In Jesus’ name, Amen.
A rather bold statement isn’t it? I go before God having been saved by the death of Jesus, ask for stuff, and at the end tack on a “In Jesus’ name” just from habit. Think about it. When I pray I say what I have got to say, and at the end it always seems to be “In Jesus’ name” – even when it isn’t.
It seems all to hollow for my liking. Just attaching the name of our savior because we happen to be talking to God. Moreover, I remember all to vividly hearing of Jesus in the garden praying to God. “Not my will but yours be done.” That was a prayer of Jesus, so it must be in His name. This was a prayer about asking God for something. Pleading with God to avoid such a great pain. It was not about Jesus’ agenda but about His mission. Jesus’ name is not a signature to just inscribe upon the last words of a prayer.
If I pray in Jesus’ name, I commit myself to praying such a prayer that I would dare to name Jesus in it. Fallen and sinful as I am, I just spoke the name of God who was crucified for me to live. I spoke it to God in connecting with all that I have just said. And with a little rubber stamp, I signed “Jesus” at the bottom. Merely to name Jesus in praying is not a sign of a good or righteous prayer. Signaling the prayer’s end with “In Jesus’ name” does not get it an answer.
No, to pray in Jesus’ name is to pray in such a way as I would follow “Not my will but yours be done.” It is not a matter of words spoken but a heart submitted. If I am to pray in the name of Jesus, I had best pray like Jesus: not in words or actions, but in humility. God who became flesh. He who died out of His great love of us. He who cried out “Father forgive them for they do not know what they do.”
It is Him that I claim signs my prayers when I utter “In Jesus’ name.” I mention His holy work and His passionate service. In that same breath I speak of me, my thoughts and my desires. They are not worthy of so close a connection to Him. When I speak of Jesus and I speak of myself it makes all the clearer why He died, and it makes all the greater my debt unto His love.

~JCPunk

Suppose this for a moment, it is your birthday. There you are at your party; everyone you want to celebrate with is there. You’re smiling and laughing – it is a great time. They start singing the song, you know the one. You’ve heard it a million times before. Then you see it. Here comes your birthday cake. It is set down right in front of you, and you discover a huge chunk of it has already been carved out. Your birthday cake is missing a piece.
Even though I may personally dislike celebrating my birth, that would hurt. Such a stunt happens all the time. The great dramas of life, the events that shape our ideas of people, are not found in the “moments that last a lifetime.” I doubt if I could recall those truly pivotal moments in my life. I remember who hurt me. I remember the tears. I remember crying out as it felt like my anguish had cut me in two – penetrating to the core of my being.
These are the moments that count. It is one thing to be at the top. When you and God are hand in hand walking through life, the world is never more lovely and never more forgettable. When that grip slips and clouds form on the horizon, we point back and cry out. “Oh God! Why?” We scream and we talk about how good everything was, about how life was different, about how we were walking with God, about how we saw God change the world when we were there with Him.
We point backwards, declaring to any and all that we belong there. That was our spot. “God why? Can’t you see how good we were together?” We reached so many; we did so much. We look forwards. “God I really need you back in my life before this all happens. God I need you help to get through this.” How can I achieve my goals with you if you arn’t there?
It takes me so long. Each and every time I must wait. Not on God, He is ever there. I wait until I remember. God is not in my past; God is not in my future; God is not in my present. God is. I am just along for the ride. He does not need me. I do not complain out of right. I do not present my timetable because it is authoritative.
It is one thing to talk about God, about who He is and about what He has done. It is quite another to get on my knees and thank Him. I may cry out at the past or at the future I have set for myself, but I only have God to cry out to. All my other words are for loss. They create what is missing from my birthday cake.

