Will Davis Jr.'s Blog, page 40

The Upgrade

For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

John 1:17

I received one just the other day. It came in the mail with a dozen other pieces of unsolicited information. It was an ad for an upgrade. It seems that the software that I purchased less than a year ago for my computer is no longer current.

Highly skilled experts have been working to improve their product and what they have come up with makes my current software . . . . uncool. OK, at least out of date.

I just bought it! How can it be a dinosaur already? But the propaganda assures me that if I don’t buy this new version I will be woefully behind the high tech curve.

It’s called an Upgrade.

But there is a problem with upgrades, be it an iPhone, iPad, operating system, version of iTunes or whatever–they never end. The software I currently have is the 8.0 version. The new is 9.0. Do you see a pattern developing here? Think about all those poor slobs who bought 1.0. If they haven’t upgraded 8 times, they’re really out of it.

Anyway, that’s the problem with upgrades. There’s always another coming down the pike. They’re set up to make you want more. Upgrades are to software and gadgets what sequels are to movies: they’re designed to leave you waiting for the next one to come out.

That is not true, however, when it comes to God. He is the God of the ultimate upgrade, but with God you need to upgrade only once.

In this verse, John tells us about the upgrade that God provided through Jesus Christ. He compares the ministry and message of Moses to the ministry and message of Jesus. Both were from God, but the former was initial while the latter was ultimate. One was incomplete, one complete. One preliminary, the other final. One asked a question, the other answered it.

Moses’ gave us the Law, and for that we are grateful. Through the Law we learned about our sin, God’s holiness and the gap between the two. But the Mosaic Law provided no ultimate solution. Thus, we needed an upgrade.

Enter Jesus. In Jesus, God moved from emphasizing our need to providing our solution.

John nails it down with his words: Grace and truth came through Jesus. John’s contrast could not be more dramatic. Under Moses we knew the Law—rules, regulations, and unattainable measuring rods. Under Jesus we know grace and truth. Which do you prefer?

God has given us, free of charge, the ultimate upgrade of grace and truth. Grace is the provision of God’s unlimited forgiveness and healing at the expense of Jesus Christ. Truth is the light of God in our lives, showing us real purpose and meaning. Both grace and truth are available to all who love Jesus Christ.

No other upgrade is needed. Once you know the favor of God, it’s impossible to improve upon it. Love Jesus. Shirk off the tyranny of the law of sin. Receive the upgrade of grace in your life today and never look back.

If you already know Jesus, then stop looking for joy anywhere else. No other upgrades exist. He is all you need.

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Will’s Letter to ACF, March 7, 2014

Greetings Friends! Are you ready for another Spirit-blessed weekend at ACF!!!!! I sure am. Here we go.

This weekend is daylight savings time!!! Woo Hoo!!! Bring on the Spring!!!! Be sure to set your clocks forward one hour and go to bed early on Saturday night!

This Weekend at ACF . . . . Is family worship! I love these weekends. All school-age children and youth will be in the adult worship event at each community. Parents, this is a great opportunity for you to pray and worship with your kids, to take Communion with them, and to engage them in spiritual conversations.

We’ll be in week two of our Follow series and we’ll be talking about how to pass discipleship down from one generation to the next.

We’ll also be baptizing this weekend and it’s not too late for you to jump in! (Pun intended.) Contact your local community pastor for more information.

Fifth Sunday Serving. The last weekend of this month, March 29/30, is our Fifth Sunday Serving weekend. Every fifth Sunday we cancel our weekend services and try to send out hundreds of volunteers into the city to serve. It’s a great way for us to be the Church outside of our regular gatherings and to share Jesus’ love with people who might never hear it otherwise.

You can choose to participate in one of several organized opportunities or you can just choose to serve with your small group or family right there in your neighborhood or with a ministry your passionate about. But please, for the sake of the Gospel in Austin, get out and serve!

Click here to sign up! 

And Finally . . . . Thanks to all of you who wrote me and agreed to pray with and for me. I can feel it! Keep praying. Pray also for your local community pastor and for the spiritual leaders of our city.

