Weeds in the garden

My favorite season of the year has to be spring! Maybe it’s because after the gray deadness of winter, the bright color and new life of spring are a welcome contrast. Or perhaps it’s because we know that when spring arrives, the days will be getting longer, and the temperatures will be growing warmer. Whatever the reason, I like springtime! Some of the things I like best are those beautiful yellow daffodils that are among the first flowers to bloom in the garden.

Did you ever notice the cleanness of daffodils? I don’t mean they don’t have dirt on them but they stand out so clearly in the flowerbed because the weeds haven’t come up yet in the brisk early spring temperatures. In a perfect world there wouldn’t be weeds. There would be sunshine and gentle rain and healthy plants—but no weeds. In a perfect world…but we don’t live in a perfect world yet. We live in this world and this world has weeds, lots of them. Every year my wife, who loves to work in her gardens, spends hours digging and pulling and spraying those gluttonous weeds that will consume the garden if she doesn’t. It seems the flowers have to bloom in between the weeds!

Weeds in our lives

Not only do we not live in a perfect world, but we don’t live with perfect people! Have you noticed how imperfect the people in your world are? Especially the person whose picture is on your driver’s license! And in addition to an imperfect world filled with imperfect people, we are members of an imperfect local church!

The weeds in our world cause worldwide problems like wars, famines, financial crises, false religions, and mass confusion of all kinds. The weeds in our lives cause personal problems like fear, greed, lust, anger, envy, hatred, and the like. The weeds in our local churches cause problems like strife, gossip, slander, unfaithfulness, rebellion, ungodliness, and more.

If you put all that together, you have a world and people and local churches with big problems, with stress, with pressure to just give up! But did you know that none of the above problems have taken God by surprise? Do you understand that Christians have good reason to rejoice in the midst of all the problems in the world, and in their lives, and in their local churches? Has it sunk in, down to your toes, that God is not just a Holy Observer in our lives, but that He is working in our lives—and He works through our circumstances and even our problems? Every one of God’s people in the Bible had problems and lived with dysfunctional families, and God used them and God led them and God blessed them anyhow!

Bloom anyway!

I think the prophet Habakkuk (huh-BAK-uhk) got it right! He understood why what he had to rejoice about overpowered what he had to worry about. Habakkuk 3:17-18 says, “Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.”

Christian, we have an eternal relationship with God. Not like we have a relationship with a distant relative—but with our Father. Not an earthly, imperfect father, but with the Father who created us, knowing we would fall into sin. Who not only made us but also made a plan for our lives and a plan to save us. We have, in the words of Habakkuk, a relationship with “God my Savior.” That doesn’t mean that He makes all the problems go away in this imperfect world, but that He makes a way for us to bloom in between the weeds.

Just haul off, right there in the middle of the weeds, and thank God for loving you and for being your Savior! And thank Him that His salvation is more than enough to handle the weeds in the garden of your life!

“I want to give a little lesson in Greek and Hebrew, to make sure we all know what the New Testament means when it says in three different places, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” (matthew 21:9, 15); “Hosanna in the highest!” (Mark 11:9, 10); or simply, “Hosanna!” (John 12:13).

A Lesson in Greek and Hebrew

You all know that the New Testament was first written in Greek, and the Old Testament was first written in Hebrew. Wherever the word “hosanna” occurs in the New Testament, do you know what the Greek word is? Right! It’s “hosanna.” All the English translators did was use English letters (h-o-s-a-n-n-a) to make the sound of a Greek word.

But if you look in a Greek dictionary to find what it means, you know what you find? You find that it is really not originally a Greek word after all. The men who wrote the New Testament in Greek did the same thing to a Hebrew word that our English translators did to the Greek word: they just used Greek letters to make the sound of a Hebrew phrase. I know this sounds sort of complicated. But it’s really not. Our English word “hosanna” comes from a Greek word “hosanna” which comes from a Hebrew phrase hoshiya na.

And that Hebrew phrase is found one solitary place in the whole Old Testament, Psalm 118:25, where it means, “Save, please!” It is a cry to God for help. Like when somebody pushes you off the diving board before you can swim and you come up hollering: “Help, save me … Hoshiya na!”

A Shift in Meaning

But something happened to that phrase, hoshiya na. The meaning changed over the years. In the psalm it was immediately followed by the exclamation: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” The cry for help, hoshiya na, was answered almost before it came out of the psalmist’s mouth. And over the centuries the phrase hoshiya na stopped being a cry for help in the ordinary language of the Jews. Instead it became a shout of hope and exultation. It used to mean, “Save, please!” But gradually, it came to mean, “Salvation! Salvation! Salvation has come!” It used to be what you would say when you fell off the diving board. But it came to be what you would say when you see the lifeguard coming to save you! It is the bubbling over of a heart that sees hope and joy and salvation on the way and can’t keep it in.

