Paradigm Shift Ministries

Fall: Week Eight
Fear Not:
"The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid.  What can man do to me?"
~Psalm 118:6 ~

As Christians, we are called to live with an unwavering confidence in our Lord and God; however, we all know that this is much easier to say than to live.  David was a man that was constantly under attack.  Throughout his life, there was always someone out to take his life, but he never wavered in his trust of God’s protection.  All you have to do is open up the book of Psalms and you will see his heart.  Yes, David knew fear, but he also knew that he served a God who is bigger than his fear.  David may be considered one of the great heroes of the Bible, but he was really no different than you or I.  He fell prey to many of the same things that men today face, most infamously his lust for Bathsheba.  Yet throughout his well-chronicled inner turmoil, David always had a strong sense of God being his rock.  With that foundation alone was he able to go on to become one of the greatest kings in human history.

The Bible promises us that if we are earnestly seeking first God’s kingdom and His righteousness, then we have nothing to fear.  If we build our lives on the rock-solid foundation of God’s covenant made through the blood of Jesus Christ, then there is no power that can separate us from His unending and unconditional love (Romans 8:38-39).  However, this does not mean that being Christian means easy living, quite the opposite in fact.  Being Christian means being tried and tested all the more because the world is designed to make Christians fall.  But, we are to rejoice when we are tested because that is how our faith is made pure (1 Peter 1:6-7).  Be encouraged because not one biblical hero made it through life without being tested – trial by fire is the only way we can become more like Christ.  Go forward, be disciplined, and be free.  If you struggle with fear, feel free to make this your prayer:

“Dear God, please hear my heart.  I want to be free from this fear, please allow me to see myself the way You see me, and pour out Your Spirit on my life.  Test me and try me, but never let my eyes leave heaven.  Give me the strength when I am to endure, and give me an escape when I am to flee.  Gracious Lord, protect me from evil and allow me to forgive as I have been forgiven.  I lift up my burdens, my fear, and my struggles to You and lay them at the foot of the cross.  Allow me to let go of my old self as it has been crucified with Jesus and put on my new self, which is made pure by the blood of the Lamb.  And God, wrap me in Your spiritual armor and equip me with the sword of the Spirit, Your Word.  In Jesus’ name, I declare victory and freedom from all that binds me.  Sin and death no longer have power over my life in Jesus’ name.  Amen.”

Fall: Week Seven
Blessed Are the Pure In Heart:
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”
~ Matthew 5:8 ~

Jesus is a heart guy.  He doesn’t care who you are or what you’ve done; He cares about the motivation behind your actions.  Everyday, we all make decisions about how we are going to live our lives.  Sometimes we make good decisions, sometimes we make bad decisions, and most of those decisions cannot be taken back.  However, each new day brings new decisions, and each new decision brings new opportunities to help you get to where you want to be.  Learn from your past, but don’t live in it.

The Bible tells us that if we seek God, then He will welcome us in.  We must earnestly seek His purpose for our lives – that is how we stay pure.  If we are totally committed to living life the way God wants us to live, then we will stay pure, and we will see God.  You have to believe that there is something bigger than yourself to live for.  God has a plan, He has a purpose for you and for me.  But we all have our own dreams and desires, our own vision of “the perfect life.”  We have to be willing to give that up and trust that God has something even better in store for us.  Only by giving up our hearts can we truly see God.

God wants us to love Him.  This is why we have free will because forced love is not real love.  The relationship between Jesus and His Church is to be like the relationship between man and wife – two becoming one.  We must let God’s Spirit into our hearts, and we must give ourselves over to Him.  There is s freedom and a strength in God’s love that can be found nowhere else – and this love is openly offered as a free gift via the blood of Jesus.

Fall: Week Five
Blessed Are Those Who Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness:
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”
~ Matthew 5:6 ~

The words hunger and thirst have lost a lot of their meaning over the years. In the land of dollar menus and water fountains, we do not know what it is like to be truly hungry or truly thirsty. How blessed are we today to be able to stop for a drink at a water fountain while out running in a park? That’s not how it was back when Jesus used this metaphor. To be hungry meant that you were starving, having gone days without a decent meal. To be thirsty meant that that you were literally dying of thirst; it is mostly desert out in that part of the world.

When you take this verse in its original context, the meaning changes a bit. The people who are blessed here are those who are longing and yearning for complete righteousness. They cannot be filled with just a bite of righteousness, but need the full meal. Their hunger cannot be satisfied by a mere snack of justice; their thirst cannot be quenched by a mere sip of honesty, but only be total and absolute goodness.

Absolute goodness cannot be found in this world. No one is completely righteous. This hunger and thirst for righteousness will never be fully satisfied by this world. The only way to be fulfilled is to be filled with the bread of life and the living water of Jesus. – “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” (John 6:35) Please read all of John chapter six to see this whole story:

Jesus starts out by feeding five-thousand people with only five loaves of bread and two fish. Then comes the scene of Jesus walking on the water. Now after the crowd at Tiberias realized that Jesus and his disciples were gone, they went looking for him. They found him at Capernaum and start to inquire about the previous day’s events. This is where Jesus separates his true followers from those who are just coming along for the ride by claiming that he was the bread of life and that the only way to eternal life is through him.

