2 MINUTE WARNING

David was running for his life.  There was no place to run and no place to hide.

And so he climbed into a cave and prayed that he would be spared.

Imagine running for your very life—-and wondering who was behind the next corner waiting to kill you?

I hope and pray that none of us would have to experience that….but the reality is that the enemy would have us experience far worse.  And the Lord warns us that He is a roaring lion, waiting for someone to devour.

We are placed here on earth inside of a sobering reality:  Death is a certainty for all—and we will all, without fail, face the reality alone.

We need to do what David did.  You see—David ALWAYS knew what to do when he faced darkness……David worshipped.

Psalm 57  1 Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers.

2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.

David knew that he belonged to the King of the Universe—and he he never, ever, tried to stand on that throne.

David belonged to the Lord.

Nothing is more vital, as we face the reality of life, than knowing who we belong to.

I once heard someone say that they did not know what the future held but that they knew Who held the future…..

The first time I heard the first three verses of Psalm 57, I heard them at a friend’s wedding.  The words convicted me and filled me….they filled me with peace and hope and joy.

I believe that these words are for all of us.

They are meant to be spoken out of a heart of worship, with our hands raised high, to proclaim the One who stands on that throne and holds the keys to eternal life.

There is nothing MAN can do to us if we belong to Jesus.  Because the Lord has a covering over our life that will never, ever, let us down.

And we must never forget:

Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked

Or stand in the way of sinners

Or sit in the seat of mockers

his delight is in the law of the Lord,

And on His law he meditates day and night.

So give him everything you have…..and expect that even if you COULD do that——-that it won’t be EVEN CLOSE to what He gives you in return.

In The Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

https://youtu.be/C3WzznP3QKQ

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Coach J

I forgot to attach this to my “Heart Of Worship” Blog!  Sorry!

John 11 35 Jesus wept.

As Jesus showed up to heal Lazarus and save the day….he was told the news:  

Lazarus was dead.

His sisters were weeping.

Many stood and simply watched.

And the power of the moment moved our Savior to weeping.

It is a picture of our society today….and as I listened and worshipped at church on Sunday, the Lord began to convict me.

Yes, Jesus showed up late, then cried, and then called Lazarus back from the dead.

The tears were wiped away and all was made well.

This is a great story of how it happened—-but it is also a great story of what we need from Jesus today.

We need His love to show up and “awaken” us.

You see……there is something MORE POWERFUL THAN A MAN COMING BACK TO LIFE.

I can not believe that I just wrote that…but I am convicted to say it again:

THERE IS SOMETHING MORE POWERFUL THAN A MAN COMING BACK TO LIFE.

God can heal the physical.  And it is utterly overwhelming when He does.

But there is nothing greater than when God awakens someone from spiritual death.

You see……

There is a wall between man and the Lord that no one can break.

There are chains around us that we can not escape from.

We are in a grave that we will never be able to leave.

Jesus did something on that cross that made all of those things null and void.

When a man decides to follow the Lord there is a miracle that no one can fathom…..

He becomes free.

He becomes a son.

He becomes an eternal being.

Jesus was not a man of arrogance or pride.  He was not offended when Nicodemus decided to visit Him at night because he was afraid of what others might do to him.

In that meeting, Jesus gave us an offer that can break us away from the impossible.

He said that we could be born AGAIN.

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. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

God would have been justified to leave us broken and hateful.

He would have been justified to condemn us to Hell.

He could have “held us accountable”.

Instead….

He called us out of the grave.

He broke down the wall that stood between us.

He tore off our chains and threw them into the trash.

It is our duty to walk out of our grave and WORSHIP Him.

This is the only hope the world has ever known.

In The Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

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Coach J

There are times when we can look at the darkness in the world around us and get discouraged….

I think one of the darkest times in human history was described in Genesis 6.

Genesis 6 5 The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. 6 The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. 7 So the LORD said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth-men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air-for I am grieved that I have made them.”

I think it is important to the Lord that we read ALL of the story, or as Paul Harvey puts it:  “The Rest of the Story”…..

Perhaps the most important verse in this entire chapter is read out of Genesis 6:8.

Genesis 6 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

I heard a pastor emphasize this point and I have always been convicted by it.

But Noah …..

Darkness can be everywhere.

Men can be doing the wrong things.

