Sometimes the boat sinks anyway

By John Stallings


Shipwrecks are fascinating.

Remember the movie, “Titanic?” It was the blockbuster movie of the year all about the ship which was called “unsinkable” hitting an iceberg & going down on her first & only voyage.

What did the Titanic teach us? For one thing the maritime nations of the world changed their policies about ship’s radio rooms after a neighboring ship turned off its radio set for the night because it was bedtime, when the Titanic was starting to sink with hundreds of souls beneath the cold waves.

Shipbuilders learned about lifeboats becoming useless when a ship lists to one side. And they also learned you have to have enough lifeboats for all on board. And maybe they learned from the Titanic not to boast as if she were actually unsinkable because clearly, she wasn’t.

In this article we’ll look at perhaps the most famous shipwreck in history, Paul’s shipwreck in route to Rome & see what spiritual lessons we can learn. That story is dramatically told in Acts 27.

One thing I’ll tell you up front is that the storm Paul encountered has to be one of the most horrendous experiences any man ever endured. It lasted two weeks & much of that time neither the sun nor stars were seen.

I’ve lived in Florida most of my life & can tell you that two days in the grip of a ferocious storm is about all a human can endure, & that’s’ with the provision that you’re on stable ground, not like Paul, aboard a small ship.

We’ll see one thing for absolutely certain, & that is even in the worst of times, God’s redeeming hand can come forth & give us a reason for hope & good cheer.

Secular literary experts & writers have given kudos’ to chapters 27 & 28 of Acts which recount Paul’s shipwreck, saying that for sheer purity of story telling, they are unrivaled in all the history of the literary world.

Luke, who wrote Acts, besides being a physician, was a cracking good writer & storyteller. If it weren’t for Luke we’d not have what has become the classic telling of the Christmas story. If it weren’t for Luke we’d have never heard the line, “There was no room in the end,” nor would we know about the stable, the shepherds or the angels.

Luke alone gives us the memorable parables of the Prodigal Son & the Good Samaritan. Luke introduces us to little Zacchaeus & crafted the post-Easter story about the “Road to Emmaus.”

In the book of Acts Luke tells us about “The day Of Pentecost,” the drama of Ananias & Sapphira, the Ethiopian Eunuch, Saul’s Damascus road conversion, Eutychus falling out the window after a long sermon by Paul, & the missionary journeys of Paul, Peter & the other Apostles.

But nowhere in Luke’s writings are his rich descriptive powers on display better than in the last two chapters of Acts.

Luke’s telling of Paul’s shipwreck has even been studied by scholars as a kind of primer in ancient sea-faring techniques. Luke’s description of the sailors, the ship, the riggings are so detailed as to give us an accurate, technological glimpse into how they used to navigate the seas back then.

But as an evangelist, Luke never wrote only for the artistry of it all. His purpose was always to help the reader to come to a better & stronger faith in The Lord Jesus Christ as the Savior of the world.

As Acts opens, Luke is encouraging Theophilus & his flock to see that there were always struggles in the Christian life & that there was never any “golden-age” of the church during which there were no problems, quarrels among believers, no mistakes & no suffering.

In my opinion nowhere in scripture do you see that message more clearly than in Acts 27. Paul’s shipwreck is an actual historical event but it’s also a kind of parable & metaphor with its high seas, storms that come & winds that howl, for the trials & difficulties in the lives of believers.

Paul had been traveling across the Near East for nine months preaching through Israel & Syria, Turkey & Greece & now he’s headed for the greatest city in the land, the center of military & political might on earth, Rome.

He’s requested an audience with Caesar. He’s been under arrest for a while & has exhausted his legal options in the smaller venues so as a Roman citizen he has this final right to take his case directly to Caesar & it couldn’t be denied. You have to give Paul some credit, he went for it. So now, finally he’s being transported via ship to Italy.

Paul is on a grain-carrying ship, which is also a ship full of prisoners. Against his advice the sailors are going to try a wintertime trip during the stormiest season. During this era, massive amounts of grain were being transported by ship which was a money-maker for the ship owners, thus their willingness to take a risk.

As Paul predicted, the ship & its crew encountered a nightmare of a storm. It didn’t take an experienced sailor to know there’d be no saving of the ship. The sailors did all possible to keep the ship afloat, including throwing grain overboard & finally things that were vital to the ships viability. In the end all that was saved were the souls on board. This brings me to the first important point;

WHEN YOU ENCOUNTER A STORM, DO EVERYTHING YOU CAN YOURSELF.

The sailors worked night & day, undergirding the ship, which means they ran cables underneath the ship to keep the planks from separating & twice they lightened the load to keep it afloat. If you & I are in a storm & our boat is sinking, if we don’t do everything we can it will probably sink. While the saying “God helps them who help themselves” isn’t in the Bible, the principle & thought most certainly is.

When I was a kid they used to say, “Work like it all depends on you then pray like it all depends on God.” Good advice.

Ephesians 6:10-17 admonishes us to “put on the whole armor of God,” & it lists all the battle dress for the child of God. God doesn’t put the armor on us, we do that ourselves & though God will help us, we’re expected to put on the armor & be ready to fight the fight of faith. Next;

PRAY AND ASK FOR GOD’S ASSISTANCE—Acts 27:29

The sailors prayed they’d see the light of day.

I remember reading about a woman who worked in a factory & was trained to operate an expensive machine. After her training, her superior told her if the machine ever got jammed, not to try to force it to work, but to call for him.

One day the machine jammed & the woman began to do everything she could to get it working. She cut it off, then cut it back on, pushed & pulled to no avail. She worked frantically with the jammed machine until she smelled smoke & finally cut it off & called her supervisor. When the supervisor came & checked the machine out, he saw that the well intentioned woman had burned up its motor. The woman cried & said, “I did all I could do to get the machine running again.” Her boss said, “Lady, you’ve never done all you can do until you’ve called me.”

After you & I have exhausted all our efforts & seen no success, & we’ve come to the end of our abilities, we can call on our heavenly Father in prayer & be assured of His help.

If however we fail to call on God & our boat hits the bottom, we have to take the responsibility for the calamity.

Have you ever wondered---?

WHAT’S GOD’S GREAT MAN OF FAITH DOING IN A STORM ANYWAY?

Some people believe if you have enough faith you’ll never encounter a storm but in this story, Paul, “God’s man of the hour, -of faith & power” gets into a killer hurricane & it goes on for two weeks.

This may shock you, but—Faith produces storms!

There’s nothing in the Bible even remotely hinting that a Christian will be exempt from trouble. You very well could come under persecution in your life for being a Christian. Jesus, Job & many of the Bible greats got into trouble not because they were bad but because they were good.

There is more persecution of Christians worldwide at present than there ever has been in history. We should be grateful we’ve not been called on to resist unto blood. In countries like Australia & Canada the pulpit has been declared a public place & ministers have been fined & threatened for things they’ve preached. Things that heretofore could be said freely are now prosecuted under “hate speech laws.”

Maybe your persecution will be so subtle you hardly even recognize it as persecution. You might have someone say, “You know, you profess to be a Christian but……” --then they proceed to rake you over the coals, holding you to some standard they themselves miss by a million light years.

The fact that they profess nothing & you profess Christ somehow in their mind leaves them freer to condemn you. The real motive behind their attacks against you is their disgust for your love & devotion to Jesus Christ.

Though the ship Paul is sailing on is tossed around like a toothpick & he hasn’t seen the sun in days, he doesn’t panic. He stands before the 276 sailors aboard & assures them that God will spare all of their lives, with one provision; they unequivocally must stay with the ship. Here’s another lesson;

WHEN YOU’RE IN A STORM--DON’T JUMP SHIP!

One of the temptations in a storm is to try to get away from the problem.

I’m tempted to laugh when I hear young ladies say things like, “I’m tired of all these house rules & pressures from my parents, & I’m going to leave home & get married.” This young lady doesn’t know much about marriage if she thinks it means liberty to do exactly as she pleases.

I smile when I hear young men say, “I’m sick of people telling me what to do & having to live with curfews & all that stuff, I’m going to join the Marines.” This young man will get a surprise when he arrives at boot-camp.

Here’s a question for all of us; --how are we ever going to see God perform a miracle if we leave the place where the miracle is needed?

The most important thing a person could possess to be successful, outside of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, is stickability. Staying power; the ability not to run when the going gets tough. You may need a vacation, but don’t jump ship. You may have to fast & pray but don’t jump ship.

LIGHTEN YOUR LOAD DURING A STORM.

Luke tells us after a few days rolling around in this killer of a storm that the sailors started lightening the ship. To show you how desperate they were, they even threw overboard the grain which could have been eaten.

Then things got so desperate they threw overboard the tackling of the ship.

If I knew exactly what tackling was I’d share it with you but for the life of me I can’t tell you. It must have been masking & sails & other paraphernalia but I know they had tackling on the ship. They probably went out & bought tackling before they shoved off. I can hear two sailors talking a day or two before the ship was to sail, “Hey Sam, we’ve got to get some tackling for the ship before we sail you know?” “Right Joe,” Sam retorts, “we have to get that tackling.” Hey Sam, what’s tackling?” Sam probably said, “Well, I don’t rightly know what tackling is either but they told me to go buy some & there’s a tackling store down on Main Street.”

TACKLING IS ANYTHING WE DON’T ACTUALLY NEED TO SURVIVE.

I don’t know what the tackling is in your life. It would probably be different than my tackling but we all have tackling. I think a good rule of thumb would be; --tackling is whatever we don’t really need to survive when things start getting stormy in our lives.

