Refocus

Psalm 20:4&7 • Trust God

by Noah Coombs - Pastor, Bay Church in San Francisco, CA (baychurch.org)

I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “seize the day.” It comes from the Latin, “Carpe Diem.” It literally means to make the most of every opportunity. That’s my encouragement for you today.

Too often, if we’re not careful, we can find ourselves putting important things off. Perhaps during this current health crisis, you’ve found yourself thinking about how you’ll live differently once this all goes away. Could I encourage you today to see that this moment, today, your life and the sovereign way in which God will put you into environments and situations…matter! Don’t let today be lost waiting for tomorrow.

Colossians 4:5-6 says, “Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.”

Ephesians 5:15-17 says it this way, “Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.”

Dear friends, God is calling us to live every day on purpose. God has “divine appointments” waiting for you and me every day. Let’s not miss them. A kind word, a smile, an encouragement to someone that can make all the difference.

Paul says, let Grace lead. We need more grace today…favoring others whether they deserve it or not, because of how generously God has favored us!

And put a little salt in it! Not salt to make something bitter, but salt to add flavor. Salt brings out the flavor in food…and salt brings out the value in people. Remind them with your words and actions how much they mean to God. They probably don’t know that.

Let’s set out today and every day, believing that God is leading us (Our steps are ordered by Him)…and Let’s bless every person we come across with grace, favor, value, words of life! Amen?!

I’ll see you next time!

John 3:16-17 • The Football Verse

by Randy Boldt - Crosspointe Ministries (TheJohnProject.com)

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“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.”

John chapter 3 verses 16 and 17 are so clear, so profound, so majestic, so full of grace that they certainly don’t need my commentary. So, having quoted them, I’ll just allow them to stand over us as the towering peaks of God’s Word that they are.

I can’t help but get just a little bit emotional right now because these are the first words I remember hearing from the Bible. So, they’ve been with me for a long time. They introduced me to the God who loves me and saves me. And they escorted me across the threshold of faith into the forgiveness of my redeemer. And I can’t stop myself from being deeply moved as I consider them all over again.

And I hope that never changes.

You know, the other day, I heard a friend refer to John 3:16 as the “football verse.” And I knew exactly what she meant. We’ve all seen someone holding up a hand-lettered sign from the stands at a televised football game hoping to catch the camera’s eye and stir a viewer’s curiosity to consider Christ.

You know, I honor those who do that. And I know my friend’s “football verse” comment was not meant disrespectfully toward either the sign-maker or the verse they reference. But her comment got me thinking and served as a much-needed reminder for me to not become so familiar with God’s amazing grace that I ever treat it casually.

May the power of God’s love always cause my throat to tighten with emotion, my eyes to leak, and my knees to bend in humble worship before so great a God.

John 3:14-15 • Sin for Us

by Randy Boldt - Crosspointe Ministries (TheJohnProject.com)

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In John 3 verses 14 and 15, we reach the basecamp from which we will summit the towering peaks of verses 16 and 17. But here, Jesus continues His conversation with Nicodemus and reminds him of something that he would have been very familiar with as a Hebrew scholar and Jewish leader – the story of when Moses, in the wilderness, raised a pole with an emblem of a poisonous serpent on it.

You see, the Children of Israel, because of fear, had refused to enter the Promised Land – the place that God had promised them as their inheritance. As a result, they began what would become forty years of wandering in the wilderness. But instead of acknowledging their own faithlessness, they started to blame God for their circumstances. And this unleashed a judgment upon them. Poisonous serpents were causing people to die.

But God was unwilling to leave them in that predicament even though they brought it on themselves. He instructed Moses to raise a standard so that anyone who would look at it – that serpent on a pole, the thing that looked exactly like what was killing them – would be rescued. They would be healed. They would be recovered.

So, when Jesus said, “Nicodemus, I’m going to have to be lifted up in a similar way,” He was talking about His cross. He was saying, “By doing this, I’m going to create the opportunity for people to not perish but have everlasting life.”

He was referring to the fact that He would be made sin for us. That’s what 2 Corinthians tells us. He was made to look like my sin and your sin. He took on the darkest, blackest, most wicked condition of humankind, and bore it to the cross. So that we – you and me for whom the cross was our just reward – could be made free, rescued, recovered, redeemed, have everlasting life.

I am in awe today of a God Who loves me so much that He was willing to take on my sin – to become sin for me – so that I no longer have to bear it.

