New Creations

From Steve Brown:

You are a new creature in Christ. It's not an issue of reading the Bible more, praying more, witnessing more and being more accountable. It's not an issue of voting, dressing or behaving in a certain way. Being a new creation is simply being who you are without any sham or pretense. It's being the real deal.

Watch this video with Steve teaching from 2 Corinthians 5:11-21. Learn about three lies that most people believe, and the truth to counteract those lies. It really is all about grace.

Power In Weakness

From Steve Brown: The Warrior Is A Child:

...The power of the Christian witness isn’t in our strength but in our weakness, brokenness and sin. It is that message with which we “strengthen our brothers and sisters.” It’s a message about redemption, forgiveness and God’s incredible grace, mercy, and love to people who don’t deserve it. Only sinners can proclaim that message because we are the only ones unqualified enough to do so.

Impossible Situations

Good stuff from Steve Brown - "What To Do In An Impossible Situation:"

Jesus just couldn’t get away from all the people who needed him. Jesus went away to a lonely place to rest and to pray in Mark 6, only to have a hungry crowd of five thousand meet him…with no fast food in sight. That is what I’d call an impossible situation.
It may look to you like everybody else has it all together except for you. Others look at you and think the very same thing. The fact is we’re all in this, facing an impossible situation. If you’re like the rest of us, you may find yourself facing pain, hurt, loneliness, worry, frustration and failure.

Recognize that there are some impossible situations you just can’t do anything about. The slogan, “the difficult we do immediately while the impossible takes a little longer,” sounds good…but it just isn’t true. For every problem, there isn’t always a solution.

Jesus and his disciples found themselves in an impossible situation with only five loaves and two fish to feed five thousand people. (It is one thing to add water to the soup to feed some extra people, but this is in another category altogether.) What Jesus did here is exactly the same thing he does in your impossible situation.

Compassion

Jesus met the impossible situation with compassion (“he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd,” Mark 6:34).

“Is there really a God?” is an irrelevant question. The important question is, “What kind of God?” If God cares and loves, then you can deal with impossibilities. Christ revealed a God of compassion: a God who knows when a sparrow dies and when you lose a single hair (he’s been thinking about me a lot). God cares about the lilies of the field and he’s especially concerned about his own, believers in the body of Christ. 

Jesus preached with his actions. Jesus came into the world, allowing us to see a God who really cares, a God who really reaches out. With God, you can deal with death, pain and impossibilities…as long as you know he cares for you.

Instruction

Jesus met the impossible situation with instruction (“and he began to teach them many things,” Mark 6:34).

In Psalm 119:9-16, the Psalmist wrote, “How can a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed according to Your word. With my whole heart I have sought You; Oh, let me not wander from Your commandments!...I will delight myself in Your statutes; I will not forget Your word.”

Where does the Word become real in your life? It becomes real in your impossible situations. God doesn’t just leave you in the darkness, he teaches you in your impossible situation. Jesus said, “In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Jesus said, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now” (John 16:12). In other words, “you’re going to learn them as you go through the bad times.” In the midst of an impossible situation ask, “God, what are you trying to teach me?” Pray that God’s Word becomes real in your impossible situation.

Every facet of your life—good and bad, every hurt you suffer and every impossible situation you face—is bathed in the teaching of God’s Word. That teaching gives understanding. And that understanding makes the impossible situation bearable.

Sufficiency

Jesus met the impossible situation with sufficiency. Only five loaves and two fish, but in the hand of Christ, it was sufficient.

2 Corinthians 3:5 teaches, “Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God.”

Are you a great sinner? His grace is sufficient for you. Are you unwanted? His love is sufficient for you. Are you afraid? His courage is sufficient for you. Are you dying? His promise is sufficient for you.

Jesus met an impossible situation with sufficiency. Whatever your impossible situation, he will be sufficient. He may not change it or erase it, but he will be sufficient in it.

Abundance

Jesus met the impossible situation with abundance.

The Father’s abundance is taught throughout Scripture: “Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you” (Luke 6:38). “Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen” (Ephesians 3:20-21). “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).

