Category Archives: Bible & Ministry

Christian Fashion

Have you ever noticed that when those award shows are on television, people are very interested in “who” they are wearing? Clothing has a lot to say about what kind of person you are. Clothes carry a price tag which says how wealthy you are or how wealthy you are not. Clothes have a style that gives voice to your personality. Certain clothes are worn to show the work you’re involved in like that of a nurse or an athlete. Clothes can also carry a sense of pride like that of a fire fighter, police officer, or military personnel. If we really think about it, clothes puts us into a community to which we want to belong. Clothes give us identity and we identify certain clothing with certain types of people. Many people will spend lots of time and resources building the identity they desire to have.

Clothing is also a commonly used illustration in the New Testament about our spiritual identity. Paul writes to the church in Colossae about this concept of “putting off” our old sinful identity and “putting on” our new redeemed identity (Colossians 3). Putting on means “to be clothed in, to dress ourselves with, to wear.” Paul says in Romans that we must “put on,” or clothe ourselves with, Jesus Christ and “put off,” or lay aside, our deeds of darkness (Romans 13:12-14). This is not a description of how to get salvation, but how to live out that salvation.

The tendency for us as Christians is to continue dressing ourselves as though we haven’t accepted Jesus as the Savior of our sins and the Master of our lives. The attitudes that we wear on our face and the actions we involve ourselves in, they are our clothing. So we have to ask ourselves: what are our attitudes and actions saying about us to those who are watching? It’s why Paul encourages us to “clothe” ourselves with compassion, kindness, goodness, generosity, mercy, gentleness, love and patience (Colossians 3:12). These things are fruits or evidences of a life filled with the Holy Spirit. I heard someone once say “if you’re happy and you know it, tell your face.”

One of the problems is that we often don’t think much about what we are wearing spirituality. James likens it to wearing dirty and soiled clothing in James 1:21. Many of us would be embarrassed to be caught wearing filthy clothes day after day, yet why do we do this day after day spiritually? We need to spend some considerable time and resources on wearing this identity of being with Jesus. The challenge for us as we leave the house tomorrow and walk down the red carpet of life, would be to ask ourselves: “Who are we wearing?”

5 Ways to Show Real Encouragement

No one would deny the power of encouragement. You can probably remember a time when you were encouraged by someone right when you needed it. And you can probably remember a time you really needed it and yet it never came.  Not to make light of anyone’s attempts to encourage, but sometimes, our efforts to encourage don’t really hit the spot. Do you know what I mean? How can we make our attempts to encourage more real for the receiver?

Here are my suggested 5 ways to show real encouragement:

1) Just be there and listen for many days after.

People are pretty good about giving you their condolences during the heat of the battle. They can be quick to show up and help out. But I’ve come to believe that it’s the weeks after and in the particular memorable times later on that become the times when people really need some type of encouragement. The problem is that people don’t go around announcing a battle re-occurrence. Being there right when it counts is huge. And since you never know when those times might arrive, check in often. Job’s friends comforted him for 7 days without saying a word. It’s only when they started talking after Job shared his pain that problems were created.

2) Meet some real physical needs.

In the most commonly quoted Philippians passage of “I can do all things through Christ,” Paul is talking about his ability to live with a lot and the ability to live without. Paul mentions that only a small group of people sent him gifts. This gift contained meaningful items to him. It wasn’t that Paul expected a gift from anyone, but it was nice to actually get something tangible, knowing someone was thinking about him. People enjoy receiving something more than words. Not that words aren’t important. We should give encouraging words. But maybe a little more is required. Sometimes we need to “put our money where our mouth is.”

3) Tell them and remind them of the good things to be done together.

Encouragement comes during times of discouragement. These are times of despair, hurt, and hopelessness. Reminding them of the good they have done in you and could still do may give them a spark to see the value they still play. We, as humans, often respond to what we see. And if we see no one impacted by our existence, it makes us question and even resent many things including our purpose, our personality, our responsibility, our beliefs, our values, our friends, our career, our family, and our God. Yet, it only takes 1 to reset the course of destruction.

4) Make the encouragement personal.

