Freedom in Christ

In Galatians 5:1 Paul writes, 'For freedom Christ has set us free.'

Now, that’s a concept that we as Americans are familiar with right. Freedom is this powerful idea that has come to define American culture and values. We sing about freedom. We talk about freedom. We fight for freedom. America has been billed as ‘the land of the free and home of the brave.’ And might I just say at this point that I thank God for the freedoms that we enjoy as Americans. I think we take some of our freedoms for granted. We are free to worship God. That’s not the case in many parts of the world. So I’m especially grateful to the men and women who serve our country and risk their lives to protect the many freedoms that we enjoy.

So in one sense we’re a free people, but there is another sense in which a person is never truly free until they surrender their life to Jesus Christ. I mean, we believe that we are a free people, born into a free society and that we can do whatever we want. But the Bible paints a different picture. It says that we’re not free, but that we are all born into slavery. It says that we’re enslaved to sin and death. Jesus said, ‘Whoever commits sin is the slave of sin.’ Anyone who’s ever tried to stop sinning understands this. We can’t. We’re all born with a sinful nature and we’re slaves to that sinful nature until Christ sets us free. It’s like our whole social structure has been built to help us deal with sin. That’s why we have counselors and attorneys and cops… But no matter how many systems we develop and programs we create and social structures we put in place, none of it works. We are slaves to sin.

Likewise, the bible says that we are all slaves to death. As one person said it, ‘The statistics on death are rather impressive. One out of ever one persons who are born die.’ I don’t care how much you go to the gym or if you eat your vitamins and veggies and make sure to wear sun-block and avoid everything that’s bad. One day, you will die. That’s why Jesus came. He came in the likeness of sinful flesh and redeemed us so that now we don’t have to die, we can live forever with God. And we don’t have to be enslaved to sin, we can walk in freedom and newness of life. Jesus said, ‘If the Son sets you free, then you are free indeed.’

I know a lot of people who think of Christianity as this thing that strips you of your freedoms. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have been set free from the bondage of earthly passions and pursuits. We are free to love God, and serve Him and worship Him and walk with Him. This is true freedom. Walk in it. Fight for it. Stand in it.

God bless,

Daniel Bentley

WALKING IN THE SPIRIT

In Galatians 5, Paul writes that if we 'walk in the Spirit, we will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.' · If your walking step by step day by day in the Spirit, you’re not going to fulfill the lusts of the flesh. So how do we do that? How do we walk in the Spirit? I think that Jesus is our example in this area, as He is in every area… Jesus did life in the power of the Spirit. I think we forget that sometimes. The scriptures tell us that He was conceived by the Holy Spirit. They tell us that after He was baptized the Spirit descended upon Him in the form of a dove. He was filled with the Spirit. In His first sermon, Jesus said, ‘The Spirit of the Lord has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor…’ His miracles were performed through the power of the Spirit. His preaching was done in the power of the Spirit. He cast out demons through the power of the Spirit. At one point we are told that He was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted. So He overcame temptation through the power of the Spirit. Everything Jesus did while on earth as a man, He did in the power of the Holy Spirit. So that’s what it looks like to walk in the Spirit. And then one of the last things Jesus says to His disciples is, ‘You will receive power when the Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses.’ And so you look at the book of Acts which gives us a record of the early church and you find the Holy Spirit everywhere.

So here’s what that means for us. Walking in the Spirit is about cultivating a heart that is sensitive to the Spirit’s leading. It’s about cultivating ears that are tuned to the Spirit’s voice. It’s about cultivating eyes that are open to the Spirit’s working in your life. You see, when your walking in the Spirit, you’ll find that you’re being led. He leads us to people who need a friend to talk to. He leads us to scriptures that impart wisdom to us and that are applicable to situations that we are going to face in that day. He leads us into situations where God’s love can flow through us. That’s what it means to walk in the Spirit. And as you do that, you’ll find yourself defeating your enemy, the flesh…

God bless

Daniel

INVITATION

Jesus shows up on the scene and He is this Rabbi who teaches like nobody’s ever taught before. He has power over disease and over the wind and the waves. And He’s getting ready to launch His public ministry so the first thing He does is He gathers a group of men and begins to disciple them.

