roots

I was reading Acts this morning and I came across a passage that speaks incredible truth about the mercy and providence of God. In Acts 13, the people in Antioch ask Paul to speak to them a word of encouragement before they left again on their travels. Paul starts by reminding them of their Jewish history, from Abraham to Saul to David, and then to Christ. But in verse 37, he tells them something that often goes overlooked by the american church today.

"For so the Lord has commanded us, saying

"I have made you a light for the Gentiles,
that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth."

And when the Gentiles heard this they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed."

What struck me about this passage is we, the American church, are the Gentiles Paul is talking about. The message of salvation did not start in America. It came from a few, poor, radical Jewish men in Israel. In America, I think we often forget that. We forget where we came from. We forget that we were Gentiles. I think we bring a sense of entitlement to God. We have this idea that because we are American, we have the whole Christian thing down the right way. We think other nations should be doing church like we are. We forget that as Ephesians says "we were separated from Christ, alienated form the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world."

The amazing thing about this passage is that it was not first written by Paul. Paul quotes it from Isaiah, who prophesied that the Jews would be lights to the Gentiles, 700 years earlier. To the Jews, this idea would have seemed crazy. To think that their God wanted to bring salvation to the ends of the earth and use them as an instrument to accomplish it. And here we are, 2700 years after that prophecy was made, the so called "The Christian Nation". I think if we understood our roots, we would fall flat on our face in the thankfulness before the living God. He didn't have to choose us, but he did. He didn't have to send anyone to tell us about Jesus, but he did.

Know today that you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, and a holy nation. Not the nation of America, the nation of the redeemed of Christ.



JN

Come On

One of my favorite bands is Rend Collective Experiment. They hail from Bangor, Northern Ireland... the land of rolling emerald hills, shamrocks, and spuds. Not really (about the spuds so i hear.) They have a song called Come On that has been so relevant to my life recently and I think is relevant to all those who long to worship Jesus.

The song is very simple, yet in it is a profound truth.

The lyrics are:

Come on my soul
Come on my soul
Let down the walls
And sing my soul

Come on, come on, come on, come on
It's time to look up


I love this song because it declares the truth of what we want our hearts to be in our worship of Jesus. There are times when I am either leading worship (musically) or just in the congregation and I feel like I am so far from a place of worship. I feel distracted, disengaged, and just plain distant from God. Sometimes there is no desire in my heart to worship at all. Before I had ever heard this song, I was talking to a worship pastor about this place of the heart. I asked him about those times when we feel out of it and distant. What should we do? He said that sometimes we have to force our heart to worship God. We must tell God "I know I don't feel like worshiping right now, but I want to want to worship. Take me to that place Lord." He said that there times when he will do whatever is necessary to get his soul in a place of worship, even if it means lying prostrate on the ground in front of everyone starting at him. If that is what it takes to force our heart to want to worship, then that is what we must do.

I love the truth that this song captures. The only response to God is worship, and when we don't feel like, we need to beckon our hearts and say

"Come on my soul! Let down the walls. It's time to look up!"



JN

Seasons

In the third chapter of Ecclesiastes, Solomon speaks about the different seasons that we encounter in our lives. In verse one, he says

"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven."

He goes on to say

a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.



These verses have really been relevant to me recently as I feel I am entering into a new season of my life. For a while now, I have really been in a season of growth in my mind. Over the past year and a half I have learned so much about the Word of God and yet sometimes I feel like I am just scratching the surface. But in the midst of learning and growing in knowledge, I had lost a sight of something that has always meant so much to me, and something that defined who I was for a long time. I had lost sight of the journey of life.

One of my favorite quotes is "life is not a problem to be solved, but an adventure to be lived." For the last year and a half, most of the time I have viewed life, as well as people, as problems to be solved. I don't think God made life that way.

So I am really excited that The Lord has broken through all the intellectual restraints I put up sometimes. He has a funny way of doing that. :) He used a band from Northern Ireland to remind me that worship is a lifestyle meant to be filled with joy and life is truly a journey we must embrace as we cross the thresholds through this side of eternity.

So as life moves, and we are taken through the seasons it brings, may our lives sing jubilant melodies to our marvelous, boundless, wonderful, sacrificial Savior, and may we know that He loves us.



filled with the joy of our Lord,

JN

The Battle

It has been a while since I have been on here. The last few months of my life have been quite busy, as the ministry has been growing. This past year, the Lord has really been teaching me a lot about myself and about some of the learned behaviors I have grown up with. But in the midst of realizing I need to unlearn some things in my life, there is a deeper issue in my life the Lord has been unlayering.


