If the church was full of perfect people there would be no need for church.  The fact is that even as believers we make mistakes.  We fail God more often than we would like to and so many times we hang our head in shame and condemnation.

As disciples of Christ we seek to live holy and righteous before Him, desiring to please Him with our lives.  The fact of the matter is, however, that even as disciples we mess up.  Looking at the failures of those closest to Christ, this notion is not far fetched.

Peter denied Christ three times…
Thomas doubted…
James and John wanted to be the greatest (pride)…
At Jesus’ betrayal all disciples forsook Him…

Sounds like a group of men who needed grace!  Child of God, we have not obtained perfection yet.  We are still in need of God’s grace.  Grace means God’s unmerited favor.  You can do nothing to earn it.  It is free!  If we could have earned it there would have been no need for Christ to die on the Cross.  We would still be shedding the blood of goats.  Now, God extends grace to those who sin.

Do not misunderstand me, this is not cheap grace.  This is grace that cost our Savior His life.  We are not to live the way we want and indulge in sin and expect God’s grace to forgive us.  We must strive to live right.  We must flee temptation.  We must desire to be holy, but when we mess up God is there to forgive.

The key to forgiveness is repentance.  James said, "God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble."  Our avenue to grace is by coming to Him in humility and admitting failure.  "Lord, I am sorry for blowing my top today.  Help me not to do it again."  We must come to God in an attitude of repentance and willingness to change.

Jesus’ disciples were a group of men who humbled themselves after their failures.  Peter didn’t deny Christ again.  James and John humbled themselves.  Thomas believed.  All the disciples but one died a martyr’s death, they never forsook Christ again.  The moral of the story here is that even though they failed they didn’t continue to live in their sin.  In our lives we should accept God’s grace and move on.  Leaving those things which are behind, I press on!

There will always be struggles with temptations in our lives.  We will fall again.  But when we do, we can come to Christ and He will forgive us.  I John 2:1, "My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin.  And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous."  I hold on to this verse because it shows me that Christ is our Advocate.  I desire to live a holy life, but when I fail I can count on the grace of God to cover the multitude of sins. 

We have hope today in the fact that we do not have to live in shame and condemnation over failures.  Christ died for our sins.  Don’t let the devil tell you to give up.  Accept the grace of God and overcome. 

Do you get sweaty palms and knots in your throat when it comes time to witness to someone?

Fear instantly grips most believers when it comes time to share their faith with someone they do not know very well.  Excuses flood our minds of why we shouldn’t do it.  When the Holy Spirit compels us to witness we think it is the devil trying to make us fail.  Let me give you a prophetic word, the devil tricks no one into witnessing about Jesus.

He does, however, cause us to fear failure.  Failure is not possible when it comes to sharing our faith.  We may not see the results right away but we NEVER fail. 

We were destined to be witnesses.  We were created for such a time as this to share our faith.  I like what Paul says to Philemon:, "that the sharing of your faith may become effective by the acknowledgement of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus."

It is already in you, you just have to acknowledge it.  You are a witness. You just may not realize it yet.  Look at yourself in the mirror every morning and say, "I am a witness" three times."  Well, maybe you don’t have to talk to yourself in the mirror, but get this within your Spirit.  You are a witness and were created to witness.

Lay down your fear!  I have heard alot of people talk about this crazy show Fear Factor.  Although I have never seen it I have heard the things they do.  Eating raw bugs (like eating cooked ones would be any better), risking their lives to cross canyons on ropes and much more.  People are excited to see people face their fears.  Maybe they should put all of US spiritual cowards on the show and watch us  go out and witness.  That is a major fear factor.

God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of POWER and of love and of a sound mind.  Fear means timidity.  You don’t have to be timid…be bold.  God has already given you every thing you need to witness.  JUST DO IT!

For many years I have cherished the writings of Solomon in the book of Proverbs.  There is immense guidance and wisdom for life found in these 31 chapters.  God has granted us a playbook for the game of life and we can learn from the experience of the ancient Solomon.

Starting March 7, we will begin a new series, Wisdom For Life.  We will be looking at many subjects from the book of Proverbs.  God’s Will, Wisdom, Success, The Tongue, The Heart, Parenting, Diligence vs. Laziness and Righteousness.  It will be a series  that will carry us through a couple of months.  We normally do not dive into a series for that long on Sunday mornings, but you cannot get through Proverbs quickly.  Join us on these Sunday mornings to help you gain Wisdom for Life.

Read this article on Mark Batterson’s blog.  It gives us an amazing picture of the price that has been paid to ensure that the Bible continues to go on.

Batterson writes, “As we kick off our Garden to City Bible reading challenge, we’re giving away free Bibles to anyone that doesn’t have one or can’t afford one. It’s the right thing to do, but honestly, I think it might be one reason why we don’t appreciate the Bible like we could or should.

In 301 AD, an edict by Emperor Diocletian set the wages of scribes at 25 denarii for 100 lines of first quality writing and 20 denarii for second quality writing. According to the computation of Rendel Harris, the cost of producing one copy of Scripture was 30,000 denarii. It’s tough to know the exact exchange rate, but if 1 denarius = 10 dollars, then one copy of Scripture cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $300,000. And that’s just labor, not parts or parchment.
Makes you appreciate it a little more doesn’t it?