Hearts can be hard.

Evil can rule.

But we can never underestimate the power of God working in the hearts of people….or even ONE PERSON.

So the question of the day is this:

Who do you choose to be?

Are you ready to jump in and flow with the mainstream and let the popular vote dictate your morals and viewpoints?

Can a man of power intimidate you into changing your very thoughts?

Are you, as the Lord would describe, a wave being blown and tossed by the sea?

Or do you choose to be the leader that God has called you to be?

All of us get to choose.

We can let circumstances tell us we are blessed or cursed…or we can act in great faith.

We can allow the crowd to lead our footsteps…or we can act in great faith.

We can choose to focus on how people perceive us…or we can act in great faith.

We can operate in the physical…or we can act in great faith.

The enemy would have us believe that he is driving the direction of where things are going, that he is in control, that darkness has overcome the light.

But the reality is this:  Our God came and made a “spectacle” of him—triumphing over him on the cross.  He showed incredible power in weakness and traded out His throne that He might show us how to change the world by….acting in great faith.

2 Chronicles 2 9 For the eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His.

The question today is not the darkness that exists in front of us……

The question is whether we can have a heart that is completely His…..

In The Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

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Coach J

There is a very appealing song in the movie Zootopia called “Try Everything” by an artist named Shakira.  I enjoyed the song and I enjoyed the movie, as did my kids…..

Today we come to the end of a five part series on Who What Where When and Why….as it relates to our Christian faith and following Jesus.

Today….we delve into the Why?

As is often the case with my quiet times and the resulting blog posts, I believe that today is the reason that the Lord had me write this entire series.

Why.

The world is unraveling in places right before our eyes.  We can pursue politics, social justice, gender equality, and every other issue that we deal with…..but our issue today comes down to two trees.

Genesis 3 1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’ ”

4 “You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

We can either choose to follow Him or not to follow Him.  And there will always be things that tempt us to go the other direction.

But our reality is very simple:

There are sights that we were never meant to look at.

There are sounds that we were never meant to listen to.

There are things that we were never meant to try.

There is a throne that we were never meant to sit on.

This is not a condemning word…it is one that is meant to give life.

There is freedom in knowing that we DO NOT have the perfect plan…in knowing that all of our dreams will never fulfill us…in finding that our earthly satisfactions and pursuit will simply never be enough.

Solomon tells us in Ecclesiastes that He puts the question on our hearts but does not give us the answer….this could lead many to frustration—but to the one who kneels before the King it brings freedom.

Jesus said that “unless we were born again we would have no part with the Father”, that we must “eat His flesh and drink His blood if we wanted to be part of Him”, that if we drank the water that He gave that we would “never go thirsty again”.

It is the reason that we pray:  “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven…”

It is our confession that, without Him, we can never be whole.

The enemy is going to constantly tell us to try the “other tree”, to pursue the idea that we can be the god of our own destiny.  That we can find love and protection and eternity and life WITHOUT HIM…..but that is a lie from the pits of Hell.

He is the Alpha and the Omega, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Author and Perfecter of our Faith.  He is the Water that quenches our thirst, the Bread of life, and the Lamb who died for our sins.  In our weaknesses, He comes and brings victory.

This is not to oversimplify our lives…..just the opposite.

He has a plan that is beyond what we could see on our own.

And just as He filled my heart with a Word to type today, He wants to fill your world with His Spirit….that you might be delivered and healed and ready to walk in peace and hope and victory.

Why?…….

Because you can search all your life for that very thing to make you whole and you will never find it.

There is no drink strong enough

No high high enough

No true love true enough

There is no protection from the enemy’s snares

No insurance that replaces

No long term destiny that ends with you not dying at the end of your life

There is no pardon for your sin

No excuse for your shortcomings

No amount of money that could pay the debt you owe

If you run, you will get lost

If you party, you will fill up with things that will only empty

If you chase love, you find lust, identity issues, dissatisfaction

There is an answer to all these issues….it is the Answer.

It is Him.

So if you feel compelled to “try everything”, I want to encourage you to start with just one thing at the start of that pursuit:

Try Jesus.

Because after you have tasted what He has for you…..the rest of it is rancid, or without taste, or poisonous, or just simply unable to nourish your soul.

