Robbie Marie Jordan

Ephesians 4:1-3 says, “As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. ²Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. ³Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.”

On this day in which my mother would have turned seventy-two, I am on vacation with all of my family and am contemplating the meaning of life and what it means to live a life that actually matters and just how one does that. I can’t help but think about how much my mom loved the times that we were all together, so it is fitting that we are all together on her birthday. So, on this day, we will celebrate my mother and the life and legacy she left and I will continue to contemplate the meaning of life and think about the legacy that I will be leaving. When I think about my mom, there were many things she was known for, these are a few: her love of her family, her love towards others, and her laugh. 

Her love for her family was fierce. A day did not go by that I didn’t think my mom loved me. I would venture to say that my siblings felt the same way. She told us every single day, hugged us, made sure we were taken care of, prayed for us without fail, every single day. I wish she was able to see life now and where it has come for me. I am thankful for so many things in my life that she was undoubtedly praying for before I was or even before I knew that I should. One of those things is Hannah. They would have loved each other. 

Everyone was welcome in our home. She loved it when our friends came over and she loved cooking for them. She loved providing an environment that we felt we could have people over in and that she could love on them as well. Having our friends over was always a treat for her and always welcome. Being the obnoxious kids that my brother and I were, we used to joke that she could talk to and make friends with a wall because she didn’t know a stranger. 

Her laugh stood out. As a child, this is one of those things that you think is annoying until you realize it is a trait that has somehow transferred to you as well. And a trait that is and was endearing until the end. If we were somewhere in public, it was always easy to figure out where our mom was because of this. But her laugh was constant and was a great indicator of her demeanor and the joy that exuded from her and defined her life. 

Her life pointed others to the Lord because of these things. And it helped to create a legacy of love within our family. I think it did this because she wanted to do those things, but she also wanted to live a life that was worthy of being called a “Christian.” She wanted to be an example to all that came in contact with her. 

I don’t know think my mom would have said she had a “life verse” or anything of the like, but this Ephesians passage surely seems like something that she lived her life by. As I sit here at half the age that she would have been and wonder what it means to live a life that has meaning and what it means to glorify God in all that I do, being humble, patient, and gentle while also bearing with one another in love is a great place to start.  I am thankful for the 31 years that I had with my mom, I wish it would have been more, but she lived those years to the fullest and loved us and anyone she came in contact with as much as she could. 

"for such a time"

“…for such a time as this.” Esther 4:17

Life. 2020. 2019 and then 2020. Internet memes focused on 2019 ending because surely 2020 could not be any worse than 2019. And, well, now we have COVID-19 running amok and as many opinions about it as there are people. Should you be scared? Should you practice social distancing? Should you go about your life as if nothing has changed? This is not a spot for those answers. 

I am no medical expert so I will not pretend to be one. I think the only thing I can claim to be an expert on is chicken sandwiches, but there are a couple things I do know and they could be pertinent to life and what is going on right now:

1. Christ is on His throne: Isaiah 6:3
2. Christ is what my mind should focus on: Col 3:1-2
3. Christ gives peace: John 16:33
4. Christ commands us to love: Matthew 22:37-39

1. Christ in on His throne

Isaiah 6 makes it clear that the Lord is seated on His throne. He is King. He is Lord. He is on His throne. This is echoed again in Revelation. It is the picture of our King, eternally seated on HIs throne. We are his subjects. He is not an earthly King, but a King that we cannot even bear the presence of. Our unholiness and unworthiness is made painstakingly aware when we see the King on His throne. 

2. Christ is what my mind should focus on

While earth is where I currently live and dwell, it is not what should consume all my thoughts. Colossians 3:1-2 talk about setting our mind where Christ is--seated at the right hand of God. That is where we place our thoughts. That allows one to be in a world where things are going crazy and to not be consumed by it. It allows one to make decisions and do things without worry. It allows one to look beyond the current struggle and to look at things in an eternal mindset. It allows one to love your neighbor without worry. 

3. Christ is the peace giver

Trouble is inevitable for many of us, this is evident now more than ever. There are financial uncertainties that make it seem like the world is crashing down. There are many uncertainties with COVID-19 and whether you'll get it and what it may or may not do to you. The world is uncertain right now. Jesus is not--"I have overcome the world." Focus on Him. Set your mind on Him. He will give you peace in this uncertain time because he is certain. 

