Recently I have sat on top of a throne that I am not worthy of. Nor am I worthy to even bow before this wondrous throne. Rather I should be banished to hell for all of eternity, and never experiance anything good! But God, by His grace, chose an unworthy sinner like me to experiance a permanent joy that is found no where but in Christ.

I cannot believe myself sometimes. I constantly reject wisdom,  which in turn, will eventually lead to my disaster according to Proverbs 1:24-26. It seems lately that I fall into sin so easily that I just give myself away to it without a fight. How can a disgusting, ungrateful, selfish, undeserving sinner like me get into heaven? If God is surely just in His ways, then why am I not burning in hell right now? Why does God not end my lawless deeds this moment so that he won’t have to deal with a stubborn, foolish, idolater like me? The answer is His mercy.

Mercy is when God does not punish us like we deserve. Mercy is when God chooses to not enforce His Holy wrath on us like we deserve. Mercy is the reason I  and you are still breathing right now. If you do not understand that your sin will take you to hell and that you need desperatly to be saved from yourself, then you cannot understand the Gospel of Christ. I was talking with a good friend of mine today. We were discussing how so many people do not understand the seriousness of their sin and how they believe that they can be a good person. This is a fake Gospel that will destroy the cross of Christ.

Repentance is key to our salvation. But repentance is not found in this so called Gospel. Repentance is to say the same thing that God does about sin. And God says that sin is not worthy of heaven. God’s Holiness does not allow Him to be with a sinner, rather, the sinner will die if he is found in the presence of God. Let us recognize our sin and trust in Christ who takes upon the sin of the world and was judged in our place. This is why I rejoice in Christ and desire to live for Him, because he died for me…

God I pray the righteousness of Christ will be upon me. Please forgive me for the sin I commit against you daily. I am unworthy of all that you do in, through, and for me. Please guide me onto your path with your word, may your Holy Spirit contol my ways and convict me and make me humble. Forgive this sinner forever. Amen

This is from the book called ‘Spiritual Leadership’ by J. Oswald Sanders

Oh it feels good to finally get up in this blog! Just following chapter 12 and using my time wisely, application. But what I want to encourage all of us on is the chapter ‘Prayer and Leadership’.

I thought this chapter was awesome and needs to be considered a great deal. As I was looking over my heart and this topic I found myself convicted because I personally do not spend enough time in prayer. As Oswald Sanders said, “And yet the most advanced leader is conscious of the possibility of endless development in his prayer life.” The only way we can find this endless development is if we are truly devoted to prayer, just like the famous Colossians 4:2-

2Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful.

This is something that cannot be taken lightly. Prayer is a “… Strenuous spiritual exercise that demands the utmost mental discipline and concentration”(pg 86). Being a leader is a serious task, so prayer needs to be a serious commitment. If we do not take it as serious as portrayed in God’s word, we will be weak in our prayer and get extremely lazy. But as read in this book, we need to give prayer a large section of our day, in all things we do. We see this example in Luke 6:12-

12One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God.

Wow! What extreme commitment we find in the Son of God, I don’t know about you guys but an all nighter of prayer and meditation is impossible for me! Or is it? My flesh says its impossible but God gives us the strength. Remember that it is not our flesh in whom we find our strength, but the Spirit that Christ has given us, so lets pray in the Spirit! We cannot rely on ourselves, it would make such things impossible.

Without prayer we will be powerless leaders who are not relying on God but on ourselves, which makes us no leaders at all. We cannot take things such as this in our own hands, but rely on the power and energy of the Holy Spirit. To echo Oswald Sanders again on page 87 near the middle-

“For its superhuman task, prayer demands more than human power. We have the Spirit of power as well as the Spirit of prayer. All the human energy of heart, mind, and will can achieve great human results, but praying in the Holy Spirit releases supernatural resources.”

This chapter was really exciting to read and blessed me a great deal! Hopefully it does this to all of you too, this topic is so serious and we cannot be hypocrites standing up leading as a Shepherd and not relying on THE Shepherd. We do this through prayer and the reading of His word. So lets pray continually in a way that mimics this chapter. I know I bounced around a lot but there was much to say but little time to say it all.

