Tag: gospels

Finding Freedom

Posted on by holyghostnotes in Ghost Writer

Recently after giving a youth group lesson I was confronted by a group of 5 teens that wanted to debate me about Christianity. Our youth group is a mix of Christians, atheists, and everything in between. Most of the teens stayed after the lesson to watch this debate go down until about 11pm. The leader of their little group said to me, “You’re a Christian. So that means you’re confined by so many rules. But I am free to do whatever I want. I can do drugs if I wanted to, but you can’t. I can get drunk if I want, but you can’t. I watch porn whenever I want and enjoy it with no shame, but you can’t. I’m free, you’re not.”

I thought about this for a moment. I responded by saying, “I don’t think you understand freedom. It’s not that I can’t do those things, it’s that I am free FROM those things. Sure you can watch porn whenever you want, but I don’t think you could stop if you tried. You’re a slave to it without even realizing it.”

If we were to define freedom we might describe it as having the ability to do whatever we want with absolutely no consequences. But imagine if we lived in a world where we had that kind of freedom. That would be like driving down a 4 lane highway with no speed limit signs and no dividing lines. You can drive however you want with no rules…but this would lead to a pileup of disaster.

Freedom requires restraint. It’s actually just like playing drums. Imagine a brand new drummer who’s never played before sitting down on a beautiful pristine kit with new heads, fresh sticks, and fresh cymbals. They sit down and just blast off with no rules. It’s a mess of cymbal slams, dramatic tom hits, chaotic double bass, and of course, cracks and dents in those new sticks.

If you want to be a good drummer, the best place to start is on a practice pad. Learn the basics. Put in the time and discipline. During this process you might feel confined and even bored, but this is what it takes to be great. Once you go through this discipline you now have freedom to play whatever you want with skill and excellence.

The same thing is true about having freedom in Christ. When God calls us to discipline and restraint it’s not meant to confine us, but it’s meant to give us the ability to live free and upright without falling into all these sins traps that are all around us.

Freedom in Christ has two main components. Freedom from & freedom to. You are free FROM your sin. You are no longer slaves to sin, but set free and set apart for God (Romans 6:18). And you are free TO live a new life. God gives you a calling and equips you with everything you need.

So this weekend we are remembering our freedom and independence as a nation. That freedom came at the cost of people laying down their lives. When it comes to your salvation, the same principle applies but in a much larger context. Your freedom came at a cost. Jesus laid down His life so that you could be free. Don’t run back to the chains that He delivered you from!

Have a Happy 4th of July weekend!

Christians with Bad Gas

Posted on by holyghostnotes in Book of Mark, Devotionals

Mark 8:14-21

A lot of Christians have bad gas.  They stink.  Their stench is partly to blame for driving people away from the church.  Of course, I say ‘partly,’ because those who don’t go to church have to take responsibility for their actions and stop blaming Christians with gas.  But I digress.

I’m not talking about butt gas, but ego gas, and, believe it or not, there’s a difference.  We’re up to Mark 8:14-21, where Jesus warns his followers about the gas of religious people, only Jesus calls it ‘leaven.’  But, let’s be honest, it’s more fun to say gas.

Leaven is the agent in bread that gives off gas so the bread will rise.  Leaven could be either chemically based, like baking soda, or naturally based, like yeast, sour milk, or beer (mmmm, beer).

When the leaven begins to break down, it releases gas inside the body of the bread and the bread rises, becoming bigger than it really is.  A lump of dough could grow twice its size because of the leaven. 

This helps us to understand why Jesus cautioned his disciples, “Watch out; beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod” (Mark 8:15).  What did Jesus mean?  Jesus knew that a lot of religious people were puffed up, making themselves appear bigger than they really were.  In other words, they had leaven gas inside them, which inflated them to about twice their size.  That’s why Jesus couldn’t stand the smell of religious people.

There was a kind of leaven inside the Pharisees that gave them an inflated ego or sense of self-importance.  They thought they were bigger and better than everyone else; and they felt their good works made them bigger and better in God’s eyes, too, which is really damnable.  The bottom line (no pun intended) is that they trusted their good works to make them righteous before God and men.  They were inflated, puffed up, and full of gas.

Scour the Bible and you’ll discover that there’s nothing Jesus hated more than self-righteous, puffed up religious people.  Jesus embraced all kinds of people, but not the ‘Pharisee’ kind.  He embraced dirty lepers, prostitutes, drunks, liers, thieves, and even murderers, but he had no patience for puffed up religious folk.  Hell, Jesus even made time for demons and the demon possessed, that’s how low his standards were!

