Category: Devotional Blog

Profound thoughts, often challenging the Christian.

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Struggles.

If you’re not struggling with sin, you’re probably not much of a Christian.

This statement popped in my head a couple weeks ago and I’ve been thinking about ever since. I have no idea where this quote came from or even if I thought it up myself, I can’t remember. When I first heard it, I immediately disagreed and began trying to disprove it because it didn’t make me feel good. It was, however, intriguing enough that I thought about it and considered what truth there might be to the statement. After thinking about it, I completely agree. This is a very true statement. Let me explain:

All have sinned, right? That means we all have a sinful nature. Those who have accepted Jesus also have a Godly nature. Paul talks about this battle of two natures in Romans 7:14-20. So considering this conflict of man, having sin in our lives is a given (unless certain parts of the Bible don’t apply to you :)). So if you’re not struggling with sin, then you’re just living with it — you’re not much of a Christian. …ouch.

So, it’s good for Christians to be struggling with sin. Is it messy? Oh yes, its very messy. But messes aren’t bad — its sort of like poop.

Now this got me really thinking. Have you ever been in a church when there is an altar call for people who want to re-dedicate their lives to Christ? I’ve often seen very few people respond to these. I think a lot of people are thinking, “Oh, that’s not for me – I’m not that bad.” Or maybe a huge hunk of people are thinking, “Nope. I’m not struggling with a sin right now.” Well . . . they should read this blog post, I guess.

I’m not trying to change altar calls nor am I saying they’re bad — those altar calls for re-dedications often are targeted towards those who have been running away from God. But if healthy Christians are supposed to be struggling with sin, shouldn’t each of us respond to our own daily re-dedication altar calls in our hearts?

Reader, can I challenge you? Is your sin a struggle or merely an annoyance to you? Do you even recognize your sin or have you been like those in the Laodician church and ignore its existence entirely? I’m not necessarily asking you to respond to these questions in the comments below, but I do ask that you respond to these questions in prayer. Think about it.

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Two Words.

If I surveyed each of you, I would find a lot of testimonies of how God changed your life – some large, some small. Perhaps yours would start out like, “I was spiritually oppressed … “, “I was at the brink of death …”, “I was an angry and bitter person …”, “My marriage was at the end of its rope …”, “I was doing drugs …”, “I struggled with gender identity …”, “Pornography consumed my mind …”, or “I was a liar ….” But for those of you who have had your life changed by God, this is only the start of your testimony. There are two words that usually come after each of these statements and they are two of the most beautiful words in the language:

“. . . But God.”

Pause.

If you are still breathing, your testimony is still in the making. That means we all have “starts of testimonies” that still need to be turned over to God – I’m talking to everyone here. When we turn to God, we open ourselves to a Better Solution that brings the words “but God” into our testimony once again.

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Self-Centered Christianity.

Our first problem is that our attitude toward sin is more self-centered than God-centered. We are more concerned about our own ‘victory’ over sin than we are about the fact that our sins grieve the heart of God. We cannot tolerate failure in our struggle with sin chiefly because we are success-oriented, not because we know it is offensive to God.


W. S. Plumer said, ‘We never see sin aright until we see it as against God … All sin is against God in this sense: that it is His law that is broken, His authority that is despised, His government that is set at naught … Pharaoh and Balaam, Saul and Judas each said, ‘I have sinned’; but the returning prodigal said, ‘I have sinned against heaven and before thee; and David said, “Against Thee, Thee only have I sinned.”

This is an excerpt from some sermon notes of Dwayne Roberts (from the leadership team of IHOP). This paragraph was a “Goliath moment” for me; it hit me right between the eyeballs.

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Jesus is NOT My Homeboy!

If you read about the early church in the Book of Acts, you will see a drastic difference between today’s Christianity and the church described in the Book of Acts. Extraordinary events today were ordinary for first century Christians: healing, dead being raised to life, hundreds coming to Christ every day, miracle after miracle after miracle. So I dug into the Book of Acts to answer this question, “What did the early Church do that Christians today are not doing?” This post is a part of a series of posts that aim to answer this question.

