Radical Christian Living By Learning How To Live For God By Learning How To Worship God

Open Your Heart To the Love of God

Jason Koeppe — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 22:53:01 +0000

“To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God.”
–William Temple

I try really hard to not OVERUSE the statement I’m about to make. I try to not HYPE anything that I feel God is doing or might do and if I’ve ever fell victim to that, then I publicly as God to forgive me, but…

I believe that God wants to do way more than we as Christians are asking from Him and He is going to do some amazing things in the near future. As I’ve been praying about it, I truly have faith for us to see God in new and fresh ways very soon.

Please do me a favor. I’m going to ask you to consider doing some stuff and pray about some things below. I guess all I’m asking is to consider what would, what could, what MIGHT happen if all of us who have laid down our lives to ENJOY making Jesus the all consuming passion of their lives EXPECTED, ANTICIPATED and PRAYED for God to move in mighty ways. Just consider it.

OK, here we go…

Pray…Seriously Pray. Make a quiet block of 5 to 15 minutes out of your schedule today and for the next week and daily pray about your next worship gathering. In other words, and I’m going to be bold here, don’t do what I’ve done for so many years which is to intend to pray about something and then not, or just as bad, pray about it without fully expecting what you’re asking for to come to pass. Let’s pray for opportunities to heal people, let’s pray for opportunities to get prophetic words to uplift the body, let’s pray for teaching to reach deep into peoples hearts and boldly guide them into living with more Holy Spirit power in their lives, let’s pray for our own lives and walks with Christ to be pushed to the next level and that as leaders of the church (if you’re actively praying like I’m suggesting you’re a spiritual leader in your church even if you don’t have the earthly title) that we would be in prayer for more of God in the church and event. Let’s pray for all these things…and then expect God to act on them. More on expectancy in a separate post…this one was getting kind of long.
Live & Die On Scripture…All Of It. Words without faith and action is incomplete. We all need our faith to be increased (I’m speaking to myself too) so we can be more effective at both winning souls to Christ, walking out our faith daily doing all He has planned for us, and living with increased Holy Spirit power! I would propose to you that there is a point at which things we read in the bible stretch our faith to or even past the breaking point. At what point do we struggle to believe anymore…Prophetic words? Supernatural discernment of spirits? Tongues? Healing (the blind, lame, deaf, mute, dying and sick)? Buildings shaking with the overwhelming presence of God? People being raised from the dead (just lost a lot of you right there didn’t I)? I believe faith starts with a decision. Let’s decide that nothing in that book is out of reach. Let’s decide that when Jesus himself said in John 14:12 “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these,…“ that He really meant even greater things. Where’s your breaking point for your faith and will you decide to stretch it farther? If so, go to BibleGateway’s topical search tool and type “raised from the dead” or some other topic that stretches your faith or go here. Then pray that God would increase your faith in His perfect way and time.
Get Fired Up! If you wanna see God doing some cool stuff, and you should want to, check out these videos with John Wimber doing a Holy Spirit – Signs & Wonders conference in 1985. There are 4 videos and they show God doing some amazing stuff both with prophetic words and also with healing. Also, he’s using this as a teaching tool that I think will be beneficial for us all as we step out in faith at our churches.

Listen in the above video as he talks about how we have westernized and secularized the church. He says that we’ve almost eliminated the supernatural from our perceptions and that we’ve come to a place we don’t anticipate God to operate as God among us. Where we think that study is an end in itself. But word without actions is incomplete. Hearing without doing is incomplete. We need the word and the works. To say that we believe the Bible in it’s entirety and then not operate as such in faith with great anticipation on what the Holy Spirit is going to do among us is incomplete.

