David CM Bell Leadership Blog

  Revelation 2 - Grace and Responsibility There but for the grace of God goes David Bell (1 Corinthians 15:10-11).  Grace and responsibility go hand in hand.  Yes, we give unto Caesar what is his, but what do we give unto God?  We are called to put love into action, to take responsibility for our actions, and to choose this day whose we are and what we will love and hate. Hating evil means taking responsibility.  That’s the blessing of God’s patience, mercy, and grace.  He allows us to take responsibility.  We get to choose what we will think, act, and do today.  Yet what seems so simple and straightforward is yet so foreign to our human nature.  We see plainly that corrupt people seem to get ahead.  And so many denominations have drifted beyond the ledge.  They no longer reflect anything of orthodoxy.  There are dreadful consequences for the church that tolerates evil people - that’s Jesus’ message to the Ephesians.  ...

 Revelation 2:1-7 - A Culture of Discipline In modern parlance, you’d say the early church, according to Jesus’ assessment of it in this passage, was based.  It was unapologetically Christian.  It feared God and loved God.  It worked hard.  It was marked by fellowship, unity in Christ, love of God and love of the Body of Christ, refusal to tolerate evil people, discerning as to who was genuine and who was a liar, willing to patiently endure suffering for Jesus, hating evil, and a stubborn refusal to quit. We can learn a lot about the Ephesian church 2,000 years ago via this passage that gives Jesus' “report card” on the early church.  However, we can, more importantly, learn and understand God’s assessment of how we are lining up with Jesus’ standards for our church.  Is God’s warning that He will remove the church’s lampstand from its place among the churches also a warning to the church today?  I think so. Jesus commands hard work.  G...

 Revelation 2 - Hard Work When we think of the church's first principles, we often look to Luke’s church birth and early history in Acts.  Or to the letters from Paul to Titus, Timothy, the Corinthians, Thessalonians, and Ephesians.  And rightly so.  Likewise, t his message in Revelation 2:2 to the angel of the church in Ephesus hammers home the importance of the principle of Christian hard work.  The message was to the church in Ephesus is also to the entire body of Christ for all time (2:7, 11, 17, 23; 3:6, 13, and 22).  Jesus expects us to hear Him here and to put our faith into action.  Hard work.           Hebrews tells us that “it is impossible to please God without faith” (11:6).  But how is that faith shown?  By obedience and hard work.  James plainly states that the key for the faithful servant of Jesus Christ, like Abraham, is that our faith and actions must work together.  That is, our acti...

 Revelation 1:12-16 - A Sharp Two-Edged Sword God longs for His people to be loyal, thankful, grateful, and faithful.  An honorable people because of who we are and what we do.  God is not blind.  He sees when His people ignore Him and vigorously pursue everything but Him, like a glib adulterous prostitute (Hosea 2).  How often do we make decisions based on money or self-interest rather than honoring God with righteousness?           Yet God, by His very nature loves us so much that He pursues His children, like a Shepherd pursuing a lost sheep.  God, in ever more spectacular and creative ways, wins us back and calls us His children.  As John says, we are “His dear children.” And we, in unison, reply by calling the risen Messiah our Lord and our Saviour.           It is striking that God put a complete end to the old way (Hebrews 8:13) and entered into a new covenant with His people  (J...

 Revelation 1 - Stop the Bleeding There’s a great expectation when you are playing hockey.  You sit in the dressing room together as a team, music playing.  You have your own little ritual of how you gear up and often you sit beside the same guys (at home or on the road).  Before you hit the ice some guys talk a lot.  Other leaders say very little.  You are all preparing mentally for the game that’s just before you.           I vividly remember playing for the Spokane Chiefs in the fall of 1989 after being traded there from the Saskatoon Blades.  Spokane had a tremendous team of young talent.  I was traded to Swift Current later that season, but I loved playing for the Chiefs.  They would go on to win the Memorial Cup the following year (1991).  It was such a fun team to play on.  We had a Vietnam vet as our trainer.  He was a chain smoker, but he loved us.  I knew from the moment I got into...