1 Peter 4:7-11 • The End Is Near, So...

By Barney Wiget - A retired pastor having planted three churches on the California coast. His two books are available on Amazon: "The Other End of the Dark" and "Reaching Rahab" (barneywiget.com)

Acts 9:17-18 • Clear Vision

by Noah Coombs - Pastor, Bay Church in San Francisco, CA (baychurch.org)

Micah 6:8 • Love Mercy

by Louis J Locke - Founding Pastor, Fountainhead Foursquare Church in Carson City, NV (ffccarson.org)

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Do you ever have the Holy Spirit ask you one of those questions while you’re reading, one that stirs your mind and penetrates your heart? It happened to me just the other day. I was reading in the book of Micah and was inspired by this verse:

He has shown you, O man, what is good;

And what does the Lord require of you,

But to do justly, To love mercy,

And to walk humbly with your God. ~ Micah 6:8

As I read about "to do justly, and to love mercy," I began to think about God’s mercy. I’m so thankful that God has been so merciful to me! I thought about the song I’ve sung for years: “the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, His mercies never come to an end, they are new every morning, new every morning, great is Your faithfulness, O Lord, great is Your faithfulness.”

As I was pondering and meditating on the part about loving mercy, that’s when the question came. I read, "to love mercy," and the Holy Spirit asked, “for who?” To love mercy… for who? I knew immediately God was speaking to me. God doesn’t have to say much to say a lot.

Who am I supposed to ‘love mercy for’, who should I want to be receivers of mercy?

My heart was challenged. There’s a lot of people doing bad things these days, you can see it on TV every night.

I haven’t been thinking much about wanting them to receive mercy, but instead wanting them to be accountable for what they’re doing.

I begin to think about the prophet Jonah. God directed Jonah to go to Nineveh and declare that there would be judgment and destruction if the people did not repent. Jonah didn’t go, he ran. He ended up in the belly of a whale.

God, having gotten his attention, directed him a second time to go and warn the people of Nineveh. He did, and the people responded with fasting, prayer, repentance and God relented from what He had planned to do. The Bible tells us that God’s mercy towards the people of Ninevah made Jonah really mad, he got angry at God for not destroying the people.

He said in effect “I knew you were going to do that, because I know that You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in loving kindness, a God who relents from sending calamity.”

Jonah did not love mercy, he wanted to see judgment.

My heart was pierced.

I want my heart to be like God’s heart. I want to be gracious and merciful. I want to love mercy, not just for myself but I want my heart to want mercy for people who are messed up and doing bad things.

Oh God, I don’t want be like Jonah, I want to be like David, a man after God’s own heart.

When those thoughts of judgment rise up in my heart, may my response instead be one of prayer, prayer for the people that they will turn, and experience the wonderful mercy of God.

In John chapter 3 verse 8, Jesus said that those who are born of the Spirit are like this: He said, it’s like the wind. It goes where it wants to. You hear the sound of it, but you don’t know where it came from, and you don’t know where it’s going. And that reminds me of these sailboats.

See, I’m here in the Hawaiian Islands. And I got here on a jet plane that expended an incredible amount of energy to break the bonds of gravity and push its way across the Pacific Ocean to deposit me here. But you know, the people who originally came to these islands, they didn’t get here that way. They simply raised a sail and let the wind bear them along.

And you know, our faith in Jesus – being born of the Spirit – is supposed to be a lot more like that. That’s what Jesus said. And yet many of us have kind of the jet plane model of Christianity. We’re using a lot of energy to push ourselves along the path that we think the Holy Spirit wants us to go. And it’s pretty wearying. How much better, how much better to just raise the sail and let the Holy Spirit lead us, let the Holy Spirit bear us along to where He is going?

Today, let’s learn the lesson of John chapter 3 verse 8. Join me in raising a sail.

One of my grandkids asked me, “What’s your favorite song to sing Grammy?’ I answered, “The one I’m singing of course!”

I love to sing.

But, there was a time I stopped singing. I was on the 11th floor cancer ward of UCSF with our 17 year old son Johnny who was going through chemotherapy treatment and a bone marrow transplant after a recurrence of lymphoma. I read to him everyday. I was reading Psalm 137 out loud to him one particular morning.

“By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. There on the poplars we hung our harps, for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land? If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill. May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy.”

I sat there dumbfounded after reading those words. I got quiet. And Johnny said, “Mom, you don’t sing anymore – you use to sing all the time.” It was like a bolt of lightening hit me. I realized God was speaking to me through the psalm and through Johnny.

I felt we had been carried away captive in a foreign land to the UCSF cancer ward. I did not want to be there. How could I sing?

“May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember You O Lord!”

I shuddered at the thought.

It was time to sing to the Lord again - for Johnny, but also for me. I asked God for help. I awkwardly began to make groanings deep within my soul. Tears came with the song. It was like a build-up of pain, emotion, and all the things I’d tried to keep down inside me came bubbling up and spilling out all over. But I was singing. Johnny smiled at me, and I think God smiled too.

I will sing to the Lord and never stop singing to Him again.

“I will sing to the LORD as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have my being.” Ps 104:33

Songs of praise and worship are a powerful weapon against the enemy! In 2 Chronicles 20 Jehoshaphat placed the singers at the front of the army, and as they began to sing and praise, the Lord set ambushes against the enemy and they were defeated!

Have you stopped singing with all that’s happening around us? Open your mouth and begin to sing again. Sing to our highest joy! Sing to Jesus. Make a joyful noise to the Lord! Let God arise and His enemies be scattered!