It All Comes from Jesus

 

It All Comes from Jesus

 

Galatians 1:1-2 says, “Paul, an apostle – not from men nor through men, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised Him from the dead – and all the brothers who are with me, to the churches of Galatia.”

 

This is how Paul begins the book of Galatians. Paul reveals that he is not an apostle because people made him that, not even what he has made himself, but he is an apostle because that is what Jesus has made him. What we do in life & what we do in God’s kingdom is not determined by us, but by Jesus. Jesus died to pay for our sins & rose to give us victory over our sins. That makes Jesus Lord & as Lord it is He, not us or others, who determines who we are & how we are to serve God.

 

Raise the Roof & Remove the Walls is about Jesus being our Lord & about Him, not us, determining how we live. 

 

Galatians 1:3 says, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

 

Paul prays that the Galatian believers would experience God’s grace & peace. Grace, God’s unmerited favor is given to us through Jesus & leads to us experiencing God’s peace. We cannot experience God’s peace until we come to receive His grace through Jesus.

 

Raise the Roof & Remove the Walls is about experiencing God’s grace through Jesus &, through His grace, experiencing God’s peace.

 

Galatians 1:4 says, “Who gave Himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father.”

 

Jesus gave His life for our sins to provide forgiveness, but also to provide us with deliverance from the power of sin to enslave us & control us. Every age since the fall has been evil because of the effects of sin. So, the age that Paul lived in was evil & the age that we are living in is evil. Jesus provides forgiveness & deliverance.

 

Raise the Roof & Remove the Walls is about receiving forgiveness of sin & deliverance from sin.

 

Galatians 1:5 says, “To whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.”

 

Jesus is worthy of glory forever because of who He is & what He has done. Paul sees everything in His life as coming from God’s grace; his calling as an apostle, the peace he has with God, the forgiveness of sin he has, & the deliverance from the power of sin that he has. We live in a time when people feel entitled to everything good that they want in life. The reality is that anything good that we have or experience comes, not from our deserving it or our earning it, but from the grace of God which we can experience in knowing Jesus as our Savior & Lord.

 

Raise the Roof & Remove the Walls is about knowing that every good thing we have comes from God’s grace in Jesus.

 

Raise the Roof & Remove the Walls,

Joe

God Is Always at Work Around Us

 

God Is Always at Work Around Us

 

In Genesis 1:1 we are told that God created the heavens & the earth. Then in the rest of Genesis 1 & Genesis 2 we are given the details of creation. But God did not just create the heavens & the earth & then abandon it & us to function on our own; He has been actively involved in human affairs throughout history. Because of sin we as humans have been separated from a close relationship with God. God is working in His creation to bring about redemption of those who are alienated from Him. He worked through Jesus to bring salvation to us.

 

Raise the Roof & Remove the Walls is about God working to bring salvation to us.

 

What has Jesus done to bring about salvation?

 

Colossians 2:13 says, “And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive with Him, having forgiven us all our trespasses.”

 

Jesus’ death on the cross provides us with forgiveness. We were dead in our sin & we were made alive when Jesus forgave us our sins. We were dead because we were separated from God who is the life giver, but Jesus’ forgiveness makes us alive with Him.

 

Raise the Roof & Remove the Walls is about being forgiven by Jesus & made alive with Him eternally.

 

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 was sinless & perfect, but He became guilty of our sin so that, as we surrender our lives to Jesus, we become the righteousness of God. It is important for us to become righteous because God cannot be in the presence of unrighteousness. So, Jesus’ death for us makes us righteous, not with a righteousness of our own, but with the righteousness of Jesus.

 

Raise the Roof & Remove the Wall is about being made righteous by Jesus.

 

1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

 

Jesus not only makes us righteous, but He cleanses us of all unrighteousness. That means that all my sins are gone, they do not exist anymore in the mind of God. That also means that those sins are no longer true of me & I am not defined by my old sins.

 

Raise the Roof & Remove the Walls is about being cleansed of all unrighteousness. 

 

2 Corinthians 5:18 says, “All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.”

 

Jesus reconciled us to Himself through His death on the cross. Reconciled means to make someone a friend again. We were not just separated from God by sin, but sin had made us enemies of God. Jesus made us friends with God again.

 

Raise the Roof & Remove the Walls is about being friends with God through Jesus’ death on the cross for our sin.

