2 MINUTE WARNING

I heard a pastor once say that “your heart will take you places that your head can not go”.

Nothing could be more true.  And nothing could be more eternally important.

Jeremiah warned us about how the heart can deceive us:

Jeremiah 17 ⁹ The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.  Who can understand it?

Solomon encouraged us to guard our heart:

Proverbs 4 ²³ Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.

Solomon also encouraged us to give all of our heart to the Lord:

Proverbs 3  ³ Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;

And Ezekiel quoted God, who told him that we would have a new heart—that God could actually replace our calloused heart with one that could love.

Ezekiel 36 ²⁶ I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

And in His ministry, Jesus told us that whatever we chose to treasure, that our heart would follow us to it.

Matthew 6 ²¹ For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Everyone who has used the terms “He showed heart”, “she loves him with all her heart”, or “the team played with a lot of heart” knows that there is more to this idea of heart than just the organ that pumps blood through our body.  It transcends how fast we are or how smart we are or how much time we have left to live.  Heart shows up in marriages and in teams.  It shows up in compassion and it shows up in our faith.  It reveals itself in our actions and in our financial transactions.

And the Bible is clear about this:  God WANTS our hearts.  He wants our hearts because when they belong to Him, they can not deceive, they can not be hardened, and love can flow from them in abundance.  He wants to give us a heart of flesh—a heart that beats for Him in all of His glory.  And He wants us to store up treasures in heaven and to have our hearts long for heaven.

God doesn’t want our knowledge or our good deeds.  He doesn’t want our resumes or our money or our fame.  He wants our HEARTS.  He wants us to pursue Him and get filled by His love so that we can give it away to others.

Gods’ love inside of us gives us purpose and power and impact.

If God is in our heart, we have a chance to make an incredible difference inside of OURSELVES AND OTHERS.

No one understood this more than Paul.

His vicious contempt for the rising of Christ followers was expressed in His heart.  He wanted to crush them and kill them and humiliate them.  It became an obsession.

But God captured His heart on a journey into Syria.

And He changed Paul’s heart in such a radical way that Paul changed his life in the craziest of ways.

And in His new journey he wrote this:

Ephesians 3 ¹⁹ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Fill your heart with God.  Fill it so that you know that you know—so that your love surpasses all the science and knowledge and logic.  Because when your heart is full of God, “your heart will take you places that your head can not go”.

Go to those places.  God is there.

In The Name of the Father and the 

Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Know anyone who might like these?  Encourage them to jump on to 2minutewarning.blog and hit the FOLLOW button!!!

Coach J

Without food,

Without water,

And alone,

Jesus wandered into the wilderness to face our greatest foe.

In our desperation to find God, we sometimes question Him about where He is, what He is doing, and why He has left us to face things on our own accord.

But the truth is that He has walked in our shoes, He has faced the trials that we face, and He has been “hung out to dry” much more than we have.  And He has done this to show us that we, in fact, are not alone.  Even though we might feel like it.

The enemy has gathered support.

He has convinced a multitude to focus on things that mean nothing while he steals the things that mean everything.

I want to encourage you to stand up and draw a line in the sand.  Because if you don’t, his plan is to find out where your line actually is.  And while you are pondering this very important question, he plans to take everything … he is not a negotiator, he is not out for the common good, and he is not a lover of the King.

So draw your line.

Tell him to take a hike.

And declare Jesus as the King of the world — his world.

As you read the following passages from Matthew, focus on what Jesus says:

Matthew 4  

⁴ Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

⁷ Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

¹⁰ Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan!  For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’”

• Verse 4:  Jesus is the bread of life.  He is the Living Water.  He is the Way, and the Truth, and the Life.  He—is our only hope.
• Verse 7:  We need to put our trust in Him and not look to other things for comfort, refuge, or help.  He—is our only hope.
• Verse 10:  We are to worship Him—and only Him.  As the Bible says:  We are to “worship in spirit and in truth”.  He—is our only hope.

The enemy is not going to defeat Jesus, or those who follow Him.

But we have to bring the gospel to those who don’t.

The enemy’s schemes and brainwashing and attempts to conquer will be grand.  But they will not succeed.  

