Skip to main content

A Morning View By the Wood Stove

Jesus Christ was beaten, humiliated, disrespected, mocked and crucified on the cross as the Sacrificial Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world. He suffered and agonized for me. ALL of me. 

There are so many layers of church, doctrine, rules, traditions, rituals and more. And all of these things without confession of our sins, acceptance of the gift of grace and a deep covenant to God through Jesus Christ lead to eternal death. It is easy to fall into the trap of false security in what I do. My life is different because of what God has done. It is not about being a good christian, it is everything about becoming the Christian Jesus Christ calls us to be. 

This Christian walk is not and will not be easy. From experience, when you surrender the deep pain you know within you and the deep pain you did not know was within you, you just might have a glimpse into the death and suffering Jesus experienced on the cross. Unfortunately pain will happen and is necessary on our journey to eternity. Jesus went through it and he did not have to do so. 

Be very clear if you are looking for a party every moment of everyday, life to be good all the time, no struggles or suffering, you will never find it here on this earth. But we begin preparing for eternity right here, right now. God will walk with us through the struggle and the result are out of this world. 

God just wants to love me. God just wants me as I am, even when I cannot stand being around me. I need and you need to choose God.

"My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not treat the grace of God as meaningless. For if keeping the law could make us right with God, then there was no need for Christ to die.” - Galatians 2:20-21 NLT

Peace,
PB

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A Morning View By the Wood Stove

If you proclaim Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, then I must ask you a question. Are you seeking the deepest possible intimate relationship with God that you can ever experience on this earth? Because I know what I am about to say to be absolutely true. If you are not and if you are pursuing anything other than God you will not ever be satisfied and ultimately any other relationship will fail. It does not matter how deeply connected with another person you are without God it will fail. Failure may not mean completely walk away, failure can mean that a relationship will not be what it is intended to be and you settle for it because at least it is there, it's the best I can do, it could be worse and for many other reasons.  We are created to be in relationship with one another. We have many relationships and many depths within those relationships. We have social relationships. We have relationship with many forms of addiction and substitution. We have friends and we have FRIENDS...

A Morning View Near the Patio

I believe Christians are called to live a different life in the world than those who are not Christian. I believe that no matter the circumstance of the world, the government and all the just and injustice we are called to be different. Jesus handled the Easter journey much differently than I believe the modern Christian in the USA would have handled it. The Apostle Paul lived as best he humanly could to model the path and life of Jesus Christ during the difficult times of persecution and injustice of his journey. A lot of thoughts are swirling in my head during our difficult time we are currently experiencing and all of those thoughts come back to my life as a Christian, believer and follower of Jesus Christ, and do my thoughts, actions and words model Jesus on the Easter journey to the cross? In Matthew 16:24-26 Jesus told his disciples to "take up their cross and follow me!" I am believing that Jesus is telling us to live like, act like, be like and love like Jesus did....

A Morning View Near the Patio

Sabbath - to rest from labor, set aside as holy. Because we have less to do in our current situation, perhaps as Christians we can redefine what Sabbath looks like for us. I wonder how many of us traditionally go to church in our weekend routine, have lunch then get right back at it? After all, we have so much to do and so little time. It has been nice to sit and be. On the nicer days, when the weather cooperates, it has been so nice to sit on the patio and just be. I have sat and contemplated there more this year than I did all last summer. Perhaps a new normal of Sabbath can take place in our lives. As a child I remember going to church on Sunday morning and on the way home being dropped off at Grandma and Granddad's place. We would have lunch and quite often go for a ride. Usually the ride would end somewhere with ice cream! The routes must have been develops around the ice cream establishments in Northeast Ohio! We did very little, but for me as a kid we did a lot. I remember...