The 260 Journey

Day 170

Today’s Reading: Ephesians 2

I love the bumper sticker that says, “No Jesus, no peace. Know Jesus, know peace.”

Ephesians 2 reminds us what real peace is and the source of it. “Peace is not the absence of problems but the presence of God in the midst of our problems.” Paul tells us that in verses 13-17:

"Now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall, by abolishing in His flesh the enmity, which is the Law of commandments contained in ordinances, so that in Himself He might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace, and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the enmity. And He came and preached peace to you who were far away, and peace to those who were near."

Three times Paul mentions “peace” in those verses:

1. “He Himself is our peace.” That’s the Source. He is.

2. “He came . . . establishing peace.” That was His mission. Peace between humans and God.

3. “He came and preached peace.” We are the recipients.

When Jesus came and preached peace, these are the recipients: “To you who were far away and peace to those who were near.” This is really important that Paul uses these two phrases: those who were far and those who were near. They are good reminders that whether you were far or near, you still needed Jesus to bring you to God.

Some people are born far from God. They were not raised in a Christian home. Some were from a country very antagonistic to the gospel. They needed Jesus to die for their sins to bring reconciliation between them and God. We see that clearly. They were far from God.

The part we sometimes forget is that you could have been born in the church pew or in the choir loft, like I almost was, and hear about Jesus in your childhood and throughout your life, but make no mistake, no matter how close you think you were to Jesus, you still need Jesus’ death on the cross to get you to God. The close are not close enough regardless of how close you think you are.

The far and the near can be best explained by a contest that’s prize is one million dollars to anyone who can swim from Los Angeles to Hawaii. Let’s say several great swimmers—the best swimmers in the world—enter to win the money. Obviously we all know that all those swimmers will ultimately fail. But each one will try really hard. Some will get farther than others. Regardless of how far you get, though, you will not make it to Hawaii, because you can’t make it to Hawaii on your own swim stroke. Some are far away from Honolulu, and some closer to it. Remember, it doesn’t matter how far you swim, you can’t make that swim. That distance needs outside help—a boat, a plane.

The distance from here to heaven is even farther than Honolulu and LA. No matter how hard you try, you do not have the capability to make it to heaven on your own; you need outside help. Enter Jesus. The far and the near all fail but He came to get both groups to God. As Brennan Manning said, “The gospel declares that no matter how dutiful or prayerful we are, we can’t save ourselves. What Jesus did was sufficient.”

In the article, “Perfection Required for Acceptance at Stanford University,” Brian Kohout wrote:

Stanford University ranks as one of the toughest schools to give an acceptance letter. The university recently updated their admission standards and stated that only five percent of applying students are accepted. In 2017, 42,497 students applied, and 2,140 were accepted.

On their website, they give students realistic answers for the question “What is the academic standard to be accepted?” An ACT score of 33 or higher will put you into the top 50 percent of applicants, however the average score for accepted students is 35. The perfect score is 36.

Accepted students will also need an average SAT score of 1520 (out of 1600), an average GPA of 4.18 (out of 4.0), plus a robust “resume” of extracurricular activities, leadership qualities, references, and recommendations. Of course new students also have to pay for Stanford at $60,000 per year.

Thank God He doesn’t have the requirements of Stanford. The far don’t have a shot and the near aren’t close enough. Because Jesus came, we all have the opportunity to get in—regardless of where we live, what we have done, and who we know. The far need Jesus and the near need Jesus. Just remember, the one place that matters to be accepted is not Harvard, Yale, or Stanford. It’s heaven. And Jesus has made that happen.

Day 169

Today’s Reading: Ephesians 1

Today people use a lot of hyperbole. From their social-media posts to their arguments with their families, people say words like every, never, and always to “prove” their points.

Hyperbole is exaggerated statements. It sounds like this:

You never pick up your dirty laundry.

Every time we talk you never listen.

You do this to me every time.

You always make us late.

This is all impossible.

Why can’t we make those hyperbole statements?

Listen closely. We can’t because no one on the planet can ever be that consistent. There is only one who can be that consistent, and that is God Himself. God never lies. God is always faithful. And in Ephesians 1, Paul associates another word of hyperbole with God: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ” (verse 3).

Every spiritual blessing. Wow! The word every is what makes this verse and the ones following amazing. Every spiritual blessing belongs to you. Paul is saying, What else do you need when you’ve got all you need!

