Heroes

Heroes.

What's the first thing that comes to mind when you hear that word?  For many of us, images of the world's superheroes instantly come to mind. Spiderman, diving head-long into the burning car to save a civilian, with his magic sticky stuff. Captain America, fending off forces of Hydra in a mission to save the nation. Superman, flying into the air to rescue Lois Lane in his arms.

Each of these comic book heroes contain an incredible element of true victory and heroism. And the best news is, legends like these are not just the stuff of comics.

There once was a warrior who saw his nation defamed. A rival territory stood mocking the forces of his king, and refusing to back down. This man saw the enemy, and knew his position. In faith, he raided the enemy territory, and single-handedly killed 800 foreign mercenaries.

There once was a king, who saw a tiny, undefended parcel of land, home only to a few insignificant people and their crops, being threatened by enemy forces. This man, with only two faithful mighty men at his side, stood his ground, and dove head-long into the fight to save that which was his own.

There once was a hero, who saw his bride falling from the sky, into enemy territory and certain death. He reached out to her, destroyed all the forces of the enemy coming against her, and with his own precious, bleeding hands, turned their own greatest weapon of destruction against them in triumph, before picking up his beloved and riding home with her in his arms.

Jashobeam, one of David's three mightiest fighters, standing against the hostility of Canaanite empires. David, guarding Pasdimmin. Jesus, rescuing his beloved with his own blood.

Heroism is one of the most breath-taking things the world has, and will ever, see. But how often do we see true heroism today outside Marvel films?

Heroes are real. But sadly, the American church today looks anything but heroic. We have never, or rarely, tasted spiritual victory. We are surrounded by people who want more, but don't know where to find it. We see the world at every turn, and are constantly having to fight off distractions. We struggle to believe that God could bring back the heroism of the Bible, because we've never seen Him do so in our weak hearts.

But we do not have to stay where we are. God is willing to build us, in a heart beat. If you look around the world, you can already see Him at work.

Voice of the Martyrs recently released a story of how brave Christians are reaching out to North-Korean defectors. It's almost impossible for Christianity to get into that severely guarded and hostile nation..... and yet it's happening. Bibles are filtering into prisons, and the good news of Christ is being spread. The world cannot stop it, no matter how strong.

Jim Elliot, who was attacked by the Auca Indians he had spent his life to reach, but did not see his life as worth saving, if his death could save them. His wife, Elisabeth, who went straight back into Ecuador, to forgive and minister to her husband's murderers. Richard Wurmbrand, who spent ten years in a Soviet prison under severe torture, for defending Christ, and endured it rejoicing.............. the men and women that Hebrews 11:38 refers to as the ones "of whom the world was not worthy".

There are nations today, in which "taking up your cross" is a tragically literal command. The news last week contained stories of eight Syrian Christians, who would not back down in spite of severe oppression and threats. They had a battleground, and were determined to take up their sword and fight for the priceless hearts of the people around them. The news article relayed the story of their murders, and subsequent crucifixions, at the hands of Islamic radicals.

These men lost their lives..... and yet they were heroes. They were moved so deeply and completely outside of the Enemy's realm that he had to build crosses for them. Yet even in death, the victory was theirs. Christian history portrays a beautiful picture of a message that spreads even more when the messengers lose their all. The world is not worthy of heroes like these...... but it is forever altered by them. To paraphrase Eric Ludy, real Christianity will either turn the world completely on its head, or they will build crosses for us. But there is no in between.

It's time for the church of Jesus Christ to start acting like the true body of our savior. It's time for the heroes to rise up, with the war cry of God's mighty warriors.

THE CRY OF A HERO:

{Larger view on the Ellerslie website}

In Christ

Spiritual warfare is an exciting topic. It's so incredible to think about the promises in God's Word, when it comes to defeating the enemy and living victoriously!  We are more than conquerors when we take up the armor of God and wield it against the prince of this world, who has been destroyed by a weapon of his own arsenal, called death.

As a young Christian, newly awakened to and in love with the lifestyle of a "Gospelteer", I was eager to see this victory played out in my own life. And in many ways, it was. I gave my life to Christ, and spent a long, painful, but beautiful season cleaning out the temple of my heart. I wrestled in prayer passionately for the first time, and was given an incredible answer. I started to write devotionals for a little blog, called Real Christianity :) and watched to see God at work through it.

But then I came across the words of Jesus in Luke 10:18-19:

“I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you."

