Identity

What do you want people to see you as? In what do you find your identity? Is it an ability God has given you; a talent? How about the friends you hang out with? Maybe it is your possessions; what you have or how much you have? What we want to be identified with or regarded as says a lot about us, and scripture is not silent about the topic. If you are a Christian, have you ever considered what God says about how people should regard you?

1 Corinthians 4:1 says, "Let a man regard us in this manner, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God."

According to this passage, people should regard me in two ways:

1. As a servant (or slave) of Christ.

A servant belongs to and is completely submitted to the will of his master.

2. As a steward of the mysteries of God (or the truth about God revealed in scripture).

Convicting? I know it is for me! How many people see you in light of these two things? Do you strive to find your identity in your slavery to Christ and the stewardship of His truth?

May the Holy Spirit help you and me to re-wire how we want others to regard us. May our identity be Christ and truth.

For the glory of God

Seth

Recently...

Recently...I have started way too many posts off with "recently," but the truth is that a lot of what I write about has happened recently. Maybe I should use a synonym...

In all seriousness though, recently God has been convicting and humbling me through this truth. (It's a shocker!) All glory belongs to God! Now this has been drilled into me from when I was little, but the other night as I went through 1 Corinthians 3, I read this; "I (Paul) planted, Apollos watered, but God caused the growth. So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth."

Those two verses hit me hard. It is so easy for me to look at the different opportunities God has given me to plant or water and think that I am going to say something awesome or clever or articulate some sort of truth that will cause someone to grow. I needed to be reminded that I can plant and water all I want, but those things are nothing if God doesn't cause the growth. I needed to be reminded that all glory belongs to Him because He is the one who causes the growth. I needed to be reminded of my complete and utter dependence on the all powerful God of the universe.

I hope that the realization of this truth will drive me and you to our knees in prayer. I need to fervently pray that God would help me know the best way to plant and water and that He would cause the growth.

The planter and the waterer are nothing; the God who causes the growth is everything. Who gets the glory?

For the glory of the One who deserves it,

Seth

A Call to Worship

Hello all! This is a call to worship I am currently working on. As you will see I tried to incorporate 3 themes into the song.

1. I know that when the Church meets there will be Christians coming from all sorts of places in their relationship with God. Some will be fiercely battling the sin that so easily entangles, some will have come from defeat. Hallelujah, the fact is that no matter where a true Christian is, they are invited to come and experience the blissful joy of worshipping God.

2. It is only by the boundless grace of God that we are worthy to come and worship. Christ opened a way for sinful humans to worship the sinless and holy God by covering us in His righteousness.

3. When we come to give praises to God as a congregation we will be coming with a lot of "baggage." Coming from our busy lives into a "worship service" isn't easy because of everything we have to deal with in life. We need to humbly go to the Holy Spirit and admit our need for help and ask Him to take all distractions away.

With that in mind, here are the lyrics.

Shout!

All you weary from battling sin

All you discouraged from giving in

All you steadily running this race

Come and bask in God's glorious grace

None of us worthy to come worship here

It's by His grace that we draw near

Sinner come stand with all the redeemed

God's praises we lift up, His mercies we sing

Pre Chorus

For He has bought us with His blood

Chorus

So we shout!

And give you glory God

And we sing with one voice

As Your blood bought children

For on the cross

You stood in our place

We are trophies of your grace

So we shout to you

Spirit we ask you to come to our aid

Banish distraction, doubt, and dismay

Fix our attention on Christ and His cross

Enlighten our hearts to see all else is loss

For the glory of God

Seth

A Prayer to the Holy Spirit

Dear Holy Spirit,

You are great and almighty, yet how often I fail to acknowledge you. My body is your temple, yet I so often act as if it belongs to me; going where I want to go, doing what I want to do, and don't give a thought to Your awesome presence and the Father's will. I am so sorry for the way I mistreat, dishonor, and sin against you.

Spirit, I am completely helpless without you! If you don't help me see the infinite value of Christ, I will seek to glorify trash. If you don't help me set my mind on things above, I will be taken by the passing pleasures of this world. If you don't convict me of sin, I will become calloused to it and seek to worship the creature rather than my Creator. If you do not keep me from sin I will wander into the basest of evil. I need you more than my next heart-beat or breath; let me never forget!

Thank you so much for praying for me when I cannot find the words. Thank you for your conviction when I sin. Thank you for the strength you give me every day to fight the sins that would crush me if I fought on my own. Thank you for enlarging my spiritual mind to see deeper into your never ending depths.

Holy Ghost, please take me deeper into the depths of the Father's grace and Christ's sacrifice. Please strike my heart with the awesome reality of the gospel every day. Please sanctify me to be more like Christ.

I pray all of these things in Jesus' name and because of His sacrifice,

For Your Glory

Seth

The Scars that Gave me Life

Yesterday I was reading John's account of the resurrection of Christ and the fact hit me that the glorified body of my Savior still bore the scars of His crucifixion. Those scars will be a reminder to all for eternity of the price He paid to purchase a "people for His own possession (Titus 2:14)." The thought moved me to write a little poem.

One day I'll finally see the one who purchased for me life

And I'll see the precious scars, in His hands and in His side

More precious still the unseen scars etched upon His heart

From the wrath that was mine to bear that should've torn me apart

But here I stand before the throne no scars to call my own

Just the mark of His love and grace tattooed on my soul

Isaiah 53:4-5

Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrow He carried; yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our wellbeing fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed.

Hallelujah for the One who this day bears the scars that brought many to life.

