S: Sufficiency of Christ

**Before you read this you must scroll down and read O: Offense of Sin**

I have tried to start this post a dozen different ways, but the only way I know how to is with praise. Thank you, God, that we have gotten to S. Thank you, Jesus, for never ever letting us walk alone. Thank you that the sufficiency of Christ is not only "sufficient" but more than enough, overflowing, abundant. Thank you for immeasurable love and sound guidance.

A clip from Ephesians 2:

 "As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3 All of us also lived among them at one time,gratifying the cravings of our flesh[a] and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. 4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace,expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."

The beginning of this passage establishes what the post from last time said: all of us, every single person to ever exist or who will ever exist has committed an offense against God. We were paying at a cash register and were told "You dont have enough". We weren't enough.

But then Jesus Christ, the of God, the essence of God in the flesh, withdrew into the pits of hell and rescued us. He handed the cashier $5 and told her to keep the change sot hat we would have no price to pay. All of us had a price tag on our heads and he paid it all in full. 

I used to wonder as a kid how one man just dying saved the entire human race. It wasn't until I was about 16 that something finally clicked: it had nothing to do with Jesus dying. It had a little to do with him rising from the dead. But it had a lot to do with what happened between those 2 events.

As I said before, we each have a price on our heads, and each price had to be paid. The wrath of God did not just simply go away when Jesus was nailed to the cross, He endured it for all of mankind. Think about the way I tried to describe hell in my last post. It's hard to imagine a place so terrible. In fact, it's entirely impossible to imaging a place void of love, God, and goodness. But just thinking about one of your loved ones having to endure it for eternity and then some sends tears to your eyes. 

Realize that Jesus had to endure the pain and wrath of hell for every person that has ever or will ever exist. 

Jesus drank the entire cup of God's wrath and then turned it upside down so that not even a single drop could escape. 

I use the term "had to endure" very loosely because in fact that wording is false. He did not have to. This was not something that God made him do, it was a choice. If you read the passages dealing with Satan's temptation of Jesus in the desert, you realize that at any point during Jesus' time on Earth he could have beckoned an angel army to him and peaced out. By no means was he being forced to stay here, to endure the pain and the burden. It was a choice that he made out of love and compassion. 

At the exact moment that Jesus took his last breath, scripture says that the veil was torn. This veil is the same veil that literally had to separate God from the worshiper in temples back in the Old Testament. There was not a personal relationship with God. There were rules so perfect that human nature could not possibly obey them, which is where Christ stepped in. He took our religion from rigid, legalistic, and impossible to personal, loving, and relieving. Jesus says his burden is light because he's already born the shame and ridicule. He has done the dirty work, all you have to do is respond (stay tuned next for that post next).

When Jesus died, the Bible is very careful to mention all of the witnesses that were around for his burial. On top of witnesses, he had guards standing by the tomb because the government feared the disciples would steal his body from the tomb in order to seemingly fulfill scripture. However, 3 days later and without the guards being distracted or having a lapse in attention, the tomb was found empty with only the linens used to bury the dead found laying there. 

Up from the grave He arose. 

Jesus had endured the wrath of God and defeated death. Hell has no victory, the battle has already been won. Yet we continue to act like religion has too many rules.

If your religion tells you that you need anything other than salvation exclusively through Jesus Christ and only Jesus Christ then your religion is not Christianity. Christ is sufficient enough. Paul tells us very plainly in Colossians 2 that any religion that tells you you must not eat something, do something, wear something, or be something is entirely false upon itself and suggests that Jesus was not enough and you need a little extra something to gain salvation. Yes, Christians often are encouraged to not have sex before marriage, curse, party hardy, etc, but these things are not a deal breaker. Paul tells us that characteristics such as these among Christians lead us to question whether or not the person ever truly accepted Jesus and was saved because by nature Christianity is life-changing and a truly Christ-centered heart should not be focused on wordly things, however there is nothing extra that you must do to earn salvation.

The only reason the above paragraph belongs in this post is to establish that CHRIST IS ENOUGH.

I can't say that louder, can't harp on it anymore. There is no need to have anything else. No good works can save you, no abstinence from food or sex can save you, and no religious practices such as observing the Sabbath or being baptized can save you. Jesus is and always will be the only way, no matter how "religious" you are or how great of a person you are. Always know that nothing you do on your own is enough, Jesus is the only answer. This is a puzzle that only has 1 piece which is Christ. That is all you need. Never, never forget that. 

And never forget that, no matter what the media or the government tries to tell you, God is love. He (and we, hopefully) is love, grace, kindness, generosity, mercy, healing, omniscient, omnipotent, ruler, king, Lord, savior, greater. 

