Hammer on Anvil '

• This week's guest blogger is Camden Pulliam.  Thanks Camden!
  
  I want you to read something with me.
  “Pray, then, in this way:
  “Our Father in heaven,
  hallowed be your name.
  Your kingdom come,
  your will be done,
  on earth as it is in heaven.
  Give us this day our daily bread,
  and forgive us our debts,
  as we also have forgiven our debtors.
  And lead us not into temptation,
  but deliver us from evil.” – Matthew 6:9-13
  
  This is the ‘Lord’s Prayer.’ It is one of, if not the best known passage in all of Scripture. Since Jesus’ ascension, Christians have been rehearsing this prayer and encouraged by its profound, yet simple, truths. But I’m afraid that often, when we read it today, we miss the bigger picture to which it points.
  Does anyone else find it rather perplexing that the requests in this prayer are completely fulfilled and answered by the individual praying?
  
  - Jesus is the one who hallows (or treats with the highest honor) the name of the Lord: “O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known” (John 17:25-26)
  
  - Jesus is the reigning king with the coming kingdom, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 4:17)
  
  - Jesus is the one who does the will of the Father, “not my will but yours be done” (Matt. 26:39)
  
  - Jesus is the one who is the daily bread, “I am the bread of life” (John 6:48).
  
  - Jesus is the one who proclaims forgiveness, “Take heart, my son. Your sins are forgiven” (Matt. 9:2)
  
  - Jesus is the one who delivers and has been delivered from the temptations of the evil one, “Be gone Satan! . . . and the devil left him” (Matt. 4:10-11).
  
  This prayer from Jesus is one massive announcement of the prayer’s incarnate answer in him. Jesus is the answer to Jesus’ prayer! Jesus is the answer to every true prayer, so that when we ‘pray in this way,’ we will not have to look far for the answer. This passage might be the ‘Lord’s Prayer,’ but the one speaking is the ‘Lord’s Answer.’
  
  So what’s the point?
  
  When we follow Jesus, we must (must!) remember that we are not paving our own paths of obedience. We are following the pattern of obedience already laid out. So often, when we talk about following Jesus, we put quite a bit of emphasis on our attempts to do what he did (and rightfully so). But just for a moment, let us recline in our seat and ponder that everything we are trying to do has already been accomplished. Isn’t that astonishing? There was a real man, just like you and me, who never once wanted to waste his time. There was a man who could honestly say, “I pray all the time.” There was a man, believe it or not, who never once disrespected his parents. He never was a coward and ‘chickened out.’ He never lusted. He never gossiped. He never valued one person more than another. He always cared for his enemies. He always loved people enough to tell them the truth, and the whole truth. He always witnessed. I mean – my goodness (literally)!
  
  We are called to follow and live righteously just like Jesus. But we are also called to believe that there was already someone who lived righteously on our behalf, someone who is ‘my goodness.’ We are called to believe that Jesus’ perfection is ours, and our sins are no more. Let that sink in. We are considered perfect, and our sins are taken care of. Jesus lived the life we should have lived. But what does he get for it? He died the death we should have died. Our places were switched so that God punished Jesus at the cross and treats us as if we are perfect. How?
  
  When we believe in the gospel, another reversal happens. Scripture says that we die and live anew with the resurrected Christ. Our bodies are the ones hanging on the cross, and now we are walking around as the body of the resurrected Jesus (kinda gruesome, I know). Colossians 3:3 – “You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” Philippians 1:21, “For to me, to live is Christ.” 2 Corinthians 5:17, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”
  
  (If you trust in the gospel) When God sees you, he doesn’t even see you. All he sees is his son Jesus. You are hidden behind the ‘invisibility cloak.’ This is the best news of your life. Receive it, follow, and ‘pray in this way.’
  
  - Camden Pulliam

Toward the end of 2011, I began to re-read a favorite biography titled Rees Howells, Intercessor. In some ways I wish I had not done it. I only got as far as chapter four, when God so convicted me that I spent an evening on my knees, weeping and crying out in repentance.

