At first you may not immediately put these two words together. However, once becoming a father I believe that the Spirit of God changes something inside a man that can never be reversed. Now, when I think about the cross, the coming of Jesus to ransom sons and daughters and bring them to glory, I think about Finley.
Would I send her to die for you?
In short the answer is no.
you may be shocked to hear or read that, but the truth is that only our Heavenly Father is capable of doing what has been done. Only the Son was righteous and selfless enough to come and die so that you and I may live. I absolutely love the way Paul describes the coming of Jesus and the consequent outcome for those who believe on him in faith:
But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.
Galatians 4.4-7
The stage was perfectly set. Humanity was in dire need of rescuing. Jesus, the Son of God, King of Kings, perfect and blameless enters in to mess that our sin created…why?
so that we might receive adoption as sons.
You were dead! You were a slave! now…You are alive! You are a son! You are a daughter!
Had Jesus’ life ended on the cross then surely there is no hope for the rest of us. But it didn’t. On Resurrection Sunday he came back to life, appeared to his followers, taught them briefly, and told them, tell everyone you know! trust in me! believe in me! and you will be a child of the Most High God. and you will know him as I know him: Abba, Father.
On Sunday at Cornerstone we watched a video about adoption and the beauty that earthly adoption mirrors in our spiritual adoption in to the family of God. Its incredible…
Several things are going on this Lent season, not the least of which is being a new Papa to our daughter Finley. With each day, God brings us new joy, challenges, confusion, and smiles. While things are evolving for our family as she grows, so our church is going through a stretching season. We have been challenged to pray for the 40 days of Lent about the future of the church and for God to stir in his people at Cornerstone His dreams and plans for us.
So, in order to go with and as the people of Cornerstone Church, our staff has taken on the task of praying collectively throughout Lent (and hopefully beyond if I get my way 
) each week. This past Monday, we spent an incredible hour of praising the Lord, praying for one another, for our leaders and ministries, and for our community. I look forward to more of these times together – seeking the Lord, lifting Him up and one another to him, listening expectantly for his voice.
Through New Eyes
As this little bundle of awesome opens her eyes each new day, God continues to completely ransack my previous notions of approaching him in prayer. We don’t come to him as perfectly put together people. We don’t perform for him in some spiritual charade as if he would be impressed with our efforts to earn his favor.
No, we wake up each day and look up at to a Father who loves us more than we will ever know.
Now I get it. Now I see Him through different eyes.
While it will be impossible for me to sum up all that God has taught us through our study of Philippians this fall, a quick recap of the major themes that we worked through will give you a glimpse of the last 13 weeks. This list is not exhaustive but is one that I think grabs the heart of our study and the depth of the work that our students put in wrestling through tough subjects each Monday night:
- Your life is not about you.
- Your list of accomplishments do not earn the love of the Father.
- God does all that he pleases, and all that he does pleases him (even when we don’t like it).
- We are called to work out our salvation in light of the fact that we have been freely given salvation.
- Christ loves us, not because we are lovely, but in order to make us lovely.
- God will always finish the work that he starts in you at your salvation.
- A new creation – our identity is not something we have earned, but is given us, and is the means by which we approach the Father.
- You will face suffering, but God will supply your every need and in that we rejoice.
- Is the world crooked, depraved? Yes.
- Is the world in need of the love of Jesus? Yes…and you are His Plan A to bring that good news.
- For those who have heard and believed in Jesus Christ, you are sealed. Your future is guaranteed (Ephesians 1.3-14).
What we believe about God is the most important thing about us. – Tozer
I pray we would all believe that greater days are ahead because we serve a great God who furiously pursues His people.
(you can catch all the weeks’ studies through the Cornerstone College podcast)The greatness of God rouses fear within us, but His goodness encourages us not to be afraid of him. To fear and not be afraid – that is the paradox of faith.
A.W. Tozer
At the end of his chapter on the goodness of God in The Knowledge of the Holy, Tozer quotes a hymn of Charles Wesley’s, one that should always describe our worship of our great God:
O God, my hope, my heavenly rest, My all of happiness below, Grant my importunate request, To me, to me, Thy goodness show; Thy beatific face display, the brightness of eternal day Before my faith’s enlightened eyes, Make all Thy gracious goodness pass; Thy goodness is the sight I prize: O might I see Thy smiling face: Thy nature in my soul proclaim, Reveal Thy love, Thy glorious name
Without a doubt, the most common complaint/problem we as believers have (in the west anyway) when it comes to spending time with the Father and in His Word is a simple, prideful one: I just don’t feel like it.
There is no doubt that the cure for these kinds of apathetic seasons is the very thing for which we lack hunger – more of Jesus and his word. I read the below passage from a Bible Study I’m working through and it pulls from J.C. Ryle‘s Practical Religion (England, 1878):
Don’t rest on past reading. Read your Bible more and more every year. Read it whether you feel like reading it or not. And pray without ceasing that the joy return and pleasures increase.
Three reasons this is not legalism:
1. You are confessing your lack of desire as sin, and pleading as a helpless child for the desire you long to have. Legalists don’t cry like that. They strut.
2. You are reading out of desperation for the effects of this heavenly medicine. Bible-reading is not a cure for a bad conscience; it’s chemo for your cancer. Legalists feel better because the box is checked. Saints feel better when their blindness lifts, and they see Jesus in the word. Let’s get real. We are desperately sick with worldliness, and only the Holy Spirit, by the word of God, can cure this terminal disease.
3. It is not legalism because only justified people can see the preciousness and power of the Word of God. Legalists trudge with their Bibles on the path toward justification. Saints sit down in the shade of the cross and plead for the blood-bought pleasures.
So lets give heed to Mr. Ryle and never grow weary of the slow, steady, growth that comes from the daily, disciplined, increasing, love affair with reading the Bible.
“Do not think you are getting no good from the Bible, merely because you do not see that good day by day. The greatest effects are by no means those which make the most noise, and are most easily observed. The greatest effects are often silent, quiet, and hard to detect at the time they are being produced.
“Think of the influence of the moon upon the earth, and of the air upon the human lungs. Remember how silently the dew falls, and how imperceptibly the grass grows. There may be far more doing than you think in your soul by your Bible-reading.” (J. C. Ryle, Practical Religion, 136)
find me here, too!
