Rayni Risher

Breaking Chains

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“This is really heavy. Maybe too heavy to wear for an extended time. But I’ll try it anyway.” That’s what I was thinking the other day as I put on a beautiful necklace with large stones. I like the necklace a lot and got it as a souvenir in one of my favorite cities but I rarely wear it because after I bought it I realized that it’s a bit heavy sitting around my neck; especially for longer periods of time. It made me think about the bondages that often hold us down in life. Those things that keep us chained and in the proverbial pit. We notice the heaviness of those chains but how do we get free?

Isaiah 52 is one of my favorite chapters in the Bible! God is calling His people out of captivity in Babylon. He is getting ready to deliver them from what has been oppressing them. That is something to celebrate! In verses 1-3 He says:

“Awake, awake, Zion,
clothe yourself with strength! Put on your garments of splendor, Jerusalem, the holy city. The uncircumcised and defiled will not enter you again.

Shake off your dust; rise up, sit enthroned, Jerusalem.
Free yourself from the chains on your neck, Daughter Zion, now a captive. For this is what the Lord says: “You were sold for nothing, and without money you will be redeemed.”

I love how God tells His people exactly what they need to do. God is going to deliver them but they have a part to play, too. They have to make a decision to stand up, to get free, to walk into their true identity in God, and to get moving forward! In John Wesley’s commentary he notes this about the word “awake” — “This is a prediction and promise what she should do, that she should awake or arise out of her low estate, and be strong and courageous.” Matthew Henry adds, “The gospel proclaims liberty to those bound with fears. Let those weary and heavy laden under the burden of sin, find relief in Christ, shake themselves from the dust of their doubts and fears, and loose themselves from those bands. The price (is) paid by the Redeemer for our salvation…”

So…
+What is holding you down? Is there a stronghold or invisible chain around your neck? Is it from past mistakes? Fear of moving forward? Hurtful, untrue words that shaped your thinking?

+Will you make a decision today to rise up, shake off the dust of victim thinking, break those unhealthy chains and move forward in Christ? If you don’t know where to begin, ask God to show you. He will. He wants you to be free!

Prayer
God, You truly are our deliverer and You are able to break every chain that binds us so we can follow Your call to stand up and move forward into more and more of the abundant life that Jesus offers us (John 10:10). Help us to be strong and courageous as we make a decision to “awake” and partner with you as You deliver us from strongholds. Amen.

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Three Practical Ways to Remain in Christ

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Don’t you love it when you’re reading the Bible and a verse just jumps out to you? That is one way God speaks to us! Yesterday I started reading through the short but often challenging 1 John and throughout the day I kept coming back to this verse:

“Your fellowship with God enables you to gain a victory over the Evil One.” (1 John 2:14, MSG)

Jesus, by His death and resurrection, has already overcome the Evil One (Satan). As God’s children we, too, have overcome the Evil One because we are under Jesus’ authority. But sometimes it’s easy to let the lies of the enemy slip in—and to believe them. I find that this is most common when we aren’t continually grounding ourselves in Jesus; when we aren’t remaining in Him.

What Does it Mean to “Remain”?
In John 15:4-5 Jesus says,“Live (Remain, Abide) in Me. Make your home in Me just as I do in you. In the same way that a branch can’t bear grapes by itself but only by being joined to the vine, you can’t bear fruit unless you are joined with Me. I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you’re joined with Me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant. Separated, you can’t produce a thing.” 

The Greek word for “remain” in these verses is “meno” and translates “to remain, abide, stay, wait.” Just like the branch that stays connected to the healthy vine will bear grapes, in order to thrive and bear spiritual fruit we must remain closely connected to Jesus, the Vine, receiving the nutrients of His life-giving Spirit. We must fellowship with Him. We must remain in Him.

So, how do we remain in Jesus in the midst of the busyness of this world? We must be intentional! Our physical, emotional and spiritual health are depending on it. Here are three practical ways to remain.

Koinonia with God & Others
Koinonia is a Greek word that means “community, communion, joint participation, sharing and intimacy.” It’s essential for us to regularly have times of koinonia with God and with other believers. Sometimes it’s difficult to feel that God really is with us. Yet, as a follower of Jesus, God’s Spirit is living inside of us. He’s that close! Be intentional about talking to God throughout the day, just like He is sitting right next to you, because He’s right there! Think about Him. Pray and ask for what you need. Praise Him. Spend time encouraging other believers and being encouraged throughout the week in person. Or send a text. Pray for your friends. Write a quick note on Facebook. Even short words of encouragement to others have a huge impact!

Learn God’s Words
This is so important and yet even with all the easy access we have to the Bible there are many Christians who are Bible-illiterate. How can we fully know who God is and who He says we are if we don’t read what He has already given us in the Bible? This includes reading about the faith-building history of the people who came before us.

