2 MINUTE WARNING

As a new fall begins, new things begin to take shape.  I said a tearful goodbye to my son Caleb this weekend as he goes to join my daughter Jenna in her final year of college.  He begins a new season as a college student, and she finishes up.  Just across the city, my daughter Jayci gets up to go take care of children in he Phoenix Children’s Hospital ER.

In my family, in every family, we walk into new seasons and say goodbye to our old ways.

These are not always easy transitions.

But as we enter into them, I remind all of us:

Our Worldview Sets Our Actions In Motion

Who we are, and more importantly, what we believe, begins to define us.

What do we believe?

As Christians, we must never stray far from the foundation that God has laid down for us.

Who are we?

In watching Lee Strobel’s amazing film, The Case For Heaven, he sure compels us to think about this very issue.  Here are a few of my thoughts:

1.  We are spiritual beings in a physical body
2.  We are NOT the center of the universe
3.  Our life is a (reference to Rick Warren):
   1. Trust
   2. Test
   3. Temporary Assignment

We are only here (on earth) for a short time.  And though we can become obsessed with the physical world, it is not this kingdom that we are trying to conquer.  Our kingdom is a spiritual one, and He is a spiritual King.  Jesus came to our physical world TO BE BROKEN and bought us at a price, and He gives us a chance to walk out our spiritual beliefs in a physical, and tangible, way.  He sealed our eternity.  He cut the head off the enemy, He took away the end of our lives, and He gave us a chance to be forgiven for EVERY ONE of our bad thoughts and actions.   He gives us a chance to bring His Kingdom into ours … to share our incredible secret (knowing Him) with all we know.

Remembering that we are not trying to conquer a kingdom that we can never keep is crucial to our lives.

So, if you are walking into a new season like I am, or if you are caught in the same old rut, I remind you:

• We are broken because of our free will
• We are redeemed by a choice
• We will either surrender willingly to a God who loves us, or we will surrender to an entity that hates us and everyone we love.

Paul gives us words that we do not have to bring the “same old garbage of the physical world” into our steps as we walk forward.

Romans 8 ¹ Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, ² because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.³ For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man,⁴ in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.

Romans 8 is an incredible chapter.  It is worth reading again and again.  We are truly free from the world if we choose that path.  And choosing that path will be tested … every single day of our lives.

It is worth the fight.

He is worthy our devotion.

Worship Him this morning in spirit and in truth.

In The Name of the Father and the 

Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

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Coach J

As I sit in worship this morning, I am in awe …

In AWE of God

Where would I be if He did not stand in the gap between me … and the pits of Hell?

My children and my wife will tell you that when I play a worship song, I play it over and over and over and over.

And the song on this blog seems to open up my heart to the Lord.  He is always there, but sometimes music will open me to be open with Him.

And so I sit this morning …

IN AWE of God.

This song sums it up.

First, He is worthy.

Revelation 5 ¹² In a loud voice they sang:  “Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!”

Second, He is holy.

Leviticus 11 ⁴⁴ I am the Lord your God; consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am holy. Do not make yourselves unclean by any creature that moves about on the ground.

Third, His Name is ABOVE every other name.

Philippians 2 ⁹ Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name …

And last, we MUST build our life upon Him and all He stands for.  This isn’t a mild little “Lord come help me do what I do” thing.  It is literally giving Him the keys to the car so that we don’t drive it off the cliff.  He, and He alone, is our only hope.

John 6 ⁶⁸ Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.⁶⁹ We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

I am sorry to use a song to write this blog today.

It is so … SHALLOW.  But I am SHALLOW.  

I am simply nothing without His hand and His calling and His covering over my life.

“Lord, I am SHALLOW.  I am not worthy of what you have.  Help me to RECEIVE your hand, 

Help me to let you REVIVE my life, 

and Help me to LOVE OTHERS like You love me.  

Take the keys Lord.  

Only You … can drive my life.”

In The Name of the Father and the 

Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

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Coach J

There is incredible truth that can be gathered from a testimony.

And there are few testimonies more powerful than the one given by the Apostle Paul…And his writings should not be taken lightly.

When I read the testimony of John, I am lead to the foot of the cross and the reality that Jesus is Lord.  The uneducated fisherman describes Messiah with such power that I can’t help but bow before Him.

