Relational Bridges

When you die to self, embracing the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for your sin, you lay your life down and the Holy Spirit comes to live New Life within you. You are no longer your own, but have been bought with the price of Jesus Christ dying the death and the separation from all goodness that you deserved. In this New and Eternal life, the Holy Spirit lives in the followers of Jesus Christ. Being united to both Jesus’ death and resurrection, physical death is now but a transition from this life to Eternal Life in God’s Presence. Dying before you die (thus bring united to the Life of Jesus Christ), when you die, you will not die (not be separated from God). The second death comes to those who have rejected the grace of God, those for whom God simply did not matter in earthly life. We are now in Holy Week. Please do not scorn the love of God, His provision of forgiveness, new Life, meaning and purpose.

CREATOR REDEEMER The Creator of all things is the sole Redeemer of humanity. He has made a Way for all who will but believe Him, repent, turning from sin to Him in faith, to be redeemed from sin and death and to be born again by the Power of God into a new life, to become a new creation in Christ Jesus. He alone is the Reconciler Who restores us to Himself. He is the Initiator, doing all that must be done, things we cannot conceive of needing doing. He has conquered death, sin, hell and the grave. Because He is the Redeemer, we no longer need to be slaves of shame, fear, unforgiveness, arrogance, greed, jealousy, lust, or any other sin that has afflicted humanity since the fall of Adam and Eve. God alone is able to save and restore. In Jesus Christ He has made a way for us to receive His salvation, receive a new Life. There is no other way to become fully human again except to believe and receive from the Redeemer.

  WHO WILL DO THE WORKS JESUS DID? John 14:12 “I tell you the truth, anyone who believes in me will do the same works I have done, and even greater works, because I am going to be with the Father. ” The Lord Jesus Christ gave power to His followers in order that the new Life they had received by grace through faith could be lived out. As recorded by Luke in the Acts chapter one, Jesus states that His disciples, those in whom He was reproducing His Life by the Power of the Holy Spirit, would receive Power when the Holy Spirit came upon them. They would be anointed with Power, clothed with Power from On High even as Jesus was anointed with the Holy Spirit and began His mission and ministry as Messiah after His baptism. THEN , thus empowered to live New Life, they would be His witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth. The ministry and work of the Kingdom of God is either done in the power of the Holy Spirit or it is not done at all as the Lord intende...

  HOPE If our hope is planted in anything or anyone other than the Lord Jesus Christ, Who He is and all He has done, then, in truth we are hopeless. There is hope only in God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Such hope is willing to be wrestled to the ground by the Hand of God so that our reliance upon Him is forged and tempered into trust. Out hope is not in our experience nor our ability, but in God alone, His faithfulness and strength. He alone can transform us into the Image and likeness of Jesus Christ. Our hope and confidence must be grounded in the truth that God’s will for us is never altered by us, not by our perceived difficulties, victories, or anything else, ever. Our hope is meant to be grounded in God alone, not in what we think, perceive or think we see. God is greater than what we can see or understand now, but one day we shall see Him face-to-face and we will no longer need to hope, but having what we have hoped for, we shall know even as we have been known.

WORSHIP IS WORTH IT Upon leaving the church building one Sunday morning after a service, a certain man said to the Pastor, “I really didn’t enjoy worship today.” The Pastor replied, “That’s OK. We weren’t worshipping you.” Worship, true worship, is not measured by the number of goosebumps you get during the service. It’s not in any visceral enjoyment of melodies or lyrics in the songs sung.   Both enjoyment of music and an occasional sense or thrill are not opposed to worship, they just are the focus, not the point. Worshipping God resets the lives of worshippers, someone once said. We live in a world whose system does all it can to get us absorbed with self, as if by being laser-focused on how we feel, helps us discover the meaning and purpose of the life we must live out. We did not create ourselves. We did not call our lives into being. Had that been the case, then we would, innately, have a sense of why we called ourselves into being in the first place. God alone in the...

