FRESH Official Podcast

How often in our lives have you and I put off something that we know would be good for us and yet somehow, we just never paid it enough attention? Somehow, we never got around to doing it. It’s the story of our lives, is it not? Me? I find it easy – very easy in fact – to sit on my backside all day working, and not do one of the most important things I can do for my health: get up and move. What is it in your life? What good thing have you been putting off over and over again because … well, you have some good excuse, hmm? For a good many, the thing they keep on putting off is dealing with the sin in their lives; their anger, their addictions, their animosity, their … well, it’s a long list, choose your poison. But we rationalise things away. I’m just too busy to deal with it. I’ll get to it later. So, with all love in Christ that I can muster, allow me to grab you today and give you a good shake: 2 Corinthians 6:2 God says, “I heard you at the right time, and I gave you help on the day of salvation.” I tell you that the “right time” is now. The “day of salvation” is now. On that day when you cried out to God, He heard you, right? He helped you, He saved you, right? But since then, sin’s crept in, eating away at you. Sure, I’ll deal with it … one day. Wake up! I tell you that the “right time” is now. The “day of salvation” is now. Don’t squander God’s grace. That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.

When you’ve done the wrong thing, have you ever tried to justify your actions – in your own mind and before others? It’s called self-justification. You have to ask yourself … why do we do that? An interesting question that. Why do we try to justify ourselves when we’ve done something wrong? Because actually, we have a strong affinity with doing what’s right. We want to see ourselves and be seen by others to have done what’s right, even when we haven’t. Why are we chatting about this in the days leading up to Easter? Because the gift of that blood-drenched Cross on which Christ was crucified … is justification. Here it is: Romans 5:1 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. (ESV) Whenever you see the word “therefore” in Scripture, we need to ask ourselves what the “therefore” is there … for? And in this case, the Apostle Paul, who’s writing this, is pointing back to the earlier chapters where he’s explained how, by putting our faith in what Jesus did for us on that cross, our sins are completely forgiven because His sacrifice paid the price that justice demanded. When we’ve done wrong we don’t have any peace, do we? That’s why we go the self-justification route, in an attempt to claw back that peace by putting ourselves on the right side of right and wrong. Truth be known, we hunger for justification – a right-standing if you will – and the peace it brings. But if we want true justification, a true right-standing before God, true peace … there’s only one way: By putting our faith in Jesus, who paid the price of our sin. That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.

As we saw earlier this week, Jesus said that out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. True. What we say to people – good or bad – is a reflection of what’s going on in our hearts. We’d all like to think that we have a pure heart, but every day of our lives we’re tempted to have anything but a pure heart; to see the people around us merely as objects, rather than as people in need of our compassion, our encouragement, and our love. So we slip back into treating them badly, or at least, less well than God would have us treat them. It can be a vicious cycle. So perhaps today, it’s time to take a stand. James 3:10-12 These praises and curses come from the same mouth. My brothers and sisters, this should not happen. Do good water and bad water flow from the same spring? Of course not. My brothers and sisters, can a fig tree make olives? Or can a grapevine make figs? No, and a well full of salty water cannot give good water. Are you a good spring with good water, or a bad spring with bad water? Are you a fig tree or an olive tree? Are you salty water or drinkable water? Friend, Jesus died that you might be forgiven your sin, and He rose again to give you victory over your sin that you might walk in newness of life. Is today the day you decide to claim that victory? Is today the day you yield your life to the power of the Holy Spirit to make you holy? Is today the day that you choose, for the rest of your days, the victory of the Cross and the empty tomb? What will it be? That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.

