“Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.” (I Corinthians 9:24-27 NIV)
Imagine if a track coach says to a recruit, “All you have to do is show up at the meet and run. If you do that, I guarantee you will be a winner.” We would think it ludicrous because we know running, or any competitive sport, requires hours and hours of practice and conditioning. Yet, we often don’t blink an eye at pastors and churches that proclaim following after Jesus is merely a matter of praying a prayer for salvation and showing up on Sundays. If you do that, you get the prize.
Paul compares following Jesus to that of the training of an elite athlete. From what we know of athletes at the collegiate, Olympic, and professional levels, their training is integrated into their lives. Hours are spent each day working on strengthening, technique, and conditioning. The only successful athletes are those who are committed to the grind of training.
Now, is our salvation dependent on how hard we work? No. It is solely dependent on the grace of God, as Paul makes clear to the Ephesians (Ephesians 2:8-9), but to grow in that grace, to experience the riches of what Paul calls “our glorious inheritance (Ephesians 1:18), requires more than a one-time prayer and a one-hour commitment on Sundays. It requires the discipline of an athlete in training, who shows up ready to work. It is not easy, and there will be times you question whether it is worth the time and effort, but in the end the reward will far outweigh all the work.
This work involves regular study of the Scriptures, prayer, serving, and other disciplines that will lead us into becoming spiritual winners, ones who take home the prize of knowing fully the riches of Christ.
Today, as Paul did, live the life of following Jesus as one who desires to win the prize. It won’t happen without effort and discipline, but it will be totally worth it in the end.
© Jim Musser 2018
“Then Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.’” (Matthew 28:18-20 NIV)
It was a Saturday morning and I had just walked into McDonald’s to grab some coffee and do some final preparation for a youth conference workshop I would be teaching in a couple of hours. I overheard the young woman trying to sell some jewelry to another man standing in line. After he politely declined, she moved on to me.
Her name was Kristin. She was doing a yearlong project with a group promoting global peace and trying to raise money. She would soon be getting the opportunity to go overseas for the first time. Would I be interested in helping her out? I was almost certain she was from the Unification Church, but asked just to make sure. She was. I politely told her I was a follower of Jesus and didn’t agree with the teachings of her church. She moved on. But I felt incomplete; my heart broke for this deceived young woman. I wanted to say more.
After I purchased my coffee, I sat down in a booth, opened my Bible and began to pray for Kristin. Suddenly, there she was standing by my booth introducing herself again. She didn’t immediately recognize me as one she had already approached. Then it clicked and she asked me about what problems I had with the Unification Church. Thus began a 10-minute discussion of the Gospel and the central role Jesus plays in it. Our conversation ended with me asking where she was from. It turned out she was from a city just down the road from where I had worked for over 20 years. She said she was homesick and knowing I had roots in her home state made her want to cry. A connection, albeit brief, had been made and I believe the Lord used it to plant that gospel seed just a little deeper.
Interestingly, my workshop was about creating a missions atmosphere in a youth ministry. One of the points I had already planned to make is that missions is not confined to going overseas; it can be found in our daily lives—like at McDonald’s.
Jesus says to go into all of the world, but that includes the immediate world in which we live—on campus, in our workplace, in our neighborhood. The call to share the gospel is not just for “over there,” but “right here” as well. The question is, are we ready to share when those opportunities arise?
Today, recognize the command of Jesus to take the gospel into the entire world includes the one in which you live. For there are a lot of Kristins in need of hearing about it.
© Jim Musser 2018
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” (Matthew 5:6 NIV)
I remember the first time I attempted a spiritual fast. I was a college sophomore. I don’t remember the reason for the fast, but I do remember the brownies I had made the previous day that were sitting in the kitchen. From the time I got home from classes that day, they had been calling my name. I was hungry, very hungry, and those dark brown, deliciously looking squares kept drawing me into the kitchen. Unlike Jesus, who resisted Satan’s temptation to make bread and eat it, I finally in desperation grabbed one of the brownies and stuffed into my mouth.
Although I failed in keeping my first fast, that experience has stayed with me. For the first time in my life I experienced true hunger pangs, and the result was they drove me to eat even though I was determined not to.
When Jesus speaks of hunger and thirst, he is speaking to an audience who understood what it meant to have no food and water readily available. They were poor and lived in a desert region. They knew hunger and thirst. It was the primary driver of their daily lives. So when He said they would be blessed if they “hunger and thirst for righteousness,” they could easily imagine what that meant.
Thinking back to my first fasting attempt, the moment I awoke that day, I was obsessed with food. I thought about it. I noticed every sign advertising it. I stared at anyone eating a snack in class. On the way home that day, I began to think about the brownies. And once the thought of them got into my brain, I couldn’t think of much of anything else.
When we are deprived of something essential, it won’t take much time before the longing for it takes over our minds, whether it be food, drink, or money. Someone caught in a famine, lost in a desert, or living in an economic depression will be focused on practically nothing else.
