Relational Bridges

  The love that others have for someone and display toward that one in both word and deed are a reflection of the character and heart of the one who is loved.

Love is kind. If it’s not, it’s something else. Love keeps no record of wrongs. If it does, it’s something else. Love is not envious. If it is, it’s something else. Love is not easily offended. If it is, it’s something else. Love is patient. If it’s not, it’s something else. Love is not arrogant. If it is, it’s something else. Love is not rude. If it is, it’s something else. Love does not demand its own way. If it does, it’s something else. Love is not irritable. If it is, it’s something else. Love does not enjoy injustice. If it does, it’s something else. Love rejoices and embraces the truth. If it doesn’t, it’s something else. Love never gives up. If it does, it’s something else. Love never loses faith. If it does, it’s something else. Love is always hopeful. If it isn’t, it’s something else. Love will endure any and all circumstances. If it won’t, it’s something else.  

  That which was broken in Eden cannot be fixed in Washington, DC. Only the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ can deal with the root cause of all brokenness, inequity, evil, sorrow, poverty, greed, suffering and selfishness. We need a new heart and a new spirit; a new spiritual DNA to replace the DNA of sin that will keep us enslaved to lesser things that never deal with the root cause of the brokenness in this world.

  On the Day of Atonement, any Hebrew could know what day it was by looking to the Temple because on that day, there would be a constant flow of water coming out of the side of the Temple to wash away the massive volumes of blood from the innumerable sacrifices being made for the sin of the people on that Day. There was a constant flow of blood and water from the side of the Temple. On Good Friday, the Roman spear thrust into the side of Jesus caused an immediate flow of blood and water from His side. It showed that THE Lamb of God had made full atonement for the sin of the whole human race.

We come to know the Lord Jesus Christ and begin to experience what it means to live in the Kingdom of God by the work and power of God’s grace alone. I believe all of us come into the Kingdom of God on the arm of a trusted friend through whom the Lord Jesus has been revealing Himself to us SO THAT His Word and His ways begin to shed light into a heart and mind that once were profoundly dark and dead. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to renew our minds and we cooperate with Him as we read, memorize and meditate on the Word of God written, the Bible. It is the Holy Spirit Who makes that Word come alive and begin to transform the way we think about everything. Jesus made it very clear that, “Apart from Me, you can do nothing.” It is not my “right thinking” that attracts God to me so that I might know Him and His ways. A dead man is not a decisive man. I must be given a new life, a new heart and a new Spirit indwelt by and filled by the Holy Spirit. IF the Lord is my Shepherd, then it...

  He is risen just as He said He would. That is proof that everything he said and did is eternally true, for He is God the eternal Son, the Word of God made flesh. He took that humanity into the ultimate suffering and death each human being that has ever lived and will ever live deserved because of our own sin. His humanity was raised from the dead as the "first-fruits" of a new creation. He didn't merely "borrow" His humanity from the then Virgin Mary, He made it His own. He fully identified with us in life and in death that we might be identified with Him, by grace through forgiveness and power, with His Resurrection. It's all eternally true. It can be embraced without reservation and lived out in a life and power that come from Jesus Christ, Himself!

  Tonight, after Jesus institutes His New Commandment and Covenant Meal, Jesus goes out to the garden of Gethsemane where He seals His will in unity with the Father's will that Jesus will be, in fact, the Lamb of God, given by the Father to take away the sin of the world by the Son's death and resurrection. When Jesus said, "Not My will, but Yours, father be done." the serpent's head was crushed. What would follow later that night and into what we call Good Friday had been settled only to be lived into for our salvation.

  Only the Creator is worth an infinite number of His creations. Only Jesus Christ, God the eternal Son, Who is God incarnate, could bear the judgement for the sin of the entire human race. He who knew no sin, became sin on the cross for all humanity and died death this day over 2,000 years ago the “death of deaths” so we might be forgiven, might turn from sin’s slavery and be born again as new creations by the power of His resurrection. He did this with you in mind.

  Why did Jesus die? Why is this death so different? "He does not fall in battle. His strength does not collapse before superior, hostile forces. He is not the victim of malevolent misfortune. True, all these things participate in His death, but they are not the real inescapable cause." (Romano Guardini). You see, Jesus dies on purpose. No one could take His life from Him. Death had no claim on Him. He was without sin, whose wage, by the way, IS death. The only way Jesus of Nazareth could have died was for Him to choose to do so. And He did...for the whole of humanity. He did it to fully satisfy the justice of God, which could not overlook the injustice and sin-soaked reality of mankind, and to fully satisfy the Love of God that could not abandon humanity to eternity separated from all that is Good. He died a death never died before nor since. His was the death of deaths so that we might know life. His Resurrection is God's imprimatur that Jesus' words from the cross,...

  The children of Israel were trapped. Their slave-owners of several centuries were drawing behind them ready to slaughter. God’s Presence went behind His people to block the attack, but they were still trapped. The Red Sea was before them and no way of escape. In the same way, all humanity was trapped in sin that had become the ruling DNA in humanity since Adam’s rejection of God as the source and substance of his life and the life. So, all who would follow him throughout the oncoming millennia would likewise be spiritually dead. All that God did for Israel had everything to do with His covenant promise to Abraham, not because Israel had merited anything from God. God’s acts toward humanity have always been grounded in His grace and mercy. So, what does God do? He splits open the Red Sea, parting it wide. The thing that hindered the saving of God’s people had to be taken out of the way. Sin had separated humanity from the life God created us to know and live. The blood of...

Let’s look again at the historically recorded acts of God in the Old Testament. Remember, they are all real events but prophetically point beyond themselves to the greatest act of God in human history: the Life, death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ and His pouring out the Holy Sprit’s anointing and power on all who believe in Him, His new creations. At the end of the book of Judges (Judges 21:25) we read, “In those days Israel had no king; all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes.” Nothing good comes from that mentality and mindset because, apart from God uniting us to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit, we are spiritually dead and deceitfully wicked. Without our allegiance being solely grounded in God alone, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, without Jesus’ resurrection life being lived out within us by the Holy Spirit to transform how we think, understand life and live out the new life given to us, we are as hopeless and the rest of humani...

  When there is no objective truth you hold to whereby you evaluate what is real and what is illusory, when politics becomes the defining ground of your identity, and when politics, in essence, becomes your religion you are extremely vulnerable to being deceived by very clever false prophets.   Politics and political systems or personalities have never and will never be the salvation of humanity nor the transformers of society into something just, honest, compassionate or secure for anyone, let alone for those with whom you disagree.

  When the devil keeps asking you to look at your past, there is something coming in your future he doesn't want you to see.

  If you give up now, you’ll never know what was on the other side, you’ll never know what you missed out on, or what the breakthrough was that was about to happen. Keep pushing through the resistance. If God has called you, He will make a way.