Tag Archives: Christianity

What Is Hope?

Paul Luckett | Brainflurry.com - What Is Hope?

Hope is a desire for something better and having reason to expect that it will be attained.

I’m still camped out at Hebrews 11:1,

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

My “hope” is for the kingdom that results from Jesus being King.

My “faith” is the evidence because of the observable effect of His government in my life.

A test of my faith is that His Kingdom should be evident in my life.

It doesn’t have to be perfect, but perfect is the goal and it should be more perfect, year by year.

In my marriage, in my family, in my dealings with my neighbors, in my work, it should be evident that His Kingdom has come. It is “the substance of things hoped for”.

So, my “hope” is for a world where He rules, and the abundant life, love, peace, joy, justice and the glorious harmony that results from that.

I hope because I’ve had a piece of that.

I can’t go back.

“These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.

For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland. And truly if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return.

But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.”
— Hebrews 11:13-16

#hope #heartwords #heartdictionary

Dealing With Feelings Of Failure

Paul Luckett | Brainflurry.com - Feelings of Failure Paul Luckett playing building with Legos at his desk

I don’t feel like I’m doing a great job, right now.

It’s a good thing that the work my Father has called me to do isn’t about good, better, or best in a moment in time.

It’s about finishing.

“But he who endures to the end shall be saved.”
— Matthew 24:13

If I can just continue in His process to the end, I will be perfected. I will become the finished product, identical to the Picture according to His plan.

“being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ”
— Philippians 1:6

So, if all I can do is take another step, I press. And, if I can’t even do that, I look to Him and I trust.

#struggle

What We Really Want Is Counterintuitive

Paul Luckett | Brainflurry.com - What We Really Want Is Counterintuitive An image depicting binge watching Netflix with snacks. © 2016 Photo Copyright trex.okiaru

What is good and satisfying is counterintuitive.

Can I be real for a moment?

I never want to go and visit a brother or sister, but I leave with such joy.

I never want to pick up the phone and talk with a beloved, but I’m always glad I did.

I never want to be bothered with what other people are struggling with. I’ve got my own problems. But, service gives me life.

The inclination when I’m tired or dejected is to do something for myself: to take “me time”, to largely abandon consideration of others and to attempt to gratify myself by eating something tasty, binge watching TV, etcetera, etcetera.

More often than not, it leaves me emptier than I was before.

But urgings of the Holy Spirit that, in my flesh, I thought would have been burdensome, in truth, turn out to be the very things that energize me!

“For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome.”
— 1 John 5:3

This is not something that naturally occurs to me. I only come to the knowledge of this truth when I obey.

A wonderful example of this is in John 4 where Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at the well. He’s tired and hungry. His disciples go and buy food. They bring it to Him, urging Jesus to eat but He was so excited by sharing Life, His response was, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work.” — John 4:34

This is what I glean from this:

Am I hungry? Is my soul weary and need refreshment?

To be filled, I’ve got to eat and Jesus shows that eating is obedience.

Eating is to do the will of God and to participate in His work.

That’s fulfilling.

This is not apparent to the natural man. I must trust and obey, exercising myself into godliness (1 Timothy 4:7).

That’s where I will find the rest and refreshment that my soul truly desires.

The Message That Changed My Life

Paul Luckett | Brainflurry.com - The Message That Changed My Life

The message that changed my life:

God is good*.
I can be with God.
God wants to be with me.

These were not the exact words that were used by the person God was using to reach me. I believe the actual words were more like “God does not hate you.”

But, it wasn’t really about the words but the Spirit of what was being conveyed. And,

“God is good*.
I can be with God.
God wants to be with me.”

is what I “heard” or more like “felt” or “came into knowing” at the moment of my conversion — when I came to faith in God through Jesus Christ, though I could not have articulated it at the time. It was a new, foreign sensation that I had no categories for.

* And the sense that “God is good” was far greater than God just being something pleasant or enjoyable but that God satisfies everything perfectly. He satisfies what everything else could not. He is what I was missing. God IS good, the critical element that determines whether something is good. Everything that is truly good is of Him.

I came to faith due to an encounter with a fruit of the Spirit that was expressed by another believer because the fruit had the Seed in it and it was being received by a broken, repentant heart.

