Cleansing the Church Ministries

10/27/2024

Grace defines you! Society labels you like a can on an assembly line: stupid, unproductive. But as grace infiltrates, criticism disintegrates. You know you aren’t who they say you are. You are who God says you are: spiritually alive, heavenly positioned, seated with him in the heavenly realms, one with Jesus Christ!

Of course, not all labels are negative. Some people regard you as clever, successful. But it doesn’t compare with being seated with him in the heavenly realms! You see, God creates the Christian’s resume. Grace defines who you are. The parent you can’t please is just as mistaken as the doting uncle you can’t disappoint. People hold no clout. Only God does.

Listen, God wrote your story. He cast you in his drama. You hang as God’s work of art, a testimony in his gallery of grace. According to him, you are his. Period.

10/21/2024

Is your fantasy that your family will be like the Waltons? An expectation that your dearest friends will be your next of kin? Jesus didn’t have that expectation. Look how Jesus defined his family in Mark 3:35: “My true brother and sister and mother are those who do what God wants.” He recognized that his spiritual family could provide what his physical family did not.

If Jesus himself couldn’t force his family to share his convictions, what makes you think you can force yours? We can’t control the way our family responds to us. We have to move beyond the naïve expectation that if we do good, our family will treat us right. I can’t assure you that your family will ever give you the blessing you seek, but I know this much: God will. Accept God as your Father, and let God give you what your family does not.

09/20/2024

The angel Gabriel gave three prophecies to Daniel. Look at the second one. He said, “A command will come to rebuild Jerusalem. The time from this command until the appointed leader comes will be forty-nine years and four hundred thirty-four years” (Daniel 9:25 NCV). The Hebrew term for “appointed leader” means Messiah…Jesus Christ. The angel mentioned two blocks of time, for a total of 483 years.

Nehemiah was a high-ranking exiled Jewish ruler. He made a request to Artaxerxes to rebuild Jerusalem, and the king agreed. According to the Hebrew calendar, the 483rd year occurred during the Passover of AD 33, on April 6 – the very year and day that Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey. Our Savior fulfilled Gabriel’s prophecy. What a testimony to the authority of the Bible!

08/20/2024

The Christian lives life on tiptoe, ever searching the skies. We awaken with the thought Perhaps today! Our hope is centered on the bodily return of Christ. We are looking to a new age in which Jesus will be crowned as the rightful King and we will serve as his grateful servants.

Peter declared, “The Lord will…send Jesus, the One he chose to be the Christ. But Jesus must stay in heaven until the right time comes when all things will be made right again” (Acts 3:19-21 NCV).

Does that assurance not speak to the heavy heart? Weary of racism? Things will be made right. Weary of child abuse? Things will be made right. Weary of terrorists wreaking terror? Rulers pillaging the poor? Scandal infecting the church? Things…will…be…made…right.

08/01/2024

A great trial of David's faith, whether he could go on, in a dependence upon the word of God, when so many of his men failed him. When we are disappointed and discouraged in our expectations from second causes, then to go on with cheerfulness, confiding in the divine power, this is giving glory to God, by believing against hope, in hope.

Matthew Henry, 1 Samuel 30:9-10

07/18/2024

A prisoner carved these words on the wall of a concentration camp: I believe in the sun, even though it doesn’t shine. I believe in love, even when it isn’t shown. I believe in God, even when he doesn’t speak. What eyes could have seen good in such horror? There is only one answer: eyes that chose to see the unseen.

As the apostle Paul wrote, “We set our eyes not on what we see but on what we cannot see. What we see will last only a short time, but what we cannot see will last forever” (2 Corinthians 4:18 NCV). Jesus asks us to make a choice. Either to live by the facts or to see by faith. When tragedy strikes, we are left to choose what we see. We can see either the hurt or the Healer. The choice is ours.

06/04/2024

Don’t deny your anger. Don’t dismiss your loneliness. Your restless spirit. Your sense of dread. Don’t let your heart shrink into a raisin. Hydrate your soul. Heed that thirst!

Not everything you put to your lips will help your thirst. The arms of forbidden love may satisfy for a time, but only for a time. Eighty-hour workweeks grant a sense of fulfillment, but they never remove the thirst. Religion pacifies, but never satisfies. Church activities may hide a thirst, but only Christ quenches it. Drink him. And drink him often!

Don’t you need regular sips from God’s reservoir? I do. I step to the underground spring of God and receive anew his work for my sin and death, the energy of his Spirit, his Lordship, and his love. His unending, unfailing love. Drink deeply, and drink often.

05/06/2024

When Joseph faced his brothers twenty years after they had betrayed him, he made an incredible proclamation. “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result” (Genesis 50:20 NASB). The Hebrew word translated here as bring about is a construction term. God is the Master Builder. He redeemed the story of Joseph. But we wonder if he will redeem our story as well?

Yes! Deliverance won’t be painless. It may not be quick. But God will use your mess for good. You are a version of Joseph in your generation. You carry something of God within you, something noble, something holy, something the world needs. That is what God is building in you. But it will take time. That’s just how these construction projects develop.

05/02/2024

Denalyn and I enjoyed a nice dinner at a local restaurant one night. About the same time we received our bill, we received a visit from a church member. After we chatted for a moment, he reached down and took our bill and said, “I’ll take this.” Guess what I did? I just let him take it away.

Someday we will all stand before God. All of us will have to give an account for our lives. And were it not for the grace of Christ, I would find this to be a terrifying thought. Yet, according to Scripture, Jesus came to “take away the sins of the world” (John 1:29 Phillips). On the day when I appear before the judgment seat of God, when my list of sins is produced, I will gesture toward Christ and say, “He took it.” Let him take yours.

03/26/2024

Two types of thoughts continuously vie for your attention. One says, “Yes, you can.” The other says, “No, you can’t.” One says, “God will help you.” The other lies, “God has left you.” One proclaims God’s strengths; the other lists your failures.

Here’s the great news: you select the voice you hear. Why give ear to pea-brains and scoffers when you can, with the same ear, listen to the voice of God?

Turn a deaf ear to the old voices. Open a wide eye to the new choices. The scripture says, “God’s power is very great for us who believe. That power is the same as the great strength God used to raise Christ from the dead and put him at his right side in the heavenly world” (Ephesians 1:19-20 NCV).

02/29/2024

Nathaniel Hawthorne came home heartbroken. He had just been fired from his job in the customhouse. His wife, rather than responding with anxiety, surprised him with joy. “Now you can write your book!” He wasn’t so positive. “And what shall we live on while I’m writing it?” To his amazement she opened a drawer and revealed a wad of money she’d saved out of her housekeeping budget. “I always knew you were a man of genius,” she told him. “I always knew you’d write a masterpiece”

She believed in her husband. And because she did, he wrote. And because he wrote, every library in America has a copy of The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Proverbs 18:21 (NKJV) says, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue.” You have the power to change someone’s life simply by the words you speak.

02/21/2024

If you're following the Healing the Damaged Self class I'm teaching, here's Session 2 of the First Class.

I'm happy to send you the Handout.

This is "Class 1 We're Messed Up!" by Cleansing the Church Ministries on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.