In the first conversion, we find the story of an Ethiopian eunuch whose curiosity for the things of God led him to discover Jesus. Let’s assume this guy has had no contact with any sort of religious education. After all, according to Deuteronomy 23.1, he wasn’t allowed in the temple anyway.

And yet as Philip talks with him about the ancient book of Isaiah, this eunuch very readily and simply trusts Jesus.

In stark contrast to the story of the eunuch’s conversion is Saul’s conversion in chapter 9. While the eunuch followed Jesus without the need for any real coaxing, it took a supernatural slap in the face for Saul to finally follow Jesus. And his road was marked with pain, suffering, and humiliation.

He was slammed off his horse, exposed to an extremely bright light, lectured by Jesus himself, left blind and completely dependent on someone else’s help, and cared for by the very man he was planning on executing.

Here’s the funny thing—Saul was the religious one.

So what have I learned from this? For starters, no one is outside of God’s reach. From the broken and remorseful sinner to the passionate and violent religious leader, God reaches all of us.

But I think he has to hit religious people a little harder. We’re stubborn, set in our ways, and we believe we’re right about everything. So he steps in, introduces a little bit of pain because, unlike the “sinner,” we haven’t experienced life’s hardships that would draw us to him, and confronts us directly.

So what does that mean for me? I’m not totally sure. I think God’s telling me that I need to love religious people just as much as I love non-religious people. They need his grace just as much as anyone else. The problem is that we’re often very unwilling to accept it.

Tweet This Post

With my voice I cry out to the Lord;
With my voice I plead for mercy to the Lord.
I pour out my complaint before him;
I tell my trouble before him.
When my spirit faints within me,
you know my way!
In the path where I walk
they have hidden a trap for me.
Look to the right and see:
There is none who takes notice of me;
no refuge remains to me;
no one cares for my soul.
I cry to you, O Lord;
I say, “You are my refuge,
my portion in the land of the living.”

The last few days haven’t been easy. And it becomes so difficult to trust God when it feels like he’s taking things away from me. To be totally honest, I’m actually angry at him right now. I almost feel like he’s given me glimpses of the great things he has planned for me, only to rip them away with the words, “You’re not ready for this yet, Nate.”

He gave me something to pour my abilities and efforts into, and then I hear, “I can’t let you do that, Nate. Not when you’ve lost sight of whom this is really about.” And it hurt, but I knew I needed to make some changes in my own life.

And just as I’m on the brink of taking that first step towards change, a gift he’d given me very recently was quickly snatched away, and I hear, “You’re not ready for this gift, Nate. This was my gift to you, but you’re not a gift yourself.” And again, it hurt.

Like any child who’s being corrected by his father, I’m angry because the correcting hurts. But, like that child, I know that I have nowhere else to turn, and that the hand that’s correcting me is the same hand that comforts me.

So I’ll run into the refuge of my Father’s arms, knowing that, even though I can’t have what I want right now, he’s providing me what I need.

My old mentor told me recently to stop “seeking change for yourself and start seeking the God who changes.” Because change may be everything I want in my life right now, but this God is everything I need.

Tweet This Post

John describes a powerful, majestic, and terrifying incarnation of Christ. But immediately following this description, Christ says, “Do not be afraid.”

It’s almost as if he’s saying, “Look at what I did for you. I am the Eternal One, and yet I stooped down to experience death for you. But I didn’t stop there. I destroyed death so that you wouldn’t have to taste it. I control Hell so you won’t have to go there. So yeah, there’s no reason to be afraid.”

But if we’re honest, we’ll admit that fear is what drives our lives.

If you’ve followed my blog for any length of time, you’ve seen that I’m obsessed with the concept of love. It’s fascinating to me because it’s probably one of the greatest mysteries of our humanity, yet it’s the most common aspect of our lives. It’s also (supposed to be) the defining point of Christians. (I’ll refrain from my rant about Christians’ failure to exhibit this feature.)

So here’s an interesting thought about love and fear. . .

Love, in its purest form, is completely fearless.

Odd, isn’t it? I mean, fear and love seem to go hand-in-hand. We’re afraid to love because we might get burned.

Or the love won’t be reciprocated.

Or we might be taken advantage of.

All legitimate fears. But none have any place near love.

Check this out.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
~1 John 4.18

Um. Ouch.

I strive to love perfectly, flawlessly, purely. Yet I’m held back by fear. And I think it’s this fear that is crippling me and keeping me from becoming the man that God is calling me to be.

Fear destroys love. The most common command in the Bible is “Do not be afraid” or some variation of it. I think it’s time I start obeying this command.

Tweet This Post

God pours out his blessings on everyone. No matter what.

All we have to do is ask him.

What’s sad is that we often assume that we have to live a certain way or do certain things before God is willing to share his love with us.

So we slave to earn God’s favor, and hope that he’s happy with the work we’re doing.

But Paul wrote a different story about God.

“If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us?”
~Romans 8.32

It’s interesting to see how much our lives change through a simple change in perspective. You can look at your life one way, believing God to be an angry judge waiting to see us screw up, seeing every difficult or painful situation as a way for him to find fault in what we’re doing. Or you can look at life another way, seeing God as a benevolent king who wants nothing more than to watch you grow and mature, embracing every trial as an opportunity to become stronger and wiser.

And God wants this for us. He’s longing to give us great things. He wants our lives to be fulfilled and joyful. The letter writer James put it this way:

“Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle. He brought us to life using the true Word, showing us off as the crown of all his creatures.”
~James 1.17-18

We mean a lot to God. Isn’t there comfort in knowing this? Maybe a simple shift in perspective is all we need.

Tweet This Post

Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
and his understanding no one can fathom.

On any given Sunday in Morristown and New Brunswick, there are dozens of tired, weary people pouring out their lives and hearts in service to the Kingdom of God. And as difficult as it is seeing my brothers and sisters weakened under the pressures of a busy Sunday, I know that the almighty Eternal One is immersing them in his strength.

Sometimes it appears that promises like the one in Isaiah are unfulfilled in our lives. We’re tired, worn out, burned out, weakened. And yet that miraculous strength has yet to show up to rejuvenate us, to refresh us.

But that strength doesn’t exist to help us out of a jam or to lift us out of weariness.

It exists to bring glory to our God. To remind us that, even in the moments where God feels distant, uncaring, or nonexistent, he is still in control.

To remind us that resurrection takes place all the time. To remind us that God is still in the business of giving life to the dead.

That strength is promised to those who trust that kind of resurrection power. So as I sit at a desk in my church’s offices, thinking about all the weary faces I encounter every Sunday, I am reminded of the power that calls the dead out of the grave.

To my brothers and sisters on staff at Liquid, when the strength-sapping Sundays come around, remember the power that can send you into the skies on eagles’ wings. Remember the power that conquers death.

And remember it belongs to you.

Tweet This Post

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

We often think of Jesus in terms of his time here on earth. But there’s so much more to him than what he revealed while he was walking among us.