~JCPunk

Looking back, I wonder about what has happened here. As I sit in this all to comfy chair, I wonder about the world out there, beyond these walls. It is Thursday, again, did I “really let my light shine” today? Mayhap I am the only one, the great louse. I sit when I should stand. I bite my tongue rather than speak, lest someone should take my words. It is so easy to invite people to an event. The event can hide my failure to evangelize. The event can hide my hypocrisy.
“Do you love me?”
“Yes Lord you know I do.”
“Then, feed my sheep.”
Without a second thought I would call Jesus my Lord. In that same instant I would rather silently skip feeding sheep. If I love Him, then I will do what He asks. So simple a task, go where God would ask. Alas, doing is so much more difficult than just saying the words. I look to my left and to my right. I seek after this year’s Christianity. The ideas of last year no longer inspire me. Those symbols and those sermons have lost their power – the edge which drove me.
How dare I find God no longer trendy. How dare I let go. It is not the symbols that have lost their power, nor is it that the sermons have drifted to nothingness. It is not the ideals of last time which have dwindled. It is I. Those never had any power save pointing to the One who does. That has not changed. God is still who He has always been.
This year is no different from the last. Christianity has nothing new to offer this year. There is nothing to flood the market with. No WWJD bracelets no copies of The Purpose Driven Life, no we have the same thing we always have had. Unconditional love. We have always had Jesus, you remember, the author and perfecter of our faith. He was crucified, died, and buried. On the third day He rose again, redeeming humanity from sin.
Yeah, that guy. I think He is more than this year’s Christianity. He is the Christ. He has forgiven my failings. I have but to feed His sheep, and I shall follow after Him ever more. Merely to step forward is merely a step. Walk forward. Follow Jesus.

~JCPunk

An interesting quirk of humanity is that we seek. We look for the best sports players, the best writers, the best novel, the best grade, the best school, the best way to write a paper and so on. Always seeking after something.
God came before Abram and said to him, “I am the Lord your God.” God came and found. When God came to Moses and said, “I am the Lord your God,” God came and found. When God came to Samuel and said, “I am the Lord you God,” God came and found. When Jesus came to the disciples and said, “Follow Me,” He came and found. In fact, the big phrase of God’s servants throughout the Old Testament is, “Here am I Lord.”
Here am I Lord.
God, who is above all and whom we seek, came to us. The oldest models of faith did not go out to locate God – He came to them. God moved toward them. Their fame rests in having declared there presence to God.
God, “Who will go?”
Isiah , “Here am I Lord. Send me, though I may be a man on unclean lips.”
By all rights we should have to look for God and He should sit and wait. He is the one whom we should serve. He is superior; we are inferior. But He seeks after us. We seek after a lot of things. God desires us so greatly that we are blessed beyond all understanding. God became man to seek us more fully. Once He was there people began pouring out of every place to seek Him there. Out of love for us God sought us.
We should be seeking Him, but He sought us first. The one who is superior came to find the ones who are inferior. Above and beyond what any would deem the proper behavior of a supreme being God came to us. Supremacy sits enthroned on high. Love is nailed to a cross. It is not merely that God is supreme or that God is love. It is that in His supremacy He loves enough to die. He is the one whom we should seek and love, yet He is the one who has sought after us – to love us.

~JCPunk

In any discussion of faith there is the eternal struggle between Paul’s, “You are saved by Grace through faith,” and James’s, “Faith without works is dead.” All to frequently I appeal to James for anything related to real faith and to Paul for the more theoretical ideas about what faith is for. I have come to realize that this idea puts faith to my test rather than to God’s.
I may be the only one, but whenever I used to reference this passage in James it was for talking about my faith or someone else’s. Behind the safety of James I sat comfortably spouting pleasantries about being “good little Christian workers.” I was such a fool. Assuming that Paul’s statement about grace and faith was well known among the gathered, I focused on “Faith without works is dead.” Seeking to encourage people in their works I have done many things.
But it was all dead already. There cannot be “good little Christian workers” without Christ. Moreover, any task that begins with “Faith without works is dead” was never alive.
What is faith? Why do we have it? What does it do for me?
“You are saved by Grace through faith.” Paul is not describing something in parallel with James’s rebuke of the lazy. They are not talking about even remotely similar things. Paul is talking about God relating to humanity while James is talking about the life of a Christian. There is no life of a Christian without the relation of God to humanity.
I cannot begin to think about “Faith without works is dead” without first thinking about the death and resurrection of Christ. If I skip this pause of meditation upon the meaning of Jesus death and just jump in to talking about faith in any capacity, then I am not talking about faith. Faith is not something to be memorized and reiterated at every confrontation. Faith is supposed to be a living part of life. Any talk that is just about faith, or about God, without having first planted oneself before the throne of God is just talk. Accurate or inaccurate, the words are hollow. To talk about God as the Lord of my life, I must first make Him the Lord of my life – anything else is empty.
To merely jump into speaking about faith and works without focusing on God and letting Him dictate the actions of a Godly life, is to be wrong. It is one thing to merely talk about what faith is for, it is another entirely to let that faith sculpt my life; this is the point I think James was getting at. We are not to go around talking about works as though they say anything about faith, to even try is nonsense.