4. Christ commands us to love

Our task and command has never been laissez faire. We do not get to sit back and watch the world. We do not get to let things happen around us without caring for people. This does not mean to be stupid and to put people in danger, but there are ways you can still love and help people and point them towards Christ while we are in this time. It will look different for everyone and all situations, but don't use this as an excuse to not love people or to not care. 

All of this to say that if you are a believer, you do not get to sit this one out. You do not get to wait and "veg" out in the comfort of your home with no thought of anyone else. If people are really out there dying from this thing and are scared for their life, we go. We love. We actually live a life that is different because we are different. Christ has made us different and has made it clear to us that He is above all of this. Know your limitations. Don't be dumb and infect someone. But don't use this as an excuse either. This is our time. There is a reason you are alive right now. Live that reason. 

"...for such a time as this."

The Death of Will

While I no longer claim to be Southern Baptist, there were some good things that came from being raised that way that I will never forget. One of which was a question taught by David Atkins from a Catechism: "What is the chief end of man? To glorify God and enjoy Him forever."

This is so straightforward that the simpleness of it is overlooked for something more complex.
It is so straightforward that I have trouble understanding it.
There are many reasons for this but most can be connected a a sin such as pride.
Some other reasons can be because I seek a way to control how and when this happens.
Perhaps Luke 22:42 offers some help to enjoying God when pride and control abound.

It says, "Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done."

Jesus is getting ready to start the crucifixion process and then he prays this.
He is asking God for a different way, but in the end He understands the importance of things happening this way. He understands the perfect will of God. He understands that it sometimes looks different than how we think it should. And in this is one way that we can glorify God and enjoy Him forever. It is the death of our will.
It is the death of wanting things to go our way.
It is the death of thinking we know everything and have all the information.
It is the death of self.

And this is where I struggle.
Your will instead of mine.
That is what leads to the best life.
My pride tells me that I am always right and that others (including God) don't know what is going on. But the truth is, it doesn't matter how much I think I know, or how right I think I am, if I am not seeking Him first and laying down my will, I have no idea what it means to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

Not my will, but yours be done.

How does someone even say that and mean it and live it?
How am I supposed to live in such a way that isn't absolutely selfish.
That is how society teaches me to live, what can I do?
How do I do something that constantly seems so out of reach?

It has to be everyday.
The death of my will has to happen everyday.
It is continual. It is admitting that I am not God.
It is looking to Jesus and realizing that if He had to do it, it would be foolish for me to think that I do not have to lay my will aside.

Not my will, but yours be done.
Everyday.

The Glory of it All

What even is there to say after the last few days in this country. How do I respond? How should a believer, a follower of Christ respond to lives being lost? Do I seek justice? Do I pray? Do I offer scripture? Do I post cute little sayings? Do I deflect and post stuff that has absolutely nothing to do with anything? What do I do?

What do I know?
Death is hard.
It comes for everyone.
It is impossible to escape.
Sometimes it comes far too early.
Sometimes it comes in unjust ways.
Sometimes it just doesn't make any sense.
But knowing this, doesn't make it any easier when death comes.
Alton Sterling's family knows this.
Philando Castile's family knows this.
The family of the officer's in Dallas know this.
I know this.
If you're reading this, you probably have lost someone close to you and know it as well.
If you haven't lost someone close, you are blessed with that but know, you will eventually.

Anything else to say here feels cheap. I've tried.
It seems that we do not get mourn and grieve without someone telling us we are doing it wrong or someone saying we should not mourn the loss of a certain life for some stupid reason in this internet age.

Don't be that person.
Don't trivialize what others are feeling.
Just because you are heartless doesn't mean that there is nothing to grieve.

Allow people to mourn for the loss of life.
Allow people to grieve for the state of this nation.
Don't trivialize this for someone else because you don't get it.
Don't offer cheap anecdotes because you don't know what to say.
Don't be Job's "friends" that tell him he is wrong for grieving the loss of his family.
Don't start a pointless argument on the internet because you are ignorant.
If someone is grieving and you don't know what to say, don't say anything.
You don't have to say something all the time.
Hold a hand. Give a hug. Cry with them.
If you want to show some someone love, just be there.