We’re entering choppy waters in America economically & politically. Sadly we’re seeing unprecedented home foreclosures, high energy costs & people of all strata’s are feeling the squeeze. We’re entering an era now where things that we’ve always had in abundance will be harder & harder to come by.

Yet our culture is a consumer oriented culture geared toward always showing us things we need to “be happy.” I have a car with over one-hundred thousand miles on it & it’s a great car. However now & then I get itchy, wanting to buy a new car with that new car smell & look. The advertisements tell me there are 48 easy payments. I know that’s a lie. There may be two easy payments, the first & last ones, but those other 46 payments are hard.

In America we strive for bigger houses, better cars, more money & power. Jesus never taught us to directly condemn wealth but He spoke often about the danger that wealth could cause.

IT’S IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER- MONEY HAS A DEMONIC DIMENSION.

What would drive a person to sell their body? Why would someone risk prison by selling illegal drugs? What drives people to cheat on their taxes or break into homes & steal? M.O.N.E.Y.

Jesus taught that there only two masters, not God & the devil, but God & money. Mammon is a Syrian God of money & people bowed down to it & worshipped it. They prayed for its success in their lives. In short there was a demonic stronghold & it held sway over people. When Jesus spoke of the God/mammon, people knew what He was talking about.

Paul said in 1 Timothy 6:10—For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness & pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

MONEY ALSO HAS A SPIRITUAL DIMENSION.

In Luke 19:11-27 Jesus told us about 3 men who were entrusted with money & then God basically stood back to see how they’d handle the money that He deposited into their care. When we stand before God He will ask us how we spent the time & talent He invested in us while on earth.

When Jesus went to church, He didn’t sit on the front seat or the back seat. Believe it or not, He sat over by the offering plate actually watching what the people were dropping in. What if your preacher did that?—Matt.12:41

GIVING IS THE STRONGEST ANTIDOTE THAT EXISTS AGAINST GOD-MAMMON!

I don’t have space to drill down into the true nature of tithing in this writing but suffice to say it’s a weekly reminder of who’s in charge of our lives, God or God-mammon.

After Paul & the other passengers on board this ship had struggled for two weeks, the ship they were sailing on splintered into pieces & all of them made it safely to shore on a little island called Melita, or modern day Malta.

GOD CAN BRING US SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCES WHEN WE’RE STRUGGLING TO KEEP OUR HEADS ABOVE WATER.

Here’s something amazing; while Paul was fighting for his life & the lives of others aboard a ship that was just about to disintegrate, with all kinds of violent wind, an out of control steering gear & steady pounding by huge waves, Paul had a dream or a vision.

Isn’t that something? This dream didn’t come when things were going smoothly, this appearance of an angel from God. There was no mood music playing & pastel lights turned low. No, thanks be to God He spoke to Paul when things were in chaos, when there was trouble on the left, disaster on the right, problems up ahead & tragedy right behind. That’s when God chose to speak to Paul.

When things get a little crazy, maybe God knows He has our attention. God speaks to us through thoughts, dreams, visions, instincts & a multitude of other ways. Many times He’ll speak when we are full of adrenaline trying to meet the clear & present danger that we face. God can & does often speak when we are so exhausted we don’t think we can do another thing productive to keep things afloat.

Are you going through a storm? It won’t be all bad if God uses that time to let you see things in a different light.

SOMETIMES, AFTER ALL OUR PRAYERS & EFFORTS-- THE BOAT WILL SINK ANYWAY.

Sometimes in spite of all your efforts & all your tears & all your prayers & all the love you've invested , all of it will die right before your eyes. Just like the destruction of the boat Paul was traveling on, after the victory he saw in the salvaging of every soul on board, his boat sank anyway. In these times it's important to remember that God is still in control & His children will be rescued no matter what.


Most of us are familiar with the eccentric [I almost wrote crazy man] cable television billionaire Ted Turner. At an American Humanist Association banquet when he received an award for his work on the environment & world peace, he openly criticized Christianity.

He said, “Jesus would be sick at His stomach over the way His ideas have been twisted. I’ve been saved seven or eight times but I gave it up when despite my prayers my sister died. The more I strayed from the faith the better I felt.”

Ted Turner is dead wrong but his attitude isn’t much different than many, especially people who’ve been around as long as Turner. It’s interesting at least to me that Turner & I, give or take a few days, are exactly the same age.

Like Ted Turner, I’ve seen my share of “boats” sink & hit the bottom. Some of my greatest heartaches have come because of the failure of people I’ve loved.

I know I’m not alone in this but I’ve helped people in my life & have been shocked & disappointed when they turned against me & did everything in their power to destroy me. I’ve lived to see [not believe] that seemingly “no good deed goes unpunished.”

If God had put me together differently I’d have long ago sworn-off helping anyone ever again. But something in my heart has demanded that I keep reaching out to others as much as is in my power.

I’ve had friendships but certain things have happened which broke the friendship & the wreckage blights the landscape of my life.

Like Turner I also have had prayers that so far have seemed unanswered but the difference is, I truly believe that God’s at work in every detail of my life & the only reason He didn’t give me what I asked for is so that He may, in His own time, give me something better.

No matter what happens to you today it will be better tomorrow.
I believe that if you just live, you’ll outlive many of your problems. I’ve learned that people love the human touch, a warm hug or just a pat on the back. I believe that even when I’m in pain I don’t have to be one.

I’ve learned that no matter how many “ships” I see sink God will put others in my life if I refuse to get bitter & keep an open heart.

I have learned, I truly have learned, that I still have a lot to learn.

Paul understood that even in the midst of life’s storms, God proclaims, God performs & God provides,- in your storm, or in mine, ---in a private storm or a public one,

In the life of an individual ---or a church or a nation.

Blessings,

John

Can it be wrong.....When it feels so right?

BY John Stallings


If you saw the movie The Passion of The Christ, I’m sure you were struck by the constant parading of Jesus before the High Priest, then Pilate, the Governor of the region Herod, then back to Pilate, then back to the High Priests, all of whom agree He is guilty of causing civil unrest but none of whom want to be responsible for dealing with Him.

Obviously everyone wants to pack this “Jesus responsibility” off on someone else. If you didn’t see the movie, I’m sure you picked up on that in your reading of the New Testament or as a child in Sunday school.

This trait of "passing the buck" & shirking responsibility isn't new in human history is it? That's what I want to talk about in this article.

If you’ve read my blogs, you’ve noticed that I usually opt for the shortest words I can find, mostly because it fits my mentality. But I like the sounds of several big words, even if they’re out of my league. One word is—obfuscation. [I also love the words ubiquitous, & jambalaya.]

Now I have many years of edumacation. So I know what obfuscation means. It means… “Concealment in communications, making the meaning confusing & hard to interpret.”

We’ve had some exquisite examples of shirking responsibility & trying to conceal the truth in the last few years furnished to us by politicians. I think the prize has to go to William Jefferson Clinton when he testified about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. After saying he didn’t have sexual relations with her one Congressman asked him, “Mr. President, were you physically intimate with Monica Lewinsky?”

The president responded, “When I was alone with Ms. Lewinsky on certain occasions in early 1996, and once in early 1997, I engaged in conduct that was wrong. These encounters did not consist of sexual intercourse. They did not consist of sexual relations, as I understood that term to be defined at my January 17th, 1998 deposition.”

This left the congressman curious & befuddled & he followed up with a question about the meaning of part of Clinton’s testimony, whereupon the president responded,” It depends upon what the definition of the word “is” is. If is means is & never has been, that’s one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement.”

A lot of folk decided right then & there they’d never want to buy a used car from this man.

The Clinton’s aren’t the only ones in national leadership who indulge in blaming others but both Bill & Hillary are blamers. You may remember during the sex scandal that Hillary blamed a “vast right-wing conspiracy” for their problems instead of placing the blame at the feet of her guilty husband.

This blog isn’t a tirade against the Clintons but if history has taught us anything, it’s being a Clinton means it’s never your fault. Before her surprise win in New Hampshire, they were trying to lay the blame on anything but her poor performance.

Forecasting a loss, Bill blamed New Hampshire for moving the primary. He ranted about how Obama had waffled as much as his wife on the issue of Iraq calling his position a “fairy tale.” In the aftermath of the Iowa loss, Hillary’s first reaction was to belittle Iowa as a state with no real impact.

She’s happy now but it doesn’t take a rocket- scientists to know her love for blaming others will return the moment she starts losing again.

As I said, the Clintons aren’t alone. There’s a strong mentality in our culture that you never admit a mistake. Instead you find an excuse that explains it away. It’s called “blowing smoke” or “spin.” At some point late in last century we morphed into the non-apology- apology. Leaders will now say, only if put on the spot “I apologize if I’ve offended anyone.” Cold-blooded murderers will utter as their last words, “I’m sorry if I hurt anyone.”

Our society is plagued with “It’s not my fault” mentality. I’m not excluding myself from this mentality & I often catch myself blaming others silently or even subconsciously. Since God raised my awareness of this problem I no longer get away with it but I still try it from time to time. I trust reading this will help someone who needs the same help I needed & still need.

We need to take responsibility for our lives & realize we’re exactly where we are in life because of the things we’ve done or haven’t done. Every time you catch yourself blaming others say, “STOP BLAMING OTHERS AND ACCEPT THE RESPONSIBILITY.”

Recently I came across the somewhat humorous retelling of the story of Noah;

And the Lord said unto Noah:

“Where is the Ark which I commanded thee to build?” And Noah said unto the Lord, “Verily, I have three carpenters off ill, Lord. Plus…the gopherwood supplier hath let me down----yea, even though the gopherwood hath been on order for nigh upon twelve months. What can I do, O Lord?”

