Remember that dirt road, the one that looks more like a crater on
the moon than a drivable road? Many of us look at it and realize
we don’t have the tools or the ability to fix it. As we come up to
the road we think, “This is just how it is going to be.”
Many of us make due, thinking, “This is just how it is, who I am,
and all there is.”
Sometimes we accept the ruts because the things harming us are
things we enjoy. The ruts may have even left some scars that are
hard to forget about. We realize that we don’t have the tools to fix
the mess our lives and have become, so we throw in the towel and
resolve that:
“This is just how my life is going to be.”
The world may have ETCHED you and left its mark. Maybe it has
scratched you up so badly that the original person God intended
you to be is unrecognizable or unfathomable at this point in
time. But that does not mean that you are a lost cause. It does not
mean that you are not fixable.
However, it does mean that we need someone specific to fix us,
to forgive us, to free us from our past and the way the world has
ETCHED us. We need someone to tenderly fill in our holes and
resurface us again.
We need our Creator to come find us where we have wandered
off to. We need Him to heal. We need Him to transform the way
we think about our lives, our purpose and our past.
Only then can He remold us into what He created us to be from
the beginning.
By God's Word
February 3, 2018 • Scott Johnson
Have you ever looked at one of those images that if you stare at them
long enough and maybe cross your eyes a bit, you begin to see a rocket
ship, a dinosaur or something else?
Some of us look at the picture and see it immediately. Others of us never
see what is supposedly there. And because of the frustration or even
our own laziness, we seek out others to help us see what the picture is
supposed to be.
Reading the Bible or the Word of God can be exactly the same way.
Some of us can read the Bible and immediately learn from it and see how
we need to apply it to our lives. Others of us read it and think we are
reading some other language, as if we need someone to translate and
explain it to us. Only then can we understand it.
We don’t realize it, but over time we begin to live and believe things that
may or may not be biblical. Instead of examining the Bible ourselves, we
ask others to dictate what it says, who we are supposed to be, or how to
live our lives.
We make decisions about things like:
• Life after death
• Heaven and Hell
• Who God is
• How God operates
• What we should do with our lives
We make these decisions based off of asking others...
• What do you think you see?
• What does the Bible say about _____?
• What do you think about?
But the whole time we should be reading the truth of the Word of God
for ourselves and letting the Holy Spirit guide us in what His Word teaches.
This may take time, work, and even cause frustration, but as the age old
adage says, “No Pain, No Gain.”
Or at least that is what my coach once told me...
The World
February 4, 2018
Many of us get really excited to know that Jesus loved us enough to die
for our sins. We even like taking time out of our lives to thank Jesus for
this gift through worship.
We will sing songs, raise our hands, bow down in reverence, and cry out
in repentance or joy.
But then we find ourselves sitting next to our friends at school, at work,
or on the sports field and immediately we feel embarrassed about all
that we were just grateful to Jesus for, to the point that we often sit
there silent because of shame or embarrassment.
But that is not how it’s supposed to be. We have the only thing that mattersfor all eternity.
“For I am not ashamed of this Good News about Christ. It is the power
of God at work, saving everyone who believes” Romans 1:16
So rather than letting the world ETCH us and who we are outside of
church, camp, or among other believers, we need to begin to be the
ones doing the etching. We need to ETCH our friends, teachers, family
and coworkers with the Good News about Christ so they too can experience salvation for their sins, freedom in Christ, and true joy, just as we have experienced.
