August 9, 2024

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!

June 5, 2023

Good News

We were hopelessly separated from God, but God provided a Way to overcome the sin that’s separating us, a Door to bridge the impossible chasm between us, the Truth that we may know Him, and Life that we may be with Him forever.

The gospel is we can be with God. Jesus is the Way.

“Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.'”
—John 14:6

When we realize that our most desperate need, our soul’s greatest desire is God, the Gospel becomes good news indeed!

#gospel

June 5, 2023

I Can’t Believe My Eyes

Jesus said we are blind.
Jesus said we are deaf.

Yet we perceive an image and we register sounds.

What does this mean?

It means we’re hallucinating. The natural man is deluded.

We are under the influence of something.

Satan deceived us and we sinned. We declared ourselves enemies of God. We grasped for His power and sought to obtain knowledge apart from Him and we fell into delusion, under the spell and rule of the evil one.

We sought to know God on our own terms according to our own understanding but God will not allow it.

He has hidden Himself that our knowledge of Him is not obtained by our own wisdom, power or will, but that is obtained through Him.

“Just as it is written: ‘God has given them a spirit of stupor, Eyes that they should not see And ears that they should not hear, To this very day.'”
—Romans 11:8

We don’t get to say who He is, He tells us who He is, because nothing is more important than getting that right!

“There shall come forth a Rod from the stem of Jesse, And a Branch shall grow out of his roots. The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him, The Spirit of wisdom and understanding, The Spirit of counsel and might, The Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.”
—Isaiah 11:1-2

“And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, ‘This is My beloved Son. Hear Him!'”
—Luke 9:35

The only way to know God is if He reveals Himself and gives us sensitivity to perceive it.

“But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”
—John 1:12-13

God has revealed Himself and has ordained His Word as the means that we receive perception.

“So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”
—Romans 10:17

Jesus is the Word in flesh.

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”
—John 1:14

“God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds;”
—Hebrews 1:1-2

The Gospel, the good news, is we were hopelessly separated from God -man’s most desperate need, but God has provided a Way to overcome the sin that’s separating us, a Door to bridge the impossible chasm between us, the Truth that we may know Him, and Life that we may be with Him forever. Jesus is the Way, The Door, The Truth and The Life.

“Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.'”
—John 14:6

However, the evil one is still actively working to separate us from God.

“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.”
—1 Peter 5:8

He is the god of this world that we gave over to him when we obeyed him and disobeyed God.

And, this world is the hallucination, the wool pulled over our eyes to distract us, to deceive us and blind us.

“But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them.”
—2 Corinthians 4:3-4

“Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.”
—1 John 2:15-17

So, we cannot trust our natural senses, what we see.

But thanks be to God,

“For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
—2 Corinthians 4:6

Light is how we see. There is false light and the True Light.

“But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!”
—Matthew 6:23

We do not walk according to what we see naturally (sight) and according to the wisdom of this world.

“This wisdom does not descend from above, but is earthly, sensual, demonic.”
—James 3:15

We walk according to what Jesus reveals (faith).

“But, the just live by faith, not by sight.”
—2 Corinthians 5:7

We distrust our senses and trust Jesus, following Him, who, upon the revelation of Himself, commands us to come to Him and step out on what we cannot see.

“Now in the fourth watch of the night Jesus went to them, walking on the sea.

And when the disciples saw Him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying, ‘It is a ghost!’ And they cried out for fear.

But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘Be of good cheer! It is I; do not be afraid.’

And Peter answered Him and said, ‘Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water.’

So He said, ‘Come.’

And when Peter had come down out of the boat, he walked on the water to go to Jesus.”
—Matthew 14:25-29

I endeavor to follow Jesus and “walk on water”.

If He is not real, I will perish.

But since I’ve been following Him, I have not yet utterly fallen.

Because, He is real.

This world is the delusion and the myth that it, under the rule and sway of the evil one, purports Jesus to be.

“We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one.”
—1 John 5:19

“We are of God. He who knows God hears us; he who is not of God does not hear us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.”
—1 John 4:6

We are in the Matrix for the sole purpose of saving people out.

Jesus is real. The world is not.

Which are you going to trust?