Jesus just wanted the bread how it was, not all puffed up.  He didn’t want self-righteous leven in it.  And that’s pretty cool.  Jesus will take bread that’s moldy, half-eaten, soggy, small, burnt, or underbaked, but he won’t have anything to do with deceptive, leavened bread.  That’s the good news.

But there is bad news: everyone who has ever lived is infected with the leaven of the Pharisees.  It’s in our human DNA.  It’s what makes you want to puff yourself up and look better than others; it’s why social media works.  It’s what makes you think you can earn God’s favor by being good or obeying his commandments.  It’s what makes you give up on yourself for failing, because you think you’re better (and bigger) than you really are.  It’s what causes you to thumb your nose at religious folks, because you think you’re better than they are.  Wow, that just came full circle.

There’s no getting around the fact that we all have religious leaven in us, giving us spiritual gas.  So how do we get rid of it?

Let’s go back to our passage of Scripture.  

The disciples forgot to bring bread (14) and were arguing about the fact that they had no bread to eat (16).  That’s when Jesus chimed in with his cautionary tale about leaven, which seemed to come out of right field.  The disciples wondered what the heck he was talking about, for they were starving and Jesus was warning them about the dangers of leaven.  So Jesus told them, “Why are you discussing the fact that you have no bread?  Do you not yet perceive or understand?” (17). 

They were still confused, so Jesus reminded them of the multiple times he provided bread for them when they didn’t have any.  “Don’t you remember?” (18), he asked them, when there was just the twelve of you, I miraculously provided bread for over 5,000 people, then I did the same for over 4,000 people, and each time there were leftovers!

In other words, Jesus reasoned, trust me to give you bread when you don’t have any; also, trust me to give you the kind of bread you need.

When we are empty, Jesus will provide what we need.  When we don’t have what it takes to earn God’s favor, Jesus will provide for us.  When we don’t have our own righteousness, Jesus will give us his righteousness.   There’s no sense in puffing yourself up in order to look twice your size, because Jesus is able to give you 9,000 loaves of bread with plenty to spare!  (That’s about 9,000 times your size!)  You don’t need to be full of gas when Jesus is full of grace.

Just be you.  Be ordinary, flimsy, plain-bagel-you.  Stop trying to impress God and those around you.  Jesus is able to provide all you need, and then some.

Here’s a thought that just occurred to me: there are two kinds of people, those who tell the truth and those who trust in their own inflating self-righteousness.

The Breakdown

  1. What did Jesus mean by ‘leaven?’  Where do you see leaven in your life?
  2. In what situations are you afraid to be your ordinary self?  Why do you think this is?
  3. Have you ever been ‘empty’ and experienced the grace of Jesus filling you up?  What was that like?  Was the ‘bread’ he provided better than what you would have been able to provide on your own?
  4. What do you think the last sentence means (“There are two kinds of people, those who tell the truth and those who trust in their own inflating self-righteousness.”)?

Idol in Every Home

Posted on by holyghostnotes in Ghost Writer

If you’re reading this, then you have an idol in your home.  Well, to be more precise, you have the potential to have an idol in your home.  Before I tell you what it is, you need to know that this post is going to be about porn.  So the idol I’m referring to has to do with your screen, whether a computer, phone, or tablet.  The actual idol is pornography.  

When you think about an idol, you may imagine a carved statue, sitting on the mantel or in a spot within the home where it can be best venerated.  You might picture the people in the house offering sacrifices to the idol or spending time sitting in front of it expectantly and entranced.  You might imagine someone bowing down to it and it holding power over a person.  

Am I talking about idols or porn?  It’s easy to get the two confused.

I don’t know about you, but I have the tendency to look on ancient people and think condescendingly to myself, ‘They were so primitive!  How could they actually bow down to a wooden or metal idol and worship it?  How could they actually believe it could give them something in return for their sacrifice?’  Most of us believe we’ve ‘evolved’ past the days of statues and idolatry.  We think idolatry like this is a thing of the past.  Oh, sure, we might believe in idolatry metaphorically, as in our capacity to make money or career an ‘idol,’ but we don’t mean it literally, heavens, no.

But I mean it literally.

