Seeing God
I went on a mission trip to South Africa and Mozambique in August. On that trip God taught me a significant lesson about seeing Him at work around me everyday. It was my desire to see what God was doing and I was frustrated by the realization that I was not seeing God at work everyday. I expressed this struggle to God.
Then God spoke to me from Matthew 6:22-23. "The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!" That entire day I had been focusing on and thinking about things that I wanted or that I thought would make me happy. Because I was focusing on myself, I was blind to and missing the things that God was doing.
I was also looking for God to do big miraculous things and God reminded me of 1 Corinthians 12 and 13. The Corinthian church was caught up in wanting God to do spectacular things. But in 1 Cor. 12:31 Paul says I will show you the most excellent way... and he proceeds to talk about loving others as being even more important than speaking in tongues of angels, having all knowledge, being able to move mountains, and dying as a martyr. 1 John 4:12 says "No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us." So whenever we see the Spirit of God moving his people to love and serve others, we are seeing God at work around us.
With that word from God, I realized I was seeing God working around me everyday as I saw members of the mission team loving the children of Mozambique through bible clubs and making meals for the poor. Through encouraging a poor pastor by helping him build his house. I saw God working powerfully through a missionary woman, Sally, who had dedicated her life to helping thousands orphans of AIDS grow up with hope.
But we can miss all that God is doing when we focus on our selfish desires and then we are in darkness. When our hearts love the things of this world that darkness is very dark indeed. God desires that we focus each day on looking for the opportunities to help and serve people. Then we will be the light of the World and people will see God through us.
Labels: God, vision
Counting the Cost
1 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
I have been reflecting on the beginning of Romans 5:3-5 this week. I have been taking a Spiritual Leadership class with Richard
Blackaby and he made the following observation. Success often develops pride in our lives whereas failure and trials drive us to our knees and humble us. If God wants to keep us walking closely with him, which would he send into our lives?
We want God to do great things in our lives and take us to the next level, yet whenever God brings a cross of adversity into our lives the first thing we cry out is, “God take this out of my life!” We have to decide if we want to be more like Christ or be comfortable.
Richards comment was that it is not safe to follow Jesus. The world needs courageous men and women, who are willing to die to do what is right, not legions of complacent followers asking for God to bless them and keep them safe. When followers of Jesus actively do things that establish justice (or righteousness; making things right), peace, and joy in our world … many self-serving agendas will be threatened. People who pursue their own desires for power, pleasure, and riches often do so at the expense of those they oppress, abuse, and steal from. People who are on fire with God’s passion for justice will be attacked in order to protect the status
quo. Consider Martin Luther King, Jr. as one of the most recent martyrs for opposing the status
quo of racial oppression and injustice.
This brings me to my reflections on Romans 5 over the past few days. Paul starts out saying Jesus Christ brought us peace with God. I did a study on the Hebrew term for peace; shalom. It’s meaning is far deeper than simply an absence of conflict or some inner tranquility. It has the meaning of completeness of life, experiencing the fullness of life, or wholeness (like a stone that never has been marred or cut… it is perfectly whole). This is God’s desire for us. We have lost the full and abundant life He originally intended for us. Sin has entered our experience and now we experience pain and suffering as people oppress, steal, deceive, abuse, use, hurt and attack each other. Jesus came as a King to reestablish a world order where selfish living is overthrown and people begin to obey God’s commands to love others and do what’s right. As people follow Jesus Christ as
their King, obeying his commands and doing his work will bring them in to conflict with the established social order. Suffering is
inevitable even for those committed to peaceful reform.
Affliction and suffering produces the opportunity to either give up or turn to God to call out for help. God has a long documented track record of delivering people who call on him for help. When people persevere into doing what is right when the pressure of affliction comes, it develops a strong character. A weak character gives up when pain comes because all that person wants is personal comfort and gratification. So they retreat from the suffering until the pain goes away. But the person of conviction will endure pain and loss to stand for what is right. They will also call on God in the midst of suffering and trust that God will help them to have strength to get through the suffering or to deliver them from the suffering.
I have noticed in my own life that when persistent afflictions come, it often initially
causes me to be angry at God because he does not seem to be answering my initial prayers. But then I remember the faithfulness of God through the past eighteen years and all that I know of Gods love and desire for our good. So I do not stay angry, instead the fire of my anger moves me to seek God with a fiercer sense of urgency. It is in those times that I meet with God in a deeper way than I would have in times of comfort and ease.
Labels: character, God, Jesus, Revival, suffering
Simplicity of Revival
Revival (a genuine encounter with God) is simple. We can draw closer to God at any time if we will humble ourselves (admit we have done wrong and are transparent) and pray and seek Gods face (with hunger and sincere desire) and turn from
our wicked ways (repent). 2
Chron. 7:14
God invites people to enter into a deeper relationship with Him. God wants to be a father to us as His children. He wants to guide us, provide for us, and protect us. He sends his Spirit to live in us to convict, teach, and draw us to Himself.
