It's Not Like Becoming a Butterfly!

So thankful the Christian

change in heart, is spiritual

In my heart, my old life is absolutely in the past. A new life, in Jesus, has begun. Because life in Christ
is new for me again in life, I'm just not the same, unaware, sinful person I once was.

2 Corinthians 5:17

2 Corinthians 5:17 has been translated — and misused — in more than one way. Some translations say we're a "new creation" in Jesus. Others say we're a "new person" in Jesus.

But neither of those translations means we're changed in the flesh! (Colossians 2:10-14, Ephesians 2:8-9, Philippians 3:3, Philippians 3:2, Galatians 6:15, 2 Corinthians 3:2-3, Romans 2:28-29, Galatians 6:13, 1 Corinthians 1:30-31, Colossians 2:10-11)

When we get saved in Jesus, when we know we have salvation in Him, when we know we have forgiveness of old sins and the opportunity to live delivered or free from those sins, we don't get that salvation through destruction or even circumcision of the flesh.

Instead, Jesus gives us new awareness, a new excitement about life (all things becoming new to us in life: even old lessons seeming new). Jesus gives us newness of understanding (faith comes by hearing), and sets us free.

And when Heaven sets us free from sins, we truly are free, indeed.

We really do become like children in the way we behold things. The Bible says it's through childlike faith in Jesus that we're saved.

Our childlike faith in Him, our being new in Him, is spiritual. It's like being re-born in Him, discovering Him anew. Salvation is having new understanding, a whole new way of wanting to live our lives.

A change in life because of salvation, isn't a change in flesh, but it's a change in awareness, like leaving a womb where you haven't known anything and suddenly seeing life the way Heaven meant you to.

Salvation is a gift that gives us grace, a new awareness, a new, spiritual hunger. And that gift (that release from sin) is spontaneous and good: no evil reminder of the past needed.

Salvation, in Jesus, is deliverance from the past, being set free to have new life from Heaven in heart.

In Jesus, the old mistakes of living are overwith. And it becomes each Christian's testimony of heart that my old way of life is gone.

Redeemed.

Everyone's View of What Heaven Must Be Like, is Different ...

and yet the same.

Maybe, just maybe, the journey back Home isn't as complicated or otherworldly as many may think. Maybe it's not about the fears and hopes a songwriter expressed in the old hymn, "Finding It Home." Maybe, it's not about meeting masses of souls on celestial shores versus the darkness of this world; for that's not quite what the Bible says at all.

The Bible says wait on rescue from the Lord. The Holy Spirit says our deliverance is promised, not as a meeting of masses on a heavenly shoreline, but, really, as Heaven's army descending to meet us at a time of fiery trial in this world.

When Jesus returns to this world full-force, He will have all of Heaven's armies with Him. He is "I Am" (Yahweh), I Am Lord of Hosts (The Lord of Heaven's Armies); and He will deliver this world.

Just how that will look, in flesh and in Spirit, no one really knows. Maybe it's simple as our descendants, our children, fighting a great battle, in righteousness one day.

But something we know for sure is that Jesus is our sure Deliverer, and that rescue begins today, with faith, a belief, a thought.

Deliverance is on the way. Heaven isn't a distant shore, but is so very close in heart.

For now, maybe, our rescue from Heaven is simply in our relationship in Jesus.

And, one day, hopefully a ripened old age, maybe that relationship is ultimately as blessed as being swept up and away into loving adoptive arms on a cold winter's day.

Life is a Gift

"We can never repay
our parents for the gift of life."

Fr. Brian Mullady

Suffering Isn't a Way of Life

Counting our living "joy"

"My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into divers temptations;
Knowing this, that the trying of your faith works patience.
But let patience have her perfect work, that you may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing."

James 1:2-4

With brothers and sisters coming to Jesus in greater and greater numbers in wake of conflicts in the Middle East, there is so much zeal of faith in Christ, so much new life in Jesus, so much joy over forming new churches and having baptisms and just overall good harvests, in certain countries of refuge. [This was written so long ago. It's a shame the same can't be said in 2024.]

But with that zeal, there also seems to be at least a little of the old Muslim way of feeling about some things. The Holy Spirit is leading; but the old heart also is speaking.

So there are Christian testimonies, sometimes, that are a little outside the lines of how the Holy Spirit leads us: like when a new minister (who has done so much: who has done the faithful work of praying his family not only to safety but to work fruitfully for Christ) says there's a price to pay for following Jesus.