And the Lord said unto Noah: “I want the ark finished even after seven days & seven nights.” And Noah said: “It will be so.”

But it was not so. And the Lord said unto Noah: “What seemeth to be the trouble this time?” And Noah said unto the Lord; “Mine sub-contractor hath gone bankrupt. And….the pitch which Thou commandest me to put on the outside & on the inside of the ark hath not arrived. To maketh matters worse, the plumber hath gone on strike.

This is not to mention the fact that Shem, my son who helpeth me on the ark side of the business, hath left to form a hip-hop group with his brothers Ham & Japheth. Lord, I am undone.”

And the Lord grew very angry & said: “What about the animals, the male & female of every sort that I ordered to come unto thee to keep their seed alive upon the face of the earth?”

And Noah said: “They have been delivered unto the wrong address but should arrive on Friday.”

And the Lord said: “What about the unicorns, & the fouls of the air ?” And Noah wrung his hands & wept, saying, “Lord, unicorns are a discontinued line; thou canst not get them for love nor money. And fowls of the air are sold only in half-dozens. Lord Thou knowest how it is.”

And the Lord in His wisdom said: “Noah, I do knowest. Why else dost thou think I am causing a flood to descend upon the earth?”

This is a humorous retelling of the story of Noah but I’d venture to sayest that thy grins comest readily because this story hit-eth home, right?

Sure it does….because just like Noah in this story we human beings have been making excuses to ourselves, each other & to God since the very beginning when Adam & Eve excused the first sin by blaming each other. Adam blamed Eve & Eve blamed the snake. It was the strategy then & it’s still very much in vogue; “Minimize your guilt by making others look bad.”

THE BLAME GAME

A nine year old boy is having an argument with his mother. [He must have been in training to be an insufferable jerk!] When the mom was trying to get the kid to shape up & start pulling his weight around the house he said,--“Hey, I didn’t ask to be here you know. I wouldn’t be having these problems if you & dad never had me.”

The mothers come-back was platinum, if a little sarcastic; she said, “Yeah, well I never asked to be here either, & yes we did have you, but we didn’t know it was going to be you.”

All this kids issues could easily be blamed, or at least he thought they could, on his parents for having him.

I recently read the story of a baseball center fielder; let’s call him Joe, who during one game let several fly-balls slip right through his glove. Four or five pop- up fly balls came right to him & he would get his glove on the ball then drop it.

The coach came out to talk to him & Joe explained it was just a fluke & he’d start doing better. But Joe dropped two or three more fly-balls & the coach had no choice but to remove him & send out John as his replacement.

Well, the first fly-ball that came to John he dropped it. He dropped the second & third fly-ball. Again the coach had no choice but to take John out of the game for a rest because these errors were allowing the other team to start putting runs on the board.

A very enthusiastic player named James ran up to the coach & said, “coach, please put me in, I’ve been playing since I was a boy & I can’t remember ever dropping a ball, especially in an important game.” Well the coach put James out in center field & you guessed it, James dropped the first ball that came to him & then he dropped the second & third ball.

As the coach started out to talk to James he noticed James was already walking off the field in disgust. He walked past the coach fuming & said, “Coach, Joe & John have got that center-field so messed up, nobody can play it now.”

To me that’s hilarious. It also sounds like some of us, who don’t like to face up to the fact that we’ve “dropped the ball” so we conveniently blame someone else.

IT’S EASY AND IT FEELS SO RIGHT TO PLAY THE BLAME GAME.

The reason blaming others for our mistakes or boo-boos is done so often is that it’s so easy to do & well, it just feels so right.—“Did he say easy?” Yes, it’s so easy a child can do it as smooth as silk & they almost always do. Just look how easy it is;

• If you’re late turning in a report at work, that’s easy, just say, “I would have gotten it in but Frank didn’t get the statistics to me soon enough.”

• Do you need to explain the loss of a job? That’s easy, it’s because the boss was unreasonable, he didn’t understand you, and he had it in for you & he hated you from the moment you walked into the office.

• If you didn’t keep a promise, that’s easy, you got snowed under doing other things.

• You didn’t do your homework, that’s easy, what about; -- “my roommate borrowed my textbook & wouldn’t give it back?”

• If you lost a friend, that’s easy, it couldn’t have been your fault. Of course not. You’re a nice, reasonable person. The other person was a creep, that’s all there is to it.

• If you blew your stack & cussed someone out, that’s easy, he made you do it. You got sick of his yakety; yakking & you haven’t been sleeping well lately. You were victimized by this person.


We hear people making great excuses all the time don’t we? We hear; “I drew the wrong hand in life,” or, “I’m poor or black,” or “I’m Hispanic & never had a chance.” We hear, “I was locked up by bad cops.”

I’ve been told the most common excuse convicts use in prison is, “My Lawyer was a crook.” We hear, “I was flunked out by racist schoolteachers,” “I was abused by heartless welfare investigators.” “I got my credit all messed up so I need to live on charity,” “I was just handed the short end of the stick.” The bottom line is, ---“Look what’s been done to me.”

The way many people get through life is by saying, “I’m a victim, I was dealt a lousy hand of cards.” The battle-cry of the victim is, “It’s not my fault.”

Now if it’s not us, it must be someone else. How about our parents, possibly? How about some psychological illness? It’s my sibling’s fault. Mom always liked ------ best. The world is full of candidates; maybe we could blame our grandparents. Yeah, that’s the ticket. We can even blame our friends or our spouses. And while we’re at it let’s don’t forget those nerds you work with.

There seems to be an open door in so-called “Christian media” for people pushing seventy years of age, whining about a hurt they endured twenty-five years ago, blaming someone other than themselves for the calamity, conveniently forgetting to include their own culpability, & calling it a “ministry.”

And the beat goes on. We’re all innocent victims, just ask us. If you’re smart, there’s never any reason to take the blame for anything.

The impact of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 allowed us to witness the blame game in full bore. The problem wasn’t necessarily trying to find real answers to what happened & why, the problem was that so many people were pursuing their own private agendas.

Everyone had their own “private Katrina.” The disaster was used an all purpose “frail-pole” with which to beat someone they’d always wanted to beat. That explains why there were so many ideas about who was to blame for the fallout from Katrina.

Some people said it was the judgment of God on the hedonistic sinners of New Orleans. The mayor of the city was blamed; the Governor of the state of Louisiana was blamed, FEMA was blamed, & President Bush was blamed, & that’s just the short list of the culprits who were blamed for the storms aftermath.

I’ve said this before but I’ve been to New Orleans dozens of times over the last several decades & I can remember being shown around the city by life-long residents & they knew well over fifty years ago the levies wouldn’t hold if a killer storm ever hit them.

Now I’m going to make the golfers mad at me. Back about thirty-five years ago I took up the game of golf. No one told me the way I played golf I’d need three courses lined up side by side. Also, nobody reminded me I already had so many other aggravations & frustrations in my life that I really didn’t need the aggravation of a game like golf.

But do you know why I quit golf? I quit golf because everyone I met on a golf course was a victim. Everybody out there was blaming something for their less than spectacular golf game.

The wind was blamed, the sun was blamed, the humidity was blamed, planes overhead were blamed, even the cars going by blocks away, birds & squirrels were blamed, the movement of the stars in their orbits was blamed & chunks of grass that were dug up & not replaced were blamed. Backs were blamed, feet & ankles were blamed, worn-out elbows were blamed, eyes were blamed, not to mention flat-feet & fallen-arches.

A preacher friend in California once told me; “John, golf is a highly psychological game.” Right, meaning; even your heart beating may mess up my timing. Forget about it.


LAW SUITS REPLACE PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

Josh Hancock was a pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals; he died a few years back in a car accident. Hancock’s blood alcohol was twice the legal limit when he reared-ended a car leading to his untimely death.

Hancock’s father sued the restaurant for serving his son, though he was an adult & made the decision to drink all night & get into a car when he had no business doing so. As I understood it, Hancock was also on his cell phone when he died & wasn’t wearing his seat belt. Should the father sue the cell phone makers, the seat belt manufacturers or the car company?

It’s a tragedy that Mr. Hancock died but suing the restaurant isn’t going to bring him back or make his father feel better about his death. This might sound cold but wouldn’t it be the mature thing to do to admit that this accident was the son’s fault?

People are suing these days for hot coffee sold to them & thieves are suing for getting hurt while in the process of breaking & entering homes. The shocking part is many of these spurious law suits are being won.

BLAMING OTHERS DESTROYS MARRIAGES

Think about it. When you continue to blame you can avoid having to forgive. Blaming is a powerful defense mechanism because it lets you find a target for your anger & frustration. It protects you from having to own up to your own shortcomings & your own contribution to the problems between you & other people. By making everything the other person’s fault it relieves you from any responsibility in having to make things better.

You reason like this; “They messed things up, so they have to fix it.” This may sound & feel good but in actuality it places you in a passive role & steers you away from a proactive position. Now you will start to behave like a victim & you won’t be attractive to anybody, even your spouse. By taking this—blame others/victim approach, you’ll win most all the battles but eventually you’ll lose the war.

In marriage & in all our relationships, if we can’t forgive & put things behind us, we will never build satisfying lives for ourselves because we’ll expect others to do all the work for us.

I don’t know about you, but to me getting ahead in life is much more important than getting even. If you find yourself in a position where you know you need to take the initiative & make a mea-culpa, here are a few helpful hints that have helped me. I can’t say I’m what I want to be & will be but by God’s grace I’m better than I used to be.