And as I was writing this blog, I was reminded of an awesome worship song.

Enjoy it.

And as you enjoy it, I want to remind you of what John wrote in Revelation.

Revelation 19 ¹¹ I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and wages war. ¹² His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. ¹³ He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. 

Our King rides a white horse.  

He has a golden sash across His chest.  

And he will decapitate anyone who stands against Him or those who love Him.

The earth, and everything in it, belong to Him.

So follow Him.

And share His gospel.

It is our ONLY HOPE.

In The Name of the Father and the 

Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIE33oW1m1E

Know anyone who might like these?  Encourage them to jump on to 2minutewarning.blog and hit the FOLLOW button!!!

Coach J

When John wrote this verse 2000 years ago I think it meant more than the way we might read this today:

John 21 ²⁴ This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true.

This was written in Koine Greek and the word testimony is, in the Greek,

μαρτυρων

It is pronounced:  Mar-too-reh’-o

And is a derivative of the word Martyr.

In other words, this uneducated Jewish fisherman wrote this gospel and then said:

“We know that his testimony is true”

Now John often referred to himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved and often talked about himself in third person.

I have meditated on this verse a lot since I heard a man named James Ryle talk about it many years ago.

I think a better translation (sorry NIV, NAS, or any other translation) might be:

I have seen this Jesus and these things with my own eyes.  I testify that they are true.  And I am willing to give my life for this testimony.

After all … isn’t that what a martyr is?

I believe this with all my heart and it inspires me.

This eyewitness.  This fisherman.  This man.  He saw Jesus and he decided that this earth was no longer his home.

And he wrote a book of the Bible to let us know that.

He truly ANSWERED WITH HIS LIFE.

This is not a watered down gospel.  This is the gospel of Jesus and it is written to EVERYONE.  Your resume, your money, your status or popularity, your talent — they literally mean nothing.  At the end of your life, the only thing that will matter is your standing with Jesus.

And this isn’t just the recipe for the eternal.  It is the recipe for the now.

John 5 ⁶ When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”

Upon first view, this is the dumbest question in the Bible.

But, as usual, God is right—and we are wrong.

This is the question that all of us must answer.

Do You Want To Get Well?

In your life?

In your relationships?

In your marriage?

In your work?

In your sports?

In your business?

In your raising of kids?

In your dating?

In your … (you fill it in)

When I have not included Jesus in things—They have NOT GONE WELL.

And I am so convicted by this that I am willing to leave it out there with you if you don’t want to do it that way.

JUST REMEMBER THIS WORD.

Because when it all goes poorly come back to it.

It is the key to your eternity.

And it is the key to your now.

Do what John did.

Do what the guy at the pool did.

ANSWER WITH YOUR LIFE

You will not regret it.

In The Name of the Father and the 

Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Know anyone who might like these?  Encourage them to jump on to 2minutewarning.blog and hit the FOLLOW button!!!

Coach J

As I awoke this morning, I could not help to think of where I stand before God.

Without Jesus … GUILTY.

GUILTY AS CHARGED.

For me to sit and write this blog and call myself a righteous man on my own accord is simply a lie.

I am guilty.

I have exaggerated.  I have had corrupt thoughts.  I have sinned in action.  My anger has taken control of me.

Without Jesus’ action to save me 2000 years ago, I am a sitting duck for Hell.

And so are you.

1 Corinthians 6 ⁹ Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men ¹⁰ nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. ¹¹ And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. 

But God moved.  Jesus moved.  And a man (Jesus) with no earthly power radically convicted His closest followers to bring us the Word that we read today.

After Peter denied, and ran, he chose to be crucified UPSIDE DOWN rather than take the same position of his Lord—Jesus.

Followers of Jesus were burned as candles under Nero.

Paul threw his life in the trash after an encounter with Jesus on the road into Syria.

And all of them did this that we might stand and be followers of the only thing that can truly rescue us.

As Jesus died, the curtain in the temple was torn in half.

It was torn in half to let you know that NOTHING, NOTHING, would ever be able to separate you from God if you chose to follow Him.

NOTHING.

