sufficiency

Being Jesus on the Job

“As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” – Proverbs 27:17 Did you ever watch the show “The Office?” Although it ended in 2013, it became one of the most successful shows in American television history. I believe it’s because of one simple thing: It portrayed the types of relationships that all of us wish we had at work. It’s easy to fantasize about a perfect workplace and think that if you only worked for Google or maybe for Apple, things would be great. Magically, you would have fun on the job and you would be innovating all day long. You would have meaningful relationships with coworkers that would just spontaneously develop. However, I want you to know that there is no magic formula specific to these environments that makes this possible. The reality is that good working relationships can happen anywhere, and they might just start with you. 

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Death to Self is not Death of Self

“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” – Ephesians 2:10 Yesterday, we discussed what it means to die to ourselves, so today, I want to point out what that doesn’t mean. Unfortunately, many of us who were raised in the church learned that death to self means death of self, but this is not the case. There is an important distinction to be made here that keeps us from falling into the trap of legalism and self-condemnation.  Death of self teaches that I don’t matter and that all of my desires are bad or wrong. In other words, it crucifies me as an individual. This, however, is not how God designed it to be. He created each one of His children uniquely and with a purpose, and as the Bible states, we are His handiwork,

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Three Kinds of Faith

“Then he touched their eyes and said, “According to your faith let it be done to you.” – Matthew 9:29 We’ve been talking a lot about faith — what it is and what it isn’t and how it plays out in our lives. Today, I want to assert that there are different kinds of faith that correspond to distinct seasons of our lives as Christians.  Different things motivate our trust at various times in our lives, but the bottom line is that faith is essential to our survival and quality of life. Why? Because faith has to do with the future. When we are unable to put our hope in anyone or anything, we quickly become despondent and crippled by worry, anxiety, and depression. Faith is the essential component of a productive, abundant, and fruitful life, which is why living in the Kingdom of God is absolutely the best way.

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Authority Over Darkness

“I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.” – Matthew 10:16 Yesterday we talked about how Satan does exist but how we, as Christians, have power and authority over the darkness he tries to bring into our lives. Overall, we affirmed that Jesus has won the war! Today, I want to talk a little bit more about our adversary and where his pseudo-power comes from.  I believe that lack and evil in this world are carried out through the agency of people; however, their root cause is found in the angelic world, namely through Satan and the fallen angels who followed him rather than serving the Lord. Now, whenever we talk about the devil and Satanic influences in modern society, it’s easy for educated people to put their guard up — that’s because the enemy doesn’t want us

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You Cannot Be Destroyed

“For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.” – 2 Corinthians 5:1 One of the greatest discoveries of the 20th century is that energy can’t be destroyed. Known as the first law of thermodynamics or “The Law of Conservation of Energy,” it means that energy can neither be created nor destroyed; rather, it can only be transformed or transferred from one form to another. While I am not a scientist and don’t pretend to understand all the ramifications of this law, I do know that it speaks to and verifies the eternal nature of our lives. Since it can’t create itself, energy then, must have been created by a force outside of itself — a Creator! As Christians, we believe that the One who created both matter and energy

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The Good Shepherd

“The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake.” – Psalm 23:1-3 Earlier this month, we touched briefly on Psalm 23, reminding us we lack nothing. For the next couple of days, we’re going to take a closer look at this beloved verse as we continue talking about living a life without lack and having everything we need in the sufficiency of God’s Kingdom. As we work through specific verses of the Psalm, I encourage you to commit them to memory so you can meditate on them and really allow their truth to sink into your spirit!  The Lord is my Shepherd, I lack nothing. We talked yesterday about how we have a good Shepherd and how in His love, we have everything

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Expand your World

“I have no need of a bull from your stall or of goats from your pens, for every animal of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills.” – Psalm 50:9,10 Yesterday we talked about how we as human beings are minds above all else and we discussed how the way we think about God has the power to totally transform us and the world around us. Today, I want to talk about another aspect of our thinking that can either empower or stifle us — how we think about ourselves.  I believe that self-obsession is the major problem in the world today. Now, I want to be careful here because I’m not talking about a kind of overly-pious religiosity that says that I shouldn’t have a self at all — I fully believe in self care. However, I am convinced that death to self, although it

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Fear Not

“One night the Lord spoke to Paul in a vision: ‘Do not be afraid; keep on speaking, do not be silent.’” – Acts 18:9 Fear Not! Do Not Be Afraid! These commonly used Biblical commands always precede God doing something really great in a person’s life. For instance, every time an angel appears to one of the Lord’s chosen, whether Mary before becoming pregnant with Jesus or the Apostle Paul before surviving a shipwreck, He tells that person to not be afraid. Naturally, the presence of an angelic being, full of power and celestial glory, would be enough to make anyone tremble in fear, at least in the moment, but after the call of God is given, there is an even greater opportunity for worry to set in.   The world is full of obstacles and there are more opportunities for angst and anxiety than ever before. When Jesus calls us

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God is Sufficient in Your Finances

“And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.” – Philippians 4:19 Yesterday we talked about living in a culture of fear that causes our world to shrink instead of expand. Today, I want to share with you a specific example of how society encourages fear in our finances. When I was in college, I got my first credit card. My mom thought it would be a good idea for me to have this card in case of any emergencies. She didn’t want me to not have money to pay for a hamburger or to fill my gas tank, so she instructed me to use it as needed. Ah yes, I remember the day I got that shiny new Discover card in the mail — it felt like I had just won the lottery! It was a live card and I

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Your Life is Full; You Lack Nothing

“The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.” – Psalm 23:1 In today’s worry-laden culture, many of us have shrinking worlds. Let me explain to you what I mean by that. Because we exist in a society that is laden with fear, we tend to see our life and its possibilities through a lens of scarcity; and a sense of lacking what we need. But what are we so afraid of? Many of us are in a kind of vortex of worry and we don’t even realize that we are. We are rushed, hurried and driven not by our true desires, but by our feelings of never having enough, whether it’s time, money, opportunities, friendship, or freedom. When we focus on everything we don’t have, our lives begin to lose its luster and dreaming becomes nearly impossible.  The fruit of this mentality of scarcity is that we become protective of

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