Turning Up the Heat for God

People who are lukewarm for Jesus miss out on extraordinary joy in both directions - to the left and to the right. On the one hand, they miss the joy of suffering because they never take a stand for their Lord. On the other hand, they miss the joy of treasuring Jesus above everything else this world has to offer. When cars and kids and jobs and TV look better than the King of kings, it's high time to take your temperature. And be careful... you may get spit out by the Savior himself! No wonder our Messiah declared to the church in Laodicea, "Would that you were either cold or hot!" (Rev. 3:15).

Lukewarm believers rarely do much for the Kingdom. Just look at Scripture. The minute someone gets set on fire for God, that's when things really take off. Half-hearted followers need not apply.

So where are you? Hot? Cold? Somewhere in the middle? Stop right now and check your temperature.

Jesus wants our joy to be full, but He wants our joy to be full in Him - not in the petty pleasures of this world. Oh, that we might be blazing hot for our blessed Savior! "For the LORD your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God" (Deut. 4:24). To Him be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

What Is True Worship?

When talking with a Samaritan woman at Jacob's well (John 4), Jesus makes an earth-shattering statement. In response to her confusion about where people should worship (v. 20), Isa says the following:

But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. (vv. 23-24)

The reason this is so earth-shattering is because for thousands of years, worship had always been associated with a physical location. The woman tells Jesus that "Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship" (v. 20). In other words, she's trying to argue latitudes and longitudes. But Jesus doesn't go down that road. He isn't concerned with temples or mountains. He's stops her dead in her tracks and says, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father" (v. 21).

In essence, Jesus is saying that you no longer need to travel any amount of distance in order to worship Allah. You can worship Him wherever you are. You can worship Him at home, in your car, at work, at the grocery store, in your room, at the bank, at the mall or anywhere else. Allah loves our worship all the time - not only when we're at religious buildings.

I know (from personal experience) that it's one thing to show up at a temple, mosque or church and go through all the motions. But it's an entirely different thing to worship the Father in spirit and in truth - regardless of where we are. And remember, these are the people that Allah is seeking! He desires our worship, regardless of where we do it. For "The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything" (Acts 17:24-25).

Praise and thanks be to God for sending Isa al Masih to show us this exciting and liberating reality. May we all be true worshipers of Allah, wherever we are, in spirit and in truth.

The Greatest Commandment

Mark 12:28-31:

And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked [Jesus], "Which commandment is the most important of all?" Jesus answered, "The most important is, 'Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."

Isn't it odd that love is the single greatest commandment in all of Scripture? The Tawrat, Prophets, Zabur and Injil are filled with commandments from God. Yet none of them surpass the commandment to love Allah.

Futhermore, we are not to simply love the Lord with our words and deeds. We are to love Him with everything we are. "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength."

This means that we can pray five times a day, give alms to the poor, fast from sunrise to sunset, memorize thousands of verses, keep the strictest guidelines of religion - and yet still be disobeying the greatest commandment of Allah. The apostle Paul puts it like this:

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:1-3)

If we have not love, we gain nothing. It is essential that we continue to seek Allah and love Him with all that we are. Isa al Masih has given us the greatest commandment and he longs for us to obey it. Once again, "The most important is, 'Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.'"

So how can we truly live this out? By obeying the commandments of Allah. "By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome" (1 John 5:2-3).

The commandments of God are not burdensome. He doesn't require us to jump through a bunch of hoops, complete a series of tests or try to merit our own salvation. He wants our hearts, our souls, our minds and our strength to love Him with all that we are. This indeed is the greatest commandment.

Too Good to be True?

When I read the Bible I often run into a very strange problem. The problem is not that God sounds too cruel, impatient or irritated. The problem is that He sounds too good to be true! He sounds too loving. He sounds too caring. He sounds like He knows every hair on my head and listens to my every cry. Here is just a miniscule taste of His goodness:

Psalm 103:13. As a father shows compassion to his children, so the LORD shows compassion to those who fear him.

Psalm 56:8. You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book?

Psalm 34:18. The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.

Ephesians 2:4-5. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ— by grace you have been saved.

1 John 3:1. See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.

Romans 5:8. But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Psalm 16:11. You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

And the list goes on and on. These wonderful truths about Allah are all over the pages of Scripture. But what do we do with a God like this? And why do we have such a hard time believing these things are true?

I certainly have some ideas of my own, but what do you think? Why do you struggle to see Allah as infinitely good, infinitely wise, infinitely patient and infinitely loving? I know He is in my head, but my heart doesn't always believe so quickly!

The Scriptures Bear Witness About Me

Reading the Scriptures and immersing ourselves in God's word is extremely essential in strengthening our faith. For "faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ" (Rom. 10:17). And as the psalmist cries, "My soul melts away for sorrow; strengthen me according to your word!" (Zabur 119:28).