Finding God In Tough Times – 7 Biblical Facts To Lean On When Things Get Tough

Jason Koeppe — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 13:35:34 +0000

God is all powerful, all knowing, all encompassing.
Nothing gets by Him, nothing surprises Him and nothing catches Him off guard. While there are things that disappoint Him, we must never forget even when He’s disappointed, He’s not surprised.
He is Creator God.
He created the heavens and the earth which we call the universe and everything on it, in it and around it…put simply, He created EVERYTHING.
He loves every single person He created.
He knows them intimately even to the cells of their body and the hairs on their head being numbered. That includes us. He loves us more than we love ourselves or even more than we love our own children. He loves our children more than we love them. His love is unimaginable. We should reflect that love to others. In doing so, we fulfill what we were put here to do; glorify His name by making Jesus our all consuming passion.
He wants the best for us.
This is a natural outpouring of number 3. He isn’t always going to make our paths easy (in this world you will have trouble), but he will make them straight (Proverbs 3: 5-6; but make sure you read what your/our part is in that one…it’s critical). Another even clearer scripture is this one: “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’” – Jeremiah 29:11 Make no mistake the Lord loves us and wants the best for us even when we can’t see it. Our problem is how we define “best”. We think of best in earthly perspective; money, health, fame, riches, happiness because of our circumstances. God defines best as how much glory your life, even in and through your suffering at times, brings Him. In other words, the best He can give us is Him and when your happiness comes from Him DESPITE your circumstances.
We have a part to play.
Sometimes I think Christians fall into the temptation of thinking that all they have to do to be in good standing with God (and be an effective Christian) is avoid sin, go to church and tithe. I know I have before and still struggle sometimes with feeling vindicated or good enough or entitled. But the question is What does God require? Hopefully you’ve read Worship by Joseph Garlington that I recommended a while back, but if not, I HIGHLY suggest you get it and read it. In the beginning he reminds us of an old testament scripture where God told the people; no worship, no rain. I’ve quoted this several times on stage. There are conditions sometimes for provision. I think sometimes we forget that about God. Don’t misunderstand me, we could never EARN our way into heaven that’s what being saved by Grace is about and we should all be thankful for that one. BUT, we should ask…What Does God Require? We should all be asking ourselves that question every day. For that day, for that situation, for that hour, for that time, for our lives, for our family, for our church, for our team, for our FILL IN THE BLANK HERE.
He is God, we aren’t.
Sometimes as believers, we seem to outgrow our “britches” as my grandma used to say. See, our kids don’t always know why we’re having them do something or endure something or wait for something or go through something, but we’d NEVER hurt them or subject them to pain unnecessarily. Neither would He and even more so. And finally…
Is my focus on the earthly aspect or heavenly aspect?
It’s good to refocus and re-align every now and then and especially at cross roads like you find yourself and I find ourselves in at times. But always, all the time, in all ways, in every situation, with every person, our focus should be sooner rather than later the heavenly aspects of the thing. The question I always ask here is God what do you want me to learn here? What do you want me to see here and how can I affect the Kingdom positively in this thing.

Do We Love Our Life Too Much?

Jason Koeppe — Sun, 16 May 2010 07:06:14 +0000

I used to fear the return of Christ.

Then, at some point later in my walk, the fear of His return turned into resistance for lack of a better word. In other words, I had (and have) a great life here on Earth and so while I would have told you I loved Jesus dearly (more on that a bit later), I wasn’t quite ready for Him to come back.

Looking back, I do believe that a large part of it was that I wasn’t well versed in scripture and had always heard about all the “bad stuff” in the book of Revelation. So I figured there would be a lot of “bad” before we got to the “good” of Jesus returning. However, this lack of biblical understanding and being infant in my faith so to speak wasn’t the only factor. I now believe I suffered from then an addiction of sorts. An addiction to “the good life” here on earth I had built for myself.

This is going to be a short post and as such, let me throw out some tough scriptures that the Lord is allowing me to chew on these days. Scriptures that I’ve both read and heard HUNDREDS of times before now, but somehow I’m just now recognizing a HUGE blind spot in my life up until now. Let me openly confess that I have asked God to forgive me for any willful disobedience to His word and any continued resistance even now as I wrestle out what they mean to me, my family, and how we live.

I want to make sure that no one that reads this blog ever feels any condemnation from me or anything I post and I wanna also remind you all to follow Christ not Jason Koeppe. Scripture is what guides our lives not what some blogger or even a pastor says. HOWEVER, one of the reasons I started this blog was because I felt deep in my spirit that I/we were and are being called to more and that there are, as a result, a LOT of sleeping Christians (not sure that isn’t an oxymoron) who think they’re ok (translate saved and going to heaven) because they prayed a prayer, go to church and tithe.

