It's All in the Context

Hello, Everyone! Sorry for being late in posting this but I have been uber sick this week. So finally I am feeling better and my head is clear enough to think so I am sitting down to write this week's blog.

This morning I was reading from 1 John chapter 1. The writings of John have always intrigued me. I don't know if it's because he tended to focus on the deeper more spiritual side of things or because he wrote the book of Revelation or if it's simply because he was the only one of the twelve disciples to die a natural death. Whatever it is, I have spent a significant amount of time in my Christian life reading the writings of John.

So when I get to verses 8-10, I find their familiar exhortations familiar and comforting but then the context struck me, and I realized that I have been missing out on the big picture.

I think just about every Christian out their has heard 1 John 1:9, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us out sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." This is an awesome and powerful verse. Plus confession in the life of a Christian is VERY important to maintaining an open and growing relationship with Christ.

What you miss by not reading it in context is the reason WHY we should confess our sins. Why is it so important? Why not pretend that we never sin or mess up? Why not just go on with life because our salvation is secure in Christ? Why confess? We find that out in verses 8 & 10...

1 John 1:8 says, "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." If we try to deny that we sin or we pretend that we are the perfect Christians we are lying to ourselves--we are liars because the truth is not in us. We must confess our sins to keep us from being deceived and to keep ourselves honest.

1 John 1:10 says, "If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us." If we lie about the sins we struggle with and the sins we commit then we make Christ a liar. The whole reason that God sent Jesus to die on the cross is because we are sinners, because we struggle with sin, and because we are imperfect. If we say that we are now perfect then we make God and Jesus liars. Plus God's Word is not being allowed to live and thrive in us.

It's all in the context.

All verses quoted today were in the English Standard Version (ESV).

Resources on 1 John
  

When God Moves

In the 26 years of my life and 21 years of my Christian walk, I can probably count on my fingers the number of times I have felt God move in a big way. God often answers prayers (even if He doesn’t give us the answer we want to hear) but He seldom shakes us to the very core. However, I saw God move this weekend and I felt Him shake me in a way that I haven’t felt for sometime. This past weekend we had our 3^rd annual Disciple Now weekend at Villebrook. The theme of the weekend was Epic. We wanted the youth to experience God in a way that they have never before. I don’t think that any of us could have imagined what God would do, which was appropriate since the theme verse for the weekend was 1 Corinthians 2:9 …

“However, as it is written:

  ‘No eye has seen,

  no ear has heard,

  no mind has conceived

  what God has prepared for those who love him’”

This weekend strongholds were broken. Sins were confessed. Lives were changed. It’s all because God moved. God began convicting His children of the sin they had been harboring in their life and they listened to Him. They confessed it to Him and to one another. Then they prayed for one another and built each other up.

God not only spoke to the teenagers this weekend, He also spoke to me and to Jimmy and the other adults. Then He answered my prayer for the weekend. I have been praying for weeks that whatever God started with the youth group would pour out into our church and begin to rekindle the fire in the adults. Sunday morning, some of the teens shared testimonies about the weekend. Others praised God through the reading of scripture. We all praised God through the singing of worship songs. Then it really hit and the adults began to confess their sins and pray for each other. It was an overly emotional time, but the healing process was genuinely started for the first time! Praise the Lord!

Over the next few days, I am going to talk about some of the issues that God dealt with me on Saturday night. For now, I simply want to show you a picture of our kids (who are very much my family).

By the way, in case you are wondering…the logos are on the back of the t-shirts, but they look like this…

“However, as it is written: ‘No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him’” 1 Corinthians 2:9