Passion Equip

For the promises you’ve made, we bless you, Jesus. For the promises you’ve kept, we bless you, Jesus. For how far you’ve brought us, we bless you, Jesus. For how faithfully you’ve held us, we bless you, Jesus. For how generously you’ve given to us, we bless you, Jesus. For your reign on the throne, we bless you, Jesus.   Desperately and expectantly, we wait for you, Jesus. Actively and not idly, we wait for you, Jesus. Filled with your spirit, we wait for you, Jesus. When our days are prosperous, we wait for you, Jesus. When our evenings are tragedy, we wait for you, Jesus. Until you return, we wait for you, Jesus.   As we go on our ways, be our strength, Jesus. As we love our neighbors as ourselves, be our compassion, Jesus. As we give without repayment, be our example, Jesus. As we live as strangers in a foreign land, be our home, Jesus. As we speak boldly of what you’ve done, be our courage, Jesus. As we put our hands to work, be our rest, Jesus.   Like a mighty rushing wind, maranatha, come King Jesus. With healing in your wings, maranatha, come King Jesus. Just like you said you would, maranatha, come King Jesus. Our salvation and our peace, maranatha, come King Jesus. Our hope and righteousness, maranatha, come King Jesus. The King of the Universe, maranatha, come King Jesus.

He entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. (Mark 11:15) This particular Monday may have felt like the proverbial Monday morning in the modern Western world — a time to reengage the grind and get back to work. Jesus, indeed, walked into Jerusalem to take care of business. The meek and mild Jesus of progressive “tolerance” that so many of our contemporaries have come to prefer was nowhere to be found when he made a mess of the money-changers. There was nothing soft and tender on display when Jesus, in Jeremiah-like fashion, pronounced a resounding judgment on Israel. In no uncertain terms, his rebuke fell on their worship. The Christian tradition in which I was raised regularly had visiting musical groups play concerts. As you can imagine, these groups would have their albums and other merchandise to promote on the circuit, but at our local church, they weren’t allowed to sell them — at least not in the church foyer where most attenders entered. The rationale came from Mark 11:15–19 when Jesus cleansed the temple. Jesus clearly didn’t like it when folks hawked their wares around the temple, and therefore we shouldn’t sell stuff around the sanctuary. To be sure, the place of worship in first-century Judaism and the auditorium of a rural Baptist church in America don’t exactly correspond, but true to Jesus’s words, my home church didn’t want the place of worship to be co-opted as a place of commerce. And that much is right. So this is one temple problem going on in Jesus’s day. If you can imagine, the city would have been packed with pilgrims because of Passover. They would have come to the temple to offer sacrifices and, seizing an opportunity, pigeon-vendors set up shop. It might not have been too different from a sporting event today when sweaty salesmen walk the aisles and herald their popcorn — except these were sacrificial birds, their motive was sinister, and the prices were probably jacked even higher. “Pigeons! Get your pigeons!” they would have hollered. Without doubt, this is a far cry from what the place of worship should have been, and Jesus wouldn’t have it. Turning heads by his claim of authority, Jesus spoke for God and turned over tables. And central to it all was what he quoted from the Old Testament, from Isaiah and Jeremiah: “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? [Isaiah 56:7–8] But you have made it a den of robbers [Jeremiah 7:11].” The co-op for commerce was a problem, but that wasn’t the only thing, or even the main thing, that Jesus was addressing. The real fiasco was how out of sync Israel’s worship was with the great end-times vision Isaiah had prophesied — the new age that Jesus had come to inaugurate. Jesus quotes a portion of that vision from Isaiah 56: “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations.” The context of Isaiah 56 tells us more. According to Isaiah’s vision, eunuchs would keep God’s covenant (Isaiah 56:4), and foreigners would join themselves to him (Isaiah 56:6), and the outcasts would be gathered with his people (Isaiah 56:8). But Jesus approached a temple pulsing with buying and selling. The court of the Gentiles, the place designed all along for foreigners to congregate, for the nations to seek the Lord, was overrun with opportunists trying to turn a profit. And the Jewish leaders had let this happen. Their economic drive, and their false security in the temple as an emblem of blessing (Jeremiah 7:3–11), had crowded out space for the nations to draw near, and therefore Jesus was driving them out. The great sadness of this scene wasn’t so much the rows of product and price-gouging, but that all this left no room for the Gentiles and outcasts to come to God. This place of worship should have prefigured the hope of God’s restored creation — a day when “all the nations shall flow to it, and many peoples shall come, and say: ‘Come, let us go to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob’” (Isaiah 2:2–3). In other words, the ultimate vision of God’s people in God’s place would look a little more motley than it did when Jesus stepped foot into Jerusalem. And because their worship was so far removed from this vision, Jesus had enough. The worship of God’s people was so out of line with God’s purposes that zeal consumed God’s messiah. It had to stop. And here is the lesson for us on this Monday of Holy Week, or really, here is the question. How well does our worship prefigure the prophetic vision of the new creation? Do our relational investments and our corporate gatherings reflect, even in a small way, the heart of a God who gathers the outcasts? This question is no more relevant than on Easter, when our churches try especially to look their finest. When we assemble for worship this weekend, no one will set up tables to exchange currency. No one will lead in their oxen in hopes of getting rich. No one will tote a cage of high-priced pigeons. But our decorations may be elaborate. Our attire may be elegant. Our music may be worldclass. We may put exuberant energy into these things, and make it an impressive spectacle, but if Jesus were to come, if he were to step into our churches this Sunday, he’d be looking for the rabble. Where are the misfits, the socially marginalized, the outcasts? There is plenty of life in the veins of Easter to propel us beyond our comforts, our cliques, and our Sunday best, and send us powerfully out in the pursuit of the least. This article was originally published on desiringGod.org on March 30, 2015 by Jonathan Parnell, lead pastor of Cities Church in Minneapolis-St.Paul. Special thank you to desiringGod for contributing this piece to our Holy Week journey.