Every is a strong word. It’s hyperbole, and it’s all God.

Every spiritual blessing means, nothing is missing for you and me to win in this Christian life. It means that since God says it, we can trust it. And every can be fulfilled only by a consistent God.

What Paul shares next shows us how incredible God is—how much He loves us and cares for us. After Paul goes all hyperbole about God, He tells us why we have received every spiritual blessing:

Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us. . . . In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will, to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory. In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory. (Ephesians 1:4-8, 10-14)

He has blessed us how?

Here are some of God’s amazing blessings in Paul’s list:

He chose us before the foundation of the world. To be chosen is to have God already have us in mind before we were even born.

He predestined us to adoption. He is our Father. What an amazing thing to know in a fatherless society. We have a Father when we get saved.

In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us. What do you think about when you think of lavish? I think of a rich father who keeps giving to his children. God our Father never stops giving to us; He is a lavish God. It means giving to overflowing.

You were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise. You were given the Holy Spirit the moment you became God’s property. The Holy Spirit in you is a seal and a pledge that you are going to heaven and you belong to God. When people in the first century wanted to claim something they had purchased, they would put their family seal on it. God’s seal is the Holy Spirit.

God is all that. He is amazing. That’s why it’s okay to go all hyperbole with God, because He can be that. Our God is a 100-percent kind of God. This is no hyperbole—He leaves nothing undone or unattended. Remember, nothing in this life is that consistent. Even if we can be 99.9 percent accurate, the result can still be catastrophic.

If 99.9 percent is good enough, then . . .

• 2 million documents will be lost by the IRS this year.

• 22,000 checks will be deducted from the wrong bank accounts in the next sixty minutes.

• 12 babies will be given to the wrong parents each day.

• 268,500 defective tires will be shipped this year.

• 14,208 defective personal computers will be shipped this year.

• 2,488,200 books will be shipped in the next twelve months with the wrong cover.

• 2 plane landings daily at O’Hare International airport in Chicago will be unsafe.

• 18,322 pieces of mail will be mishandled in the next hour.

• 20,000 incorrect drug prescriptions will be written in the next twelve months.

• 114,500 mismatched pairs of shoes will be shipped this year.

• 107 incorrect medical procedures will be performed by the end of the day today.

The God we serve is 100 percent. Every, never, always is who He is.

I think that’s why Paul starts us off in verse 3 with praise and then proceeds to tell us how amazing God is. The Living Bible says verse 3 like this: “How we praise God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every blessing in heaven because we belong to Christ.”

We praise God because He is worthy.

Day 168

Today’s Reading: Galatians 6

Hu Jen-chuan was two years old when he fell from a table and went into a coma. When he woke after six days, he was unable to talk or move. Like any parent, his mother, Liu Kuei-lan, was terribly distressed. Yet her distress was multiplied by the fact that she could not afford to place him in medical care or any type of rehab. Instead she has cared for him herself, and for the past thirty years, she has carried her son on her back. As she’s grown older and more frail, she has fallen and fractured bones while carrying her grown son who weighs 180 pounds. Yet she continues to carry him. When asked how this sixty-five-year-old, ninety-five pound woman can do it, her reply is simple: “He ain’t heavy, he’s family.”

Galatians 6 is about us remembering that very thing: they ain’t heavy, they’re family. Paul ends the book of Galatians with us learning how to carry one another, or another way he puts it, bearing one another’s burdens:

Brethren, even if anyone is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness; each one looking to yourself, so that you too will not be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. (Galatians 6:1-5)

Galatians 6 is the antithesis of Galatians 5. In chapter 5 people are devouring, criticizing, and destroying each other. But in chapter 6, Paul challenges the church to help carry one another. That is what the body of Christ does.

Keep this in mind: the sign of a healthy body is its ability to heal itself. The church is called the body of Christ, and when it is healthy, the church has healing components within itself. That’s what Paul sees when he reminds us to carry each other’s troubles or burdens.

Our privacy, though, can become our downfall. When we are afraid to come clean and be vulnerable that we need help with our marriages, our thought lives, our finances, or our children, we are only deceiving ourselves and setting ourselves up for failure.

Verse 3 is a warning to those who try to appear stronger than they really are: “For if anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.”

The Christian life isn’t meant to be done alone. Only weak people think they are strong enough to do the Christian life alone. If you try to make yourself look like a superhero, a super-Christian, your life expectancy will not be very long.

