By John Stallings
Did you know…..?
……….the book of Romans doesn’t have any stories about Jesus? The book of Romans doesn’t contain any stories about the apostle Paul like the book of Acts does, & Paul wrote Romans.
The book of Romans has no stories, period! The book of Romans only has ideas, great sweeping theological ideas, & all the ideas are about Christ; the mind, heart & incarnation of Christ.
Many scholars believe the book of Romans to be the greatest work ever written. It was certainly written by the greatest Christian, Paul, on the greatest subject- salvation.
Romans was written by the Apostle Paul in approximately 58 A.D. Hundreds of books have been written about Paul’s letter to the Romans however it reads more like a theological essay than a letter.
It’s not my intention to try to analyze the book for I can’t, any more than babies could analyze their mother’s milk. They drink it for nourishment & life. I come to this letter again & again to drink deeply of it, to digest as much of it as I can & to get to know the Lord more intimately, until His nature is formed in me.
The themes of Romans include, sin & death, sanctification, grace, faith, righteousness, justification, redemption, resurrection, glorification, spiritual gifts & respect for government.
In her book, Joni, Joni Erickson Todd describes coming to grips with her paralysis. At the age of 15 Joni was paralyzed from the neck down as a result of a diving accident. Joni lay unclothed on a hospital cart & she wanted to cover herself, which in the past had been an easy task. But now, try as she may she couldn’t get her arms & legs to respond to her wishes. She knew in her mind what she wanted to do but her body was unresponsive, something most of us can only relate to in small ways.
In Romans Paul describes a much bigger problem & deeper frustration; the agony that our sinful flesh doesn’t want to respond to God’s Law, & that our natural bodies or flesh man, constantly wage war against our Spirit man.
ROMANS CHAPTER 7 IS ONE OF THE MOST MISUNDERSTOOD CHAPTERS IN THE BIBLE.
In this great chapter, Paul tackles the problem of our sinful nature. He says in essence; “I don’t understand my own actions. I do the very thing I hate. The good things I want to do I don’t do but the bad things, the things I hate- I end up doing. I’m a miserable person. Who’s going to rescue me from this awful situation, this life of sin, this body of death?”
Some of our tender spiritual nerves & sensibilities get pinched when we read these words of Paul because he’s talking about the most depressing & hopeless aspects & realities of our lives. Some people even interpret chapter seven to mean to live the Christian life is impossible.
However Paul doesn’t dwell on our weakness in this chapter to bring us down, quite the contrary. He’s preparing us for God’s provision for living righteously which comes in chapter eight.
CHAPTER 7 INTRODUCED A CONUNDRUM
A conundrum is a problem or puzzle, something that’s truly unsolvable. The following is a conundrum;
There was a church in the process of calling a new pastor. They interviewed two candidates; we’ll call them candidates Smith & Jones. The congregation voted to call Pastor Jones but the church secretary mistakenly sent the letter of acceptance to Pastor Smith. Pastor Smith was so happy to leave the church where he Pastored that he immediately resigned & wrote to the new church to tell them he was coming.
Only then did the church realize they had sent the wrong man the letter of call. What to do? Do you tell Pastor Smith that he wasn’t elected & leave him without a church? Or do you take Rev. Smith knowing all the while the congregation’s choice was Pastor Jones? He’s going to find out anyway isn’t he?
It’s a conundrum! There seems to be no answer that will satisfy everyone, no matter how determined a problem-solver you may be. I couldn’t help but smile when I learned what the church did to solve their problem. They took Rev. Smith as their Pastor & fired the church secretary! It figures.
Have you ever snuck into the kitchen in the quiet of the night when everyone was asleep & raided the fridge? Have you ever made yourself a chocolate sundae with nuts, after midnight? What I’ve learned is, especially if you have a sweet-tooth, you just have to quit buying certain things & “fat-proof” your kitchen. Someone has said; “the best way to lose weight is eat all you want of everything you don’t want.”
You & I know exactly what the Apostle Paul is talking about in Romans 7.
Years ago a lady shared a story about her experience with her unsaved husband. She’d been going regularly to Wednesday night prayer meeting & was having no problems with him. One night she went with friends to get a bite to eat after prayer meeting & came home a little late. Her husband asked where she’d been & she flew into a rage, telling him that he knew where she’d been; she’d been to prayer meeting. In her defensiveness she attacked him with the words, “You go fishing or golfing with your friends & come home when you want to.” On further reflection she asked herself “why?” Why did I need to verbally attack the person I deeply love? My lower nature & instincts just took over.”
We all know how true it is. The exact scripts may vary but the stories of our lives are closely similar. “We met the enemy & the enemy is us.”
I read a story some time ago about Victor Hugo, who wrote that famous story Les Miserables, which was a favorite Broadway play for years. He was supposed to write every morning but something would get inside of him & get in the way. He would go for a walk, putter in the garden & around the house; anything but write. Hugo finally solved the problem by telling his servant to take his clothes away every night so he’d be forced to stay in his room in the morning & write.
Again we may laugh but it’s because we all know how true it is of our old nature. It’s the age- old clash between our best intentions & reality.
WE SEEM TO BE A BUNDLE OF CONTRADICTIONS
A Christian is, so to speak, a “split-personality.” We are a living battleground on which good & evil vie for mastery. The inner conflict is disturbing but it doesn’t have to be defeating. Most of us strongly desire to be more spiritual don’t we? We want to have a deeper interior with God. We make resolution after resolution to wake up in the morning & read the Bible & pray. I could describe what happens but it would just be needless pain because we all already know.