Sometimes there is nothing worse than a boxed encouragement. Christians often like to do this in the form of giving Scripture to the problem. We quote verses like Romans 8:28 or Jeremiah 29:11. Although these verse are very true, they can be misplaced if it makes little sense to the person receiving them. It would be like giving them a snake when they were asking for something to eat.  It would be like saying you would pray for them when they were asking if you could watch their kids or help them move. I’m not minimizing prayer (as you’ll see in #5) or giving of Scripture, but get to know what’s going on with the person so you can rightly land all those types of encouragement on target.

5) Pray for them and, if possible, with them.

Knowing someone is praying for you really does a lot. It helps us know that we aren’t fighting these battles by ourselves. There’s also something about praying with someone in person. It takes that encouragement and makes it personal. We can actually hear the prayers of the other person that said they were praying for us. Jesus said in Matthew 18:20 that “where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am with them.” We already have Jesus and the Holy Spirit speaking on our behalf. Praying with them in person reflects that God is there for us as well.

Certainly I have a long way to learn these suggestions myself. I know that I could have done better in many cases. There’s plenty of opportunities to encourage someone right around us. What else would you add to the list to make encouragement, real encouragement?

What does Bible reading do?

If you’re a Christian, you have heard plenty of times that bible reading is good for your spiritual growth. But what does that actually mean? What should we expect to gain from reading the Bible?

There are some who would say that the Bible is full of wisdom and principles from God that lead us to discover success in life.  In this reasoning, the Bible gives us the keys to know how to unlock God’s secret rooms and methods toward fulfilling our dreams and gaining earthly blessings. These nuggets of wisdom and principles also help us deal with humanity so we can live in the land of peace, liberation, and prosperity. But I don’t think this is what the Bible is for. Most of us would agree that the Bible is God’s story of providing the solution to our sin problem. It is the revelation of Jesus Christ and our need to believe in Him by faith. Yet, why do we continue reading the Bible for anything else?

In one sense, I believe we then reduce the Bible and the hope of its message to following the Old Testament “law of works” to gain spiritual growth. We often resort to learn the “do’s and don’ts” of the Bible in order to practice them to gain something for ourselves or some sort of increase in our spirituality (the way spiritual people would say it). But if we know that we can’t increase our spiritual standing before God, what do we mean by spiritual growth?

We turn into the people of Galatians in the New Testament who added Judaism to Christianity by adding the good works of the Law for their spiritual growth in Jesus Christ. Paul spent a big portion of his letter to this church for deserting the true gospel.  We do the same thing when we buy into this false goal of Bible reading.

When we define spirituality with blessings of this kind, we reduce the idea of spirituality to an odd and unbiblical concept. Spiritual growth is not that we get to a higher level of spirituality (if that would be possible), but that we gain a better understanding of our need for a Savior and God’s solution to that problem. More Bible reading helps us grow in our knowledge of what we learned from the Bible in the first place. Spiritual growth is that we become more obedient to the spiritual life we now live by.  Following those “do’s and don’ts” in the Bible are done only because we know that God commands us to act like we already have a relationship with Him. We show that we are in God when we love one another (John 13:34-35). It’s an expression of our relationship with God rather than a means to gain more of a spiritual standing with God. When we fail to live by those commands, we only express that we don’t live by that relationship, but for ourselves.

We can’t build upon our spirituality with deeds because it’s foundation is not deeds. We live to proclaim our acknowledgement of God in our lives. We read the Bible to understand how we can do that more. We read the Bible to put the goal and center of our existence in God. We read the Bible to be reminded of our need to be corrected and produce more good stuff in our lives for God rather than the pursuit for our happiness and pleasure. Not that God wants us to be miserable. Total opposite. He desires for us to be blessed and have abundant joy, but not so we can spend it on ourselves. During our reading of the Bible, we do find out that God does have blessings for those who live this way. Praise God that He does bless us with every spiritual blessing in heaven through Christ! There’s no secret or key to God’s blessings. They are free for all who live by faith in Christ. Keep reading your Bible to gain more understanding of this truth you believed in already. Keep reading your bible to understand the depth, width, and height of God’s love. You won’t get tired of reading it because it becomes fresh every morning. We have a poor memory, don’t we.