The New Testament puts this phrase throughout its pages: one another. It shows we need each other. Listen to a few of them:

• Build up one another (Romans 14:19)

• Accept one another (Romans 15:7)

• Care for one another (1 Corinthians 12:25)

• Serve one another (Galatians 5:13)

• Bear one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2)

• Be kind to one another (Ephesians 4:32)

• Comfort one another (1 Thessalonians 4:18)

• Encourage one another (1 Thessalonians 5:11; Hebrews 3:13)

There are things we go through that need the help of other people. This means that in relationships, we find weight bearers to help us carry what we could not and cannot carry by ourselves. God makes it that way so that we can’t do Christianity by ourselves.

When you are not in a church and connected to the body of Christ, you make the Christian life something it was never meant to be. It’s like what happened during the 1976 Special Olympics in Spokane, Washington. As the competitors began their race after the gun sounded, only a few yards into the race, one of the children fell and began to cry. Several other athletes stopped running and came back to their fallen comrade. The children lifted him together, and arm in arm, they ran over the finish line—together. For a fleeting moment these children showed us what the Kingdom of God is like.

Here’s the Passion Translation of Galatians 6:2-3: “Love empowers us to fulfill the law of the Anointed One as we carry each other’s troubles. If you think you are too important to stoop down to help another, you are living in deception.” Those athletes with special needs show us what that looks like. They stooped to help the fallen.

If we keep running when someone has fallen, I think we are in more need than the fallen comrade. Let’s always remember, they ain’t heavy, they’re family.

Day 167

Today’s Reading: Galatians 5

Karl Wallenda, the great tightrope walker, fell to his death in 1978 from a seventy-five-foot high wire in downtown San Juan, Puerto Rico. Here’s what his wife, Helen, said about the fall:

All Karl thought about for three straight months prior to it was falling. It was the first time he’d ever thought about that, and it seemed to me that he put all his energies into not falling rather than walking the tightrope.

He was virtually destined to fall.

As Christians we are commanded to walk in the Spirit. We are not commanded not to fall. Those who pursue not falling end up like Wallenda. Those who think about falling and failure never really walk. Galatians 5 teaches us how to walk and not fall. Today, with God’s help, we will walk with God.

The apostle Paul gives us these fighting words: “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh Galatians” (5:16). The opening word of this verse, But, is a response word. It’s a response to having healthy relationships and not hurting people.

Here is the verse before it: “But if you continue to criticize and come against each other over minor issues, you’re acting like wild beasts trying to destroy one another!” (verse 15, TPT). Paul is saying, Do you want to not fall into criticism and hurting one another?

He didn’t say “bind the devil” or be free from a critical spirit or even “just stop it.” He said that we can win if we walk.

Just like Wallenda. Walk!

Walk in the Spirit.

A father and son arrived in a small western town looking for an uncle whom they had never seen. Suddenly, the father, pointing across the square to a man who was walking away from them, exclaimed, “There goes my uncle!”

“How do you know when you have not seen him before?” his son asked.

“Son, I know him because he walks exactly like my father.”

If we walk in the Spirit, the world should know us by our walk. The apostle Paul said walking is a weapon. It’s how we fight. When we walk by the Spirit, we will not carry out the desires of the flesh.

What is the flesh? That is our old sinful nature that is always popping up. In fact, we find a whole list of those fleshly desires in verses 19-21:

Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. (Galatians 5:19-21)

To try to fight each one of them would take a lifetime, and even at that, winning seems impossible. So Paul says, “Here’s how you fight. If you walk by the Spirit, you will not fulfill those fleshly desires.”

This is important: he did not say they won’t come and attack you. People think that once you become a Christian, you won’t have evil thoughts any more. Paul says, that’s not true, you will get the desire, but you don’t have to fulfill the crazy thought. Because walking in the Spirit is now your focus.

It’s not a run or a jog but a walk. Even a child can walk. But for the Christian, that walk is valuable. Why?

A Christian can commit any sin a non-Christian can commit but he can’t commit it without a fight. Because when we walk in the Spirit, God is helping us to keep moving forward. We need the Holy Spirit to walk.

Every time you choose to go to church, you are walking in the Spirit.

Every time you choose your family over yourself, you are walking in the Spirit.

Every time you choose to spend time in the Bible, you are walking in the Spirit.

Every time you choose to be kind, to be generous, you are walking in the Spirit.