This is how the Spirit of God revives us:
- The Spirit convicts you of sin.
(The Spirit guides you in to the truth and reveals what is hindering you from having a close relationship with God.)
- You confess your sin.
1 John 1:9 - If you confess your sin, God is faithful and it is right for God to forgive us (because Jesus died to pay the death penalty sentence for everyones sin) and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
- Repent
You turn from the sin and choose to obey God. Turning back to God and being renewed in your relationship with Him is this simple. The hard part for many is making the choice to love God more than the thing that has turned them away from God.
- You are forgiven by God and cleansed of all unrighteousness.
If you admit you are wrong in the current matter that God is convicting you of, God will cleanse you not only of that sin but will cleanse you from all unrighteousness. When God forgives you, he cleans the slate. He keeps no record of wrongs (1 Cor 13:5) and removes your sin as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12). Once you are forgiven, you are completely clean before God and can approach God with confidence because you are now made righteous in Christ.
- You are filled with the Spirit
God is concerned with the choices you are making right now; once you confess a sin and repent, God no longer remembers it (keeps a record of it). Once you confess and repent, you are restored to a right relationship with God enjoying full access to His presence and being filled with the Spirit of God... until the next time you choose to sin.
- Be accountable to not return to your sin and be enslaved again.
Once you have returned to a whole hearted relationship, the key is continuing in that relationship and not falling back into sin (selfishness). Many Christians experience times of closeness with God, but then soon fall back into long periods of living for themselves. When God has guided you into the truth and you see a pattern of sin (selfishness) in your life that keeps pulling you away from God, it is critical to ask others to help you keep from returning to that habit.
But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness. Hebrews 3:13
It is this willingness to humble yourself to admit your struggles to others that marks revival. When we come to the place where we are more concerned about doing whatever it takes to be right with God that we nolonger care that we may look bad to people around us, then we are in the place God can set our lives on fire with His Spirit.
Labels: accountability, God, Revival, Spirit-filled
My Journey So Far
Wow. 2006 is over and I am half way through seminary now. And I am creating my own blog to chronicle my ongoing adventures in my life of serving Jesus Christ. I am hitting the halfway point in life as well, for in a few days I will be 39 years old.
To briefly recap the adventure so far... I was born in Rhode Island to Robert and
Christy Colebank in 1967. I grew up as an only child in a very artistic family. My Dad is an architect and my Mom is an illustrator/graphic designer. They met while going to Rhode Island School of Design and I was born while they were in college. I followed in their footsteps and went to college at R.I.S.D. too. I graduated in 1989 with a B.F.A. in Industrial Design.
While at R.I.S.D., I discovered that God really did exist through seeing the difference He made in the lives of my friends; Nick
DeLuca, Steve Brock, Dan Fergus and Eric
Holter. In September, 1988 during my senior year I asked God to come into my life and began to follow Jesus. After I graduated, I decided to make God my first priority by focusing on growing in my relationship with God, so I stayed in RI and took a commercial art job. I began asking God to lead me in my career and give me a soul mate.
In 1996, I sensed Gods leading to change careers and got into web site design right as the Internet began to take off. This proved to be a great career to be in over the next decade. I love computers, so I had a lot of fun as I dove into programming and database design. God was faithful in leading me into a career that was perfectly suited for my interests and abilities.
In November, 1996 I heard Henry
Blackaby speaking on a Fresh Encounter with God and heard God calling me to serve Him full time. Six months later I met my wife, Lynn, and we were married in August, 1998. Lynn was serving on the staff of Grace Chapel in Lexington, Massachusetts and had just completed her Masters in Counselling at Gordon
Conwell when I met her. Once again God was faithful in providing a soul mate for each of us who was perfectly suited to complete the other. I am a thinker and Lynn is a feeler. I love to spend time alone getting deeper into things and Lynn loves to connect with lots of people. I love to
strategize and plan and Lynn loves to be spontaneous and have fun. God is so good and loves to give us the best. We have discovered great joy in exploring life together as a couple comparing our unique perspectives. And God has been faithful to help us move through and beyond the times when those differences caused us to clash.
We settled in to establish our home and in 2000 we began our family. We asked God to provide for us so Lynn could stay home with our children and several months later I had a new job with a 50% salary increase which allowed Lynn to stop working. Our son John was born in September 2000. Over the next four years God blessed us with two more children; Sarah and Jenna.
By the summer of 2005, we were ready for the next step and moved to
Cochrane, Alberta in Canada to go to the Canadian Southern Baptist Seminary to prepare for what God wanted us to do next. The last year and a half has been a tremendous time of spiritual growth and my heart is increasingly on fire for God as I continue to experience his faithfulness to us. God is truly good to those who put their trust in Him. I hope that the chronicles of Gods faithfulness in this blog will encourage many others to be wholeheartedly follow Jesus as well.
Labels: biography, God, Jesus