I'm sure this post is scattered but dealing with something as precious as this has the ability to cloud one's thoughts. If you walk away from this knowing that you deserve darkness, pain, misery, suffering, but Jesus bore that burden for you and now you have life, healing, joy, and salvation then my goal is accomplished. Know that Jesus is enough. He is the ONLY way to salvation. 

Next post I will discuss P: personal response.

If you took away from this post what I hope you did then you will learn how to respond to this outpouring of love.

O: Offense of Sin

Oh boy. This part of the series is a doozy. This is the part of the story that no one wants to hear. Society as a whole (and honestly modern churches) kinda skim over this and "get to the good stuff". If the Bible was a movie, the "sin" scene would be when you got up to refill your popcorn. But the truth is that its real and its the only way to indeed "get to the good stuff", so here we go.

A long time ago in a land far far away God made the heavens and the Earth and people. He loved the people and he gave all he had to the people. The people loved him and obeyed him out of love and respect, knowing he only lovingly walked with them. However, a voice kept talking to the people, convincing them with dripping deceit that they had been deceived by this God, that they weren't truly loved by Him. The voice told them he can't be trusted, that his ways were unfair, that he didn't want their minds to be open to everything that the world had to offer them (oh, how we hear this same voice every day in so many different forms). And so the people made the single worst decision in human history and listened to a worldly voice instead of an out-of-this-world God. They sinned against God.

This action- this sin- told God that they thought they knew better than Him. That they had this thing in the bag and he could just mosey on off and keep ruling the universe and stuff. They told him in essence that they didn't trust him, that they were questioning his love for them, that they didn't need his guidance or compassion. On this day, mankind partnered with Satan and tried to kill the very essence and character of the Almighty Creator. And you and I do the same thing every single day.

I think that this article is crucial. I think that as Christians, you and I must come face to face with who we really are underneath the getup that we put on. I think to be on right terms with God and to fully get the gospel, we have to understand the facts. So here goes nothing.

You and I are sinners. Our very being hates God. He makes our worldly skin crawl. Almost every natural instinct we have tells us to go against his guidance, to give into what we want no matter who it affects. Our feet hit the floor and we commit a dozen offenses against God before we even go to work. We separate ourselves from protection, perfection, immeasurable love, humility, grace, mercy, and guidance and sometimes we even have the audacity to be proud of it. And that only means one thing.

We deserve eternal damnation. We deserve an eternity away from true love because every minute we deny that God is God. I'm going to discuss S: Sufficiency of Christ next week in great detail, however we are faced with 2 and ONLY two options: Accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior and know that he died on the cross and endured all of God's wrath for the very sins that you and I committed yesterday and today and tomorrow or spend an eternity away from God.

The reason that the gospel message is so important is because of that very reality. There is no other way around it. Good works won't get you to heaven. Being a "nice guy" will not land you a spot in front of those pearly gates. If you donate a day of your life every single week to volunteering or some form of charity, that still isn't cutting it. No other religion or "savior" gets you there either. There is but ONE way to escape the inevitable fate of mankind and that is through accepting JESUS CHRIST.  

What does "forever" in hell look like?

I don't know. I can not imagine a place where God's love cannot be seen neither here nor there. I can not imagine a place where pain and suffering exclusively exist together for stretches of time that literally never end. I can not imagine a place that is void of all goodness, all hope, all joy for forever and ever and ever and then some. All suffering, all work, all wrath and pain and agony. I don't want to know what the looks like.

 But it makes me cry.

And the reality is that every single human being who has ever stepped foot on Earth has fallen far short of what he/she was created to be and have slapped the face of the very same creator who crafted the universe and we deserve that terrible, awful place that makes me cry. And like a brand new iPhone, our factory settings are set to "hell". The reality is that every single person who does not accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior are automatically sent to this place. Any person who hasn't even heard of Jesus has the same fate.

That is why the Gospel message is so urgent. That is why your very essence must positively ooze Jesus. It is that crucial. It is of immediate, 911, need to do right now importance. Because it's up to you. Imagine your own very near and dear loved ones who may or may not have the Gospel message a little mixed up and your heart absolutely shatters and you realize just how urgent that this message is. Next week I get to tell you of the immense love and mercy and grace that was and is extended to you every single day and that story is the most important story you will ever hear in your entire existence and it is absolutely vital that you know it and believe it and tell it to anyone who will listen, no matter the cost because the alternative is absolutely unbearable to consider.