1. Admit to yourself that you were wrong.

You & I have to own our mistakes. This is often hard to do especially if the mistake was public. If we throw all our creative powers into proving ourselves right when we’re wrong, soon we’ll begin to confuse the truth with lies. People can become so self-diluted that they lose any kind of authenticity in their lives.

Do you think you always need to be right? Get over it. The Bible says if we say we haven’t sinned we’re liars & have deceived ourselves. If we want to be accepted by others we’ll do it quicker when we crawl off our high-horses & get real.

Come on, let’s be honest; this latest mistake you made is just the latest in a string of mistakes & if you’re blessed to live a long life you’ll be making more. We should admit our mistakes but don’t wallow in them.


2. Use accurate words in your apology.

Other people want to know if you truly “get-it” and understand what your stuff is. Don’t beat around the bush. Just because you made a mistakes doesn’t mean you have to apologize for the whole situation or the whole world. State as accurately as you can what your stuff is & don’t take the blame for things you know aren’t your fault. If you constantly apologize for things that aren’t your fault it will come off as self-pity & you again lose your authenticity.


3. Don’t apologize for the wrong thing.

If you’re apologizing for forgetting the birthday of a spouse, it isn’t productive to add that you are so overworked that you forgot. If you try to deflect attention by blowing smoke, you’ll increase the mistrust & others will think you’re boneheaded or not trust worthy, & probably a combination of them all of the above.

4. Don’t apologize & blame someone else in the same breath.

Don’t try a Kumbaya or group apology. People will notice. If we treat others with respect, we encourage them to respond to us with respect.

5. Don’t go vague & say things like “I want to apologize.” I want to trim down & look like Stallone too but that doesn’t mean I have any intentions of doing so.

Let go & let God. If you’ve admitted you were wrong it’s now out of your hands & out of your control. You can’t control the response of other people. Jesus told us to do things but he never said any of them were easy.

In the fullness of time things will improve & sometimes we’re not dealing with forgiveness but trust. Repair takes a long time but humility puts us on the right track.

A few years ago a minister in our area obviously backslid, got into drugs & alcohol & started frequenting the strip joints in the coastal area near his home.

Almost nightly there was film of him walking around with ladies of the night & painting the town like a drunken sailor. He was so into denial that it took a while for his Church to finally reel him in & still he was belligerent & refused to own up to his guilt.

Of course we could say that the substances he was taking took away his judgment but he was still responsible for the drugs & drink he put in his mouth.

When confronted with his pictures in all kinds of compromising situations, he denied it was him & went so far as to say it was his brother who looks a lot like him. He was finally relieved of his pastorate & I believe spent some time in jail, rebellious & accusatory right to the bitter end. I’ve often wondered how he got things straight with his brother.

If we can’t admit small mistakes, bigger things are crouched, waiting in the wings to become part of us. Pride turned angels into devils & it can lead to our destruction.

In Matthew 15 Jesus told the parable of a great supper a man had & sent out invitations to many people. The story says;

And they all with one consent began to make excuses.--vr. 18

The people first invited to the supper made excuses as to why they couldn’t come, so the host passed them by & sent his workers out to find the poor, the maimed the crippled & the blind to enjoy his provisions.

Jesus said the gospel or the invitation to come to God’s table will be extended to every nation before heaven’s end-time clock strikes midnight & He appears to split the eastern skies.

Maybe you’ve offered excuses to God as to why you can’t avail yourself of the awesome invitation to life He’s extended to you. But whatever your excuses are, keep this in mind;

They’re just that, --excuses.


Blessings,

John

PS.--If you apprecaite these messages, please tell a friend about us. We aren't selling anything, we just want to be helpful. If the blog seems hard to pull up, go to Google & use either of the following adresses;--John Stallings Wisdom and Wit----or John Stallings blogspot.---Thanks.--JAS

Very bad things

By John Stallings


Have you ever been into a jewelry store & watched the way they display the beautiful diamonds? When the customers come in to see the rings or precious stones, they pull out a cloth of black velvet & move it under the bright light. The diamond sparkles & shines & arrests the heart of the potential buyer.

Why don’t they use a cloth of multi-colored background? ---Contrast! It’s a stark contrast for people to see the beauty of the diamond against the black background.

The Bible contains some stories that are so terrible they boggle the mind. Remember the one about Lot & his two daughters? They both got pregnant by him. Remember Dinah the sister of Judah? Remember Rahab the prostitute?

Then there’s the adultery between David & Bathsheba. What about the prophet Hosea who was commanded by God to marry a practicing prostitute? What about the murder of the little boys in Bethlehem?

If there was one chapter in the Bible I’d have removed if it were up to me [If I looked at it strictly from the human standpoint] it would be Genesis 38,-- because it’s so exceedingly dark. But the reason this black chapter is there is so that we can see God’s love & grace contrasted against the blackness.

Chapter 38 of Genesis pops out at you almost like one of those pop-up books for children, interrupting the interesting flow of the story of Joseph.

Here’s a good rule of the thumb in Bible study; if you find something that seems to be out of context or out of sync with what you’re reading, stop & look carefully for God is trying hard to get a message through.

The story of Judah & Tamar in Genesis 38 is so ugly that teachers & preachers don’t like to address it often.

Judah, one of Jacob’s twelve sons is supposed by divine fiat to have offspring because God had promised it would happen. His kids were supposed to have kids of their own & this was supposed to happen until at last Jesus was born.

But Judah doesn’t believe this & he wanders off to do his own thing. He has no faith in all the prophecies so he goes down to Adullam & takes a pagan wife from the unbelieving Canaanites, themselves folk who don’t have any regard for the prophecies of the coming Christ.

Notice, they had people who doubted the coming Messiah just as we have people who doubt He ever came.

Judah knew better. He was in possession of the facts; he’d been raised as a member of God’s covenant & was one of God’s special people. He knew he was unequally yoked just like people in our day go right on & yoke up with unbelievers & expect good results. 2 Cor.6:14.

Judah & his wife have three sons, & they are like him, they don’t believe the promise of the coming Messiah either. All these people doubt Jesus will someday come. Does that kind of hard-headedness sound familiar?

Now, God kills Judah’s first son before he has any kids. The second son is a non-believer & wants no children so God kills him. Now this man Judah has only one son left. Judah by now is scared, wouldn’t you be? He has only one son to even try to have children & he’s afraid God will kill his last son too. [I'm trying to be polite but these men are killed because they are intentionally rebelling against God, in having sex only for pleasure & not allowing their seed to be used to produce an offspring.]

A woman named Tamar enters center stage. She was Judah’s daughter-in-law who was married to Judah’s first two son’s who died. Judah had promised her his third & only other son Shelah but he had no intention of keeping that promise.

In Matthew 5:37, the Bible says, ---- let your yes be yes & your no be no. anything beyond this comes from the evil one.

There was a custom in those days that if a man died & left no children, his brother should take the widow in & father her kids in his brother’s name so his name would not die out.

Now Judah’s wife dies. So, nobodies having any children. But how is Jesus supposed to get here if He’s coming through this lineage &, pardon my countrified speech; “they aint having no babies?”

Well, Tamar decides to fix all of this mess. Boy did she fix it? She finds out that Judah is going to Timnah to sheer sheep & disguises herself as a temple prostitute. Judah, somehow justifying it in his mind, doesn’t recognize her behind the dark veil & hires her for her services. These aren’t very nice boys & girls. Here we see a major step down for Judah as he descends into wickedness. He knew better than to sleep with a prostitute.

But Tamar bargains with Judah & asks him for a pledge, or shall we say, a deposit? They finally settle on it & Judah gives her a signet cord & a staff. A signet cord in those days was a sign of identification & a staff was a symbol of authority over his family & servants. Can you believe this; Judah is handing over his identification & authority to this “strange woman?” He’s giving up his social security number & his American Express credit card, voluntarily forfeiting that for this pleasure.

Don’t think too deeply about this, just think of some of the crazy things you’ve known men to do just for a few moments in the arms of some strange woman. It’s a good thing that women seem to be more forgiving than men.

Through Judah’s lack of faith he’s condemned his family but now he’s giving everything up to have what he thinks is a meaningless one night stand that can’t, as far as he knows produce a seed.

Judah finds out he’s been tricked by his daughter-in-law & decides to get his two identity symbols back & sends an offer of a goat to Tamar. What a mess!

Time goes by & now Judah is told that Tamar is pregnant, [shades of David & Bathsheba.] Judah decides that for Tamar’s deception she’s to be burned to death, him being so holy & all. Talk about a double standard. He doesn’t know she’s carrying the promised seed. The seed is now in jeopardy.

Judah has sinned by whoring around, he’s sinned by being against the promises of God, he’s sinned by marrying a Canaanite woman in the first place, this hypocrite will now sin by standing in judgment against Tamar, & having her burned to death. At this point, Judah isn’t exactly a lover of the truth. As a matter of fact he’s perfectly willing to settle for quick judgment rather than to take the time for truth & justice.

But wait, on the way to the fire Tamar produces Judah’s signet cord & staff & asks, “Whose are they?” Now comes the turning point for Judah. I wonder if he turned white or red in the face when he saw this. He recognizes the proof she has, acknowledges them & makes the famous statement, “This woman is more righteousness than I.”

Truer words were never spoken. It seems that right here Judah was converted. He’s clearheaded enough to see he’s in no position to judge Tamar because he was a greater sinner in not keeping his word to give her his son Shelah to try to produce a seed.