When was the last time that someone said something to you that smarted, that caused you to wince, to recoil; that caused you pain? Think back … is it an experience that you’d like to repeat in a hurry? Probably not, I’d imagine. Definitely not! I have a neighbour who always has some negative comment, some little dig, ready and waiting when he sees me. Not surprisingly, I’m always delighted when I get in or out of our place without running into him. So, let’s now put the shoe on the other foot. Rather than being on the receiving end, what do you and I dish out? What do we say? How do others see us as a result? And most importantly of all, what does God think? James 3:6-9 The tongue is like a fire. It is a world of evil among the parts of our body. It spreads its evil through our whole body and starts a fire that influences all of life. It gets this fire from hell. Humans have control over every kind of wild animal, bird, reptile, and fish, and they have controlled all these things. But no one can control the tongue. It is wild and evil, full of deadly poison. We use our tongues to praise our Lord and Father, but then we curse people who were created in God’s likeness. It’s true, isn’t it? In one breath those of us who call ourselves Christians will be praising God, and in the other, cursing the very same people whom He created and whom He loves. The world hates a hypocrite. And I don’t imagine that God’s all that particularly enamoured of them either. Watch what you say.   That’s His Word. Fresh … for you … today.

As body parts go, your tongue isn’t particularly large – not like a hand or a foot, right? But even with its diminutive size, it can cause a world of blessing or a world of pain. How’s your tongue doing? The other day, we looked at this Scripture together: Luke 6:45 Good people have good things saved in their hearts. That’s why they say good things. But those who are evil have hearts full of evil, and that’s why they say things that are evil. What people say with their mouths comes from what fills their hearts. In other words, as Jesus is often quoted as saying, the tongue speaks out of the overflow of the heart. Without purity of heart, without a heart that’s chosen to draw close to Jesus, to yearn for Him, to follow Him, to worship Him, to obey Him … without that sort of a heart, there’s rarely any good in the overflow. But no matter how pure your heart is, things will still come along to annoy you; things will happen to set you off. James 3:3-5 We put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us. With these bits we can control their whole body. It is the same with ships. A ship is very big, and it is pushed by strong winds. But a very small rudder controls that big ship. And the one who controls the rudder decides where the ship will go. It goes where he wants it to go. It is the same with our tongue. It is a small part of the body, but it can boast about doing great things. A big forest fire can be started with only a little flame. Control your tongue. That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.

As you and I look back on our lives, we can both recall times when we’ve said things that hurt people – lies, criticism, ridicule – that must have landed like a dagger into their hearts. It’s a sobering thought, isn’t it, that you and I have hurt people along the way; that we may have left a trail of destruction in our wake through what we’ve said to others? I heard someone say once that words are containers of power. It’s true. What we say, and just importantly how we say it, tells the other person exactly what we think of them. And even if you’re someone who makes it a habit to think before you speak (and let’s face it, a lot of people don’t – they just blurt out what comes to mind without any kind of filter), even if you’re measured in your tone and careful in how you choose your words, there’s absolutely no doubt that you have, as have I, hurt people with what you’ve said. And sometimes the harm that our words do lingers on for a lifetime. James 3:2 We all make many mistakes. A person who never said anything wrong would be perfect. Someone like that would be able to control their whole body too. Wow – a person who’s never said anything wrong would be … perfect! Absolutely, they would. That takes a lot of self-control – something we’ll chat about over the coming days. But, for the moment, know this: Words have power – the power to do good and the power to do evil. Every word that you and I speak will, to some extent, do either one or the other. Be careful what you say. That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.

So, a question: how do you treat people … at work, your family at home, your neighbours? When you look at them, do you see their humanity or do you treat them just as objects? Your answers are incredibly important because they tell you what’s going on in your heart. With technology being what it is these days, it’s so easy to become detached, physically and emotionally, from the people with whom we interact. And so, instead of seeing them as people – with hopes, dreams, desires and frailties just like us – and treating them with the compassion that their humanity demands, it’s ever so easy to see them simply as objects; chess pieces to be moved around the board to suit our own purposes. Now all of a sudden, we’re in a dark place. Our heart towards them hardens, it plots evil designs … that spew forth from our mouths. Don’t believe me? Luke 6:45 Good people have good things saved in their hearts. That’s why they say good things. But those who are evil have hearts full of evil, and that’s why they say things that are evil. What people say with their mouths comes from what fills their hearts. What we say to others betrays what’s going on in our hearts. How we treat others so clearly demonstrates what we think of them. Let’s just allow this to sink into our hearts one more time: Good people have good things saved in their hearts. That’s why they say good things. But those who are evil have hearts full of evil, and that’s why they say things that are evil. What people say with their mouths comes from what fills their hearts. That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.