  WHOSE OPINION MATTERS? People were created for community. Solitary confinement is one of the cruelest punishments known to mankind for it is utter isolation from all human contact. I can tell you with assurance that Satan begins to attempt to mar the image of God in every human being from their earliest age. He whispers that you don’t belong, that you are “bad seed”, that you don’t have to obey their parents, that you are unaccepted as they are, that you are different from everyone. There are all sorts of situations, cross words, being excluded from games, and the like because other kids and even adults are so self-centered and insecure that they need to put others down to have any sense of security or worth. The lies seem to take on what looks like truth. Then our ancient foe tells us that we need something that we never needed, a bridge that should never be crossed and that THIS will make us accepted, special, lauded and accepted. Even though it’s not true, lies begins to c...

  SAFETY There is no other refuge but in God alone. You can’t trust in Congresses, trust in chariots, trust in horses or trust in swords, trust in men with big fat muscles, you must trust in the Lord. You can’t find your confidence, know assurance by watching the TV or going to shows, reading the Times or the Wallstreet Journal, for only my Jesus knows. You can’t find true peace or joy that’s lasting by closing your eyes or stopping your ears, doing your “duties” and patting yourself on the back won’t calm your fears. For the Congresses mess up, chariots break down, horses get slow and swords get dull, muscles get weak, strong men get flabby, but Jesus’ Love makes life whole. You will never find the true peace we were created to know and live in until you surrender to the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ.

  ULTIMATE LOSS The only unbearable loss in life would be to lose the Lord God and His Presence by refusing to believe Him. Without Him, life on earth now is the only “heaven” you will ever know. But surrendering your life to Him by believing in Jesus Christ and what God has completed for you through the life, death, resurrection and ascension of the Lord Jesus, life on this earth is the only “hell” you will ever know. When you believe Him, the Lord comes to live His very Life within you in the Holy Spirit’s power. You then begin to live forgiven, reconciled to God, rescued, redeemed and made a heir of God. He promises to work the transforming power of His salvation in you and to bring to completion that good work He began when you believed.

WHEN GOD SPEAKS Psalm 33:6-9 “T he  Lord  merely spoke,   and the heavens were created. He breathed the word, and all the stars were born. He assigned the sea its boundaries   and locked the oceans in vast reservoirs. Let the whole world fear the  Lord ,   and let everyone stand in awe of Him. For when He spoke, the world began!   It appeared at His command. ” In Psalm 33 , the Psalmist, King David, is referring to God speaking the universe into existence out of nothing. From the account of creation in Genesis, David understood that God spoke into existence things that did not exist. They were not before He spoke them into being. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the Eternal Triune God is God, alone. There is no other. All the “gods” of every other religious construct are not “gods” at all. Demonic forces may attach themselves to idols and ideologies of deception, but they are not creative. They only seek to distort, deface, pervert, an...

FULFILLED PROMISES In Genesis 15 , God made a promise to Abram that Abram would have a son of his own body to be heir of all that God was promising him by an unbreakable covenant. This was the same context where God promises the land we know as Israel and more to Abram and his descendants. Time was passing and Sarah had been barren their whole marriage. This promise of God of a son seemed like it was not going to happen. It was customary for children to be raised up for the clan through a servant woman, a maid to the wife of the chief. At this time, Sarai was around 76 years of age and Abram was around 86. What God had promised seemed an impossibility to them. It did not seem like even a remote possibility. The evidence that they really did not trust what God had specifically said showed itself in impatience and trying to humanly to bring about the fulfillment of God’s promise of a son. Sarai’s and Abram’s unbelief resulted in Abram being convinced to have sexual intimacy with Sara...

WHO IS THE CHURCH FOR? Our belonging comes from the Lord, Who alone is our salvation. He is the One Who calls us; He moves us to seek Him, and so we find He has been seeking us. He gives us the grace of repentance to turn from self-reliance and sin and so to turn to Him. He is the One causing our believing Jesus Christ to be all He is and to receive all He has done. He becomes life within us. His Light and Life supplant the darkness and death of sin that once reigned in us and held us in slavery. Truth is, no one belonged. All we like sheep had gone astray; we had, each one of us, turned from God to go our own way, a way whose end was death and separation form all goodness and hope. The Lord Jesus causes us to belong. He has taken upon Himself our sin and death and gives us His own Life, His Spirit to permanently dwell in us with the Power and authority to live the new Life He has given to us. So, who is the church for? It is there, called into being by the death, resurrection, a...