But it is not enough to stop there. We cannot simply read and hope for the best. Why? Because the reading is not the destination. Jesus is.

Listen to these words from Isa al Masih:

You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. (John 5:39-40)

This is a rather remarkable statement. Jesus is talking to very devout Jews who likely have most of the Scriptures memorized by heart. These people could often recite the entire Tawrat off the top of their heads. But Isa is not impressed. He isn't satisfied with their intellectual knowledge. He wants them to come to him.

The beauty of the Scriptures is that they are all pointing forward to Isa al Masih. He is the promised Messiah whom all the prophets foretell. (And while we don't have time to fully address this truth right now, it is something that we will continually come back to on this blog.) As Isa himself points out, Allah's blessings throughout the generations are ultimately fulfilled in His Word, Jesus Christ. It is the Sciptures that bear witness about him (John 5:39).

Reading the Scriptures is vitally important to our spiritual life. But we cannot stop there. We must soak in the word of God so that we will be directed to Jesus, and come to him that we may have life (John 5:40). If we simply read for intellectual knowledge, it's as if we're driving a car for thousands of miles with no specific destination in mind. Just as the car is meant to get us somewhere, so also are the Scriptures meant to get us somewhere: To Jesus Christ our Lord.

Isa is calling us to come to him for life. He says to those who hear, "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst" (John 6:35). The Scriptures all bear witness about him. May we come to him that we may have life.

The Parables of Isa

Isa al Masih told many stories and parables during his time of earthly ministry. In fact, the Injil tells us that Jesus "did not say anything to [the crowds] without using a parable. But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything" (Mark 4:34).

So why did Jesus do this? Why did he speak to the crowds in parables, but explain everything to his disciples in private?

We find the answer in the gospel of Luke. There Isa says to his disciples, "The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to others I speak in parables, so that, 'though seeing, they may not see; though hearing, they may not understand'"(Luke 8:10).

In other words, those who have ears to hear the good news of Isa al Masih will respond in repentance and faith towards God. But there are some who will not respond. They do not have ears to hear. They do not have eyes to see. And yet even so, Allah is still completely sovereign over their spiritual deafness and blindness to His word.

Here is one of my favorite parables from Jesus. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on what he says:

He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: "Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.'

But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, 'God, be merciful to me, a sinner!'

I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted." (Luke 18:9-14)

This is always a convicting passage for me. It's easy to become arrogant and look down on others, thinking that our good deeds somehow make us righteous before God. But as Isa clearly points out - it is the mercy of Allah alone that justifies us before God. "For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted."

What are your thoughts on this parable? Does it resonate with you? Which person do you more closely align with - the Pharisee or the tax collector? Feel free to leave a comment below.

Worship from the Heart

There are countless ways in which we all dishonor God. One of the most common is when we cease to praise Him with our heart, and only give Him glory out of stale religious duty. In the same way that we might tell our spouse or children that we love them – while still remaining bitter on the inside – we can just as easily “pretend” to worship God with our actions and our speech.

For instance… Anyone can go to temple, mosque or church. Anyone can pray a prayer in front of others. Anyone can memorize Scripture and recite it correctly. Anyone can fast from food and drink. And anyone can call themselves a “believer”. But what does Allah truly want from us? Is He really content with all these outward acts of reverence?

When some of the religious leaders around Jesus became upset that his disciples didn’t properly wash their hands, Isa responded by saying: "Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written,

'This people honors me with their lips,
but their heart is far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines the commandments of men'" (Mark 7:6-7).

What a convicting truth this is! How many times have we honored the Lord with our lips but had our hearts far from Him? How many times have we worshipped Him in vain? How often have we acted as if our man-made traditions are actually the commandments of God? How often have we washed the outsides of our bodies while our hearts are still unclean?

The Lord is worthy of our sincerest adoration. He is “a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin” (Ex. 35:6-7). He is a powerful God who “is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing” (Zeph. 3:17).

This is the God we are privileged to worship – both with our lips and with our hearts. If we only honor him with our mouths and our deeds, then it’s time to “examine [ourselves], to see whether [we] are in the faith” (2 Cor. 13:5). Do we truly yearn for the Lord with all we are? Do we seek Him with our whole being? Does our soul pant after Him “as a deer pants for flowing streams” (Ps. 42:1)?

I’m reminded of Al-Anfal 8:2: “For, believers are those who, when Allah is mentioned, feel a tremor in their hearts, and when they hear His signs rehearsed, find their faith strengthened, and put (all) their trust in their Lord.” May the name of the Lord put a tremor in our hearts. May our faith be strengthened as we put our deepest trust in Him. And may our hearts be near to Him as we worship the Lord “in spirit and in truth” (John 4:23). To God be the glory forever. Amen.