#gospel #lookagain

May 30, 2023

Preach The Foolish Gospel

I have a tendency to intellectualize things and want to make a compelling argument.

But far be it from me when God has chosen foolishness for me to make it reasonable and render it of no effect!

“For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.”
—1 Corinthians 1:21

I was not called to win debates.

I was called to preach the gospel.

“And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.”
—1 Corinthians 2:4-5

Jesus said His sheep know His voice and they follow Him.

“My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.”
—John 10:27

So, my aim is simply to speak with His voice by His Spirit to gather His Sheep to Him that He leads to good pasture in God.

If the preaching of His Anointed Word does not cause them to hear, nothing will.

If the foolishness of the gospel does not save them, nothing will.

“For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
—1 Corinthians 1:18

The foolishness of the gospel is the God ordained means by which He chooses. It is His dividing rod. I must be careful not to modify it or corrupt it to make it suitable lest it is no longer the gospel.

I must trust God.

I must do it His way.

If I don’t, those who are “saved” by my “ministry” are not saved at all, rather they are deceived again by the deceitfully wicked heart of man.

Preach the foolish gospel.

Here it is:

God alone is good.

We sinned and thereby died, becoming instruments of death, killing and being killed, languishing in darkness, hopelessly separated from God and condemned to the same destruction of every evil thing by a good and Holy God.

But, God demonstrating His exceeding goodness and love provided a Way, while we were His enemies, that we can be with Him. Jesus is the Way.

God came Himself, to do what only He could do, taking the form of man by sending His Son to live a sinless life so that He might be the perfect sacrifice -a sacrifice infinitely greater than sheep, goats and bulls, a sacrifice sufficient for the sins of the whole world for all time. Because, without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin.

But, God through Jesus, who having the riches of God, paid the debt and took the penalty we owe -death. God made Him who knew no sin become sin that we might become the righteousness of God.

God through Jesus provides a way of salvation from the death we are dying now and the death to come.

But, God not only had Jesus to die for us. Jesus being God laid down His life and took it up again. He was raised from the dead as the firstborn of a new creation which we become part of as a new creature when we believe.

And, this is the good news: we can be with God.

Our sin is great but God’s love is greater and God has provided a Way to be with Him for all who will accept it. Jesus is the Way.

We accept it by believing God, that Jesus is God who came in the flesh, that He is the Word, that He alone makes the truth of who God is known to us, that He died for our sin and that He was raised from the dead.

Acceptance is indicated by repenting of our sin: denouncing the world -the kingdom of darkness, forsaking it with joy in exchange for the kingdom of light, seeking the kingdom of God and His righteousness above all, confessing Jesus as King and Master and giving our lives to Him who in turn reconciles us to God.

When we believe God, not only does He account Jesus’ payment on the cross to our account so that our current, past and future debt is forever paid, He gives us new life, making us righteous and acceptable in the Beloved, making us instruments of life rather than death through the same Power that raised Jesus from the dead -the Holy Spirit, and by Him makes available to us all of the riches of God, including a bodily resurrection on the Last Day so we can be with God forever.

God has done this and it is marvelous in our eyes.

God has done this, not we ourselves, so it will not fail.

God did it for Himself, not for us, so His reason will never change.

God didn’t do it because we earned it, deserve it, or because of anything desirable in us, quite the contrary.

God did it because He’s just that good.

And, the good news is that we can be with God.

Repent.

Accept what God’s done.

Believe in Him who God sent: Jesus.

And, be saved.

#gospel #preaching #perfectourlove

August 31, 2022

Not What, Who

The are many paths.

Only Christ leads to God.

I do not say this to assert the superiority of a religion, namely Christianity. Most who identify as Christians don’t have a clue about who Christ is. -Matthew 7:14, 21-23

The only ones who see Christ are those to whom God chooses to reveal Him. -Matthew 16:17

We can not see Him on our own. That’s humbling and it’s meant to be.

Because, “God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.” -James 4:6

Our chief problem is we’ve been deceived to believe that we don’t need God. The enemy has blinded us through seeming material sufficiency, fake cultural harmony and outward civility while inwardly hating one another. We have a façade of peace and prosperity while our families are being ravished with war and destruction at every hand.