Anyway, here is the question I pose to you with these scriptures…”What Does the Gospel Demand”?

Luke 9:57-62

Luke 14:33

Matthew 10:37-39

As I walk through and unpack all I can in these and other verses in scripture, I’ll record what God is doing in my life as a result. The question is simple, but the answer might take us places we have never been. Here’s the bottom line…

Do I/YOU believe the Bible?

May God give us ears to hear and eyes to see the truth found in His word. I pray God that I nor anyone who reads these posts would ignore them or willfully disobey them but rather be transformed by them and let it completely change the way we live. More to come…soon.

How to Relate to Evil

Jason Koeppe — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 13:00:16 +0000

Last night my daughter asked my wife and I some great questions about Satan. For example:

why did God create someone so evil?
didn’t God only create good things (in Genesis she pointed out that God looked at all He created and said “it is good”)?
why doesn’t God just “get rid of” Satan? She also pointed out that He was going to do it someday anyway so why not now?

In trying to answer these questions biblically, I found an article/sermon by John Piper that I thought might be timely and helpful for some people. Below is a snippet with a link to the full text of the sermon where you can also watch it in it’s entirety. Check this out:

How should we think and feel and act about Satanic evil—the death of little Zach at the attack of a pit bull? The deaths of three more miners trying to save their buddies? Five hundred dead in the Peru earthquake? The evil you confront in your own lives? Here is my summary answer. Eight things to do with evil. Four things never to do.

Expect evil. “Do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you” (1 Peter 4:12).

Endure evil. “Love bears all thing, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Corinthians 13:7; cf. Mark 13:13).

Give thanks for the refining effect of evil that comes against you. “Give thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 5:20; cf. 1 Thessalonians 5:18; Romans 5:3-5).

Hate evil. “Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good” (Romans 12:9).

Pray for escape from evil. “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” (Matthew 6:13).

Expose evil. “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them” (Ephesians 5:11).

Overcome evil with good. “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21).

Resist evil. “Resist the devil and he will flee from you” (James 4:7).

But, on the other hand:

Never despair that this evil world is out of God’s control. “[He] works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Ephesians 1:11).

Never give in to the sense that because of random evil life is absurd and meaningless. “How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! . . . For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever” (Romans 11:33, 36).

Never yield to the thought that God sins, or is ever unjust or unrighteous in the way he governs the universe. “The Lord is righteous in all his ways.” (Psalm 145:17).

Never doubt that God is totally for you in Christ. If you trust him with your life, you are in Christ. Never doubt that all the evil that befalls you—even if it takes your life—is God’s loving, purifying, saving, fatherly discipline. It is not an expression of his punishment in wrath. That fell on Jesus Christ our substitute. “The Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives” (Hebrews 12:6).

When we renounce the designs of the devil and trust the power and wisdom and goodness of God through Christ, we fulfill God’s purpose in letting Satan live. We glorify the infinitely superior worth of Jesus.

Here is the link to the full article/sermon. I highly recommend you check it out for a greater perspective of God’s love for us and desire for our joy in His glory. As always, share your thoughts/comments here.

One World Order, Illuminati & One World Economy. Far Fetched? Watch this…

Jason Koeppe — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 04:55:15 +0000

Paul McGuire - End Times Video

Duration: 25 mins 48 sec

Bible prophecy expert, Paul McGuire is back in the hot-seat with Rory & Wendy after his intriguing input in the series last year. He continues to expose the New World Order, Illuminati and One World Economy. A professor at King’s College & Seminary, Paul is also a commentator on Fox News and CNN and has written such books as: ‘Are You Ready?’ and ‘The Warning’.

Amazing Biblical Prophecies Being Fulfilled in Israel – Proof of His Soon Return

Jason Koeppe — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 04:41:26 +0000

Amazing Prophecies Being Fulfilled in Israel – Proof of His Return

Perry Stone

Manna Fest Show

The Goal of God’s Love May Not Be What You Think It Is

Jason Koeppe — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:00:47 +0000

Do people go to the Grand Canyon to increase their self-esteem? Probably not. This is, at least, a hint that the deepest joys in life come not from savoring the self, but from seeing splendor. And in the end even the Grand Canyon will not do. We were made to enjoy God.