The Father meets your impossible situation with abundance. At that point, there is a joy welling up that isn’t even related to circumstances. It is the abundance that God gives.

In your impossible situation, remember that the Father is with you. And that makes all the difference in the world.

Eschew Religiosity...And Run to Jesus

I just love Steve Brown! Read Garbage In, Garbage Out- HT: Internet Monk

Confession: In my lifetime, I’ve believed and taught some pretty dumb things.

One of them: If you memorize Scripture, pray a lot and do religious stuff, you will sin less, be more obedient and have a powerful witness for Christ in the world. The principle is: Garbage in, garbage out.

I’m a lot older and somewhat wiser. I now know that this idea suffers from two fatal errors…maybe more. 

The First Fatal Error: The Belief That We Are A Lot Worse Than We Think We Are And It’s Up To Us To Make Us Better.

Do you know what bothers me? Systems for godliness. I want to please God more than you can imagine and I read more books than you can imagine in the fond hope that someone will tell me how to please God. What they say simply doesn’t work and, if I end up meeting the people who wrote the books (and I often do), the truth is, it hasn’t worked for them either.

Every time someone tells me the ten ways to have a closer walk with God, I go off on another tangent of praying more, memorizing Scripture more and doing more stuff that I think will be pleasing to God. And then when I find that “Jesus has left the building,” I keep kidding myself that he is still there and that I’m quite godly. After a while, I’m so phony I can’t even stand myself.

Religious stuff doesn’t make us better…it makes us more religious.

That’s what Jesus meant in John 5:39-40 when he criticized the religious people for thinking that the Scriptures would give them eternal life when, in fact, all they did was point to him in whom was life.

I think it was the late Vernon McGee who said that the danger with most Christians is that we say what we’re going to do, talk about what we’re going to do, and think that we have done it when, in fact, we haven’t done it at all. That is, of course, true of religion. We think that the more we “do” religion, the more godly we are. Sometimes just the opposite is true.The

Second Fatal Error: The Belief That Being More Godly, Spiritual And Religious Is Even The Point.

What is the point then? The point is Jesus.
Jesus said that if we were really tired, we should come to him.

Jesus said that if our lives were empty, we could come to him and he would give us abundant life.

Jesus said that if we were sick, sinful and very needy, he would be there for us.

Jesus said that he came to love the people who couldn’t pull off the religious thing.
Jesus said that he was a shepherd and not a butcher. He loved the sheep and gave his life for them.

Jesus said that he was light for the darkness, bread for the hungry, water for the thirsty.

Jesus said that if we ran to him, he would never kick us out.

In fact, Jesus’ harshest criticism was reserved for the religious, the sanctified and the pure.

The spurious idea of “garbage in, garbage out” is just that…spurious. I don’t know about you but I’m quite good at multi-tasking. I can memorize Scripture, pray, and sit in church, and at the same time, hate, lust, covet and be really ticked off at and unforgiving toward the person who is sitting next to me. Not only that. I found that the garbage doesn’t come from the outside but is a lot closer to home…me (Mathew 15:10-20).

Am I saying that we shouldn’t read and memorize Scripture, that prayer and going to church are bad things? Are you crazy? I’m a Bible teacher, I couldn’t survive without prayer, and I make my living working as a religious professional.

To play on the words of C.S. Lewis, those who run to Jesus get him and his love with forgiveness, eternal life and sometimes even godliness thrown in. Those who focus on godliness get neither Jesus nor anything else.

Easy A

From Tullian Tchvidjian, quoting Steve Brown:

My friend Steve Brown tells a story about a time his daughter Robin found herself in a very difficult English Literature course that she desperately wanted to get out of.

She sat there on her first day and thought, “If I don’t transfer out of this class, I’m going to fail. The other people in this class are much smarter than me. I can’t do this.” She came home and with tears in her eyes begged her dad to help her get out of the class so she could take a regular English course. Steve said, “Of course.”