Follow Him today.

Worship Him in gratitude.

Give up your pride.

Follow Him without remorse or hesitation.

Matt Maher is such a “simple” artist.  I love to sing with him as he expresses what all of us truly need:  

As this song says:  “Come Awake!”

In The Name of the Father and the 

Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Know anyone who might like these?  Encourage them to jump on to 2minutewarning.blog and hit the FOLLOW button!!!

Coach J

In early 2009, my wife Angie and I made a crucial decision.

We were broke.

We were living in 2 bedroom townhouse in Commerce City.

We were over a million dollars in debt.

But we made the best decision that we could ever make.

We decided to have another precious child.

At the beginning of our marriage, God had convicted my wife to read a book called the Full Quiver.  She shared verses from that book with me and talked with me about what she felt God was leading us to do.

And I was ALL IN.

So, when things got tough, I told her that God was convicting me that we should continue with our plan.  I reasoned that God still wanted to bless us even though we were broke, and “at the bottom”.

And did He ever.

Justine “Carissa” Johnson was born on December 18, 2009.

And my fear of her never getting any attention was quickly squashed.  She was loved on by 6 of us in ways that none of our other children came close to.

As I tell others:  “Thank God … for God”

When we were pregnant with Carissa, everyone thought we were crazy.  And we were.  We were following Jesus with passion—actually believing what His word says, and what our Bible following friends were saying, and what prayer lead us to do.

Our parents disagreed with us.

Our siblings disagreed with us.

And our friends?  I would love to go back now and hear their perspectives.

We disagreed on where life should go.

And that begs the question:

Since When Is AGREEMENT A Requirement For Coexistence?

It ISN’T.

AND ANYONE WHO PUSHES FOR IT IS EITHER EVIL or unknowingly on the side of evil.

How could anyone follow God and possibly agree with what is being pushed by the world?

This is not a feel good message that I am writing today.

It is a challenge to all of us.

Our goal is not to agree and jump in with the latest and greatest technology, or theory, or worldview.

Just the opposite.

Our goal is to agree with God, and God alone.  Popular or not.

Our goal is to “cast our lots” with the living Messiah.  The One who loves all people WAY MORE THAN ANY HUMAN.

Our goal is to please God … and God alone.

Jesus was crystal clear about this.  And if any speech got Jesus killed, it was the one He spoke in Luke 16.

Luke 16 ¹³ “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. 

When our lives are over, there will only be ONE AGREEMENT that will matter—the AGREEMENT we made with God.

Never let someone bully you into changing the way you think by calling YOU a bully.  This, in today’s age, is the root of many evil things.

     It takes God totally out of the equation.

     It allows SOMEONE ELSE to change YOUR morals.

     It is complete and utter manipulation.

This is exactly what a man named Adolf Hitler did.

He convinced people that he was the one being pushed around.

And then, before anyone could blink, he was moving through Europe and exterminating anyone who opposed him and anyone who didn’t fit his view of the perfect race.

This … is the game plan of Satan.

And so I declare what Joshua did;

Joshua 25 ¹⁵ But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

And I declare this because the One who hung on that cross loves me, and my family, way more than any person could.

And, thank God, He also holds the keys to eternal life.

In The Name of the Father and the 

Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Know anyone who might like these?  Encourage them to jump on to 2minutewarning.blog and hit the FOLLOW button!!!

Coach J

Mark 4 ³⁷ A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. ³⁸ Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?” ³⁹ He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.

Sleeping in the boat, Jesus chose His rest when He could get it.

But He always showed up for the fight.

And He always won.

We need to remember that if storms came for Jesus, they will surely come for us.

1 Peter 5 ⁸ Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. ⁹ Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings.

Peter warns us about “your enemy the devil”.  And we must take heed.  He is no joke.

But we must also remember that we have Jesus.

My wife Angie is always aware … and anointed.  She rises at night to pray.  She senses when storms are near.  And she stands in the gap for everyone around her.

Her word today was amazing and out of the very mouth of God.  As Christians, we need to calm the waters.  The storms will come.  And the enemy will always try to weaken our faith.  But as she prayed today about resting and resetting, I was convicted to use those as our encouragement.