I have a tendency to view the Christian life as us humans trying to be better people, to be godlier in our actions and lives. While this is true, the Christian life does not stop there. Ephesians 6 tells us that there is a spiritual battle going on all around us. It tells us Satan is trying to deceive God's children into believing lies. There is a very real supernatural force of darkness that we are battling daily. And the battle is for our heart. If Satan can get believers to be unproductive and ineffective for the Kingdom of God, then he has succeeded.

I have a tendency to merely acknowledge the existence of Satan, but significantly play down his role in my life. Whether Satan or his demons, the truth is there is a spiritual battle going on. This cannot be ignored. And this battle is not only within me, it is outside of me. When the enemy gets my eyes off the eternal and focused on the temporal, then I tend to get discouraged, self focused, lazy, and just down. But if my eyes are fixed on Jesus and the eternal reality of the spiritual battle, I see things much differently. I see the Christian life as not just me wanting to become a more godly man. I see it for what it truly is, a battle that I must fight.

In my past, I have had a real fear that I am inadequate. Much of my life has been lived out of this fear. It was not until recently, that The Lord has shown me that this fear does not only come from within me. It is comes from without. This new truth has changed the way I look at that fear. I used to see my fear that I am inadequate as inadequacy itself. In other words, because I had that fear and I thought it came from me, I thought there was something wrong with me. Something that I had to try and change myself. Much of my Christian life has been me trying to overcome this fear. It never works. Now, I recognize that that fear is a lie that Satan wants me to believe. That battle is not a fight against myself. It is a fight against the demonic strongholds of the spiritual world.

In 1 Timothy 6:12, Paul exhorts us to "Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses."

I love this verse because it demands action. We cannot expect God to do all the work, while we sit back and relax. God has empowered us to fight the good fight trough His Spirit, and by Him, we must take hold of the life to which we were called. This is a daily battle. This is our lives as followers of Christ.

The question is, are you fighting? And if you are, who?


JN

Spiritual Antenna

I was challenged this past month by a youth pastor to always have my spiritual antenna up. What I mean is, throughout my day, to always be asking The Lord what He wants to teach me. God is in the process of conforming His children into the image of Christ. In this process, our character is always being refined so that we would have the blameless, perfect character of Jesus. If we are daily asking the Lord to teach us, He will show us things about ourself that we otherwise would miss.

The past month I have seen a few things in myself that The Lord needs to work on. It is a humbling experience, being shown our imperfections, but it brings us closer to God.

God is always working on our character. We can make it easier by asking Him to open our eyes to our spiritual needs, or we can be the stubborn, selfish humans we naturally are and try and do it ourselves. I encourage you keep your spiritual antenna up and ask the Lord to teach you, mold you, and use you. You will be amazed at what He does!


JN

prayer

I was reminded this week how vital prayer is in our walk with the Lord. I noticed when I stop praying or go hours in my day without talking to God, my thoughts quickly become all about myself. It is so easy for our mindset to be focused on us. Have you ever desired to do godly things for the purpose of making yourself look good? Have you ever prayed or read the Word with the mindset that it is all about you?

This past week, I did not get up early and get into the Word like I usually do. But yesterday, the Lord reminded me something that I had forgotten: He wants to meet with us. When we wake up, God desires to spend time with us.

My mindset has been that reading and praying is all about me meeting with God because He expects that. I forgot that it goes the other way. I forgot that the only reason I can talk to God is because He first spoke to me. This is a truth that I often forget. 1 John says that "we love Him because He first loved us."

Prayer is all about God. It is us relinquishing our dependence our ourselves and submitting ourselves fully to Him. I love in Psalm 17 when David writes:

"Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow if your wings."

I often forget that I am His child and He wants me to just sit and be with Him. What an amazing truth!



JN

five years

I was thinking today about what my life could look like five years from now. Where will I be when I wake up on a cold, January morning in 2016? Who will be president? Will the Cleveland Browns have a super bowl title by then? Will I still live in Ohio? Will anyone close to me pass away? Will I be single? These questions are all the unknowns of life.

I used to think five years was a long time. Now I realize time seems to only move faster. When you break it down, five years is only about 44,000 hours from now. I remember five years ago today. I was a freshmen in high school, studying for my first final exam. I was 15. If you had asked me then what I thought my life would be like now, I would have been probably 99% wrong.

I was reminded in Proverbs today that "In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps." Proverbs 16:9. It gives me great confidence to know that God knows my entire future and He is directing my life.

For some reason, the future can seem intimidating. But we often overlook the fact that the future does not exist yet, at least from our perspective. How can something that does not exist intimidate us? More and more I am reminded that right now is all we have in this life. God asks us to worship Him now. If our gaze is fixed upon Jesus now, then the unknowns of the future simply become the realities of our present. So worship Him with wholehearted devotion right now. Cause that all we have. And that is all we are asked of.



JN