So the invitation of Jesus over and over and over again in the New Testament is to come and ‘follow me.’ ‘Come live as I lived.” Literally, “Come walk with me.” So He’s walking along the shores of the sea of Galille and He sees Peter and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea and He calls them to be His disciples and the invitation is, ‘follow me.’ And it says, they left their nets and they ‘followed him.’ Then he calls James and John to be His disiples and again it says that they left their boats and they ‘followed Him.’ So the call into discipleship always begins with this invitation to ‘follow Him.’

And here's the thing... When Jesus called them to follow Him, He wasn’t just inviting them to follow his teachings, He was inviting them into a brand new way of doing life. This much is made clear by the fact that when He called them to ‘follow Him’ they literally got up left their nets and physically began to follow Him. You see, back in the days that Jesus walked the earth, those wishing to study with a certain rabbi would follow not only that rabbi's teachings as closely as possible, but they would also physically follow him. The idea was that you would follow so closely, in order to not miss a word, that you would be covered in the dust from the road that your rabbi's sandals kicked up as he walked. So, there is this ancient blessing that is still used today among Rabbis and disciples, and the blessing is ‘May you be covered in the dust of your Rabbi.’ What that means is may you follow so closely behind him that as he walks and kicks-up dust, it gets all on you.

So to be a disciple wasn’t just about adhering to a set of doctrines or following a bunch of teachings, it was a way of doing life. In fact, when you go back and look at the first, Christians, they weren’t called Christians at all. They were called ‘followers of the way.’ In the book of Acts, which gives us a record of the first 30 years or so of church history, Luke uses the term Christians only once to refer to followers of Jesus and the rest of the time he uses this term, ‘followers of the way.’ And so from the very beginning, to be a Christian was all about a way of life. It was all about following the One who said, ‘I am the Way, the truth and the life.’ {John 14:6}

God bless,

Daniel Bentley

Amazing Grace

What’s grace? What does it look like? How does it work? Perhaps the best way to understand grace is to set it beside justice and mercy. Justice, is getting what you deserve. If I break the law, and then go to jail for my crime, justice has been served. Now mercy, has been defined as not giving someone what they deserve. I deserve punishment, but when you extend mercy to me, your absolving me of that debt. Your saying, I’m not going to give you what you deserve. Now grace, is something altogether different. Grace is doing good to someone who deserves the opposite.

Let me give you an example. We’re all familiar with Victor Hugo’s book, Les Miserables. In that book there is a wonderful picture of grace. You know the story. The main character, Jean Valjean is a laborer working to support his sister and her seven children. After a long dry spell with no available work, he breaks a window to steal a loaf of bread for them and is caught and sentenced to five years of hard labor at the notorious prison of Toulon. Through misbehavior and escape attempts, Jean Valjean ends up serving 19 years, and Hugo describes his gradual emotional decent as all hope and love are quenched in the crucible of prison life.

One night, Valjean is sleeping on a stone bench on the street, when a woman suggests that he ask for lodging at a nearby house, which she does not mention is the modest home of the Bishop of the town. The Bishop takes Valjean in, feeds him and gives him a bed. And while Jean Valjean is deeply grateful, he’s also pretty hardened at this point, and in the middle of the night, he gets up, steals the Bishop’s silver utensils, and flees. The next day, he is picked up randomly and discovered to have the silver on him. The soldiers bring him back to the Bishop, but rather than pressing charges against Jean Valjean, the Bishop tells the soldiers that he had given the silver to the convict as a gift. And then he also gives Jean Valjean two heavy silver candlesticks.

And then he says, “Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to evil but to good. It is your soul that I am buying for you. I am taking it away from black thoughts and from the spirit of perdition, and I am giving it to God.” That’s grace! That’s what God has done for us.

And here’s the thing about grace. Grace is always expensive to the giver. Shocking to the observer and traumatic to the receiver. First, it’s expensive to the giver. You see, in order to extend grace to us, it cost God everything. Our salvation was not cheap. It’s been said, Salvation may be free, but it wasn’t cheap. It cost God His life. So we can’t ever say that sins not a big deal. Or that it doesn’t really matter. We can’t trivialize it in that way. Because our sin cost Jesus His life. Peter puts it this way, ‘We weren’t redeemed with perishable things like silver and gold. But with the precious blood of the lamb.’ So grace is expensive to the giver.