These verses quickly became my favorite promise of victory from God. And yet, the more I thought about them, the more it bothered me. My spiritual walk was growing..... but I was becoming less and less convinced that it was "victorious". I was sometimes able to say no to elements of selfishness in my life, but I was defenseless to trample any scorpions in the lives of others, and even in areas of my own walk. There were moments when I made a small choice to take a less traveled route because wouldn't lead me into sin, but could I really say that I had overcome the power of the enemy?  And even though some elements of sin had been denied, there were still areas of my life where the flesh was on the throne... it was there to harm me, and it was often succeeding.

It wasn't until a few months ago that I realized my spiritual battleground was missing the most important factor in gaining a victory: the simple Biblical phrase "In Christ".

An analogy Pastor Eric Ludy often uses to illustrate this idea is the law of gravity. You can jump off the ground, and temporarily defy the law of gravity. You can have some form of "victory" over it. But you can't stay in the air forever; gravity will keep pulling you back down. The only thing that can defy the law of gravity is the law of aerodynamics, and flight. And you don't have it.

But a plane does. A plane was built to defy the law of gravity, and rise above. And that plane's doors are open to you. But you are not going to defeat gravity by believing that the plane exists. You're not going to defeat it by looking at the plane, praising it, or even touching it. Even if you go so far as to hold onto the outside of the plane, gravity will still pull you down in the end. It's only when you're in the plane that the victory is won.

One Ellerslie sermon from 2011 gives a list of 66 elements of victory found in Christ. Each one of them, if you stop and think about it, are beyond belief!  Here are ten of them:

      1)  Our sins will be removed from us
      2)  We will have peace with God
      3)  We will overcome the Devil
      4)  We will bear much fruit
      5)  All the promises of God will be "Yes" and "Amen" to us
      6)  Nothing will be able to separate us from the love of Christ
      7)  We will be new creations, and all things will be made new
      8)  We will be the temple, the very dwelling place of God
      9)  We will have the power to rejoice!
    10)  The love of God will be perfected in us

Talk about victory!  And the offer stands fully available to us today. The plane door is open. In Christ, there is freedom and forgiveness, and newness, and the complete fulfillment of the work of God. There is true, real, tangible victory.

Over the past few weeks, my spiritual growth partner and I have been taking up the challenge of spending one hour in prayer every day. At first, it was difficult. I couldn't keep my focus, and I found myself continually stopping to read Bible verses just to keep my mind awake. But last week, God opened up a whole new door to me. I found myself on my floor, praising Him for all that He was, and finding a deep love and security I had never experienced before. The hour passed by so quickly I hardly noticed it. I had found myself in Christ, abiding in the depths of His presence, in a way I didn't know was possible. And there was victory that night.

The plane door is open. Are you ready to defy the chains of this world?

Broken Made Beautiful

I'll probably never forget the day last October when I found myself curled up on the floor in my room, broken, and in tears. On that day I surrendered the broken pieces of my life back into God's hands.

I struggled with an eating disorder for about a year. In September, I started eating again, but I hated every minute of it. I hated the fact that I was forcing myself to eat, rather than eating willingly. And I hated the fact that I had to eat, even though I had no desire to. I was ashamed, afraid, and dealing with self-hate. I had struggled for control, only to realize that I had none. That I was completely out of control. I realized that I was broken, but I was still unwilling to surrender to God's control. I had compartmentalized my life. God could have everything but that. I tried to piece myself back together.

And it didn't work. It was like trying to tape together broken china.

I was reminded today of the fact that we serve a God who makes broken things beautiful by the healing power of His grace. I also found a Japanese art form that I have thoroughly fallen in love with. It’s called kintsugi.

Veins of gold lacquer delicately hold together a once broken piece of china.

On that day in October, I surrendered to God. I realized that I couldn't fix myself, so I asked Him to do it for me. I'm not saying that everything has been perfect since then. It hasn't. There are days when I still have to make a conscious effort to eat enough. Perhaps the biggest struggle for me was to choose joy, instead of being weighed down by the guilt, shame, and regret that I felt.

For a long time, all I saw were the cracks - the marks of my failure. When I finally saw beyond that, and in those cracks saw God's golden grace, that I was able to rejoice. I'm not happy with my choices and the consequences they had, but I am joyful that God's grace is enough to heal and hold together a life that was once broken.

For a long time I struggled to be honest about the fact that I had been anorexic. I still don't talk about it a lot, but I've gotten to the point that I'm not unwilling to talk about it. I realized that I needed to be willing to acknowledge my struggles to others, in order to share with people the incredible work of God's grace in my life. It's like a kintsugi plate: if you pretend that it was never cracked, then you can't enjoy the beauty of how it is now held together. It's like Paul, choosing to boast in his weaknesses, in order that the power of Christ could be seen in him.