The message was Gospel and (ex)changed my life. As a starving, existentially empty man, “God is good. I can be with God and God wants to be with me,” even despite my grave and often intentional offense, was the best thing I’ve ever heard.

If you’re hungry and in want, God through me invites you to taste and see that the Lord is good!

What Is Faith?

Paul Luckett | Brainflurry.com - What Is Faith?

What is “faith”?

Many think that faith is just believing something.

Even Merriam Webster defines faith as “firm belief in something for which there is no proof.”

But that’s not faith at all.

Hebrews 11 offers a different definition. It begins, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” — Hebrews 11:1.

It says faith is “substantive”, not just some flimsy belief with no evidence. But perhaps most remarkably it claims that faith itself IS the evidence— “the evidence of things not seen.”

That’s a lot to take in. And to truly grasp a concept, I believe it is important to pray and ask God to show me what He means. When I’ve caught a glimpse of it, either through it being “taught or caught”, I put what it means to me in my own words so I can look back on how God has grown my understanding over time. I call these #heartwords.

Considering the whole of scripture, illuminated by my own walk with the Lord, I would define faith as this:

Faith is the product of a conviction about a hope that comes from experiences that have built trust.

I believe there are five essential elements to spiritual faith:

1. Experience – faith is always initiated by an encounter with God. “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” — Romans 10:17. God expresses His Word and we can encounter it in many ways by His Spirit: scripture, preaching, love, etc… We know we’ve had an encounter when it is facilitated by His Spirit and echoes His Word (Message).

2. Hope – A desire that is a result of the encounter and is given by God.

3. Conviction – Convinced to action. This is not just intellectual assent to an idea, but an assertion that is born from the encounter and results in an internal drive that demands action.

4. Trust – Experience with something or someone that gives you reason to have confidence.

5. Product – Fruit, an observable expression of faith. The product is more than just doing, it’s a state of being which expresses in doing.

Crises of faith, I believe, is due to an absence or distortion of one of these five elements.

I believe the most common faith problems are lack of personal experience which is prevalent among Cultural Christians where people simply adopt the beliefs of people around them (therefore they lack the conviction and trust that come with experience), and misplaced hope where people pursue things other than what God is offering.

It is important that we each have our own experience with God, a point that we can refer to that began our trust in God.

The hope of every believer is ultimately to be with God ultimately which is synonymous with His ultimate glory. This alone is what Christ offers. Hope anywhere else is misplaced and will lead to despair.

I have faith because I’ve had an encounter with God that has given me hope of something incomparably better than what I had. The encounter came with a message -a word that matches His Word found in scripture. It’s like meeting a Person and not knowing their name until you come across a picture that identifies them. For me, that encounter was the meeting and the picture was the Word. The encounter was the beginning of my trust that the Person exists. It was so wonderful, it created in me a yearning and a burning that I have to act upon. Each time I act upon His Word, in pursuit of the true hope, it proves to be true, building my trust.

This very way of living, this state of being, is faith. And, these experiences with God—consciousness to even comprehend these encounters ARE THE EVIDENCE. (See John 1:5, 2 Corinthians 4:6)

So, faith, is not just empty philosophy that I believe, it’s substantive. And, faith is not belief in the absence of evidence, it’s a state of being that arises from evidence, producing more evidence, and becoming evidence itself.

#faith #heartwords

52 Weeks Of Gratefulness #30 – Church

Paul Luckett | Brainflurry.com -

In Week 30 of 52 Weeks Of Gratefulness, I give thanks to God for safe places with authentic believers in Christ where the more sin I share the more I am loved.

They make 1 Peter 4:8 real to me, “love will cover a multitude of sins”

I don’t have to pretend.

I don’t have to be perfect to be loved, I am perfected by being loved.

This is not love that excuses wrongdoing but love that both warms my heart (affirms me) and burns away sin (holds me accountable).

I’m eternally grateful. #52WoG

This Is Not Church

Paul Luckett | Brainflurry.com - This Is Not Church

These are not churches.

These are businesses.

They are places where you can buy justification, where an organization certifies that you’re a good person.

In exchange for your money, some spare time and the legitimacy that you lend to the organization, you get justification so that you can continue your worldly life, pursuing dead and worthless things, but with a certification that allows you to do it in God’s name. #industrialchurch

The authentic church is the church Jesus established made up of His disciples who believe, love, walk with and obey Him as the Christ, who do so at the expense of everything, whose obedience is evidenced by their going out and gathering in with the Master for communion —a coming together characterized by Love —a One-ification with God through Christ to the ever increasing glory of God.