 Revelation 1:1-3 - Back to the Future In Revelation, we find the beloved Apostle John exiled to the island of Patmos for preaching the word of God and for his testimony about Jesus.  John is calling us to certainty in Christ and to patient endurance.  But, importantly, John was writing down the vision that the Almighty One gave him about things that had just begun to happen so that the early church would be both warned of persecution and encouraged they get through it.           As you know, I’m just a farm boy from Saskatchewan.  I’m no theologian.  I’m a sinner saved by Jesus.  I am reading Scripture just as you are, but I confess I don’t feel like I know enough about Greek, Jewish, or Roman history to fully understand what went on in the first century AD.  By the grace of God, we are allowed to learn and grow in our understanding.  Christians are responsible for hearing, understanding, and obeying God’s word....

 Jude - People Snatchers           God tells us to "Rescue others by snatching them from the flames of judgment" (Jude 23).  This is a time of great spiritual revolution and revival in this land, and I suspect all across the globe.  It is a time of great awakening.  We see a renewed confidence in Christ and a willingness to forego worldliness for godliness.  We see people putting their faith in Jesus and trusting in His promise of new and eternal life.  Jesus’ little brother, Jude, does us a huge favor.  He reminds us to be humbly confident in God.  And to be honest with each other about what it means to trust in and follow God.   Jude reminds us that God will do what is just and good.  It is Christ Jesus who loves us beyond measure and who holds us securely.  We can trust God because He is good.  God, by His power and as our LORD and God shows us His love and forgives us.  We usua...

 3 John - Dear Friends What a blessing it is to get a note or a call from a dear friend.  Dear friends are a gift from God.  God has given us time together in various stages of our lives to love each other, serve and help each other understand God's goodness, model servant leadership, fellowship, celebrate, and mourn and comfort each other in times of sickness and death. As Anne of Green Gables would say, we want the best for our dear friends - our bosom friends.  We love to spend time with them.  We share our successes and our struggles.  And if we are fortunate God gives us friends who unconditionally love us.  Yes, they know our oddities, quirks, failures, foibles, and sins.  And yet they pray earnestly for us - they love us anyway. Dear friends pray for us when they think of us.  We may not have seen them or have talked to them in years.  They may live thousands of miles away from us, but we are still bound together in Christ’s...

  2 John - Who Do We Say Jesus Is? John warns us that the Church must not confuse love with celebrating or encouraging evil work.  John says the consequences are dire.  In Matthew 16, Jesus calls out the wicked and adulterous Pharisees and Sadducees.  He warns his disciples to not mix with the evil people who do not recognize the Messiah.  Jesus calls them hypocrites.           I know, tough stuff.  But we need to wrestle with John's message.  Men and women of God can handle straight talk.  We need it.  In Matthew 16 Jesus also asks His disciples the critical question, “But who do you say that I am?” (Matthew 16:15).  That is what John is getting at here I believe.  And, just as Jesus did with the disciples, John is warning us to not partner or encourage anyone who denies the Son of God.  Our object is not to please the devil or any of his followers.  Our objective is to obey our King and be...

  1 John 5:2-3 - What Does It Mean to Love? If you could summarize the messages of the Apostle John into a single statement it would probably hone in on 1 John 1 (love God, love one another, and do not love the things of this world) and these verses in 1 John 5.  These verses tell us that loving God means keeping His commandments and loving His children.  But what does that mean?  What’s the practical side of it?  1 Corinthians 13:4-8 sheds some light on the subject. In Virginia (where I live) we have LOVE signs all over the place.  It's a somewhat helpful reminder of Jesus’ commandments.  But I rarely stop to think about the power of a Holy Spirit-led life - a life led by God’s love.           A life abounding in love is a supernatural life.  It is available to every person that breathes.  Yet it seems rarer than a Monet.  We may be more likely to see a Russian oligarch without a yacht than a life lived...