Yea God and see you this weekend, Will

 

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The King Killer

  King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter. . . . 1 Kings 11:1

This may be one of the saddest chapters in Scripture. Solomon’s fame, wisdom and leadership were unmatched anywhere in the world. Kings and queens of other nations praised God because of his example. God was blessing both Solomon and the nation he led. Things could not have been better. But Solomon had a weakness: Solomon loved women.

The foreign women that Solomon married eventually led to his downfall and resulted in civil war in the nation that he and his father had guided so well for nearly 80 years.

They were from nations about which the Lord had told the Israelites, “You must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods,” (vs. 2a). God had specifically warned the nation of Israel not to intermarry with other nations, and yet Solomon is all his wisdom did not heed this warning.

Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love (vs. 2b). This ‘holding fast” is a biblical way of saying that the king was addicted. His love for these women owned his heart more than God’s Word did. That’s an addiction. And in spiritual language, it’s a stronghold.

He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray (vs. 3). Solomon could sleep with three different women each day for a year before he would see the same woman twice. Yet all of this sexual indulgence did not satisfy him.

Let me say that again: Solomon had over a thousand women available to meet his sexual needs, and yet it didn’t quench his sexual thirst. It did, however, sabotage his heart.

As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God (vs.4). It took a while, but Solomon’s sin eventually cost him his relationship with God. God had blessed Solomon because he had been wholly devoted to him. But at the end of his life, Solomon had traded his passion for God for passion for sex. That’s a common exchange even among Christ-followers today, and it always kills.

So Solomon did evil in the eyes of the Lord; he did not follow the Lord completely (vs.6). What a tragic verdict on the life of such a great leader. All of Solomon’s humility before and blessing from God evaporated in the fire of his carnal passion. The end result? The Lord became angry with Solomon because his heart had turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice (vs. 9). Solomon not only broke God’s Law, he lost his favor. God’s righteous anger burned towards Solomon. Both he and the nation he led paid dearly for his sin.

What do you love today more than God? What controls you and causes you to do things that you know are wrong? What fleshly appetites so grip you that you would risk your job, your marriage, your leadership role in your church or even your freedom to satisfy them? That’s an addiction.

Have you set aside part of God’s Word to accommodate sin in your life? It does not have to be 1000 women to steal your heart from God. Each of us has something that competes for our loyalty to God. To the degree that we yield our hearts, like Solomon, we yield the Kingdom.

Wake up and heed the warnings of Scripture. Anything that competes with God in your life is an idol. It will quench the fire of God’s Spirit in you and lead your heart astray. Learn from Solomon’s mistake. Don’t deliberately walk around God’s Word just to satisfy a desire. Such behavior is fool’s folly and a killer of kings. Just ask Solomon.

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Never Retreat

 And He was saying to them all, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it.”

Luke 9:23-24 

One-hundred-and-seventy-eight years ago today–March 6, 1836–the Alamo fell.

In the predawn hours, after a twelve day siege and after Mexican General Santa Anna had ordered an all-out assault, the one-hundred-and-eighty-nine men who had so bravely guarded the fort died in a bloody and fierce battle that was primarily hand-to-hand. After it ended, Santa Anna ordered that the bodies of those who had fought for the Alamo be burned.

Nine days earlier, Col. William B. Travis sent a letter via courier pleading for reinforcements. As he and his watched the Mexican army growing every day, they knew that they couldn’t hold out much longer against such numbers. But reinforcements or not, Travis knew what he had to do.

He wrote: I shall never surrender or retreat . . . . If this call (for help) is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible and die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his honor and that of his country. Victory or death.

To this day the Alamo’s story still moves me. I’ve walked it’s halls many times, halls where the bloodiest part if the battle was fought. I cry every time.

I want to know that I would have shown the same courage that Travis and his followers did. I want to know that, when called on, I would readily die for what I believe in.

Would you?

Those of us who follow Jesus are called to do just that. We’re called to set our lives aside and gladly take up the mantle of slaves of Jesus. We’re called to die to ourselves and live for Jesus.

We are called, fellow disciples, to stand with courage against the relentless onslaught of Satan. Though we feel outnumbered, though we stand alone, we are called to fight like soldiers for the name of our King and never surrender or retreat.

And yet some of us still struggle to read our Bibles and pray every day.

Friends, those heroes of the Alamo died for a great earthly cause. We are invited to live for an eternal one.

Will you?