So “Hosanna!” means, “Hooray for salvation! It’s coming! It’s here! Salvation! Salvation!”

And “Hosanna to the Son of David!” means, “The Son of David is our salvation! Hooray for the king! Salvation belongs to the king!”

And “Hosanna in the highest!” means, “Let all the angels in heaven join the song of praise. Salvation! Salvation! Let the highest heaven sing the song!”

Two Kinds of Hosannas

Picture a Super Bowl game, and (believe it or not) the Vikings are three points ahead of the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Steelers are on their own 35 and have no more time outs. There are two seconds remaining on the clock. The Vikings’ fans are going wild. The Steelers line up, fake a pass to the receivers on the left sideline, and run a wide sweep around the right end, and the quarterback breaks into the open and heads down the right sideline—40 — 45 — 50 — 45. The only hope for the Vikings is Willie Teal, the safety, cutting a diagonal across the field. And out of the Vikings’ grandstand come two kinds of hosannas, the old kind and the new kind. One part of the crowd is yelling: “Catch him! Catch him, Willie!” (That’s the old hosanna.) The other part of the crowd is yelling, “You got him! You got him, Willie!” (That’s the new hosanna.) The word moved from plea to praise; from cry to confidence.

So when we sing “Hosanna” now, let’s make it very personal. Let’s make it our praise and our confidence. The Son of David has come. He has saved us from guilt and fear and hopelessness. Salvation! Salvation belongs to our God and to the Son! Hosanna! Hosanna in the highest!”

• I am God’s child (John 1:12).
• As a disciple, I am a friend of Jesus Christ (John 15:15).
• I have been justified (Romans 5:1).
• I am united with the Lord, and I am one with Him in spirit (1 Corinthians 6:17).
• I have been bought with a price and I belong to God (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).
• I am a member of Christ’s body (1 Corinthians 12:27).
• I have been chosen by God and adopted as His child (Ephesians 1:3-8).
• I have been redeemed and forgiven of all my sins (Colossians 1:13-14).
• I am complete in Christ (Colossians 2:9-10).
• I have direct access to the throne of grace through Jesus Christ (Hebrews 4:14-16).

I am assured…

• I am free from condemnation (Romans 8:1-2).
• I am assured that God works for my good in all circumstances (Romans 8:28).
• I am loved by God (Romans 8:31-39).
• I have been established, anointed and sealed by God (2 Corinthians 1:21-22).
• I am hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:1-4).
• I am confident God will finish what He started in me (Philippians 1:6).
• I am a citizen of heaven (Philippians 3:20).
• I have not been given a spirit of fear (2 Timothy 1:7).
• I am born of God and the evil one cannot have me (1 John 5:18).

I am approved…

• I am a branch of Jesus Christ, the true vine (John 15:5).
• I have been chosen and appointed to bear fruit ( John 15:16).
• I am God’s temple (1 Corinthians 3:16).
• I am a minister of reconciliation for God (2 Corinthians 5:17-21).
• I am seated with Jesus Christ in the heavenly realm (Ephesians 2:6).
• I am God’s workmanship (Ephesians 2:10).
• I may come near to God with freedom and confidence (Ephesians 3:12).
• I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me (Philippians 4:13).

We can’t find in the Bible any permission to not pray. Nor can we find justification for only a few praying. God has put a copy of His Word in every Christian’s inbox; none are given a special pass to be exempted from prayer.

It is true that God appointed priests in the temple to offer up prayers for the people, but those prayers were a ministry God had given them to pray on behalf of the people. That didn’t mean the people themselves were not to pray. Consider some of the many prayers in the Old Testament, and the exhortations to pray throughout the Bible:

• “I cried out to God for help; I cried out to God to hear me. When I was in distress, I sought the Lord” (Psalms 77:1-2).
• “’Because he loves me,’ says the LORD, ‘I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name. He will call upon me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him. With long life will I satisfy him and show him my salvation’” (Psalms 91:14-16).
• “In bitterness of soul Hannah wept much and prayed to the LORD” (1 Samuel 1:10).
• “Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up” (Luke 18:1).
• “And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints” (Ephesians 6:18).
• “Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful”(Colossians 4:2).
• “Pray continually” (1 Thessalonians 5:17).
• “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective” (James 5:6).