The blog title is very straight forward and relevant, because this is a straight forward and relevant blof to all who read it! Many people think of an enemy as some one who has a gun and is shooting at you. Or when there are two large groups of people on both sides of the field so they would be called ‘enemies’ of eachother… “But an enemy inside of me? What’s that all about??”

There is indeed an enemy inside us all, and scripture places this enemy as your heart! Yes your very heart is your number one enemy! Your heart is the very thing you should be fighting against daily, and we all should be waking up with the mind set that we are in a war! There are so many passages in Scripture that we can look at but I chose the most familiar passage I know, and that is Jeremiah 17:9- 

 9 The heart is deceitful above all things
       and beyond cure.
       Who can understand it?

As it reads, your heart is deceitful, but not just that it is deceitful ‘above all things’. What God is trying to say here is that your heart is the biggest liar there is! Yes your heart lies to you, do you wanna know how the heart lies to you? Your heart is constantly telling you that sin is more valuable then God’s divination. Your heart is continuisly pulling you towards the thoughts and desires of your flesh. And this is something we all have, and we all need to be aware that this is a true war inside of us that needs to be brought to our attention. Because right now, if you are thinking, “My heart is fine,” or “Oh I have got it under control,” If you are saying things like this, you are already losing the battle! You are already losing that battle because if you look at the end of Jeremiah 17:9 it says the heart is “beyond cure.” What this means is that you will be fighting your heart till the day you die.

As Pastor Bobby loves to say, “Your heart is a CESSPOOL OF WICKEDNESS!!” And if you don’t know what a cess pool it, say there was a suage pipe under ground that ruptured and it began to flow towards the top of the ground. After a while there would be basically a pool of poop, pee, and other stuff that I will not mention, and yes that is exactly what your heart is! Your heart is a pool of sin and lust and adultery and basically this puddle of evil!

So we as Christians need to be aware of this battle and should be doing everything we can to dominate our Hearts through Christ! And the only ways to battle the heart are not physical, but spiritual… Our fighting tools would be what? Probably a shield and a sword but this is spiritual, so what we need is spiritual tools, your spiritual sword is your bible! You can us that to look up scriptures agianst sin and to capture every thought the heart throws at you and make it obediant to Chtist! And your spiritual shield is prayer! You can block temptations when you talk with God and spend some time focused on Him.

We also have this thing at True North called the Spiritual Growth Chart! It is an excellent tool that Pastor Bobby came up with to make sure that we are fighting the battle with our hearts daily and spending time with God! I strongly encourage it because it has helped me so much in my fight against my heart and all of sin! So let us fight that battle every single day and live for the Lord almighty!!!

One day at work, I was having a conversation with Pastor Jon. I had used some hand-sanatizer and asked “Pastor Jon, do you ever use hand-sanatizer?” He replied, “No, if I use hand-sanatizer my immune system won’t have to work against bacteria and germs so it will begin to rely on hand-sanatizer to do the work for me. Then I will begin to get ‘soft‘. In the same way I need to be constantly fighting for the Lord, or sin will take over me and I will become soft spiritually speaking. So no hand sanatizer for me!” Now before I thought that was a rediculous answer to such a simple question, I thought how true his reply actually was! It was later when I began to question his hygiene.

Moving on to the basis of this blog we, those who call themselves Christians, need to keep up our spiritual immune system and need to continually be fighting sin! There are many passages of scripture that deal with such things, but first I want to take a look at Proverbs 6:10-11

10 A little sleep, a little slumber,
       a little folding of the hands to rest-

 11 and poverty will come on you like a bandit
       and scarcity like an armed man.

According to what Solomon is saying here, if we give in to any temptation to rest or to ‘take it easy’ look at what it says in verse 11, “poverty will come on you like a bandit and scarcity like an armed man.” And that is only if you give into a little sleep, and a little slumber. Even just a little bit, yes you will be ruined. So speaking from the analogy Pastor Jon was so nice to give earlier, if we were to give in to a little bit of letting our guard down of sin, so we can use the spiritual hand-sanitzer of relaxation or rest, our guard will get week, our spiritual immune system will get soft! When you get soft, you will have nothing to look forward to ‘poverty’ or ’scarcity’ as described in the passage above.

