Death and Life

 

We have many words and phrases that we use to refer to a person dying. One of those phrases is passed away.

 

In 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”

 

Paul says that if we are in Jesus, we are a new creation and the old has passed away, the old is dead. The old does not exist anymore.

 

Romans 6:4 says, “We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”

 

Again, Paul says that we died to our old life of sin and have been raised to a new life and that we have the power now in Jesus to walk daily in that newness.

 

What are the old things that have died and the new things that have come to life?

 

An old thing that must die.

 

James 4:6 says, “But he gives more grace. Therefore, it says, ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.’”

 

Pride has to die. Pride exalts us in a very ungodly way, and it puts us in opposition to God.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is killing the pride that puts us in opposition to God.

 

A new thing that must come to life.

 

Being humble allows God to pour out more grace on us. Being humble means as Peter says in 1 Peter 5:6, putting ourselves under God’s authority. When we do that, it allows God to exalt us by His grace and when God exalts us, we will not fall.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is allowing God’s grace to make us humble and letting God rule in our lives.

An old thing that must die.

 

Ephesians 4:31-32 says, “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ has forgiven you.”

 

Unrighteous anger. Any form of unrighteous anger.

 

Unrighteous anger does not allow us to experience the love of Jesus because we are so focused on our anger, and it stops us from showing the love of Jesus.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is turning our anger over to Jesus and not letting it control our lives.

 

A new thing that must come to life

 

The desire and ability to forgive.

 

We in Jesus have the power to forgive others just as God through Jesus has forgiven us. Jesus forgave us unconditionally, completely, and when we asked. We are to forgive others like that.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is forgiving those who have hurt us in the same why that God has forgiven us through Jesus’ death on the cross.

 

Mark 9:23-24 says, “And Jesus said to him, ‘If you can! All things are possible for one who believes.’ Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, ‘I believe; help my unbelief.’”

 

An old thing that must die.

 

Unbelief must die.

 

Unbelief stops the work of God through the Holy Spirit in a person’s life. When we don’t believe God, we don’t let God work because we don’t believe God is or that God is willing or that God cannot.

 

 Raise the Roof and Remove the Wall is letting any doubt about Jesus’ power or love die.

 

A thing that must come to live.

 

Belief must come to life.

 

Belief allows Jesus to do things in our lives that go beyond anything we could hope or imagine. It allows Jesus to be truly Lord of your life.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is putting complete trust in Jesus as the Lord.

 

Letting the Old Die and the New Live

 by Raising the Roof and Removing the Walls,

                                                         Joe

Being a Disciple of Jesus

 

What does it really mean to be a follower or a disciple of Jesus?

 

In 1 John 4 John gives us five evidences that we have surrendered our lives to Jesus and are relating to Him as Savior and Lord.

 

1 John 4:2-3

By this you know the Spirit of God; every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard was coming and now is in the world already.

 

A disciple of Jesus acknowledges that Jesus has come in the flesh and that He is from God.

 

John writes in John chapter 1 that the Word, Jesus, is God. If a person acknowledges that Jesus has come in the flesh and that He is God in the flesh, that person is of God. If a person does not acknowledge that Jesus has come in the flesh and is God in the flesh, then he is not of God and is expressing the spirit of an antichrist. The first key in being a disciple of Jesus is to believe that Jesus is who the Bible says He is, God come in the flesh.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is knowing Jesus as God in the flesh and living based on that truth.

 

1 John 4:6

We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

 

A disciple of Jesus listens to God’s word and receives it as truth.

 

John 17:17 tells us that we are sanctified by truth and that God’s word is truth. As disciples of Jesus, we have the Holy Spirit with us, and He will reveal truth and error to us.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is knowing and believing God’s word.

 

1 John 4:7-8

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

 

A disciple of Jesus loves others.

 

Jesus made it clear in Mark 12 that the greatest commandment is to love God with all that you are and love others as you love yourself. Jesus said that our love for others is the mark of being His disciple.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is love others in the way that Jesus loves us.

 

1 John 4:13

By this we know that we abide in Him, and He in us, because He has given us His Spirit.

 

Disciples of Jesus are filled with the Holy Spirit.

 

Paul tells us in Ephesians 5:18 that we are to be continually filled with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit empowers us, reveals truth to us, guides us to obey Jesus, and He is our seal and guarantee of our salvation.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is being continually filled and thus empowered by the Holy Spirit.

 

1 John 4:18

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.