These are an individual’s prayers, one person, not a nation as a whole.

We are to also pray as “a people” and the prayers from the group are understood to be made by every member of the group.

For example: “When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:13-14).

That prayer comes not just from the group but, of course, from every member in the group. When all the people “humble themselves and pray” means when each one, acting in unity, humbles themselves and prays.

“…because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:4-7).

Made for magnificence

One day, a man was enjoying himself on a hike in the mountains. He climbed to the top of a tall peak in the Smokey Mountains and stood on an outcropping of rock, just taking in the beautiful view. After several minutes in reverent silence, he said, “Man, I was made for this!” What he meant was, he felt connected to the beauty of the Creation; he felt he had found his purpose: to enjoy what he saw as he hiked along the rugged places of the country. What he was sensing was what one man called “the fingerprints of God.” He was appreciating being in a place where he could see the glory of what God had left behind when He “created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).

In a way, he was correct. God made the view the man was experiencing, and like anything anyone has made, the maker likes to have his work admired. So you could say, at least in part, the purpose of the man was to enjoy what God had made (as we all should). But Christians have a greater, more significant, more meaningful purpose than that! Those who have been redeemed by the work of Jesus on the cross have been saved; as Ephesians 2: 7 says, “in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.”

Showcasing Grace

Like the mountains and valleys of the Smokey Mountains display the handiwork of God, so also we who are the redeemed of the Lord will forever display the riches of the grace of God that are so vividly seen in the salvation that was given to us by virtue of the suffering and death of the Son of God. We are the eternal canvas that displays the mercy and grace of God for all the universe to see. And it is not just a two-dimensional picture that hangs in a museum, no, we are to be a living and eternal demonstration of how rich the grace of God really is. So rich that, even though we were the enemies of God, even though we hated Him and profaned His name, He saved us. We understand what riches means when referring to money—it means the more we have the richer we are! In that light, God’s supply of grace is so immense it cannot be contained even in all the universe—He is rich in grace and we are the ones who are the recipients of all that His grace has given as Ephesians 2 says, “the incomparable riches of his grace.”

He gave His body on the cross so we could be saved! (1 Peter 2:24-25: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. For you were like sheep going astray, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.”) Your purpose, Christian, is more amazing than you know! Everywhere you go from now through eternity you are showing off the lavish riches of the grace of God!

by Pastor Don Neighbours

Satisfaction—guaranteed?

One of the benefits from shopping at stores like Sears and Lowes and Wal-Mart is their “Satisfaction Guarantee.” That means if you don’t like something you bought at the store, you can return it for a refund so you can get something else. A guarantee is a powerful thing; it binds the one who gives it to the one who receives it. It’s a promise to make good on what they have said. But guaranteeing satisfaction is difficult, if not impossible!
How many of us are expecting some kind of satisfaction with life? We want to be satisfied with the gadgets we buy, and we want to be satisfied with life. The stores with a satisfaction guarantee will tell you that some people are never satisfied, even with a refund.

Satisfied means we have stopped looking for something else; we are contented with what we have. Some people think they can’t get what they really want, so they adjust their expectations downward. That means they think they can be satisfied with less; but that’s submission, not satisfaction. The question for us as we seek to follow our Savior is, Are we satisfied with what He has done for us and given to us? (If not, what will satisfy the needs of our soul?) Finding our purpose cannot be done without first finding satisfaction in knowing Him and going with Him. Dr. John Piper said, “One of the most important discoveries I have ever made is this truth: God is most glorified in me when I am most satisfied in him. This is the motor that drives my ministry as a pastor. It affects everything I do.”

Perfect satisfaction

King David wrote in Psalm 17:15, “And I—in righteousness I will see your face; when I awake, I will be satisfied with seeing your likeness.” God calls us to know Him, and He plants that yearning in our hearts so we seek Him, and so we will not be satisfied with anything less or anything else. The Presbyterian pastor Matthew Henry (1662-1714) said, “There is no satisfaction for a soul but in God, and in his good will towards us, and his good work in us; yet that satisfaction will not be perfect till we come to heaven.” The satisfaction King David spoke of is only fulfilled when we look upon Jesus in Heaven; but the fact that it is a future reality does not mean we should not experience some measure of it by faith today. Our faith, trust, and confidence in God’s Word can bring our future satisfaction together with our present experience in life. Life may not come with a “satisfaction guarantee” but God’s promises are bigger than life, and heavenly satisfaction is assured—and that means we can stop looking for something else in this world and live a life of satisfaction in what our Savior has waiting for us! Proverbs 19:23 says, “The fear of the LORD leads to life, and he who has it will abide in satisfaction.” If we know that Heaven is our destination, then whatever happens in the present—good or bad—at least we know we are going in the right direction. What could be more satisfying than that!