And then there is the testimony of Paul.

The man who tried to exterminate Christianity before it came to be. 

And then he becomes its greatest champion.

And he is so rocked that he writes three of the New Testament books from a prison cell.

How does that happen?

It happens when a man (or woman) comes to the reality that they are short.

Short on character.

Short on holiness.

Short on righteousness.

Short on … happiness.

God is not in the business of taking our lives.  He is in the business of giving us a life so great that we would throw our old one in the trash.

Colossians 4 ³ And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains.

Amen, amen, and amen.  And in response to this verse I say:

“Lord, fill me up with Your mystery… 

And then help me give it away to others.

Let me be so filled with your spirit that I would 

consider chains not to be a burden.”

And so I ask you this day:  

How well do you know this God of the universe?  

Do you know Him well enough that you will walk into chains because you see being away from Him worse than being in chains?

I don’t.

I want more.

I want the God of the universe to further overwhelm me.

I want the God of the universe to change my house, and my children.

I want the God of the universe to change my school and my city.

I want the God of the universe to change the hearts of my country.

It is in this hope that I have hope.

“Lord, we are lost without you.  We literally are sitting ducks for hell.  Change our hearts.  Callous our appetites.  Open our eyes ears.  Show us who to fight and who to hug.  And rescue us … from ourselves.”

In The Name of the Father and the 

Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

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Coach J

When we hear the term “put to death” with regards to Jesus, it is easy to see the brutal crucifixion that Jesus endured some 2000 years ago.

• Betrayed
• Denied
• Falsely accused
• Silent before His accusers
• Mocked
• Men gambling over His clothes
• Quoting Psalm 22:  “My God why have you forsaken me?”
• Taking care of His mom … and His friends
• Declaring it is “paid in full”

But He died to “put to death” the things that we carry.  He died to give us freedom from what we encounter.  He died so that we could stand innocent in the court of character.

He died that we could be free.

Colossians 3 ⁵ Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.⁶ Because of these, the wrath of God is coming.⁷ You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived.⁸ But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips.⁹ Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices¹⁰ and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.¹¹ Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.

Anyone who has tried to walk this out has failed.

His death sentence was not because the above things were easy.  His death sentence was to give us the opportunity to pursue Him and to change our inner being.

Freedom is not always something that is immediately attained.

Greed?

Idolatry?

Lust?

Anger?

Slander?

You can find all of those in good measure in every Christian circle.

And this is what an outsider looking in has a hard time understanding.

We have a hard enough time walking out this call when we can identify our shortcomings.

But our society’s newfound attempt to say “nothing is evil” makes us all sitting ducks for Hell.

So spread the gospel.  We, if we are honest, are all aware that we have done wrong.  We know in our inner being that we are guilty.

What the world needs to know is that He fought this fight … for us.

That He died … for us.

That He endured all of those things … for us.

On a cross on calvary and all through His ministry, He FOUGHT FOR US and for all we love.

And so we must respond and fight for Him.

In The Name of the Father and the 

Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

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Coach J

The Old Testament is a great tool to show us who we are without Jesus.

It is not about us being able to watch the mistakes and judge them, it is about us being able to read it as a mirror.

This is who we are without our gospel.

This is who we are without Jesus capturing our destiny.

It is who we are when we wake up and begin to walk in a different direction than where God is taking us.

Our beautiful country is example of that today.  When you begin to pile days and weeks and even years of walking the other direction from God, things erode very quickly.

Jonah is a great read to remind of us.

Jonah 1 ¹ The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai:² “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”

 ³ But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord.

In asking Jonah to minister to the city of Nineveh, God was asking the impossible.  These people were barbarians.  They were murderers.  They HATED God.  And there is a good chance that they had sinned greatly against Jonah.  And, WHY?  He was a worker for God.  He was doing what God had called him to do with great obedience.  Why would God call him to go give a gift to the very people who had, quite frankly, spit in his face?

Even as I write this paragraph, my heart begins to side with Jonah.  “Yes, Jonah.  This is not your job.  Go the other way.”  And this is exactly what he does.

The miracle in this story has nothing to do with a very large fish (in my mind, an ENORMOUS great white) fully ingesting him.

