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“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” — 2 Corinthians 10:5

Every sin we’ve ever committed had a common birthplace: the mind.  Before a muscle moves or the mouth speaks a word, the mind formed a thought suggesting a course of action.  Purity in thought, then, leads to purity in action.

Taking control over our thought life might seem difficult to do.  Thoughts come at such rapid pace that it might seem overwhelming to control each one.  The point, though, is not to be free of ungodly thoughts, but to control what we do with the thoughts we have–or rather, what the thoughts lead us to do.  Next time you catch yourself doing something you knew you shouldn’t have, trace back to the thoughts that led to the action.  How do those thoughts compare to God’s Word?  Do your thoughts reveal a belief that you — or another — are someone other than God’s beloved child?  Choose not to act on deceitful thoughts and embrace truth instead.  Then you will be “transformed by the renewing of your mind.”  Romans 12:2.

Sustainable Love

“Remain in my love.”  — John 15:9b (NLT)

“Sustainability” is the buzz word in these Green times.  The UN World Commission on Environment and Development defined sustainability to mean “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”  How might this apply to living a godly life?

The Great Commandment is to “love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind” and “love your neighbor as yourself.” Matthew 22:37-39.  Putting this into practice requires access to a renewable supply of love because lots of it is needed.  The source of such love is a life hid with Christ.  Love by your own means and it will last for a while, but eventually the limits of your supply are tapped and burn-out will settle in.  Remain in the love Christ has for you, and love will flow out of you like a perennial stream.  The Great Commandment calls for sustainable love.  Make every effort to remain tapped into His endless supply.

For a related post, see “Love and Be Loved.”


Can Do

“I can do everything through him who gives me strength.”  — Philippians 4:13

“But it’s too hard!”  The Bible never said being a follower of Christ is easy.  What it does say, though, is that we have power from God to lead a Christ-honoring life.  Oft miscited as inspiration to achieve personal desires, Philippians 4:13 is actually the key to honoring God’s desires.  By His strength, we can — love the unlovable; respond to meanness with kindness; abandon sinfulness for godliness; live a life surrendered to Christ.  Philippians 4:13 reminds us that we have a reasonable God; He issues no command that is impossible to follow.

Just Ask

“You do not have, because you do not ask God.  When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.”  James 4:2-3

“What just happened here?”  That’s the likely reaction when God responds to a prayer we didn’t expect him to answer, and with blessings beyond our imagination.  Answers to prayer are evidence of God’s faithfulness.

God wants us to ask him to provide for our needs, not just because he has the ability to provide, but also because the act of asking draws us closer to him.  Truly depending on God for help is a humbling experience.  It means giving up prideful thoughts that we can just rely on ourselves.  It requires trust that God’s solution will satisfy.  And in the process of crafting our request, we learn what he desires to bless us with and discover God’s heart so that we would not “ask with the wrong motives.”  James 4:3.

The wonder of our relationship to the Father is displayed when we get to the point of knowing him, asking him, trusting him, and receiving from him.

Bryce Canyon Photos

Bryce Bryce Canyon photos are up on my Flickr page.  Grand Canyon up next!

Zion National Park

Zion National Park

Pictures from my recent trip to Zion National Park are up on my Flickr page. Pics from Bryce Canyon and Grand Canyon coming up soon.

Happy Anniversary

Today marks the one-year anniversary of this blog. To my regular readers — all four of you :) — thank you for your support and comments. I’ve enjoyed hearing from you. I confess I haven’t updated the blog with posts as often as I would have liked. Last year was breakneck busy. This year has been calmer, so hopefully I’ll have more time to write. I do try to post a devotional at least once a week because I am part of a group of Christians at my workplace who send out a devotional daily by email to a list of subscribers.  My day is Wednesday.  That’s why many of my posts are published on Tuesday night or Wednesday morning.  Time permitting, however, I hope to post more than just devotionals this year.

As I was going through some of this year’s entries, it occurred to me that I don’t think I ever explained the name for my blog, LIGHTbreak.  My initial inspiration for the name comes from the way God often gives me insight into His heart.  In the middle of my muddleheadedness, God will speak to me a truth much like how a ray of sun can break through the clouds.  It’s a beautiful thing, and I am humbled He communicates with me that way.

But there’s also a scriptural basis for the name LIGHTbreak.  In Isaiah 5, the Lord recounts the ways in which the sacrifices offered by the nation of Israel are superficial, and then instructs Israel on the kind of sacrifices He’s really interested in — justice, feeding the poor, clothing the naked.  If you do these things, the Lord says in Isaiah 5:8, “[t]hen your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.”  (Emphasis mine).

I admit that Isaiah 5:8 was not the original source of the name for this blog.  Still, it’s a good reminder of what is dear to God’s heart.  I hope my future posts will reflect efforts to live out Isaiah 5:8.

Less of Me, More of Him

“let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise–the fruit of lips that confess his name.”  — Hebrews 13:15

Sacrifice involves cost.  Offering a sacrifice means giving up something.  Sacrificing something that costs nothing is no sacrifice at all.  Cf. 1 Chronicles 21:24.