 

 

 

 

 

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Letting the Chips Fall

A hot-tempered man must pay the penalty; if you rescue him, you will have to do it again. Proverbs 19:19 

I shouldn’t be surprised, but it is totally amazing to me just how practical the Bible can be sometimes. In a verse like this, it’s easy to see the wisdom of God being spoken through King Solomon.

Simply put, Solomon tells us not to rescue people from the consequences of their own actions. If we do, we only set them up for failure in the future. Now remember that this is 3000-year-old counsel, and it’s right on. Human nature hasn’t changed much in three millennia. Rescue somebody and you’ll have to do it again later.

Years back I was working with a staff member who dropped the ball on a huge assignment. It wasn’t an oversight or a miscue, the staff member just didn’t prepare well for the upcoming busy season. The problem was, the staff member was supposed to leave the next day–the day after the assignment was due–for a work-related conference. In a team debrief, I suggested that the staff member not go to the conference but stay behind and finish the assignment. His failure to complete the task would have a huge trickle down effect on many people, including volunteers in our organization. To me it was pretty clear that this staff member needed to learn from this mistake, stay behind and make things right.

I should have stuck with my convictions. However, when the other staff members proposed to pick up the slack for their teammate’s error, I acquiesced. In short, we rescued him. Off he went to his conference, happy as a lark and lesson unlearned.

Can you guess what happened? That same staff member dropped the ball on the exact same part of his job description on several other occasions. When I began to insist that he pick up the slack, I was accused of being uncaring, cold-hearted and mean. What’s wrong with that picture?

Friends, it truly is uncaring to rescue people and not let lessons, however painful, be learned. Parents rescue children, spouses rescue spouses, friends rescue other friends, siblings rescue siblings, and workers rescue co-workers. When we do, we only serve to deepen an already unhealthy pattern of behavior.

The Bible’s wisdom is to not rescue but to let the chips fall. If they oversleep, let them be late. If they spend too much, let the check bounce. If they have a quick temper, let them face the consequences. In short, if you love them let them fail.

Is there someone in your life that you’re in the pattern of rescuing? Stop today. Let the consequences come. It’s the most loving response when someone close to you needs to grow.

 

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Following 101–This One Really Surprised Me

I’ve been preaching for over three decades, and rarely have I seen the kind of corporate “wow” over a sermon as I have seen in response to last weekend’s message at ACF.

We began a new series in John about what it means to follow Jesus. It may be the increasing openness of our people to God’s Spirit or their increasing hunger for more of God’s truth, or it may be the increasing favor on and movement of God’s Spirit in our city, but something made this weekend’s message and response time very special for ACFers.

It certainly wasn’t due to anything unusual in my preaching. Honestly, the message was too long and not well-delivered.

But God seems to have anointed it, as the response has been overwhelming.

Curious? Or even better, hungry?

Click the image to watch or listen. As always comments are welcome.

 

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Waves of Grace

For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace.

John 1:16

Imagine that you are standing on a beautiful beach. You see a giant wave coming right you. It’s much larger than all the current breakers and it obvious that if you stay where you are it will drench you. Instead of backing up, you decide to stay put and let massive roller hit you head-on.

What happens next is nothing like what you expected or ever experienced. As the wave hits you, you’re suddenly overwhelmed with feelings of peace, security, love, favor and inexpressible joy. It’s almost as if the wave contains everything you ever needed or hoped for in life and you were just unable to express it.

With this wave came a taste of something you never even dreamed was possible. And in that single, amazing taste is more than you could ever need in a lifetime. This single wave has answered every question, solved every problem and restored every hope and dream that you ever had or might have in the future. It has totally and completely satisfied you. 

And before all those thoughts and feelings can even finish firing through the synapses of your brain, before you can even utter a sigh of pleasure and relief, another wave, exactly like the first, one hits you.

Now you’re more than overwhelmed. Tears start gushing as you try to fathom your unbelievable good fortune. And as you start to breathe a simple prayer of gratitude, and as your eyes clear for just a moment, you’re able to look out at the sea.

All you can see is wave after wave, all just like the first two, lining up out into the horizon, and they’re all headed right at you.

When John says that we have all received from God’s fullness, the picture above something like what he is trying to describe.