We are all bent to believe that we are central in the universe. How shall we be cured of this joy-destroying disease? Perhaps by hearing afresh how radically God-centered reality is according to the Bible.

Both the Old and New Testament tell us that God’s loving us is a means to our glorifying him. “Christ became a servant … in order that the nations might glorify God for his mercy” (Romans 15:8-9). God has been merciful to us so that we would magnify him. We see it again in the words, “In love [God] destined us to adoption … to the praise of the glory of His grace” (Ephesians 1:4-6). In other words, the goal of God’s loving us is that we might praise him. One more illustration from Psalm 86:12-13: “I will glorify your name forever. For your lovingkindness toward me is great.” God’s love is the ground. His glory is the goal.

This is shocking. The love of God is not God’s making much of us, but God’s saving us from self-centeredness so that we can enjoy making much of him forever. And our love to others is not our making much of them, but helping them to find satisfaction in making much of God. True love aims at satisfying people in the glory of God. Any love that terminates on man is eventually destructive. It does not lead people to the only lasting joy, namely, God. Love must be God-centered, or it is not true love; it leaves people without their final hope of joy.

Take the cross of Christ, for example. The death of Jesus Christ is the ultimate expression of divine love: “God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Yet the Bible also says that the aim of the death of Christ was “to demonstrate [God's] righteousness, because in the forbearance of God he passed over the sins previously committed” (Romans 3:25). Passing over sins creates a huge problem for the righteousness of God. It makes him look like a judge who lets criminals go free without punishment. In other words, the mercy of God puts the justice of God in jeopardy.

So to vindicate his justice he does the unthinkable – he puts his Son to death as the substitute penalty for our sins. The cross makes it plain to everyone that God does not sweep evil under the rug of the universe. He punishes it in Jesus for those who believe.

But notice that this ultimately loving act has at the center of it the vindication of the righteousness of God. Good Friday love is God-glorifying love. God exalts God at the cross. If he didn’t, he could not be just and rescue us from sin. But it is a mistake to say, “Well, if the aim was to rescue us, then we were the ultimate goal of the cross.” No, we were rescued from sin in order that we might see and savor the glory of God. This is the ultimately loving aim of Christ’s death. He did not die to make much of us, but to free us to enjoy making much of God forever.

It is profoundly wrong to turn the cross into a proof that self-esteem is the root of mental health. If I stand before the love of God and do not feel a healthy, satisfying, freeing joy unless I turn that love into an echo of my self-esteem, then I am like a man who stands before the Grand Canyon and feels no satisfying wonder until he translates the canyon into a case for his own significance. That is not the presence of mental health, but bondage to self.

The cure for this bondage is to see that God is the one being in the universe for whom self-exaltation is the most loving act. In exalting himself – Grand Canyon-like – he gets the glory and we get the joy. The greatest news in all the world is that there is no final conflict between my passion for joy and God’s passion for his glory. The knot that ties these together is the truth that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. Jesus Christ died and rose again to forgive the treason of our souls, which have turned from savoring God to savoring self. In the cross of Christ, God rescues us from the house of mirrors and leads us out to the mountains and canyons of his majesty. Nothing satisfies us – or magnifies him – more.

By John Piper. © Desiring God. Website: desiringGod.org

Originally published in Dallas Morning News.

What Does It Take To Waste Your Life?

Jason Koeppe — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 00:44:31 +0000

Don't Waste Your Life by John Piper

What kind of life must you live for God to say at the great day of judgment…”you’ve wasted the precious life I’ve given you”?

Better yet, how must you live for YOU to conclude that you’ve wasted your life?

Sound like harsh questions? If so, then you should see what John Piper (and I conclude) thinks is the answer! I found this book several days ago and it’s hitting me like a ton of bricks right now cause I feel like John is saying what I’m not able to put into words as well as he did. I feel like this book is going to be yet another wake up call for me to realize that God is calling me (and you) to a higher standard, a deeper love, a more resolute passion and an unwavering commitment to His Glory.

Do yourself a favor…Christian or not, go download the FREE copy of this book and read it from cover to cover. Don’t forget to subscribe on the right side of this page as we’ll be providing some AWESOME tools, tips, encouragement and resources to help you make sure that you Don’t Waste Your Life!