Jesus knew that knowing the words of God was so important. He refuted the lies of the enemy with the words of God. The Bible says the word of God is living and active. It brings refreshing. Shows you how to live. Teaches you who God is and who you are. It also says that Jesus is the Word of God. One translation of 1 John 2:14 says, “…and the word of God lives in you, and you have overcome the evil one” (NIV). The power of the word helps you overcome the enemy. Remaining in Christ helps you understand how to overcome the enemy.

Don’t Love the World’s Ways
1 John 2:15-17 cautions us, “Don’t love the world’s ways. Don’t love the world’s goods. Love of the world squeezes out love for the Father. Practically everything that goes on in the world—wanting your own way, wanting everything for yourself, wanting to appear important—has nothing to do with the Father. It just isolates you from Him. The world and all its wanting, wanting, wanting is on the way out—but whoever does what God wants is set for eternity.”

Those verses say it all. When we are more acquainted with the ways of the world than the ways of God, we can’t help but become more and more separated from Jesus. We have to choose to remain in Jesus while we live in the world, rather than putting worldly ways that go against the very teachings of Jesus at the forefront of our lives.

This week think on these things as you make a daily decision to remain in Jesus.

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Lessons From a Bird Nest, Part 2

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Imagine the scene…Your 25 year old able-bodied son comes over for dinner. You’re excited to have him visit. He sits down at the table. As he recounts his day you cut the steak and vegetables on his plate into small pieces. You pick up the fork and begin to feed him, bite by bite, wiping his mouth often. Then you pick up his sippy cup and give him a drink. Does this scene sound familiar in your house? I certainly hope not! And yet metaphorically, it gets played out over and over in the church.

We Have to Learn to Feed Ourselves
Recently I shared about the baby birds I watched grow up in a nest under the eaves of my home. (Read it here) The newborn babies were frequently fed by their parents. As the baby birds grew and matured they learned to use their wings to fly. Then they learned how to hunt for food and feed themselves on a daily basis. They have now left the nest and someday soon they will likely have their own babies. The adult birds will be responsible to feed themselves and their little ones until the new babies mature and the cycle is repeated. 

This model can be likened to our spiritual journey. When we’re new believers we are often fed much of our biblical truth by others, not having our own solid foundation to stand on. Then slowly we learn to feed ourselves through reading the Bible, prayer, service, worship, and remaining in Jesus (John 15). As we become more mature it is still good, helpful and encouraging for others to teach us but we mostly “feed ourselves” from our own time seeking God. If we want a truly vibrant relationship with God, we have to remain in Him daily…not just one hour a week on Sunday mornings. Ideally, as we grow and mature we should be taking someone else under our wing as a disciple to help them to grow, like Jesus did.

But sometimes we get stuck in the spiritual “baby stage”. All we want is for someone else to feed us, pray for us, tell us what we should do, tell us what the Bible says. It seems easier that way because we don’t have to be fully responsible for ourself and our decisions. As one blogger put it, Babies are immature physically and mentally, but we expect them to develop. If they don’t, there is a problem. The same is true for followers of Jesus. We are supposed to be maturing in our spiritual walk, becoming more like Jesus. How can we do that if we don’t really even know what the Bible says? If we’re constantly relying on others to meet our basic spiritual needs? Paul admonished the “infantile” Hebrews:

“By this time you ought to be teachers yourselves, yet here I find you need someone to sit down with you and go over the basics on God again, starting from square one—baby’s milk, when you should have been on solid food long ago! Milk is for beginners, inexperienced in God’s ways; solid food is for the mature, who have some practice in telling right from wrong.”(Hebrews 5:12-14)

It’s Time to Put on Your Big Kid Pants
Here’s the thing….we need you! The church needs you and the world needs you. If you stay spiritually immature you aren’t living out the potential God created in you. God gave you a particular personality and gifts to glorify Him and reach out to others. We need your gifts, your wisdom, your maturity. We need you to be healthy in your marriage, modeling to your kids what God teaches, living out the wisdom of God’s words in your life, helping others to grow more like Jesus, sharing the good news of eternal life.

This week let’s begin doing the things we need to do in order to grow and mature spiritually so we can fully be who God created us to be and bring as much glory to Him as we possibly can! I encourage you to spend time daily reading the Bible, praying, listening for God’s voice, worshiping Him, serving others. As we do these things we will be encouraged and we will also find that we are automatically growing spiritually, just like a branch connected to the Vine.

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Are You A Disciple Or A Spectator?