Adapted from Louie Giglio’s talk, The Anxiety Exchange. His peers balked at the claim and offered a wager where Hemingway would reap the profits if he could make good on his claim. Undaunted, the man who would go on to write A Farewell to Arms and The Old Man and the Sea scribbled six words on a napkin and handed it over. “For Sale, Baby Shoes, Never Worn.” Words matter, and often, it’s not the number of them but the quality of them. Take 1 Peter 5:7 as an example. 11 words that can change the entire direction and quality of your days: Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. Said another way: Release what you are concerned about so that you can receive that God is concerned about you. Of course, this falls securely into the easier said than done category. How? How do we actually do this? How do we take those fears and anxieties that occupy our minds and turn them over to God so that we can live in the peace He has for us? Looking at the context in which 1 Peter was written, we can see that while the sources of anxiety may have changed (for those of us in places where our faith will not lead to our death), the promise has not. Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your Anxiety on him because he cares for you. Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings. And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen. 1 Peter 5:6-11 This text wasn’t written to belittle our anxieties today; instead, we have to read it and understand that God is powerful enough to carry His people through all circumstances, even ones of life and death. 1 Peter is calling us to cast our anxiety not on some weak or incapable God but upon the chief shepherd (5:4), the one who is leading us to green pastures and who walks with us through the valley of the shadow of death, and who laid down His life for his flock, for us. You see, unloading our anxiety isn’t about us at all; it’s about the chief shepherd, it’s about Jesus. It’s not pushing your anxieties to the side and trying as hard as you can to ignore them; it’s depositing them with Jesus once and for all because while we are concerned about any number of things, Jesus is concerned about us. So then, if we believe that, how do we go about this anxiety exchange? What is the key to releasing those concerns into the hands of Jesus? The key is humility.  Notice that Peter starts this with an observation about our anxieties: In the same way, you who are younger, submit yourselves to your elders. All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, “God opposes the proud     but shows favor to the humble.” 1 Peter 5:5 Our anxieties, for the most part, revolve around our pride.  They spring up out of our haughtiness inside of relationships. Friendships and family connections give way to anxieties when we feel tension because we’ve forgone extending grace. In the same way, the areas of our lives where we have placed our dreams and desires above the will of Almighty God give birth to, honestly, terrible worries and anxieties as we wrestle for control where we have no rightful claim to it. And in these exact places, humility is the key. Humility among one another and humility beneath God is not devaluing yourself; it’s elevating your confidence in God. It’s not listening to the enemy when he tells you you’re a worm. Knowing that you are the prize of a great shepherd, of God, and seeing God as king. Humility is a matter of the heart. It springs up when we spend time with God, reminding us that we are a work in progress. We have ground to cover and mountains to climb.  “Anxiety is a self-contradiction to true humility. Un-belief is, in a sense, an exalting of self against God in that one is depending on self and failing to trust God. Why worry, therefore, if we are His concern? He is more concerned about our welfare than we could possibly be. In it all, He is concerned about us, therefore again, why worry?” – Kenneth Wuest  God’s mighty hand is open for you today. It’s not the closed fist of a tyrannical ruler. The Chief Shepherd calls for you with hands that bear the scars of nails driven on your behalf. This great anxiety exchange is possible because of a great exchange of grace, and if He was willing to bear all of your sin and shame to rescue you from death itself, surely He is willing to carry through on the promise to restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. Put another way, in 11 incredible words: Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