When people hear the truth, it often makes them angry & contentious. They want to argue rather than say, "It's me O Lord." But Judah came clean here & we can see the basic good stuff that was in him.

There can be no doubt that the Judah we met at the first of this story isn’t the same Judah we meet at the last. He started out wicked, hypocritical, self-righteous & untrustworthy & ended up humble, loving, caring & trustworthy.

So Tamar gives birth to Judah’s babies & has twins. The names of the kids will be Zerah & Perez. When the time comes, one of the twins sticks a hand out first, & this catches the mid-wife’s attention. She ties a scarlet thread around the hand & says “this one came out first.” What she is securing are the rights of the firstborn for the child.

But the other child comes out first. What’s happening is; God is interjecting Himself here & choosing the child not chosen by man. According to the midwife, Zerah is the firstborn but according to God He can do what He wants to so He chooses Perez.

This child Perez will be in the direct lineage of none other than Jesus Christ. Once again God does it His way & turns people’s plans on their heads. Doesn’t this cause you to marvel at the gracious providence of our God?

How does this story make you feel; Revolted, disgusted, shocked, horrified, embarrassed, or dismayed? Is there a messier story in the entire Bible? Yet out of all this messiness God brings the righteous Christ. God’s plans aren’t thwarted & His purposes are sure.

Yes, there has to be willingness on our part but God many times in spite of our best efforts to frustrate His plans produces great victories.

We can now see the reason God interrupted the story of Joseph; like a television channel interrupting a program to bring us an important message, God wants to show us how the linage of Jesus went from Judah to Christ. It’s plain to see that Jesus didn’t have an ancestry of noble men.

God also wants to show us the ugliness of sin & the self-delusion of sinners & how easy it is for the worst of us to pretend we are better than the best of us.

Like Judah, we see many messed up family situations today don’t we? We see divorce, remarriage, incest, physical, mental & emotional abuse, adultery, broken promises, homosexuality, pre-martial sex, & single parent homes.

It’s easy for us, like Judah, to set in judgment on all this wickedness & condemn them with gusto when some of us have done just as bad as those we condemn. Like Judah, we need to be humbled at times & see ourselves as God sees us. We might even end up saying, even of someone whose behavior we despise, “She/he is more righteous than I.”

Tamar is also a story of grace, God’s grace. God used Tamar to humble Judah & after that he started to change.

Consider this; Judah was one of the leaders in selling his brother Joseph into slavery & not killing him. Gen.37:27. And remember what Judah did years later when a cup was found in Benjamin’s sack of grain. Judah offered himself as a hostage & slave in the place of his brother. Do you see the change that took place in Judah’s life? He was changed from a very bad man to a man willing to serve & love others & it was God’s grace that brought about that change.

If God’s grace can change a man like Judah, then His grace can change the life of people we’re praying for too—no matter how great their sin & misery may be. So in actuality, this is a story of hope & comfort is it not? It’s the story of what God can do & does do in the lives of broken people.

This story is also about how God providentially preserved the family tree of Jesus. The twin boys given to Tamar were named Perez & Zerah. When you read the first few verses of Matthew, you see the names of Judah, Tamar & Perez as part of the family tree that starts with Abraham, goes to David & ends with Jesus.

Yes, Judah & Tamar & Perez are part of the family tree of Jesus. They are listed among those whom God has chosen, whom God has elected to be His special people. They aren’t exactly the kind of relatives we’d tell others about but the Bible includes them in the family tree of Jesus.

The last blog I wrote had Father Jacob on his deathbed. He called all of his sons to him, one by one. God inspired him to give a special prophecy & blessing to Judah. Judah may have lived a portion of his life as an alley-cat but Jacob called him a lion. Jacob said that Judah’s & Tamar’s line would be a royal line that would eventually give birth to the Ruler of all nations.[Genesis 49:10] This prophesy was realized in Jesus Christ, the lion of the tribe of Judah.[Rev.5:5]

It’s also awesome to note that of the twelve gates of the celestial city of heaven, God has a gate named Judah.

So now these very bad things become a wondrous story of divine irony & God’s providence by which He preserves the linage of the Christ Himself. We can see what God can do with messed up, mixed up families like Judah’s & Tamar’s to carry out His great & eternal purposes in Christ.

Take note that Perez & Zerah were twins who struggled in the womb just like their grandfather Jacob & Esau struggled. You will probably also remember that the birthright in that case didn’t go to Esau, the older brother ; instead contrary to human custom it went to Jacob the younger brother.

In the case of both the sets of twins, what counted were not human qualifications, not human righteousness, or human efforts, or human custom or standards. What counts was God’s blessing & God’s providential choosing.

This story tells me that God doesn’t avoid sinners but rather by His grace He saves them, changes them & uses them. Truly,

Those who sat in darkness have seen a great light.

At first blush, this story doesn’t seem like it should be in Holy Scripture; a tradition that requires a widow to try to conceive a son with her dead husbands relatives; a man so greedy he would destroy the reputation of his brothers widow in order to take the inheritance that would go to her children; a woman who dresses as a prostitute to attract her father-in-law who doesn’t recognize her, but when he finds out his widowed daughter-in-law is pregnant he has her brought from the neighboring town so he can burn her to death for adultery.

Then as the story ends the woman pulls the evidence out that her father-in-law is the father of her children, her life is saved & she is proclaimed the most righteous one in the whole bunch. This seems more appropriate for HBO than for the Bible.

Why would this story be told at all & why should Matthew's geneology include this motley crew? The answer to this question is part of Matthew’s root understanding of who Jesus is, and how God can work through those the world would consider unrighteous, or at least at the very bottom of the religious pecking order.

Another thing it shows us is that our race is depraved. If God can use the people in this story He can certainly use & bless our families no matter how messed up they may be.

Selfish behavior is destined to bring trouble & what looks like successful strategies in the eyes of man are not always successful. You & I apart from Christ are nothing & He’s certainly not depending on us to produce our own salvation.

You and I know the nature of God is such that He cannot & will not accept anything unholy. Tamar’s behavior is no more to be emulated than Abraham who was willing to cut his son apart with a knife. We generally won’t be called to go to distant lands like Ruth & Abraham or leave our families behind like Peter, James & John.

We don’t have to endure the hardships like the people did in the early development of the Kingdom. We don’t have to shed the blood of animals or be circumcised or baptized over & over. Christ has changed things & destroyed many barriers. Praise His Name!

If God could work miraculously as He did in Genesis 38 before the New Covenant & before His Son came to be the sacrifice for sin, think what He can do for us today, in the light of the finished work of Christ on the cross?

All we have to do is;

--lay aside every weight & the sin that doth so easily entrap us & run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author & finisher of our faith

Blessings,


John

What the world needs is-- a good grilled cheese sandwich

By John Stallings

I’m serious.

When I get finicky & don’t know what I really want to eat, I’ll usually go for a good grilled cheese sandwich. I used to love to add a piping hot bowl of soup [ New England clam chowder] but these days with my doctor fussing at me about sodium, I find myself leaving off the soup most of the time & eating the grilled cheese sandwich. [Chips go good with the sandwich but they’re salty too!]

My wife Juda makes a great grilled cheese sandwich for the same reason she’s good with an iron, but I’ll get to that later. I can’t iron, period. I’ve tried it many times & I don’t have the touch. I’ll leave the imprint of the iron right on the garment every time, plus I’ll iron in more wrinkles than I iron out. I just can’t do it, at least not with any confidence. Why? I’ll explain.

PATIENCE! ---- Or shall I say lack of patience? It takes patience to iron & it also takes patience to make a good grilled cheese sandwich. I like the cheese melted well & I also like the bread to be soaked with “I can’t believe it’s not butter” with a slight burned look but not so much as to taste burned.

Now about the grilled cheese; if you want a good sandwich you’ve got to get a few things right. You must exercise patience in getting the temperature just right. Also to be successful in making the sandwich to perfection you have to turn it just at the right time. A bad grilled cheese sandwich isn’t the end of the world, or by any means a big tragedy-- but it is a shame.

Patience is a key ingredient in lots of things in life. I’m convinced that most people, when they say they can’t do something, they really mean they don’t have the patience to fool with it.

I never thought I could be a computer nut & I’m sure I wouldn’t have been in my younger days, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve become a little more patient. That’s really about all it takes, along with a couple of brains cells to rub together. Juda & I can even exchange worn out components in computers if we have to.

I heard about a policeman who watched an impatient lady driver honking at the person in front of her to move on through a busy intersection as the light was turning red. The officer walked up to her car, knocked on her window & told the lady to follow him to the police station. She was actually taken down to the station & put in a jail cell. A couple of hours later the officer came back to the holding cell & released the shocked woman & as they walked out he apologized for the misunderstanding.

He told her that when he saw her pitching such a fit at the intersection, he walked up behind the car she was driving & noticed several stickers on her car, One saying “follow me to Sunday school,” another one saying “honk if you love Jesus,” & another fish symbol which of course is an old Christian symbol. The officer said, “Lady, I apologize but when I saw all those signs & the way you were behaving, I just knew you were driving a stolen car.”

I’ve observed that in our society if you act as if you’re not all disturbed & upset when you have to wait for something, people will spot you.

Recently I was about twelfth in line at the post office & the lady behind the counter would occasionally glance back at me with a confused look on her face. When I arrived at the counter she asked how I could be so patient. To be frank I guess I was hiding my feelings better than I thought I was. If almost fifty years in the ministry teaches you anything it teaches you not to be too emotionally transparent. I gave her my standard line at times like that; I said jokingly, “Oh, I’m not really patient, I’ve just given up in life.” As I said it’s just a joke which I think is funny but it seldom gets a laugh.