Most people throw away their broken china. A lot of people are willing to throw away their broken lives. But that isn’t how God works. God’s grace is beautiful. More and more I see the incredible grace of God running in gold en veins through my life, holding me together. Like kintsugi, where the lines where the piece of china was once broken add beauty as they are filled with gold, our lives become beautiful as they are put back together by God.

Written by Patience Griswold

Discipleship - The Leader

(Click here for enlarged video... you'll want to see this one full-size!!!)

HE IS

Pastor Eric Ludy and the Church at Ellerslie

Have you caught the vision of world-altering Christianity?

Are you willing to follow it, no matter the cost?

Are you willing to give up all that you are

for all that He is?

.....How could we not?

Discipleship - The Cost

It Will Cost You Everything

Pastor Steve Lawson

Have you given up everything?

Is there something that God is not "allowed" to touch

in your life?

What is keeping you from spreading the Good News?

Are you willing to give all that you are for all that 

He is?

[to be continued next week]

Flesh

Flesh... the old man... sin... Who is this?

Spirit... the new man... righteousness... Who is this?

What are we?

I have always had this assumption that I am evil. After all, I inherited sin, right? Am I not born condemned? Am I not a vile creature in the presents of a great God?

Let me tell you something:                     YOU are NOT your FLESH. YOU are not the old man, YOU are not sin. YOU are the IMAGE, the PICTURE, and the REPRESENTATION, of GOD.

Fear of evil and change is something that many of us have. We are afraid to change ourselves. We think that sin is part of us, and subconsciously we imagine ourselves like an amputee with out it. In reality though, this idea that we are made of our sin is from the enemy.

First, let’s establish who we actually are, and I am a debater... and its time for Cross examination.

• Do you agree that you are made in God's image?
• Is God in any way blemished?
• Is he the perfect creator?
• Does He have every skill, or is he imperfect, and did he mess up on you?
• Would He create you in a way that did not accurately represent a part of Him?
• Thank you... No further questions at this time.

You see, God made you in His image, and in His likeness. You are a perfect creation. We are made in the image of a perfect God, so how are we sinners? That is just it we are sinners not actual sin.

At creation we were made like an easel, a frame to display a picture. As humans, were created to where garments, clothing. At creation God filled us, or clothed us in his perfect righteousness, yet in the fall we rejected that. We forsook our perfect garments and traded them for imperfect sin. After the fall man realized that he was naked; he was suddenly aware that without the perfect raiment of God he must be clothed with other garments.

Man was meant to wear things, to be clothed. We were many different things, but our clothes are not us. Unfortunately though, it is by what we clothe ourselves with, that we often measure our worth. We often measure by the garments worn… and I say that in both a physical sense and a spiritual sense.

God, on the other hand, sees us for who we are to become, the person we were meant to be. We are each unique frames, each of us is a unique person. We are each meant to display a peace of art, whose art we display is how we will be seen judged. We are that frame, but differing from the one hanging on my wall now, we were given something very great. We were given free will. This is perhaps the only thing given us. FREE WILL: The ability to act as wished and to reap the consequences. Using this “free will” we often let the enemy start to draw on our canvas.

When we are stained by the enemy’s pencils we look at ourselves in horror and grief. That is when God comes in to the picture. We are the frame and the canvas, the enemy has only pencils, but God has the great eraser and paints. God has the power to remove those blemishes into little bits of eraser crumple on the floor, and create a master piece of his own.

This is very easy to write and read about, isn’t it? But some how we have such a hard time in real life. Why? This is where Flesh starts vying for canvas control. The flesh promises temporary pleasures and delights. We are promised the temporary emotional high, an appeal to our fleshly desires. Emotions are perhaps the most likely to fall to the prey of the flesh. Emotional desires are temporarily rewarding when satisfied, and we learn to love the reward.

You and I are spirit. We are not this fleshly body that will die and decay. We are meant to be worn by a body, and that body is meant to be worn by clothing. We have free will over our raiment, or our image, for good or evil. "For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind." 2 Timothy 1:7 

 

So what is the point of this? Well, a few months ago I was struggling with my own out look on myself. All that I could see was how dreadfully wicked, sinful and horrible that I was. I was personally convinced that I could never be made right, that I was stuck, that I was so horrible that I couldn't be fixed. I was distraught over who I thought myself to be. That is when God told me where I was mixed up.

“You are not your sin. You are a beautiful child, created in My image. Right now you have many evil pencil marks from the enemy, but come to Me. I have the Great Eraser. I will remove your sins as far as the East is from the West. Then I will paint over you such a beautiful picture. You may only think them to be little strokes now, but in eternity you will see that they fit into my great mosaic. Let me make you a gem. You are not your sin. You have dominion over your actions. You CAN change. Never forget that. You, by My name, have conquered every sin. You are not trapped. For I have not given you a spirit of fear, but of power over sin and of love and of a sound mind.”