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Join us as we explore seven “I am” statements from Jesus.

The Essentials. It’s easy to fly over the essentials of our faith without really considering them at a deeper level. Imagine a construction crew not understanding the foundation before building on it. In the same way, shouldn’t we, as believers, explore the essentials of our faith? Essentials is a launchpad for students who want to dig deeper into their faith and ignite their walk with Jesus.

Join Passion Daily every morning, Monday through Friday, as we take a moment to pause and reflect on God’s Word and presence. These short daily devotionals from The Jesus Bible will guide you on a reading journey through Scripture.

Come along on our journey as this 7-day devotional opens the Scriptures as we explore the Glory of God from Creation to Heaven.

Adapted from Louie Giglio’s talk, Walking to Macon. Imagine being an astronaut for a second. No, seriously, imagine it.  What are you picturing?  Is every bone in your body rattling as the ignition sequence ignites and you’re catapulted into space? Or maybe you’re smiling at the thought of hopping off the ladder and onto the moon’s surface, leaving your footprints behind for all time. Zero gravity meals, flying upside down, catching floating water in your mouth; these are the kinds of things we all dream about when we picture ourselves as astronauts. What we don’t usually imagine is the heat shield.  The heat shield is the beautiful wall between you and 3,500 degrees of inferno as a result of the friction created upon reentry. Without it, no man or woman who has been to space could have ever survived coming back to this planet at 17,500 mph. Think about that: the heat shield is why there is a magnificent splash down at the end of reentry instead of a tragic incineration at the end of the friction of the journey. You are likely not an astronaut, but you are on a journey—and there will be friction. God has begun a miraculous work in each of us, one He promises to perfect until the last day. In the meantime, we will travel through some tumultuous trials, but we will be protected by the heat shield—our faith in His power. But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. 1 Peter 2:9-10 Today, it is imperative that you know WHO you are. God wants to remind you that you are chosen, you are Holy, you are God’s. You have to know who you are in order to know WHY you are. This is the equation of every believer. You once were not, but now you are. You didn’t, but now you do. You were without, but now you’re with. Because of what God has done, you may now declare His praise.  Take a praise break.  But while you’re doing so, make sure you look at the full context that Peter is trying to convey to us: Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, 1 Peter 1:3-4 Great so far… This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who, through faith, are shielded by God’s power until the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.  Thank God for the heat shield, we’re ready for the splashdown… In all this, you greatly rejoice, though now, for a little while, you may have suffered grief in all kinds of trials. Wait, what? The book of 1 Peter was written about 30 years after the death of Jesus, and as the message of Jesus spread throughout the world, it very quickly encountered cultures, leaders, and nations where it was not welcome.  The friction was growing. This is the context in which this letter was written, a context of trial and suffering. It’s almost rhetorical to ask, but haven’t we all felt our own trials this year? Haven’t we all suffered in one way or another? Even the opening of Peter’s letter lets us know that we are in need of grace to make it through each day and peace to cling to when the friction starts to heat up. But why? Why do people suffer, and more specifically, why do people who are God’s special possession suffer? These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, 9 for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls. Peter 1:7-9 You see, God has placed each of us in neighborhoods, businesses, and schools amidst a lost and dying world, and that means friction. Why did He put us there if He knew it would be difficult? Because His mission is to save the whole world. Jesus suffered for the sake of the world, and we, as Jesus’ followers, will share in that suffering.  Why? Because going through the fire refines us, it sheds things that aren’t needed; it steels our resolve as we discover our faith is real and sets us ablaze, shining for people to see. The trials will come so that the genuineness of your faith will result in praise and honor to God. People who have come through the fire and know there will be a reward in Heaven—these are people who can be used powerfully by God. So ask yourself: if on the other side of the fire is your family knowing Jesus, wouldn’t you do it? If on the other side of the fire is that co-worker you’ve been praying for finally knowing Jesus, wouldn’t you do it?  If on the other side of the fire is your husband or wife finally coming face to face with Jesus, wouldn’t it be worth it? If on the other side of the trial was Heaven, what wouldn’t you walk through to get there? This year may be difficult, yes, but you still have a chance to shine in the middle of all of it so that the people around you see Jesus. It’s your chance to free your mind from worry and fear to believe that there is a plan in motion.  Trust that He who began a good work in you is faithful to complete it. Walk through the fire wrapped in the heatshield of your faith, awaiting the splashdown guaranteed into the ocean of eternity, where Jesus is waiting for you as the prize.

