourself to the advancement of the Kingdom of Heaven, you are storing up treasure in Heaven. The treasure you store up in Heaven is rust-proof, can’t be stolen and is eternal. Whose kingdom are you serving?

Battling Temptation with Prayer

And do not lead us into temptation, But deliver us from the evil one. Matt 6:13

Are you struggling with temptation?  You are not alone. Even though we may not talk about it, all Christians experience that struggle. There is no point at which the believer graduates from temptation.  Sometimes you get the picture that the struggle to succumb to temptation is something that only new Christians struggle with. That is not the case. The truth is that you have weaknesses just as I do.  There are certain areas of our lives where we all battle the flesh. To make matters worse, the Bible tells us that our “adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.”(1 Peter 5:8) Yes it is true. Christians have an adversary, the Devil, and he wants to make us give in to temptation and disobey God. We all have different areas that we struggle with, certain propensities to sin, and our adversary knows just where they are and what buttons to push to try and make us give in.

When we pray “do not lead us into temptation, But deliver us from the evil one”, we begin to acknowledge the battle against temptation. And as the old saying goes, acknowledging that there is an problem it the first step in curing it. In humility we are saying “Lord I know that have areas in my flesh that I struggle with and I am confessing I need Your mercy and grace.”  God can, and does, give you the grace you need to stand up to the temptation and resist the evil one.

When we use the Lord’s Prayer as our blueprint, we begin our day by addressing the fact that certain temptations will come our way and we will struggle with them. Don’t be afraid to acknowledge your struggles to God.  He knows them anyway. Ask Him for the grace to overcome them, and He will answer.  

A Prayer Request and Barometer of Your Faith

¹² And forgive us our debts, As we forgive our debtors… ¹⁴ For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. ¹⁵ But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. Matt 6:12, 14-15

In Jesus’s model prayer, The Lord’s Prayer, He instructs His disciples to pray to the Father for forgiveness of their debts (sins). We are not simply to pray “forgive us our sins” but rather “forgive us as we forgive others”. In other words “Father, just like I have forgiven others their sins, please forgive mine.” “Father please do for me what I have done for others.” Is this a prayer you can wholeheartedly pray? Have you forgiven others of their sins? Are you holding out forgiveness? If that sounds harsh, what Jesus says afterwards is even more sobering. “But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” This should cause us to do some serious soul searching.

If Jesus is saying that in order for God to forgive us we must forgive others, does that make forgiveness a work necessary for salvation? Salvation is by faith not works. Romans 4 says “⁵ But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness.” So what does that say about Jesus’s statement that God will not forgive us if we do not forgive others? The answer is found in a parable Jesus shared on forgiveness. In Matthew 18 Jesus told a parable of a man who owed a king a great debt.  The man could not pay and begged the king to show him mercy.  The king did and forgave the man’s debt.   The same man went out and found someone who owed him money and demanded to be paid. The other man begged for mercy asking to be forgiven his debt, but the man would not.  When the king found out that the man he had forgiven would not forgive another man’s debt, he was furious. He rebuked him saying “should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’” (Matthew 18:33) The king then threw him in prison until he could pay all his debt.  The point of the parable is that once God has forgiven you, you are expected to forgive others. Why would a man who was forgiven a great debt refuse to forgive another man his debt? The answer is that the man was not truly repentant in his heart. He just wanted to get out of a jam. When he got out of the jam he went back to being his old miserable self. In the same way our hearts are exposed when we have a chance to forgive others. If we realize just how much God did for us by forgiving us, we should jump at the chance to forgive others. How could we who received so much mercy not do anything but lavish mercy on others? If you refuse to forgive others it may show that you never really repented and turned to Jesus in the first place.

Make this process part of your daily prayer life. Ask God to forgive your sins and search your own heart to see if you are holding out forgiveness on someone else.

Prayer Is Not An Exercise In Futility

Give us this day our daily bread. Matt 6:11

This is the part of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus instructs us to pray for our needs. I would like to make three short observations about asking the Lord to “Give us this day our daily bread.”  

1. We are told to ask.  This point may sound simple, but some people think that God does not want to be bothered by someone asking Him to meet their needs. People reason that God has much larger issues to handle so He can’t be bothered by their prayer requests.  Or for whatever the reason, some people just don’t ask. The bottom line is that Jesus tells us to ask and if Jesus tells us to ask, we are to ask.