Our sophisticated, evolved, cultured, educated, christianized, western world bows down before idols each night and worships.  Just about every household.  Don’t believe me?  Then what do you call this: a person sits down before his computer (an idol carved from various metals and materials); types in search words (tells the idol the magical incantation so the idol gives the person what he wants); goes into a trance staring at the pornographic images (worships); wastes countless minutes and hours each day searching and staring (the sacrifices he offers to the idol are time, health, resources, work, relationship, and family); perhaps he masturbates or fantasizes (more offerings to the idol); feels shame and guilt afterwards (idolatry always wrecks you).  Need more evidence?  In ancient times, there were prostitutes in pagan temples, because part of worshipping the idol culminated in ritual sex; again, this is just like how our worship of the porn idol often leads to masterbation.  

Whenever you seek after or watch porn, you engage in idol worship.  And every idol has a demon attached to it.  This is why it’s so hard to stop, why you feel so much shame and guilt, and why it consumes your life.  Pornography devours because that’s what demons do.  You may get a little rush, just as someone receives some sort of ecstasy from idol worship, but the demon quickly revokes the ecstasy and replaces it with misery.  Whenever you look at porn, you are inviting a demon into your home and it will wreak havoc on you and those around you.

In ancient times, people prayed to an idol so it would comfort them or help them avoid problems; in modern times, we pray to porn so it can comfort us and help us avoid problems.  We do it for the same reasons. 

Does it have to be porn explicitly?  Here’s a rule of thumb: it’s porn if you make it porn.  It could be a PG-13 movie, but if you use it as porn, then it is porn, an idol.  So be careful and don’t play games with these demonic idols.

The vast majority of us would never bow down to a wooden idol in our home and worship it, knowing full well that God hates idolatry.  Most of us know that God truly loves us and can make our lives better, not worse.  We’ve just never realized the connection between idols and porn.  

But now you know.

The best way to stop worshipping a false god is to start worshipping a real God.  So instead of bowing down before a screen and worshipping the porn idol, bend your knees to God and seek his beautiful Face.  You will find love, meaning, and forgiveness; and your life will start to come together, rather than continue to fall apart.  

Here’s a prayer Martin Luther taught us to pray every morning, why not start to do the same: 

“I thank you, my Heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ, Your dear Son, that You have kept me this night from all harm and danger; and I pray that You would keep me this day also from sin and every evil, that all my doings and life may please You. For into Your hands I commend myself, my body and soul, and all things. Let Your holy angel be with me, that the evil foe may have no power over me. Amen.”

True Judgment Free Zone

Posted on by holyghostnotes in Book of Mark, Devotionals

Mark 8:11-13

The Pharisees were the religious leaders in Jesus’s day and Jesus clashed with them quite a bit.  They were literally the ‘religious police’ of their day, judging and condemning those who did not live up to their impossibly high standards.  

Near where I live, there’s a Planet Fitness gym; on the building there’s a huge banner that says, ‘judgment free zone.’  In our day, we frown upon judgment, in fact, we do everything we can to create safe spaces for people and help them feel accepted, rather than judged.  

When we pick up the Bible and learn about the Pharisees, we’re quick to side against them, thinking we’d never be like them.  They were so judgmental and we’re so accepting, we assume.  

But I’ve got a secret to share with you: the role of the Pharisees in the Bible is to show us ourselves.  Those who wrote the Bible needed a ‘mirror’ to show people what they were like, so they chose the Pharisees.  When we look at the Pharisees, we’re supposed to see what we look like, for we are as judgmental as they are, despite our gym banners. 

And the more unbelievable it seems to you that you are just as judgmental as the Pharisees, the blinder you are to the reality of your snobby, pharisaical heart; hence, the more important it is that the Bible shows us the Pharisees so we can see what we look like.

Here’s how this plays out in our short passage today, Mark 8:11-13.  The Pharisees were up to their usual ways of judging Jesus, demanding he perform a miraculous sign for them to prove his claims.  They were testing him.  But Jesus knew how their hearts were operating, so he refused to comply.  He sighed deeply in his spirit about the generation who demanded a sign.  And then he left.

What’s really going on here and how are we like the Pharisees?

A Pharisee is anyone who thinks that we can look better in God’s eyes by keeping the law.  “If I do this, then God will look with favor on me,” is the reasoning.  Now look closely and you’ll see the telltale sign of the law, which is a conditional if/then statement.  “If I do this…then this will be the result.”  

Not only was Jesus’s day filled with the law, but also ours is today.  