The miracle is what happens to an entire city of barbarian God-haters.

The second miracle is the one that happens in Jonah’s heart.

(Read Jonah–Great book!)

But let’s make this work for 2 minutes for you today.

Here goes.  Here is some truth that I am grabbing from this:

TRUTH 1-  God’s mercy is the ONLY thing that will save us, and it doesn’t work if you don’t use it.

TRUTH 2-  We don’t get justice for them and mercy for us.

TRUTH 3-  Free Will gives us a choice.  With choice, we get sin.  And with sin, we have broken the world.  We destroy perfect systems, we destroy governments, and we destroy families.  Free will allows for terrible decisions.

TRUTH 4-  ONLY Jesus redeems that brokenness.  ONLY Jesus.

Our God is not underplaying Justice.  And He isn’t giving out too much Mercy.  

After all, if he played out the appropriate amount of justice, we would be sitting ducks for Hell.  

And …  if He gave out too much mercy, we would be living in Eutopia—continuing in our path to destruction without even being able to say or see evil or all the things that are going on.

And so I finish with this:

TRUTH 5-  We are accountable.  We will take a last breath.  And we will stand before the King.  It is the reality for all of us and all those who we love.  And denial won’t make this go away.

As I sit here and ponder what goes on today, I simply marvel at how much we need Him.

Without Him, we have no hope.

I accept His gospel.

I accept His mercy, and His grace, and His correction.

I accept Him.

Lord, help me make this work.

You, and You alone, are my only hope.

In The Name of the Father and the 

Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

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Coach J

Love is NOT PATIENT.

Love is MEAN AND NASTY AND INCONSIDERATE.

Love gets JEALOUS, and wants what it cannot have.

Love BRAGS, it takes all the credit, and it stands in front of everyone showing how great it is.

Love is PRIDEFUL.  It never admits when it is wrong.  It is too proud to forgive or to give any leeway to someone else’s mistakes.  It wants JUSTICE.

Love is IMPOLITE.  It thinks of itself first and considers no one else.  It gets angry and keeps a log of others’ mistakes.  It never, ever, lets a mistake go unnoticed or forgiven.  It wants REVENGE.

I simply cannot keep writing.  Because this is a hideous description of love.  But this description is what love is when you take Jesus out of the equation.  It is, simply, nothing at all.

Jesus said “I am the way and the truth and the life”.

He said “whoever drinks this water will never be thirsty again”.

He said “go and sin no more”.

And He said, in referring to our hideous sin debt, “it is paid IN FULL”.

Thank God.

Because here is what love is when Jesus is painted over it:

1 Corinthians 13 ⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.⁵ It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.⁸ Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part,¹⁰ but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears.¹¹ When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.¹² Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.¹³ And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

This is one of the greatest excerpts in the Bible.  It describes what we cannot be.

But, in Jesus, and by His grace, and in His strength, and with His forgiveness … we can pursue it each, and every, day.

In The Name of the Father and the 

Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

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Coach J

God pulls no punches when dealing with our inner heart.

In the word, He even warns us about it, saying that:

• Our hearts are deceitful and beyond cure.
• Men can not be trusted because of what is in their hearts.
• The religious leaders were hypocrites.

These were not statements directed at people different from us.  They were directed at people LIKE US.  And this is because the world can be lifted up or put in reverse by the likes of people LIKE US.

Who are you to be in your daily life?

Newton’s second law of thermodynamics does not just apply to particles in physics, I believe that it applies to every aspect of life:  In other words, things will lose order over time.

Paul references this in the second book in Colossians:

Colossians 2 ⁸ See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.

Paul tells us to:  “See To It”

Reading this chapter, he purposely references Laodicea, a church that Jesus addresses through John in Revelation 3 (Read it!), mentioning that they have become lukewarm, so He is about to “spit them out of his mouth”.

As a follower, I certainly contemplate whether Jesus would have some of the same words He said 2,000 years ago for me today.

What is God warning us against?