We appear well but are dying on the inside –whitewashed tombs.

However, if like me, you have been granted to see your brokenness, you know you are destitute and your spirit yearns for something you don’t know what to ask for (Matthew 5) and you are drawn to Jesus –not His followers, not institutions in His name, but you are drawn to the person of Jesus revealed through Holy Scripture by His Holy Spirit, you are being saved!

Therefore, cry out as the blind who desperately wants to receive sight. -Matthew 20:31
Search for Him as those who know they are dying and want to live! -Mark 5:25

Come to Christ believing He alone is the Way to God where every good and perfect thing is. -John 6:68

Revival is in three words: not what, Who.

It’s not about all the things we could or should do to improve our lives.

It’s about knowing Who life is. -John 14:6

Believe Christ and live.

#notwhatwho

April 2, 2022

We Have The Wrong Idea About God

We have the wrong idea about God.
Christ was given to correct that.

Judging God by His Old Testament work is like judging a person with bloody hands standing over a gruesome, half-dead body, without the context that they’re the doctor saving their loved one’s life from terminal cancer.

The body is creation and we are the members conscripted by cancer, ravaging it. The treatment of cutting away flesh and blasting areas of infection with radiation, while brutal, is not only understandable, it’s good -done with the purpose to save life.

But, that the Great Physician would invest any time saving cancerous cells; setting some apart and doing millennia of delicate, painstaking surgery to give destructive cells a new Stem so that they would have new life and function properly is astonishing, especially given His ability to utterly wipe out the cancer and start completely over.

But His heart toward mankind was not to utterly destroy us, but to love us and make us whole by being with us. He’s done all that He’s done to the end of this His original purpose, including the vital and righteous work depicted in the Old Testament. But, we shouldn’t stop there. He wasn’t done. It’s not the complete picture. God’s heart is revealed by the completion of His work –His wonderful, glorious, incomprehensible work completed in Jesus Christ.

If I want to have the right idea about God, look to Christ:

Christ in Creation.
Christ in Redemption.
Christ in Recreation.

Who God is becomes more clear when I understand Christ was always the plan.

And, the right idea about God changes everything. #Gospel

October 6, 2021

Fine Without God

I reject God believing “I am fine without God”. At the heart of that thinking is a belief that the light I’m walking in is my own.

Whatever your proximity to God, all light you enjoy -any semblance of love, justice or truth comes from Him. These are not concepts of human invention or products of our effort. They are characteristics of God that emanate from Him and shine through His vessels.

But there is coming a terrible day, after God’s offer of Himself and plea to choose life has gone out to every creature under heaven, that God will withdraw Himself completely from those who reject Him,

“For the stars of heaven and their constellations will not give their light; The sun will be darkened in its going forth, And the moon will not cause its light to shine.” Isaiah 13:10, Mark 13:24

God will allow them their desire -utter darkness because “they loved darkness rather than light” John 3:19. In His withdrawal, He will also take His people. Not one who bares His Light will remain. Mankind will be completely left to languish in their own corruption and cruelty, being devoid of understanding, with no hope of any good. There will be no love, truth, justice nor anything of the sort -no light.

This is why Jesus proclaims, “I must work while it is day; the night is coming when no one can work.” John 9:4

I remember my ignorance of the harm I was doing and how I was being harmed, until finally I was forced to acknowledge my sin because it was piled up to heaven and I was being crushed under the weight of it. I was not fine without God. And, neither are you.

Be not deceived, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.” James 1:17

I am so thankful that while I was in darkness, hope remained for me and there shone a great light. Isaiah 9:2, Matthew 4:16

And, there remains hope for you! The love of God compels me, “Believe Jesus, be freed from darkness and receive the Light of the world!” John 8:12

How can you test what I’m saying? How can you know it is true? The closer you walk with God through faith in Christ, the greater your light will shine.

August 10, 2021

What The Storm Taught Me About Jesus

“Why are you so fearful? How is it that you have no faith?”

