John Fischer The Catch

Shiny happy people

Posted on August 20, 2015 by jwfisch

At an event where I am speaking this week, I asked a gentleman I met about his kids. He replied with a casualness that shocked me, “My first two are alcoholics, then I have one in high school and this here is Christian.” Christian looked to be about 7 years old. I marveled at this man’s casual candor, not to mention calling his first two kids alcoholics in front of their 7-year-old younger brother who didn’t flinch, by the way. This must be just basic family knowledge. It wasn’t until I heard him talk about his kids some more and asked him to repeat what he had said about his first two, that I realized he had said they were “out of college.”

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged 1 John, relationships | 6 Comments

In the company of sinners

Posted on August 20, 2015 by jwfisch

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. (1 John 1:8)

Make no mistake about it, there is a lot of self-deception in Christianity. If we aren’t actually saying we have no sin, we are at least acting like we don’t, and if we are acting like we don’t have any sin, we must believe we don’t, or we have at least talked ourselves into believing that whatever sin we might be guilty of is so minor compared to everything else out there, that we render our little smidgen of sin insignificant for the most part.

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged 1 John, relationships, sinners | 1 Comment

Walking, talking and getting cleansed

Posted on August 19, 2015 by jwfisch

We are looking into the first letter of John in the New Testament this week. John was the disciple called beloved of God. Of all the disciples, he was the closest to Jesus. But John is also different. Marti says that if John were around today, he would undoubtedly be diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia. That’s because he doesn’t think straight like the apostle Paul and the rest of us; he thinks sideways like Marti. He thinks in circles instead of straight lines. You follow his thinking for a while and suddenly you notice you are back to where you started, only this time you’re seeing something you didn’t see the last time you were there. It may sound the same or use the same words, but it’s different. If you want to know what I’m talking about, sit down and read 1 John … round and round you go.

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged 1 John, coming alongside, relationships | 1 Comment

Joy unspeakable

Posted on August 18, 2015 by jwfisch

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete. 1 John 1:1-4

Yesterday we focused on the blood and skin nature of the opening lines of John’s first letter to the churches, and today we want to look at why. Why did Jesus Christ come in blood and skin? Why did He make us in the first place? Why the pain, the martyrs, the suffering, the death?

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged 1 John, relationship with God, relationships | 3 Comments

The skin I’m in

Posted on August 17, 2015 by jwfisch

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. 1 John 1:1

If you are a believer today, you have been touched by God, and I don’t mean that in just a spiritual sense. I mean you have been touched by someone who was touched by someone who was touched by someone … all the way back to someone who, like John, saw, heard and touched Jesus, and in handling Jesus, they handled God Himself, because Jesus is God, the word made flesh. It has to be this way because the truth has been handed down personally from one generation to the next. You wouldn’t have even heard of Jesus had there not been an unbroken line of living, breathing human beings between you and Christ who touched each other and finally touched you. And, in touching someone who touched Christ — no matter how many people you put between you and Him — you have physically, not just spiritually, touched the Lord.

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged being human, relationship with God | 2 Comments

Just as I was

Posted on August 14, 2015 by jwfisch

Meet Woulda, Coulda and Shoulda: the I Don’t Care Bears.

Just as I am, though tossed about
With many a conflict, many a doubt,
Fightings and fears within, without,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.
– from the hymn, “Just As I Am,” lyrics by Charlotte Elliott

“Just as I am” is an everyday thing. It is not just a salvation invitation song; it’s the way we live. It’s about coming to life with an honest estimation about who you are, what you have, and what you need. It’s about facing life with our doubts, our conflicts and our fears and trusting in the Lord to get us through. The other option is to live in the past. If we don’t live “Just as I am,” we will most likely be caught in the “Just as I was.”

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged dealing with fear, honesty | 3 Comments

Love is already

Posted on August 13, 2015 by jwfisch

“God loves you, just as you are, not as you should be,” was a favorite saying of the late Brennan Manning. He concluded almost every talk with it. “I will not should on myself today,” is another.

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged God's love, love | 3 Comments

Getting over plank-eye

Posted on August 12, 2015 by jwfisch

Here is how you accept and love other people just as they are, regardless of who they are, or what they have done. You settle, once and for all, the issue of measuring righteousness and comparing your sin with others by concluding that your sin is, and will always be, worse than anyone else’s. It’s a foregone conclusion. We know how the answer is going to come out every time, so don’t even bother. It simplifies everything, doesn’t it?

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged judging, Pharisees | 1 Comment

Just as they are

Posted on August 11, 2015 by jwfisch

I am tracking with many of you who remember “Just As I Am” as the invitation hymn for Billy Graham crusades, sung by a few-hundred-voice choir as literally hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people would get up out of their seats and come forward to receive Christ. I am one of those as well, and as a result, this song will always be associated with my salvation, just as it is for many of you.