Christ is our gateway to heaven…now!

Jesus is the gateway to heaven. As He told Nathaniel, He’s the conduit between heaven and earth (John 1:51). But this doesn’t just mean that He saved us so we can go to heaven when we die. He’s also the means by which we step into heaven now. Because, the reality is, you’re already in heaven with Christ in God. Because of what Christ has done, heaven is continually open to you and me right now.

Our confidence for intimacy with God

Unlike the covenant of Abraham and Moses, our confidence is not based on pedigree or performance, respectively (see my post, “How God fulfills His promise to Abraham” for explanation). Our confidence is based on placement. When Christ died, we died; when He was buried, our sin was buried with Him; and when He rose from the grave, we rose with Him, to sit with Him in the Trinitarian life of God.

The antidote to spiritual dullness

Spiritual dullness comes from not being mindful of who you are in Christ. When we forget, or don’t know our true identity, even what we read in God’s Word has little effect in keeping us from our spiritual slumber. We may even love His Word, but that may only foster pride and zeal, because we’re not experiencing where His Word is meant to lead us.

Riots and Racism

I really liked what Todd White has to say here about how we, as sons and daughters of our Father in heaven, should respond to the current issues of racism and rioting. First and foremost, we must remember who we are, and Whose we are, not follow the systemic victimology and vindictiveness of the world. Beloved, we are to side with Jesus in this world, not with what’s popular on Twitter or the mainstream media. “As He is, so are we in this world.” (1 John 4:17b)

Heart and head matters

If the goal is that we grow up into Christ (Eph.4:15), which it is, then we’re going to need to re-form our hearts as well as our heads. These are both critical components for training our soul to live from heaven to earth like Jesus did. For it’s with the heart that one believes (Rom.10:10), and it’s with the head that we come into agreement with what God believes about us.

What the world needs now

I can sympathize in many ways with all the social unrest going on today, and many things certainly do need to change in how we see and treat one another. That’s not my point here. As a follower of Jesus, I have to ask a bigger question with regard to the unique times we find ourselves living in: How would Jesus have us respond to our current cultural climate?

Happy Father’s Day!

I posted this video back in 2016, but it’s always a good reminder! Here’s God’s invitation to us to let Him love us and be our Father.

Happy Father’s Day! Blessings to all the dads. You are so loved and appreciated.
And to everyone, know that you have the BEST Papa in the whole world! He loves you SO much.  Enjoy this love letter from our Abba (from Barry Adams – fatherheart.tv).
Oceans of love,
Mel

Holy Lust!

We were created by God to seek pleasure and follow our desires. I wrote about this in my post, “Smartphones, addictions, joy, and pleasure,” so I won’t belabor that here, only to say that it’s a stoic delusion to think we’re going to be free from desire for pleasure as we follow the Spirit. Quite the opposite. We’ll be simply be replacing the counterfeit for the real thing. And that’s because God made us this way.

Repentance

Someone recently asked me if I preached repentance. I’m not sure why he asked this, but one thing I most definitely do is preach repentance! I’m all for it. Repentance is from the Greek word, μετάνοια (metanoia), which means to change your thinking, a reversal of the way you did things in the past. This is precisely what I preach. Let’s look at this foundational principle in Hebrews:

Why you cannot follow Jesus and the Law

You cannot follow Jesus and follow the Law. You must choose the former and leave behind the latter. Now, I’m not talking about being lawless, but about where you draw your life from. If you want to live according the New Covenant of grace, you can give no quarter to the Law for the simple reason that you cannot both walk in the supernatural power of God’s grace and live by self-effort. This is Paul’s argument in Galatians 4, which is where we’ll go today in order to finish up where I left off with my post, “Leaving legalism for Christ.”

In this chapter, Paul uses an allegory in order to show us the total incompatibility of the Law and grace.