Hopefully this will too. Scribes spent their days in scriptoriums listening to lectors read from the exemplar texts while the scribes wrote what they heard. It was mentally and physically exhausting work. Part of the reason why we know that is the colophons or notes that scribes wrote at the end of their books. One of my favorites, in light of our recent weather, is an Armenian manuscript of the Gospels that complains about the fact that this copy was made during a heavy snowstorm and his ink literally froze and his hand became numb and the pen fell from his frozen fingers! One common colophon amongst scribes was this: “As travelers rejoice to see their home country, so also is the end of a book for those who toil in writing.” Others would simply say: “The end of the book; thanks be to God!”

Scribes would take an entire year making one copy of Scripture. And some scribes took longer. One group of scribes, the Masoretes, were so meticulous in the copying standards that they would count ever letter, every word, and every verse in the OT to insure it’s accuracy!”

One of the beauties of the church is the fact that we are one body made up of individual believers.  God instituted a church that would stick together. That would love one another and care for one another.

Last night I was reading through I Corinthians and noticed a verse of Scripture that gives us a great picture of the church.  "If one members suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.”

We are a part of a family and if one of us suffers we should all suffer with them.  We should come along side of them and lift them up.  It is the opposite of what Job’s friends did.  They came alongside of him during his suffering and pointed fingers at him and tried to blame him for his mess.  Suffering with someone means that we identify with them, pray for them, listen to them and hold them up without reproach.  We must minister to others in their suffering by being a help and not a hindrance.

The Apostle Paul also wrote that when one is honored, we rejoice with them.  Too often in the body of Christ, we are jealous when others are honored over us.  The true heart of the body of Christ is that we all rejoice when others have been honored.  We must walk in such humility that when others get credit for what we have helped with, that we are happy even when they are honored instead of us.  One of the hardest things to overcome in the church is our own pride. 

When we are interested in building God’s Kingdom, we could care less who gets the credit, as long as God is glorified and His Kingdom advanced.  Our passion and desire should be for others to excel and have success.  My desire as a pastor is that we will raise up people that will go forward and do greater things than we have done.  My hope is to one day raise up pastors who will go on to build bigger churches and do greater things than I could imagine.

As we raise a small child, I have noticed that there are traits that we are born with.  My parents were in Rogers for several weeks and while here, my mom made Hannah an angel costume.  Hannah loves to dress up like a princess but wanted to have a costume for an angel.  Now I will always testify that Hannah is my little princess, but to call her an angel is a stretch:)

The angel costume was finished and she wore it for an hour or so.  She then decided to take off the costume.  She said, “I need to take off my angel costume so I can act ornery!”  We were taken by surprise by this.  She acts ornery in her princess costumes but when she is wearing an angel one, she somehow knows that acting ornery is out of character for an angel.  She had to take it off!

I know I try to spiritualize everything so I can write about it, but every one of us knows the difference between right and wrong.  Hannah knew angels (good not fallen) do not act ornery.  So she took off the costume.  She knows the difference between the two.  Everyone of us has been given an inner tuition that reveals to us right and wrong.  It is called by some a conscience,  but that conscience is a person, the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit convicts us of right and wrong.  To convict literally means convince.  He lets us know when we are following the wrong path.

We must tune in and listen to Him.  Follow His way and walk in the Spirit.  We must make sure that we listen to His conviction so that we will not act “ornery”.

I have read many marriage books, yet I am still learning how to be a better husband.  Most books tell  you what you should and shouldn’t do.  Books that try to fix marriages, more like a self-help course.  Love and War is a different type of marriage book.  John and Stasi Eldredge share from their personal journey to “stay” married.  The book begins by relating with most married couples of how we have so many expectations only to find ourselves disappointed because it was more difficult than we thought.  The authors talk extensively about how we need to count the cost of marriage before we say I do and to consider the baggage that we carry into the marriage.  They deal with the issues of self-esteem, past hurts, misdirected goals and much more.

They talk about the couple that seems happy in public but are falling apart inside.  The Eldredge’s give hope to every couple with their honest insight and by sharing from their own failures.  I have decided that Love and War will be required reading for every couple I counsel before and after marriage.  If you are struggling through marriage, Love and War is for you.

Summary:

What the Eldredge bestsellers Wild at Heart did for men, and Captivating did for women, LOVE & WAR will do for married couples everywhere. John and Stasi Eldredge have contributed the quintessential works on Christian spirituality through the experience of men and the experience of women and now they turn their focus to the incredible dynamic between those two forces.  

With refreshing openness that will grab readers from the first page, the Eldredges candidly discuss their own marriage and the insights they’ve gained from the challenges they faced. Each talks independently to the reader about what they’ve learned, giving their guidance personal immediacy and a balance between the male and female perspectives that has been absent from all previous books on this topic. 

They begin LOVE & WAR with an obvious but necessary acknowledgement:  Marriage is fabulously hard.  They advise that the sooner we get the shame and confusion off our backs, the sooner we’ll find our way through.  

LOVE & WAR shows couples how to fight for their love and happiness, calling men and women to step into the great adventure God has waiting for them together. Walking alongside John and Stasi Eldredge, every couple can discover how their individual journeys are growing into a story of meaning much greater than anything they could do or be on their own.

Get a copy of Love and War here.

This was book was provided for review by WaterBrook Multnomah.