Youthful Passion

Jeremiah 2:2
"I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved me and followed me through the desert, through a land not sown."

Ah, the passion and excitement of the new Christian! There is something exhilarating and inspiring about discovering the truths of Christ and seeing how they apply us. We see even in our depraved, sinful state, God’s promises are for us and we can count on Him. We begin to dig into the Word, share with our friends, and get involved - all with a seeming unquenchable passion. Christ loves us and nothing could diminish that!! Weathering times of trial and pain, we hold tight to the promises of God, still so fresh in our memory.

Then life begins to wear on us, the church misuses or abuses us, our friends don’t want to hang out with us because all we talk about is God. The truths and promises of God that once held us so close to Him begin to fade in our minds and our Christian walk slows to a crawl and becomes just another drudgery we must do each week. Oh that each of us could be one of the few that watches our passion grow and strengthen over time, rather than weaken and become so mundane and every-day. The flame has flickered and is, perhaps, barely an ember that could be extinguished at any time.

Does this describe you? I hope not, because I’ve been there. I knew that I needed to be in the Word, but it held no luster for me. I knew that Jesus should be my hope, my love, my passion, but frankly the "devotion of my youth" had given way to the glitter of the world. Even when I got back to church and started doing all the right things it was still gone. I just thought I had "grown out of it," matured past the silly giddiness about God. However, I could feel that something was missing.

Can the passion be reignited? Is it possible to rekindle the flame of youthful devotion?

Yes, yes, a resounding YES! I can say that with absolute assuredness, because He did it for me. Christ desires nothing more than for each of us to rekindle our youthful, passionate devotion to Him! Let’s ask Him to fill our lives with a desire for Him - an unquenchable fire for Him alone. When we each come to the amazing realization that everything our heart is longing for (and I mean ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING) stems from a desire to be intimate with Christ . . . oh the freedom that brings! Run into the arms of the Lover of your soul! Let Him hold you and whisper His sweet promises in your ear. Let Him give you a glimpse of all that He holds for you! He alone, can give you the love and adventure your heart desires! He is all we’ve ever wanted and so much more. Women, we tend to love wild men - check out Jesus, the only rebel who won’t get us into trouble! Men, you love adventure, and danger - may I suggest that there is none more adventurous and dangerous than our wild God (and only the bravest really dare going with Him)!

Let our wild and passionate God reach out today and capture your heart and all its wildest dreams. He alone can surpass anything you’ve ever hoped or dreamed! Watch out and hold on tight!

Eternal Perspective

1 Peter 1:6-7
In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

I just love it when God follows-up on a lesson just learned, don’t you? Recently, I had a nervous breakdown (OK, so I’m exaggerating a bit, but I was on the verge!), only to turn around right into feeling God’s great love and compassion. He knew and understood at that moment what I needed most - just the reminder of the simple truth of His great love. When I sat down for my quiet-time the next morning, He took me one step further, and revealed to me much of the reason He allows difficult times in our lives - our faith.

I love in verse 7 when He tells us our faith is of greater value than even gold. Gold seems to be the universal symbol of affluence and wealth - if we have gold, we have everything, right? Wrong. Faith is of greater importance to God, and so it should be with us. After-all, gold will perish, but our faith will last forever. I am constantly asking God to strengthen my faith, to help me walk more confident in it. Then, when He sends a trial or test that will help me do just that, I cower and whimper, asking Him to take it all away - I have nights where I feel my life must be at its end (and then I call it a nervous breakdown).

I know it is so difficult to keep an eternal mind-set. This world around us is so temporal, very much into the here and now, very much into the external. Somehow, though, we must continue to see this life as God sees it - a mere stepping stone into the next, richer, eternal life. God is simply building us up that we would then glorify God in what we do. Our finances will fluctuate - money will come and it will go - yes, God has set out pretty clear standards regarding how we are to treat it, but it is not eternal. It is simply a tool. We will have times when things in our lives are going well, and everything seems to be falling into place with our family, our ministry, and everything else we put our hands to. Then, there will be times when we wonder why we bother with our families, ministry, or anything else. It feels as though God is completely against us, and nothing we do will ever succeed. Somehow, through it all, we must look to God to give us His perspective. We must allow Him to remind us that this chapter may be bad - we may not understand it, or like it, or agree with it - but when the last chapter is written, and we can look back over the whole story, we will see how it all worked together moving us ever closer to the happy ending we can all rest-assured is in store for us.

So, we have a choice - will we allow God to temper us, test us, and strengthen our faith? Will we trust that this chapter will take us to the next chapter, until finally the story is complete and bound in heaven’s radiant light? Our faith is of utmost importance to God - let’s let Him build it up, and use it for His great glory and delight!