They Respected and Feared the Name of Jesus Christ. Here’s Scripture.

In the book of Acts we can see respect for Jesus formed after a great work. Amazing things were happening and it resulted in a Holy Fear for God. That didn’t surprise me, that just makes sense. But compare that to today’s world.

Today the respect for God has been diminished into the ever popular, “Jesus is my Homeboy” campaign. Thousands of T-Shirts with these designs have swept the country. The “Jesus is my Homeboy” design does a great job demonstrating the caring relationship we can have with Him, but it tosses respect and Godly fear right out the window. Jesus is NOT my Homeboy – HE IS GOD!

The natural result of Godly fear is genuine holiness. Revival starts with holiness.

Church, if we’re expecting God to come and do amazing things among us — if we’re hoping for God’s presence to show up powerfully — if we’re hoping for a revival, we must be holy. We must respect and fear Jesus and his commands. We must be obediant. God will come with great power when we’ve prepared a Church that’s worth it.

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My Gray Hairs Are Gone. Seriously.

My second year of college was the busiest year of my life. I was a full time university student studying music (which meant a lot of practice time). I led and directed a midweek evangelistic children’s program at my church. I worked a significant amount empowering the worship teams and choirs to serve more effectively. I took Bible college courses in the evenings. I had never been so stressed in all my life. I actually wrote out my schedule to help me organize my time and realized that I had a grand total of something like 4 hours PER WEEK of non-committed time. That means for every week, I had a grand total of 4 hours to hang with friends, watch T.V., take showers, or just whatever I wanted to do. I was about that busy all four years of college, but my second year was the worst. It nearly killed me.

During that crazy busy time, I grew 3 gray hairs. I knew exactly what they were from: stress.

Yesterday when I was getting ready in the bathroom, I realized that my gray hairs were gone. (Don’t even start with the, “You’re going bald” crap. I’m not going bald – the gray hairs are gone). It was quite cool – I mean do I have less stress? Maybe. But more than that, I think I’m handling the high levels of mental stress much better now that I’m doing a better job at living a LIFE of renewal.

Now of course I’m not equating no gray hairs with good spirituality. That’s not the point. I’m talking about what the gray hairs represented in my life. Good spirituality will eliminate the “gray hairs” (ignored stress). “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.” That means if we’re spending time with God, eagerly anticipating Him, our strength will be RENEWED. We’ve heard that scripture in Isiah a million times, but seldom do we live like it.

When crazy busy times come our way, I think we go into a “focus” mode and we only do the things that MUST be done — which ignores our time with God. That thinking is killing Christians! When we have more work to do than ever before, we should pray twice as much! God will make up the difference, he never lies: “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.”

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Everyone On a Soul Search – Go to McDonald’s

I met a Buddhist (yes, right here in DeKalb County) a few days ago who agreed that all religions were equal as long as the person was sincere in what they were believing. I pushed his idea to the limit and said, “So if I believed that a chicken egg was God and I worshiped the egg, I would find [heaven]?” He said, “yes.” Now as I wrote here, the only way to heaven is through faith in Jesus. I was concerned about this man’s eternal destiny, but he (as a Buddhist) wasn’t the least bit concerned about mine. I was sincere in my Christianity — and to him that was enough. If I was sincere in “Big-Diehl-ism” it would have been fine, as well.

I recently saw an add on my own website which read, “Which Religion is right for YOU? Click here to take the test.”

I threw up a little bit in my mouth.

When I go to McDonald’s I can order a Big Mac, a Salad, or Chicken McNuggets. It really doesn’t matter which I choose – it’s a choice from a menu. What if religions were just a choice on a menu?

“Hi, I ‘d like some Islam (with no jihad), with a side of Buddhism, some Christianity to drink, and one of those cherry Wiccas for desert.”

