Journey of Worship

Posts Tagged ‘relationship with god’

It’s been said that our life betrays what we believe. Or that our beliefs are betrayed by our life. Either way, most, if not all, Christians say that Christ is the most important thing to them, but their living says they are more concerned with life, work, status, homes, cars, retirement plans, etc. Most aspects of life reflect a forgetting of our Maker, Redeemer, and Savior. I’m not here to tell you how a life that has Christ as the most important thing will be played out in you specifically, but to simply cause you to think.

This aspect of drift and forgetting is a common occurrence in all of our lives. The issue isn’t so much if it has happened (because it will at some point), but recognizing it and making appropriate course corrections.

The season of Lent, at its core, calls us back to God, back to basics, and back to the spiritual realities of life in Christ. Back to the things that we say we believe in. It’s a time when we can ask Christ to once again put to death sin and indifference toward God and others so that we might fulfill the Greatest Commandment to love the Lord our God with all of who we are and to love our neighbors as ourselves. We can once again enter fully into the joy of the Lord Who is our strength. Read the rest of this entry »

Consider the concept of an advocate. How many of us really understand that concept? While advocates still exist in our society today, most people don’t think they will ever need an advocate. An advocate is someone who supports or speaks in favor of something. The advocate concept comes from the legal world. Attorneys were to speak in favor of their client’s case.

We see the advocate role still working today. In hospitals, there will be people serving as patient advocates when a family member is not available. For children in abusive and neglectful situations, the welfare and DFS systems play the role of advocate.

But dig a little deeper and discover that the meaning of an advocate is much richer. An advocate is also someone who acts or intercedes on behalf of another. We have a hard time accepting this truth, but as humans we are in desperate need of an advocate when it comes to having a relationship with God. We cannot speak for ourselves before God because our lives are marred by sin from the moment we are conceived. Without an advocate, we can never hope to enter into God’s presence, gain forgiveness of sins, or know the power of God at work in our lives.

God knew this and gave the role of advocate to Jesus Christ. As our advocate, Jesus throws open the doorway to heaven. He makes it possible for us to enter boldly into God’s presence as we place our trust fully in Him. And so, dear brothers and sisters, we can boldly enter heaven’s Most Holy Place because of the blood of Jesus. By his death, Jesus opened a new and life-giving way through the curtain into the Most Holy Place (Hebrews 10:19-20).

As our advocate, Jesus is constantly before God on our behalf interceding for our sins. We will continue to struggle with sin until the every end, yet Jesus is before God on our behalf as we confess and seek forgiveness. Without the blood of Christ interceding for us, we would not have any hope of forgiveness and cleansing. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate who pleads our case before the Father. He is Jesus Christ, the one who is truly righteous (1 John 2:1). Christ does what we cannot as our advocate.

Jesus is uniquely suited to fulfill the role of advocate before God because He has conquered sin and death. All power is given to Him over all things. Now he is far above any ruler or authority or power or leader or anything else-not only in this world but also in the world to come (Ephesians 1:21). There is no one who can take that power away and no one who can usurp that power. As we trust Jesus as our advocate, we can have confidence that He has the ability and power to do it.

If we grab on to the reality and depth of Christ as our advocate, it could revolutionize our perspective and understanding. To realize that we have, interceding on our behalf, He who has conquered the chains of death and sin is huge. Take some time today to give thanks to God that He gave His Son as our advocate and that we can rest secure in that. Even now my witness is in heaven; my advocate is on high. My intercessor is my friend (Job 16:19-20a).

Thank Jesus today for being your advocate before our Holy God and go boldly into His presence through Jesus Christ.