So it is, then, when someone hungers and thirsts for righteousness. The pursuit is driven by the need, and Jesus says the person who has it will be blessed. Yet, I wonder how many of us truly feel this need. Looking around at churches and on campus, I don’t see much hunger and thirst for being right with God, nor can I say honestly that I always feel the same intensity for pursuing the Lord as I felt on that day long ago for food when I intentionally deprived myself of it.
It is tempting at this point to feel guilty, but I don’t think that was the Lord’s intention. Instead, I think He is merely telling us the truth and if we want to embrace it, we will be blessed. And the truth is when we insist on attempting to fulfill our deepest desires with worldly things, we will miss out on wonderful blessings. But if we have the same desire for the Lord as the hungry and thirsty person has for food and drink, then we will find countless blessings.
Today, if you want to hunger and thirst after the Lord, then ask Him to give you that deep desire that leads you to think of almost nothing else. Years ago, a plate of brownies called my name and I, in desperation, answered it. May it be the same when we sense the Lord calling each of us. For when we do, we will be blessed.
© Jim Musser 2018
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.” (Hebrews 12:1-3 NIV)
When I was a college student, I remember being told that my campus minister was up by 4 AM and typically read the Scriptures and prayed for several hours. I also remember in the early years of my spiritual journey reading books by authors such as Corrie ten Boom, Dietrich Bonheoffer, C.S. Lewis, and Joni Eareckson Tada, people who discovered God’s goodness in the midst of suffering. And I remember in those early years meeting followers of Jesus from foreign lands or working in them that, while enduring great hardship and challenges, lived their lives with great joy.
These are the “great cloud of witnesses” in my life that gave me encouragement to stay on the narrow path that leads to life when it would have been very easy to leave it when life became so hard. As I have moved on down the road of life, I have picked up additional witnesses along the way. Just yesterday, at a prayer gathering on campus to pray for the campus and the students on it, an elderly gentleman prayed and I found myself so encouraged and uplifted, not only by his words, but also by the strength and earnestness of them. I later learned he once was the Chancellor of Appalachian State University.
Life is sometimes such a struggle that we need all the encouragement we can get. This is the point of the Hebrew writer listing all the faithful people who had lived prior to Jesus coming to earth in the previous chapter. He was showing it is possible to continue on in the faith even if life seems stacked against us and God seems distant. These “witnesses” were an encouragement to him because of the way they lived and kept their eyes fixed on Jesus.
Most of our lives will be long and there will be many low times, times where we are weary, discouraged, apathetic, or full of doubt. In order to navigate these turbulent times, we need our own witness list from which to gain strength, hope and encouragement to continue on.
Today, consider whom you can put on your witness list. Who have you known or read about whose faith inspires you? Put them on your list and keep your eyes open for others. For there will soon come a time when you will need them as inspiration and encouragement to continue fixing your eyes on Jesus.
© Jim Musser 2018
“For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” (Ephesians 3:14-4:4 NIV)
Evangelist Billy Graham died yesterday at the age of 99. His last appearance on the national stage was shortly after 9/11 when he spoke at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. at a memorial service for the victims of that dreadful terrorist attack. Among the students I work with, and even the many who have graduated in recent years, they have no memory of Dr. Graham. If they recognized his name, they knew little about him other than he was famous and very old. But like so many elderly people we know, Billy Graham had an extraordinary life, and the Lord used him to impact literally millions of people over his lifetime.
He became a Christian in his teens and felt the call of the Lord on his life to be an evangelist by the time he was 20. Imagine that. And what can be said about him as we remember his life is that he was faithful to the calling he received and lived a life worthy of it. Was he perfect? Did he do everything right along the way? Of course not, and he freely admitted that. But what he did do was live out faithfully the call the Lord had given him and to trust Him. Growing up on a farm just outside Charlotte, NC, Graham could have never comprehended what his life would become. He just followed Jesus and proclaimed what he deeply believed and felt—that the Lord’s love for us is much greater and grander than we can fathom.
My life intersected with Dr. Graham’s life on a wintery night when I was 20 years old, at a missions conference attended by 18,000 college students. As he spoke about God’s call on our lives to surrender to Him and follow Him wherever He leads us, I listened with much unease. I had given my life to Jesus just a little over a year before that and I was terrified that God would send me overseas somewhere to live as a missionary. I was more than content staying in the good ol’ US of A. In fact, I had an iron-fisted grip on that idea. Until Graham challenged us to surrender our lives to the Lord’s will, whatever that might be, to trust Him not just with a portion of our lives, but all of it. That night, I surrendered my will with much fear and trembling for what might be looming ahead for me.
Some 40+ years later, as I reflect on both Mr. Graham’s life and my own, I see the hand of God; I see His love; and I see His incredible power to use people in ways that are truly unimaginable. Life trusting the Lord always turns out much different and better than if we shrink back in distrust and choose to live life on our terms.