These words of Jesus recorded in Mark 4:40 always perplexed me. What do you mean, “Why am I so fearful?!” We’re in the middle of a deadly storm! (Mark 4:37) Don’t you feel the ship being tossed violently about? Don’t you see that the ship is filling with water and that we’re about to sink?! What does faith have to do with anything? This is not a matter of attitude or perspective. This threat is not spiritual. The danger is real! So, what do you mean, “Why am I so fearful?!”

The questions seemed absurd. That is, until I had to face a storm of my own.

Like the storm in Mark 4:37, mine came upon me suddenly, unexpectedly and violently. In one great swell the waters crashed on my life, threatening to tear everything apart. After barely surviving its impact, I was then hammered with wave, after wave, after wave. I lived in constant fear of the blow that would finally end it all. This went on for years.

But, Jesus was in the boat the whole time.

I was so focused on the storm, I lost sight of who He was. And, I didn’t realize the effect that Jesus was having just being there. While He seemed to me to be “sleeping”, He was the reason I had not perished. It was His presence, and not all the things I was clinging to, that was preserving me and providing for my need. What I see now, that I didn’t see then, is that He had angels encamped all around us -real people, who ministered to my real needs. As I reflect on those years, I clearly see people God sent that provided precisely what I needed both spiritually and materially in their due seasons. Why? Not because of what I had done, but because of who I was with. I was with Jesus –Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God who was sent according to the love of God for this very purpose: that those who believe in Him would not perish but have life everlasting.

That last part –Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God.

This view of Jesus as God incarnate is what I believed or at least conceptually understood at some point, but lost sight of. And this is why, I believe, that Jesus asks, “Why are you so fearful? How is it that you have no faith?” Because, if I am with Christ in the boat, do I really believe the Christ will perish? Do I really believe that He will fail to do what He came to do? Do I really believe that any promise made concerning Him will go unfulfilled? Oh Father, grant me the faith of Abraham who believed so steadfastly on your Promise because he believed God to be so faithful that He’d never go back on His word and believed God to be so powerful, that He could raise the son of Promise from the dead. (Genesis 22:1-14; Hebrews 11:19) Lord, help me to see You and to allow the reality of who You are to loom larger than the reality that I’m wrestling with!

When I believe Jesus, my hope and expectation is in the furtherance of His purposes: reconciling creation to Himself and the full coming of His kingdom. This, by faith, becomes the desire of my heart that I can be fully assured that God will give to me. (Psalm 37:4) Furthermore, if He can command even the storm, I can have confidence that nothing concerning me is beyond His control. If I live, He is in control. He has work for me and as I walk in it, no storm, no circumstance, no power in Hell -nothing can prevent it. If I die, He is in control. I can depart knowing that He is faithful to finish the work He began and that nothing that I have committed to Him will be in vain. So, whether in life or death, He is in control, His purposes will prevail, He will be glorified and my desire in Him will not fail.

As I look back from the other side of the storm, I see that the whole time I spent being anxious, frantically flailing about, I could have been resting confidently with Jesus.

March 28, 2021

The Most Important Word

What word in the Bible do I believe is the most important, even more so than justice, love, truth and even faith?

Sin.

Sin means to miss the mark, to offend. It indicates that there is someone that set the mark. Which further indicates there is someone who claims to have the authority to set the mark.

On what basis can one claim such authority? The very word “authority” suggest the answer: authorship.

Sin demands a Creator who has the authority of ownership and thereby the right to set the mark.

According to the Bible, the Creator set that mark for us to be His representatives in the earth, to be caretakers of it. But we were not satisfied with being His representatives and in ignorance of the knowledge and power it takes to sustain creation, we rejected His rule and made for ourselves gods we could understand and control so that we could be the rulers and sit on the throne instead of God. In our effort to gain and to maintain power we have suppressed what can be known of God even apart from the revelation of Holy Scripture by creating false and distracting narratives. In our ignorance, we were also unaware of the immutable spiritual law that to whosever’s idea you yield or to command you obey, you become that person’s slave. Furthermore, we did not understand that ideas do not originate with us: they either stem from Truth or Lies, Good or Evil. As such, by obeying a command stemming from lies we did not become rulers as we thought but subjects, trading the rule of a loving God for the rule of the Father of Lies. We thereby entered in league with Satan and acting as his subjects, we threw the world into disorder, injustice and evil.

We missed the mark.

