self-help

I am stealing today’s message from Tre Sills. Tre is a local pastor and convicted our FCA group today with an important message.

There is a good chance today that many of us have failed on some of our “I am going to be better” convictions that we made at the beginning of 2025.

I know this idea resonates with me because I live in a world of: “I am going to be better”

The reality is that it is God that makes us better. God and God alone.

After all, when we meet Jesus in the quiet place and surrender to what He has for us, He does a new thing inside of each of us:

2 Corinthians 5 ¹⁷ Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

It is God, and God alone, who makes us better. And sometimes He does it one layer at a time. He comes and ministers to our inner self and begins to do a work on us, and in us. HE, and HE alone, can do that work.

Paul continues with his encouragement, telling us almost the opposite of “I am going to be better” by telling us:

¹⁸ All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: ¹⁹ that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.

²⁰ We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. ²¹ God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Thank You Jesus!

In a world with the wrong kind of accountability, God can show up. He can show up for me … and for you.

And when He shows up it is to remind us that we are not who we are by our own works … but that we are created in His image and that He can actually work on us from the inside to make us like Him.

He shows up to remind us that His plan is to also do this for others … to reconcile them with Him.

Man doesn’t fix marriages, or companies, or countries, or neighborhoods. Our president doesn’t decide if we have a life. Our mayor doesn’t change our life from bad to good. And our enemies certainly won’t bring out our best.

No.

It is Jesus.

It is the Jesus who spoke the words of life to Lazarus and the woman at the well. And it is this Jesus who ministered to Roman soldiers, and pharisees who would listen, and leppers who were outcast, and Kings … It is this Jesus who showed up at the temple to tip over tables and send a message to the establishment: “Not on my watch!”

And it is this Jesus that can fix me … and you.

And we would do wise to do what the Samaritan woman did. To go into “our place” and tell people: “Come and meet the man who told me everything I ever knew” (John 4).

After all, if we want to fix _ ….. Whatever it might be ……

We need the Author of the “ministry of reconciliation” and not anything else.

Because He is the only One that can do it in the way that will bring hope.

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 turned on Chris Tomlin this morning, I was taken aback. What a song … and what a moment … a whole crowd crying out to Jesus. His mighty hand on our lives is ALL THAT WE HAVE.

Perhaps you might listen to it as you read this word?

Let me say this again: He is ALL THAT WE HAVE.

The verse on my heart yesterday and today is no cliche’. It’s not a guide … or a map … or some lucky word.

God is not lucky. He is not our rabbit’s foot. And He isn’t passively waiting for us to “get through it”. Our God, in all forms, is all about being for us.

Jeremiah 29 ¹¹ For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord , “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. ¹² Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. ¹³ You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

The choices He gives us have lead to our demise. They lead to Adam’s demise and EVERYONE else’s. But this is not a mistake. Without a choice, without our ability to say yes or to say no, there can be no love.

Our trials are not on Him. They are not Him trying to test us or to punish us or to paint us into a corner. Our trials are the result of choice and the sin we live in. Nothing more. Nothing less.

And for us to think that the world will somehow fill us is a lie from the pits of hell.

And to this conundrum there is no human answer: We have made a mess.

And when we fall into that mess it is, simply, what happens. And so it goes.

Thank God for the gospel.

When we wallow and sit in our hole with no hope … Here comes Jesus. And He comes in the form of the Holy Spirit or another believer who would dare tell us what we sometimes won’t hear from God.

He has a plan

He wants to bless us … and give us a future

He wants us to thrive

This is not easy … but we must FIGHT both for ourselves and for each other. When the mountain before us is too big …

We must ask God to resurrect HOPE inside of us, get up, and walk forward.

This is not easy.

It requires us to stand up and to move forward.

It might require us to change our situation.

We might have to change our mindset.

It might be an act of faith that God is simply moving us to a new season of life.

“For I know the plans I have for you,”

But whatever it is, we must grab on to this Jeremiah 29 word and get up.

If you are in this place, cry out for HOPE, because HOPE is the rocket fuel for Faith, and Faith is the rocket fuel for walking up that mountain that we see in front of us.

Because without Him, we can never ascend.

And ascending to worship Jesus is the only thing that can truly make us whole again.

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

2 MINUTE WARNING

WITH DOUG JOHNSON

Tag

512 By Your Grace

482 I Am Going To Be Better

481 Hope AND A Future