~JCPunk

More than my fair share of the time I have sat back after pulling my weight and the weight of a few others on this or that task, and wondered, “Where is my thanks?” I of course never would admit to working for a thank you; it is always for the good of this or that. But that is hypocrisy.
I would rather not count the sermons I have heard about forgiving people 70 times 7. I have heard hundreds of people talk about faith like a mustard seed. I have never even heard people discuss what you find only one verse later. In Luke 17:7-10, Jesus calls me out in my error. “Suppose one of you had a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Would he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’? Would he not rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’? Would he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’ “
How easily we forget what we were commanded to do – Go into the world and preach the Good News. We get hung up wondering where our thanks are coming from for this or that little task; there is a whole world out there needing the love that only God can give and we bicker about a word of thank you for doing exactly as we are expected. Maybe your professors are a little different than mine, but none of mine coo and fuss over me turning my papers in on time. It is expected. When people dare to step forward and own up to their faith, we congratulate them and get excited.
That is such a mistake. We shower praise upon an unworthy person for doing just as they are expected. In an entire lifetime we could not unwrap all of what Jesus is saying in these verses, but I know this. If I ever hear about you sharing your faith with another, I will let you know you did a good job – but then I will ask a simple question, “What about him? Or her, does she know?” Each time we discuss salvation there should be a great party and rejoicing beyond compare – while we were yet sinners Christ died for you and you and you and ……
Celebration of such Love and returning it does not expect a thank you. It makes no sense to expect God’s thankfulness that we have accepted His gift, and He is after all the one whom we serve.

~JCPunk

You may have heard of the time that God parted the Red Sea for Moses and the rest of his buddies (the entire nation of Israel) to cross. Right there at the end of the chapter in Exodus 14:31 it says, “when the Israelites saw the great power the LORD displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the LORD and put their trust in Him and in Moses His servant.” Then they sing a big long song about how great God is. God performs another miracle and makes some bad water drinkable so they don’t all die of thirst. In Exodus 16:2-3 it says, “In the desert the whole community grumbled [...] The Israelites said to them, ‘If only we had died by the LORD’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.’” I am sure that you are thinking, “Wha? How many miracles does it take? Yeah food is an issue, but you just watched God part an ocean so you could walk across on dry land. Why did God pick, what clearly must be, the dumbest group of people on the planet?” The Israelites, in fact, spend most of the rest of Exodus crying about this or that thing that is so much harder now. They were slaves in Egypt, but this living off of the land stuff is so hard. Oh wait, God is sending food directly from heaven to them each day, all they have to do is pick it up. They complain about the food. Do you really think God makes bad food?
What if God comes in a big way in this ministry and changes it up? It will be different, totally unlike anything before. We are so eager to make fun of the ancient Israelites, but we do the same thing when God tries to turn an object we know into something new. We changed the communion plates in my church back home. This caused more of an uproar than our last revival.
Not just here, but as Christians we ask God to do something big in the world around us. If He is going to do us the honor, the least we can do is not complain because it is new and different. I believe that we can wander around in the desert for years, or we can just believe that God is doing something amazing every time He gives us the chance to glorify Him. It doesn’t always have to look like it makes sense, but it does always have to glorify God.