 

Shifting Sand

There once was a little girl who loved blue eyes. Every morning, she would gaze into the ravishing sky-like tone of her mother's eyes, and long for hers to look the same. But this little girl had brown eyes. As the days went by, she grew more and more insecure about her appearance, and those dark, hollow-looking eyes. One day, however, she heard someone talk about the power of prayer. If I pray, God will give me blue eyes!  This little girl closed her eyes tight that night, and fell asleep, sure that she would wake up to a pair of beautiful cerluean eyes staring back at her in the mirror. After all, God answers prayer!  When she woke up, however, she saw only the same brown eyes blinking at her in the glass. Maybe "no" is an answer, too.

Many of you have probably heard this story. And we all understand, and can relate, to its meaning and its moral. But could I suggest that this story, in the way that it's usually told, can be dangerously misleading?  The average Christian hears the lesson this girl learned, and applies a simple philosophy to their prayer life: "No" is an answer.

There is an undeniable element of truth in this statement; God will not fill every prayer request, just as He didn't see it fit to give this little girl blue eyes. The problem with the modern outlook on this idea, however, is that we think it's arbitrary. Many of us have the outlook that we present our requests to God, but never really know what to expect. God just sometimes says no.... that's all there is to it. Right?

The wise man built his house on Rock. An arbitrary "no" that we expect from God is not rock. It's shifting sand. It's changed by every draft that washes in. We don't know where we stand, if we think God is arbitrary in His answers to prayer.

The Rock is God's plan. The Rock is God's promises. The Rock is God's will.

Leslie Ludy rightly asserts in her book Set-Apart Femininity that modern prayers of the church are weak. We're afraid of receiving an arbitrary "no" from God, so often, we never step out boldly to ask for anything. So often, we act like He may not even hear us..... and many times, we have to wonder if He does.

Prayer is a difficult subject to tackle. One of the first questions the disciples asked Jesus was: "Lord, teach us to pray!"  Jesus' answer was the Lord's Prayer. Notice that, on the very second line of that prayer..... before personal requests for our daily bread, before forgiveness, before even a plea against temptation..... are these simple words: Thy will be done.

God does answer some prayers with a "no". But He is not arbitrary in his answers. God cannot violate His own nature. God will not go against His own plan. It's true that He will sometimes answer a prayer with a "no". But let's return to the story at the beginning of this devotional.

This little girl's name was Amy. Amy grew up in Europe, but she would not spend her whole life there. Later in her life, she moved to Japan as a missionary and, later, to India. She felt deeply moved when she heard stories of children forced into temple prostitution, and made it her goal to free as many as possible. A European blue-eyed, light-skinned woman sneaking into a Hindu temple would have been noticed and questioned. But an Indian woman, with tan skin and, yes, brown eyes, would be able to get in and out much more subtly. Amy Carmichael saved the lives of hundreds of children, and brought many to Christ through her work. God had a plan for her. God did not arbitrarily deny her request for blue eyes. He knew that blue eyes could compromise the mission and the sacred call He had set upon her life. God has even the tiniest, most minuscule details of our life worked out. Yes, His answer is sometimes "no". But His will is always done.

Our faith is built on shifting sands, and is changed by every tide of life as it washes in. But it doesn't have to be that way. We can build our house of prayer on the Rock. If God says He has given you an open door, then He has given you an open door. That no one can shut. (Revelation 3)  No one, whether it's personal failure, weakness, insecurity, guilt, or seemingly unanswered prayers, can shut that which He has opened.

I'm always amazed when I read Eric and Leslie Ludy's outlook on prayer and faith. They spoke in one of their books about how they had struggled with a lack of faith in their prayer lives, and had been afraid to pray boldly, for fear of an answer being no. But as their faith grew, their prayers became more and more powerful. Eventually, they came to the point where their entire lives depended on and centered around true, wrestling prayer. Even with all of that spiritual vigor, the answer was sometimes "no". But they had built their house on the Rock. Now, every time God answers no, they excitedly look for His hand in the situation. He is not arbitrarily which prayer requests to fill, and which ones to ignore; He's working out His perfect plan.

The Rock is unchanging. The Rock is immovable. It's unending, it's infallible, it's true, it's perfect, it's whole.

The Rock is also available. Are we brave enough to build upon it?

My faith is like shifting sand,

Changed by every wave,

My faith is like shifting sand,

So I'll stand on grace.

-Caedmon's Call