This particular chapter detailed Howells’s own experience of dying to self. I know – not a popular topic, but one we are called to if we profess Christ. My eyes began to blur with tears as I read the account. I was humbled and filled with remorse as God began to show me how my own life needed to be brought under His control. Sounds pretty basic, right? When you accept Christ as your Lord, it’s a contract of sorts – He saves you from hell and eternal death, and in turn, you give your life in service to Him. I think many of us stop short of fulfilling our part of the bargain.

Why do we run from God as we do? Mark Galli explains it well in his book, A Great and Terrible Love:

Why do we avoid the call of God on our lives? I know that the more I give
myself to that call, the more I must crucify the self. The more I do that, the
more I meet Jesus the crucified, and that is indeed a mercy. But in that
meeting, I am always called to a deep crucifixion. No thanks, I say. And so
I flee the call of God, and run from the presence of the Lord.

As I prayed that night, God reminded me (again!) that I am not my own – I have been purchased with the precious blood of His Son. Dying to self means exactly that: dying. I cease to be. My wants, my desires, my prejudices, my stubbornness, and my need to be right all the time. All of it is nailed to the Cross, and I become entirely His. The result is a life poured out in service to God and His purposes. And, as Oswald Chambers says, “The only impression left by such a life is that of the strong calm sanity that Our Lord gives to those who are intimate with Him.”

At church yesterday, our worship leader shared a story that I found interesting. Apparently, when he was growing up, he would never sing in church because he was too embarrassed about his voice. This was the case all the way through high school, but then it finally changed in college. When he got to college, he was at a Christian student union during a worship event and there was a guy he knew who would just belt it out without reservation. What’s so special about that you ask? Well, this guy was a horrible, horrible singer. But the thing is, he didn’t seem to care. All he cared about was what God thought and he was singing from his heart knowing that it was a pleasing sound to God. This changed our worship leader’s perspective and made him realize what really mattered. He started singing.

Hearing this story, I recognized some parallels to my own life, which made me wonder if most of us can connect to this in some way. We all have things we are good at. Areas where we excel. Gifts. Maybe we don’t fully recognize their full potential or maybe we haven’t developed our gifts as far as others, but we DO have them. But in many cases, we don’t utilize our gifts (or maybe we don’t utilize our gifts to further God’s Kingdom).

Why is that, do you think? There are probably as many excuses as there are gifts. It could be that a person is self-conscious (like the worship leader), or maybe he doesn’t use his gift because he feels like he’s showing off when he uses it (because he excels more than others), or perhaps he’s too busy with this, that, and everything to find time to use the gift, but just knowing he is gifted feels like it’s enough.

But the thing is, God gave you your gifts for a reason. He has a purpose. And you are endangering that purpose when you chose to allow the excuse to subdue the gift.

We all make up different parts of the same body (Christ’s body). If God has gifted you as a leg, then the body not only wants you to be a leg, but it NEEDS you to be a leg. If you chose not to exercise that gift, you have disabled the body. Can the body still function? Sure. Can it function at full capacity without you? No.

The body needs you. Step up. (1 Corinthians 12:12-27)

Greetings! Let's look at a few different translations of James 1:2:

Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy (NLT).

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds (ESV).

Consider it wholly joyful, my brethren, whenever you are enveloped in or encounter trials of any sort or fall into various temptations (Amplified Bible).

In our Tuesday night house group, we are studying the Book of James. Because we have a lot of wonderfully articulate people in our group, we only made it through three verses the first week we met. It’s pretty much a verse-by-verse study, and I am privileged to glean wisdom from my peers as we discuss the book.

James 1:2 is a tough one. When you first read it, you might think to yourself, Am I supposed to be a masochist and enjoy heartache and tribulation? Hardly. What James is referring to here is the process we must all endure if we are to be more like Jesus. Unfortunately, most of us don’t draw closer to Him when everything is going our way. So our loving, all-knowing God permits us to—in fact promises that we will—go through trials in this life.