God warns us NOT TO BE:

• Spiritually Blind.  Paul walked into Syria as a scripture-believing Jew and was ready to exterminate the world of people who followed Jesus.  We must continually ask Jesus to give us Eyes To See And Ears To Hear.
• Lukewarm.  God warned the church in Laodicea that they were just like the aquifer that fed their city.  Not cold and not hot but lukewarm.  We must understand that the gospel is not neutral.  The Gospel Is A Scandal That God Wants Delivered To The World.
• Going Through The Motions.  I believe that Paul is referencing this in his words about “shallow” philosophy.  He is calling us to be “game changers”.  He Is Calling Us To Make A Difference.
• Buying Into Deceptive Philosophies.  These are not things that come by accident.  They are driven by God-haters.  We must ask if they can truly be mixed into our day to day life and actually make us anything close to better.  We Are Called To Reject Evil.

Do not be taken captive.

You were not meant to be in “spiritual chains”.

You were meant to Be Free.

You were meant to Bring Freedom To Others.

You were meant to be ON FIRE FOR JESUS.

In The Name of the Father and the 

Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

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Coach J

When Paul converted to being a follower of Jesus Christ he made some staggering admissions that are worth noting today:

1.  He admitted that the first portion of his life was … wrong
2.  He, even though he admitted that his life was wrong, adopted the Old Testament as a foundation and connected it to Jesus Christ.
3.  He made a radical conversion from being a Jew to a Christian.  This can not be understated.  He began to minister and evangelize to the gentiles.  In other words, he took the faith to people that he formerly despised.

Colossians 1 ¹⁵ He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.  ¹⁶ For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him.  ¹⁷ He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.  ¹⁸ And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.  ¹⁹ For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, ²⁰ and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

This gospel is God’s way of giving us a chance.  It is God’s decision to make us “good as we stand before Him on judgement day”.

It is God’s way of doing the impossible.

I heard a pastor once tell his congregation:  “People do not have the right to tell other people what to do.  But God does.”  HE HAS THE RIGHT TO TELL ALL OF US WHAT TO DO.

And this is the Heart Of The Matter.

We either give our permission to God to rule over our lives … or we do not.

In The Name of the Father and the 

Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

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Coach J

It is easy to forget that we have an unseen enemy that is constantly looking to harass and lie to us.

The Bible refers to him as:

A thief 

The ruler of the sky

The tempter

The god of this age

The roaring lion

And it also says that his goal is to steal, kill, and destroy.

I think it is worthy of more writing here, and I do that because many would think I am crazy for even bringing up such a topic.  But look at our world and our universe.

We have light ……… and darkness

We have life ……… and death

We have sunrise ……… and sunset

We have love ……… and hate

We have good ……… and evil

Isn’t it logical to think that we have God ……… and devil

I want to say this before you read on:  Not all of your thoughts are even yours.  This is a crazy concept but I have thoughts sometimes that would categorically point me to one place:  the insane asylum.  But those thoughts are not mine.  They are planted there by an enemy who is seeking not only my destruction—but the destruction of everyone.

This is why, as an educator, I must humbly face what we, as educators, would put in front of innocent children.  Are we leading them to a chance to know God … or not?  Pretty important question that all of us must sooner or later face.  Does supporting someone who is headed into their own destruction actually show that we care about them?  These are thoughts for another post but must be considered as we read on.

Paul must have been in a spiritual prison.  Because when he encountered Jesus, he found a freedom that made him feel MORE comfortable in a real prison than living a life of luxury.

And from prison, he wrote a God-inspired set of books that are a life giving wisdom to all who would dare read them.

And so today I tell you:

Take Control Of Your Life

No matter what age you are.

No matter what you did yesterday.

And no matter how ingrained you might be in routine.

Take it back.

You don’t take control of your life by being better, or by doing more, or by doing something to take away your guilt.

You take control of your life by listening to the one who gave it to you:  Jesus Christ.

Listen to what He said in Paul’s writing:

Philippians 4 ⁸ … whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things.

True.

Noble.

Right.

Pure.

Lovely.

Admirable.

Excellent.

Praiseworthy.

Those are things to think about.

And when we think about them, we begin to be transformed from the inside out.

And we can then hear the lies of an enemy who would like nothing better than to make us think perverted… or evil… or selfish… or greedy… or STUPID … thoughts.

Take control of your life.

By giving it to the One who gave you a chance to live.

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