Relational Bridges

  THE TREASURE Jesus told a parable that compared the Kingdom of God to a treasure buried in a field. A farmer digging in the field discovered the treasure and then went and sold all he had in order to buy that field. If you don’t believe that the treasure and glory of life as it was meant to be known and experienced are found in God ruling over all of life, you’ll never give it all to receive all God promises. “Selling all you have” is tantamount to surrendering all you are and all you have to God without reservation and letting Him be the Lord of all of it. Knowing about God is never the same as knowing God and being known by Him for the transformation of and the flourishing of life as God intends and desires us to know. Sadly, you can be religious and have it all remain superficial and outward with no life-change. It takes the digging, the revealing of the Treasure by God and then the surrender of all you are to receive life-eternal and the living Presence of God within yo...

CONFIDENCE AND PEACE People, everywhere and in every age have asked questions like these. “Where can I find lasting peace?” “Where can I find the meaning and purpose of human living?” “Where can I find joy that circumstances cannot alter?” “Where can I discover the order and integration that I feel I was made to know?” “Who am I really and why am I here now?” Those questions have percolated in everyone, everywhere. That is because when we separated ourselves from God (because we didn’t want anyone to be in charge of our lives but US) we became lost to ourselves. Meaning and purpose only come from the One who created us. Meaning and purpose can only come from being in an intimate and dependent relationship with God. He alone knows why we are here and for what reason. But now being lost with a broken moral compass misfiring in us all, we have no capacity of finding our way back to what was meant to be. The wonder of it all is that the faithfulness of God has removed the guesswo...

  YOU ARE When I feel dry, You are still that spring of Living Water within me. When I can’t see, You are still my vision, oh Lord of my life. When I don’t understand, You are still eternal Wisdom within me to guide me. When I feel alone, I am never alone for You will never leave or forsake me. When I feel dead, You never stop being Resurrection Life within me. When I feel unloved or unlovable, You never stop loving me with an everlasting Love that nothing can separate me from. When I feel like I’m just “marking time in place” You never stop working Your purposes in me for You promised that having begun the good work of salvation in me, You will bring it to competition; You always finish what You start. You are always the Lord my Peace, the Lord my Salvation, the Lord my Provision, the Lord my Hope, the Lord my Refuge, the Lord my Protector, the Lord my Strength, the Lord my Anointing, the Lord my Shield, the Lord my Song, the Lord my Banner, the Lord my Joy. You are the Almighty...

 DON'T BE DECEIVED Hebrews 13:8-9  “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.   So do not be attracted by strange, new ideas. Your strength comes from God’s grace…” Galatians 1:11-12  “Dear brothers and sisters, I want you to understand that the Gospel message I preach is not based on mere human reasoning.   I received my message from no human source, and no one taught me. Instead, I received it by direct revelation from Jesus Christ.” (the Apostle Paul) Galatians 1:8-9  “Let God’s curse fall on anyone, including us or even an angel from heaven, who preaches a different kind of Good News than the one we preached to you.   I say again what we have said before: If anyone preaches any other Good News than the one you welcomed, let that person be cursed. ” (the Apostle Paul) It has always been the tactic of Satan to do all he can to twist the Word of God, to cause people to doubt and/or reject what God has plainly communicated. God’s Wo...

 FAITHFUL I am faithful and will be faithful because God is faithful, and His Faithful Life is being lived in me by the Holy Spirit making me faithful because salvation is of the Lord.

 THE GREAT GARDENER Job 34:32 “Teach me what I do not see; if I have done iniquity, I will do it no more.” We know what needs changing in our lives because the Holy Spirit reveals it to us. God’s Word makes it very clear that salvation…from start to finish…is of the Lord. God saves, restores, and transforms us or it does not happen. The capacity to cooperate with Him, to be honest in confession, to have the power to repent and abandon sin, to obey and trust Him are all gifts from Him to those who believe Him. Our faith depends upon Him from start to finish. THAT is great comfort and freedom as my hope is never to be grounded in my abilities, ever, but in Jesus Christ, the One who has redeemed and rescued me for a purpose. God has made it clear that we can rely on Him for the whole of life, even as sheep rely on the shepherd who leads and protects them. Only God can plow up hardness of heart in a person so that the mere theoretical becomes relational. Only God can take away...

 TRUSTWORTHY Hebrews 6:16-20 “ Now when people take an oath, they call on someone greater than themselves to hold them to it. And without any question that oath is binding.   God also bound Himself with an oath, so that those who received the promise could be perfectly sure that He would never change his mind.   So, God has given both His promise and His oath. These two things are unchangeable because it is impossible for God to lie. Therefore, we who have fled to Him for refuge can have great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us.   This hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls. It leads us through the curtain into God’s inner sanctuary.   Jesus has already gone in there for us.” God has made an eternal promise, a covenant commitment that can never be revoked and nothing in creation can ever separate us from. Our hope is not “wistful thinking” but a confidence that the One who has made us His own heirs, joint heirs with Jesus ...

FAITHFUL TO HELP Hebrews 2:14-18 “ Because God’s children are human beings—made of flesh and blood—the Son also became flesh and blood. For only as a human being could He die, and only by dying could He break the power of the devil, who had the power of death.     Only in this way could He set free all who have lived their lives as slaves to the fear of dying.   We also know that the Son did not come to help angels; He came to help the descendants of Abraham.   Therefore, it was necessary for Him to be made in every respect like us, His brothers and sisters, so that He could be our merciful and faithful High Priest before God. Then He could offer a sacrifice that would take away the sins of the people.     Since He Himself has gone through suffering and testing, He is able to help us when we are being tested. ” Everyone who has ever followed Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, Rescuer, Redeemer, and covenant Friend knows the frailty of their own ...