In The Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

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Coach J

Jesus understood the true nature of the human condition….and that is the fact that each of us comes to a moment of truth and we must make a decision as to who we will be and what we will do.  Sometimes that moment passes and we have not made the decision—and it never comes up again.  And sometimes in that moment we make a life-changing choice that forever changes our destiny.

I think many of us would call this the Moment Of Truth.  If you have never had that moment—today is your day.

If you have….it falls upon you today to take this moment and offer it to all you know.

Luke 9 59He said to another man, “Follow me.” But the man replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”  60Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”  61Still another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say good-bye to my family.”  62Jesus replied, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”

When I first read both of these conversations I did not understand them.  I thought….Jesus is “harsh”.….why would He say something like this?

I have to think that Jesus understood that these were Moment Of Truth conversations.  That they were going to be determining factors in the destiny of two different men.  And we do not know from scripture what happened to either one of them.  Did they walk away or did they realize that the time to decide was NOW?

This is all the more support for the simple fact that we will determine our destinies—that God is sovereign and He controls all things….but He does not control our choice–or the choices of those around us.  We must each decide who we will be and who we will follow.

I do believe that Jesus will give us the choice to choose OR reject Him…that we will live out our days as a disciple or in a state of running, denying, or hiding from the gospel….

But for today I want to deal with the fence-sitters.

I think many people will sit on the fence….and maybe even say that they will commit to the Lord later—after they get through a season—or maybe even as a permission slip to walk with God AFTER a pursuit of sin is completed.

I think this verse is very clear:  God doesn’t work like that…and that mindset is not OF Him….

Yes….He is full of grace and quick to show compassion—but He is not a doormat.  He is, after all, the Living God!

As I meditated on the first verse, another came to mind out of 2 Timothy.

2 Timothy 2  1You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. 2And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others. 3Endure hardship with us like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. 4No one serving as a soldier gets involved in civilian affairs–he wants to please his commanding officer. 5Similarly, if anyone competes as an athlete, he does not receive the victor’s crown unless he competes according to the rules. 6The hardworking farmer should be the first to receive a share of the crops. 7Reflect on what I am saying, for the Lord will give you insight into all this.

I think God put this on my heart because of the options that we have.  I think He is trying to tell us that there are three facets to following Him:

1. Sacrifice
2. Trust
3. Faith

Soldiers SACRIFICE…they give up everything to walk forward into what they are called or asked to do.  They give up EVERYTHING, and I mean EVERYTHING, to serve and protect.  Sometimes they follow orders that they do not understand, or even agree with, because that is their duty.

Athletes TRUST…they learn to lean on their teammates and they must constantly renew their perspective—and their trust—in order to ultimately succeed.  EVEN when they have been let down before—they must fight back and build trust and believe again.

Farmers display FAITH…they work on a field for hours and hours without being able to see if what they are doing is even working.  But day after day, hour after hour, in the hot sun from dusk till dawn, a farmer toils to bring about his crop.

I believe that these are a few of the reasons that God mentions these three examples in His word for us—He wants us to carry these qualities and follow Him.

2000 years ago Jesus put a claim on saving us from the pits of hell….and though we use this phrase loosely in many ways….this is not a figurative statement.  He came to save us from pits of hell.  We get to respond.  Do we want what He has?  Do we want what He is offering?  Do we want to drop everything and follow Him?

All of our lives we learn that we can not count on people.  Sometimes these learning opportunities are major…sometimes they are small.  We learn, through a consistent body of evidence, that other people let us down, they betray us, they turn their backs on us, they use us, and they condemn us.

But God is not like that.

Jesus made a choice to do just the opposite.

We let Him down.  We became enemies of God and turned away from what He called us and created us to do.  We turned our back on Him and betrayed Him.

But He chose to overlook that and come to save us anyway.

On a cross on Calvary some 2000 years ago Jesus was nailed to a cross….but it wasn’t nails that held Him to that cross….it was His love for you.

At any moment He could have come down and aborted the mission—but He chose to be the blood sacrifice that would atone for your sin.

I have never had a good player make a play by not reacting.  Good players trust their teammates.

They let go and play with abandon.

They react….and they react in a way that is almost ahead what is going on.

They react with violence and decisiveness and enthusiasm.

And when they do this, they show up with velocity and power and beat their opponents to the punch.

That, my friends, is exactly what Jesus is asking us to do.