My point is, sometimes it helps to-- not give up-- but to scale down our expectations & develop some patience. I can say one thing unequivocally; if you & I are growing at all in Christian maturity, we’re growing in love & patience.

The Bible says God is slow to anger.—Ex.34:6, Num. 14:18, Neh. 9:17, Ps.86:15, 103:8, 145:8, Jer.15:15.

The New Testament word for patience is Makrothumia, “longsuffering, & “forbearance.”

In Acts 26:3 Paul asked Agrippa, -- “I beg you to listen to me patiently.”

In Galatians 5:22 we see that patience is-- the fruit of the spirit.

In 2 Timothy 4:2 the word is to be preached—with all patience.

In 1 Peter 3:20—to the sinners in Noah’s day God showed patience.

Speaking of grilled cheese sandwiches, in Hosea 7:8 God says, about the tribe of Ephraim,--Ephraim is a cake half-turned.

God said Ephraim was burned on one side & raw on the other side.

It takes patience to make a good grilled cheese, it takes patience to make a mature Christian & it takes patience to develop a strong church. God’s word & example should be our standard practice when it comes to patience.

God told the church at Philadelphia ----Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation which shall come upon all the world to try them that dwell upon the earth. ---Revelation 3:10

P.S---I posted this last night but the news has come in about a tragic 70 car pile-up not far from our home, between Orlando & Lakeland Florida. Thus this foot-note. Juda & I were just discussing this tragedy. The question, "how could this happen" came up & of course the short answer is because of a combination of smoke from a small brush fire & early morning fog. Visibility was diminished & as so often happens good people & skillful drivers plunge ahead into calamity.

We learned decades ago that 1-4 between Orlando & Winter Haven is a death trap because from 5:am-7:am there isn't a cop in sight.

But one other thing comes to mind, [& this isn't meant to be in any way judgemental,] Americans are so impatient. Several people have died & many have been maimed on I-4 & if the details parallel other chain-reaction pile-ups, many were in such a hurry they were driving too fast for conditions.

The graveyards are full of people who could have lived if they'd had a few seconds more patience. This is just a rhetorical question but, why are we in such a hurry? Where is it we have to be that's worth dying for?

Please, lets make one of our new years determinations to slow down & be a little more patient. Our grandparents would wait a week for another train & our blood pressure goes up if we miss one blade in a revolving door. I'm guilty too so won't you join me. Lets slow down & live.

Blessings,

Easy does it!


John

A Commandment And A Promise

By John Stallings


A grandfather lived with his son & family. The family had one six year old boy. The old gentleman had a condition that caused him to tremble slightly which became a problem when he was eating. One evening at dinner, in spite of the old man’s best efforts, food dropped from his plate, some landing on the table, some on the floor & some on the front of his clothing.

The wife flew into a rage declaring she no longer would allow grandpa to sit at the table with them. She insisted her husband make a wooden bowl she could put his father’s food in & she would serve him in his room.

The husband did as his wife demanded & carved a bowl from a large chunk of wood he had in his workshop. Then, night after night grandpa would sit in his room & eat his meals from the bowl, cut off from the fellowship of his family.

Not long afterward, the man saw his little boy in the backyard chopping on a large chunk of wood. He asked the boy what he was doing & the boy replied excitedly, “Oh, daddy, I’m making you & mommy bowls like grandpa’s so when you’re old like him, I can feed you in them.”

Pricked in his heart, the man brought his dad back into the dining room & grandpa never ate alone in his room again.

In the boy’s innocence, he’d gotten the truth over to his dad that what he sowed in putting his father away, he would reap someday.

We should all remember the way we treat our own mothers & fathers will almost certainly serve as a pattern for the way our offspring will someday treat us. Do we expect their treatment of us to magically be better than the example we’ve set before them?

THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT

The Bible shifts gears in the Ten Commandments between Four & Five & we notice now the laws are about people. Not only about people but how God expects us to honor Him by the way we treat specially placed people like our parents in our lives. The fifth Commandment is all about honoring parents & in so doing we’re honoring God, -- that’s where all this is going.

The first four Commandments have to do with; -- no other gods, graven images, the taking of the Lord’s name in vain & remembering the Sabbath. These are the Commandments designed to address us to God. Honoring our parents is transitional because following it is, -- thou shalt not kill; commit adultery, steal, & so forth. Again, they are about how people should treat people.

It’s interesting that the parental Commandment is given before “Thou shall not kill” & starts off the second tablet God gave Moses. This parental Commandment is the one in between, transferring God’s authority from heaven to a horizontal level beginning with the parents, in the home & reaching out from there.

I pray that God will help me to amplify Exodus 20:12,--Honor your father & mother that your days may be prolonged in the land which the Lord your God gives you, -- because what seems to be a very simplistic Commandment is not all that simple, but is in reality a loaded one.

Parents are foundational in the authority structure of God & we need to not only have a heart-check, but carefully evaluate our understanding of this business of honoring our parents.

Our culture these days doesn’t do a very good job of honoring things worth honoring. Our honor code has been flipped upside down & we now honor incompetent movie stars & musicians above men & women who are willing to sacrifice their lives for our freedom. We’ll honor “American Idols” before we’ll honor people who make real contributions to preserving our way of life.

When God says-- you shall honor your father & mother; -- He is doing more than offering us some good domestic advice. He has placed certain people in our lives that represent Himself, His interests & His authority. He commands us to honor that authority which represents His own because the way we regard & treat the ones He’s placed in our lives, no matter how uncomfortable it may be to hear, is an accurate reflection of how we regard God Himself.

LET’S DEFINE THE WORD HONOR

The Hebrew word regarding honoring parents is kabed. Though I think the King James translators were masterful in their use of the English language, to translate that word as honor is, shall I say, not so great? The true meaning of the word kabed is --dignity. Thus the way we should treat our parents is with dignity & do all possible to insure their dignity is kept in tact.

Opening doors & helping our aging parents in & out of cars if they need that help preserves their dignity. Seeing to it that they’re clothed & fed in their old age is preserving their dignity. Contacting them on special days, calling & writing them if they don’t live nearby is preserving their dignity. Anything that diminishes the dignity of the parent is an insult & an affront to God.

According to the Old Testament, there’s a curse placed on anyone who dishonors or treats a parent in a way that compromises their dignity;

…….God’s curse on anyone who demeans a parent. Deuteronomy 27:16---The Message.

The meaning & true depth of kabed even has to do with the attitude & tone of voice that’s used with the parent. An offspring will often have the right to disagree with the parent but they should maintain a parent’s dignity even when disagreeing with them.

But actually, kabed has little to do with sentiment. Relationship is secondary while dignity has everything to do with a position as God’s representative.

Even in a world ruled by wicked & sinful men, both Paul & Peter told us to obey all authority for all authority is established by God Himself. Read Romans 13:1 & I Peter 2:13-17.

Surveys show that in 1940, 76% of all American households had at least one elderly member of the family living in the house. By 1980, the number had shrunk to less than 2%. This shows us that Americans have terminated the whole concept of the extended family.

My grandmother, on my mother’s side lived in the home with us for thirty-two years. Though she & I would often disagree, [she sewed some of my shirts & put the buttons on the girl’s side] she did nearly as much to raise me as my mother did. I greatly missed her & wept when she went to heaven. Looking back, I can see that the texture of my life was greatly enhanced by my grandmother living with us.

I’m not saying here that it’s always God’s will for elderly parents to stay in their children’s home. That may or may not be the best arrangement & each family has the freedom under God to determine what the specific arrangements should be. But it’s not right to just abandon our parents to a nursing home so that we can ignore them. Even if you don’t believe what the Bible says about the matter of caring for parents, believe this; there’s a Karma train that will run you down if you don’t handle this matter tactfully.

Many younger adults seem to have no clue what the Bible means when it Commands us to honor our parents. When you think about that it’s strange because we all instinctively know what it means to treat a person with honor & dignity.

If you were to have a guest in your home you wouldn’t need to call Miss Manners or go online to find out how to do it. When you honor a guest, what do you do? You roll out the red carpet. You bring out the china & flatware. Honored guests are treated as valuable & important. You make sure their physical needs are met. You strive to give them the very best you have; the best food, drink, the best room & you listen with respect when they talk.

WHY DID PARENTS RATE ONE OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS?

A lot of nice things didn’t make it into the Ten Commandments. For instance, why aren’t we told to honor children? We know that children are our future. If we don’t honor them, care for them, raise them well & educate them our society will fall apart, will it not? Also children are weak & innocent & need love & tender care. Why then wouldn’t the Commandment read like this;

…..”Thou shalt honor thy children, provide for them, give them college educations that they may feel indebted to you & make you proud in your old age?”

Why, in the Ten Commandments doesn’t God put the emphasis on honoring children or for that matter on wives or husbands? We are told to love & care for all of these & to cherish all our relationships but none of them made the Top-ten list. To the modern mind this seems like a reversal of priorities that God singles out parents for special honor, but the answer as we’ve already stated is that parents are pivotal & foundational in God’s authority structure.

In Exodus 21:15 we’re told that anyone who attacks his father or mother should be put to death. In Leviticus 20:9 we learn that under the Law, anyone who cursed his father or mother must be put to death.

And in Deuteronomy 21:18-21 we get this sobering passage:

If a man has a stubborn & rebellious son who does not obey his father& mother & will not listen to them when they chasten him, his father & mother shall take hold of him & bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. They shall say to the elders,--This son of ours is stubborn & rebellious. He will not obey us. He is profligate & a drunkard. Then all the men of his town shall stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you.

