“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things become new”—2 Corinthians 5:17

On the television series Fixer Upper, which ran for five seasons, Chip and Joanna Gaines would choose an old house in Central Texas and give it a new beginning. Sometimes the house was for a young couple getting their first home, and sometimes it was for a retired couple looking for somewhere new. Joanna, the designer, came up with amazing plans, and her husband, Chip, the builder, implemented them. When they were finished, it was hard to believe that it was the same house.

Have you ever wished you could start over again, maybe in your marriage . . . maybe in your relationship with your children . . . maybe with friends? In a way you can, because 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (NKJV).

As the J.B. Phillips translation puts it, “For if a man is in Christ he becomes a new person altogether—the past is finished and gone, everything has become fresh and new.”

God can do that for your life. You say, “It’s messed up. It’s broken down. It’s falling apart.”

It can become new and fresh in Jesus Christ. It tells us in 1 John 1:7, “But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin” (NKJV). Notice it says all sin—not just some sin.

You, too, can have a new beginning. It can start now. It doesn’t matter what time of the year it is. It can all change because of the blood of Jesus Christ. You don’t have to be crippled by your past anymore. You can put it behind you.

No matter what you are going through remember you can start again today! May God bless each of you!

Blessings,

Chaplain Rob

But Jesus said to him, “ No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” – Luke 9:62

It took God one night to get Israel out of Egypt. But it took forty years to get Egypt out of Israel. The Israelites were always looking back.

Some Christians are that way. They’re always looking back. They say, “Remember the good old days—you know, before I was a Christian? Man, we would party! We had so much fun!”

Really? Were they, in fact, the good old days? Were they as good as they thought they were? Or is their memory a little distorted? Have they forgotten the emptiness? Have they forgotten the despondency? Have they forgotten the repercussions of the things they did? Have they forgotten that dull ache deep inside? Have they forgotten the havoc it brought on their family? They’ve conveniently forgotten about that and remember the few good times they had.

That is what the Israelites were doing. They were always looking back. But before we judge them, let’s realize that we’ve done the same thing. This is why Jesus said, “No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62 NKJV).

Have you ever been driving along and had the highway patrol pull up behind you? It makes you nervous, doesn’t it? Do you slow down, even if you’re doing the speed limit? And if they happen to slow down, do you slow down even more?

You can’t live in two worlds. You can’t go forward when you’re looking back. And you can’t walk forward spiritually if you’re always looking over your shoulder. World changers see opportunities, but those who are changed by this world see obstacles. World changers see bridges, but those who are changed by this world see walls. It’s all in how you look at things.

May each of us look forward to what God is going to do next in our lives!

Blessings,

Chaplain Rob

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things become new”—2 Corinthians 5:17

On the television series Fixer Upper, which ran for five seasons, Chip and Joanna Gaines would choose an old house in Central Texas and give it a new beginning. Sometimes the house was for a young couple getting their first home, and sometimes it was for a retired couple looking for somewhere new. Joanna, the designer, came up with amazing plans, and her husband, Chip, the builder, implemented them. When they were finished, it was hard to believe that it was the same house.

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things become new”—2 Corinthians 5:17

Have you ever wished you could start over again, maybe in your marriage . . . maybe in your relationship with your children . . . maybe with friends? In a way you can, because 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (NKJV).

As the J.B. Phillips translation puts it, “For if a man is in Christ he becomes a new person altogether—the past is finished and gone, everything has become fresh and new.”

God can do that for your life. You say, “It’s messed up. It’s broken down. It’s falling apart.”

It can become new and fresh in Jesus Christ. It tells us in 1 John 1:7, “But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin” (NKJV). Notice it says all sin—not just some sin.

You, too, can have a new beginning. It can start now. It doesn’t matter what time of the year it is. It can all change because of the blood of Jesus Christ. You don’t have to be crippled by your past anymore. You can put it behind you.

No matter what you are going through remember you can start again today! May God bless each of you!