I think he hasn't gotten the good news deep in heart yet, that Jesus "paid it all," and that we've been called to a certain freedom.

Too often, newness in Christ seems to be compromised by the old feeling that faithfulness means suffering and suffering. And maybe that's why some of our understanding of the New Testament has begun to lean a little more toward suffering than the Holy Spirit intends for us.

When the Apostle James says to count it joy when we're going through trials of life, he's not saying to look for trials to get into, to look for temptations, to look for opportunities to suffer, nor to want anyone else to suffer. But the Holy Spirit is saying, through James, that when there are trials or tests of faith (even though, like Jesus, we despise the shame), we have to keep focused on the promise of deliverance and the prize of Heaven, which is "joy."

Throughout trials of the New Testament, we learn to focus on what's ahead in Christ, to endure through ignoring the suffering and focusing only on the "expected end," which is never the Christian's destruction.

"For I know the plans I have for you," says the Lord.

"They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope."

Jeremiah 29:11, New Living Translation

But what about long-suffering? The New Testament teaches that long-suffering may be an outcome of being a devoted in faith. Isn't that an argument for suffering?

... You know, God lets us know, through His word, that we're always supposed to be ready with an answer for the hope that we have because of our faith in Jesus. And the Bible says we're able to even shut mouths, to end arguments, through Him.

So it's with conviction in the Spirit that we know, and are blessed to say, how long-suffering is only seasonal — or for a season — in our lives.

Yes, slavery in the United States was a time of long-suffering, and that time wasn't for what anyone would call a short season. But, in that time, God was working, bringing many slaves to life in Him.

And that time of true long-suffering did have an end, a season of deliverance, of harvest. And the end was joy — a joy the Holy Spirit had led many a faithful slave to keep faith for.

That was during the time of the birth of a nation.

Slavery was among our birth pangs, as Jesus might say. And even Israel, the mother place of our faith, has well known those pangs.

But those pangs, ultimately, were only for a season, not as a way of life for generations; and suffering isn't what the Christian is to look forward to — but joy in the end.

To review:

In Jesus, suffering is only momentary, not a way of life. 

The reason we count it joy when there's sometimes suffering in Him, is we know suffering is only for a short while, that our day of deliverance is promised, that we can endure — thinking only of the prize of deliverance for many people.

 

During difficult times in the life of nations, during the birth pangs Jesus foretold, there's always the promise of joy.

And maybe, today, long-suffering, for us as Christians, means growing patient (for a short while) with the broken, fallen nature of this world.

But personal suffering — as individuals and as families — isn't supposed to be a way of life.

What Does "As Touching" Mean?

Jesus said it, and that settles it ...

"For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in Heaven. But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have you not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, 'I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?' God is not the God of the dead, but of the living."

Matthew 22:30-32

It's so important not to read the Bible with an ungodly heart. So God plainly tells us that spiritual things are spiritually discerned: 1 Corinthians 2:14.

How on God's green earth is anyone of a mind to think Jesus Himself spoke of physically touching anything hellish?!

My Lord, Jesus, help us.

When Jesus and the disciples use the term "as touching," they're simply expressing closeness in spiritual agreement. The simplest way to understand that is to know that when the New Testament says "as touching," that means "as in close spiritual agreement with."

So, when Jesus speaks of the resurrection in Matthew 22:30-32, He's basically saying, "There's not person-to-person marriage in Heaven. But, as in close spiritual agreement with knowing you'll be resurrected from the dead (knowing you'll have new life through My promise of Heaven), you can believe that [because they trusted in the word that I whispered to the prophets, and even though I had not appeared to Israel yet, they believed in Me] I've already raised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I'm not God of death, but of Heaven."

Then, the disciples speak of "as touching" Gentiles who have become believing, meaning "As in close spiritual agreement with new believers," this is what we're teaching.

It's not hard to understand the way the Holy Spirit speaks!

Heaven Bless Their Hearts

Lord, bless the Jehovah's Witnesses, anyway!

I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

Psalm 27:13

They're a misunderstood part of Heaven's church: the Jehovah's Witnesses. They are some of the few Christians who've been brave enough to come to our door, in a city and community whose troubles are well and widely understood now.

The latest tract I received from them is almost as if in answer to some of the worries that kept me grieved, years ago, about the state of the church, and the state of many of our homes.

The tract asks a question that would earn a "D-minus," if I were a college theology teacher. The tract asks, "Who really controls the world?"

It's a terrible question.

To make that worse, the tract goes on to say, "The Evil One controls the whole world."