Francis Schaffer, when asked how he would disciple to someone who has never heard the gospel before in just one hour, replied:

"I would spend 45-50 minutes on the negative, to really 

show him his dilemma- that he is morally dead- then

take 10-15 minutes to preach the Gospel. I believe that

much of our evangelistic and personal work today is not 

clear simply because we are too anxious to get to the answer

 without having a man realize the real cause of his sickness, which 

is true moral guilt (and not just psychological guilt feelings)

in the presence of God."

This message is so vital that we should spend about 4/5ths of our evangelistic time addressing the problem. And I agree. People are falling apart today because society has deemed sin offensive (as they should) and in return "feel good" churches kinda sweep it up under a rug. Don't get me wrong, I am a far cry from a "fire and brimstone" kinda gal, but as a logical and mathematical person I understand that before a solution can be found, the problem must be clearly stated and understood. 

We can not make a person whole by starting the Gospel message in Matthew. 

I do not want anyone to experience an endless amount of time in suffering, where even the sweet relief of death is nowhere to be found. Therefore I am not hesitant to clearly state that that is reality if steps are not taken. 

This is not a fun topic, no, but it is perhaps the most necessary one. It's scary without a doubt, but how blessed and grateful am I that after O comes S, the sufficiency of Christ. In the time being, meditate over the idea that we do not have to experience an eternity away from God because Christ already endured it for us. Not once, but for every single person who has ever and will ever live. I don't know how to express this joy any better than the below verse from "It is Well With My Soul". 

"My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!"

G- God's Character

God's character is probably the most important aspect of the entire Bible, yet it's probably also the aspect that we neglect to think about enough in our own walks with God. The government and a lot of activists groups like to comment on what they think the character of God is like, however you and I are probably not as quick to write up a Facebook post about this instead of writing a post about those same activists groups and their "crazy" ideas (More on that next week). Without the character of God, the Bible doesn't even exist. Who God is creates the very foundation of our faith and we should meditate on the truths of his character daily. 

So who is God?

According to those activists groups or any disgruntled person on any given day, God is a pretty mean guy. He takes a lot of what we want away. He lets terrible things happen in our lives and is full of hate and wrath toward us. Some say that if "God" even is real then its no god that they want to serve. Unfortunately, this view of God is becoming more and more popular. As humans, we search for answers and when we can't find them we shake our fist at the sky and blame our creator.

Thankfully, the people above are completely wrong. They have confused God with the backlash of sin and have turned their bitterness towards the wrong offender. The God who made is so much more than wrath.

God is love. I know you have probably seen that written on some sort of Facebook post where you were prompted to "share it" because God saw you read it, but it's true. God is love in its purest, most untampered form. Like fate, I read 1 Corinthians 13 in my devotional tonight and immediately I knew I had to include it in this post. We usually pull out these verses on engagement posts to put on instagram but never really consider the actual weight of the words.

"Love is patient, love is kind,

Love does not envy, 

it is not boastful or conceited, 

does not act improperly,

is not selfish, is not provoked,

and does not keep a record of wrongs. 

Love finds no joy in unrighteousness

but rejoices in the truth.

It bears all things, believes all things,

hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails."

1 Corinthians 13: 4-8

Yes, this is an awesome verse of marriage, but its also an awesome verse for the character of God. God is love.  He is patient, kind, not boastful, not selfish. He keeps no record of wrongs (once you accept Jesus), he rejoices in the truth. He bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. God never fails. 

How amazing is that? On top of that, God is personal. He actively seeks a relationship with you. One of the stories David told about a mission trip he went on somewhere in the Middle East. He was talking to a Buddhist and a Muslim all day and after talking for a while, he asked them a question based on what he had picked up on from their conversation. He said "So if you do all these rituals and pray this amount of times and keep yourself clean, you essentially are journeying up a mountain to get to God, right? And once you get there you're golden." The men agreed, very pleased that he understood. David replied "What if I told you that you don't have to do that. God comes down the mountain and meets you". 

Oh how much of God's unending love and grace do we take for granted? The fact that I can pray to my God any time of the day and know that he is listening to every word that I speak is more than enough. Every Sunday I feel his presence in Church and I know that He is with me. I feel him when I walk through trials or when I'm scared. He knows my name, how many hairs are on my head, what I'm thinking this exact moment, the contents of my heart. What other "god" makes the journey to you where you are? What other "god" allows you to be his without praying a certain amount of times a day or performing certain rituals? There is no one like our God y'all and that is GOOD NEWS.

Our God is perfect. And He made us perfect and I will elaborate on that in such great detail next week. But because of our sin we is also a wrathful God. We must pay for the wrongs that we commit every single day. The price is high, unpayable by the wealthiest of men. No good works can remove the price tag that is on your head. 