We used what has been given to us for purposes other than what the Giver intended, thereby opposing and offending God which is sin. There was yet another immutable law, the penalty of sin is death. Sin is opposed to God and whatever opposes God will be destroyed. We are all guilty under this law, leaving corruption and death in our wake and becoming enemies of the Creator, appointed to destruction.

But, God.

But, God was not caught unaware. In fact it was part of His design. Before time, He purposed to grow His beloved family, accounted for our weakness and prepared a Way out for those who were born into corruption but would accept His Love.

In His tender mercy and His loving kindness, God humbled Himself to plea His case with the creatures He made! He spoke through messengers and even established an entire nation to demonstrate the impossible task of humans bridging the gap between themselves and God, even if we were given the instructions!

These were tutors to humble us and bring us back to square one that upholding and governing the universe –achieving good, requires that God does it. But even more than that, it was to prepare us for His greatest act of Love yet, making His appeal to us flesh and walk among us. Such was God’s desire to be with us that He came and made His case to us directly in the person of Jesus Christ!

But not only that, Jesus was sent to take back the creation we lost by being a human that presents Himself obedient to God, being a caretaker of creation, advancing the kingdom of God by taking dominion of the earth, submitting everything that enters His domain to the Father, translating it from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light.

Not only that, He sent Jesus to satisfy the penalty of sin -death, by dying Himself, so that there would no longer be any separation between us and God. Being a perfect man in whom the fullness of God dwells, Jesus is a sacrifice who’s worth can cover all the sin of all mankind; past, present and future. So great is His worth that His sacrifice forever tips the scale so that grace continually abounds toward us.

Not only that, when we believe that God sent the Son, we agree with God about our sin, that the penalty is just, that we are incapable of setting things right, that He alone is good and fit to rule and we, having now no reason to boast, are at His mercy to restore us and all creation.

Not only that, for those that humble themselves, acknowledge their error and place all their hope in Christ, so great is God’s love towards us that rather than leave them subjects, He gives us robes and crowns and makes us sons and daughters! Hallelujah!!!

In this age, by the tutelage Christ’s example provides but moreover by the power God provides and that we receive through faith, we are transformed and given a new heart -a new center of our being with new desires. We want what God wants and walk as Christ walked -living obedient to God, submitting everything in our domain to Christ as he continually translates everything from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light until that day when all things have been put under His feet -where all evil, darkness and even death have been abolished. Our ultimate hope is the resurrection that begins the age where we reign with Christ and live with our loving Father and all those that love Him forever.

To many, this is utter foolishness but if any of this resonates with you, you are being saved.

You need only need to confess a belief at the center of your being (in your heart) that the Father sent the Son and raised Him from the dead to be saved -saved from the death your sin is contributing to the world now and the second death later; the wrath of God to come.

If you want to learn more, start here: https://bit.ly/39ipuDP

I love you.

February 23, 2018

Until I Get My Life Right

What I hear more than anything as I encounter people who consider themselves “unchurched”, is a reluctance to come to worship “until I get my life right.” Surprisingly, there is an element of this that is good theology and demonstrates a knowledge of God that many “churched” folks have lost as a result of their religion: God is holy and I must be holy or in “right standing” to enter into His presence. That’s truth.

But, here’s the good news (the gospel): God loves you so much and is so committed to being with you, that even before the beginning, He architected an ingenious Way for you to be in His presence without compromising His holiness. He provided a Savior able to pay the debt required for our sin and thereby making us able to be in right-standing (righteous). Not only that, but when we believe Christ, we’re given a new heart, HIS heart, a seed that grows unto a new spiritual man and empowers us to put to death our former, godless appetites. And, as we undergo the process of being re-made to look more and more like a Son of the Father (sanctification), we enter the presence of God by the blood (the work and person) of Christ. As a result, when God sees you, He sees His Son in whom He is well pleased so that you can dwell boldly in His presence. Hallelujah! #TheDoorOfTheChurchIsOpen

In loving memory of the greatest teacher of grace I’ve ever known, my mentor and friend, Dr. Gregory Wilson Jones.

Paul Luckett

Proceed with caution. Visibility is limited.

Tag Archives: gospel