Walking is your weapon. Walking is how you win. Just keep moving forward.

The best story about winning with walking is the children of Israel. When they left Egypt after four hundred years of slavery, they came to the Red Sea. The Egyptians decided they wanted them back. They wanted the old relationship with them, just as our desires of the flesh want us back. So they hunted them down. The children of Israel had the Egyptians behind them and the Red Sea in front of them. What did God tell them to do? He did not tell them to fight the Egyptians, to fight the past, to fight the old enemy.

God told them to walk . . . walk in unchartered territory. He wanted them to walk through the Red Sea. God split the sea in half and the children of Israel walked through on dry ground. When they got to the other side, the Egyptians tried to follow them, and God closed the water on top of them. They beat the Egyptians by just walking forward.

Your past will try to come after you, but you can outwalk it every time when you walk in the Spirit.

The story is told about a little boy who was flying a kite. It was a windy day, and the kite kept going higher and higher. Finally it got so high that it was out of sight. A man passed by and saw the little boy holding onto the string. The man could not see the kite, and he asked the boy, “How do you even know you have a kite up there?” The boy replied, “Because I can feel it.” Although we cannot see the Holy Spirit, we should be able to sense His work in our lives changing us and helping us to walk each day.

Day 166

Today’s Reading: Galatians 4

In his autobiography, Buck O’Neil tells what it was like being a black man who played professional baseball before African-Americans were allowed to play in the all-white major leagues. By the time the color barrier was broken in 1947, O’Neil was considered too old to play in the big leagues, as were most of his teammates. Many of his friends grew bitter about their missed opportunities. O’Neil writes:

At a reunion of Negro league players in Ashland, Kentucky, a reporter from Sports Illustrated asked me if I had any regrets, coming along as I did before Jackie Robinson integrated the major leagues. And this is what I told him . . . “Waste no tears for me. I didn’t come along too early—I was right on time.”

That was the title of his autobiography, I Was Right on Time.

And that’s what today’s chapter is about, perfect timing. God’s timing couldn’t have been any better than when Jesus came to earth. The apostle Paul confirms that:

When the right time came, the time God decided on, He sent his Son, born of a woman, born as a Jew, to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law so that He could adopt us as His very own sons. (Galatians 4:4-5, TLB)

Here is where it gets really amazing. Why couldn’t God have timed it any better? Let’s answer the why by looking at history.

When we look at history, the coming of Jesus was perfect for two reasons. Centuries earlier, Alexander the Great had conquered most of the known world, which didn’t just bring Greek culture to the world, it also unified the planet with one language, Greek. That’s why the New Testament is written in Greek.

After the demise of the Greeks, the Roman Empire picked up where Alexander left off and the Romans started expanding but doing something that would make the Good News of Jesus expand also. The Romans opened the way for expansion over three continents through roads and safe sea travel. They brought order to intercountry travel. One language and a world that was able to be traveled in. That’s a good time for Jesus to come.

But it gets crazier. This is why God is right on time.

I was recently reading apologist Dinesh D’Souza’s book What’s So Great About God. In it he quotes statistician Erik Kreps. Think of Erik’s numbers and think of our Galatians verse for today: “When the right time came . . . He sent His Son.”

Now buckle your seat belts.

The Population Reference Bureau estimates that the number of people who have ever been born in human history is approximately 105 billion. Of this number, about 2 percent were born . . . before the birth of Christ. “So, in a sense,” Erik Kreps notes, “God’s timing couldn’t have been more perfect. If he’d come earlier in human history, how reliable would the records of his relationship with man be? But he showed up just before the exponential explosion in the world’s population . . . only 2 percent of humanity had previously been born, so 98 percent of us have walked the earth since the redemption.

God is so smart. His timing is impeccable. That is one, big, great reason that God knew the right time to send His Son. When most of the world would be born after Jesus died. Someone said, “Stress makes you believe that everything has to happen right now. Faith reassures you that everything will happen in God’s timing.”

God’s whole plan was the adoption of humanity. We see this in Galatians 4:5: “God sent Him to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law, so that He could adopt us as His very own children” (NLT).

There is something special about being adopted as opposed to being born. Olympic skater Scott Hamilton was adopted as a child and often teased for it. “You aren’t the real son of your parents,” they’d said and laugh. Hamilton took their mocking as long as he could, until finally he told them, “My parents chose me, but your parents were stuck with you!”

He came at the right time to adopt everyone He could.