God has responded to our sinful desperation with wave after wave of magnificent grace. It just goes on and on.

Jesus isn’t all you need. He’s more than all you need.

God doesn’t redeem. He over-redeems.

Praise his name.

 

 

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Desire

Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Psalms 37:4

The world is in the habit of cheapening and lessoning the profound realities of a relationship with God. In my last Wake Up Call, we talked about real Glory. Today, let’s talk about real Desire.

Desire has been greatly cheapened. We associate it with lust, passion and the relentless pursuit of more. Much like the concept of Glory, Desire has turned horizontal. We long for things of this earth.

We want a nicer car. We desire for a larger home. We lust for another person’s spouse.

But biblical Desire isn’t horizontal. It’s not about pursuing things in the here and now. It’s rather about desiring up. It’s about longing for things that we’ll never reach on our on. It’s noble, blameless, and pure.

Let me rephrase this great verse: Desire God, and you’ll always have what you desire. When God is all you want, he also becomes all you need. When you delight in him, he heaps his favor and blessing on you. And it’s then that you discover just how rich you really are.

Don’t cheapen Desire. The problem with cheap Desire is that it never satisfies. You’ll always be yearning for that next thing, that next fix, to satisfy you. It never will.

Delight yourself in God. Find your joy in him. Recognize his infinite value. Embrace the riches of his mercy and grace.

And then you’ll find yourself completely fulfilled.

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Glory

 

And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory . . . John 1:14

We don’t really understand glory. We’ve reduced glory to being about men—the famous, the rich, the powerful and the “beautiful.” Glory is praise we heap on each other for what we do, or for who we are.

But that isn’t glory. Glory has nothing to do with humans. It is never extended horizontally. It’s always vertical. It always goes to God.

Think about the moon. We’ll stand at night with our Jaws agape at the brilliance of a full moon. Sometimes the moonlight is so bright that the landscape looks like it’s day.

But moonlight is an oxymoron. The moon has no light. What we’re seeing is reflected light. Moonlight is nothing more than sunlight that’s bouncing off the moon.

When John writes that he saw the glory of Jesus, he’s talking about deflected glory. Jesus was the first man John had ever met that always pointed others beyond himself.

Jesus’ glory was really God’s glory shining through him.

We need to return glory to its rightful owner. Let’s not talk about our culture that heaps praise and glory on men, let’s talk about the Christian subculture that has its own set of stars, celebrities and beautiful people. We, the very followers of Jesus that should be the first to reflect his glory, have made it into a human thing. We’ve made it about people—finite, sinful people.

Today you have a chance to be a glory reflector. You have a chance to rise like the moon and shine brightly on your world. But as you do, be sure that people know the source of your brightness.

Point people in your world to the one true source of light. Don’t be subtle about it. Shout it out:

We saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. John 1:14

*I’m teaching through John at Austin Christian Fellowship. To watch or listen to the messages, click here.

 

 

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What are You Wearing Today?

So, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Colossians 3:12

Okay, I’m not trying to be creepy. But I do want to know what you’re wearing. Actually, I’m more interested in how you got into whatever you’re wearing.

Chances are you climbed out of bed this morning and, among other things, you either put on a robe or something else over whatever you slept in or you changed into something else entirely.

The point is that your clothes didn’t get on you by themselves. You put them on. It was strategic, deliberate and an act of your will.

Now, think about your spirit—What are you wearing? What is covering your spirit? What will people see in you today when they meet you? Shame? Grace? Joy? Anger? Bitterness? Unforgiveness? Peace? Blessing? Selflessness?

In the verse above, Paul tells the believers in Colossae that they must choose to put on the spiritual clothing that honors God. Just like you won’t walk around today with too much of your flesh exposed, Paul urges us to cover our fleshly selves as well.

So he tells us to put on our clothes–compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.

You have to go to the closet and pick them out. You have to choose them over other things.

You have to choose compassion over callousness.

You have to choose kindness over cruelty.

You have to choose humility over arrogance.

You have to choose gentleness over aggressiveness.

And you have to choose patience over being quick-tempered and quick-tongued.

And after you choose them, you have to put them on.

So, I ask again: What are you wearing today? Because you are chosen by God, choose to dress in his clothing.

Now please excuse me. I need to go get dressed.

 

 

 

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