“If I lose weight, then people will like me more.”

“If I make more money, then I’ll be better off.”

“If I don’t do bad things, then I’ll be a good person.”

“If I keep the Ten Commandments, then God will love me more.”

You get the idea.  Now, it’s important to realize that these sorts of law-conditional statements could be true!  If you look a certain way, then people (albeit shallow people!) might accept you more.  Again, that could be true, but that’s not the issue here.

The issue is whether or not our conditional mentality can give us more favor in God’s eyes.  And Jesus’s resounding answer is, “No!”  

But first he has to break our addiction to the law, and to do this, he cannot play along with our legal demands.  So when the Pharisees come at him with their conditional statement, “If you perform a miraculous sign, then we will believe you…” Jesus must not comply, for if he did, then he’d be sanctioning the age-old law-mentality.  It’s as if they tossed him a coin, but he let it drop to the ground.

So let’s use the analogy of a coin.  There are two sides to the law coin, God’s and ours.  On God’s side, the inscription reads, ‘If God does a miraculous sign for me, then I will trust him.”  But on the other side of the coin, our side, the inscription is, “If I keep the law, then God will save me.”  That’s the law coin in a nutshell, the coin humanity has been flipping for generations, down through the ages.  On the one hand, we honestly believe that if we do the right things, then God will save us; and on the other hand, we honestly think that if God did a miracle for us then we would believe him.

But Jesus wants to take this kind of coin out of circulation and introduce a new coin to the world, the grace coin.  

The grace coin has two sides, as well, God’s and ours.  God’s side says, “I will not do a sign, but you can still trust me” and if you flip it over to our side, the inscription says, “You don’t have to perform any good work, and I will still save you.”  And that’s where the real money is at.

By not giving a sign, Jesus does not validate their current system.  Instead, he refuses to play along and challenges the world’s system of law and judgment.  He wants us to doubt our current system so that he can introduce his radical new currency of grace, which is the greatest treasure the world can discover.  

We can hang all the banners we want that say, ‘judgment free zone,’ but people will keep on judging until the world ends.  Ironically, the only one who does not judge is THE Judge, himself, God.  God doesn’t require us to keep if/then laws to earn his favor.  He does not say to us, “If you do this, then I will accept you.”  Humans do that, but God doesn’t.  

Only humans say, “If I make all the correct choices, then I will live happily ever after.”  That’s the way all our old myths go, but Jesus has a new, true myth for us, which says, “You can make all the wrong moves and still live happily ever after with me.”  Jesus says to us, “Let’s make a deal, I don’t have to prove myself to you and you don’t have to prove yourself to me.”  That’s the new formula of grace.  

But grace has a jarring side effect to it: God won’t always perform for you when you ask him to.  In fact, in order to shake the law coins from our tight pockets, he’ll gladly interrupt our current life system, so we stop flipping the law coin in his face.  As he did with Job, God may cause things to happen in your life that make no sense at all.  This is not to punish you, but to liberate you from your reliance on the law.  Again, he doesn’t have to perform for you and you don’t have to perform for him, he wants and gives only love.

There is a tiny Pharisee lurking in every person’s heart, trying at all times to convince us of the law.  This makes Jesus very sad.  He doesn’t want anything to do with the spirit of judgment.  Instead, he wants to pour his love into our hearts and make us worthy by his grace.

The Breakdown

  1. Can you see a tiny Pharisee in your heart?  What sorts of judgments about the world and others is he/she making?  Why do you think this is the case?
  2. How can Jesus break our addiction to the law?  (Think about how you might attempt to break the addiction in a loved one.)
  3. What do you think keeps you from realizing God’s love right now?  Be honest and read over Mark 8:11-13 again.  What might Jesus be doing in your life?

Empathy and Action

Posted on by holyghostnotes in Book of Mark, Devotionals

Mark 8:1-10

Empathy means to “feel into” the situation of another.  To have empathy for the plight of another is to be able to put yourself in his or her shoes and feel what the person feels, as if you were going through the same situation as that person would.  Truly to have empathy doesn’t mean you experience their situation as you would experience it, but as they would experience it.  You try to imagine what it must be like to be that person, with the same history and hindrances, facing the same situation.  

Quite often, my ability to feel empathy is hijacked by my lack of sensitivity to the disposition of the other person, so I end up thinking to myself, “Well, if that were me, I’d just do this or this; it’s not a big deal, I could handle it.”  Again, this is not true empathy.