Listen to Instruction

Proverbs 19:27
Stop listening to instruction, my son, and you will stray from the words of knowledge.


Have you ever met someone who thinks they have it all figured out? I’m afraid I may have been that person, if you’ve ever met me. It’s easy to think we’ve read it all, and we know the answer to every malady and every problem. Of course, Christ is the ultimate answer to each and every problem we have - real or imagined. However, it’s also very easy to think "I know Him, so everything else is taken care of." Why bother with church? Or Bible study? Or Christian living books? Christ is in me, and that’s that.

Well, as we can see from this passage, "that’s" not entirely "that." You see, salvation is 3-fold - past salvation is the moment we chose to live under Christ’s Lordship; present salvation is the process through which God refines us, teaches us, molds us to be more like Him, and uses us for His great purposes (this is known as sanctification); and future salvation is the moment we are saved from eternal damnation - the fate we all deserve. This verse is speaking to us regarding our present and on-going salvation - our sanctification.

When we bow our knee to Christ and open the door for Him to enter our lives, we have simply taken the first step in our Christian journey. I know women who think that once Christ is in their lives, they simply have to trust Him to "do His thing" and everything else will be taken care of. I also know women (and I would tend to fall into this category) that after being under His teaching for a brief time, we’ve heard it all and know it all, and have "arrived." These are two extremes of the same problem - not listening to instruction. Whether we have been Christians for a day or 100 years, we all need to listen to instruction - we all need to be under a person who is teaching us, and then take that teaching and apply it to our lives. We need to be in the Word, allowing Christ to teach us, and then take that teaching and apply it to our lives. We cannot do this alone. We cannot walk in the Spirit, living in truth, and make an impact in this world without being taught.

Who is teaching you? What are you learning? How are you applying what you’re learning and living it out? If these questions are stumping you, perhaps you should look at your life and see what needs to change. Perhaps you think I’m in the wrong here. If so, look at your life - the choices you’re making, the way you’re living, the impact you’re making. Now, hold it up to the light of truth - compare it to what God has to say (not what you think God has to say) about all of these things. Look in the Word and see if your life is lining up with a true, radical disciple of Christ. I would be willing to bet that if you are not listening to instruction, your life will not line up very nicely. Oh, you might have a nice veneer - a beautiful shiny outside - but your life through-and-through will be in the shadow that the world’s teaching is casting onto your life.

Here’s the thing - we’re all learning something, we’re all under someone’s teaching - the question is, are we learning the truth? Is that someone a person who is under the truth of Christ? Or are we learning life’s lessons from the TV or from magazines or secular books? We must listen to Christian instruction, and apply it to our lives, or salvation from the snags of life will be long and painful. Oh, God will finish us - He always finishes what He starts. But it is so much more fun, delightful, and amazing when we are willing parties to His great plan.

Wounds From a Friend

Proverbs 27:6
Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses.

I have a dear friend who is one of the most painfully honest people I know. If I want to know the awful truth about something, I can trust her to point it out clearly, as she sees it, and from a Christian view-point. I, on the other hand (and we talked about this last week), fear offending people, or hurting their feelings - I hate to be the one to point out the painfully obvious truth. As a result, it can be a bit difficult to hear the truth coming from someone else, when really, I’d rather we just gloss over it, make it look pretty and call it good.

However, I can honestly say I have come to highly value this attribute in my friend. As painful as it is, I know she is not saying it to hurt me or bring me down. Rather, she is trying to help me, to build me up, make me stronger, and to correct me, just as the Bible tells us we are to do. Because she is such a good friend, I know I can trust what she says as being said out of love, not maliciousness.

On the other hand, we tend to be drawn to those people who make us feel good about ourselves, complement us, and tell us that all the things we do wrong are "OK - we all make mistakes, right?" While this is a true statement, we do all make mistakes, it is doing us no good to have this person in our lives - all they are doing is justifying our bad behavior for us and pulling us further down. So, while we may not consider them an "enemy" as we traditionally think of them, they are an enemy of our faith, as they spur us on toward disobedience rather than obedience.

Let’s ask ourselves today: Am I a true friend, one that will speak the truth, in love, encouraging my friends to take the right steps? Or, am I their enemy, always flattering them with my lips, telling them what they want to hear, rather than what they need? And when a friend tells me the hard truth, do I get defensive, hurt, and angry? Or do I allow the truth of what they said to alter my attitude and help me choose to take steps toward a healthier relationship with Christ? I believe we all, for the most part, know what is right and what is wrong. So there is no excuse for us being an enemy to our friends, or getting hurt and offended when our friends point out to us that which we really already knew to be true. Let’s each of us take a look in the mirror and strive to be better friends, shall we?