Commitment: The state or quality of being dedicated to a cause or activity. 

"And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground."
Luke 22:44

Great way to start a blog right? No warm up just a direct hit on a topic many of us have struggled with. Now I seem to have it right but in my days of addiction that word meant nothing to me. But then, I met Jesus and I read things like the above which demonstrated to me both the humanity of Him and the dedication to his commitment to die for us.

Anguish, yes! The thought often of keeping our commitments can be like that so deeply felt that we have a massive internal struggle to keep it or not. But now, many years removed from those bad days I understand how important it is not only to me but to those it will have an impact on. God kept his to us, why can't I do it for  you?

Take a read in Daniel 3 of those three brave Jewish boys Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego whenever you are weakening, thinking of bailing out, and remember not only that Jesus died for us in a painful and horrific way, but that the faith to believe in him propels us to summon courage to die to ourselves and our selfishness as well.

Say to yourself - I am keeping my commitment no matter what!

How many of you have actually been punched and knocked down? I have. And I noticed something that is a life lesson.

Something inside of me stirred and said you can't quit, you can't let your peers see you like this, your heart won't let you give up, Get Back Up.  And when I did I saw fear in my adversary's eyes because a wounded tiger, a wounded man who has nothing to lose by fighting on is a bad man, a danger to the opponent.

Here's another question for you? When are we going to realize as Christians that the ultimate baddest man on the planet gave us a blueprint of how to get back up when we Fall Down? Check out Matthew 26:36-46 and Luke 22:43. In a summary that fits a blog, Jesus was preparing for his arrest, persecution and crucifixion by going to the Garden of Gethsemane. He became anguished and distressed, his soul was crushed even to the point of death.

He asked his apostles to be there for him, they weren't because they fell asleep. He Fell Down to the ground and prayed, "Father, if it is possible, let this cup be taken away from me. Yet I want your your will to be done, not mine." In Luke it adds "And being in anguish he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground". He was hurting, just like we are in times of great anguish.

Lots of folks have advice for us, they say they will pray for us but never pray with us. And when we are knocked down the self help books and seven ways to get right folks are MIA. What we are left with is what Jesus faced, the weight of it all knocked him down, but his fighting spirit, knowing his purpose told him to get back up. And when he did he gave the disciples the formula to fight back and stay awake.

Keep watch and pray, so that you will not give in to temptation. For the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.
Stay down or get back up? Quit or finish what you started? Three times Jesus went back and watched and prayed, each time gaining strength, then he stood face to face with his accuser and capturers and said Let's be going!

The baddest man to walk this planet (I say that with all respect), fell down and got back up. He looked his adversaries in the eye and said do what you must do. He died and got back up. And the greatest thing about it is....he did it for you.

Let's hope you don't get punched today, but if life itself knocks you down, think about how he told us to conquer the temptation to quit! 

"Just as the son of man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many"

These words, spoken by Jesus were repeated a few more times in the Bible. Just in case we didn't hear it the first time, he's most assuredly letting us know that serving is more important than being served, which requires sacrifice.

We may associate serving with such things as washing feet as he did, or serving food, giving help, and even helping someone across the street. But giving is serving which includes the financial support given to churches, charities and non-profits like ATB, and that also requires sacrifice. When someone puts a dollar in    the basket it is just as sacrificial as a large donor who blessed us with a life changing gift. They both served!

I was looking at two grants we received recently that totaled $25,000 and at an envelope handed to me from another small meeting that had $2.50 in it and I had some thoughts. First, I wish that the purity of serving, as Jesus spoke of it, was just about the act of it and not have anything to do with money. That's what I and those of us who serve at ATB signed up for, just helping people through our service.

Secondly, in a moment of gratitude I thought of the magnitude of those gifts and how the ones who gave it paid a price to serve it to us, which brought me to the last part of that scripture from the Bible. Virtually everything that churches, charities and non-profits do comes from what happened on that cross. The goodness of God overcame the selfishness, evil and corruptness of this world to bring us this message.

No matter how much it hurts to give, including the enormity of the situation, serving is the currency of heaven, it is a by product of salvation that each one of us can do. Serving the homeless, talking someone out of a relapse, helping a child learn how to read, it all matters if we follow the directions of our fallen leader.

​When we do, I am pretty sure we are getting an ovation from many of those angels in heaven that came before us. That's a donation that is priceless!

What are we talking about? Most days we usually communicate either by voice, text, social media or some other method. Are we positive, negative, angry, happy, spiteful, hopeful - what's in what we say?

Some folks tend to be ones intent on berating others, complainers about just about everything, or negative Nellie's about what's about to happen. Others merit sainthood because they do nothing but lift up others and communicate most effectively by their actions that help others. Most of us are somewhere in between because we are humans with flaws.

But the ones intent on hurting others, those are the ones I have a difficult time with, especially gossip. This is how the dictionary defines that word: idle talk or rumor, especially about the personal or private affairs of others.  In Psalm 41 David describes it perfectly: Whenever one comes to see me, he speaks falsely, while his heart gathers slander; then he goes out and spreads it abroad.

That's not even the worst part of it, he follows it with this: All my enemies whisper together against me; they imagine the worst for me saying, a vile disease beset him, he will never get up from the place where he lies. Sometimes we forget, even those of us who call ourselves Christians, that if someone screws up or makes a questionable decision our goal is not to shoot the wounded, but to help patch up the wounds.

This is just a reminder that Proverbs has the antidote for this attitude: Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones. Sure, deal with a problem, but use these kind of words as an antiseptic and bandages for a discretion and do not compound it with gossip to others.

Or as Jesus said, ​let he who is without sin cast the first stone!

I heard a great sermon yesterday about how to answer some of the difficult questions people ask of Christians. Like how is God speaking to Jesus from heaven after he is baptized if Jesus is also God? Is God speaking to himself? That was from an 8 year old.

Takes a bit to answer that and some of us would be perplexed to try and answer logically. Some things we believe by faith are just that and in some cases have an incredibly difficult answer if we even have one at all.
However, the greatest answer we can give about our faith and why we believe is our personal testimony of how God has worked in our lives. Even better is the tag that draws people into asking more questions.

For example here are a few phrases in the Bible, one from John 9: One thing I do know, I was blind but now I can see. Or from the Parable of the Prodigal son: this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!

Maybe yours is all I know is that I was an addict and he made me clean. Or I was in the darkness and he showed me the light. Or possibly, I had cancer and now I am cancer free. One sentence that inspires a conversation which answers that most difficult question, "Why do you believe what you do?" The simplest answers reduce the most difficult questions to answerable.

A couple that a man named David gave in Psalm 40 work as well: I waited patiently for the Lord: he turned to me and heard my cry. Or even better is the next verse: He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire: he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm pace to stand.

Does that answer the question when we are confused how to answer? Not directly, but it gives the Why of Why I believe. And then you may answer that 8 year old with this: God is God and I am not - who am I to tell him he can't speak to himself? Or part a sea, or heal a leper, raise a man from being dead or raise himself from the dead, or make that blind man see, or any of the other thousands of miraculous things he did?

I don't know much, but I know in my heart God did it!