Therefore let us be disciples, make disciples, seek each other out for communion, abiding in His love, assembling ourselves over food and drink in celebration of the breaking of His body and the shedding of His blood to make us One, endeavoring to keep the unity purchased by His blood, fighting toward each other, encouraging each other every day until that great day when we shall see our King face-to-face, the One whom our hearts adore, and drink it new with Him in the Kingdom of God.

That’s church.

Tough Love

Paul Luckett | Brainflurry.com - Tough Love

One dollar and twenty-five cents in quarters is all that I have. I take a deep, quivering breath, pick up the handset and feed the coins into the payphone at the corner of the gas station that would later become Strange Brew coffee house.

I push dial the number to call home to Jackson, Mississippi. The first ring lasts for an eternity. Mom answers. We exchange pleasantries and I nervously ask, “May I to speak to Dad?”

I’m starving. My head hurts, I’m so hungry. Then I hear the rustle of the phone exchanging hands.

“Hey Dad. I’m out of food. Can you send me some money for groceries?” The question hangs in the air a bit before my father calmly replies, “Welcome to the real world, son.” Click.

When I was younger, I shared that story to make my father out to be a villain. The hearer would often respond, “How awful. That’s cruel.” But, what they didn’t know was, at that time, I was living lasciviously, wastefully and in rebellion. Nobody could tell me anything. I did as I pleased and my situation was the consequence.

What is clear now that I didn’t see then, was that my dad’s objective for me was to choose a good and productive path. And before I could do that, I had to see for myself what a worthless and destructive path I was on. I had to come to a place where I recognized that my lifestyle, which seemed good (fun and pleasurable) at the time, was not good. I had to see that my choices were producing outcomes I really did not want. In the words of scripture, “I had to come to the end of myself,” (Luke 15:16-17). I had to realize there was a better way. I’ve been seeking it ever since.

There was no greater kindness than for my father to allow me to be confronted with my error rather than help me continue in something that would hurt me. Love “does no harm” and does not always look like hugs and kisses.

Originally posted by Paul Luckett to Facebook here.

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Our Fights Reveal What We’re Really Seeking First

Paul Luckett | Brainflurry.com - Our Fights Reveal What We're Really Seeking First

You can tell what we are truly “seeking first” by what we fight for and what we fight against.

The world seeks commodities. (Matthew 6:32)
They fight for “all these things”: food, shelter, clothing.
They fight against losing what they perceive as theirs or against others gaining more.

The children of God seek the Kingdom. (Matthew 6:33)
They fight for communion.
They fight against what hinders communion (2 Corinthians 10:4-6): those things that work to separate the family of God, including the Father and His lost children —sheep that are not yet of this fold (John 10:16).

I must pay attention to what I get defensive about and what I fight for (James 4:1-5). It will reveal what spirit I’m really of, whether I’m of the world or whether I’m a child of God, not as a condemnation but as an opportunity for correction -so that I can repent and turn from my way, or the world’s way, to Him (James 4:6-7).

If I were seeking first the kingdom of God, I would be fighting for communion with the beloved in God through Christ.

What do the reasons I fight tell me about what I’m truly seeking first and how I need to correct course?

If I Keep Sinning, Am I Really Saved?

Paul Luckett | Brainflurry.com - If I Keep Sinning Am I Really Saved?

If I keep messing up, am I really saved?

Are you familiar with those challenges during a basketball game where if you make a shot from mid-court you’ll win a car, $100,000 or something like that?

Now imagine that instead of being awarded if you make the shot, that you die if you miss it.

Missing the mark is exactly what sin is, and killing us is exactly what sin does.

“the wages of sin is death” — Romans 6:23

It is important to understand that death is primarily a result of sin, not a punishment.

God’s desire is for us to live, not to die and He created us for this very purpose.

God is not lurking around every corner waiting for us to mess up so that He can punish us. We see in Christ that this is contrary to God’s very nature because Jesus, who is the Christ, proclaims, “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” — John 10:10

Death is a natural outcome of sin because sin is missing the mark and the mark is God. It’s like a branch being separated from the vine, or if our planet were no longer in view of the sun -eventually, all processes of life would cease and everything would die.

