Return

Yesterday I had the opportunity to sit and listen to seven gifted, large church pastors speak and teach about leadership.  I would not normally sit through ten hours of preaching as a rule, but this conference was structured in such a way as to make a large impact in a small amount of time. And… it was well done.

I won’t bore you with a synopsis of their teaching. You can check that out in a more detailed overview which I will make available online later. Suffice it to say, I was stretched, overwhelmed, humbled and encouraged by all the messages. However, there was an overriding theme to this conference which centered on the question of returning to God.

Coming back home!   I thought a great deal about that during the day and tried to discern in my mind what that really meant.  What would coming home look like for me?  To be more precise, what needs to change in me to enable me to come back home?

Of course, my mind immediately went to the story of the father who had two sons. (You can read this story in Luke, chapter 15) My problem was not so much on what I needed to change before I could return...that was the easy part.  I can give you a list a mile long on things I need to work on in my life.  My problem was that this action was not what God was asking me to do.  God was not asking me to change myself; God was inviting me to allow Him to change me!

Coming home means that I return back to God with all my stuff in tow—all my baggage.  It’s realizing that I really can’t change myself and that if things are going to be different I need help.  I need forgiveness.  Ouch, there is that word again. I need the forgiveness of God in my life so that the healing which is offered is applied freely.

The liberating reality is that God planned returning home events for all of us.  And now God is wooing us back. “Come home,” Jesus says.  “Come, taste and see,” He invites.  Find rest for your soul.  Find forgiveness.

Blessings

Pastor Rip

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Forgiveness continued…

As I was working on this BLOG today, I was again overwhelmed by the superiority of God’s forgiveness offered to each of us freely. Not only is forgiveness the main point in Paul’s presentation of the Gospel, but the very idea of forgiveness was the mainstay of God’s redemptive plan for humankind.

As I look around at the world I live in, (and please realize I have been to many places in the world) poverty and starvation and death are everywhere, senseless murders and rape are everyday events, countries are ravaged by corrupt governments…life in a simple word… STINKS.

We live in a broken world, but the good news is that God never intended for us to be here. God’s plan for us, as Pastor Tom has forced us to consider over the past few weeks, was a much better plan. We were created to live in paradise. However, somewhere along the way we began to think of ourselves as more in control and became less concerned with following the plan of God.  Brokenness resulted.

Psalms 130 gives an amazing picture of this forgiveness at work in us. The Psalmist says,

“Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord; Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy. If you, Lord, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, so that we can, with reverence, serve you.”

God’s plan was forgiveness--to restore us, to clean us up, and to set us again on a pathway to relationship with Him.  That is the beauty of forgiveness and the beauty of a God who loves us even when we are unlovely.

Ever feel that way?  I encourage you to return to a God who is ready and willing to receive you back home.

Pastor Rip

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I love the word forgiveness.      While this word may have many different meanings to different people, nowhere is it exemplified best than from the personal testimony of the apostle Paul.  In the book of ACTS, Paul gives his personal forgiveness inventory. If you remember this story, Paul was persecuting Christians when one day Jesus spoke to him from a bright light. Now that should get your attention, and for Paul, it did. This is what Paul says of that experience.

^{Acts 26:15  “}Then I asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ “ ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,’ the Lord replied. ‘Now get up and stand on your feet. I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen and will see of me. I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to them to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’

(For a full understanding of what happened in Paul’s life, check out chapter 9 of Acts)

There are a couple of things that stand out to me in this recounting from Paul. First, God came to set him free. That is what God does for us in Christ Jesus. Jesus confronts the bully in us. Have you ever faced your biggest fear only to discover that in reality there was nothing to fear in the first place? Jesus comes to us to help us realize that we can have something really great if we would trust Him to make it happen. Paul did not change by his own power; he received forgiveness.

Then he received an appointment. That’s the great thing about forgiveness; God chooses to use us who are less than perfect to accomplish that which is about Him. The perfect God uses imperfect people to demonstrate His forgiveness in action.  How cool is that!

You see what this means is that, now, we have a story that we can share with others. The power of our stories can be the catalyst for life-change in another person just as it was in the life of Paul and in countless Pauls since that time.

Why did God forgive you? To set you free from the powers of darkness so that through you the light of redemption might shine into others.  Put that way, forgiveness is a really cool thing.

Blessings,

Pastor Rip