Don’t Waste Your Life Book

Don’t Waste Your Life Study Guide

Don’t Waste Your Life Sermon

Don’t Waste Your Life Gospel Tract

It’s Crazy…Isn’t It?

Jason Koeppe — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 06:19:50 +0000

I recently heard about a book that seemed to really speak to the heart of what this site is all about. It’s called Crazy Love by Francis Chan. I haven’t finished it yet, but I want to share just a small section of content from the back of the book and one quote from the inside. Check this out:

Have you ever felt like we were missing it?

It’s crazy if you think about it. The God of the universe – the Creator of nitrogen and pine needles…galaxies and E-minor – loves us with a radical, unconditional, self-sacrificing love. And what’s our typical response? We go to church, sing some songs and try not to cuss.

Whether you’ve verbalized it yet or not…we all know something’s wrong.

Why are there are over 350,000,000,000 BILLION galaxies…that we know of, most of which the human race has only seen in the last few years due to the Hubble telescope?
Why does a caterpillar have 228 separate muscles in it’s head (that’s a lot for a bug don’t you think)?
The average elm tree has approx 6M leaves on it
Your own heart generates enough pressure to squirt blood up to 30 feet
He didn’t have to put over 3,000 species of trees within 1 sq mile in the Amazon jungle or so many different kinds of laughter (you know…wheezes, snorts, quiet, loud, obnoxious), but he did.
Did you know that spiders, when spinning their web can produce up to 60 ft of silk per hr while simultaneously producing a special oil on their feet so they don’t stick to their own web…that deserves some respect!
When you get goose bumps, the hair in your follicles is actually helping you stay warmer by trapping heat.
Or have you ever marveled at the fact that plants take in Carbon dioxide and produce oxygen?
And those same plants started as a seed in the dirt, some watered some not, that transformed and defied gravity and poked their head/sprout out of the ground and into the sunlight.

The rest of the back cover says…

Does something deep inside your heart long to break free from the status quo? Are you hungry for an authentic faith that addresses the problems of our world in tangible, even radical solutions? God is calling you to a passionate love relationship with Himself. Because the answer to religious complacency isn’t working harder at a list of dos and don’ts – it’s falling in love with God. And once you encoutner His love as Francis describes it, you’ll never be the same.

Because when you’re wildly in love with someone…it changes everything.

And here’s a quote from the book:

“Whatever God’s reasons for such diversity, creativity and sophistication in the universe, on earth and in our own bodies the point of it all is His glory.”

Radical Awakening – You Betchya

Jason Koeppe — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 04:04:56 +0000

So I’m sifting through my email one day after I wrote the about page for this blog which attempts to describe why this blog exists; and that is:

To help Christians who are hungry for more of God and are searching to find information that will disciple them and help them grow.
To help wake up sleeping Christians who aren’t hungry enough and have fallen into a spiritual lethargy of sorts.

Anyway, as I’m going through my email I come across this Facebook email with this subject:

“Radical Awakening” sent you a message on Facebook…

Now I found out that is was an invitation for a webinar that was going to “be talking about a new evolutionary impulse coming through humanity now that is giving birth to a new paradigm of consciousness and a new paradigm of living. This new frequency is calling us to make fundamental changes in all aspects of our lives.”

Wow…not sure what the webinar was about (very much doubting it had a biblical basis but I don’t know), cause I didn’t attend. But this much I know…I LOVE the term/concept “Radical Awakening”. I love it cause that’s how I’d describe my experience with Jesus over the last 2 years and it’s how I’d describe one of the primary purposes for this site.

A bit down the message the webinar inviter says “and you’re being called to awaken to your true nature and transform your relationship to Life! ” I’d probably re-phrase this slightly to read more like this:

“and you’re being called to awaken to your spirit and inner person by the renewing of your mind and transform your relationship with Jesus! “

No matter where you are in your walk/relationship with the Lord, it can and should grow stronger. There is no coasting with God, you’re either drawing nearer to Him or drifting farther away from Him.

So which are you doing…drawing closer or drifting farther away? The day of the Lord’s return is close…it’s almost as if the world even senses that something’s up.

Chime in with your thoughts and feelings on this by commenting below!