If that was the case we could all just go around picking and choosing whatever we felt was correct at that moment. Deciding right from wrong cannot be based on our feelings, attitudes, or pleasures. I didn’t choose Christianity because it “fits” me the best or it looked the most tasty on the Religion menu – I chose and continue to choose Christianity because its the only religion in the world that can connect me to God by creating a bridge over my spiritual separation from Him (sinful nature). No other religion in the world addresses the issue of our sinful nature like Christianity.

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“Just”

Whoever started the trend of putting the word “just” in front of the phrase “a peanut butter and jelly sandwich” is an idiot.

“JUST” a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. JUST?! What?! Do you have any idea how tasty a good peanut butter and jelly sandwich is? Oh my gosh. They’re wonderful. Especially with milk. “Just” implies that its not that big of a deal. Those sandwiches are actually really good!

Instead of saying “I want JUST a peanut butter and jelly sandwich” I’m going to start saying, “I want a GLORIOUS AND MAGNIFICENT peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”

‘Cuz they’re good. . . . . Think about it.

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Profoundness in “Humil___”

Have you ever noticed that “humble” and “humiliate” start the same and have similar meanings – but there is still a distinct difference.

Humility is a characteristic of your soul.

Humiliation is a characteristic of your “flesh.”

Now the really cool thing is that those who are truly HUMBLE have the deeper thing, and they can never be truly HUMILIATED. Now switch that around: That means those who are easily humiliated probably have an issue with pride in that area. Why else would they be humiliated?

I don’t know about you, but I find that really deep.

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The Spiritual Microscope.

The apostle Paul called himself the “worst of sinners.” I always wondered about that. I mean, this is the Apostle Paul! This is the guy that historically had the largest effect on Christianity, next to Jesus of course. If anyone has ever been CLOSE to God, its the Apostle Paul — yet he calls himself the WORST of sinners. Why?

I think back to 9th grade Biology class. One of my favorite things was working with a microscope in the labs. Maybe I’m a geek – but I still remember the time I looked at a celery cell. The microscope had three different lenses that increased in power. With the first lens, we could see a large group of the individual cells. When we turned up the power to the second lens, we could see three or four cells, and some of the stuff on the inside. When we turned up the power to the highest level, we could see the details of one individual cell. We could see the mitochondria, the lysosome, cell wall, everything (I didn’t even google that stuff, I still remember it!).

When we get close to God, its like we turn up the power on the spiritual microscope and we can see what we couldn’t see before. I think the closer we get to God, the more we see our own sin. This happens to me, but it also explains why the Apostle Paul called himself the WORST of sinners. It wasn’t that he sinned more than anyone else, it was that he could see better. It also indicates his humility.

Do you struggle with your sin? (That’s rhetorical!). My bet is that you say “yes, of course I struggle.” But please press further before simply passing this off as an irrelevant blog post:

Do you truly STRUGGLE with your sin or do you just feel bad about it?

That’s a really introspective question. Go ahead and think about it. No really – think about it. I’m going to wait.

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I think most of the Christians in America, especially the Midwest region, just feel bad about their sin – they aren’t struggling – they are not OVERCOMERS. I think most Christians couldn’t make a list of the sins they are struggling with because they’re not struggling at all – they think they have everything under control but they don’t realize they have nothing. It’s not until they are close to God when they will see clearly through a higher powered lens in the spiritual microscope.

That is the description of the Church in Laodecia that is talked about in Revelation 3. The very nature of this sin is that you don’t realize there is even a problem… it’s a “slow and subtle fade” away from your relationship with Christ. It’s self-deception. I encourage you to ask God to show you if you fit into this “lukewarm Christianity” described in Revelation 3. I wrote more about it here.

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Preach It, Nathan!

I wrote this about two months ago, about how stupid it is when Christians publicly talk bad about a church.

Now now my brother wrote this and its awesome. As I read it, I found myself saying, “PREACH IT, NATHAN!” Go read it – but remember that I’m the better looking one.