Secondly, grace is always shocking to the observer. This is what its talking about back in verse seven. When the angels see us and they see how wicked and sinful we are and then they see God pour out His grace on us, it blows their minds. We should be blasted. But God loves us!

Thirdly, grace is always traumatic to the receiver. Think of Valjean. That one act of undeserved kindness changed his life and shaped the rest of his story. Surely all of us are familiar with the story of John Newton. John Newton was the captain of a slave trading vessel in the 1700’s. Of course, he went on to repent of his sins and became a driving force in the fight against slavery. It was he wrote the words to this beloved Hymn.

Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound)

That sav’d a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now am found,

Was blind, but now I see.

Truly this song is so beloved because it captures the essence of what it means to be saved by grace. Written by a man who understood the depth and depravity of the human condition. This song is our story.

God bless,

Daniel Bentley

Stories

I love a good story. And the thing about the bible is, it's filled with them. Noah's ark, David and Goliath, Daniel and the lions den... the list goes on and on. Don't you just love that about the Bible. That it's filled with stories. I know I do. God could have just left us with a stack of rules to keep. He could have left us with a list of instructions on how to do life in the form of a manual. But He didn't. In the Scriptures, you've got all these different genres of literature. You've got history, and law and poetry and prophecy... But by far and away, the most prominent form of literature in the Bible is narrative. Think about that. Of all the ways GOd could have communicated to us, He chose to do so primarily, through telling stories. The gospels are told in this way. And it was a favorite form of communicating for Jesus in His own teaching. So one of the really great things about the Bible is that it's filled with all of these wonderful stories.

But here's the thing. They're not just stories. These aren't fairy tales. They're true! Peter writes in his second epistle, 'For we were not making up clever stories when we told you about the power of our Lord Jesus Christ and his coming again. We have seen his majestic splendor with our own eyes.' {2 Peter 1:16} And what's more, in 1st Corinthians Paul tells us that 'All these events happened to them as examples for us. They were written down to warn us, who live at the time when this age is drawing to a close.' {1 Corinthians 10:11}

So the next time you open your bible, find your way into the story and allow the Spirit of God to shape you through the living word.

God bless

Daniel Bentley

The Long Road Home

   What is repentance?  I think it’s a word that has gotten a bad reputation over the years because of the way it’s been used in a lot of church’s.  We’re used to hearing the word in a context like, ‘You’d better repent or you’re going to burn!!!’  Biblical repentance is something that’s altogether different.  It’s even beautiful.  And the reason I say it’s beautiful and something that we should all be quick to run to is because it opens the door to grace.  I like what C.S. Lewis had to say about repentance.  He said repentance is not something God arbitrarily demands of us; he described ‘It simply as a description of what going back is like.’

Perhaps the best illustration of what it means to repent is found in Jesus famous story of the prodigal son.  In that story, the son takes his father’s inheritance and squanders the entire thing on parties and prostitutes.  Before long, his money runs out and his friends desert him.  He eventually finds work feeding swine. (Not the ideal job for any Jewish boy)  And he actually gets to the point where he becomes so hungry, that he wants to fill his belly with the slop the pigs are eating.  It was at this point, that the gospels tell us that ‘he came to himself.’  He decided to return to his fathers house and beg for mercy.  As he headed for home, while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and began to run towards him and embraced him and put a ring on his finger, and shoes on his feet, and commanded that the fatted calf should be slaughtered. 

And the picture of the boy coming to himself and returning home is the best illustration of what it means to repent. Repentance is the flight home that leads to joyful celebration.  It opens the way to a future, to a relationship restored.  As one author put it, God awakes guilt for my own benefit.  God seeks not to crush me but to liberate me, and liberation requires a defenseless spirit like the one we see illustrated in the story of the prodigal son, or like the one we see pictured in Jonah.