But that's wrong, wrong, wrong.

The tract goes to 1 John 5:19, which says the whole world lay in evil. Some versions of the Bible read that to mean the whole world is under "power" of the "evil one." But that's just not the Holy Spirit's meaning!

1 John 5:19 is simply telling us the whole world has people who are choosing to live wickedly. There's no nation that's completely free of evil.

But that does not mean evil has control of this world!

Ephesians 2:1-6 says Heaven's church has been delivered from evil, and that means every one of us who has grown to know Jesus!

Jesus does promise that we're persecuted as Christians, as He was persecuted, especially if we want to live right instead of wickedly like much of the world. But, in heart and mind, we're not consumed by evil. We may be in evil circumstances, but the circumstances are not in control of our destinies as Christians.

So, when someone says, "We have the power. We're in control," that's not someone who really knows the Lord. Because, that's nothing to boast about.

Being free in Christ, or having the promise of freedom in Him, is something to value in our lives as Christians. But warring over "control" isn't godly or true to Heaven.

The word of Heaven says Satan is "prince of the power of the air," a kind of power "now at work in the children of disobedience." But that's as far as the word goes in giving hell any credit for being in control of anything.

Hell is at work in "children of disobedience," or people who so choose. But evil isn't at work in us as Christians, no matter how evil pushes us around. And, knowing that truth, we can patiently go about our way in life, forsaking any evil.

Evil is not our controller!

One good thing in the JW tract is 1 John 2:17.

To paraphrase that scripture, I read it to mean:

"And the world perishes, and the lust thereof: but those who live according to the will of God abide forever."

The tract also offers the comfort we find in Psalm 37:10-11 and Revelation 21:3-4.

Lord, bless those witnesses.

Our Firm Foundation

Living in Christ isn't just like living on a houseboat

I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

Psalm 27:13

Matthew 24:45 speaks of a faithful servant preparing food for a household.

Genesis 35:2 speaks of Jacob leading his household to part with the idols that were objects of worship among his people.

The New Testament speaks favorably of the households of Lydia and Narcissus. Lydia's whole household received salvation in Jesus.

Jesus spent much time at the household of Mary and Martha, among others whose names we don't know.

The Proverbs 31 woman, a foreshadowing of how the church would live and work, was attuned to the needs of her household.

Jesus prophesied that members of households would begin to struggle one against the other in these end times, for sake of trying to save people from their sins, for His sake.

When Israel was fighting to leave slavery, their households were saved from death through applying the blood of the Passover lamb to their doorposts, foreshadowing how Christians are spared damnation by carrying the blood of the Lamb on the spiritual doorposts of our hearts.

Joseph's long-lost family was saved from famine when his brothers reunited with him and received the forgiveness and hospitality of his household.

A jailer who received salvation, because of Paul and Silas' time in prison, courageously and joyously brought the two prisoners into his household, so that his whole household would be saved.

Jesus' healing of an official's son brought the official's whole household to faith.

Paul preached goodwill to men, but especially to "the household of faith." (Galatians 6:10)

And when Jesus fed more than 5,000 after church one day, he asked the congregation to get together in groups of 50, probably to symbolize how churches would get together and become the households of faith that Paul preached about.

Clearly, households are important to Jesus, important to all Heaven.

Not every household is a full house. Some are empty nests where one person is meant to care for only one other for a season, showing us God doesn't give all of us the same responsibilities in life.

For some, taking care of a household in elder years is much different than in big families with children.

Thinking again about when Jesus fed the multitude: Most of our lives are more quiet than that.

It's easy to think Jesus fed more than 5,000 faithful people, so maybe we should make that a goal in our week to week. But that may not be what God is calling everyone to do.

Instead, for many of us, there's a need to overcome hurt, have household peace, and begin reaching out to just a few around us.

The well-being of households — and our ability to be fruitful at home — is important to Heaven. Just look at what Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 4:9-12:

"Concerning agreement in brotherly love, you don't need instruction: for you are taught of God to love one another. And indeed you are in loving agreement with the faithful all over Macedonia: but we beseech you, brethren, that you increase more and more; and that you study to be quiet and to do your own business and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you, so that you may walk honestly [having honest gain to give] toward them that are without, and that you may have lack of nothing." (Paraphrased)

Getting settled, having peace at home, and thereby being able to get things done, is a first step toward being able to be a good example to those in spiritual need around us, as long as we don't become overburdened like Martha did one day.

Jesus being the anchor of our soul and home, we don't have to worry as much about the troubled waters around us in life.