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Do Anything You Want

/ Virginia / Leave a comment

A good friend told me, “When you believe in Christ, you can do anything you want.”  Wow!  A pretty amazing statement, isn’t it?  Do ANYTHING???  Really???

Unpacking this quote helps us to understand the difference between Christianity and other religions.  The original quote comes from St. Augustine who said,  “Love God and do whatever you please: for the soul trained in love to God will do nothing to offend the One who is Beloved.”

Such a simple statement with such amazing depth.  How we love speaks volumes about our relationship to someone.  When we truly love someone, we want to please them, do special things for them, and be with them.  We don’t want to do anything that will disappoint them or hurt them.  When we truly believe in Jesus and love Him, then we will want to obey His commands,  love as He does, and do things that are pleasing to Him.

Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6).  When He said this, He was not talking about starting a new religion.  He was talking about starting a new relationship.

While some may disagree, Christianity is not a religion.  There are no set of rules to follow, no list of accomplishments to achieve, no religious tenets to hold (Ephesians 2:8-10).  Christianity is a WAY…. a following… a relationship with Jesus.  In fact, early Christians called themselves followers of the Way (Acts 9:2).

God wants a relationship with us.  Our sin broke that relationship, so Jesus came to pay the penalty by dying on a cross so that our Loving God could call us His children.  The Bible teaches us that we become adopted children of God when we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior (Galatians 3:26-29).

That’s why we can call God our Papa.  That’s why we can love Him and do anything we want.

 

See what kind of love the Father has given to us,

that we should be called children of God; and so we are.

The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know Him. (1 John 3:1)

There Was This Lawyer and an Investigative Reporter…

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The title for this post is not the first lines from a joke.  It is the true story of two nonbelievers.  The first was esteemed lawyer Samuel Greenleaf, Royall Professor of Law at Harvard University.  The second is Lee Strobel, an investigative journalist and former legal editor for the Chicago Tribune.  Both of these men determined to expose the myth of Christ’s resurrection and divinity.  In the process of their investigations, each became followers of Jesus.

Have you investigated Jesus?  One of the things I love most about Christianity is that Jesus doesn’t expect us to have blind faith in Him.  Instead, He invites each of us to investigate Him thoroughly.  Jesus welcomes skeptics.

The surprise is how many choose not to believe in Jesus because of something they’ve heard.  To me, that would be like someone telling me my child was dead and that I should just take their word for it.  Of course, I wouldn’t believe until I proved it for myself.

With mortality looming and eternity awaiting, I had to investigate Jesus to know for certain.  Like Greenleaf and Strobel, I found the evidence that Jesus is who He said He is more than compelling.  I invite you to do the same.  Please check our ABOUT page for links and books to get you started.

David’s testimony:  Although I had been raised in church, by my twenties, I had fallen away from the faith.  I felt angry because in a time of need, my church family didn’t help.  I felt that all Christians were hypocrites.  I was unchurched for thirty years.  During that time, I looked into different religions, visited Hindu and Buddhist temples and read about their faiths, went to sweat lodges, tried transcendental meditation, and studied new age ideas.  It all left me empty… there was something missing.

One morning I looked in the mirror and heard a voice, “What’s going to happen when you die?”

I didn’t have an answer.  It was a powerful event.

I decided to investigate Jesus more thoroughly.  During my journey, I received several signs that I was on the right path.  I reaffirmed  that there is a God and that He had sent His Son to save us from our sins.  I realized Jesus was in fact who He said He was.  I discovered His salvation and grace.  I also recognized that I had to separate Jesus from religion.

I know now that the voice I heard in 2001 was God speaking to me.  I accepted Jesus as my Savior and have found a peace that I never had before.  My life has changed forever for the good.

Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”

But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”

A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!”  Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”

Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”

Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”  John 20:24-29

When God Pursues

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When God chooses to pursue someone, He is often relentless. At every corner, Milton felt God’s tug at his heart.  Soon Milton had to acknowledge that the many coincidences he was experiencing added up to signs that God wanted him for His own.  As an example, a co-worker who nobody else would work with was paired with Milton. The co-worker spent his entire day gushing words from the Bible.

While God continued His pursuit, like Jonah, Milton ran the other direction.  He drank and lived hard.  When he lay down to sleep, however, Milton’s mind was filled with questions. He often would awaken suddenly, seemingly haunted by a God he didn’t know and didn’t understand.

Milton’s daughter Shanna was both the joy and test of Milton’s life. She exuded the love of Jesus. Born with a dysfunctional liver, Shanna had her first liver transplant when she was two years old.  When she was well enough, she sang in the church choir. She often talked to Milton about Jesus and His love. Like many of us, however, Milton wondered how a loving God could allow this precious child to suffer.

When Shanna was ten years old, her transplanted liver began to fail.  She received a second liver transplant. The surgery did not go well, however, and infection set in. Shanna was rushed back to surgery. The doctors left the gaping wound open so that they could treat the infection. When Milton visited and saw his beautiful daughter with an open, oozing wound in her side, he could barely stand it. Still Shanna glowed as she spoke of her wonderful Jesus.

Milton was by Shanna’s side when she passed from this world. Overwhelmed with grief, Milton left Shanna’s room and walked to the end of the hospital hallway. He bowed his head and prayed. “God if You’re real… if You really want me… please show me.”

As tears ran down his face, he looked towards Shanna’s room. Her door opened, and Shanna, all dressed for Sunday, came twirling into the hallway. She stood before Milton and smiled before she vanished.

Milton hung his head and whispered, “God, if you can raise my baby girl from the dead like Lazarus, then there’s nothing You can’t do.”

Right then and there, Milton surrendered his life totally to Jesus. He buried Shanna on Saturday and gave his first sermon on Sunday.  Today, Milton is pastor of Hopewell Community Church in Conroe, Texas.

When Pastor Milton told me his story, he spoke softly about Shanna’s death.  He said, “At times like that you either run to God or run from Him.”  Milton chose to run to God.  As a result, his life and the lives of those he serves have been forever changed for good.

“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” ~Romans 8:38-39

Welcome to What’s Next Papa!

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This is our first post on our new website.  We are excited to begin this journey with you and hope that you will join us regularly.

The seed for What’s Next Papa was planted during a testimonial that I gave at a women’s conference several years ago.  The conference theme centered on the names of God.  My topic was God the Provider.  I told the story of how God had provided for my mother and us four children in an adventure that took us across four states as we fled from my violent, alcoholic father.  It was a story that I had kept secret my entire adult life.  Now, in front of nearly a hundred women, I felt God calling me to reveal it all.  It was a life-changing day.

During the testimony I reaffirmed that God had, indeed, provided.  He has always been there for me, offering adventure after adventure.  As a child, I decided that if I didn’t have an earthly father that God would be my daddy.  I call Him my Papa.

As I ended my testimony, I told each person that they were also a child of the King and that they, too, could call Him Papa.  I told them that life is an adventure waiting for us.  To try to explain, I used these verses from The Message translation of the Bible…

This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike “What’s next, Papa?” God’s Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who He is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what’s coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance!  We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with Him, then we’re certainly going to go through the good times with him! (Romans 8:15-17)

My life continues to be an adventure… some scary, some heart wrenching, but most are more amazing than I can even express.  Our hope for this website is that you will also see the adventures in your life, recognize that Papa is always there for you, and that there is good in this crazy world.

Let’s journey together and ask, “What’s next, Papa!”