 

A disciple of Jesus is being led by love, not fear.

 

Jesus’ love is a perfect love and when Jesus’ perfect love is filling us and leading us, we will not give in to fear and let it control us.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is being filled with the love of Jesus and letting that love lead us and not letting fear control us.

 

Being a disciple of Jesus is not a matter of words we say but of what we allow God to do in and through us. Our belief must be seen in what we do, how we live. If it is not, then we do not really believe. A disciple of Jesus lives out their beliefs in every day living.

 

Living It Out as A Disciple of Jesus

by Raising the Roof and Removing the Walls,

Joe

Jesus is the Answer Because

 

 

I hear this phrase a lot and even say it myself frequently, “Jesus is the answer.” Now, this a totally true statement, but exactly what does it mean? Many times, the response is, “What is the question?”

 

In the New Testament Jesus and all the writers of the New Testament make the claim that Jesus is God in the flesh. So, as God, Jesus truly is the answer for everything we face.

 

The New Testament also makes it clear that we are to love Jesus with all that we are and above any other person, place, or thing.

 

What makes Jesus unique, to claim our highest and deepest love? There are so many reasons that I don’t have enough time or space to mention them all. I want to mention four.

 

Matthew 15:19

For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.

 

Number 1: Because of the human condition of sin and evil

 

Romans 3:10-12 says, “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no seeks God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”

 

Romans 3:23 says that all have sinned and fall short of God’s glory.

 

Romans 6:23 says that the wages of sin is death.

 

Our nature is one of being unrighteous, turning away from God, and not desiring to seek God, and that is sin, and sin always leads us away from God and leads to death.

 

The depravity of humanity is the most empirically verifiable reality but at the same time the most intellectually resisted fact.

 

Because of our sinful nature and condition is why, as God, Jesus is the answer.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is acknowledging our sinful condition and realizing that Jesus is the only answer to our human condition.

 

1 Corinthians 1:18 says, “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

 

#2: Jesus’ provision for our sinful human condition

 

The provision Jesus gives for you and me is absolutely one of a kind, and it is not cheap. It is the cross.

 

Every other religion or religious world view is about we as humans earning salvation. In Christianity salvation is from God based on His mercy and grace. When we choose to accept Jesus’ grace through His death on the cross it changes our heart and thus our life. The death of Jesus on the cross is the source of our salvation, the only source.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is depending on Jesus and Jesus alone for our salvation.

 

1 Peter 2:22 says, “He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in His mouth.”

 

#3: The purity of Jesus

 

When Jesus stood before Pilate and was interrogated, it says that Pilate found no fault in Him.

 

The thief on the cross being crucified with Jesus said that Jesus was being punished unjustly.

 

Jesus was a lamb without blemish. Jesus was unique because He was sinless. So, when He gave His life on the cross for our sin, He had no sin of His own that He had to die for.

 

2 Corinthians 5:21 says, “For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”

 

Jesus could die for our sin because He had no sin of His own to die for.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is acknowledging Jesus’

sinlessness and that His death on the cross was Him sacrificing Himself for us.

 

Matthew 28:6 says, “He is not here, He is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where He lay.”

 

#4: Jesus’ resurrection from the dead

 

Many people have talked about coming back from the dead, but Jesus said that He would, and He did.

 

Jesus’ resurrection gives us victory over sin. Jesus not only died for our sin, but through His resurrection we are given power to not live our lives in sin and the enslavement sin brings.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is believing that Jesus rose from the dead and living in the victory that His resurrection gives through faith in Him.

 

Jesus is the answer because He is the sinless God who came in the flesh and died for our sin on the cross and rose from the dead.

 

Jesus as the Only True God

and Raising the Roof and Removing the Walls,

Joe

Experiencing God Everyday!

 

Jeremy Camp has a song called Getting Started. Some of the lines are:

To anyone who has ever lost their way

To everyone who ever felt ashamed

Here’s a song for the broken hearted

 

All of us have experienced those circumstances and those emotions. John chapter 14 helps us to overcome these circumstances.

 

John 14:16 says, “And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, to be with you forever.” The word helper means one who comes along side of another and pleads his case to another. The word is capitalized showing Jesus is referring to the Holy Spirit.

 

The Holy Spirit is God, and He comes to us and empowers us and intercedes for us with the Father. He is another Helper meaning another like Jesus. God is with us to empower us and to intercede for us when we need something.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is experiencing the help of the Holy Spirit as He empowers us and intercedes for us.