The Fear

"Only fear the Lord, and serve him faithfully with all your heart; for consider what great things he has done for you. But if you still do wickedly, you shall be swept away, both you and your king.”

1 Samuel 12:24-25

1 Samuel 12 is a farewell address of sorts for Samuel. His purpose is fulfilled. The Israelites have their king, and now it is time for him to move on and for Saul to lead the Israelites into being a great, God-honoring Kingdom. But things do not exactly follow that plan.

In this passage there are two pretty simple formulas:

1. Fear the Lord.

2. Follow His commands.

3. Prosper

or

1. Don’t fear the Lord.

2. Don’t follow His commands

3. Be “swept away.”

This is not a new idea. This is pretty much the idea put forth in much of the bible. We could debate what it means to prosper or do well (maybe another time?) But this is it. It is simple; it is to the point; and it is seemingly impossible. 

In the very next chapter, we have an example of Saul not fearing the Lord. So that didn’t really last long for Him. We don’t really have to go far or think too hard for many more examples of the Israelites doing things that showed their lack of fear or trust in the Lord. 

Fearing the Lord requires a certain level of humbleness that doesn’t seem becoming to people in western society. It requires us to admit that we are not our own bosses. It requires us to look up and realize that their is one much greater than us. It requires us to die to ourselves. Everyday. 

While this situation might seem bleak and we might wonder if we will ever have a proper view of fearing the Lord and a proper view of what it means to follow him, there is some good news. 

While it might seem impossible for us, there was one that it was not possible for. 

This is Whom we follow. 

This is Whom defeated sin. 

This is Whom died on the cross. 

This is Whom did not stay dead. 

This is Whom our life is found in. 

Yes, there are times that we will fail. But that isn’t where are story ends. If it was, I wouldn’t be here. I am only here now because of the grace and love of my savior. Without that, I would be off chasing money somewhere drowning in sin and doing my best to mess up everyones lives that I would happen to come in contact with through my extremely selfish actions.

None Shall Stand

"Therefore God also highly exalted him
    and gave him the name
    that is above every name,
10 so that at the name of Jesus
    every knee should bend,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue should confess
    that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father."

Philippians 2:9-11

Interestingly enough, the name of this blog is derived from the idea presented in this passage, and it has never been talked about on this blog before. So this seems like a good time to do that.

This passage is pretty clear.
Every knee.
Every tongue.

This is a lesson I have had to learn.

It hasn't been easy. 

It hasn't always been something that I have chosen. 

There are a few reasons for this:

1. I did not have a healthy fear of the Lord.

2. Sin is comfortable. 

3. Pride doesn't relent. 

But, really, all three of these are related. Recently, I preached on the fear of the Lord. I won't go into much detail about it now, but my next post will probably be a summary of sorts of that message. Without a healthy fear of the Lord, the life of a believer is focused on the wrong things. Priorities are mixed up. It is more focused on self than anything else, and that leads into finding comfort in sin or something other than the Lord.

Without a fear of the Lord, sin becomes more commonplace than it should. Will we ever be perfect? No. That doesn't mean that we should be accepting of sin either. How often do you find yourself doing something that you know you should not be doing but do not know how you really got there? That was the story of my life for more than ten years. There have been many times in my life in which I would be in the middle of doing something and have to stop and ask the question, "how it got this far?" I have to go back fifteen or so years to see the roots of some problems. One such problem came in the form of addiction. Sometime during the year 2014 I realized I was addicted. I was addicted to something that changed and altered how I viewed the world and my savior in ways that I never imagined. I was addicted to pornography. It got there through never viewing it as something that was dangerous to my being. It got there because I assumed I could stop at any moment. It got there because of pride.

Pride would not let me tell others about my problems. Pride allowed my sin and addiction to stay in a place of comfort and ease rather than where it should have been. It nearly ruined my life. Pride does not relent. Even now, it does not relent.

The good news is that the Lord does not relent as well. We don't have to be perfect. We don't have to do everything right. We don't have to have it all figured out. We don't have to do any of this because there was One that did.

At the name the name of Jesus...

I suppose I was fortunate.
Jesus found me and gave me a way out.
He gave me a choice.
He showed me that at His name, everything will bow.
At His name, sin has to flee.
At His name, death loses its sting.
At His name, I had to bow.