He is offering us a deal that is better than anything we have ever seen or heard of……

RESPOND TO HIS CALL.

It will be the greatest decision you have ever made.

In The Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

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Coach J

As Jesus DROVE away followers by asking them to eat His flesh and drink His blood He turned to Peter and asked him if he wanted to go to…..to which Peter responded:  “Where will I go?  You, and you alone, hold the keys to eternal life.”

When Peter was in tune with the Father, He was right on.

That, and the fact that he made great mistakes, has always drawn me to him.

My mistakes have sometimes driven me to my knees—but I have hope because of Peter…..and often I am crying out to the Lord, after screwing it all up, to ask Him to just come and give me the keys eternal life.

What a concept.

The concept of WHERE.

For Joseph, it was prison.

For Abraham, it was wandering and traveling.

For Moses, it was leading a group of people who he had brought out of Egypt—

but the harder thing was driving Egypt out of them.

For Esther, it was putting herself in front of a King and endangering her life.

For Daniel, it was in a den full of hungry lions.

For Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, it was in a blazing furnace.

For John, it was on an island, alone, to carry out his days.

WHERE

I think sometimes we get caught up in:  “What is he going to do to me?”  Am I going to be in the middle of the Australian Outback eating bugs in the Name of Jesus?

But the reality sometimes gets twisted in our minds…..

The reality is exactly what Peter said:  Where will I go?……

Think about it:  Where Will You Go?

There is no place we can go without God that will truly fill us up.

And…..WITH GOD….THERE IS NO PLACE WE CAN BE THAT CAN HURT US.

How baffled the prison guard must have been listening to Paul and Silas singing worship songs…rejoicing and celebrating…while sitting in chains in a dingy prison cell.

Paul found out something that we must never wait to find out……

Being in prison was the very thing that set him free…..because He had Jesus.

“Where?” is not a geographic location……it is the state of where you choose to put your heart.

And WHERE we put our heart changes EVERYTHING!

In The Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

https://youtu.be/U4OnZUfzlHU

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Coach J

There is a story of the father of a union soldier who was desperately trying to get to Abraham Lincoln to have his last child pulled from the war.  He had lost several sons and was desperate not to lose his last boy in the bloody civil war.

He went to the white house to see if he could arrange a meeting with the president.  As you might imagine, he could not get to Abraham Lincoln to talk to him.

Despondent, he found a park bench and sat down to reflect.  A young boy came and sat by him and questioned him about why he looked so sad.  The boy would not relent in finding out what was wrong, so the man told the boy his story just to appease him.  After sharing his story, the man had hoped the boy would leave him to his misery….but the boy knew something the man did not.  “Come with me”, the boy said, and lead the man into the back door of the White House and up to a hallway where he had him wait.  Minutes later, the man was talking to the boy’s father:  Abraham Lincoln.

Sometimes the best way to get to a father is through his son.

And that is where we begin today……in the second part of Who What Where When Why…

When we know Who we are….that we are God’s priceless image, his work of art, and that we were created for purpose, we are on our way to doing great things.

And when we realize what we are …. we can go even further.

What Are You?

Galatians 4  7 So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.

You are a son…a daughter…of the King.

We don’t have to sit outside the White House and wait for a miracle to access the King.  We don’t have to go through a priest.  We are more than welcome to call Him Daddy, yes Daddy, and talk to Him.  His Son not only “sat on the bench and gave us access to Him”, He made a spectacle of the enemy while doing it.

This is not fairy tale…it is our reality as followers of the King.  We do not have to live in what we don’t have.   We can begin to live in what we do have.  We can begin to ask the Lord to act on our behalf and to change the hearts of people.

When people kneel for during the Star Spangled Banner it burdens me.  It burdens me for the veterans who fought and gave us freedom.  It hurts my heart to see them have to stand and watch others not enjoying the freedom that they gave their lives to defend…….But it also burdens me for the people who are fighting their way just to find peace.  It burdens me for the single mom.  It burdens me for the broken families and broken people all over the world.

The answer to all of these issues is, in fact, to kneel.  It is to kneel down and cry out to the only One who can truly do something about it…..the Living God.

The God who has made us sons…..The God who has made us daughters…..the God who continually and without hesitation….restores hope.

When someone is without hope….they are a slave.  They can’t see the end from the beginning and they can’t see a future.

