Live BOLD

How do we live when we wake up in the morning? Are we living for Christ, are we boldly proclaiming His name to the world?

Jesus is the best example of boldness. Jesus did not live and talk as if He had nothing to say. He claimed to be the Son of God, the Bread of Life, Living water, and more. What He said was by no means any distance from the truth, but was truly the example of truth. As humans we will often rather live with the problems that arise than to put ourselves out there and state what we know to be truth. However, when Christ makes us new how can we, but profess the truth!

Zone Out - KB
I’ve seen the Lord, the same I’ll never be
Some say they’ve seen the Lord but live on casually
I don’t know what-what you saw but the Lord ain’t what you seen
Once you really seen the Lord, you’re obsessed with what you see

As Christians we are to be bold. We are to live boldly for Christ, shouting His name from the rooftops. Now, don't think that I have this down and figured out. Personally, I am not at all bold about showing Christ's love so I'm saying this to you and myself.

Christ suffered and died for us, there are no other bold attempts at expressing great love that come close to what Christ did. Shall we not in the same way attempt to express the great love of God for the world to those around us boldly?

Talking about Paul in - Acts 28:31

He proclaimed the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ—with all boldness and without hindrance!

Are we living boldly for Christ? I know for myself it is not easy and am often scared to do so. It is not easy living like Christ, to be like Him is not out nature, but we have been changed by His grace and love. The boldest display of love. Do you profoundly live boldly for Christ? Do we profoundly proclaim boldly our Life in Christ, cause thats what its all about. Life in Christ.

Righteousness Through Christ

One day I was looking outside a window at the snow falling to the ground and started to realize something. Snow can be used as a picture of virginity coming down from the sky. Snow is formed from pure water and becomes a beautiful crystallized white structure as its formed.

Then again, falling snow can be used as an analogy for Christ. Christ came down from heaven as a virgin, He was without sin. He was blameless before God and men. Jesus came bringing the hope that we can through Him become new, that we can become pure and clean like fresh snow.

In this analogy, we are the ground. We were made out of the dirt, Christ is the one who came down from above, from heaven to defeat what we could not ourselves. Ever since the time when sin entered the world we have been unable to become pure. No matter how hard we tried we still were stuck playing with our dirt, our sin.

Since we are stuck in our sinful nature we don't really mind being sinful. We sometimes like getting more and more dirty by doing deeper in our sin. It is until we are shown the beauty and righteousness of Christ that we see how dirty and unclean we are. The problems is, we must be either cleaned up or thrown into the fire.

It is not in our power to clean ourselves up. You can't clean dirt by human attempts, soapy water only makes soapy mud. We may smell a tiny bit better, but in reality our attempts at cleanliness make no difference. That is the very reason we needed someone with supernatural power and complete righteousness to some down and make us new and clean. It was not because of anything that we could do that made us clean or loved by God.

Ephesian 2:8
For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:

When we are cleaned by Christ, it is like snow that falls and covers the bare, dirty, and ugly ground. However, unlike snow which just covers the dirt, Christ wipes away our sin forever. When Christ wipes away our sin we are made righteous and blameless before God. Instead of being like dirt, we become like fresh snow. There is nothing we can do to clean ourselves up, we should know it is by the profound power and work of Christ in us that makes us clean.

I Signed Up To Die

A few years ago when I first was getting into christian rap and was learning that it was actually full of solid content, I was introduced to Thi'sl's music. One song that I really liked was called I Signed Up To Die. The song talked about people who were persecuted for Christ and how they didn't disown Christ because they signed up for this, they signed up to die. Even though I don't really know what facing persecution for the faith is like its so cool hearing how these people stood up as they were being beaten and knew they were alive in Christ whether or not they were alive in their body. To be a martyr for Christ you have to be all for Him, because in reality what more can you lose than your life on earth if you know Christ?

Thi'sl -I Signed Up To Die
I signed up to die
Death don’t have a hold on me
So death don’t put no fear in me
I don’t think that you hearin’ me
I signed up to die
When I lay down on that bed
I’m gon’ open up my eyes
And my Lord gon’ be there
I signed up to die
Death don’t have a hold on me
So death don’t put no fear in me
I don’t think that you hearin’ me
I signed up to die

I know we are not living around religious persecution and don't have much perception of what that looks like, but I think we still have signed up to die. To live for Christ we must give up everything, we must die to ourselves to live for Him. We can't life for Christ and for ourself. Its either life with Christ or ... not.

As a martyr for Christ you know that when you choose your life you choose death, when you choose death you get life. In America we know that we don't literally sign up to die, but we must still die to our  flesh to live in Christ. Because we have signed up to die, death has no power over us and we shall see our Lord face to face. Profoundly, I have died to my own life and now instead live for Christ. Have you signed up to die?