We offer a valuable sacrifice when we praise God even in times when we don’t feel like it.  Life circumstances may be gloomy, the future unclear — praise God anyway.  Give up your feeling of entitlement to self-pity and worry. Surrender your finite vision of things and exalt the infinite God.  When we intentionally confess that God is God, we trade in human frailty for the joy of being in His awesome presence.  Then do we live out John 3:30 — “He must become greater; I must become less.”

The Church and Vocation

I began reading Redeeming the Law: Christian Calling and the Legal Profession by Michael P. Schutt, a book given to me a while ago.  I did not have a chance to read it until my recent vacation.  I’ve only read the first chapter, and already it has sparked some thoughts.  The book speaks of the disillusionment Christian lawyers and law students face.  Some feel as if it’s impossible to be a faithful Christian and a lawyer.  Others struggle with integrating faith into the legal profession.

I have experienced the same struggle, but thankfully, God early on exposed me to marketplace ministry.  In fact, I was involved in marketplace ministry before I even knew it was called that.  Shortly after I joined the firm, I was pleasantly surprised to find that there was an active community of Christians there.  Later on, I got involved with HisBiz and then began formally learning the theology behind marketplace ministry.

I find it interesting that one of the reasons for disillusionment among Christian lawyers identified in Redeeming the Law is the lack of understanding of the doctrine of vocation.  The Lord exposed me to the doctrine of vocation early in my career.  As I reflect on what He’s done in my career, I’ve come to realize that He faithfully answered my prayer when I began my job at the firm that my desire was to honor Him in my career and continue to grow in Him.  I prayed that prayer knowing the potential for my job to consume all my energy and passion, and to shape me in the ways of the world.  Seeing others like Schutt talk about the need for an awareness of marketplace ministry, and then seeing how god taught it to me before I could even identify the need is a testament to His design on my life.

The other thought sparked by the book is how lackluster an effort the Church is making in supporting their members in fulfilling their vocations.  Redeeming the Law says this:

The local church has provided little assistance, if not outright hindrance, to professionals working out biblical solutions to issues that arise in their lives.  These issues often take the form of the false roles already mentioned.  Because there is no teaching on vocational duty, some Christian lawyers fall, as if by default, into the prevailing identity of the lawyer as “hired gun” or the inflated ideal of the lawyer as social engineer.  Neither view is helpful to a vision for Christian service.  And many of the Christian lawyers who consciously or subconsciously reject the hired-gun or social-engineer models still see their life in the law as “just a job.”  While the church has recently realized that a “marketplace ministry” is needed, its focus has not been on the doctrine of vocation.

(Emphasis mine).  The above statements apply to any profession, not just law.  God calls his followers into different vocations, and all should be performed to the glory of God.

But it is easy for “marketplace ministry” to become another buzz term, a convenient slogan used by pastors to rally their lethargic congregations into integrating faith into everyday life.  The wellhead of effective marketplace ministry, however, is coherent teaching of the doctrine of vocation, and at least in my experience, the Church is doing little to help its members practice the principles of the doctrine on a consistent basis.

In my job, for example, I constantly need to make decisions with ethical implications.  How do I make these decisions in a God-honoring way?  Well, first I need to be aware of the ethical and theological dimensions of the situation.  The role of the Church is to educate and train me to spot those issues.  After teaching me to identify ethical/thelogical issues, the Church should provide theological guidance to help me resolve such issues.  I cannot say that the modern Church is structured in a way that enables its members to fulfill these two functions with great efficacy.  It seems a rare occurrence that a church would devote a significant portion of its resources to grounding of members in the doctrine of vocation and its implications on everyday life.  Much less can be said about the availability of  “on-the-job” counsel from the Church on theological and moral issues that arise day in and day out.  The Church seems more concerned about issues of general (and visibly controversial) concern, such as abortion and homosexual rights (not that the Church should ignore such issues).

If the Church were to believe the doctrine of vocation with all its heart, it would structure its operations differently.  It would not pay lip service to marketplace ministry by merely mentioning the phrase in a sermon.  Even teaching on the subject is not enough.  What’s needed is the resourcing of church members to fulfill their vocations through counsel, active prayer coverage, encouragement — all kinds of spiritual arsenal the Holy Spirit has supplied the Church to fight the war against the Enemy.  The trick is to understand that the war is going on all around us, and through vocations, God has strategically placed His beloved on every inch of the battlefield.  It’s time to launch a few grenades.

One of Us Made It!

“But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.”  — Hebrews 2:9

Everyone likes to root for one of their own.  Perhaps one reason the election of Barack Obama inspired such excitement was that, for the first time, an African American became president of the United States.  Whether you agree with president Obama’s politics or not, there’s no denying Obama is a trailblazer.  African-American communities rejoiced in the fact that one of their own had made it.  A similar celebration is going on in Hispanic communities which, with the recent nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court, may soon see the first Latino sit on the highest court of the land.

On a much grander scale, and of far greater importance, is our hope in the work of Christ.  Jesus took a form “a little lower than the angels” so he could experience firsthand the foibles of being human — our struggles and temptations — and yet emerge victorious over it all.  We have hope because Jesus blazed the trail to an unblemished relationship with the Father.  We are no longer oppressed by sin because Jesus has set us free.  Be encouraged by the death and resurrection of Christ.  Reflect on what a monumental event that was.  One of us has made it!

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