Get Up With God
highly caffeinated daily bible doses to help start your morning off right

This week on GUWG, we’re examining some of the world’s favorite Bible verses and the impact they’ve had on people’s lives.

Here’s today’s selection . . .

He wrote more than a thousand songs and sold more than 50 million records. He’s the only performer who’s been inducted into both the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He survived addictions to amphetamines and barbiturates and multiple jail terms. He won Grammys, he won Country Music Awards, he recorded best-selling albums when he was a septuagenarian.

His name? Johnny Cash.

In 1968, at the height of his popularity, Johnny tried to kill himself. Under the heavy influence of drugs, he descended into a cave, trying to get lost forever and “just die.” After passing out in the depths of the cave from exhaustion, he said he suddenly felt God’s presence in his heart and managed to find his way out by following a faint light.

Johnny gave his heart to Jesus a short time later in an altar call at a Nashville church. With the help of his future wife, June Carter Cash, he kicked his addiction to drugs. They married shortly thereafter and stayed together until their deaths in 2003.

Before he died, Johnny recorded several gospel albums and made an influential movie with Billy Graham about the life of Jesus entitled The Gospel Road. While he never stopped struggling with sin, Johnny repeatedly turned to God’s word for counsel. For him, it was a matter of life and death.

His favorite verse?

For if you live according to the sinful nature you will die;
but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body,
you will live . . .
(Romans 8:13)

Got a favorite verse you’d like to share? I’d love to hear from you. Shoot me an e-mail at getupwithgod1@yahoo.com. Thanks!

I have set before you
life and death,
blessings and curses.
Now choose life,
so that you and your children may live
and that you may love the Lord your God,
listen to his voice, and hold fast to him.
For the Lord is your life . . .
(Deuteronomy 30:19b-20a)

God gives us a simple choice. Choose Him and get life. Don’t and get death. It’s that simple.

My humble suggestion: CHOOSE LIFE. Love God, listen to Him, hold on to Him. Every moment. Every day. It sure beats the alternative.

It’s really that simple.

Without Jesus, you’re dead. With Jesus, you’re alive.

Or, put another way, Jesus doesn’t have any dead friends.

Here’s what the Bible says:

As for you,
you were dead
in your transgressions and sins,
in which you used to live
when you followed the ways of this world
and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air,
the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.

All of us also lived among them at one time,
gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature
and following its desires and thoughts.
Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.
(Ephesians 2:1-3)

We were all there. You, me, Mother Teresa, Billy Graham, the Apostle Paul. Every single one of us. If that were the end of the story, it would be pretty tragic and depressing. But it’s not. Here’s what comes next:

But because of his great love for us,
God, who is rich in mercy,
made us alive with Christ,
even when we were dead in our transgressions –
it is by grace you have been saved.
(Ephesians 2:4-5)

So what are us “alive” people supposed to do?

The Bible makes that clear, too. It calls us “God’s workmanship” — other translations say “masterpiece” — “created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Ephesians 2:10)

We’re God’s walking and talking masterpieces. Let’s live like that today and get out there and do some good. 

LIVE
LIKE
YOU’RE
ALIVE

I have come that they may have life and have it to the full.
(John 10:10)

I shared this last year, but I feel compelled to share it again. Chokes me up every time.

The following essay was written by a twelve-year-old girl named Brooke Bronkowski. Read every word.

SINCE I HAVE MY LIFE BEFORE ME

I’ll live my life to the fullest. I’ll be happy. I’ll brighten up. I will be more joyful than I have ever been. I will be kind to others. I will loosen up. I will tell others about Christ. I will go on adventures and change the world. I will be bold and not change who I really am. I will have no troubles but instead help others with their troubles.

You see, I’ll be one of those people who live to be history makers at a young age. Oh, I’ll have moments, good and bad, but I’ll wipe away the bad and only remember the good. In fact that’s all I remember, just good moments, nothing in between, just living my life to the fullest. I’ll be one of those people who go somewhere with a mission, an awesome plan, a world-changing plan, and nothing will hold me back. I’ll set an example for others, I will pray for direction.

I have my life before me. I will give others the joy I have and God will give me more joy. I will do everything God tells me to do. I will follow the footsteps of God. I will do my best!!!

Brooke didn’t just write those words — she lived them. She started a Bible study with her friends from school and spent all her babysitting money on Bibles to give away to others.

Two years later, when she was just a freshman in high school, Brooke was killed in a car accident while driving to the movies. But that’s not the end of the story. Far from it. In the words of her pastor, Francis Chan, in his book Crazy Love:

Nearly fifteen hundred people attended Brooke’s memorial service. People from her public high school read poems she had written about her love for God. Everyone spoke of her example and her joy.

I shared the gospel and invited those who wanted to know Jesus to come up and give their lives to him. There must have been at least two hundred students on their knees at the front of the church praying for salvation. Ushers gave a Bible to each of them. They were Bibles that Brooke had kept in her garage, hoping to give out to all her unsaved friends.

In one day, Brooke led more people to the Lord than most ever will.

Life is precious. Don’t waste a second.

LIVE YOUR LIFE FOR GOD

If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation:
the old has gone, the new has come! (2 Corinthians 5:17)

One of my favorite things to do when I’m traveling is to check out local churches. Yesterday, I had the extreme privilege of attending New Life Church on the campus of the University of Michigan.

The above is New Life’s theme verse. From what I experienced, it certainly strives to embody the “!” at the end. My ears are still ringing from the rather rockin’ worship.

The service centered on reconciliation as demonstrated by the parable of the prodigal son. Besides learning that Badgers like myself can actually learn to love Wolverines, here’s what we covered:

• If you’re a prodigal son, go home. Get out of the pig slop of sin and run to your Heavenly Father. He’ll welcome you with open arms, forgive your sins and throw you a party.
• If you’re like the other son in the story, stop living like you’re dead. Stop judging others and grumbling about what God has given you.

The service concluded with a call to action:

All this is from God,
who reconciled us to himself through Christ
and gave us the ministry of reconciliation:
that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ,
not counting men’s sins against them.
And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.
(2 Corinthians 5:18-19)

Here’s the kicker:

We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors,
as though God were making his appeal through us.
(2 Corinthians 5:20a)

We’re Christ’s ambassadors. Let Him reach out to others and make his appeal of reconciliation through you. Live like you’re alive.

. . . all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God . . . (Romans 3:23)

Everybody sins and falls short of God’s glory. You. Me. Your pastor. The President. Billy Graham. Mother Teresa. The Apostle Paul. Everybody.

God makes it 158% clear that we can’t work our way into Heaven on our own no matter how hard we try. If that’s the way you approach life, it’s a bit like being in a high-jump competition where after years of training, vitamin supplements and maybe even some blood doping your best effort barely clears five feet but the qualifying height is a googolplex times infinity plus a zillion miles. You’ll always come up short.

So, what’s the solution? The Apostle Paul grappled with that very question in the greatest Bible tongue-twister of all time . . .

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do — this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but is sin living in me that does it.

So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Praise be to God — through Jesus Christ our Lord!

So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.

Therefore, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the  law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit. (Romans 7:15-8:4)

As if that wasn’t enough, Paul adds this:

Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace . . . (Romans 8:5-6)

So, stop jumping and let Jesus carry you. It’s a matter of life and death.

LET JESUS SET YOU FREE