But that's okay, because our God is merciful and gracious. He is 3-in-1. He paid the price and took the punishment for every single sin that every single person in the entire world that ever has or is or ever will be has committed. He took the cup of wrath, drank it in full, and then turned it over because it was bone dry and said "It is FINISHED". Yes, don't tell me God isn't love because I am bathing in it. 

God deserves our praises, our adoration, our entire lives and beings. And hopefully by the end of this series we will all be able to agree on that. I think I could discuss who God is and how incredibly tangible he and his love is forever, but I will stop now and let us all meditate on this post, mostly on the last 2 paragraphs written above. Thank God for the glorious lover of souls that he is and remember his goodness. He is more than enough. 

The G.O.S.P.E.L. Truth

David Platt.

If you don't recognize that name, open up a new tab, google it, and immediately watch videos and buy books because trust me, you're going to want to be familiar with that name.

David Platt is a young preacher right here in the southeast who is the most by-the-book, wash-me-in-biblical-truth pastors I've ever heard. I have never read a book or watched a video by him where I did not feel like I was constantly growing in my walk with Christ. Seriously y'all, he's that good. He makes sure that what he says can be backed up by the Bible and is God-breathed and you just don't get that anymore.

Whew, anyway, on to what this post is about.

So David Platt does this thing every year called "Secret Church", inspired by some of his past mission trips in Asia years ago. On these trips, church goers could be killed if the government saw that they were attending church so they literally would risk it all to walk to an underground, undisclosed location and for 12 hours straight they would go through the Bible with David. Yes, the whole Bible. David describes his experiences with them in his book "Radical" (seriously, you have to read it), and it's amazing. It will sure make you think twice about how you walk into your church on Sunday. Well, after these trips, David began to wonder how he could instill the same sense of passion and urgency for the word in his own church back home. So began Secret Church.

It started with just David's church. They would remove some of the comforts in the sanctuary, such as chairs, and hundreds of members would come and sit on the ground for 6 hours and go through a large portion of the Bible. It became so popular that soon thousands attended. It began to be podcasted until it grew into what it is today. Secret Church was one week ago and over 63,000 attended/watched from their own church homes. Dozens and dozens of countries are represented in that number. And it is AMAZING.  God speaks volumes through David every time and it is never a disappointment so I recommend that you check that out next year because it is worth all 6-7 hours.

Now, to what I actually wanted to write this post about...

David's message this year was all about how we can disciple to people of different religions. However, he made sure to start off the night reminding us why it is so vital to spread the good news to everyone that will listen. He did this through an acronym which just so happens to be G.O.S.P.E.L., which inspired me to do a little 6 week series on each of the letters.
Here's what each post will be on:

G: God's Character
O: Offense of Sin
S: Sufficiency of Christ
P: Personal Response
E: Eternal Urgency
L: Life Transformation

I am so looking forward to this new journey that I myself am getting to partake in and I so hope that you all will join me and get something out of it too.

I'm Done with Being Politically Correct.

A few weeks ago in my American Government class we had to sign up for a topic to debate on, work with a group to get a debate together, and then battle it out in class with our opposers. I glanced at the list looking for a topic close to the top so that I could more or less "get it over with", so I wrote my name down beside "against abortion", knowing I didn't support abortion and not knowing much more than that.

When I began to research, I remember actually feeling physically sick.

If we want to look at it in a political angle, we always hear people saying that abortion needs to be legalized for the rape victims. When I began to research, I expected to see a large portion of the women who got abortions report that they received one because they were a victim of rape. That, however, is not what I found.

I discovered that less than 1% of women who receive an abortion in the US report that they got one because they were a victim of rape.

But this is what all the political gurus first go to when they try to defend abortion, I thought as I scratched my head. So why do women get an abortion? What I discovered shook me to my core. Most report receiving an abortion for 3 top reasons: They got pregnant at an inconvenient time in their life and just didn't want a baby right then, their significant other left them when they found out they were pregnant, or they had money issues. Thats right, most women are getting their abortions simply because "its not the right time". Are you kidding me?

I then began to get information as to how an abortion is done and exactly what is going on with the fetus at certain weeks and I will spare you all of those details, but I can assure you that my eyes welled as I read these things on my computer screen as I was completing my work study hours. There was and is no doubt in my mind that abortion is absolute murder.