How do we survive the storm?  We apply the 3 R’s:

Rest.  Nothing is more important than getting our rest.  We can rest in the Lord, and, yes, there will be seasons when He calls us to rise.  But we must also be willing to rest in the front of the boat just as Jesus did.  One of the ten commandments?  Rest and worship on the Sabbath.  Rest.

Reset.  In scripture, Jesus often left the others and went to be alone.  And we must do the same.  We must go, and be alone, and get into scripture.  NOTHING refines and renews like the Word of God.  Read it.  Memorize it.  Speak It.  Live It.

Resist.  Stand up to any and all things that are out of alignment with God and God’s word.  No one will win who turns his back on the Living God.  NO ONE.

Rest.  Reset.  Resist.  Repeat.

Do not give up.

Do not grow weary.

Do not relent.

This earth, and all of its people, belong to the Lord.

We don’t make our own rules.

We don’t redefine truth.

We don’t get to decide that there is no right or wrong.

The only thing we get to do is to proclaim Jesus as King.

In the end, this is the only thing that will matter.

In The Name of the Father and the 

Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Know anyone who might like these?  Encourage them to jump on to 2minutewarning.blog and hit the FOLLOW button!!!

Coach J

As a coach, it is easy to find your team “going through the motions”.  They are doing all the right things, and saying all the right things, and the coaches are coaching all the right things, but the team does not look right.

While it is difficult to see this going on, I think that we can all identify that this is not only an issue for teams, it is an issue for people.

We get in routines.

We ENDURE seasons of life.

We go from one activity to another without really stopping to see what is really going on.

I think that this, at least in one sense, is going on in Haggai 1.

Haggai 1 ⁵ Now this is what the Lord Almighty says: “Give careful thought to your ways. ⁶ You have planted much, but harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it.”

Think about it.  Because God gives us terrific advice throughout the Bible.  And as I talked to my FCA group on Friday, I warned them that the reason that God warns us or encourages us or commands us is because the issues he warns about are hard to follow.

Do Not Be Afraid.

Do Not Covet.

Do Not Give False Testimony.

These things seem so easy to follow.  And yet, we fear, we covet, we exaggerate.  And when we do, we walk in utter misery.  Because God has not designed us to get by.  He has wired us to be CONNECTED to Him and using that connection to help others to CONNECT to Him.

And in Haggai, God gives us a simple word that can change our world:

“Give Careful Thought To Your Ways”

That is a good word.

Because when we give careful thought to our ways, we can avoid, as He says in Haggai:

• Working for something that never harvests
• Eating but remaining hungry
• Drinking but always being thirsty
• Earning money that is spent before we collect it

God is so good.

He sees the end from the beginning and gives us a game plan on how to walk through this life without losing our way.

And yet, we lose our way.

I want to challenge you to Give Careful Thought To Your Ways.

To find God in the relationships that you build

To find Him in your daily work

To honor Him with what you eat and what you drink

To follow Him with your money

And to remind yourself who you are and how you can thrive:

There is no victory without God

There is no party that fills us up

No amount of money that can fulfill us

No way of life that works

When Solomon decided that he was lost, he went for it ALL.

Ecclesiastes 2 ¹⁰ I denied myself nothing my eyes desired;  I refused my heart no pleasure.

And when he was done corrupting himself he was broken, and empty.

This is because we were not built to fill ourselves with whatever our hearts desire.

We were built to follow the Living God.

Give Careful Thought To Your Ways.

Listen to the words of Jesus:

Mark 8 ³⁶ What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?

And never, ever, forget that you were bought at a price and put here to do one, and only one, thing:

Love … And Worship … God

What flows out of that is something that we will never regret.

In The Name of the Father and the 

Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Know anyone who might like these?  Encourage them to jump on to 2minutewarning.blog and hit the FOLLOW button!!!

Coach J

“Lord, help me be more like your servant Daniel.

Fill me with his:

Wisdom.  Discipline.  Commitment.  Anointing.

Allow me to unwaveringly commit to you and to carry out the call that you have given me.  Help me to sway people BECAUSE of what you do inside of me.”