But before that door to grace can be opened we’ve got to admit our need.  And that’s a hard thing for us to do.  It doesn’t take long to learn how to ‘look the part ’ in a church setting.  In fact, it’s been my experience that church is one of the easiest places to hide.  And what can end up happening if we’re not careful is we can all start to look really pretty on the outside, and yet have all this secret sin going on in our hearts.  And the problem with that is in doing that, we become the very people that Jesus had such a difficult time with in the gospels.  In the end, I know of only two alternatives to hypocrisy: perfection or honesty.  Perfection is not a viable option.  Being honest before God about who I really am is the only path that will ultimately lead to life and freedom. 

--Daniel 

The Shared Life

There is this repeated phrase that occurs no less then 6 times in the first chapter of Genesis 1.   Of course, Genesis 1 is this great poetic song of creation in which God is seen moving and creating and forming and fashioning everything that is.  And what we discover is that  God is the author of all the beauty, and all the majesty and all the glory that can be seen in creation.   And so the bible says that He created all of it and He saw that it was good.  And so 6 times we find those words repeated in Genesis 1.  It was good.  It was good.  It was good.  But then in Genesis 2:18 God creates man, and for the first time we find these words uttered from the mouth of God, ‘It is not good that man should be alone…’  

Now, here’s what’s interesting about that statement.  When God says this, He is making this statement before the fall of man.  That doesn’t happen for another chapter.  So what that means is at this point, there is still no sin, no disobedience, nothing to hinder the relationship between God and man. Adam was living in a state of perfect intimacy with God.  Every day they would walk together in the cool of the day.  Adam is perfectly known and loved by an omniscient Creator and yet the word that God uses to describe Adam is ‘alone’. 

I wonder how many of us would use that same word to describe our own existences.  Most of us live lives in which we’re almost continually  surrounded by other people.  We drive on crowded freeways and wait in long lines at Starbucks before we get to our jobs where we work around dozens of people and yet many of us, if we were being truly honest with ourselves would admit that there are times when we just feel alone in the deepest recesses of our soul.  It was Thoreau who said, ‘Most men lead lives of quiet desperation, and they go to the grave with the song still in them.’  Is that not the case?  

And so the Bible says that we were never meant to do life on our own.  Not only were we created to live in fellowship with God.  We have also been created to do life with one another.  And the reason for that is because we have been created in God’s image and after His likeness and God Himself dwells within community.  Yeah… God is a community within Himself made up of Father Son and Spirit.  And His desire is that we would become participants in that community.  

But walking in deep meaningful relationships with other believers is something that is easier said than done. And the reason I think so many of us fail to walk in authentic community with other believers is that it requires us to be honest and open with other people about our struggles and about the things that are really tripping us up in our walks.  And that’s a scary thing to do.

Here’s what sin does.  It causes us to hide our true selves because of fear and shame.  Think back to the Garden of Eden.  Prior to the fall, Adam and Eve lived in community with one another in this beautiful paradise and you know what the Scriptures tell us about them?  It says in Genesis 2:25 that ‘they were both naked and they were not ashamed.’ 

What does that mean?  They were naked and they weren’t ashamed.  What is God trying to tell us?  I think that what’s being said is, they had nothing to hide from one another.  They had absolutely no secrets that they were keeping from one another.  And this is the first picture God gives to us of what it means to walk in community.  Walking in genuine community means exposing who we really are .

But then what happens after the fall?  What is the first thing that Adam and Eve do?  They realize that they’re naked and they hide by sowing fig leaves together.  They hide their identity from each other and then they hide from God.  Which, by the way, I always thought was kind of funny.  As if God was looking around saying, ‘Where is that little rascal?  I can’t find him anywhere.’  God knew where Adam was.  You can’t hide from God.  But that’s what sin does.  It makes us want to hide from each other and from God. 

And the only way to defeat sin is by walking in the light with one another and before God.  It’s going to be a continual battle.  And it’s going to require that we walk in deep meaningful relationships with other Christians. It’s a fight. This isn’t natural. If it was so natural, why is the Bible filled with, “Don’t forsake it...Don’t forsake it...Don’t forsake it...Get with one another...Confess your sins...Walk deeply with one another...  And so in our pursuit of God, we must find that 'band of brothers' or sisters that we can run with, and battle with, and pray with, and cry with, and laugh with and grow with.  Your growth in Christ depends on it.  

-Daniel