Seven "Bottom Line" Thoughts

Every believer has the entire Christian life living in them right now.

Christ is all and is in all.

Colossians 3:11

The only way to grow the quality and the reach of our love is to grow in Christ as the center of our life.

"My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in in you..."

Galatians 4:19          

There is a difference between my soul and my spirit. My spirit is sealed and secure in eternal  connection to Jesus. My soul is imperfect and in the process of learning to love again.

Hebrews 4:12

For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

There is nothing the presence of Christ in me cannot cure.

John 7:37-38

On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.

Jesus is my life, therefore, my life is perfect.  The sum of my experience in this world is far from perfect, therefore, my experience in this world is not my life.  

Philippians 1:21

For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

John 16:33

These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will[a] have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”

Whatever gets my attention gets me.

Matthew 6:22-23

“The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

Underestimating Jesus leads me to my greatest losses.

John 15:5

“I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.

Bud McCord

Abide International

Jesus - Invitation or Innovation?

For many people Jesus was simply a teacher of moral innovations and an agent of change.  Many people give Jesus credit as one of history’s most influential moral forces and innovators. Attributing to Jesus any power or sustainability beyond his ideias and innovations does not fit the modern view of Jesus. He died, they say, but his ideias and innovations live on among all the other competing ideias and innovations.

People who see Jesus in this way have never come to grips with the Jesus of history or the Bible. The Jesus of the Bible and history never called people to his ideas and innovations. and he never said he was an innovator ready to compete.

Jesus called people to Himself not  to His ideias.  In fact, He did not traffic in ideas or innovations. He stated facts over which he claimed to have total authority given to Him from His Father. He was singularly focused on His own facts as the facts that matter.

Perhaps to best way to see Jesus is as a personal, loving invitation given  to each of us written in flesh and blood.  Everything Jesus said and did is an invitation to us to come home to the original idea the Creator has always had for humanity which is Jesus.  Jesus embodied this original human ideal and turned it into a personal invitation to live Him.

One does not evaluate the ideas of an invitation. One evaluates the one who invites.  Take a good look at Jesus. See Him and listen closely to Him.  If He appears to be generous, loving and caring, say ´yes´ to His invitation.  There will never be a better one that comes to us.  He is the God we all hoped exists!

Bud McCord

Abide International

The Will of God

Doing the will of God is food for the human soul and for human strength and development.  We were created to do God's will and in the process live well.  Not doing God’s will  may be normal for humans at this time in human experience, but sin entered human experience as something unnatural when humanity failed to do God’s will.  Doing the will of God is what was once natural for human beings.  Adam and Eve tasted the food  and strength of doing God's will before they tasted temptation's illusion and pain.

When Jesus said doing the will of His Father was His food, He was saying doing the will of God is good and sustaining for humanity.  Jesus showed us what should be normal for humanity. Normal is doing God's will every day just like we need to eat every day.

We are surrounded then by unnatural human behavior that the Bible calls "sin".   Sinning adds nothing to life, but it most certainly subtracts from life.  Sin does not feed anyone. Sin steals food from life and moves us closer to death.

As we abide in Christ we begin to experience Jesus' continuous flow of life and love passing to us and through us as fruit.  When doing the will of God becomes as natural as eating we are heading  back to normal in the Kingdom of God.

Bud McCord

Abide International