Mini-post Sunday - Snowboard Competition

Around a month ago I went to Ski Sawmill's slope style competition they have held yearly for a few years. This was my third year competing in the competition and I all the years before I never got into the top three. I knew I was better than last year, but so would everyone else.

This year I have grown a fair amount and I have been learning to try and give God the credit for things. When I think about it, who is the one who gave me the passion and desire to get better at snowboarding? God. Who has allowed me to be able to improve my skills? God. Ultimately God could either put me on top of the podium or at the bottom and off the chart.

If God is the one who is controlling my life, He is then the one who should get and deserves all the credit. As a result, instead of trying to win the competition to prove my abilities and hopefully gain status as a snowboarder, I tried to give glory to God through the competition. Even though I was unsure of how to glorify God while snowboarding, I prayed that God would somehow show me how to do just that.

I ended up getting third place, not that was anything really great, but it did give me a lot to work with. Instead of trying to take the credit for myself and saying that I was good. I could instead try and give all the credit to God.

Who are you giving credit to and glorifying? Yourself, or do you realize how God profoundly deserves all the credit and glory?

Desire Fame?

I think most of us want to be famous. Well, maybe not famous per say, but known, liked, and seen as good at something. Personally I wish I famous enough to become a professional snowboarder. However, is fame really as good as we may think it is?

Fame - The condition of being known or recognized by many people.

Fame is something that some people can handle well and others can't. In reality its quite a burden. When your famous its easy to become prideful, lose sight of what is important, and even depressed. 

Either you take in the praise or shove it away. When you take in the praise you typically become prideful and maybe even addicted to it. Fame can feel like a buzz, to hear you name called, written, and exclaimed all over does not feel like normal life, but surreal. If you get addicted you will keep on doing what can you do to get more and more praise until you end up where you never thought you would. You will find yourself doing things you may have promised yourself you never would. And then either you find that even fame doesn't fulfill you or the fame will run out and you will chase that buzz in other things as such as drugs.


If you shove the fame away, you seclude yourself because you feel oppressed or don't know how to react. When one doesn't like the fame its easy for them to shut the world out, but its nearly impossible when they have so many people wanting to see them.

Either method of living with fame doesn't seem any good, but I didn't mention the one other way to live with fame. Instead of taking in the praise for ourselves or trying to push away the fame we can direct and give it to God. God deserves all Glory and we are to give it to Him. When you know that it is God who has given you everything you have no reason to have any sort of pride in yourself.

As Christians, no-matter what people say about us or how famous we become we know that its really not us or about us. We know that we are only good because of Christ in us and we know that we are only at the very place we are now because of His perfect plan.

Do you still think you want some fame for yourself or do you wish to give it to God who profoundly deserves all praise?

Are you living It?

I have mentioned this one good Switchfoot lyric before, but this time I mean to look at it differently. It goes; This is your life, Are you who you want to be? Even though this is a really good self evaluating motivator I think that as Christ followers we should probably look at it a little differently. What we should maybe ask instead is; This is Christ's life, Are you living it? See, as disciples of Christ we are trying to become more like Him and we have given our lives up to Him. So in a profound deepness the life we "have" is really Christ's life, but are we living it?

Are we living for Christ? Are we living the life He has for us? Are we living the life that Christ lived? He taught those who would listen and those who would not listen about the Father and eternal life. He cared for the sick, the poor, and the cast outs. By cast outs I mean adulterers, stealing and dishonest tax collectors, and the unclean lepers. He cared for them because He loves them and He knew that they could be made new, that they could receive eternal life and a relationship with Christ. He got dirty and laid down His time, His life to serve those who needed saved and to show the way to the Father. He glorified His Father with everything He did.

Once again I must ask, are we living as Christ did? As Christ followers we are trying to become a mirror image of the one who made us in His image? Do we love the destitute, the poor, the sick, the lonely, the adulterer, the lier, the drunkard, the dishonest salesman, the homosexual, the man next door, the annoying one, the creepy one? Yes I know its not easy to love those people and we probably don't want to. However, we must realize they are just like us except for one thing, they don't have Christ in their life. They don't have the Spirit of God inside of them. Only until you see them as they are will you  start to love them. When you realize that they are just like lost sheep trying to find their way in life. They don't know their full purpose in life, but we do. We are living for Christ and we know that it is all worth it. We have experienced and felt His amazing love. We have tasted the living water, we know what it means to really live.

They don't know true love, they don't know true life. Are we going to show it to them? God is the one who possesses and grants the love and life, we are merely the ones displaying the glory and love of the Father just like Jesus.

This is Christ's life, are you living it? Are you living as Christ profoundly did, are you glorifying God, are you displaying His love to the nations?