For the glory of God

Seth

Black and Blue Knees

Recently God has been doing some major work on my heart as prayer is concerned. I am starting to understand that when I am not spending time in prayer before God I am saying that I don't think I need Him and that He isn't all that important or worth taking time to talk to. See any problems? I certainly do!

God is the one who keeps my heart beating and my lungs breathing, to think for one second that I don't need His power and strength to do anything physically is suicide; much less spiritually! Yet I will so often stride into a meeting with someone where I will attempt to communicate deep and profound truths and go in proud and without prayer. How arrogant!

May God sanctify me to the place where I am often knocked from my arrogant feet to black and blue knees because I am so moved by my weakness and His fulness and strength. May I see that prayer is more worth my time than anything I try to do. May I know intimately the joy of talking with my Creator, Savior, and truest friend. To quote Pastor Jason Vaden, may I pray like it is my next breath of air.

For the glory of God

Seth

Watch Your Mouth!

Recently God has been showing me more and more how His word needs to govern every aspect of my life, not just the where it is easy or convenient. This has been so good because I am beginning to taste the joys of obedience to Him. One of the areas that I recognized I hadn't let God completely govern was my speech, and from my limited observation, it seems as though a lot of people my age have the same problem.

From scripture it is obvious that a Christian's speech is never to do two things:

1. Tear down

A person who has been rescued by Christ has no place tearing another person down with his or her tongue. Our words are to be gracious, edifying, and uplifting at all times. This means that sarcasm or humor at the price of the degradation of someone else is offensive to God and must not be a part of our speech.

2. Joke about or make light of what God has made serious

Joking about or making light of the things God has made serious is an offense against our pure and holy God and I lose sight of this at times. To joke about anything God has made serious is offensive to God and so we must stay run from it. However, the sacred and serious gift God has given us that I see gets made light of and joked about possibly the most (besides God Himself), is sex. Sex and everything that surrounds it is the end of countless jokes, even in Christian circles. On an arrogant campaign to be the funniest person around, so many Christians, or so called Christians, let their humor run wild in this sacred realm. Just because something makes you laugh, doesn't make it right. If you feel guilty that you are laughing than what you are laughing at probably isn't right and is an offense to God because it violates your conscience.

I am guilty of both of these categories, but by God's amazing grace I am repenting and turning away from my sinful speech and striving to honor God with the tongue He has given me.

Christian, will you allow God to govern the way you live in every aspect of your life? Then surrender your speech (and everything else) to Him. Do not take my word for what He says, pick up your bible and go and see, and may it change you in every way.

For the glory of God

Seth

"If You Love Me..."

In John 14:15 Jesus says these words to His disciples and to us, "If you love me you will keep my commandments." This is a verse very well known to the church, but I hope the conviction it brings will never loose its sting. The truth is our obedience says volumes about our hearts. Here we find a big problem. On our own we only disobey revealing hearts that hate God. This is why Jesus is our only hope.

Jesus was perfectly obedient. His obedience, even to the point of death on a cross (Phil. 2:8), revealed his boundless love for the Father (John 14:31), and on the same hand His love for us. Our only hope of salvation is to be covered in His perfect obedience. Hallelujah for the cross which purchased both forgiveness and our obedience for us.

Yet we are not off the hook! God sees us in Christ's righteousness and that is a beautiful truth, but as we see God's never ending love for us we should be able to do nothing else but show love back. How do we do this best? By striving toward the perfect obedience we are covered in. If we love Him, we will keep His commandments.

Christian, do you love Him? Than stop treating His commands as spiritual suggestions (as I am often guilty of) and start seeing the as His loving demands on your blood bought life. Love Him with everything you have by the spirit by striving to obey in everything He has commanded. That is how you say "I love you Father."

For His glory

Seth

A Very Small Thing

This past week I got to go to Cincinnati with my family. We got to do a lot of amazing things while we were there like going to the 3rd highest rated amusement park in the country (King's Island) and the #1 zoo in the country (The Columbus Zoo). As my family and I walked around these places filled with people, I noticed something going on in my heart...I wanted to be liked, accepted, thought well of by all these people that I didn't even know!

I am naturally a people pleaser. I don't like it when people are upset with me and I always want people to like me and accept me. But there is a huge problem...if I follow and obey Christ, I won't be accepted and liked by most people because most people don't accept and like Christ; in fact they hate Him. What I had fallen into was valuing the opinions of men higher than the opinion of God.

God started to convict me of this and I began to repent...but He wasn't done. On our way back from Cincinnati we got to visit a church in Louisville and the pastor got up and preached on 1 Corinthians 4:1-5. In this passage Paul tells the church of Corinth that (along with many other things) he considers it a very small thing to be examined or judged by them or any human because God is His ultimate judge. Now Paul is not saying that he considers it a small thing when someone brings a sin of his to his attention...in fact in the very next chapter he tells the church to judge and kick a man out of the congregation who was in sin. What he is saying is that it isn't a big deal if people don't think highly of him because of what he looks like or how he speaks or you fill in the blank. It wasn't a big deal because he had been accepted by God in Christ and was now working through the Spirit to be faithful to do all that God had for him to do. If people thought less of Him for this...no big deal! Needless to say I needed to hear this, and maybe you do too!

Knowing that God is our judge frees us to consider the approval of man a very small thing. If you are in Christ you are accepted by God! Now strive to obey God in everything submitting to every whim of His will and know that it isn't a bid deal what people think of you for it.

For the glory of God

Seth