So instead of getting soft, those who follow Christ Jesus, need to be focused and keeping our spiritual immune system working and striving for one goal, which is God’s glory. Because if we don’t have this focus, this desire, we will get soft, and we will give in to using the hand-sanatizer of temptation and worry.     1Tim 4:8 reads-

 8For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.

In some translations such as NASB, the word “training” can also be translated into the word “discipline”. And I really want to key in on what this word means. The defintion for discipline is activity, exercise, or a regimen that develops or improves a skill, and no where do you find the words ‘lazy’ or ’slow’ but instead you find such words as ‘exercise’ or ‘improving’ or keeping up with an ‘activity’. This is the only way to become spiritually strong, and keeping you spiritual immune system focused and destroying the sin in your lives, it is to always be enduring and staying focused and always moving towards a goal, because as it says in the passage above, yes physical discipline has some good benefits, but Godly discipline and Godly training of the immune system has value for both lives!  All this talk about working and striving and focusing, but what I we striving for? It makes it very clear in verse 10 of 1 Tim-

10(and for this we labor and strive), that we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, and especially of those who believe.

We are doing this to reassure that we “have put our hope in the living God!”   We are doing it for God’s glory, and for nothing else. We have put our trust in Him, and out of gratitude we can’t let ourselves just fall into sin so easily, but we need to have one goal, one focus, and one reason, that is for God and God alone. So lets not get soft but stand firm in Christ!

A couple days ago I was talking to a great friend and I was telling him how school had seemed to be piling up on me. I began to explain how I couln’t spend time with God and how I couldn’t serve God with all this school work drowning me. He started talking to me about how I can serve God even with all this school work piling on my, and how this is a perfect oppertunity to serve God and show Him that I love Him. I knew this too but for some reason I had forgotten that simple fact, that I can give glory to God in all I do.

1 Corinthians 10:31~

 31So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.

 This is such an amazing thing that God gives us. God gives us the oppertunity to glorify Him in all we do. So no matter what, whether you eat or drink, or are caught up in school work, or anything you can glorify God in all we do! Worship is a lifestyle, and we can worship God in everything if we lift up our bodies as living sacrifices..

Romans 12:1~

1Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.

This is just another verse that clearifies this concept up even more. If we offer our bodies and do what God wants and not we want this is an act of worship.  And if you look earlier on in this verse it tells us why we worship, we worship because of God’s mercy, He has shown us grace with Christ on the cross and has given us salvation, and He continues to show us each and every day a new day and breath. No if those aren’t good enough reasons to worship, I dunno what is. 

This gives us the view that God has given us everything. Which means we need to do everything for Him, including school work and everything else. God makes it clear through the biblical message that we can focus and serve Him in all we do. And I would like to thank my friend Evan for reminding me of that. So as followers of Christ, do everything for Him who has given you life, there is no excuse because you can Glorify God in everything! So do it!

This phrase “Crucifying the flesh” is a common theme throughout the New Testament, and not the old. The reason is because this phrase came from Christ on the cross and how He was crucified. If you were with us at True North this weekend Bobby hit up on this theme a little bit in point number two which is

“Follow Christ by taking up your cross“

Bobby gave us the passage in scripture to go along with this point in 1 Peter 2:21

21To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.