.....
Last week as I was walking to my 9am, I saw large posters with the words "Warning: Photos of Mass Genocide Ahead". I thought someone must be doing a Holocaust awareness thing or something and went on to my class, thinking nothing else about it. I then heard a buzz of people absolutely livid. Apparently some pro-life activists had set up a large booth to both raise awareness about abortion and protest it. Pictures of aborted babies were posted everywhere. People were mad. 

I heard one major complaint: "I shouldn't have to see dead babies as I'm walking to class!" or  "I'm pro-life and everything but those pictures were just gross". And of course the really great, solid argument of "Pro-life people are dumb and shouldn't be allowed to have an opinion". That's my favorite. I even read a poster of someone protesting which read "Trust women: Pro-choice is pro-life"....what? Isn't that kind of like Hitler saying "Trust me on this one guys, the Jews gotta go, I know what I'm doing". Is that the best they could come up with, seriously?

......
So, as I stated in my very long blog post from 3 this morning, I thought about doing a blogpost for all of the major issues David Platt addressed in Secret Church last night. In all honesty I'm not sure if that will actually happen, but I do have to speak about abortion. I am tired of this staying in the darkness because no one wants to talk about it, and I feel compelled.

The main argument for abortion is that within the first trimester the baby is not actually a person, but just a clump of cells. If we want to talk science, I can talk science. For my debate specifically I read the definition of life first. Webster defines life as "the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity to grow, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death". Interesting, because for all but that whole reproduction part (at this stage), that clump of cells has life. If you want to argue for the reproduction part then full term babies or toddlers are free game too. From the moment that a person is conceived, it continuously is growing. Ask any woman who has had a baby before and see if they believe that a baby is a person within that first trimester.

But putting human's limited outlook on science aside, let's look at scripture. The all famous Psalm 139 tells us a lot, including that God knitted us in our mothers womb, that he saw us and knew the number of days we had, that we were wonderfully made even then. There are a number of verses that tell us God is the giver and taker of life. There is no doubt that biblically there is a person in there because God is the one who blesses us with children. He put that child there, he made that child possible, he is knitting that baby. We then can look at verses such as Job 10:8-13 and see that God made EVERYONE wonderful, even the disabled, and we as humans have no right to tell a disabled child that they were a mistake and they don't even deserve life. David Platt told us that about 90% of women who are told their baby will have a disability choose to abort. We as Americans see no worth in the life of a disabled person and there is something seriously wrong with that.

Gregory Koukl talked about a little girl named Rachel. "If a doctor came into the hospital room and, instead of caring for Rachel, took the life of this little girl.... it would be a homocide. However, if this same little girl- the very same Rachel- was inches away resting inside her mother's womb, she could be legally killed by abortion".

David Platt did address the subject of rape babies. Guess what? They deserve life too. Duetronomy 24:16 says "Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers,". He told us that a woman would not be allowed to in turn murder her rapist for emotional relief, so why do we let her murder the innocent product of a bad deed? I know that it would be so incredibly hard to have that baby, I do. Do not think that I am downplaying that for one second, because that would cause me to wake up every day and pray for grace for that child, but it has to be done. Extend the same mercy to that innocent child as God extends to you every single day.

Another huge argument that advocates abortion is that making it illegal forces women to get it done with other means, including horrifying stories involving coat hangers. That sounds like a moral issue, not an abortion issue. The problem there is not that we should make it safer for them to murder a child, the problem is that we have got to change a culture. David Platt compared this to someone robbing a bank. Just because it is dangerous for someone to rob a bank does that mean we have an obligation to make it safer for them? Of course not! No one would for a second support that idea. Yet we do it in this society every day. It is time for women to take responsibility for their actions.

The main beef I have is not with the culture, honestly. It's the fact that our churches are sitting back in silence on this issue in fear of "offending someone". Churches geared towards my generation especially live in fear that if they speak out against one hot topic issue then the whole congregation will call them the go-to names (like closed-minded, hypocrites, hateful, you know the names) so they simply do not talk about it while their congregation sits there in sin. I find it interesting that the church has no problem speaking out against "normal" sins, for lack of a better term. A preacher will more than gladly talk about a man's sin of lusting or a woman's obligation to be modest while avoiding an issue that most of the congregation either participates in or thinks is okay. It's time to change our church culture, people. We can not afford to remain silent on issues such as these any longer. An abortion occurs every second of every minute of every hour of every day. We kill more people than the holocaust killed every year. Do you understand how many souls that is? Who are we to say if God's work is good enough to live or not?

If you have had an abortion, know that there is mercy and grace for you. You are fully forgiven. If you have supported abortion in the past, I strongly urge you to get on the biblical side of it. And if you are reading this, I urge you to speak out. This has to be addressed in our churches and in our government.