2. We are told to ask for our needs. Bread is a need. You have needs, and you have plenty of them. Give them to God and believe that He will meet them. A few years ago I needed wisdom in a big way. I came to a decision, but I was a little hesitant to act on it. “What if I am making the wrong choice?”  I finally came to the realization that I had asked God for wisdom. God promises to provide that wisdom, so why did I not believe that He gave it to me.  That is true about many or all of the needs we ask God for. If He tells us to ask for our needs, He will meet our needs. Ask and believe. A jobless Christian who asks the Lord to provide food for his family should not worry if His children are going to go to bed hungry.

3. We are told to ask for our immediate needs. It is not a mistake that Jesus said to ask for our “daily bread”. If you think Jesus just kind of threw the word “daily” in there, keep reading Matthew 6. In verses 25-34 Jesus goes to great length to tell us not to worry about what we will need tomorrow, but to trust God for our immediate needs and let tomorrow take care of itself. You have needs today; pray for them, when tomorrow comes pray for the needs that arise at that time.

The thing that hinders prayer the most is unbelief. Jesus tells us to pray for the needs of today. He is not giving us an exercise in futility. Instead of worrying about our needs, ask God for them. Believe He will provide. He can be taken at His Word.  

Standing Against Unrighteousness

Your will be done

On earth as it is in heaven. Matt. 6:10

God is good. He has given us the privilege of prayer so that we can come to Him and ask Him to meet our needs. Prayer is much more than just asking for our needs. God desires that we pray His will be done.  For a period of time, God in His sovereignty has allowed man to follow his own course and rebel against His will. For example, God’s perfect will does not include murder. The Bible says that God hates hands that shed innocent blood (Prov. 6:17); however, God has allowed man to act on his own fallen nature and take innocent lives, even those of the unborn. The fact that there is unrighteousness does not mean that the righteous are to stand idly by and accept it.  God wants us to pray that His good and perfect will happens here on earth just as it is in heaven. Again, according to his sovereignty, God answers our prayer.

With being said, we should ask ourselves, “Do our prayer lives include a time where we ask that God’s will is done in our family, communities and country?” “Do we have a time in our prayer that we stand against such things as abortion?” Prayer does matter, and we are to believe that as individuals or corporately we can make a difference to stand against unrighteousness by kneeling in prayer.

Take some time to seek the Lord and see what He places on your heart. Make it part of your prayer life to pray for some area of your family, community or country that is not in line with God’s will.

Maranatha!

Your kingdom come. Matt 6:10

We are spending some time going through what is known as the “The Lord’s Prayer”. Actually a better title would be “The Disciple’s Prayer,”  as this prayer is Jesus’s model for His disciples to pray. The prayer is broken down into six requests. The last three requests are in regards to our needs (i.e. give us this day our daily bread), but the first three are in regards to God, His glory, and His kingdom. Today we will look at the second request: “Your kingdom come.”

A few days ago I heard another pastor explain that one of the reasons Christians struggle today is because pastors have stopped preaching on Heaven. We have made it all about your “ Your Best Life Now.” This is not in line with Biblical doctrine. The Bible teaches that, though the Lord does bless us in this life, the ultimate hope for the Christian lies in what is ahead.  This is such the case that the Apostle Paul wrote “19 If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable.” (1 Cor. 15:19) So how does removing the hope of Heaven from our teaching cause Christians to struggle? Christians struggle with this because in this life we face many hardships and even endure persecution for the name of Christ. The motivation the Bible gives those Christ Jesus to press on through these trials is ultimately the return of our King.  If you take future glory out of view, and make everything about the here and now, believers can get discouraged and have trouble pressing on. The Apostle Paul was motivated to “run for the prize” That prize was not a new Mercedes, it was an imperishable crown that he would receive in Heaven (1 Cor. 9:24-27).  If we take away “kingdom come”, we take away the finish line and tell believers to just run for the sake of running.

 

When we pray “Your kingdom come”, we are praying come Lord Jesus come!   When we pray this, we set our minds attention and our hearts affection on the return of Jesus. As Christians, we are supposed to be in anticipation of Christ’s return. It is interesting to think that so much of our prayers solely focus on issues that will be irrelevant when Jesus comes back. 

As Christians we should turn our thoughts back to the hope and anticipation of Jesus’s return. Starting your prayer time by praying “Lord Jesus come back and reign! or “Lord Jesus return for your bride!“  is a good way to direct your  heart and focus on His return. Again, this is the focus of the Book. If you don’t believe me turn to the last page where the King says“20 “‘Surely I am coming quickly.” (Rev. 22) Come Lord Jesus come!