The ascension represents the completion of God’s work in Christ incarnate and the completion of Christ’s work in us.
It’s easy to gloss over the Ascension as we move through the 50 days of Easter toward our celebration of Pentecost, but we should not do so. The Ascension represents a fulfillment of prophecy and explains visions seen by the prophets. It is the fulfillment of Christ’s incarnate work on earth. It is the end of Jesus’ limitations of time and space as he reentered the spiritual realm. It results in the sending of the Holy Spirit and the imparting of spiritual gifts, which we will celebrate at Pentecost. It has so much meaning, yet it is often overlooked as part of the celebration of the life of Jesus.
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The journey through Holy Week and beyond helps us with our unbelief.
The disciples had been through a lot with Jesus; they’d seen multitudes fed, demons rebuked, people healed, and the dead brought back to life. There was still confusion in their minds about who Jesus really was, but some were starting to believe he just might be the Messiah. His teachings were profound at times, confusing at other times as he loved to speak in parables – requiring them to think deeply about what meaning was behind his words and stories. They knew they were headed toward Jerusalem, but they seemed to believe it was for a different purpose than Jesus told them. Three times, he told them what he was going to face. Here is the third passage:
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As we focus on the Love Avenue and our theme, Compelled by Love, there are three questions each one of us needs to address.
There is a lot of enthusiasm in GCI as we focus on the Love Avenue and reaching out to our neighbors and friends, but there are also a lot of questions. How do we do this? Why are we doing this? Is this really our calling? What can my little group do? What does this mean for me and my personal life? I submit these questions are mostly addressed when we answer the three main questions for every Christian. Who is Jesus? Who am I in relation to Jesus? Who are others in relation to Jesus? The answer to these questions gives us the Why of the Love Avenue and our participation with Jesus.
Who is Jesus?
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For the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.
Editor’s Note: For years I struggled with the word “lost” when referring to people who don’t know Jesus. It seemed such an ominous term – almost permanent, as if there was no hope for those who are “lost.” Yet the term is used in the Bible. Jeremiah and Ezekiel refer to people who have become lost (Jeremiah 50:6, Ezekiel 34:16). The psalmist referred to himself as a lost sheep (Psalm 119:176). Luke tells us, “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10). Reading these passages, I see the term “lost” referring to those whom the Lord is seeking. So what does “lost” mean? What does it have to do with our 2022 theme Compelled by Love?... Read the article
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Continuing our focus on Healthy Church, the 2022 theme for Equipper and our GCI media team is “Compelled by Love.” The church of Jesus Christ exists for the sake of other people.
I spent most of my life with an “us and them” point of view. The main “us and them” concerned those who believed in Jesus and those who didn’t believe in Jesus – for simplicity I referred to these two groups as believer and unbeliever. Believers were included; unbelievers were excluded. But my erroneous point of view went beyond that. I also believed in an “us and them” among those who professed belief in Jesus. If you believed what I believed and followed certain commandments, I believed were more important than others, you were among the... Read the article
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When the Son of God put on humanity and became the Son of Man, he was inviting us to participate in the relationship – the dance – that he shares as Father, Son and Spirit.
Cheryl and I love to dance, in particular to waltz or slow dance. Good dancing is fluid – it is two individuals becoming one on the dance floor. Dancing is more than moving to the beat—it is following the rhythm and flowing with the music. It is being in communion with the music and with your dance partner. Good dancers almost glide across the floor as they move together with one purpose. I don’t dance as well as I’d like to, but I love the experience of Cheryl and I moving in unison, sharing in the joy of the dance and the company of each other.
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Advent, which means “coming” – or from the Latin “to come to” – not only illustrates the biblical teaching of trusting in God and waiting for a fulfillment of his promises, but it also offsets the commercial hype and focus of Christmas that is usually not focused on Jesus.
I believe all of us would agree we need Jesus to come. “Lord, please return and fix this mess we live in.” Not only is the world messed up, but so are we. We hurt people without meaning to. We are easily offended. We are accused of evils and bad intents. We misjudge and are misjudged. We know we need God to make us right and to make the world right. We pray and watch for signs of his coming… and we wait, and wait, and wait in hope for evil to be... Read the article
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… young families, teenagers, more people, a building or better place to worship, someone under the age of ___ in our church, a seasoned pastor.
What do you believe you need to make your congregation or fellowship group successful?
I love to look at a Scripture with new eyes – asking God to help me see something I haven’t seen before, or to understand something I perhaps misunderstood before. Admittedly, this has caused me some pain over the years as he has revealed to me things I’ve misinterpreted, misunderstood, or completely ignored.
I was recently reading Matthew 9 and came to the last verse of the chapter, which I’ve heard and used many times in sermons.
“The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the... Read the article
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There is a reason Jesus referred to himself as “son of man”.
Quite a number of years ago, I was asked by my district pastoral leader (DPL) to move to Cincinnati, Ohio, to pastor a church. I said “no” because I had just moved my family to pastor another congregation. Over the course of several weeks, several different people from the Home Office also asked me to move to Cincinnati, and I kept saying “no.” Finally, my DPL called again and said, “I don’t understand, Rick, every time we talk about Cincinnati among the church leadership, your name comes up. Every time I pray about this, again, your name comes to mind. Have you been praying about this?” I said “no,” and he chuckled and asked me why. I told him because I... Read the article
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May we never grow weary sharing that God is a Father we can always run to.
“Religious people drive me nuts, always putting others down and spouting off about their beliefs.” I was talking to a landscaper who was helping me with a lawn project when he shared an argument he had overheard between two churchgoers about a doctrine their particular denominations had different views on. I responded by saying, “That’s OK, Jesus didn’t think too highly of the religious people in his time.”
About this time the landscaper remembered that he had previously asked what I did for a living, and I answered that I wrote for a Christian denomination and I was a supervisor/resource consultant for about 50 pastors. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he... Read the article
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