If you've ever had a teenage son, you'll know this answer. When a teenage boy gets home from school, what's the first question he asks? "What's for dinner?" Now one of our boys' unfavorite answers to that question was that dreaded "L" word - leftovers! Now leftovers aren't too many people's first choice for a meal. Right? And the longer they've been left over, the more unsatisfying that choice becomes. I know I've never been to a restaurant who offered an item called "leftovers" on today's specials, or anywhere on the menu for that matter. Let's face it. They're second best - at best.
Well, Jesus knows that feeling. A lot of us have tried to fulfill our commitment to Him by giving Him the leftovers of our life that we don't really care that much about. But He paid the whole price for us when He poured out His life for us. He should get what He paid for. And Jesus isn't any more impressed with getting leftovers than we are. You can tell from our word for today from the Word of God in Malachi 1, beginning with verse 6. Now, God's people in that day worshiped Him by bringing spotless livestock as atonement for their sin. And God says, "'It is you, O priests, who show contempt for My name.' But you ask, 'How have we shown contempt for Your name?' ... When you bring blind animals for sacrifice, is that not wrong? When you sacrifice crippled or diseased animals, is that not wrong?'" Well, God goes on to tell them that they might as well shut the temple doors and that all their religious exercises are, in God's words, "useless." We have a lot of time to put into making money, watching TV, recreation, sports, but we're just too busy to give prime time to the work of the Lord. It's very clear that God is not impressed with sacrifices that cost us nothing ... with the leftovers of our life that don't matter that much to us anyway. But far too many of us try to get by with what I call "Selective Lordship." We may sing, "I surrender all," but we live, "I surrender some." And while the Christians around us may be impressed with our spirituality, God says, "You're giving me your leftovers and you're holding on to the important things for yourself." And honestly, that is an insult to Jesus ... the one who held back nothing as He paid your eternal death penalty. He paid for all of you. Are you hanging onto your music, your activities, your relationships, your entertainment, that sinful attitude or way of doing things? What part or parts of your life can't Jesus have? Why? Because you love that more than you love Jesus? Because you don't think you can trust Him with the stuff that really matters - you can't trust the Man who gave His life for you? When David had a chance to get for free the land that God commanded him to acquire, he said to the owner: "I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing." (2 Samuel 24:24) David knew you don't try to get off cheap with God - because cheap is basically worthless when it comes to giving to the Lord our God. So, what's it going to be in your relationship with Jesus Christ - your leftovers, or your whole life? Jesus paid the whole, awful price for you. Shouldn't He get all of you? RON HUTCHCRAFT
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I was a senior in college, interning at a local church. The youth pastor asked me to attend a high school Christian club meeting on his behalf. I was happy to oblige. It was almost the end of the school year, and this club was meeting one last time before the summer started. During the club, students played a couple of games and sang a couple of silly songs. Then, at the end of the night, a college leader got up and asked students to share what this club meant to them and how they had grown that year. One by one, students began to go to the front of the room and tell their story. Some stories were goofy, some were mushy; none was substantive.
I was disappointed that no students were sharing about what God had done in their lives or how they got to lead a friend to Jesus. But then a girl (“Jasmine”) stood up and began to speak: “Hi. Most of you know me from school, and so you know I’ve got a reputation. Throughout high school, I would go partying every weekend. I’d get totally plastered. But then I met one of the college leaders here—‘Kristen’—and—” At this point, she welled up and giggled a bit to compensate for her tears. I thought, “Here we go! Finally! This girl is going to straight up share the gospel and talk about how the grace of Jesus has changed her life! This is awesome!” She continued, “I met Kristen, and now—well, I mean, I still go to parties and I still get drunk. But now I know that God loves me, and so it’s okay.” “I met Kristen, and now—well, I mean, I still go to parties and I still get drunk. But now I know that God loves me, and so it’s okay.” She giggled some more, hugged Kristen, and sat down as her peers clapped for her. It was all I could do not to do a facepalm (although I was doing one on the inside). I had just witnessed a modern day example of what Bonhoeffer called a “cheap grace”—a so-called grace in which people take God’s offer of forgiveness as a license to live however they want without any fear of divine retribution. I wish Jasmine’s story were unique. The truth is many teenagers think this is how grace works. They have a warm, fuzzy feeling that God loves them and has a wonderful plan for their lives; they just don’t think that plan involves any change on their part. Many today are good at calling teenagers to “faith” in Jesus. Believe this, pray that, and you will be saved. Upon praying a prayer, students are given the assurance that they can never, ever lose their salvation—which is absolutely true if they are actually saved. But they can’t lose what they never really had. The fact of the matter is if a continued pattern of sin is evident in their life, it is doubtful they have ever truly known grace. As youth pastors, we must equip students to understand that genuine faith requires repentance—and that a call to grace is a call to holiness. Students need to know . . . 