Relational Bridges

 A NEW CREATION 2 Corinthians 5:17  "Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come! Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person." Anyone who belongs to Jesus Christ HAS BECOME A NEW PERSON. This is because God has given you a new heart and a new spirit. You have a new life empowered by the Holy Spirit to both "will" and "do" the good will of God. The new heart God has given us in Christ Jesus is not "...deceitfully wicked; who can know it?" It is a "new creation" created in Christ Jesus for good works that God has foreordained that we should walk in them. Paul writes in  Colossians 2:11-12   "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 n...

 SECURITY The security of the ones who are following Jesus Christ as Lord is never grounded in the praise or adulation of other people. It is not located in success as the world system has defined and delineated it.  Our security is grounded and built upon the foundation of the reality of the relationship God has established in us by uniting us to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The reality of Jesus Christ being the salvation of God for all who will believe, the reality of His cutting away our sinfully oriented old nature and giving us a new nature that is a new creation by God's work, this is the immovable rock upon which a believer in Jesus Christ has their life grounded and built by the Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ is not just with us, He is Life within us. He is the living Lord in us, having united us to Himself. He is our righteousness, our salvation, our stability, our shield, and sword for the battle we are engaged in. There is nothing in life that we lean on w...

WHAT DO YOU BLESS? It would be an act of utter folly and disaster were I to choose to "bless" what God will not bless. God's wrath is set against anything and anyone that would try and hinder you becoming all He created you to be and to grow in by being united to Him through the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus Christ. There is nothing arbitrary about the Word of God. He is very specific on what will make for life and what will not. Human life only becomes human life when the Holy Spirit becomes Life withing a believer. Being united to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the follower of Jesus becomes a new creation and begins to live Life as God intended. God begins the good work, and He is the One who will bring it to competition. Somethings will NEVER make for life. What God calls sin, missing the mark of what will make for life, is always sin regardless of what culture anywhere and anytime say to the contrary. Sin cannot save, heal, redeem, restore or remake...

BEWARE DECEPTION   Deuteronomy 18:9 “When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, be very careful not to imitate the detestable customs of the nations living there. Deuteronomy 12:29-30 “When the Lord your God goes ahead of you and destroys the nations and you drive them out and live in their land, do not fall into the trap of following their customs and worshiping their gods. Do not inquire about their gods, saying, ‘How do these nations worship their gods? I want to follow their example.’ Pragmatics was the downfall of Israel when they took possession of the Promised Land. To the unredeemed eye, it seemed that the fertility gods and agricultural gods of the pagan nations actually were helping the indigenous peoples. Just because something works does not make it right or good.  God promised to prosper His people if they would trust Him to the point of obeying His Word. God's Word is not empty. When He directs and commands, it is always for...

 REJOICING We do not rejoice in successful service for the Lord Jesus. We rejoice because God has given us a right relationship with Himself in Christ Jesus. THAT is why there can be "successful" service in His Name. It is because He is the One working in us both to will and do His good will. The mission of God, the will of God, the advancing of the Kingdom of God is either done in the power of the Holy Spirit, in His anointing, or it is not accomplished at all. His authority being lived out through His people will look like the ministry manifested in and through the Lord Jesus. If the Church is the Body of Christ, then it will be the life and ministry of Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit's power that will be manifest in and through the Church. Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today, and forever.  His Life is us being lived out through us will look the same as it did when the Holy Spirit's anointing was manifest through Jesus establishing the Kingdom of God in the l...

NUMBERS 7:89 "Whenever Moses went into the Tabernacle to speak with the Lord, he heard the Voice speaking to him from between the two cherubim above the Ark's cover - that rests on the Ark of the Covenant. The Lord spoke to him from there." God still speaks to His people from the place of Atonement, through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ once offered for all time. That sacrifice has consecrated all who will believe God and the eternal work of salvation He has accomplished through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Moses' relationship with God was a "shadow", a "type" of the relationship God desires to have with mankind. God, Himself, is the One who unites us to Himself. The Holy Spirit unites us to the death of Jesus Christ where our sin is fully and eternally dealt with so we can now walk with God in the power of Jesus' resurrection. The Holy Spirit has united believers with the resurrection of Jesus Christ giving us a new nature, a ne...

 WHERE DO YOU PLACE YOUR CONFIDENCE IN LIFE? My feelings of inadequacy, at any point in my life, are actually a revelation of the truth, not a cause for me to abandon myself to despair. Such times are God's nudging me to stop relying upon my finite self and my circumscribed abilities and to surrender all I am to His Sovereignty, His Life within me, to yield it all to the Holy Spirit. It's a moment to stop my striving and rest in His ability to do far above and beyond all I could ever ask or imagine by the Sovereign Holy Spirit living out the Resurrection Life of Jesus Christ in me at this very moment!