When I first became a Christian, I used to wonder why Jesus had to die for me. Why go through all that suffering? After all, I’m no criminal. I haven’t stolen, I haven’t assaulted, I haven’t murdered. Why? And that’s the thing; you and I aren’t all that bad, are we? Sure, we’ve made some mistakes along the way. Sure, there are things we’d do differently with hindsight. And absolutely, we wouldn’t hurt the people we’ve hurt on our journey if we had our time over again … but Jesus dying on the Cross … really?! Yet, God is a holy God, a God whose standard is absolute, one hundred percent perfection. He’s also a just God. After all, if God is indeed God, if such a God really exists, you’d want Him to be just, right? And yet this same God is a God of love. Justice and love – that’s Him. So the only way He had of loving us and seeing justice done was to send Jesus His Son to be crucified, to spill His blood, to give up His life to pay the price of your sin and mine. Revelation 1:4,5 Grace and peace to you from the one who is, who always was, and who is coming … and from Jesus Christ. Jesus is the faithful witness. He is first among all who will be raised from death. He is the ruler of the kings of the earth. Jesus is the one who loves us and has made us free from our sins with his blood sacrifice. As Charles Spurgeon put it: “Morality may keep you out of jail, but it takes the blood of Christ to keep you out of hell.” That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.

Satan has a burning desire to play merry hell with your heart and with your mind. Make no mistake, he is in the business of drawing you away from God, away from following Jesus. So how do you deal with that? Perhaps you believe that there is indeed a personal force of evil in this world – the devil, Satan, the father of lies – or, perhaps you don’t. For my money, it’s as clear as day that Jesus believed in the existence of Satan, which is more than good enough for me. And look around. His grubby fingerprints are all over the evil being perpetrated in this world. And he’s on a mission to draw you away from taking up your cross and following Jesus, towards an eternity in hell with him and all his demons. If you’ve ever wrestled with him, you’ll have discovered that he’s a wily old soul, capable of deceptions that you and I never dreamed of. So how do you avoid his snare, if fighting him seems useless? James 4:7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. (ESV) The answer is first and foremost submitting to God; praying, going to Him with a desire in your heart to honour Him, receiving instruction, admonishment, encouragement, truth as you dive deep in His Word.  Then … then you’ll have all that it takes to resist the devil. Then he will flee from you. As Billy Graham once put it: “Most of all, let the Word of God fill you and renew your mind every day. When our minds are on Christ, Satan has little room to manoeuvre.” Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.

There’s a fine line, isn’t there, between confidence and overconfidence? But here’s a question: can you ever have too much confidence in God? Is it possible to be overconfident in Him? Actually, I suspect that all too often we head in the other direction when we’re faced with challenging circumstances. Our confidence in God wavers when enemies confront us. Think back to the last time you faced a difficult situation in your life. On a scale from zero to 10, how high was your confidence that God would get you through it? One of the things that helps grow your confidence in God is going through challenging circumstances again and again – because, each time, you can look back to see how God delivered you. Perhaps that’s why King David was so supremely confident in God – he’d had so many life and death scrapes in which God had stump up to save him. Psalm 27:13,14 I believe that I shall see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD! (NRSV) Do you think David’s being over-confident here? Not at all! It’s just that he’d learned through bitter experience that God is faithful; that God can be depended upon. And his advice to you and me in difficult times, the thing that he’d learned in all those dark and dangerous places? Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD! Wait with the hope, wait with the expectation, that God will show up and defeat the enemies that assail you. Wait for the Lord! That’s His Word. Fresh … for you … today.