Blessings,

Chaplain Rob

The secret of the LORD is with those who fear Him, and He will show them His covenant. —Psalm 25:14

We don’t hear much about the fear of the Lord anymore. We used to say things like, “He’s a God-fearing man” or “She’s a God-fearing woman.” This was meant as a compliment, by the way.
Today we hear a lot about the love of God. Of course, the Bible teaches about the love of God, and we should preach about the love of God. But it seems to me that in the days in which we’re living, we never hear about the fear of God.

We hear a lot about the glories of Heaven, but we never hear warnings about Hell. We hear a lot about forgiveness, but we don’t hear much about repentance. All of that is the gospel, you see, and it all needs to be proclaimed.

In days gone by the criticism of the church was about hellfire-and-brimstone preachers. My question is where are they? I want to hear one. I hear preachers talking about health and wealth and prosperity and free parking spaces and blessings galore, no matter what. But I would like to hear a hellfire-and-brimstone message. And I would like to hear something more about the fear of God.

The fear of God doesn’t mean cowering in fear before Him. That is not what I mean by the fear of God. Replace the word fear with respect, reverence, awe, or honor. One definition of fearing God is “a wholesome dread of displeasing Him.” It’s thinking about the repercussions of sin.

We need to know the love of God, and we need to have the fear of God. They’re both important. As Oswald Chambers put it, “The remarkable thing about fearing God is that when you fear God you fear nothing else, whereas, if you do not fear God, you fear everything else.”

My prayer today is that all of us will approach the throne of God with love and reverence, with awe and grace!

Blessings,

Chaplain Rob

Your sun will never set again, and your moon will wane no more; the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your days of sorrow will end. – Isaiah 60:20

In 1835 Abe Lincoln was a member of the Illinois legislature and a man with a bright future. In love with the red-haired beauty Ann Rutledge, they joyfully anticipated their future together. . . then malaria struck. Upon hearing that Ann was sick, Abe came to her only to watch helplessly as her life – and his dreams – slipped away. A week after the funeral, a friend saw Lincoln rambling through the woods almost incoherent, mumbling sentences no one could understand. Weeks passed and Lincoln was lost in pain.

Lincoln eventually recovered. And though grief haunted him, faith sustained him. Pain had made him strong. The hard lessons he learned in the Illinois woods prepared him to navigate America through the travails of Civil War. Abraham Lincoln was transformed in the crucible of grief, and in turn, was used to transform an entire nation.

You can have hope in the midst of your hurting. God will never leave you. The Holy Spirit will guide you. And whatever you are going through the promise is you will get through it.

This fact won’t remove the hurt today, but it will help you work through it.

Many of us spend our whole lives running from feeling with the mistaken belief that you cannot bear the pain. But you have already borne the pain. What you have not done is feel all you are beyond the pain. – Saint Bartholomew

Chaplain Rob

But now thus says the LORD, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine” (Isaiah 43:1, ESV).

God is very personal. Consider the word formed (v.1)—it’s so intimate. God may have spoken the universe into existence, but He formed you. This is the same word used in Jeremiah 18 to describe God as the potter with His hands on the clay, personally shaping you. He did not just make your life and bring you into existence; He is forming the kind of person you are becoming day by day. God is making you into who He wants you to be.

“God paid your redemption price with His Son’s life so He could have a relationship with you that will last forever.”

When it comes to your identity, the critical issue is not what you think about yourself—because you can’t be trusted! As Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” Ultimately, the only thing that matters is what God thinks about you.

Tune in to the biblical message of who God says you are, and allow His thoughts about you to build your identity. You will discover a remarkably different thought pattern developing: I’m not who my parents or my spouse say I am. I’m not who my boss says I am. I’m not what my performance or my appearance says I am. I am who God says I am!

If you let your mind be renewed with His Word, the truth that God formed you will download into your identity and your attitude. This involves accepting truths about God that will affect your understanding of who you are, and it results in an attitude that honors Him. You’ll be surprised by how your actions naturally begin to flow out of who you know you are in Christ.