Ask yourself if this is how you live. Are you yearning for complete and total righteousness? Do you find yourself left unsatisfied by all the things of this world? The only comfort is found in Christ, the bread of life.

Fall: Week Four

Blessed Are the Meek:

“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”

~ Matthew 5:5 ~

The English word “meek” is misleading.  It is often defined as being submissive or even spineless, but the Greek word “plaus” that is used here is a much deeper word.  “Meek” is not something that we often want to be known as, but “plaus” was an honorable adjective in ancient Greece. Some versions of the Bible translate “plaus” as “gentle,” but even that in the English fails to convey the whole meaning of this word. So as I was researching to try to get to the root of this mysterious word, I stumbled once again upon William Barclay’s The Daily Study Bible and found this interpretation: “O the bliss of the man who is always angry at the right time and never angry at the wrong time, who has every instinct, and impulse, and passion under control because he himself is God-controlled, who has the humility to realise his own ignorance and his own weakness, for such a man is a king among men!”

The theme of humble, gentle people rising to the top of society runs throughout the narrative of the Old Testament; from Adam and Eve, to Abraham (Dt 4:38), to Moses (Num 12:3), and to David (Ps 37:11). Jesus uses this radical ideology to demonstrate that His followers were to be set apart from and not to conform to the way that the world is run. In our society, we our taught at a very young age that the only way to get through life is to cheat, fight, and do anything and everything to win; ‘the end justifies the means’ if you will. That mindset is not compatible to Christ’s kingdom. It is different, and we as members of that kingdom are required to live different.

“If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14). This verse is a rally call, it was for ancient Israel, and it certainly is for the members of Christ’s kingdom. If we are going to ‘take this world back for Christ,’ then we must humble ourselves before the Lord and let Him do His work through us. Strive to be meek, strive to be humble, strive to be different, but most importantly, strive to grow closer to Jesus Christ, for He is our Brother, our Friend, our Savior, and our King.

Fall: Week One

Seek First the Kingdom

"But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well."

~ Matthew 6:33 ~

This is the core statement in Jesus’ famous "Sermon on the Mount."  Everything He said there led up to this idea of living for something more than yourself.  In this section, Jesus was addressing where people put their hearts, in earthly possessions or in their faith in God.  Oswald Chambers, in his devotional My Utmost For His Highest, says that these are "the most revolutionary [words] that human ears have ever heard."  Why, because this goes against the social current of our human nature.  We are taught to always take care of number one, to live for yourself.  But Jesus was a radical dude; He taught His followers to live life upstream.  Max Lucado refers to 2 Chronicles 7:14 in his book Turn and calls us "to turn from self-promotion to God-promotion, to turn from self-reliance to God-dependence, to turn from self-direction to God-direction, and to turn from self-service to repentance."

You have to start with this in mind, without accepting that true, authentic Christianity is a calling to go against the grain and live for something much larger than yourself.  The guys from dc Talk in the book Living Under God use the illustration of contrasting the colonial settlements of Plymouth, MA and Jamestown, VA.  The Pilgrims of Plymouth were devoted to living for God, and when the going got tough, they were not deterred.  They would leave a legacy of freedom and of unity for generations to come.  On the other hand, the original settlers of Jamestown (the Virginia Company) were only concerned about making money.  However, they also believed that hard work was beneath a "gentleman," in fact many of the settlers died rather than doing simple things like chopping wood for warmth or digging wells for water.  And when the local gold mine turned out to be full of "fool’s gold" (iron pyrite), they turned their attention to tobacco.  The legacy that they left for future generations was a legacy of slavery and of lung cancer.

What legacy will you leave?  Will you keep your “mind on things above” (Col 3:2) and live for something more than yourself?  Or will you leave a legacy of slavery to sin and to money?  What do you want people to see in your life?

God promises to take care of all of your needs if you only “seek first His kingdom and His righteousness.”  I encourage you to look up Matthew 6:19-34 and really let it soak in.  By simply shifting your focus, you can begin to change your life for the better.

So I was sitting in the “Holy Week Chapel” service here at school a couple days ago and found myself wondering why are the services around Easter so dry and formalized.  The concert band and the choir were up there performing, there were lengthy Scripture readings, and many of the students in the room were asleep.  Now I go to a Christian school, but not everybody on campus is a Christian.  Easter is about the resurrection of Christ and how He defeated sin and death to save us!  This is the whole point of the Gospel; if we can’t get this message across to unbelievers, then what hope do we have?  If there was one church service a year that didn’t put people to sleep it should be Easter Sunday!  Easter is to be the day that the Church comes together to celebrate what Jesus did for us through His death and resurrection, but instead it is all about candy and bonnets.

This blog is not merely a commentary, it is meant to challenge people, and this is your challenge for Easter –> CELEBRATE!!!  Be joyful, be happy, show the love of Christ!  Liturgical calendars list the seven weeks after “Easter Sunday” as “Easter Season,” which is supposed to be a time of celebration.   Enjoy Easter Sunday with family and friends, but do not lose that joy and excitement when you return to work or to school on Monday morning.  Remember the cross, and remember the resurrection!

“Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”

- 1 Peter 1:8-9