Jesus showed true empathy to the large crowd in Mark 8:1-10.  Even though there were about four thousand people there, he ‘felt into’ each person individually.  “I have compassion on the crowd,” he said.  To have compassion means to be moved in one’s inward parts, the bowels, to be specific.  Jesus had a belly ache for each person there, his stomach was in knots, just thinking about each person in the crowd.  

He stepped into their shoes and experienced their circumstance not as if he were the Son of God, but as if he were one of them.  Notice the detail in the text.  Jesus knows they had been with him “three days” and he realized they had “nothing to eat.”  Then he imagines each person on the long journey home and says, “And if I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way.”  He even knew how far each person had travelled, “And some of them have come from far away.” 

Jesus felt into the plight of each person and was emotionally moved.  He had true empathy.

What is your plight right now?  What are you facing?  What are you lacking?  What dangers are ahead of you if something doesn’t happen soon?  Friend, Jesus feels into your life and circumstances today, just as much as he did then.  Whether you realize it or not, he stands in your shoes each morning and walks with you to face all your problems.  His stomach still turns when he sees what you see and feels what you feel. 

When he said, “I have compassion on the crowd,” you and I are in that crowd.  

But Jesus does more than have empathy, he also takes action.  He has empathy and action; he feels into your plight and takes action out of it.  Sometimes Jesus takes action directly, but sometimes he uses other people, as in Mark 8.  Remember this great truth: Jesus loves to use ‘means.’  He uses other people, objects, or events to minister to us.  

In Mark 8:1-10, Jesus used the means of the disciples and the bread and fish they were able to collect.  Jesus could have instantly filled the bellies of the four thousand people, but instead, he used the actions of the disciples to gather seven loaves of bread and a few small fish.  

How does Jesus act?  Now, it’s really important to see the pattern here, because it’s repeated twice in this passage, both with the bread and the fish, for emphasis.  Here are the seven steps of Jesus’s action in our lives.

  1. He uses what we have.  Again, God often uses means in order to minister to us.  He tends to use what we already have, rather than giving us something completely new.  Most likely, the answer to your problem is with you already, but you just don’t know it.
  2. He adds up our resources so that we can see they are not enough.  There were just seven loaves of bread and a few small fish.  Part of his action is for us to realize we don’t have what it takes.  His action doesn’t happen when we think we have it covered, but when we’re staring at an empty plate.
  3. He has us sit.  He directed the crowd to sit down.  For us, this means he humbles us, puts us in a posture of reception, waiting, and patience.  Also, sitting is the posture of grace: he serves us as a waiter as we sit and enjoy.   
  4. He takes away what we have and puts it in his own hands.  The crowd only had seven loaves of bread and a few fish, but Jesus took these away from the crowd.  Often, God will take away what little we have before he acts.
  5. He blesses or gives thanks for it.  We struggle to give thanks for what little we have, but Jesus doesn’t.  He gives thanks on our behalf for what we have.  He blesses what we have, in case we forget how special the little we have truly is.  
  6. He breaks it.  After taking away our meager resources, he breaks them.  While his breaking hurts us and we don’t understand what he is doing, it is necessary.  Just as a grape must be broken to produce wine, so must our hopes and dreams be crushed.  Useful things are broken things.   
  7. He has his disciples set it before us.  We depend on other people more than we realize.  When we’re broken and hungry and waiting on the Lord, other people will minister to us.  God loves to bring us to a desolate place where we have no resources and can no longer depend on our own strength; then he uses other weak and hungry people to care for us.  Sometimes we don’t realize how much God is using other people to help us; it’s okay to let it happen.  The most important meal others can serve to you is the word of God itself, reminding you of the truth of God’s grace in your life.  This is the meal that truly satisfies.   

Look at these seven steps, can you see any of them unfolding in your circumstance right now?  If you can, then you can see the action of Jesus.  Remember, he acts mysteriously and he uses others on his behalf, but he is directing the miracle.  His action will never turn out how we normally think it would, because he is always doing something new and gracious.  But in the end, his way is always best and always satisfies the most.  

There were four thousand in the crowd that day and you were one of them.

The Breakdown

  1. What is empathy?  When have you experienced true empathy?  When have you given true empathy?
  2. Go through the seven steps of Jesus’s action.  Which do you see at work in your life?  
  3. How has God used other people to care for you?  Take one minute and think about all the ways other people have loved you.