  Psalm 31:15 “My times are in Your Hand. Rescue me…” At conception, our lives have a beginning here on earth. We also have an ending, the moment our physical bodies die. And so it is, that God has our “times” in His Hands. Each moment, every breath and heartbeat of each and every day are known to Him. The Lord God sees the end from the beginning as He stands outside time in eternity. Only He knows what each day will bring. He alone knows our lives with absolute certainty, intimacy, and understanding. God know that we need Him if we hope to become fully human. He knows and wants us to understand that we are not sufficient in ourselves to think of anything as having come from ourselves. Innate gifts, talents and abilities have been given to us by God. He is the One who gives us time for those things to develop and flourish. Understanding that “our times” are in His Hands, rather than somehow feel like we are a burden to God, we can let go, trust in Him completely for each day,...

 HE IS THE SHEPHERD If the Lord God, the Infinite, Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnipresent Three-in-One is your loving Shepherd, then you can live fearlessly. Sheep follow, they do not need to know where they are going in order to get there if they are following their Good Shepherd. I’m sure that the Shepherd will speak to His own about the direction they are to go, but knowing the “where” is not the thing that gives peace. It is in knowing the One who tells us “where” that gives us the confidence that we will indeed get “there” because of who He is. He tells us where He is leading, but not so we can then “take it from there.” How we get to where He is leading is not our purview. He doesn’t give us a “road-map”, but, as He did with Abraham, He gives us Himself. He's given us His Word, preserved, written, utterly reliable and eternally true, to show us who He is that we might trust Him and His promises. The Word of God is living and active, penetrating, sharper than a surgeon’s ...

 THE FOLLY OF IDOLATRY Martin Luther said that the human heart is an idol factory. The truth is that we were created to know and live by the gracious rule of and in the Presence of God who created us. Our peace, our understanding of meaning and purpose can only be truly grounded in God who created us for that meaning and purpose. The rebellion of Adam and Eve, their decision to do the opposite of what God said would make for life, resulted in spiritual and ultimately physical death. They chose to believe they needed something more than what God had provided. Their doomed attempt to try and live life without reference to God as the ground of meaning and purpose did not make life fuller, but emptied it. They wanted to decide what was good and what was evil without God and the disintegration of human life was the consequence. Rather than living in the Presence of God and by the gracious rule of God all around them, they turned from wholeness to brokenness, from fulfilment to scarc...

 THE GROUND OF PEACE Isaiah 26:3-4 “ "You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You: because he trusts in You. ” Romans 15:13 “ I pray that God, the Source of hope , will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in Him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit. ” The Prophet Isaiah states as does the Apostle Paul that our confidence, our peace, and our joy come from God. They are the fruit borne in a life of one who has their mind fixed on God, Himself. What is the reason that a person would have their mind stayed on, fixed on God? Why would someone so focus their life to be devoted to God? It’s important to understand that the word “devoted” in the Old Testament was the word that described the whole burnt offering. In that offering nothing was held back; everything was given over to be consumed in the surrendered worship of God. So, again, what is the reason that someone would have their mind s...

 THE CONDITION AND THE CURE If you have a life-threatening infection actively working in your body, or a malignant tumor on your skin boring its way into your systems to spread certain death, a Band-Aid will do you no good. Covering up those maladies will only make certain your ultimate demise. The tumor must be fully excised, and the infection must be fought with the correct antibiotic to guarantee its destruction. When there is a remedy, it must be applied to deal with fatal maladies. A good physician will be honest about your condition, diagnosing the problem clearly and presenting to you the cure. It would be unthinkable for the doctor to hide from you your true condition if you did have something at work in you that was going to kill you. The world and its demonic system doesn’t want you to know the truth about the true condition of your eternal soul and its desperate need for God’s intervention to preserve and restore your life. The world states continuously in so ma...

 ANOINTED FOR MISSION AND MINISTRY In John 20:21 Jesus states clearly that as the Father had sent Him, He was sending His disciples. That promise and command given by Jesus was not just for those in that room the evening after He rose from the dead. It is for all followers of Jesus Christ down through the ages. Being fully God and fully man, Jesus became the Messiah when, being baptized by John, the Holy Spirit came down and anointed Him for mission and ministry. Messiah means “anointed one.” Jesus Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary and then anointed with the Holy Spirit and power for His mission and ministry. We are born of the Holy Spirit when in repentance we believe Jesus and surrender our whole lives to His Lordship. We are then to be baptized in the Holy Spirit, anointed for mission and ministry as well. The Holy Spirit, dwelling in followers of Jesus, lives in them the resurrection Life of Jesus Christ. We must be born of the Spirit and t...

 NEW WAYS Don't be surprised when this present world-system and those it enslaves by deception think you are evil because you will now affirm and bless what they have come to define themselves by. Follower of Jesus Christ, you worship God, not the gods of this age. Romans 12:2 "Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect." 1 Peter 4:4-5 "Of course, your former friends are surprised when you no longer plunge into the flood of wild and destructive things they do. So they slander you. But remember that they will have to face God, who stands ready to judge everyone, both the living and the dead."