If you are claimping to be a follower of Christ, you are also claiming that you have taken up your cross no doubt about it. You cannot be a follower of Christ if you haven’t. To be a true follower of Christ it requires crucifixion of the flesh. Christ says this Himself in passages for example as it says in Luke 9:23-24

23 Then he said to them all: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.”

 Christ makes this very clear that if any one would go after Him they must turn away from themselves daily. Daily is no easy thing either, getting up in the morning thinking “How can I die to myself daily and let Christ reign in me?” What an amazing thought that would be in our every day lives! But I do know one man who does that for sure, or at least he declares it. This one man is the apostle Paul and he claims that he dies daily in 1 corinthians 15:31~

31″I die every day—I mean that, brothers…”

We as followers of Christ need to have the same mindset as Paul did back in the apostolic age, where we have the focus of dying daily to ourselves. What Paul did I can say bears fruit, what I mean is that when Paul says this, he has evidence to back it up. When we take a look at Paul we consider Him to be one of the most righteous men who have ever lived after Christ. He has suffered many ways for Christ. It says in the bible that he was phipped 40 less one times which is 39 times! The whips that these persecuters used were not the regular whips either, but they had something like little thorns on them so instead of a nive clean cut on his back it tore it up.  After 39 whips throughout his life can you even imagine what his back would look like… If he still had a back! I am not saying that in order to crucify ourselves we need to get whipped alot but I am saying that if we crucify our selves it would change the way we live. So there is now a question to ask your self.

“Have I completely died to myself?”

And if the answers is yes to that one, then ask yourself just one more

“If I have crucified myself, how have I changed?”

The bible makes it very clear that once you are crucified you are dead, and Christ is now living in and through you. Not meaning He is in you and you can’t control yourself but you will now become more and more like Him becuase you are dead. And the only thing we have in the flesh is faith in the son of God! This is spoken really well in Galations 2:20~

20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.

 This is actually my favorite verse in the bible, and it is my favorite for a reason. This verse spells it our perfectly, what it means to crucify ourselves and how God now lives in us and we are not our own. And why are we doing this in the first place, why am I writing this blog, why is this such a necessity in our faith, why? There is a simple answer to that question and its at the end of that verse. It is because He was crucified for us… Because He died a horrible death on a cross and took up all of our sins, because He did that for the world when He didn’t have too, because He gives us eternal life even though we don’t deserve it, this is why we crucify our selves.

What an amazing thing He did! And what an awesome God we have! So let us continually crucify ourselves and follow Christ’s example, so that He may be pleased with us. Let us do it daily, each an every morning. It is dying to ourselves what makes salvation valid with faith, lets show our God how we have died to oursleves and how we live only by Him who strengthens us.

Matthew Crane’s Definition of Lifestyle Evangelism:

“Christians living such an amazing and sin free lifestyle that it causes all the non-christians to ponder why we are so different. As a result the non-christians searches for the answer and realizes that God is real and living al because of an amazing lifestyle of a Christian. ”

I am going to explain a few things before we dive into this passage, just a little history lesson is all, nothing big

Before we get started, a little history lesson: At this time when Peter is writing to Rome, the city of Rome was actually burned down. Some say king Nero burnt it down so he can rebuild it, but he redirected the hostility towards the Christians saying that they did it, so they suffered many persecution during this time.

1 Peter 2:11-12~

11Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. 12Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.

 Peter’s audience in this text is obviously the Christians in Rome. I want to key in on the beginning of verse 12 as it says “Live such good lives among the pagans”, and in other translations the phrase ’such good’ is translated into ‘excellent’. This word came from a greek word meaning purest highest or noblest. Then he goes on to say later in verse 12

“though they accuse you of doing wrong they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.”

Back to the history lesson: Even though the Christians didn’t start the fire in Rome which caused the city to be burned down, the gentiles accused them of doing it anyway. So Peter here is encouraging his fellow brothers in Christ that even though they didn’t do it, when God visits the non-christians, whether by saving faith or when they die and are judged, they will remember the Christians and how they acted. They will remember the testimony of the Christians. And why is all this going on? Why exactly do they want to keep their behavior excellent? It is so that the gentiles will “glorify God on the day He visits us.”