1. Grace is not freedom to sin; rather, grace is freedom from sin. What Jasmine failed to understand was that Christ did not die for our sin so that we could continue in it; He died for our sin so that we could go and sin no more. Will we all still struggle with sin? Absolutely. Does our struggle with sin separate us from the love of Christ? Absolutely not. But the attitude of sinners truly saved by grace is not to wallow in the very behaviors that Jesus died to deliver them from. Rather, redeemed sinners trust in the work of Christ on the cross and desire to become like Him. When the Apostle Paul explained salvation by grace, he anticipated the replies of those who would seek to abuse it. That’s why he asked, “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?” (Rom 6:1-2). The Apostle John likewise warned, “No one who abides in [Jesus] keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen Him or known Him” (1 John 3:6). Jesus Himself warned that we “will recognize [people] by their fruits” (Matt 7:20). Thus, anyone who continues in sin, thinking that God’s grace will cover it, only reveals that he has not known God’s grace at all. We must not offer students a cheap grace that allows them to proclaim devotion to Jesus with their lips while having a love affair with sin on the side. Jesus is an all-or-nothing kind of guy. We must call students to choose their sin or choose Jesus. They cannot have both. 2. Grace does not mean we take sin less seriously; it means we take sin more seriously. Contrary to what Jasmine thought, it was not “okay” that she was still going to parties and getting drunk. It is certainly true that we are saved by grace through faith and not by works. But that doesn’t mean we can be flippant about our sin. Jesus told us, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). The Apostle Peter reminded us that “as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct” (1 Pet 1:15). Genuine faith produces the fruit of good works; by the same token, “faith apart from works is dead” (Jas 2:26). That’s why Paul, even after he has told us that there is “no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:1), admonished us to “put to death the deeds of the body,” which themselves lead to death (Rom 8:13). A casual attitude toward sin reveals a casual attitude toward Jesus. While we don’t want students to live in guilt and shame over sin from which they have truly repented, we cannot allow them to think that a “decision to follow Jesus” means anything less than actually following Jesus. 3. Grace is simultaneously a call to rest and a call to action. There is nothing more liberating than knowing that we have contributed nothing to our salvation. It means we can do nothing to mess it up. Praise God that it is “by grace [we] have been saved through faith”—and that even this faith is a “gift of God” so that there is no room for boasting (Eph 2:8-9). Praise God that nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of Christ” (Rom 8:39). Indeed, we fix our eyes on Jesus as the “founder and the perfecter of our faith” (Heb 12:2), knowing He will be faithful to complete the work He has started in us (Phil 1:6). Our trust is in who Christ is and in what He has done on our behalf. What a joy to rest in that truth. But resting in that truth is not a call to become a spiritual couch potato. Instead, in light of the fact that our standing in Christ is sure, we are called to get to work. No sooner does Paul tell us that we are saved by grace through faith does he tell us that we were “created in Christ Jesus for good works” (Eph 2:10). Even after telling us to fix our eyes on Jesus, the author of Hebrews goes on to tell us to “strive . . . for holiness” (Heb 12:14). When we experience God’s grace, we don’t just check out and wait for Jesus to come back. Instead, we recognize that we are the firstfruits of a coming kingdom, showing all creation what the restored image of God looks like (Jas 1:18; Rom 8:18-23, 29-30). “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Cor 5:17). And this newness isn’t just “not sinning”; rather, this newness is marked by a zeal to advance Christ’s kingdom (2 Cor 5:20). Don’t shortchange your students when it comes to grace. They have work to do—glorious work—work that is inaugurating the kingdom even as it is transforming them. I think many of us are afraid to talk about holiness because we’re afraid of being legalistic. But calling students to obedience is not legalism. Legalism is telling students they have to do a bunch of good things in order to earn God’s grace. Holiness is the sign that we have experienced God’s grace. Many teenagers—and adults too—want to accept the grace of God without the life transformation that is supposed to come with it, thinking they can have the one without the other. They can’t. There’s a generation of “Jasmines” out there who are perishing, and they don’t even know it. In grace, let’s call them to that which Christ has called them: a life of obedience and repentance. Anything less is not only cheap; it’s damning. by Ricky Stark Once you've gotten used to a new convenience you find yourself asking, "How did we ever do without these?" Sadly, my cell phone is one of those new things that seems indispensable now. Especially when you have lots of irons in the fire and you're on the road a lot. Often, by the end of the day my cell phone and I have something in common - our battery is dead and we need recharging. I get into a bed - my phone gets plugged into an outlet. Not long ago, I went through my night-night drill in my motel room, including plugging in my cell phone. It wasn't happy the next morning when I went to turn my cell phone back on. Oh, I had plugged it in - on one end. See, I had connected my phone cord into the phone, but I had forgotten to plug it into the wall. So, my dead phone was still very dead.
