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Remember Jesus Christ

4/30/2018

2 Tim. 2:8 – “Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel”

Memory is an interesting thing. A few months back I was scanning old pictures from my younger days in order to have digital copies of them. Some were of mission trips, some were of old friends I haven’t seen in a number of years, some pictures were from vacations, and some were even of old injuries I had. It was amazing how many different emotions I felt as I looked at the pictures. Some were feelings of joy as I recalled what the Lord did on those trips; others were sadness as I recalled old friends who have walked away from the Lord. Feelings of pain came over me as I looked at the injuries and recalled how unpleasant they were.

As I meditated on the above verse, I remembered that I don’t “Remember Jesus Christ” enough. The fact is that Jesus Christ is God, who put on flesh, so that we might be restored to have a relationship with God. Jesus Christ who has forgiven us by his shed blood. Jesus Christ who will one day come back and reign as king.

As we remember Jesus; who he is, and what he did, the good memories become great. And those memories that we’d like to forget or wish never happened…the reality of Jesus taking the punishment of those on the cross floods our minds and hearts.

Take some time today to actively remember Jesus.

Jonathan Lusk

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Ready for the Lord’s Return

4/24/2018

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Well, here we are. April 24, 2018. Looks like we all remained through yet another prediction of the exact date when the Rapture would take place. If you’re not sure of what I am referring to, that’s probably a good thing. It means you missed the media circus surrounding yet another self-proclaimed “Bible expert” who made his second attempt in the last six months to predict the exact date that Jesus would take His church home to be with Him in heaven. Never mind all that stuff Jesus said about “you don’t know the day or the hour.” It seems that many folks simply can’t help themselves when it comes to trying to come up a mathematical formula that will discern the exact day and the exact hour.

I find it very interesting that we have seen a heightened sense of expectation surrounding the return of Jesus Christ in the last hundred years or so, particularly here in the United States. Nearly all Christians, from a myriad of traditions and denominations, believe that Jesus will someday visibly return to the earth to bring about God’s justice and to establish a new heaven and new earth. The exact way He will do this and the timetable surrounding the prophetic events remain a topic of debate. But I think there is a longing in the hearts of all who follow Jesus to see Him face to face, and we cling to the hope that one day He will wipe away every tear from our eyes. It is a good thing to long for this day, and this hope will not disappoint us. Jesus is coming again as He promised He would.

But in the midst of that hope, there is the temptation to spend so much time and effort on trying to decipher prophetic passages that we can lose sight of the most important part of Jesus’ desire for our lives. I know this is true because there was a season in my life many years ago when this was the case. Everyday I would visit several websites and read the daily news trying to figure out how the latest world events fell in line with biblical prophecies. This pursuit became a real distraction from the simplicity of growing in my walk with Jesus and learning how to stay in step with the Spirit. Thankfully, this was a short season in my life, and through it I learned to “keep the main the main thing.”

When Jesus was asked about the most important command in all of the Jewish Law, He answered that it was to first love God, and secondly to love our neighbor. I find it fascinating that Jesus threw the second most important command in with the first. I believe He was emphasizing that doing the first inevitably leads to the second. This is the heart and center of what it is to be a follower of Jesus: loving Him and loving our neighbor. So simply stated and yet it encompasses a universe of meaning and implication for our lives. This is the part of being a Christian that we need to figure out the most. This is what Jesus longs for His disciples to focus on every day.

If we are seeking to love God and love our neighbor, then we will be ready whatever day and hour the Lord returns. I’m not trying to insinuate that we should never contemplate the Lord’s return, or that we shouldn’t seek to study the Scriptures and increase in the hope it gives us. But it’s important that we remember that hearing the words “well done good and faithful servant” are not contingent upon our precise deciphering of the prophetic timetable. Love God. Love people. He will take care of the rest.

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He is Risen. He is Reigning. He is Returning.

4/5/2018

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He is Risen. He is Reigning. He is Returning.

Driving through a small town in Tennessee, I saw this on a church sign and it resonated with me. We are people of the resurrection and we have just celebrated that with great enthusiasm. As I mentioned on Easter Sunday, sometimes we forget that it is resurrection day, everyday. When we give our lives to Christ, we are submitting to his authority and allowing Him to reign in our lives. This has to change us. As Paul says in Galatians 2:20 “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” We need to let Him reign in our lives freely.

We also need to remember that He will return. We don’t know when, but it sure seems like it will be soon. So we need to have a zeal for the Lord’s return and a burden for the lost. We need to be ministers of grace and love and to walk in the peace of God. By doing this, we will encourage those around us to give their lives to Christ. Let’s make sure we take all of our loved ones with us to heaven. Remember that He is risen. He is reigning. He is returning. Praise the Lord!

John Ohanian

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Remember Jesus Christ

Ready for the Lord’s Return

He is Risen. He is Reigning. He is Returning.

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