How many of us would have survived this law?

Notice, to dishonor parents in the Old Testament was a capital offense. In the New Testament it’s a denial of the faith, making one worse than an unbeliever. The New Testament doesn’t abolish parental honor but ratifies it & further clarifies It.—1 Tim.5:8

GOD DIDN’T GIVE THIS COMMANDMENT TO YOUNG CHILDREN.

It’s a mistake to think that God’s command about honoring parents is for children. Nothing could be further from the truth. In the New Testament children are told to obey their parents but the fifth Commandment is a life-long command & it’s clearly given to adult offspring in relationship to aging parents. Obviously as children grow up & parents grow old the parent is needed less & this fifth Commandment is God’s way of protecting the aging parent. We may not relish it so much when the burden is on us, but we’re certain to love it when it’s coming our way.

In I Timothy 5:8, Paul says—But if any provide not for his own house, he hath denied the faith & is worse than an infidel.

We often hear this verse quoted & used to speak to fathers who don’t provide for their families. Certainly it applies to that but Paul is also speaking here of any person who doesn’t provide for their family who needs care & protection, including assisting aged parents. Paul goes on to say people who neglect members of their family are worse than outright unbelievers.

As an aside, adult children aren’t expected by God to endure abusive behavior or disrespect from their aging parents. The parental Commandment isn’t to be used as a club over the offspring’s head.

It’s almost inevitable that adult children will at some point along the way be a disappointment to their parents & conversely the parents will at times disappoint their children. We were never promised a rose garden, & while God expects children to honor & respect their parents, He also expects the parents to be honorable & respectable. However, there is no qualifier, just that a parent be treated with respect. There are no loop-holes in the fifth Commandment. God didn’t say—Honor your parents if they deserve it--- He just Commands us to honor our parents.

As a young evangelist in my early twenties, the door opened for me to go to California for a couple of years. My father was pastoring a church in Orlando Florida & wanted me to work with him in the church on the pastoral staff. Neither of my parents wanted me to go the California, feeling I should stay closer to home. After much soul searching & prayer, I had to tell them, though I loved them & was sorry to make them unhappy, I was convinced God wanted me in California & I was going.

I was able to do what I knew God wanted me to do without ever disrespecting my parents & it wasn’t long until they saw the hand of God in the decision I made. Had I been a teenager still living at home I would have been obligated to obey my parents, but that obligation ends when an offspring moves out of their parents house. My obligation now was to honor & preserve the dignity of my parents, however, since I was in my early twenties & not living at home, & no parental neglect was involved, God expected me to obey Him & find His will for my own life.

The fifth Commandment also continues after the parent’s death. No one should disrespect their parents name even when they are dead & can no longer hear what is being said. God hears everything we say.

In Romans chapter one, there is a list of several vile & despicable sins. The following sins are listed;

…..Professing themselves to be wise they became fools,…. changed the truth of God into a lie,…. God gave them up to vile affections,… men with men, women with women engaging in homosexuality & lesbianism,… reprobate minds,… filled with all unrighteousness,…. fornicators,…. wickedness,…. covetousness, maliciousness,…. full of envy,…. murderers,…. debate,…. deceit,…. malignity, ….whisperers,…. backbiters,…. haters of God,…. proud, ….boasters,…. inventors of evil things,

………disobedient to parents…

Did anything jump out at you in that passage? Was there anything that seemed incongruous to you? Was there one sin that maybe you hadn’t placed beside the reprobates mentioned here?

The sin I speak of, the sin that we usually don’t put on the same list with fornication, a reprobate mind, murder, homosexuality, lesbianism, & all manner of shameful sins is---- being disobedient to parents. And as if that isn’t surprising enough, we’re told

…….they which commit such things are worthy of death.-Romans 1:32

Listen to the Message Bible----Since they didn’t bother to acknowledge God, God quit bothering them & let them run loose….they filled the earth with their envy, wanton killing, bickering & cheating. Look at them: mean-spirited, venomous, forked tongued, God-bashers, bullies, swaggerers, insufferable windbags, they keep inventing new ways of wrecking lives,

--- They ditch their parents when they get in the way. Romans 1:28-32

WE HONOR & DIGNIFY OUR PARENTS BECAUSE OF THE HIGH POSITION THEY OCCUPY.

If a man is pulled over by a policeman, it could very well be that he’s more experienced than the officer who pulls him over. It may well be that he has more formal education than the policeman does. He may be wealthy while the policeman lives on a very meager income. However, the point is, the man doesn’t pull over because of any of the aforementioned qualifiers. He respects the law enforcement officer because of his position, because of who he is.

Joseph in the Old Testament book of Genesis had a situation that parallels a parent’s position. He wasn’t the pharaoh, but he might as well have been. Wherever Joseph went in the chariot that was given to him, everyone was told to bow the knee as though this was pharaoh. He was second in command but he might as well have been first because of the power & authority he had at his disposal.

Let’s be frank here; Joseph was a Shepard, a Hebrew, a slave, an accused rapist [though wrongly] who got released from the big-house. He was “a nobody,” but he was elevated & honored accordingly. This is akin to the authority God gives to parents.

Part of protecting a parent’s dignity is to speak well of them. If you disown them, you disown God also. If you have a parent in a penitentiary, you should go visit them as often as possible. If you can’t do it for them, do it in honor & obedience to God.

Choosing one parent to honor doesn’t satisfy the scriptural Command. Honor both your parents- BECAUSE OF WHO THEY ARE.

As in all our obligations as Christians, we don’t look at what the other person has or hasn’t done; we focus on our own actions & behavior before God.

WHAT THE COMMANDMENT DOESN’T MEAN

Honor & respecting a parent’s dignity doest mean adults must do what their parents want. That makes no sense at all. At what age would that end? God expects us to make our own decisions so we aren’t to live our lives to please our parents.

It doesn’t mean that when we marry we should put our parents first. Just the opposite, the Bible tells married couples to “leave & cleave.” Our first allegiance is to our spouse & our family & after that our parents. When we marry, that new family takes precedence over the family we were born into. Treating our parents with respect & protecting their dignity doesn’t equal living our lives for them. Parents are human & they make mistakes so honoring them doesn’t necessarily mean following in their footsteps. Our mandate is to follow God.

Sometimes, in all honesty, there are parents about whom there isn’t much good & positive to say. Certainly this is often true of both parent & offspring. Find something good to say.

You & I didn’t choose to be born. We had no control over our genetic make-up, the place of our birth or the family we were born into. We didn’t do the choosing, God did the choosing.

Hence to reject the parents you were born to is to reject the life God gave you. It’s a basic kind of rebellion against God. He was the one who created me. It was He who brought my parents together. It was He who ordered the circumstances of my birth.

Honoring my parents is a way of acknowledging & accepting God’s sovereignty over my life. I didn’t choose my parents but He did. By honoring them I demonstrate my belief that He knew what He was doing.

When I disown, dishonor, ignore or cast aside my parents or write one or both of them out of my life, I’m disowning, ignoring & casting God out of my life also. When I despise my parents I despise God. If my parents aren’t welcome in my home, God isn’t welcome either. It’s impossible to hate my parents & to love the God who chose to give me life through them.

We must settle this fifth Commandment in our hearts because God takes it deadly serious. This is proven by the promise of long life [that thy days may be long upon the earth,] when we do right by our parents.

Even if our parents treat us like dirt, we should still be God’s main link to them with His love. If they never respond to us or respond with meanness, we can be kind & caring toward them. If there is a root of bitterness for things our parents did to hurt us early in life we need to forgive them & get our hearts right in the sight of God so that we can pray for them, because obviously salvation is their primary need.

In John 19:26-28, one of the last acts of Jesus on the cross was to honor His mother. Mary had no one else so Jesus appointed John to care for her. The narrative says after that, John took her into his own house. Remember what he said in John 14:15? –If you love me, keep my Commandments.

Let us choose praise where we can & let us choose silence where we must, but let us always choose respect & dignity for our parents for this is God’s path of honor.

If I’m reading right, each time we knowingly & willfully disregard God’s clear Command to honor, respect & dignify our parents; we are in a very real sense, shortening our own lives.

Blessings,

John

First Comes Love...

By John Stallings

……..Thou hast left thy first love…..Rev.2:4


America is indeed the greatest nation ever to exist on this planet & we’re certainly better off than most nations but scratch the surface, get to the dark underbelly of life in the year of 2009 & what do you see?

Our present spiritual state gives us little to be proud of in God’s eyes. I can’t help but feel sad because of the open, blatant, rampant sin that exists. Its everywhere you look.…in government, in our schools, in the vulgar & profane language, on radio & television, in movies, magazines & in most all of media.

People are bending over backwards to see that God is outlawed from all aspects of our lives. We can’t have Him in our schools; we can’t have Him in our courts, or any public settings. We are frowned upon if we mention God or Jesus except in the barest, slightest whisper & then only in the privacy of our homes. Merry Christmas isn’t “politically correct” & happy holidays is the accepted greeting in many quarters.

It’s reminiscent of Jesus’ prediction--- And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.—Matt.24:12


WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?

For the answer we can go to the front or back of the Bible. Let’s first go close to the front of the Bible, to the book of Judges.

The last verse in the book of Judges is…..In those days there was no king in Israel & every man did that which was right in his own eyes.

I’m not asking this to put you on the spot, but how much do you know about the book of Judges? Most Christians know very little about the book. I would guess that what most of us know about in this book are the stories of Gideon & Samson. Ask yourself how long it’s been since you heard a sermon [other than Samson & Gideon] from the book of Judges.

