Taking a Minute

John 16:33 (NIV): “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart, I have overcome the world.” Now Jesus is going to be crucified shortly after saying this, so these are kind of like His parting words to His disciples. Of all the things He wanted them to hear, it was peace. It’s like Jesus was saying, “Alright, sometimes things get crazy in this world, but you can have My peace.” He didn’t just give us some peace, but His peace. Jesus is your peace. When life gets crazy it usually means we need more of something. We run out of money, we need more money, or less bills. Someone is sick, we need more health. So Jesus might say, “When the trouble comes, what you really need is more Me. I’ll be your peace.” It doesn’t mean the storm magically disappears, it means you aren’t stressed out about the storm. You have peace. You are trusting that Jesus has overcome the world back at the cross. And He has. Are you nervous, anxious, scared or worried? Forget about it. Jesus is the Prince of Peace, you just need more Jesus.

Pastor Jason Anderson

The Living Word Bible Church

1 John 2:1 says, “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” Ok, so the goal here is to not sin, but hey, sometimes you might sin. And it doesn’t say “But if anyone does sin, well you’re gonna burrrrn.” Instead it says, hey, I’m hoping you don’t sin, but if you do, you have an advocate. An advocate is someone who comes to your aid, helps you, and pleads your case before a judge. Now Jesus is your advocate, and one thing you may notice about Jesus, He’s really good at everything. So you have the best advocate ever, and He’ll never send you a bill. He’s absolutely free. Sometimes we get the idea that Christianity is about don’t sin or you’re gonna burn. But really Christ was about forgiveness. He says, well, you might sin, but I won’t and then I’ll take your sin, even the ones you haven’t committed yet, and I’ll nail them to the cross with Me. I’ll even take them to the grave. And then He stands before the Lord, and when you sin, He’s your advocate, and He says, I already paid the price for this sin. I died for it. Yeah, Jesus is your advocate. Like that.

Pastor Jason Anderson

The Living Word Bible Church

In Matthew 5 Jesus is teaching his disciples about prayer (yes, it’s a running theme with me this last month) and he points out different things we should be bringing to God.  In one case he says that we should ask God to “Lead us not into temptation.”  Now the early church started teaching that God sometimes tempts us, and maybe they got the idea from this, but James 1:13 clears it all up by saying God does not tempt anyone.  In the Greek language they mix up the words different for reasons like emphasis, but another way of saying this would be to say “LEAD US away from temptation.”  So really what I’m praying is “God, lead me away from temptation.”  You see, it’s me that goes to temptation.  Or sometimes temptation is stalking me.  (I’m using the word stalking, because temptation is a tricky little guy.  It’s lurking in the strangest of places.)  So the real trick to overcoming temptation is to stay away from it.  Like with Joseph.  When Potiphar’s wife started hitting on him, Joseph took off running.  See Joseph recognized that his human side might do something stupid if he stuck around.  He was being led away from temptation.  Jesus had to be tempted on our behalf; he took temptation for us and beat it.  Now when He had been tempted three times he sent Satan away from him.  “Away from me.”

When it comes to temptation, well, usually we don’t include God at all when we are being tempted.  Like Eve, she could’ve called on God when Satan was tempting her, but she didn’t.  How would things have been different if she would have included God?  So in this prayer, we are including God, were asking him to help.  Hey, I see some temptation, Father God, steer me out of here.  You see God’s strength is made perfect in your weakness, but you should ask Him for that help.  James said, “we have not because we ask not.”  Want to overcome temptation, well pray about it, ask God to get you away from it.  Now that sounds like something He would definitely help with.

The Living Word Bible Church – Jason Anderson

Well you’re reading this, so that’s like manna, and today I’m talking about prayer.  When Jesus teaches his disciples to pray, one of the things he told them to say was “Give us this day our daily bread.”  Well you might be thinking, hey, bread is carbs, that’s to many carbs.  But when Jesus talks about bread he’s talking about God’s word.  He tells the devil that “man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”  You see daily bread is like the manna the Israelites got every day.  And Jesus said, “I am the bread of life”, and of course Jesus is the Word of God.  So it wasn’t about carbs, it was about God’s word, the Bible, Jesus.

Do you need a little Jesus every day?  Well, we want a lot of Jesus.  In fact, we want all of Him.  Including in our prayer life the prayer for daily bread reminds us to that we need to be in the word searching for the wisdom of God.  We need not only some oatmeal and brown sugar, we also need A bible buffet.  A scripture soufflé.  He was telling us to pray, “Lord teach me something new today.”  When we pray we ask for all sorts of stuff, and God is our father, so we can.  But one of the greatest things we can ask for is Wisdom.  And where are we going to get some wisdom?  Well, God’s word of course.  And God also put in to place a system where both faith and the wisdom of God is heard when we go to church.  Seriously.  I’m not just saying this because I’m a preacher, but check this out:  Eph 3:10 “His intent was that through the church the manifold wisdom of God is made known”  Remember from Malachi 3 – “that there might be food in my house….”  You see, the food is at church.  Uh huh.  Daily bread.  Bible.  Church.  Eat up.

The Living Word Bible Church – Jason Anderson