This is the only way I know of that leads to change. 

It is through recognizing he is sovereign and Lord of all. That is through open confession of sins and idols and whatever it is that is keeping you from him. You can’t do this on your own. You can’t fix this by yourself. You can’t do this apart from Christ and a body of believers. 

Every knee. 

Every tongue. 

You can either do it in life or death, but one will turn out much better for you.

The Only One

This is an excerpt from a sermon I preached on August 2. It covers Acts 9:1-9.

"Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest ² and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem." Acts 9:1-2

In these verses we see a man that is doing what he thought was the right thing to do.

He was not hunting down this new sect in secret.

He was not hiding.

He was not ashamed.

He went through the proper channels to continue this hunt that gained steam with the murder of Stephen.

Saul was doing something he thought he had to do.

Saul was a Pharisee. This was a group that fervently sought after God.  

They wanted to do everything that they could to protect their version of who God was and to follow Him.

The problem for the Pharisees started to come in with how they dealt with the Law and what they did with Oral tradition. The problem was with their “version” of God.

So if there were a Pharisee in our presence, it would be someone that loved the Lord and did everything he or she could to follow Him.

They would be devoted to doing what they thought was right.
It would be their life goal.

It would happen at whatever cost.

For Saul, it took what we would call an extreme route.

It went this route because he took offense to what was going on.

He found it to be offensive to the version of God that he knew.

He made it his task, his burden, his righteous duty to do something about. We see this carried out in the end of Acts 7 and beginning of Acts 8.

He was not hiding.

The problem for Saul starts in verse four:

"Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" Acts 9:3-4

This is where Saul’s worldview starts to come crashing down.  

This is where Saul started to realize that he had not been making good choices.

This is where he realized he could not make himself righteous.

Think about what Saul is doing at this moment.

He is traveling to Damascus.

The distance from Jerusalem to Damascus is 135 miles.

Imagine the thoughts going through Saul’s head in this situation.

He is doing what he knew to be right.

Everything was right in his head.

He was seeking justice for his God.

He was approaching Damascus and probably prepping himself for the task he had at hand.

And then, blinded by the Light. Literally.

Imagine the thoughts that might be going through Saul’s head:

“Whom am I persecuting?”

“I am not persecuting anyone. I am doing my duty.”

“Could this be Jesus, the heretic?”

“Could this be God?”

“Does this mean I am going to die?”

“If this is God, death is probably the best option now.”

For Saul everything he knew to be true was shown in an instant to be wrong.

Everything he knew to be true and was doing was predicated on the fact that Jesus was not who He said He was.

It was predicated on the fact that Jesus was a fake, was a blasphemer.

It was predicated on the fact that Jesus was not resurrected.

It was predicated on falsities.

Verse 5 says:

"He asked, “Who are you, Lord?” The reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.”"Acts 9:5

And the shattering of Saul’s worldview is now complete.

This is where Saul’s questions were answered.

This is where everything appeared to be final.

This is where he probably should have died.

If we were judging things, this is where he would have died.

I imagine that there were some followers of the Way that wanted him dead too.

Thankfully, we are not the judge because if we were, our New Testaments would be severely lacking. 

This is where Saul realized that Jesus was actually who he said he was.

Think about Saul’s shock at hearing the name, Jesus.

This Jesus that he had heard about, actually was true and righteous.

Jesus was the righteous one.

Saul was not the righteous one.

He could not carry out the righteous act because he had a wrong idea about what was righteous.

He had a wrong idea about God.

His version of God was wrong.

His version of God did not include Jesus.

His version of God was incomplete.

Jesus helped to complete Saul’s view of God.

Jesus helped to show Saul his error.

Jesus offered redemption.  

"But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.” ⁷ The men who were traveling with him stood speechless because they heard the voice but saw no one. ⁸ Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. ⁹ For three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank." Acts 9:6-9

The word “but” is huge here. This shows that Saul’s story was not done.

This shows that Saul was going to get another chance.

Saul was likely relieved and now we start to see a different Saul.

We see everything starting to come full circle for him.

We see a man that is starting to understand the weight of what he had been doing.

We see a man that realized he had chosen poorly on many of his life decisions.

We see a man that thought his life was correct.

 But now he is seeing that the only way to change is through Jesus.