Daniel had won over the King.  He was wise.  He could interpret dreams.  He was the guy you wanted giving you information if you had all the power.  And because of this, many men were very jealous of him.  And so they influenced the king to pass a law that there would be no praying to God.  The law was passed and the document was signed.

Daniel 6 ¹⁰ Now when Daniel learned that the document was signed, he entered his house (and in his roof chamber he had windows open toward Jerusalem); and he continued kneeling on his knees three times a day, praying and offering praise before his God, just as he had been doing previously. 

This is not a cute story.  It is a testimony to a believer’s faith in God.  And I love the line:  “just as he had been doing previously.”

Daniel’s world was God.  And, because of God, he had a gift that men and women do not have.  He had God in him and on him.

I often ask God what to do in various situations, seeking Him to lead me at the fork in the road.

But as I read this this morning, I realize that Daniel probably did not look at the fork in the road.  He looked at the vehicle he was riding on—as God was his transportation.

Before you make your FIRST decision today.

Before you even GET ON THE ROAD.

Before you worry about the laws of man and the worries of this world.

Kneel and pray before the God of Wonders and ask Him to be your driver.

When you do this, the only Lion you need to worry about is the one in charge of the Tribe of Judah.

In The Name of the Father and the 

Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Know anyone who might like these?  Encourage them to jump on to 2minutewarning.blog and hit the FOLLOW button!!!

Coach J

In the spring of 1990, I had come to a crossroads.

Falsely accused and undone, I had become obsessed with proving my innocence.  On a spring afternoon, after an unsuccessful meeting with a district attorney about a bogus “dine and dash” charge, I was focused on a confrontation with my accusers at their place of business.

I was angry and bitter and solely focused on Proving My  Innocence.

Something stopped me that day and instead of a confrontation that surely would have landed me in more trouble than I was already in, I ended up going up to Flagstaff Mountain to look over Boulder and reflect on where I was.

I can remember that after coming back to my house, my friend who was in the same situation told me:

“Look, my friends know I didn’t do it.  My family knows I didn’t do it.  And God knows that I didn’t do it.  After that, I don’t care.”

A pretty good perspective.

And, to be fair, what God knows is the ONLY perspective.

It is … the only thing that matters.

And the reality for each of us is this:

We can try with all that we are but we will never be able to:  Prove Our Innocence.

I heard a pastor once say that we:

• Judge others by their ACTIONS.  (Justice)
• Judge ourselves by our INTENTIONS.  (Mercy)

We don’t care what the other’s motives are if they have hurt us.  But when we mess up, we want others to know that we did not mean to do it.

This is so true of me.  I want to have a different rule applied to me while applying a harsh standard to someone else.

It is the ultimate HYPOCRISY.

And thinking about this—I can not deny that many times my motives are not right either.

If I were put on trial for being guilty by the standards of God—I AM GUILTY.

God knew this about all of us.  Jesus knew this about all of us.  And that is why we are so desperately in need of the gospel that Jesus offers.  It is … Our ONLY Hope.

When Nicodemus met Jesus at night He knew this.  He knew that Jesus was right but wasn’t quite sure how to go about “changing teams”.  And when Jesus told Nicodemus that he must be “born again” Nicodemus was confused, but enlightened.  He knew that at his core, he was guilty and that he must have a spiritual miracle to make it right.

Are you born again?  Because Jesus offer to Nicodemus is the same offer that He is giving to you.  And this is why the greatest verse in the Bible (besides all of the other ones) is John 3:16.

John 3 ¹⁶ For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 

God gives us many options.  He offers chance after chance.  He even meets people at night, as He did with Nicodemus, so that they can fully know their options without the pressure of others.

But there is no riding the fence.  There is no “Proving Our Innocence”.  We are guilty as charged and beyond the hope of man.

But God SO LOVED …

We are blessed to be able to surrender.

Follow Jesus. 

In The Name of the Father and the 

Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBjIcjZRzVI

Know anyone who might like these?  Encourage them to jump on to 2minutewarning.blog and hit the FOLLOW button!!!

Coach J