The reason we know so little about Judges is it’s not an enjoyable read. Judges is a hard book about hard times showing sin in all its repulsiveness. What makes it even more uncomfortable for us is the fact that it mainly deals with wickedness among the people of God. Because God only has one church, His Body, in a very real way the mess in Judges is the mess in our spiritual family tree.


The book of Judges makes not the slightest attempt at cosmetics. It openly & candidly portrays ungodliness among the people of God. We can’t read Judges without being implicated because we too have been unfaithful & unholy. We too have been disobedient & have compromised & can grieve the Holy Spirit therefore reading this book pricks our conscience. Maybe that’s why Judges is neglected.

Just think of how differently the people of God looked a generation earlier than they look in the book of Judges. In Joshua’s time the people followed him in entering into the Promised Land & one enemy after another fell before the army of God. It was a time of unprecedented conquest & privilege. God’s people in those days weren’t perfect but everything pointed to a new era of godliness in Canaan. As soon as Joshua & his generation dies, the people became wicked…….another generation grew up who knew neither God nor what He had done for Israel.

Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord & served Baalim…..Judges 2:10-11

The book of Judges spans a long period of time, about 350 years---from Joshua to Samuel—or a quarter of the Old Testament history. This sheer volume of time is another reason we ignore so much divine revelation at our loss.

We don’t know who wrote Judges but Jewish tradition claims Samuel as the author. It had to be someone who could look back over the whole pre-kingdom period because of the repeated statement—“Israel had no king,” meaning it was written around 1000 B.C, about the time of Saul or David’s early years, in the days of Samuel.

JUDGES TEACHES US GOD’S PEOPLE NEED A LEADER.

Sheep are lost without a Shepherd. Joshua provided great leadership but when he died the tribes became disunited & individuals started to live as they pleased. The leadership of the judges over the next three to four centuries was temporary & partial & as soon as the judges died, the old wickedness started again. Even the best of kings all failed at some point but the whole of the Old Testament is preparing us for the righteous king who was to come, Jesus Christ.

He alone is the Messianic king, the Judge-deliverer, the ultimate Savior, & the Lord of the church. Israel has some glory days. They were led by the likes of Moses, Abraham, Joshua & Samuel but look how low they sank. Reading the book of Judges causes us to ask ourselves where we are now spiritually. We should make sure we’re not living off victories from the past or victories our ancestors had but we should ask ourselves if we have an up-to-date experience with God.

THE LAST THREE CHAPTERS TELL A GRUESOME TALE.

Chapters 19-21 of Judges tell the horrific story of a man who carved up the body of his concubine, a live-in lover into twelve pieces sending the grisly parcels throughout the whole land, one piece to each tribe. The result was civil war, eleven tribes of Israel against one tribe, Benjamin. Now I’d like to tell you that story & see what important truths we can glean from it.

A man & his concubine were traveling toward the city of Jerusalem. It wasn’t such a good plan for it to them was a foreign city. People in those days took a chance going among folk who weren’t their own kind. They stopped at Gibeah, a Benjamite city where they should have been safe.

This night will go down in history as one of the bleakest nights a person’s worst nightmares could conjure up & has to be one of the most terrible stories ever told.

The couple stopped in the city square as was the custom then, in hopes someone would see them & invite them to spend the night with them. If you saw someone in the city square with no place to stay it was common courtesy to invite them back to your place.

People passed by & looked them over but nobody invited them to their house. Finally an old man comes by on his way home from working the fields & invites them to his home.

What happen next is so sickening I can hardly bring myself to write it. You may say, “This is so terrible I don’t want to know any more.” But somehow we need to know, & Israel did too.


The small group was relaxing in the house when a noise was heard outside. They soon realized it was a mob of locals who then started knocking on the door & shouting. They had seen the couple but they weren’t interested in the woman, they demanded the man.

The old man was having none of this so he went outside & rebuked them. This is hard to understand but it was a custom of that day, that the old man had an obligation to the male guest to protect him as best he could. So the old man offered his daughter & the visiting concubine to the men to have sex with.

The mob got more & more demanding & unruly so finally the visiting man took his concubine to the door & threw her out to the ravenous mob. Now hear this; the visiting man who’d thrown his concubine outside went to bed & went to sleep while the blood & sex thirsty mob gang-raped & abused his concubine all night until the sun came up the next morning.

When he awoke he went to the door & saw his concubine lying at the door. We don’t know if she’s dead or alive at this point [I’d sure like to know] but the man puts her on his donkey & goes home. When he gets home, he gets a knife & mutilates his concubine’s body. He actually cuts her in pieces & sends her body to all parts of Israel.

To be honest, the man didn’t have to do any of this. He didn’t have to of his own free will turn his concubine over to the mob & he certainly didn’t have to cut her up & send pieces of her all over the countryside.

I’ve always thought Sodom was a low point in Scripture. You can’t get much lower than Sodom but at least at that time the angels intervened & saved Lot & his family. But now, the people of Israel had become Sodom. Nothing like this had ever happened in Israel & I’m pretty sure it’s never happened since. This is about as terrible as things can possibly get. Sorry, there’s more. When everyone received the part of the girl’s body it shocked them as it should have. Now at least the girl is going to get some “justice.”

If you remember Natalie Holloway who died a few years ago, probably at the hands of some oversexed spoiled kids in Aruba, it doesn’t seem like there’ll ever be justice for she & her family.

It’s as though Israel woke up when they got the news, suddenly they roused themselves & said, “What’s going on here? There’s something rotten in Denmark” [Israel.]

They immediate asked,


WHAT CAN WE DO??


Gibeah had no answer for what their citizens had done so all of Israel assembled an army & got their fighting britches on. Keep in mind they were going to war not against a foreign enemy but against one of their own cities. Now a little more pepper gets thrown into the Gumbo because when letters were sent to Gibeah to hand the offenders over, they wouldn’t give them up. Blood is thicker than the right thing, right? Right!

All the Israelites except the Benjamites came together in Mizpah. Several battles were fought, with Israel standing up an army of four-hundred thousand men against Benjamin’s twenty-seven thousand. Israel won & all but 600 of the Benjamites were killed. Justice had been served on the men who did this terrible deed against the innocent concubine.

WHERE DID THINGS GO SO WRONG??

How did Israel get to the point that they were their own worst enemies? Moses had told them they were God’s kingdom of priest’s & they were a holy nation. Was it when they didn’t take the land that the Lord had promised them? Was it when they little by little slid back into the world, eventually becoming just like them?

Where did they go wrong? How did God’s people become rotten to the core? Was it the paganism of Gideon, the self-righteousness of Samson, the cowardice of Barak? Was it when they decided that they could be the judge of what was right or wrong?

How do you get to the point in which you don’t show hospitality to your own people, where a Levite throws his concubine to a mob, & we can wipe out an entire tribe?

I don’t know the answer to these questions but I know that several times during the book & at the very last of the book we’re reminded that Israel had no king so people were doing what they thought was right. When you read what was happening in this story you are shocked to realize, this is Israel, God’s people; people who were called to be different from the people around them. Called to be separate & holy, reflecting the character of God.

Moses laid out a path for these people that would lead to blessing but they took a different path. It didn’t look so bad at the time but look where it ultimately took them.

What is the answer? When we read or hear the news now-a-days we say, “This is Judges Stuff.” Will God save us from what we’ve become? The answer for us today is the same answer the people in Judges needed. We need a Savior, a king.

The book of Judges ends on a depressing note. Everyone is doing what is right in their own eyes & God’s people have become rotten to the core. They had sunk as low as you can get.

Why was this horrendous story placed last in the book of Judges? Because God wanted to make a point: When God’s people wander from Him, the consequences don’t look bad immediately but if they insist in their rebellion the consequences are worst than we could imagine.

But slowly through Samuel, David, the prophets & ultimately Jesus Christ Himself, God’s light began to penetrate that darkness. The darkness could not extinguish the light God sent into the world.

The end of Judges, the tribe of Benjamin was almost wiped out. Centuries later a descendant of this almost-lost tribe, Saul of Tarsus, became the premier interpreter of the good news of Jesus Christ.

When we disobey & go against God the consequences are horrendous. But God is faithful to keep His word & send a Savior to save His people from their sins.

Lastly, & perhaps the most important thing in this story is the fact that even though the main man threw his concubine to the “wolves,” he did one thing right, [if you can call the mutilating of his concubine right] he sent the pieces of her body to the rest of Israel asking them how they felt about it. Asking them if they felt it needed to be answered with action, & of course it was.

What should we as Christians do when we see our children being spiritually & morally mutilated?


AMERICA MUST AWAKE!

Not only must we stand & be politically active & vote the wrong people out of office & the right ones into office, we must also keep it in mind that we need a king & that king is Jesus Christ; a king who was crowned when He hung on the cross, “This is Jesus, the king of the Jews.”

In His death & resurrection, He breaks the power of sin that entraps us. To not have Jesus as our king is to be like Israel was & do whatever you feel like doing. It would seem today that America has no king & many of its citizens will do whatever they can get away with.

Again, the problem in Judges was that the inhabitants of Israel were God’s people. The message to America today is that we must clean up this mess, return to our first love, stop playing at religion & be real. We must stop worshipping anything else but the God of heaven.

When God was replaced in Israel, all hell broke loose. Such was Israel in the time of Judges & such it will soon become in America because God cannot withhold His judgment if we don’t

---return to our First Love.


Blessings,

John