When you forget to plug a cell phone into the power source, it's going to be powerless. It's the same for you and me. We're designed by our Creator to regularly plug into our power source. When we neglect to do that, we find ourselves increasingly losing power. Life becomes more and more overwhelming. The old you, the bad you, starts making a comeback. You become less kind and more harsh; less peaceful - more stressed; less about others and more about yourself. And as the demands increase, your power to meet those demands seems to be diminishing. Jesus becomes less real and your cold or fearful heart becomes much too real. Those are pretty clear indicators that you are trying to live unplugged. You've been "Martha-ed." I know that's not a verb, but it is now. Martha's story is in Luke 10:39-42, our word for today from the Word of God. And it's an all too revealing mirror of what we're like when we have neglected our connection to our power source. Jesus was a guest for dinner at Martha's house. The Bible says: "She had a sister called Mary, who sat at Jesus' feet, listening to what He said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to Him and asked, 'Lord, don't You care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!' 'Martha, Martha,' the Lord answered, 'you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.'" Pretty amazing: Martha has the Son of God right there in her home, and she is stressed, and critical, and miserable. That's when Jesus lets her know that all the important things she is hustling around doing are not as important as what Mary is doing - sitting at His feet, listening to Him. If life has become way too stressful and overwhelming for you, it's a good possibility you've been making that same mistake. You've let the bombardment and the overload squeeze out your personal time with Jesus - at the very time when you need Him the most! The busier and "behinder" you get, the more desperately you need the perspective and power that comes only from sitting at the feet of the Son of God. In Psalm 42, the psalmist cries out: "My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?" That needs to be the cry of your heart. Because a regular time with Him is, as Jesus said, the "one thing (that) is needed." It's time for you to make your time with Jesus not an option, if and when you have time, but the singular non-negotiable of your daily schedule. You just can't afford to leave home without it - with the mercies that the Bible says are "new every morning" (Lamentations 3:23) - mercies that keep us from being "consumed." If you're running out of power, it's because you've been unplugged from the source of power too long. You're missing Jesus - and He's missing you. Get back to the source of your power. Ron Hutchcraft Now, let me make clear, I didn't participate in World War II, but I've been told that they gave American soldiers more than bullets to support them when they went into combat. They gave them a chocolate bar. It makes a lot of sense, actually, when you think about needing a sugar rush when they've got to have all that energy for the battle ahead. And maybe that's not all bad. Of course if you did it to a man as he's about to fall on the couch and take a nap, that might be bad. That's the funny thing about sugar. You eat it and you exercise, boom, it's energy! You eat it and you just lie there, it's fat.
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Joshua 1:8. We're looking at this because God has a lot of overweight kids because there's no conversion. When I say overweight, I'm not talking about physical pounds. When I say conversion, I'm not talking about being born into God's family. Spiritually, too many of us are loading up on spiritual food but not converting it into action. Which is why we're looking at Joshua 1:8, "Do not let this book of the Law (the Bible) depart from your mouth. Meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful." Okay, God says, "I want you to meditate on this." Actually the Hebrew word here is chewing like a cow chews their food; over and over and over again. In the original Hebrew, it's actually "chew it until you're ready to digest it." He says, "I want you to think about it, okay. And then I want you to talk about it. I want it to be in your mind. I want it to be in your mouth. Don't let it depart from your mouth." And then He says, "All this is so you will do something because of what you read." I want it to be in your life! So you don't just study God's Word to get smarter spiritually and to know something. Every time you pick up this book, you're supposed to do something; live different because of it. Now, most of us get a lot of great Bible teaching. I mean, you've got sermons to watch and listen to, Bible studies, CDs, DVDs, books, seminars, and radio programs. You know what? You can have a notebook full of Bible notes, and you can have a life that's spiritually empty of any real change in your relationships, your finances, very little change in your pet sin, or your attitude, your temper, your pride, your complaining. Now, why is it that North American Christians are so well fed and yet we seem so spiritually powerless when you compare us to like third world Christians who don't have all of this? Could it be that we're just hearing it, we're filing it and we're not applying it? Are we just letting it turn into spiritual fat? And then there are people in situations where they have to put it immediately to work. They're living on it, living for it. They're living it. We need exercise! That means you study the Bible to find out what God is saying about a particular issue. But you don't let it stop there. No, you say, "Now, what should I do differently today because He said this?" Keep a journal. Write down and process what He said to you, and then what you say to Him that you're going to do that day because of what He said to you through His Word. Writing it down actually takes the abstract and it makes it concrete; it's like right there in front of you. See, when it comes to the Bible, we've got a lot of information; not nearly so much application. We're storing all kinds of Bible information and yet it's turning into fat. But when you make it a daily discipline to put the verse to work as soon as you can, it turns into a lot of spiritual energy that will enable you to live more powerfully than you've ever lived before. Ron Hutchcraft |