 

John 5:17 says, “But Jesus answered them, ‘My Father is working until now, and I am working.’”

 

Jesus worked through His death & resurrection to bring salvation to us. Jesus is still working to save the lost & to grow us as His disciples. When we see all the evil & destruction that is going on in the world, we may tend to lose hope. But don’t! Because Jesus is working & in the end He has the victory.

 

Raise the Roof & Remove the Walls,

Joe

 

 

 

In case you were wondering, I cannot post a devotion 666 so this is Devotion 667.

Jesus Is The Way

 

Jesus is the Way

 

In John 14:6 Jesus says that He is the Way & the Truth & the Life. Jesus is the Way. Many people ask God for a detailed road map of what He wants them to do before they set out on the journey. But that is not the way God led people in Scripture.

 

Jesus as the Way led people day by day & that is how He leads us today. We are called into a relationship with Jesus in which He is Lord & where we are willing to do & be anything He desires. We know that what Jesus as Lord desires for us is for His glory & our good.

 

Jesus is the Way for everything that God desires for us & for everything we need. But I want to share four things that Jesus is the Way for.

 

Jesus is the Way for us to know God.

 

In Matthew 11:27 Jesus says, “All things have been handed over to Me by the Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.”

 

In John 14:7 Jesus says to Thomas when Thomas tells Jesus that they do not know the way, “If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also. From now on you do know Him and have seen Him.”

 

When we come to know Jesus, we know the Father because Jesus is the Way to know God.

 

Raise the Roof & Remove the Walls is about trusting that Jesus is the Way to know God.

 

Jesus is the Way to grow in our faith in God.

 

Colossians 2:6-7 says, “Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.”

 

We grow physically by eating right & exercising our bodies & our minds. We grow in our faith by following Jesus out of our comfort zones. We allow Jesus to take us into situations where we must depend on Him. Like Peter preaching to the crowd in Jerusalem or Paul standing before the crowd at Ephesus or Philip going to Samaria to share the gospel.

 

Raise the Roof & Remove the Walls is about depending on Jesus as the Way to grow our faith in God.

 

Jesus is the Way to experience peace.

 

In Isaiah 9:6 Isaiah prophecies that the Messiah would be called the Prince of Peace. In Luke 2:14 when the angels announce Jesus’ birth they say that there will be peace through Him. And twice in John 20 Jesus gives peace to His disciples.

 

We have peace through Jesus because Jesus made atonement through His death for sin. Now we are in right relationship with God & we have peace.

 

Raise the Roof & Remove the Walls is about having peace with through Jesus as the Way.

 

Jesus as the Way gives purpose for living.

 

Ephesians 2:10 says, “We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

 

God created us for good works & we find those good works & thus our purpose in Jesus. It is in Jesus that we find our eternal purpose. If we live life without Jesus, we have only a temporary self-centered purpose, but with Him we have an eternal God-centered purpose.

 

Raise the Roof & Remove the Walls is about finding our eternal purpose through Jesus as the Way.

 

Jesus is the Way, but each of us must decide to make Jesus our Way.

 

Raise the Roof & Remove the Walls,

Joe

Awakened by The Spirit

 

Awakened by The Spirit

 

In Revelation 3:2 Jesus in speaks to the church in Sardis & He says, “Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of God.” We as God’s people, the church, need to wake up. We need to trade the American dream for the kingdom of God & to see that God has blessed us so that we can complete the mission God has given us. That mission is to spread the gospel of His grace to all the world.

 

We as the church need to wake up & see that we are in a battle & be prepared for action. We need to be awakened to the truth that our enemy, Satan, is out to kill, steal, & destroy

 

We need to wake up in our affections for Jesus.

 

The driving priority behind the mission of the early church was the person of Jesus. In Acts 1 in verses 1-3 They knew Jesus as their risen Savior. In verses 4-8 they served Jesus as their exalted Lord. They worshiped Jesus as their all-powerful King. Their passion was for Jesus & His kingdom.

 

Jesus tells us in Mark 12:30 that we are love Him with all that we are. He tells us in Matthew 6:33 that we are to seek His kingdom above anything else. Loving Jesus & seeking His kingdom are the priorities of the life of a disciple of Jesus.

 

Raise the Roof & Remove the Walls is about loving Jesus & seeking His kingdom.