So the next day he took her down to  the school and went to the head of the English department, who was a Jewish woman and a great teacher. Steve remembers the event in these words:

She (the head of the English department) looked up and saw me standing there by my daughter and could tell that Robin was about to cry. There were some students standing around and, because the teacher didn’t want Robin to be embarrassed, she dismissed the students saying, “I want to talk to these people alone.” As soon as the students left and the door was closed, Robin began to cry. I said, “I’m here to get my daughter out of that English  class. It’s too difficult for her. The problem with my daughter is that she’s too conscientious. So, can you put her into a regular English class?” The teacher said, “Mr. Brown, I understand.” Then she looked at Robin and said, “Can I talk to Robin for a minute?” I said, “Sure.” She said, “Robin, I know how you feel. What if I promised you and A no  matter what you did in the class? If I gave you an A before you even started, would you be willing to take the class?” My daughter is not dumb! She started sniffling and said, “Well, I think I could do that.” The teacher said, “I’m going to give  you and A in the class. You already have an A, so you can go to class.”

Later the teacher explained to Steve what she had done. She explained how she took away the threat of a bad grade so that Robin could learn English. Robin ended up making straight A‘s on her own in that class.

That’s how God deals with us. Because we are, right now, under the completely sufficient imputed righteousness of Christ, Christians already have an A. The threat of failure, judgment, and condemnation has been removed. We’re in-forever! Nothing we do will make our grade better and nothing we do will make our grade worse. We’ve been set free.

Knowing that God’s love for you and approval of you will never be determined by your performance for Jesus but Jesus’ performance for you will actually make you perform more and better, not less and worse. In other words, grace mobilizes performance; performance does not mobilize grace.

If you don’t believe me, ask Robin!

Just Show Up

"When Christians get to the point they read only Christian books, go only to Christian movies, hang out only with other Christians, eat only Christian cookies, and wear only Christian underwear, it's time for a reality check. That's sick, and it is a sickness unto death.

Once we are set free from the need to defend, protect, and hide, we have the freedom to show up in places where proper Christians don't go fro fear of getting dirty. And it is in our showing up that the authenticity of who we are becomes the 'flavor' that attracts others to the ice cream maker.

So, go do something that isn't religious. Just show up. It's called evangelism."

                        -Steve Brown, Three Free Sins, Page 192

Three Free Sins - Video Intro

This is a video intro to the book Three Free Sins by Steve Brown, which I have been quoting from this past week. Enjoy! the book is worth reading.

Power of Forgiveness

More good stuff from Steve Brown's Three Free Sins:

"When we finally acknowledge our need for forgiveness and come to God in repentance, we find true power: for we now have nothing to hide or protect, we don't care what people say or think about us, we are willing to speak truth gently, and we are enabled to speak it with tremendous, supernatural power." (Page 45)

"I've found that the greatest need among Christian leaders isn't for more commitment, more religion, and more 'making an impact' for Jesus.  What they need is to be taught that they are seriously sinful and God loves them anyway." (Page 87)

"Jesus set loose power in the world by forgiving a whole lot of people a whole lot of sin when they didn't deserve it and never would. He said that 'sorry was enough.' And now those very people have the power to do the same thing for others who don't deserve it. The essense of the christian faith is forgiveness - unbelievable forgiveness given for screwed-up people to other screwed-up people without any 'kicker.'" (Page 88)

I'm enjoying this book!

The Club for Screwed Up People

I'm reading an interesting book by Steve Brown with the provocative title Three Free Sins - God's Not Mad at You. The quote below is from page 42.

"When Luther told his followers to 'sin boldly!' he wasn't encouraging sin. He was encouraging repentance and a bold new trust in the sufficiency of Christ for all sin. Luther once suggested to a man who questioned him about encouraging sin that there was an incredible arrogance in assuming that anything we could ever do would be more sufficient than the blood of God's own Son....

...I don't know why you're shocked. When you joined the church (if you are a Christian), you announced to the world that you were sinful and seriously screwed up. The church, someone has said, is the only club in the world where the only qualification for joining it and staying in it is that one be unqualified. .."

I qualify! What do you think?