Relational Bridges

EVIDENCE OF A CHANGED LIFE The fruit of salvation by God's grace through faith in Jesus Christ is a changed life. If your life has never been changed by the Gospel, don't deceive yourself. Believing God will result in a changed life; a life lived from a radically different frame of reference and by the Power of God working change in you. Such a change in life and direction will be evidenced in doing what God says we are to do. The world's opinion will cease to be the basis of any action in living out your new Life in Christ Jesus. How we live life, daily life, will verify if we believe in the work and power of God in Christ Jesus or not. Faith is demonstrated in loving submission and obedience to the Word of God made alive in us by the Holy Spirit.  There is no real or lasting life to be drawn from this world and its systems of deceit. Real and lasting Life can only be drawn from Jesus Christ. The fruit of true salvation is a changed life; a live demarked by radical repenta...

 WHY People have wondered for eons why life is so hard. Why has it been such a struggle to discover or find the purpose and meaning of human existence? Ponder as people have pondered, philosophize as philosophers have philosophized, the answer has seemed to be just out of reach, just beyond what we know. Ask a potter what they are making on their wheel, and they can tell you right away. Ask the vessel on the shelf after the artist is finished and the pot is glazed and fired, and you will get no reply. The piece of art itself suggests that there is meaning and purpose, but to know for certain, you must ask the artist. God created and called into being humanity, and He made us to be in a living relationship with Himself. Human living was meant to be the Life of God being lived in us and through us so that we might become all we were meant to be. There was to be understood purpose and meaning growing in us daily as we drew Life from our Creator. There was freedom to respond and to fol...

  PSALM 119:163 "Great peace have those who love your law,  and nothing can make them stumble." If God is the source of life, then His Word will give life. When God speaks, what He says will come to be. Therefore, His Word cannot err. God has testified about His eternal Son, the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ. 1 John 5:11-12 reads, " And this is what God has testified: He has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.   Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have God’s Son does not have life." The Lord God has made it clear that eternal Life is His gift to all who will believe. That eternal Life is in His Son, Jesus Christ. To believe what God has said, to receive what He has revealed by His own Word, to trust Him as the Source and Substance of Life eternal, to rely on Him and trust Him for the Power of the Holy Spirit to follow Him, THAT is what it means to love God's Word, His commandments. The Lord, Eternal Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Sp...

  CHRIST IN YOU People talk about being "close" to the Lord. Being close to the Lord is not a feeling, it is not modified by circumstances, it is not altered by culture. The closeness that the believer, the follower of Jesus Christ, has to the Lord is an unchangeable fact. Nothing in all creation is able to undo what God has done and is doing in a true follower of Jesus Christ.  The awesome reality for the believer is that once they were dead, essentially, spiritually dead. To be truly alive in God now, the life within you is not your old way of being refurbished. You have been given a new life, a radically new life that God lives in you, transforming you day by day. moment by moment. Colossians 2:11-15 "When you came to Christ, you were “circumcised,” but not by a physical procedure. Christ performed a spiritual circumcision—the cutting away of your sinful nature. For you were buried with Christ when you were baptized. And with Him you were raised to new life because yo...

 SHAKEN OR SECURE? The world systems are being shaken, and they are being shown to be as unstable as the people who built them. These systems, designed to bring stability to human life, are like idols of old, false gods. We have human constructs that seem reasonable, and we are told to believe that they can save us when things go awry. But as old ones topple over, new ones are forged and tacked precariously in place. But the world and its systems, things we are told we can rely on, like power, prestige, riches, education cannot securely define humanity. The world is being shaken and so we find more and more "idols" are being constructed, being built by people who are not stable, who themselves are being shaken. Idolatry, the things of our own creation tend toward autonomy, attempts at establishing a sense of self based on things that can be and are being shaken. This produces an endemic sense of confusion, who we are, what we are, and why we are here in the first place. We tr...

 OVERFLOW Surrender, love and commitment to the Lordship of Jesus Christ will overflow into the lives of His followers around you and through you all, into the world to draw those who are still trapped in slavery to spiritual darkness into the marvelous Light of the Lord.

 FINDING THE LORD JESUS We speak of a hope that people, young and old will "find the Lord." That would mean that they were looking for Him. However, w hen they do "find Him", it will be because He has been seeking them. I pray that their hearts will become ravenously hungry for Him and will realize the dust and straw the world offers them (claiming it is nourishment) is empty, lifeless, and intent upon destroying who they could be. Jesus Christ alone can cause a person, old or young, to become their authentic self, fully human and finally fully alive. He came to seek and save the lost. He alone could be the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world that we might be reconciled to God through Him.

  WILL YOU PRAY? I just finished reading a post on Facebook that read: King David was a man after Gods own heart, he wrote the psalms, trump A BILLIONAIRE made his own Bible and sold it for money. BIG DIFFERENCE Wow. To believe that one can actually make such a final judgement must be heady stuff. Had this man met King David, who was, by God's own decree a man after God's own heart, after David had committed adultery, tried to hide the fact that he had fathered an illegitimate child with the wife of a faithful soldier (who was full of loyalty and integrity) and then made sure that the husband was murdered, the writer of the above post might have sung a different tune, being quick to judge another with such finality. King David, as well as you and I, had/have the capacity to commit every sinful act of rebellion against God, every arrogance, every envious act of self-righteous and to walk in them were it not for the grace of God. One stands on very shaky ground to assume that God...

T HE ARMOR OF GOD Jesus Christ is, Himself, the armor of God. By the Holy Spirit, every follower of Jesus has already "put on Christ" ( Galatians 3:27 ). Jesus in the TRUTH that girds us holding all things together; He is our RIGHTEOUSNESS covering us all around; He is our SALVATION protecting and renewing our minds; He is, Himself the GOOD NEWS giving us the stability to run and not be weary, to walk and not faint; He is our SHIELD as Galatians 2:20 states that (in the Greek) "The life we now live we live by the faith OF the Son of God" the Greek tense in the tense of possession telling us Whose faith we live by; and He is the WORD made flesh, the LIVING WORD, sharper than any two-edged sword. Christian, you are the only warriors who go to bed in your armor. You never "take Jesus off", but you need to daily remind yourself of WHO has equipped you for the battles you will face each day He gives you grace to live. Be encouraged!

FOUND I am blessed because I once was dead, no true Life within, just existing in a real existential emptiness. But Jesus found me. I didn't find Him, He wasn't lost. I was the one utterly lost. But Jesus rescued me and replaced my death with His never-ending Life. I am now blessed because Jesus Christ is Life within me. He is my Life and ever shall be!

FOR ALL THE SAINTS T hose who today stand in Christ Jesus, living by His life being lived in them by the Holy Spirit, we stand on the shoulder of humble and faithful giants. These who the Word of God calls "saints", who believed God, who knew Him as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and now see Him face-to-face confirming infinitely more than they could have ever asked or imagined; this day they are remembered. Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastor/teachers, those who faithfully delivered to the world the Word of God written, who passed on what the Lord Jesus had engraved upon the whole of their lives; this day they are remembered. Not merely remembered but remembered with great thanksgiving to the Life of God manifest in them and through them. Faithful brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus; this day you are remembered. FOR ALL THE SAINTS For all the saints, who from their labors rest, who Thee by faith before the world confessed, thy Name, O Jesus, be forever blessed. Alleluia, ...