Adapted from Louie Giglio’s talk, Positioned for Powerful Influence. Let that sink in.  Among your co-workers, God has positioned you for powerful influence.  In your neighborhood, God has positioned you for powerful influence.  With your in-laws, God has positioned you for powerful influence.  And in your relationships, God has positioned you for powerful influence. Louie and Shelley Giglio remind us that God has intentionally placed each of us in other people’s lives so they can watch Him transform our lives—because when God changes a life, people see it. Put simply, our witness is strongest when the quality of our lives is more powerful than the quantity of our words. Said another way, pretty is as pretty does. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness! Matthew 6:21-23 What is inside of us will indeed make its way out of us. The light within us shines out of us, and darkness within us reveals itself. That’s why it’s such a great folly that most of us spend all day worrying about our outward appearance rather than the condition of our hearts. It is the condition of our hearts that most effectively displays Jesus to the world around us.  For the Christian, this is where our perspective has to shift. We have to spend more time considering what our actions and attitudes are putting on display. We have to consider often if we are living according to the commands of 1 Peter 3 or not; if we are treating our spouses the way God has called us to or not; if we are eager to do good and turn from evil or not. Paul says it this way in his letter to the Philippians: In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God,     did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing     by taking the very nature of a servant,     being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man,     he humbled himself     by becoming obedient to death—         even death on a cross! Philippians 2:5-8 We are co-heirs with Christ, a title that comes with celebration and calling. Jesus is making us new; it’s time to act like it.

Adapted from Louie Giglio’s talk, Fear of God. Have you wondered why there is tension in your life between what you know God wants and what the world seems to value, or why the way you live your life looks so different from the way your co-workers, neighbors, and even family members? What if there is a simple but perspective-altering reason? That’s what God intended. Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us. 1 Peter 2:11-12 God has placed you exactly where you are, on display—living among the lost. At your company or in your school, you may be the only representation of the Gospel that people encounter daily, the only reference point that they have of what it is to be a Jesus-follower. That’s our call: to be above the fray, outside of the anger, fear, division, angst, and negativity that trips us up.  Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us. Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human authority: whether to the emperor, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right. For it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish people. Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as God’s slaves. Show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers, fear God, honor the emperor. 1 Peter 2:11-17 In other words, be different. And as you are different, watch how your life influences others’ lives for the good of the world and the expansion of the Kingdom. So how do we distinguish ourselves on planet Earth?  We show proper respect to everyoneWe have an overwhelming love for the Brotherhood of believersWe fear GodWe honor the King One of those may have tripped you up. After all, most of us don’t walk around daily talking about how we love to fear God, but all four things only fit together when they hinge on that very idea.  The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.  Proverbs 9:10 Even the criminal being crucified next to Jesus knew this, asking of the mocker, “Don’t you fear God,” before he heard those beautiful words from Christ in response to his faith, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” Fearing God and having the proper-sized respect for Him, His authority, and power is the line of demarcation between the true Church and those who simply come to church. Yet, as we dig into the text, this is not a call to live oppressed under a terrible heavenly ruler: We guess one of those tripped you up.  Since you call on a Father who judges each man’s work impartially, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear.  1 Peter 1:7 See who we are calling upon, not a crushing authoritarian but a father, one who wants us to live in freedom. If anyone can speak to this, it’s Peter. Peter, who, while living under the fear of MEN, denied Jesus three times in his darkest night. The same Peter who walked with Jesus, who watched His death, who heard about and ran to the empty tomb, witnessed the ascension, and was in the upper room as the Holy Spirit descended. Peter was writing to you today, calling on you to concern yourself rightfully fearing God. A few chapters later, look at Peter’s attitude when, after being imprisoned for preaching, freed by an angel, and then confronted once again by the High Priest and officers of the law: The apostles were brought in and made to appear before the Sanhedrin to be questioned by the high priest. “We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name,” he said. “Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man’s blood.” Peter and the other apostles replied: “We must obey God rather than human beings! Acts 5:27-29 It’s counterintuitive to our times, but in this text, Peter is respecting authority and fearing God. He didn’t break himself out of jail; God did that, and he didn’t try to escape when the authorities would later have him flogged; in fact, he celebrated being counted worthy of suffering for the name of Jesus.  Said another way, this time by Jesus, Peter gave Caesar what was Caesar’s, but he did not stop preaching because that is what God had called him to do. At the end of his life, the emperor whom Peter is inviting the believers of his time to honor would put him to death. Still, Peter never capitulated and prioritized fearing man over fearing God. Could you do that in the face of real danger? Do you have an elevated faith, one that says, “I don’t know how everything will work out, but I know God is working out everything?” Have you lost the incredible wonder of your Father in Heaven, who gave the life of Jesus for you? Can you walk with the peace of God that allows you to submit to and respect the World’s authorities while never giving up your fear of God? Can you be a peacemaker because you have peace? Can you bring unity to division because Jesus gave His life to bring you back to God across the greatest division?  This is so radical, so different from how the rest of the world lives; sewing dissent to grasp what they believe will give them temporary satisfaction from the chaos. This is how we will be light in dark places, how we will be a shining example of Jesus to a world desperate to know Him.