The Bible never teaches that God is idle. In the book of Genesis, we know that on the seventh day of Creation He rested from His work of creating but not from holding all things together.

For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together (Colossians 1:16-17).

God sustains us

We know that in addition to being the Creator of life, He is also the Sustainer of life. He keeps everything going. He doesn’t do that like a toymaker who winds up a toy and sets it down to go along a prescribed sequence of actions, but He keeps all things going by being God, intimately involved in the working out of His plans for His Creation. If He were to turn loose of the universe, nothing would stay in its place and all things would cease to be.
So because we still exist, we know that it’s because God has a plan for our being in His Creation just where He put us. There is, or should be, great comfort in the fact that we are here on the earth, by the grace and sovereign will of our loving God and Father.

The Calling of Saint John and Saint Andrew by Tissot

God calls us

We were born knowing we exist but not that God exists; we have to learn about Him. In fact, when we were born we didn’t know anybody existed except us—our world view was very small. Then Jesus came into our life and began to show us who He is and how He loves us and what He wants us to be. When Jesus came into the lives of His first disciples, He called to them; they weren’t looking for Him. He found them; they didn’t find Him. The first thing He said to them was simply, “Follow Me,” and they did.

As Jesus was walking beside theSea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.” At once they left their nets and followed him (Matthew 4:18-20).

Our highest calling from Jesus is to follow Him. And if we are going to follow Him we will be busy.

Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me (John 12:26).

How do we follow someone we can’t see? We follow Jesus by following His Word, by obeying what He has shown us in Scripture, by praying to discern where He is going. We follow by studying the trail He left to show us the way—the trail that stretches from Genesis to Revelation. Our great purpose in this world is to follow Jesus—to know Him, not as some have imagined Him to be but as He is, revealed in His Word. The Apostle Paul wrote to the Church in Philippians 3:10:

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.

The amazing reward of following Jesus is that as we do, we come to know Him, and we find in Him our purpose for living.

In these days of economic hardships and wars and terrorism and unrest, have you ever had the thought: “What’s life all about anyhow?”

Answers that can change our lives

If you are a Christian, you know that life is a gift of God, and therefore it has purpose and meaning. God gave us life for a reason; it’s not just the meaningless existence that some folks think it is. The Good News is, we have a point of reference—a place to go to find answers.

God has told us what we need to know about life and living, and long ago He gave people the ability to listen to Him: He put heavenly words into human language. The written version of God’s words is the Bible, the Scriptures, and we probably have at least one copy in our house. The thing is, the Bible in our house will do nothing for us in our life. But the Bible in our mind and heart will change our life. We call what is written in the Bible the “Word of God” and we can trust it to be true, even in a world that cannot be trusted.

In God’s image

Scripture, then, teaches us that God made people in His “image.” He made everything, but He made only one thing in His image—us! We are not God, but we are made to be like Him in that we reflect Him in this world. The sun and the moon are both heavenly bodies but the moon reflects what the sun gives it. The moon has no light of its own, but reflects the light that the sun is. So we are to be an image-bearer of God in this world. We were made to act like Him, in that we were made with the ability to communicate with Him in the context of a relationship. That communication continued until it was broken by the sin of our predecessors Adam and Eve. The broken connection has been restored by the work of Jesus on the cross, when He reconciled with God those who believe. We now are image bearers once again.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:17-19).

Our first purpose

So the first purpose we have is to represent God in this world. Today, we don’t have to wonder what God is like, because He has revealed Himself to us in Jesus. We know what God is like because we know what Jesus is like! Therefore we know whom we represent, and our life can be lived as a reflection of Jesus so that others can see who He is. Every Christian will reflect Jesus in some way and to some extent by what we do and what we say in our life. Our life has purpose and a purpose, and it is connected absolutely to our relationship with Jesus and how well we know Him. And because God made us on purpose, we have value. Value to God and value to ourselves.

The Word of God has much to teach us about that relationship, and the Spirit of God will lead us to discover more details of His purpose in making us, as well as more details of how He has called us to follow Him. We will continue on this path in future articles, so stay tuned!

Years ago I heard a man say, “God don’t make no junk!” At the time he was trying to encourage someone to not quit in the face of difficult circumstances because the person to whom he was speaking was a Christian and God was involved in his life.

I was reminded of those words when I read from Psalm 139:13-16 “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”

The Bible reveals here something every Christian should have in the front of their mind: God not only knows everything about me, He made me—literally—“knit me together in my mother’s womb.”