But God has a future.  He has a plan for us to walk into freedom.  And Paul wanted that freedom so badly to be free that he went to prison to do it.

When my son was born he became gravely ill….and before we knew it he was in ICU at Children’s Hospital in Denver.  Our family dropped everything and poured out all of our energy into seeing him back to health.  Not just my immediate family—-my wife’s parents, my parents, our best friends, our family friends, the people I worked with, …. Many people stopped and pitched in….

When a child is sick ….. his or her parents will do anything to make them well.

And that……is the story of the Gospel.

Go be a son.  Go be a daughter.

The King has given you all that you need to have hope and peace and love.

Our Daddy loves us so much that He gave His son that we might be free.

In The Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

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Coach J

Who Are You?

Many people can come with an answer right now…but others–they are searching.

And for some of us…that simple question is a painful one.

None of us want to “go through the motions”….to walk through our life each day without purpose or meaning…but if you are like me–you sometimes do just that.

Many years ago, my brother-in-law showed up at our house with a puppy….a Walker Hound.  My children took to him immediately and set out to take him on a walk around the neighborhood and to the park.

About a half an hour later, my kids returned and told me the dog would simply not get up.  All he would do was lay on the ground and sleep….

I had a hard time believing that a Hound Dog would be so lazy and not want to run and bark…so I was curious and went to see the dog.  Sure enough….he was the laziest dog I had ever seen.  We could pull him on the leash and he would go two steps and, literally, lay down and go to sleep.  He would not walk.  He would not pick his head up.  He would not even open his eyes…..and this was not a one day thing.  This was WHO HE WAS…..

As I talked to my brother in law he told me that this dog was the runt of the litter and that:

• He was lazy.
• He was sleepy.
• He had no energy.
• He was like this—ALL THE TIME.

And this dog was even worse when he was put on a leash.  You would have to PULL HIM and he would not follow…..

Then one day my brother in law was at the lake and he put the scent of raccoon in front of the dog’s nose….and he came to life.  He jumped up and began to bark, then ran OVER the other dogs to get on the trail of that raccoon…. the next I saw him, my brother in law had a raccoon in a live trap…..and this “lazy dog” had done it.

In one moment, that dog had discovered who he was.

Who Are You?

YOU….Are God’s WORKMANSHIP.

Ephesians 2:10  For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Read that verse until it sticks.  You are His workmanship.

You are His work of art…His prized product….His son, His daughter.  Look at the mountains, the blue sky, the rainbow, the sunset, the ocean as it crashes into the rocks.  These are His great creation….But YOU—YOU—are His workmanship, created IN Christ Jesus to do good works that He has prepared for you.

And until you begin to walk in that identity—you are no different than that hound dog….asleep.

The enemy will spend all of his days planting thoughts about who you are that will discourage and distract.  The enemy wants you to be just like that dog, and he will continually pound into your identity….using “runt”, “lazy”, “asleep”, and any other words that he can put over you…….and the enemy also loves words like:

Failure

Quitter

Loser

It is his hope that he can get you to lose your dreams, to not believe that God can use you, to get you to “go through the motions”…….

The enemy knows that when you walk without the knowledge of WHO YOU ARE….you are no different than that dog…..

Asleep.

Trying to grab an energy that isn’t there.

On a leash.

Lifeless.

But what if you began to believe that He means what He says?  What if you believed that you were, in fact, His WORKMANSHIP?

• It would give you permission to dream again….because He is the God of dreams.
• It would give you permission to cry out and find who you are…..because He is not a God of mediocrity.
• It would give you permission to realize that He is proud of the work He has done IN MAKING YOU…..because He is a God who has a plan for your life.

When you find your purpose….you become ALIVE.

Cry out that you would find out WHO you are …. And start by facing the truth….that you are His WORKMANSHIP……

God never intended for you to be bored.

He never intended for you to go through the motions.

He never intended for you to get through the day.

God’s plan for you is going to be harder than you thought it might be…..but it is also going to be exhilerating, and life-changing, and purpose-filled.

He wants you to walk in a freedom you have never known, doing things you never thought you could do, and living a life that you never thought you could….

You are His greatest prize……and He wants to show you off to the world.

In The Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

https://youtu.be/LfzpfqrPUDo

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

Coach J