Adapted from Louie Giglio’s talk, Is This the End? The end of all things is near. Therefore be alert and of sober mind so that you may pray. 1 Peter 4:7  We are living in the last days. We’ve faced fires and floods, storms, plagues and pestilence. This begs the question, how do we handle this? There’s not exactly a handbook for handling this kind of trauma. Unless there is. Think about what was happening when Peter penned his letters. Rome was burning, and if the stories were true, Nero was at the heart of it, playing his fiddle as he persecuted Jesus’ followers, putting them to death as fast as he could find them. To Peter, the known world was completely collapsing around him. And yet, prompted by the Holy Spirit, he continued to reach through time and speak to us: So I will always remind you of these things, even though you know them and are firmly established in the truth you now have. I think it is right to refresh your memory as long as I live in the tent of this body, because I know that I will soon put it aside, as our Lord Jesus Christ has made clear to me. And I will make every effort to see that after my departure you will always be able to remember these things.  2 Peter 1:12-15 Peter faced what we all will; our days are numbered, as are the days left of this world before Jesus comes back. It’s this truth that leads us to see life through a different lens and to adjust accordingly. We have to be patient—patient with God, with ourselves, and with others.  Patience is, after all, a fruit of the Spirit. The time of redemption is coming; no one wants to pull the plug on this broken world more than God, but He knows there is a drain at the bottom of that decision, and the stakes are eternal. So, for the sake of all of us, He has patience with us. God allows us to be a part of His story as we spread his fame worldwide. We need to be urgent—urgent about the things that matter.  So many of us spend our days hurrying through life, frantically chasing after objects and occurrences that will disappear instantly. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare. 2 Peter 3:10 The days are long, but the years are short. If we commit to living with a “Jesus is coming back” mentality, that has to change us. We have to spend our days well, using every moment to tell the world about Him. We have to live with confidence.  Fear does not have the final word; cancer does not have the final word; death itself doesn’t even have the final word. Living with a mentality of confidence means refuting the narrative that the enemy is winning and holding fast to the truth that Jesus has already won, and even in our most uncertain moments, is winning still. We must live in congruence.  We have to learn to be less concerned about not fitting in. Our call in life is to fit in with who Jesus is and become more like Him. To know that we have a destination in Heaven and to let that truth soak into our every day. Jesus has called us His own; who are we to look for any other acceptance? Ultimately, these days are fleeting, but how we spend them will echo in eternity. Let’s be the Jesus-followers who commit to using each second of them well, heading the call to be sober-minded so that we may pray, listen, and act.