God made you on purpose

We are on the earth not merely as the result of a biological process but by the direct action of God, our Creator. That fact has to be the overwhelming reality of our life because that means our existence is not an accident of birth but the plan of God. The psalmist knew that as he wrote: “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well” (Psalm 139:14 ).

Christian, do you believe that? Do you believe God’s “works are wonderful”? Because if that is true, then the rest is true also: you are an individual work of God and that makes you, yes, wonderful! Rub that into your self-worth!

God made other people on purpose

That has life-shaking implications for us as a God-made, Blood-bought, Born-again child of God! Not only must I think better of myself and how I live but also I must think better of my fellow Christians, whether they agree with me or not! Not only must I love myself, I must love them! I must love them because they are a work of God just like me! Not only is the ground level at the foot of the cross (Jesus died for us all), but also the ground is level at Creation (God made us all). Of course, we know that sin has messed up God’s creation but sin does not change how God sees us—He loves us, all of His children.

Our value to God

Christian, you are of enormous worth to God! But before we get puffed up with pride at being so valuable to God we have to remember that our value has nothing to do with our performance, and it has nothing to do with our appearance. Our worth to God is not connected with how smart we are or how brave we are or how long we have been a Christian. Those are all things that people use to assign value but our worth is determined by what God has done. God loves us; therefore, we are valuable to Him. People rush into burning buildings to retrieve personal items like photographs and letters because they have personal value to them. We have personal value to God; He made us and He loves us. He went to inconceivable lengths to demonstrate that by sending His Son, Jesus, to the cross to reconcile us to Himself (2 Cor. 5:17-21).

There is more evidence all through the Bible, for example, Isaiah 43:3-4. Here God is talking to His people, trying to make them understand their relationship with Him, so that they will trust Him and faithfully follow Him. “Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all you who remain of the house of Israel, you whom I have upheld since you were conceived, and have carried since your birth. Even to your old age and grey hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.”

God used the personal pronoun I seven times: “I have upheld you,…and carried you…I am he who carries you even to your old age and grey hairs… I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and [again] I will carry you…. He said [again] I will sustain you…and rescue you….”

Not only the Old Testament, but also the New Testament has it written again and again:

• John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
• Ephesians 2:4-5 “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.”
• 2 Timothy 1:8-9 “…God, who has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time…”
• 1John 4:10: “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

Get the idea?

We know we are valuable to God because of two unchangeable things:

1. God made us.
2. Jesus died for us.

So why are we so hard on ourselves and why are we so difficult with each other? Life will be better when we value ourselves and value our relationships with our brothers and sisters in Christ!

God doesn’t love us because we are valuable—we are valuable because God loves us! So we are free to love ourselves and love one another because “God don’t make no junk!”

“Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful” (Hebrews 10: 19-23).

Happy places

I am told there is a wonderful place in Hershey, Pennsylvania, where chocolate flows like a river and tasty samples are given away to every visitor. However, regardless of how good it sounds, I have never been there. It’s not because I don’t want to go, I do! But I just have never gone.

I am also told there is another place even more wonderful, where children’s dreams come true and grown-ups can act like children again! It’s in the far-off land of Florida and it’s called Disney World! A whole world of joy and thrills and happiness—-who wouldn’t want to go there?! Again, even though it sounds like a wonderful place I’ve never been there for the same reason—-I just have never gone.

Am I missing out on a great experience? Probably! Would I enjoy it if I went? I’m sure I would! Then WHY don’t I go? I just don’t want to go strongly enough to take the time, effort, and expense of going there. Some will say my life would be enriched by the experience and I would be glad I went once I got there. But here I stay!

No, I haven’t taken leave of my senses or become the “Grinch Who Stole Christmas”! I simply want us to think about how we are so easily enticed and drawn to so many places in our world that give us temporary moments of happiness. And I’m all for happiness—I recommend it!

The best place

But there is more, there is something better! And a lot of Christians just don’t go there. It is not because we don’t want to; it’s that we just don’t! We have so many things to do, so many people to see, so many places to go, but THE place we would all be enriched to go to we just don’t! We just put it off. I’m talking about going to God, drawing near to Him. As Hebrews 10 says, since Jesus has made it possible for us:

“…let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith…” (Hebrews 10:22a).

We can come with a clear conscience because our guilt has been carried to the cross by Jesus. We can come having been made clean by the blood of our Savior. We can come not because we are so special but because God is so faithful.

“…having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful” (Hebrews 10:22b-23).

Let’s go!