The Sign of the Spirit

Remembering the Covenant

Jude 17-19 The Message

17-19 But remember, dear friends, that the apostles of our Master, Jesus Christ, told us this would happen: “In the last days there will be people who don’t take these things seriously anymore. They’ll treat them like a joke, and make a religion of their own whims and lusts.” These are the ones who split churches, thinking only of themselves. There’s nothing to them, no sign of the Spirit!

For Reflection

We are in the "Last Days." Our churches have been split, not because the believers are frivolous, but because they are fearful and threatened by the fluid secular society. We are experiencing an inability to identify the truth in the massive amount of information from all sources. The swinging balance of political power in an increasingly diverse population places enormous pressure on our ability and willingness to adapt to a rapidly changing world.

We Christians should be the sign of the Spirit.  It is we who should become a sanctuary of truth, the resting place for those weary of retribution and injustice. In Christ, we discover freedom from the seductions of our human condition.  In Christ, we find strength in hope and an unreasonable trust in God.

Pray

Pray to face the world with courage and confidence in the Holy Spirit.

Keeping the Faith Entrusted to You

Remembering the Covenant

Jude 4 The Message

Fight with All You Have in You

3-4 Dear friends, I’ve dropped everything to write you about this life of salvation that we have in common. I have to write insisting—begging!—that you fight with everything you have in you for this faith entrusted to us as a gift to guard and cherish. What has happened is that some people have infiltrated our ranks (our Scriptures warned us this would happen), who beneath their pious skin are shameless scoundrels. Their design is to replace the sheer grace of our God with sheer license—which means doing away with Jesus Christ, our one and only Master.

For Reflection

In this world, our faith in God is challenged.  Christians face enormous pressure to conform to the societies in which they live. As in Jude's time, there are artful and wicked men and women who have pretended to be religious teachers, but whose doctrines tend to sap the foundations of Christianity.  These false teachers deny fundamental Christian beliefs and profess to be holy when in fact they exploit our fears so that we will abandon our confidence in the power of God in favor of self-determination and self-righteousness.

We are to be humble, kind, generous, receptive, and nonjudgmental toward all people. As Paul put it, "Therefore do not let what is a good thing for you [because of your freedom to choose] be spoken of as evil [by someone else]; for the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking [what one likes], but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit." (Romans 14:15 -17 AMP)

Pray

Pray so that you become confident in the power of God to make all things work for good.  Pray for the courage to guard the bedrock of love, grace, and justice that is the foundation of Christian righteousness.

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Christ, Our Creator, Savior, Peacemaker

Remembering the Covenant

Colossians 1:9-20 The Message 

9-12 Be assured that from the first day we heard of you, we haven’t stopped praying for you, asking God to give you wise minds and spirits attuned to his will, and so acquire a thorough understanding of the ways in which God works. We pray that you’ll live well for the Master, making him proud of you as you work hard in his orchard. As you learn more and more how God works, you will learn how to do your work. We pray that you’ll have the strength to stick it out over the long haul—not the grim strength of gritting your teeth but the glory-strength God gives. It is strength that endures the unendurable and spills over into joy, thanking the Father who makes us strong enough to take part in everything bright and beautiful that he has for us.
13-14 God rescued us from dead-end alleys and dark dungeons. He’s set us up in the kingdom of the Son he loves so much, the Son who got us out of the pit we were in, got rid of the sins we were doomed to keep repeating.

Christ Holds It All Together

15-18 We look at this Son and see the God who cannot be seen. We look at this Son and see God’s original purpose in everything created. For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible, rank after rank after rank of angels—everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him. He was there before any of it came into existence and holds it all together right up to this moment. And when it comes to the church, he organizes and holds it together, like a head does a body.
18-20 He was supreme in the beginning and—leading the resurrection parade—he is supreme in the end. From beginning to end he’s there, towering far above everything, everyone. So spacious is he, so roomy, that everything of God finds its proper place in him without crowding. Not only animals and atoms—get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death, his blood that poured down from the cross.that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe—people and things, people and things, animals and atoms—get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death, his blood that poured down from the cross.

For Reflection

Our salvation is not an end to be achieved.  Preferably, it is a starting point for a journey into spiritual maturity.  As we learn more and more about how God works, we understand more fully how we should work.  
We look to Christ to see God.  We see in Jesus the persons we were intended to be. Do we dare strive to emulate Christ?  Can we achieve the spiritual maturity Jesus has shown us? We can only if we dedicate ourselves to the task, pray, study the scriptures, meet in the fellowship of other believers, and face the inevitable growth of our faith, fearlessly.  The beliefs we had as children were not the beliefs we had in early adulthood and will not be the beliefs we will have.  As we grow into Grace, we become closer to the archetypal Grace in Christ.   