 

We need to wake up in our obedience to the Holy Spirit.

 

In Acts 2 the church becomes filled by the Holy Spirit. In verses 1-4 the church experiences the presence of God through the filling of the Holy Spirit. In verses 5-8 the church obeyed the commands of God through the Holy Spirit. In verses 40-41 the church obeyed the commands of God by the power of the Holy Spirit.

 

In John 16:13-14 Jesus says that the Spirit will reveal truth to us & lead us into all truth & that He will speak to us the things of God. We as the church must listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit & obey Him.

 

Raise the Roof & Remove the Walls is about listen to & obeying the Holy Spirit.

 

We need to wake up & surrender our wills to God.

 

Also, in Acts 2 we are given the priorities of God for His church.

 

Verse 14: Speak the word of God boldly

Verses 44-45: Care for others sacrificially

Verses 46-47: Worship God wholeheartedly

Verse 47: Multiply disciples exponentially

 

Raise the Roof & Remove the Walls is about surrender our wills to the will of God.

 

God promises to bless His church when we as His church walk in faith & obey him. When God does that two things will happen according to Acts 2:43. First the church will stand in awe of God & second the world will stand in amazement of God. God wants the world to know Him & He has chosen us as the church to fulfill that mission. But we have to wake up & obey!

 

Raise the Roof & Remove the Walls,

                        Joe

 

 

 

God Wants a Love Relationship with You

 

God Wants a Love Relationship with You

 

The prophet Jeremiah is amazing to me. He was faithful to proclaim the word of God for forty years & the response of the people was primarily one of rejection. Yet we see a very intimate relationship between Jeremiah & God. It is the kind of relationship that God wanted with all His people & it is the kind of relationship that God wants with us. 

 

Jeremiah 31:3 says, “The Lord appeared to him from far away. I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued My faithfulness to you.”

 

Many people see God as some far-off deity who wants to use us & if we don’t obey, will zap us with a lighting bolt.

 

God is speaking through Jeremiah to the people telling them that their disobedient & sinful behavior has cause it to appear to them that God was far off. But even when they pushed Him away, He still loved them with an everlasting love.

 

God’s love for us is not based on emotion because, if it were, it would be a come & go, an up & down love, & it is not. God’s love is out of His sovereign chose to love us & God never changes so His love for us will never change or fade away or be less than to the max all the time. In Romans 8:38-39 Paul makes it very clear that nothing in all creation, the visible & invisible creation, can separate us from God’s love.

 

Raise the Roof & Remove the Walls is about knowing & experiencing God’s everlasting love for us.

 

God is also faithful. He will always fulfill everything He says. The people of Israel during Jeremiah’s lifetime & for many years before had turned to worship & serve other gods. But God remained faithful & never abandoned His people. 2 Timothy 2:13 tells that even if we are faithless, God will be faithful. And in Hebrews 13:5 we are told that God will never leave or forsake us.

 

Raise the Roof & Remove the Walls is about living our lives knowing that God is faithful, He will fulfill all that He says & He will not forsake us.

 

Jeremiah also reveals to us that God invites us to call out to Him. Jeremiah 33:3 says, “Call out to Me and I will answer you and will tell you great and hidden things.”

 

 

God invites to call out to Him & He promises that He will answer us. Prayer is not talking to the celling & prayer is not talking at God. Prayer is talking to & connecting with the Almighty God of all creation & He will answer us.

 

Raise the Roof & Remove the Walls is about calling out to God in prayer & knowing that God hears & that He will answer.

 

God says that He tells us great things & mighty things that are new to us. God will speak to us about who He is, His ways, & His purposes so that we can know Him & His will.

 

Raise the Roof & Remove the Walls is about experiencing God as He reveals to us who He is, His ways, & His purposes.

 

1 John 4:19 says that we love Jesus because He first loved us. Jesus pursues us because He loves us & through His love for us, we come to love Him. In Luke 15 Jesus tells the parable of a shepherd who had one of his flock of one hundred wander off. The shepherd leaves the ninety-nine & pursues the one lost sheep. Jesus is the shepherd & we are the one lost sheep who He pursues.

 

So, God is pursuing a love relationship with you. We can know & experience the relationship that God created us to have with Him by surrendering our lives to Jesus as our Savior & Lord.

 

Raise the Roof & Remove the Walls.

Joe