But it is suffering with a purpose. James describes the testing process with the Greek word dokimion, which is the word for “sterling coinage.” The aim of testing is to purge us of all impurities. If we embrace testing in the right way, it will produce what the King James Version calls “patience”—a much too passive translation. The Greek word is hupomone—not simply the ability to bear things, but to turn them into greatness and glory for Jesus’ sake.

The end result of testing, if we are submissive to our Father’s hand, will make us three things:

• Perfect – This doesn’t mean we will never make mistakes; it means we will be perfectly fitted for whatever God may ask of us.

• Complete
  

• Deficient in Nothing

May we all have courage to praise God in the midst of trials, and pray that His purposes will be accomplished in our lives.

This post is not about a guy that the media has caused many people to grow tired of hearing about (Tim Tebow), but the idea for this post did originate with him. Ever since the media started hyping his devotion to Jesus Christ, I’ve seen stuff all over Facebook and elsewhere on the net that can be boiled down to, “Why should God care about football?” And it’s true (to an extent). There are so many pressing matters in the world that the outcome of a football game seems pretty trivial.

But then I started thinking about that more in depth. If the outcome of a football game is too trivial for prayer, then at what point is something important enough to pray about?

If my car has been breaking down, should I pray for it to work? What if it’s my xbox that is broken? Or what if my health takes a turn for the worst? Certainly that is worthy of prayer, right? And, you know what, the political candidates that I support need to win the upcoming election. Should I pray for that? The outcome of a football game doesn’t affect much, but whoever wins the election will be leading our country, so that means it’s worthy of prayer, right? And c’mon, my xbox is important.

The more I thought about this, the more I realized that the answer is complicated. On the one hand, God definitely wants us to come to Him for all of our concerns, no matter how trivial. We see at least a couple of examples in the New Testament when Jesus shows us that God wants us to pray about our concerns: Matthew 6:11 (“Give us today our daily bread.”) and part of Matthew 26:39 when Jesus knows he is going to be crucified (“My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.”).

But on the other hand, the Bible is rich with the sentiments of Colossians 3:2, “Set your minds on things above, not on Earthly things.” I frequently say that we all need to have an eternal perspective. There are loads of things that are here today and gone tomorrow, but very little that will last into eternity. We should be investing in those things that will last, and our prayers should reflect our devotion to that investment. And in both of those examples in Matthew, Jesus goes on to demonstrate that we should ask for God’s Will above all else.

In the end, I think that both perspectives are true. God wants us to come to him with all of our concerns, and as we mature as Christians, he wants our prayers to reflect our growing investment in eternity.

With that in mind, please join me in this short prayer. Dear God, please let the 49ers win the Super Bowl. Amen. ;)

My wife and I have recently been watching America’s Funniest Home Videos, which was just added to Netflix. Nothing makes your day better than laughing so hard you cry and there is no comedy better than real life.

So today, I wanted to share with you one of the videos that made me cry from laughter. Watch it, enjoy it, watch it again because it’s just so funny and it’s short, and then read the part below. :)

When I saw that part of the show, I laughed so hard that I had to pause it to keep from missing the next several videos. It still makes me chuckle when I watch it and I may or may not have acted it out for a few friends. :)

And then later, I thought about a metaphor. It’s pretty loose, but I had to think of some excuse for sharing that video. :)

Okay, here it goes. We are the little kid, the fishing pole is sin, and the fish is the negative consequence of sin. We tend to hold on to sin with a death grip and refuse to let go while at the same time we run as fast as we can to try to get away from the consequences of our sin. All we have to do is let go of the sin and the consequence will go away too (in most cases). But we just won’t do it. We don’t see the connection. Just like the kid doesn’t realize that holding on to the pole is the exact reason the fish is following him, we refuse to acknowledge that holding on to our sin is the reason we’re suffering negative consequences.

And you want to know one of the worst parts? In the spiritual realm, it isn’t nearly so funny.