Life is abiding in God.
Death is separation from God.

But God, desiring that we live and not die, sent His only begotten Son, Jesus. “His only begotten Son” means Jesus is the only direct and unmediated expression of God. He was sent so that the offense would be removed and the mark would be met, connecting us with God.

“In these last days [God has] spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person”
— Hebrews 1:1-3

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life”
— John 3:16

Just as a man, Adam, missed the mark (sinned) and plunged everything in his dominion into death, the man Jesus made the mark (abides), tipped (more like flipped) the scales in our favor satisfying the debt of sin through His death, removed the offense (stumbling blocks – “lies block love”) by declaring the truth, and came as a King establishing the Kingdom of God that is taking by force everything that was sold under sin (redemption) -establishing an everlasting kingdom that we receive when we believe and that grants us access to God, resulting in everlasting life. This kingdom, with Christ as King, is advancing until everything that opposes Him is put under His feet to the end that Christ will present the subdued creation to the Father that everything will forever bask in God’s life-giving presence to His ever increasing glory.

“For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous.”
— Romans 5:19

“Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power. … Now when all things are made subject to Him, then the Son Himself will also be subject to Him who put all things under Him, that God may be all in all.”
— 1 Corinthians 15:24

“They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain, For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD As the waters cover the sea.

And in that day there shall be a Root of Jesse, Who shall stand as a banner to the people; For the Gentiles shall seek Him, And His resting place shall be glorious.”
— Isaiah 11:9-10

Jesus makes the mark so that we can be with God.

Not only that, He’s made it so that we can also make the mark without fear of failure, completely destroying the threat of death through His resurrection.

“But [our salvation] has now been revealed by the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ, who has abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel”
— 2 Timothy 1:10

“There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit”
— Romans 8:1

To return to our basketball analogy, what Jesus has done for us is removed any risk of failure because He’s made the shot in our stead. In doing so, He’s removed all fear. Now we can just focus on becoming as great as He is.

“There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.”
— 1 John 4:18

“Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world.”
— 1 John 4:17

So, to the original question, “If I keep messing up, am I really saved?”

Messing up -sin, is not necessarily an indication that there’s a question about my salvation.

We mess up because there’s stumbling blocks in our lives (pre-existing and those that are continually being put in our way) which are lies that block God’s love.

Everyone has sin (1 John 1:8) -the saved and lost alike.

However, God gives the saved capacity through the manifold grace of His Word, the revelation of Jesus Christ, His Holy Spirit and His church, to discern these cancerous areas of rebellion in our lives, to confess them and to be healed of them. These are the weapons of our warfare to advance the Kingdom of God, starting in our own hearts.

Conviction, the very awareness of “messing up”, is a good indication of my salvation!

The key distinction of someone who is truly saved, returning again to our basketball analogy, is that they want to make the shot.

Michael Jordan, arguably the greatest basketball player of all time, is known for his exceptional scoring ability. He is also widely known for the sheer number of shots that he has missed. But despite missing over 9000 shots in his career, what we can be sure of is that he took each shot wanting to make every single one because he has a heart of a champion that wants to win.

Those who are born of God, as a new creature, have a new heart that desires excellence because He is excellent.

So, though we may mess up and miss the mark at times, those who are saved aren’t frivolous about it.

We don’t carelessly throw up the ball. We don’t foolishly throw it into the stands.

We want to make the shot.

But if Jesus already made the shot, why would I even bother shooting at all?

Because, making the shot -living as Christ lived, abiding in God’s love and being governed by it, brings God glory, and like Jesus, there’s nothing that authentic children of God want more.

Every time we take to the court, we want to contribute, increasing the glory of His already glorious victory. And when we have a bad game, we submit to the necessary practice and gym time to work out our bad form.

The aim is development, to be more and more perfectly aligned to Christ so that His life: His purposes, His power and His production shines through.

“But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.”
— Romans 8:11

This is a work that God does in us, that when we submit to it, we can’t miss.

“for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.”
— Philippians 2:13

“Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place.”
— 2 Corinthians 2:14

So, the test of my salvation isn’t whether I mess up, it’s whether I want to make the shot.

Because of His life in me, I want to.

And because He makes it possible, I can

without fear.

Thank you, Jesus.