The fact that God is personal reinforces this awesome identity truth: the Lord has redeemed you and called you His own. He paid your redemption price with His Son’s life so He could have a relationship with you that will last forever.

If you have put your trust in Jesus, God says, “You are mine.” That is who you are. And what God says is the only thing that will ultimately matter. Let this truth shape your identity for His glory today.

Pray
Father, You are awesome and I thank You for the awareness that I am being shaped by Your hands today. Sharpen my senses to appreciate the care and workmanship You are lavishing on me. Thank You for paying for my redemption, for knowing and calling my name, and for claiming me as Your own. What delight there is in relishing Your grace! In Jesus’ name, amen.

May you remember who and whose you are this day!

Blessings,

Chaplain Rob

But those who wait on the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.— Isaiah 40:31

There was a time when, if you wanted to access a movie, you went to a video store and rented something called a videotape, which also came with a reminder to “be kind and rewind.” Then DVD technology arrived, so you didn’t have to rewind anymore. Then Netflix came along, and your rental DVDs were delivered by mail. Now you can just stream the movies you want to watch.

We don’t have to wait for much of anything today. We just click it and stream it. Everything comes fast. The idea of waiting is an alien concept in a culture accustomed to immediate gratification. The Bible tells us, “But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint” (Isaiah 40:31 NKJV).

After Nehemiah heard that the walls of Jerusalem were broken down, four months passed. He waited before he posed his question to the king: “If it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor in your sight, I ask that you send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers’ tombs, that I may rebuild it” (Nehemiah 2:5 NKJV).

Nehemiah spent more time praying than he did building. Sometimes the Lord will give you an idea. But timing is everything. You must wait for the right moment to go to the next place. Most of us don’t like to wait, however. We like everything now.

Know this: Waiting time is never wasted time. We need a plan, and then we need to pray that God will help us with that plan—if it is the plan He has given to us. There is a time to pray, and there is a time to move.

May God Bless each of you today!

Blessings,

Chaplain Rob

When Jesus had tasted it, he said, “It is finished!” Then he bowed his head and released his spirit. —John 19:30

The cross was the goal of Jesus from the very beginning. His birth was so there would be His death. The incarnation was for our atonement. He was born to die so that we might live. And when He had accomplished the purpose He had come to fulfill, He summed it up with a single word: finished.

In the original Greek, it was a common word. Jesus probably used it after He finished a project that He and Joseph might have been working on together in the carpentry shop. Jesus might have turned to Joseph and said, “Finished. Now let’s go have lunch.” It is finished. Mission accomplished. It is done. It is made an end of.

So what was finished? Finished and completed were the horrendous sufferings of Christ. Never again would He experience pain at the hand of wicked men. Never again would He have to bear the sins of the world. Never again would He, even for a moment, be forsaken of God. That was completed. That was taken care of.

Also finished was Satan’s stronghold on humanity. Jesus came to deal a decisive blow against the devil and his demons at the cross of Calvary. Hebrews 2:14 says, “That through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is the devil” This means that you no longer have to be under the power of sin. Because of Jesus’ accomplishment at the cross, finished was the stronghold of Satan on humanity.

And lastly, finished was our salvation. It is completed. It is done. All of our sins were transferred to Jesus when He hung on the cross. His righteousness was transferred to our account. So Jesus cried out the words, “It is finished!” It was God’s deliberate and well-thought-out plan. It is finished—so rejoice!

May each of you have an amazing Holy Weekend and a Very Blessed Easter Sunday!

Blessings,

Chaplain Rob

A new commandment I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. John 13:34

Today is Maundy Thursday, three days before Easter. The word Maundy comes from an old Latin word maundatum, which means commandment. It was the word in the Latin Vulgate translation of the New Testament which recorded Jesus words: “A new command I give you: Love one another” (John 13:34). And there you have it! You’re learned something new.

