A Passion To Share

“A Passion To Share”

By Zach Wood

Acts 20:24 (NLT)

“But my life is worth nothing to me unless I use it for finishing the work assigned me by the Lord Jesus—the work of telling others the Good News about the wonderful grace of God.”

Paul is one of my favorite characters in Scripture.  Not just because of the passion he had for sharing the Gospel, but also because of the transformation that happened in his life from being a persecutor and murderer of Christians.  It is absolutely amazing what God can do with a life and how He can transform someone.  Then, to watch the person build a passion in his or her life to do amazing things for the Kingdom. 

Paul not only had passion, but he was willing to do anything and everything possible to make sure the Gospel message was spread.  He did not care what threats came to him or what all he had to go through to get this accomplished.  He was passionate, dedicated and determined.  He was one bold man!  With all the accomplishments Paul could thrive on, he made it very clear that his life was worth nothing if He was not completing the work of Christ.  That’s a bold statement!

I cannot help but wonder why, in the church today, we don’t have the passion that Paul did?  What keeps us from not only being so passionate, but also having no other desire other than to make Christ known to the world?  Why do we care about so many other things that are really not important, but then focus so little sometimes on getting His Word out? 

My hope and prayer for us, as Christians bonded together in unity as the Church, is that we develop a pure passion for Christ and a mission in our hearts to share His love and that nothing else will matter to us.  There is no greater message we can spread, as the Church, than to share the Good News about our wonderful and awesome God.

Never-Ending Consistency

“Never-Ending Consistency”

By Zach Wood

Hebrews 13:8

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.”

One of the most simple verses in the Bible to understand, yet it’s one of the most important messages we could ever remember.  So many things change in life, every single day.  And…..throughout the day!  We are surrounded by constant change in life.  It almost seems like nothing really is consistent, except for the consistency of constantly changing.  Everywhere we turn, there’s some new technology coming out or some new law being put into effect or something else happening.

It’s not a surprise to any of us that we live in a constantly changing world.  It’s hard to rely on anything and hard to rely on anyone sometimes.  While people do have good intentions at heart, they are fickle and sometimes surprise us with change.

With all the change going on around every day, I am reminded today to be thankful that Jesus never changes.  His love for me is constant and full each and every day.  He loves you as well and that will never change.  He is someone we can depend on, no matter what else in life seems to be falling apart or changing constantly.  Sometimes, we just need to stop what we’re doing, sit down and take in the fact that Christ is always there for us and His love will never change. 

We cannot do anything to make Him love us more or love us less.  He is all that we need and we can rely on Him when nothing else makes sense to us.  It is amazing to know that we have a Savior that we can fully trust to carry us through life and be there when it seems nothing else in life is going right.  And, when life does seem to be going well, He still there and still loves us just as much.  We can always rely on Him, never-changing and always by our side. 

He is the same yesterday, today and forever!  Amen!

From Worry To Peace

“From Worry To Peace”

By Zach Wood

Philippians 4:6-7 (NLT)

"Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus."

If there is one thing we are all good at, it is worrying.  We all have varying degrees of how much we worry, but every human being worries at one time or another.  No one is excluded from this problem.  As much as Jesus told us not to worry, we still find it necessary, for some reason, to continue worrying and dwelling on things that haven’t happened yet or might happen.

You know what really feels wonderful?  When we finally give our worries over to God, let Him be in complete control and experience peace.  There’s nothing else like the peace of God surging through your body and taking away the worries.  When we focus each day on letting God be in control and not focus on our minds so much on the things of the day, there’s an unexplainable peace that fills us.

The first line of this passage is very important.  Paul says not to worry about anything, but to pray about everything.  I am ashamed that I have a past of being a worry-wart.  I don’t try to be, but it’s in my blood somehow and I have to daily put my trust in God and let Him be in control so that I don’t make my blood pressure sky-rocket!  I often let worry consume me and focus on things that haven’t even happened. 

I’m also ashamed that I often find myself not focusing on praying through things.  I encourage others to pray, but so often I myself fail at being faithful in my prayers life about things I’m worrying about.  I’m sure many of you, if not most, struggle with this exact same problem.  When we finally let go of worrying and pray that God will fill us and guide us, we feel a peace that we cannot explain.  The worries of the world then seem to fade from our minds and hearts.

If we want to experience true peace from God, then we need to let go of the worries we have and let Him be in control, every day, all day.  It is indeed hard to do, but it’s possible only through God.  

Do We Really Follow?

“Do We Really Follow?”

By Zach Wood

John 8:31-32

“To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, ‘If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples.  Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’”

It’s really easy for any of us to do something in our lives and think we are good at it.  We often try new things or get into a new hobby or other activity and think we do a pretty good job.  Maybe at our work we get into doing a new project and we consider ourselves to be doing a pretty decent job and we feel good about.  While it’s great to feel good about a job well done no matter what we are doing, it’s still important to make sure we are actually doing things correctly. 

It’s quite easy for us to go along through life and think we are doing things correctly and quite well.  Sometimes, a manager or supervisor at a job or a friend or family member needs to stop us and show us how to really do things right.  We’re often taken off guard when we realize we haven’t really been doing things right and need to shift gears and do things another way.  It’s not that we desired to do things wrong, but we thought we had a pretty good idea how to do them.