Now comes the application. Christians need to keep their lifestyle ‘excellent’ among everyone, whether  among Christians or not. We need to continually be living examples of Christ! We as Christians need to be living such good lives that we need to stand out amongst everyone around us. If you look at how Peter opens in verse 11 “Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers” Have you ever seen an alien walking down the street??? If you have, you must have been pretty shocked right? This is how people need to look at us. We need to be acting so much like Christ that people look at us in a weird way. And how are we going to do this? How do we live such good examples? Take a look at the rest of the verse 11 

 11…to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your

The way we are going to live as examples of Christ is by abstaining from sin. Which is another way of saying you will voluntarily not sin. Because when we sin we will look like the rest of the world dead in our sins, but because we have the Holy Spirit in us and we claim to live for Christ, we need not to be a part of this world but to be a part of God’s nature.  

 So let us refrain ourselves from any sin, so that we may prove ourselves to be blameless and innocent! I am not sure if most people know this but we as followers of Christ are representing Christ’s Holy and Righteous name. So is we are repping a ‘Holy and ‘Righteous’ name, should we not be ‘Holy’ and ‘Righteous’ ourselves?? God calls us to be holy as He is holy. This is an awesome way to evangelize, to do it by our lifestyle and actions, sometimes this can be the best way to evangelize. We are God’s children and how with the Holy Spirit in us we are new creations as it says in 2 Corinthians 5:17

2 Corinthians 5:17~ Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

So lets do it Christians!!! Let us go out there and on our campuses lets show them how there is something different about us because we have the true living God with us. Lets represent Christ’s name like we mean it!!!

Trust is an amazing and powerful word! In the bible the word trust is found many many times, but almost all of them are found in the context of trusting in the Lord and the Lord alone. In psalm 20:7 it talks about how some people trust in material things

Psalm 20:7~

 7 Some trust in chariots and some in horses,
       but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.

And not only should you trust the Lord, but you should trust Him all the time! Even in the worst of situations when you are afraid, as it says in psalm 56:4~

 3 When I am afraid,
       I will trust in you.

4 In God, whose word I praise,
       in God I trust; I will not be afraid.
       What can mortal man do to me?

So we know as Christians that there is nothing more powerful then trust itself, that very word is the  key to salvation! If we do not put our trust in Christ and what He did on the cross, how then can we be saved? When Paul is talking to the church of Galatia, He makes this argument. Paul writes this letter to this church because he knows there were false teachers at the time giving false doctrine saying that a man can be justified by observing the law. We know this is not true as it says in Galations 2:16~

16know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified.

 It is obvious that if we were to live by observing the law, we would never ever be able to make it into heaven. We all have sinned and if we have sinned once, then we have broken the perfect law and have fallen short of God’s glory, and if we have fallen short, then we do not make it! Paul says those who rely on the law will be under a curse!

Galations 3:10~

10All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.”

 So it is obvious that we cannot be saved by trying to keep the law, it is impossible! The only way we can be saved is by puting your Faith in God and His grace and mercy for what He did on the cross for us. So we know that we are not justified by observing the law but we are justified by faith in Christ Jesus our Lord!

Galations 3:24~

24So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith.

 What an awesome thing that is! And we are called as a result of Christs death to do a number of things, first one being your faith in Him and repenting of your sin.

 So we know that trust is a powerful word, trusting in the right thing just might save you from hell, and we know that thing is Christ. No matter what or who you trust in, or whether you know someone doesn’t trust you as much as you thought or anything in that case just rejoice in the fact that you are saved by your trust in Christ and nothing else. So if you trusted someone, and you were leaving soon forever, what do you think our last words would be to that person, would they not be probably the most important thing you would say to that person or persons.

Matthew 28:19-20~

19Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

 Christ in this case would be the last time He would physically be with His disciples, and this is something He meant for us to do because we have trust in Him. We as Christians need to continually follow the great comission and tell the “nations” about who our God is. And Christ promises something here which I think is amazing!

“And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

What a blessing that is, to know that Christ will always be with you, in the good and the bad. So know that everytime you witness to someone, He will be right there listening. And also know that everytime you don’t take the oppurtunity and are ashamed of Christ, He will still be right there ashamed of you!

Luke 9:26~

26If anyone is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels

 Do not let the Lord be ashamed of you! We as followers of Christ need to go and spread His word as He has commanded us, let us give it all up to Him, and make sure that our trust is in Him and in Him alone and nothing or nobody else!