Down through the centuries, the church has associated the washing of feet with Jesus’ command to love each other, in that His words were part of the comments He made to the disciples in the Upper Room immediately after He took off His outer garments and washed the feet of the disciples.

There’s one thing for sure: We’ve long forgotten both what it means to really love each other, and to demonstrate the humility and security that love brings by being able to humbly wash each other’s feet.

In Jesus’ day and culture–where there were few Roman roads paved with stone–people walked on dirt roads. Puffy clouds of dust rose with every step. Obviously by the time you reached your destination, your feet were in need of a bath, so upon arrival, as a gesture of hospitality, your host would instruct servants to take a basin and wash your feet, drying them with a towel.

For a long while the kings of European countries would set the example, washing the feet of the faithful on Maundy Thursday. In England, servants known as “yeomen of the laundry” washed the feet of the poor while the king and queen watched, but eventually that custom went the way of loving people as Jesus also commanded. Actually Pope Pius IX, who died in 1878, was the last to wash feet on Maundy Thursday. (Source: World Book Encyclopedia, Vol. 13, p. 250).

A young Jewish intellectual, trying to find out who he was and what life was all about in the turbulent 60s, took a backpack and began a journey that took him around much of the world. Arthur Katz was hitchhiking one day when a pickup truck stopped. “Throw your backpack in the bed and get in,” invited the driver. As Katz was riding with his benefactor, they began talking about the world and its problems. “Do you know what’s wrong with the world?” asked the driver. “No,” responded Katz, thinking, “It’s this guy’s truck and I don’t want to walk so I might as well sit here and listen to what he has to say.” The man looked at Katz and said, “We need to learn to wash each other’s feet!”

No, he hadn’t expected that, but it struck him forcibly and lodged in his thinking. Is love only words or can we learn to love as Jesus commanded His disciples in that Upper Room, before He went to the cross?

There’s one thing for sure, it’s powerful: Until we learn to love, really love each other, you can forget about stooping to wash your neighbor’s feet–whether it is translated “do the laundry for your sick mother, or give a gift to the family who lost a husband in a recent tragedy.” Acts of love, including the washing of feet– which has many faces today–will never take place until you really let God love people through you.

Jesus said, “Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them” (John 13:17). It’s still true.

May you have a blessed Maundy Thursday,

Chaplain Rob

Then He said to them, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here and watch.” —Mark 14:34

Have you ever felt lonely? Have you ever felt as though your friends and family had abandoned you? Have you ever felt like you were misunderstood? Have you ever had a hard time understanding or submitting to the will of God for your life?

If so, then you have an idea of what the Lord Jesus went through as He agonized at Gethsemane.

Hebrews tells us, “This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin. So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most” (4:15–16 NLT).

The Bible tells us that Jesus was “a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief” (Isaiah 53:3 NLT). But the sorrow He experienced in Gethsemane on the night before His Crucifixion seemed to be the culmination of all the sorrow He had ever known and would accelerate to a climax the following day. The ultimate triumph that was to take place at Calvary was first accomplished beneath the gnarled old olive trees of Gethsemane.

It is interesting that the very word Gethsemane means “olive press.” Olives were pressed there to make oil, and truly, Jesus was being pressed from all sides that He might bring life to us. I don’t think we can even begin to fathom what He was going through.

But look at what it accomplished. It brought about your salvation and mine. Because of what Jesus went through at Gethsemane and ultimately at the cross, we can call upon His name. Though it was an unfathomably painful, horrific transition, it was necessary for the ultimate goal of what was accomplished.

Maybe you are at a crisis point in your life right now—a personal Gethsemane, if you will. You have your will; you know what you want. Yet you can sense that God’s will is different.

Would you let the Lord choose for you? Would you be willing to say, “Lord, I am submitting my will to Yours. Not my will, but Yours be done”? You will not regret making that decision.

Blessings,

Chaplain Rob