Pray

Pray for the wisdom and the courage to grow into the human God has intended. Pray for the courage to embrace your changes in belief and work as you mature as an authentic Christian.
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Mediator of the New Covenant

Hebrews 9:11-15 The Message

Pointing to the Realities of Heaven

11-15 But when the Messiah arrived, high priest of the superior things of this new covenant, he bypassed the old tent and its trappings in this created world and went straight into heaven’s “tent”—the true Holy Place—once and for all. He also bypassed the sacrifices consisting of goat and calf blood, instead using his own blood as the price to set us free once and for all. If that animal blood and the other rituals of purification were effective in cleaning up certain matters of our religion and behavior, think how much more the blood of Christ cleans up our whole lives, inside and out. Through the Spirit, Christ offered himself as an unblemished sacrifice, freeing us from all those dead-end efforts to make ourselves respectable, so that we can live all out for God.

For Reflection

The voluntary death and resurrection of Christ gave humankind a new beginning. This selfless act establishes a personal and internal covenant with God. We have seen God in Christ and we have not perished but gained everlasting life. No amount of good works can save one who has already been saved from selfish endeavors by the blood sacrifice of Christ.

Pray

Pray prayers of thanksgiving to God who loved you so intensely that God sacrificed God's son to absolve your sinfulness. Pray so that you will act upon the love of God humbly and in God's service.

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Everlasting Single Sacrifice for Sin

Mediator of the New Covenant

Hebrews 10:11-18 The Message 

11-18 Every priest goes to work at the altar each day, offers the same old sacrifices year in, year out, and never makes a dent in the sin problem. As a priest, Christ made a single sacrifice for sins, and that was it! Then he sat down right beside God and waited for his enemies to cave in. It was a perfect sacrifice by a perfect person to perfect some very imperfect people. By that single offering, he did everything that needed to be done for everyone who takes part in the purifying process. The Holy Spirit confirms this:
This new plan I’m making with Israel
    isn’t going to be written on paper,
    isn’t going to be chiseled in stone;
This time “I’m writing out the plan in them,
    carving it on the lining of their hearts.”
He concludes,
I’ll forever wipe the slate clean of their sins.
Once sins are taken care of for good, there’s no longer any need to offer sacrifices for them.

For Reflection

Know this. Believe this. Trust this. Act on this.

Your sins and iniquities are remembered no more. God is not an accountant in the sin office. There is no more offering to pardon sin. You can quit your feelings of guilt.  Christ's sacrifice has removed your guilt. You are free to choose not to sin. Guilt is not a stumbling block to a right relationship with God.

Pray

Pray prayers of thanksgiving to the living God who pardons your sin and wipes them from memory. Pray that you will follow the path of righteousness that Christ has shown you.

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Praise God for Answered Prayer

Mediator of the New Covenant

Psalm 66:16-20 The Message

16-20 All believers, come here and listen,
    let me tell you what God did for me.
I called out to him with my mouth,
    my tongue shaped the sounds of music.
If I had been cozy with evil,
    the Lord would never have listened.
But he most surely did listen,
    he came on the double when he heard my prayer.
Blessed be God: he didn’t turn a deaf ear,
    he stayed with me, loyal in his love.

For Reflection

What is the beauty in your prayer?

Perhaps it is the implied and sometimes literal thankfulness for the Grace with which God embraces you.  Perhaps it is your implied or literal recognition that it was God's intervention into your life that redeemed your soul, pardoned your guilt, enabled you to overcome sin and find peace and joy.  Perhaps it was that God gave you comfort as you faced the prospect of death.  Or perhaps it was that God gave you the possibility of hope grounded in God's enduring presence. The beauty in your prayer is the unbreakable loving relationship with God.

Pray

Pray in the beauty of a loving relationship with God. Pray when you are sad.  Pray when you are angry. Pray when things look hopeless. Pray when things are right. Pray about everything and rest in the lap of a loving God.

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Covenant Blessings

Mediator of the New Covenant

Matthew 5:1-12 The Message

You’re Blessed

5 1-2 When Jesus saw his ministry drawing huge crowds, he climbed a hillside. Those who were apprenticed to him, the committed, climbed with him. Arriving at a quiet place, he sat down and taught his climbing companions. This is what he said:
3 “You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.
4 “You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.
5 “You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.
6 “You’re blessed when you’ve worked up a good appetite for God. He’s food and drink in the best meal you’ll ever eat.
7 “You’re blessed when you care. At the moment of being ‘care-full,’ you find yourselves cared for.
8 “You’re blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.
9 “You’re blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight. That’s when you discover who you really are, and your place in God’s family.
10 “You’re blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution drives you even deeper into God’s kingdom.
11-12 “Not only that—count yourselves blessed every time people put you down or throw you out or speak lies about you to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and they are uncomfortable. You can be glad when that happens—give a cheer, even!—for though they don’t like it, I do! And all heaven applauds. And know that you are in good company. My prophets and witnesses have always gotten into this kind of trouble.

For Reflection

There is value in making the familiar Beatitudes unfamiliar. Perhaps in reading this version, we may begin to understand what it means to rest in God. This interpretation allows us to see the connection of our immediate or temporal circumstance and the unexpected result, everlasting righteousness.

Take time with these passages.  Remember the times in your life that prove the statements to be true.

Pray

Pray for the humility that will allow you to rest in the truth that God can and does save you from yourself.
Pray that you will walk humbly hand in hand with with Christ.

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