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Have you ever climbed to the top of a steep mountain or hill? It can be tiring and daunting with potential hazards along the way. It takes time and it also takes a commitment to not only start the climb but to keep climbing all the way to the top, even when it’s difficult. At times our faith journey can feel like a long, steep upward climb, can’t it? But we can trust that if we’re following Jesus up the mountain, He will bring refreshing and that something beautiful will result from the difficulty of the climb.

Something like this happened in Matthew 5:1-2: “When Jesus saw His ministry drawing huge crowds, He climbed a hillside. Those who were apprenticed to Him, the committed, climbed with Him. Arriving at a quiet place, He sat down and taught His climbing companions.” 

Crowds Don’t Always Mean Commitment
Jesus was aware that His ministry was drawing large crowds. The people had heard that this Jesus from Nazareth healed sick people, cast out demons, spoke with authority, and a large number of the people wanted to see this “show”. Most probably wouldn’t and didn’t want to make a radical commitment. They just wanted to hang around. Others were there in desperation to seek out healing and deliverance from Jesus—they wanted something from Him and then would return to their normal life. A smaller amount of people were there who were genuinely committed to being Jesus’ disciples, or apprentices. They were in it for the long haul.

Before He delivered one of His most talked about teachings to this day, I think Jesus wanted to see who was really with Him. He probably knew only the truly spiritually hungry would follow Him anywhere, even up a hill. The others—the less devoted—would just wait around for Him at the bottom. Wait for “the show” to resume when Jesus came back down. Those who were committed climbed with Him.

Worth the Climb
When you make a decision to go the distance with Jesus, to follow Him through the obstacles, rough patches, continue even when it’s a difficult climb, He brings you to a place where you can sit down and rest with Him and hear Him tell you something only the faithful followers got to hear. I think Jesus also wanted to get above the noise of the crowd, to a quieter place where the people who genuinely wanted to hear Him could do so without the distraction of the non-committed stragglers.The revelation from Jesus’ mouth and the time spent resting with Him was worth the momentary hardship of the climb. 

So…
Are you the committed disciple of Jesus, the spectator who wants to see a show, or somewhere in between? Are you willing to go the distance to get to that quiet place with Jesus, where you can more easily hear His voice above the din of the jostling crowd? I encourage you this week to take time to “Step out of the traffic! Take a long, loving look at Me, your High God….above everything.” (Psalm 46:10). And if you’re in the middle of a difficult stretch of the mountain…just keep going! One foot in front of the other, trusting that God will meet you there with the wisdom and refreshing only He can give.

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Lessons From a Bird Nest, Part 1

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Last month I noticed a bird trying to build a nest in a corner under the eaves of my home. He’d find some twigs, fly up to the eave and delicately try to wedge the tiny branches between the wood and a supporting wire underneath. And each time he failed. Flight after flight. Twig after twig. Day after after. Each day when I walked outside I noticed his failure as I stepped over a smattering of small branches and brush on the concrete.

I prayed, God, help this little bird to build the nest he needs.

And then finally, a few days later as I looked out the window I saw that the bird had built a robust nest under the eave. Shortly after that I noticed another bird—presumably the momma bird–sitting in the nest as the daddy bird sat on a wire nearby, diligently fending off other birds who flew a little too close to the nest. Not long after three babies were born and I have had the joy of watching them grow up over the last few weeks. They have gone from tiny tweets, to open mouths waiting for food to be dropped in, to larger birds sitting on the edge of the nest, practicing flapping their wings…and still crying like babies when it’s feeding time.

And that nest has amazingly weathered major winds and rain storms.

Let God Be the Builder
Watching the bird originally try to build the nest made me think of Psalm 127:1,“Unless the Lord builds a house,
the work of the builders is wasted. Unless the Lord protects a city, guarding it with sentries will do no good.” (NLT) God is our provider in all things. Even our very breath comes from God. He always wants to partner with us in the work He is doing by giving us specific tasks to do. That way it’s our story, too…not just His.

But unless God is the foundation and the builder of what we are creating, we’re laboring in vain. It’s so easy to think that we know better than God and to take any idea—especially one that promotes ourselves—and run with it. But God may have something else in mind for you. A different road. A different timing. And at the least, a desire for you to be surrendered to Him in all of it, moving with His rhythm rather than your own. Why? Because God is wisdom. And going in the way of wisdom is always the best road to take.

When we build something ourselves it will eventually fall apart. When God is behind it, it will survive and thrive!

So….
+What have you been trying desperately to build on your own that is falling apart because you’re trying to do it your own way or it isn’t led by God?

+Are you willing to surrender every part of yourself and your life to God and ask Him to be the builder?

Prayer
God, thank you for caring about every small and large detail of my life. You are good and nothing can separate me from Your immeasurable love. I fully surrender myself and my dreams to You. I want You to be the originator and builder of everything I do. Help me to follow Your lead, rather than my own selfish ways. In Jesus’ Name.

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