The sad thing is we will never know what we have missed by going our own way until our life is over. This is why I think Paul urges (pleads) that we live a life worthy of the calling we have received so we can know just how great the Lord is in loving us and transforming us. That terrified young man of the mid-70’s became one who has eagerly traveled to much of the world to help college students grasp the Lord’s love for all who live on this planet and how they can play a role in His mission to tell them, just as Billy Graham went from a farm boy to a global evangelist.
Today, what do you sense God’s calling is on your life? Are you shrinking back from it out of fear? Are you instead planning your life the way you want it to be? Then just as Dr. Graham challenged me and thousands of others decades ago, let me challenge you, plead with you, to trust the Lord and embrace His call to follow Him no matter where He leads. It may be terrifying, but you cannot even imagine the great things He has in store if you surrender all of your life to Him. This is the legacy of Billy Graham’s life. I hope it is the legacy I leave. And I hope it will be your legacy as well.
© Jim Musser 2018
“Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. As it is written: ‘They have freely scattered their gifts to the poor;
their righteousness endures forever.’ Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God. (II Corinthians 9:6-11 NIV)
Suppose I offered you $100 cash and asked only that in the next week you return to me ten dollars. You keep 90% and give me back 10%. I assume you would think that to be a great deal. That is basically the deal God has offered us. He gives us everything we have (Click here) and He asks us to give back at least 10% of that. It is called a tithe, and while Paul says it is not obligatory, it was the baseline for giving in the New Testament Church.
Yet, most of American Christians don’t see it as a good deal for them. Only five percent tithe, and the average is two percent of their income. A lot of people are going reap very little!
There are a number of reasons for these dismal statistics—selfishness, greed, and debt among them—but they all have their root in a lack of trust in God. We hoard what He has given us because we fear He will fall short in His promises. If we give our money away, will we have enough? Will our needs be satisfied? Will what He provides be better than what we can buy for ourselves? So we are inclined to tighten our grip on what He has so graciously provided. And when people like me say what I am saying, we often get defensive and rail at how the church is “always talking about money!”
Yet, think about it. Is God really asking so much? He gives us everything and wants only a small portion of it back, and then says if we give Him that, He will give us even more! How is that not a wonderful deal?
Today, recognize how generous the Lord is with you. Everything you have has come from His hand. He has every right to demand all of it back, but instead He asks for only a very small portion. Now that, my friend, is a great deal!
© Jim Musser 2018
“The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First he says:
‘This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.’
Then he adds: ‘Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.’ And where these have been forgiven, sacrifice for sin is no longer necessary.” (Hebrews 10:15-18 NIV)
For years I internally berated myself for many of the sinful choices I made in my youth after I had decided to follow Jesus. I had no problem putting the sins of my pre-Christian days behind me, but found it very difficult to do so with those after I acknowledged Him as my Savior and Lord. I had not blasphemed the Holy Spirit (Matthew 12:31), nor intentionally went on sinning (Hebrews 6:4-6). No, I just kept on sinning in ways that were appalling to me.
Have you ever felt that way, guilt-ridden, ashamed, and stuck in a vicious cycle of sin and self-condemnation? It is a miserable place to be and, during my early life, I spent much time there. And it is where our enemy desires us to remain. He wants us to be so overwhelmed by our sin that we feel ashamed, guilty, and hopeless. He takes advantage of the sorrow that naturally follows for anyone who has a good conscience. We feel bad, but then what?
Paul identifies two types of sorrow—godly sorrow and worldly sorrow. He says the former brings repentance, salvation, and leaves no regret, while the latter brings about death. (II Corinthians 7:10) It is easy to conclude that he is referring to the experience we have when we come to Christ and give our lives over to Him. That’s how I once interpreted it. However, repentance is not a one-off thing; just as we sin repeatedly as believers, so also we are called to repent of these various sins, and then move on without regret. This is only possible if we truly believe and understand what we read in this passage in Hebrews. Because of Jesus’ sacrifice through His death on the cross, nothing more is needed on our part but to humbly accept the grace that is freely offered to us.
Yet, what we often do, just like I once did, is to offer up repeatedly to Him our sacrifice of regret. We are so, so sorry and we tell Him as well as ourselves long after the sin has been confessed, and forgiven. We act in a way that suggests His sacrifice was not enough; that more is needed. So we offer up over and over the sacrifice of regret. It feels right because we feel so bad. This is the worldly sorrow Paul speaks of, and if we remain there, it only leads to a deep emotional and spiritual dark hole that will eventually destroy us.
Today, if you find yourself feeling ashamed of your sin and in the habit of offering the sacrifices of regret, know they are not necessary or wanted by your Savior and Lord. The sacrifice He made on the cross was sufficient. No other is needed. As John reminds us, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” (I John 1:9 NIV) That is all that is required of you, and if you can do that, then you can move on in freedom and grace without regret.
© Jim Musser 2018