 

John 14:18 says, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” When Jesus leaves the earth with His earthly body, He will not leave us as His disciples alone. He will not abandon; He will send the Holy Spirit.

 

 Jesus will not physically be with us but even better, the Holy Spirit will be with us everywhere and all the time. We will literally never go anywhere that the Holy Spirit is not with us. We as disciples will never face anything alone. When Hebrews 13:5 says that God will never leave us nor forsake us, we see the reality of why in this verse because we are not orphans but always have God with us.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is knowing that we always have the Holy Spirit with us and living every day based on that knowledge.

 

John 14:21 says, “Whoever has My commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.”

 

Jesus will manifest Himself to us. We as disciples of Jesus will be able to know Him and experience His presence in our lives. Just as Jesus showed who He was to the Twelve, so He shows us who He is through the Holy Spirit revealing Him to us.

 

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is, through the Holy Spirit, knowing who Jesus is and experiencing the full reality of Jesus in our lives every day.

 

John 14:23 says “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make our home with him.”

 

We will have God living in us. He will not be working in our lives from the outside in, but from the inside out. God working in us from the inside out is more powerful. The Holy Spirit will empower us to become more and more like Jesus.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is having God make His home with us and form in us the image of Christ.

 

The key to experiencing the Holy Spirit working in our lives is found in verse fifteen. It says, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.”

 

The key to experiencing the work of the Holy Spirit is obeying what Jesus says. The Bible is God’s word and, as we yield our lives to Jesus and obey what God says in the Bible, we will experience the filling and working of the Holy Spirit.

 

Obeying and Being Filled with the Holy Spirit

by Raising the Roof and Removing the Walls,

Joe

Who Did Jesus Die For?

 

I am a paradox even to myself. I have been in local church ministry for over four decades and love the fact that God has used me in this way, and I love the church. But I am not a people person. I don’t need people and am very comfortable being with my family or being alone. I serve a God who loves people and wants people to know Him and love Him.

 

Jesus not only loves people, but He loves messy, broken people. Jesus says He didn’t come to call the righteous but sinners. Jesus also said that He came to seek and save the lost. Paul writes in Romans 5:6-8, “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person – though perhaps for a good person one would dare to die – but God shows His love for us in that while were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

 

Jesus died for us when we were:

Weak

Ungodly

Sinners

 

We were not good people when Jesus died for us, and we were not good people when Jesus called us to follow Him. We as disciples and followers of Jesus are to love the weak and the ungodly and the sinners.

 

We many times struggle with loving the people who are messy and broken. We tend to view them as an enemy. We need to view them as Jesus did, as victims.

 

Paul says 2 Corinthians 4:4, “In their case the god of this world has blinded the mind of unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”

 

Those who are weak, ungodly sinners have been blinded by Satan from seeing the truth of the gospel, God’s love and His grace that led to Jesus dying for every human. We have been given the privilege to be about showing them the truth of the gospel by how we love and accept them.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is loving as Jesus loved and loving who Jesus loved.

 

But not only did Jesus love messy broken people, and not only does Jesus love broken and messy people, but Jesus will also never not love or turn away from any of us.

 

Hebrews 13:5 says, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

 

Romans 8:37-39 says, “No, in these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

 

The promise given to us in these two passages is that Jesus will not ever turn His back on us and that He will always love us no matter what.

 

In John 10:29-30 Jesus says, “My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all, and no is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.”

 

God does not lose anyone who puts their faith in Him. Jesus and the Father are one, the same, so no one can snatch us out of Jesus’ hand.

 

Ephesians 2:8-9 tells us that we are saved by grace through faith and that it is not by works, doing all the right stuff, so that no one can boast about it.

 

Our salvation is not based on us, our working to deserving it, but it is based on God’s grace and our faith in Him.

 

Jesus does not change, so neither does how He provides salvation or how He views us as His human creation.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is trusting Jesus for our salvation and knowing it is by God’s grace to us and that His love for us will never change.

 

I see a nation divided by hate and anger.

I see marriages falling apart.

I see families being destroyed.

I see a generation losing itself to addiction and lies.

 

The answer for all this is knowing Jesus and living in a loving personal relationship with Him. We as disciples and followers of Jesus have the answer. The question is: Will we show our nation and the world the answer?

 

Experiencing the Reality of Jesus and

Raising the Roof and Removing the Walls,

Joe