~JCPunk

“No see it is a Christian band/book/shirt.” I am sure that many of you have heard some form of that. Whatever the format, it comes out saying the same thing. “That objection you have is invalid because this object has some sort of tie to the Christian faith.”
Since when has hiding behind Christianity been a fair justification. One of the most infamous sites on the Internet (GodHatesFags.com) hides behind Christianity. The thing is how exactly does their message coincide with what Jesus taught? I believe that Love was rather central. I am convinced that we are called to hate sin, not sinners. Yet they proclaim that they have “A serious Gospel basis.” Jesus said, “Love your enemies.”
Why hide behind the human construct of Christianity? We have Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith. Just a simple comparison should suffice – which is better: the Son of God who started the religion or what that religion has become? If the answer of Jesus does not pop out at you, I would encourage you to read the Gospels.
We use the terms Christianity and Christian so loosely that they can be applied to anything we feel has some relation to what we think those terms mean. How about we start over.
Square one – Jesus is my Lord. We read up on the life that He lived. Then and only then do we dare to take on the title of “Little Christs.” Once we know what His life looked like and can commit to modeling our lives after the love that was His can we hope to bring honor to His name. Until we let go of ourselves enough to let Him shine through, we drag the name of God into the dirt with our lives of selfishness. Until we own up to Jesus is my Lord and follow His commands like a loyal subject, we dirty the image of God.

~JCPunk

“Lets just throw off that sin which so easily entangles and run the races as we are surrounded by this multitude of witnesses – so what can hold us back? Just look to Jesus!”
That is the kind of stuff I hear a lot of Christians say. I am not calling it empty, but I will go so far as to say that it is far more challenging than proclaiming it in a mighty utterance. The verse this is paraphrased from is Hebrews 12:1. Now if you read this you will notice that those witnesses it refers to are the key players in the Bible (see Hebrews 11). Those who by, with, and through faith allowed God to do amazing things.
By faith Abraham…..
By faith Moses…..
By faith Joshua…..
By faith David……
Now if you are going to throw off that sin, it does not mean an end to sin, but it does mean you will pursue it no more. This is a fair claim for throwing yourself into the mix with these guys. I had better mean it to the core of my soul that Jesus is my Lord and my God. No Sunday Christian ever did anything with this great claim of encouragement and hope. No Sunday and Thursday Christian even came close. The Only-In-Public Christian also failed this call to devotion and faith.
There are stories that surround us of heroes who with their did what only God could see. Step one: Jesus is my Lord and my God. Step two? There is no step two. Follow step one: in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight.
Just throw off the idea that there is more to Christianity than Jesus. Just throw off everything that is not Jesus. It is not impossible; it is not easy either. It is an act of faith in the Most High. It is trust and commitment. These men were nothing special until they dedicated themselves unto the Lord. They have been made into models of faith by God; no human can ever become what they were. Only in dedication to God does Moses become Moses.

~JCPunk

I am responsible, not just for myself and every action I perform, but also for the attitude I project, what people see of me – moreover what I reflect of Jesus and His character. That is harsh, but it is also the truth.
I may be the only one, but I know dozens of people who know there is no God because of one person who claimed Christianity yet had no love within them.
“Oh, just come to my group – I don’t want you going to hell.”
If that is Christianity – I quit. This is not some over stated claim merely for the sake of making a point. I mean it. At the center of who I am I know beyond question, beyond the things of this world, I want nothing to do with people who are “better” than me. You know why? If these people who are so superior, than they would have bothered to try and get to know me.
If they had bothered to try to get to know me they would have realized that there is something unique and special that God would die for.
If they had bothered to spend the time trying to find out what I believed before telling me I was wrong, perhaps I could have listened.
If they had bothered enough to love me, than perhaps I might find something in what they offer that I want.
But since I have been written off as too stupid, too unimportant, and too wrong, I guess I can’t change. What matters to me more though is that I WOULD TURN INTO THEM.
I want none of that. This “love” you offer is nothing but judgment. This “love” is hypocrisy. So, here is the deal – with the rod that you measure so shall I measure against you. Pound for pound, inch for inch – you offer me no love and I return none.
Jesus offered better than this; it is time that we remembered who Love really is.

~JCPunk