Relational Bridges

  PATIENT ENDURANCE Hebrews 10:35-56 So do not throw away this confident trust in the Lord. Remember the great reward it brings you!   Patient endurance is what you need now, so that you will continue to do God’s will. Then you will receive all that He has promised. James 5:7-8 Dear brothers and sisters, be patient as you wait for the Lord’s return. Consider the farmers who patiently wait for the rains in the fall and in the spring. They eagerly look for the valuable harvest to ripen.   You, too, must be patient. Take courage, for the coming of the Lord is near. Planting root vegetables is the hardest thing for a young child helping in the garden. They can’t see the progress of growth in the carrot, potato, onion or garlic. More than one kiddo has grasped the green top of a growing carrot and pulled it out of the ground to see how it’s doing only to be told that they need to be patient. Hundreds of years transpired between the Canon of the Old Testament and th...

HEARING MUST BE UNITED TO BELIEVING Hebrews 3:16-19 “And who was it who rebelled against God, even though they heard His voice? Wasn’t it the people Moses led out of Egypt? And who made God angry for forty years? Wasn’t it the people who sinned, whose corpses lay in the wilderness? And to whom was God speaking when He took an oath that they would never enter His rest? Wasn’t it the people who disobeyed Him? So, we see that because of their unbelief they were not able to enter His rest.” I have heard people say, “If I heard the voice of God. I would not rebel; I’d believe.” Others have said, “If I saw a miracle, I’d believe.” We really do not have a grip on the capacity for unbelief that is resident in the human heart and mind. The children of Israel saw God decimate the false gods of Egypt in the plagues He sent through Moses. The Lord God who had called Abraham made sure that Abraham’s children saw that the gods and religious culture surrounding them for 400 years were not gods at all...

  Whose Will? A man named Dennis F. Kinlaw wrote this years ago, “Satan disguises submission to himself under the guise of personal autonomy. He never asks us to become his servants. Never once did the serpent say to Eve, ‘I want to be your master.’ The shift in commitment is never from Christ to evil; it is always from Christ to self. And instead of His will, self-interest rules and what I want reigns. THAT is the essence of sin.” The chaos that is recorded human history is the fruit of us simply wanting to do what we want. Truth is, we think we know what to do and thus we do what we want. We show what we believe by doing what we do. It is seminal to understand that the life God has given us to live on this planet is not something we really know how to live. The questions of, “Why am I here?” and “What is the purpose and meaning of life?” have fueled the machinations of philosophers for centuries. Most religious systems try to make sense out of the human condition, but they al...

  Relying on God Alone 2 Timothy 1:9-10 “ For God saved us and called us to live a holy life. He did this, not because we deserved it, but because that was His plan from before the beginning of time—to show us His grace through Christ Jesus. And now He has made all of this plain to us by the appearing of Christ Jesus, our Savior. ” Human beings throughout history have wanted to believe that they can somehow warrant God’s favor, exerting some effort to affect their own salvation. The truth is that every human being born since Adam’s fall (except for Jesus Christ) has been born spiritually dead, separated from the Life Gods intended for us all. The Apostle Paul makes it very clear that that is the case as he quotes Psalms 5, 10, 14,36, 53, 140 and Isaiah 59 in his letter to the church at Rome. Romans 3: 10-18 “ As the Scriptures say, ‘No one is righteous—not even one. No one is truly wise;   no one is seeking God.   All have turned away;   all have become u...

  Good Old Days? Philippians 4:6-8 “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” I have heard folks say, for as long as I can remember, “I wish it was like the ‘good old days.’” The truth is that people tend to forget exactly what life has been on the earth since Adam’s rebellion. I say rebellion because Adam and Eve chose to believe a lie about God’s character and nature and to do the opposite of what God said would make for human flourishing. Humanity moved from abundance to scarcity, from peace to anxiety. Anxiety has been a hallmark of human exp...

  HOW TO LIVE A NEW LIFE 2 Thessalonians 3:5 “ May the Lord lead your hearts into a full understanding and expression of the love of God and the patient endurance that comes from Christ. ” In John 15:5 Jesus says that He is the Vine and we are the branches. Thinking with any degree of clear logic, you can see that the sap or “life” in the branch is coming from the singular Source of the Vine. That is why the “fruit” produced in the believer is the fruit of the Holy Spirit, the character and grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, Himself. We are destined to be conformed to the Image of Christ Jesus by the will of God. It’s not by human strength or initiative, but by the grace and power of God that is utterly trustworthy and eternally true. So, if you belong to Jesus Christ and are one of His followers, the Life being lived in you, the Life flowing in you is simply and none other than His Life within you. The Holy Spirit has united you to Jesus’ death where your sin, not in part but...

  MEMORY AND TIMING Psalm 106:13 “But they soon forgot what He had done and did not wait for His plan to unfold . ” It is an amazing thing to read through the Book of Exodus. Part of the difficulty in studying it, is that it becomes impossible to dodge the truth about human nature. The lie embedded in the spiritual DNA of everyone since Adam’s stupidity in the Garden of Eden is that God is not enough for human being to flourish as human beings. God’s ways are not preferable to going our own way, even in the face of historic reality; the devastation waiting at the end of our own trajectory. We want to believe that IF we had seen the miracles God had done in Egypt as He decimated every idol and false god the Egyptians worshipped, we would have never forgotten God’s power and faithfulness. It is a terribly sad thing that all too often, our memories of all that God has done resemble Swiss cheese. We muse with words unspoken, “What have You done for me lately?” The spiri...

  WORKING AGAINST ALL HUMANITY 1 Thessalonians 2:15-16 “They fail to please God and WORK AGAINST ALL HUMANITY   as they try to keep us from preaching the Good News of salvation to the Gentiles. By doing this, they continue to pile up their sins.” WOW! What a startling statement! St. Paul is making it crystal clear that those who oppose and work to prevent the proclamation of the Gospel are actually “working against ALL HUMANITY.” Why would he write that? It is because the only means of the restoration, reclamation and salvation of humanity is what God has done for all people through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That is the essence of the Gospel: Jesus Christ. To oppose and try to silence the presentation of the Gospel is to work against the reclamation of all humanity. Who would want to work against ALL humanity? Satan is the name by which he is known. He hates ALL humanity because every human being still bears the image of God, albeit that ima...

  GOD IS FOR ME Psalm 56:9-10 “ You are my source of strength. I will wait for You. For God is my refuge.   The God who loves me (who is for me) will help me; God will enable me to triumph over my enemies.” St. Paul writes in Romans 8:31 , “If God is for us, who can be against us?” The Eternal, Infinite, Holy Trinity being for us is infinitely greater that anyone or anything that could ever set itself against us. As St. John states in 1 st John 4:4 , “Greater is He that is in you than he who is in the world.” If God is for me, what can mortal man do to me? One may be able to cause my physical death here on earth, but that one can never harm me further. Being in Christ, having Jesus Christ be Life within me, nothing can separate me from the love of God. Eternal life is just that, eternal. Therefore, I will not fear because God is for me. God being “for” me must mean that there is purpose and meaning in life that God intends for me to know, experience, grow, a...