Sadly, this happens a lot in our walk with God.  We often go through life doing things we feel are worthy of Jesus and His teachings, but really we are just doing what we think is right.  It’s easy to go through each day of life and “think” we are doing things right, when many times we may not be.  We must constantly be in God’s Word and seeking His direction through the day so that we know we are in step with Him.  We can say we are true followers, but if we’re just doing what we think may be right and what we like to do, that doesn’t mean we are truly following Him.

Jesus says if we truly hold to His teaching, then we are really His disciples.  We cannot just think we are doing life right and go on our merry little ways.  We usually have great intentions, but if we are not truly seeking to follow Christ and checking His Word to make sure we are following, then we need to reexamine our ways.  When we choose to study His Word daily and pray for guidance, then we will know the truth more and that truth will surely set us free. 

We cannot just think we know what is right to be doing, we must be in sync with His Word so that we know what we are doing is from His teaching.

Loving Others

“Loving Others”

By Zach Wood

1 John 4:13-16

“We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.  And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.  If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God.  And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.  God is love.  Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.”

Does it seem to be easy to love others when we enjoy being around them?  Does it seem easy to love others when we get along with them and don’t argue?  Of course it does.  When our kids are behaving and using great manners, it puts a smile on our face.  When we are around family and friends who we really enjoy being with, loving seems to come naturally.

How about when we are around others who seem to be nothing but difficult for us?  How about when we are around our kids or other’s kids who do nothing but whine, complain and throw fits?  How about when we work right beside someone all day long who does nothing but use foul language? 

How do we feel about loving others when we are around these people and others that are challenging to be with?  Of course loving others with God’s love is so much easier when we are around those who don’t present a challenge to love.  We sure want things easy, don’t we?  We want things to be the easy way so much.  However, we often forget that God wants to work through others who are difficult to build our character and to teach us to love deeper. 

How could we possibly grow in loving others if we are always around those whom are easy to show love?  We would not grow.  God’s love is definitely beyond our love.  However, we can still strive to show His love, even though we will be imperfect many times.  We must make an effort to be sincere in our love for others, especially when other people seem to be more difficult.

What we must always remember when we deal with difficult people is that we are also difficult to deal for others to deal with as well.  As much as we sometimes want to focus on how others are toward us, we are the same way.  God’s love needs to be lived through us, always.  No matter how difficult others are, God wants to strengthen our hearts so that we learn to love regardless of how we are treated.

Listening Is Not Enough

“Listening Is Not Enough”

By Zach Wood

James 1:22-25

“Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves.  Do what it says.  Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.  But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does.”

Being a parent has been one of the most challenging things for me to deal with over the past eight years.  I absolutely love being a dad, but as any parent would claim and admit to, it has its very frustrating and challenging times.  No parent can escape this.  While we love our kids and would do anything for them, there are very challenging times, especially when they don’t listen.  It creates frustration to try to do the best parenting and not say or do something we will regret later. 

No matter how many times I have issues with my kids not listening, God always uses those situations to remind me that I often struggle with listening.  There are so many times I have problems listening to Him.  When I notice how my kids don’t listen, it’s often a great reminder God uses to show me how I don’t listen to Him often.  It’s painful to realize this, but this pain often helps me to grow and to be reminded how I need to listen to Him more. 

However, listening is only part of the battle.  Listening is great and we all need to be better and improve on this area in our lives, but it’s only part of what we need to do.  After we listen, then we need to do what we’re told to do.  We cannot just do things halfway and think we’ve done well.  Again, while listening is great and understanding what we’ve heard is wonderful, then we need to put into practice what we’ve heard. 

I appreciate how James explains that listening and not doing is pretty much worthless.  If all we do is listen and not put anything we’ve heard into practice, it’s about as useless as looking into a mirror and then forgetting what we look like.  God gives us commands and instructions for us to obey and put into practice.  If we don’t, we are not being obedient to Him.  We must break this “halfway” problem and do more than just listen.  We must do what we’ve been told to do. 

Just as we want our kids to do more than listen to us, we also must listen and do what God has told us to do.

Our Need Provider

“Our Need Provider”

By Zach Wood

Matthew 6:33 (NLT)

“Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.” 

Jesus talks on the Sermon on the Mount about worrying in our lives and what it does to us and what it does not do for us.  It hurts us so much when we worry and it does not become a productive thing for us.  So many of us are great at worrying.

We tend to seek a lot of things in our lives.  We seek a good spouse.  We seek a great friendship. We seek a good job.  We seek to have good kids.  We seek to have a nice house.  The list could go on and on.  We seek a lot of things.  None of these things are bad in and of themselves, but when they become what we focus most on, then we’ve taken our eyes off Christ and we start to worry.

I like how this translation explains that we need to seek God above all things.  It is not at all that we cannot seek to have a good life by having things, but these things and relationships cannot be what we seek the most.  If we have our eyes completely on Christ to be our All in All, then He will provide all that we need in life. 

When our eyes are focused on Christ, it is much easier to not worry about little things that we so often focus on that we make bigger.  It is great how Jesus encourages us not to worry, but to make Him priority and He will provide everything we need.  Easier said than done, but what has Jesus ever asked us to do that would be easy?  His ways are not easy.  They are challenging and they are intended to build our character and make us stronger.

As you continue into this new year and throughout the year, I encourage all of us to focus on Him more so that our worries become less and less.  He will provide.  He will give us all that we need.  We desperately need to seek Him more than anything else we desire.  When we do this, we will see our worries lessen because we are relying more on Him.