I want to organize my life so that I can identify with the poor & hurting in this world. I for years have wanted to so arrange things that I could give a larger percentage of my income away to the needy. But what do I do? Too often, the same thing I’ve done for forty years, & that’s to accumulate more stuff. I know what I should do but do I do it? Truthfully-not often enough. What’s wrong?
I want to eat more simply. But I don’t do it, not for long. I want to get off the “ice cream wagon” but, though I’m watching my sugar a lot closer these days, I seem to have some of the same problems at this stage of my life that I had in my early twenties. I want to be able to sit down to a meal of veggies & have no meat with it. Really! I’d like to love vegetables more than I like meat. I want to get off all starches & off salt & sugar & I want to get up in the morning & do my exercises. But is that what I do? Not nearly often enough.
Lust isn’t always sexual lust. Anything that we hunger for that isn’t what God wants for us is lust. [1 Cor.10:6.] There are lots of feelings I have that I know I shouldn’t have but I have them from time to time anyway. To be frank, in reality we all have them. We all have these inner struggles, you have yours & I have mine.
Paul had the most dramatic conversion of anyone on record & probably was the greatest Christian who ever lived. He wrote these words about not doing what he should do, but doing what he doesn’t want to do at the very high point of his life. He was fifty-five to sixty-five years old. He’d been a Christian for more than thirty years & was certainly a mature Christian. He had a fervent prayer life, saw many miracles take place & even by secular standards left some of the greatest writing every penned.
Here was Paul who’d spoken courageously to governments, kings & rulers; was thrown into prison, beaten & stoned. Here was Paul, at the top of his A game saying, “I don’t get it. I just do not get it. I do the things that I hate. And the very things that I want to do, I don’t do. What’s wrong with me? I’m such a wretched person.”
I read that animal trainers can do some remarkable things with African Zebras in captivity. The problem is, the animal is easily frightened. “Flight to life” is his specialty. The Zebras main defense is to get away. He’s mostly always leaving. This was necessary in the African jungle but to the trainers who would never harm the animal, it’s their biggest headache. You can take the Zebra out of Africa but you can’t take Africa out of the Zebra.
Likewise, you can take people out of sinful situations, but you can’t completely take the propensity for sin out of them. The conflicting natures within us are very real. One can be reborn as a child of God but we can’t completely rid ourselves of our old nature that loves to sin. Paul said it best—“So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin. [Rom.7:25]
The truth is- you & I are in a “Great War.” We’re in a war with our flesh, our will & our old nature. We’re still encased in a fleshly body. We say we’re going to lose 10 pounds but we eat ice-cream sundaes. We say we’re going to get up a little earlier in the morning & pray but our resolutions don’t last. We set out to Fast for a few days but then we start having visions of “Whopper-Burgers with cheese” flying all around our heads.
Here’s the truth; our Old Man died with Christ on the cross but we still carry a dead guy with us as long as we’re in a fleshly body. When we choose to live according to the dictates of the flesh we’re constantly giving “mouth-to-mouth” to our Old Man. But here’s some good news, & it’s contained in chapter eight. If we lean on fleshly weapons we’ll fail, but if we lean on the Holy Spirit a whole new dynamic gets interjected into the picture.
There’s a new reality T.V show called “Moment of Truth” on the Fox Channel. Contestants are asked before the show a series of personal questions & their truthfulness is tested by lie detector. When they appear on the program they can win $500,000 if they answer each question correctly. The questions are so dark & personal they can reveal things that are potentially destructive especially to family members.
Recently a young woman appeared on the program hoping to win money so she had to respond truthfully. She admitted to having slept around with other men & wanted to marry someone else for fame & fortune. This admission devastated & humiliated her husband, a New York City police officer, before 8 million people on Network T.V. She was about to pocket $200,000 dollars when she lied on the next question & lost everything. The next question was if she thought she was a good person & she said “yes” & that lie cost her everything. Her sin resulted in pain, guilt & shame & has threatened to destroy the love her husband had for her.
Though a show like this is personally repugnant to me & I’ve only surfed by it a few times, I don’t think a more perfect illustration could be found of the depth of depravity & sin unregenerate man is in before a holy God. Thanks be unto God for His Holy Spirit who gives us power beyond our fleshly appetites.
CHAPTER SEVEN IS A PRELUDE TO CHAPTER EIGHT
The agony of Romans 7 is a prerequisite for the ecstasy of Romans 8. Romans 8 is one of the finest chapters in the Bible. When we move into this chapter we discover Paul talking about the power of the Holy Spirit. Victory in the Christian life is possible not by our human struggle but by yielding our lives to & allowing the Holy Spirit to take over for us. [Rom.8:13.] The Spirit comes in & gives us strength & helps us gain victory over things like judgmental attitudes, bad tempers, alcoholism, & food & drug addictions. The power of the Holy Spirit helps us get control of those destructive behaviors that are hurting us in so many ways.
In Romans 8, Paul talks about the Holy Spirit coming to strengthen us & help us do right. Listen;
There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit. Roman 8:1
Conversion to Christ doesn’t solve all our problems, indeed it results in some problems we never had before. Before our conversion to Christ we weren’t in opposition with sin. Quite the contrary we were slaves to sin & in opposition with God. Now as Christians our animosity toward God has ended & a new animosity—toward sin—has begun. Paul’s struggle was because of his conversion to Christ on the Damascus Turnpike.
Like Paul, until we hate sin we won’t turn from it & until we reach the end of ourselves we won’t turn to God. We have cause to be concerned when we don’t have the agony over our sin nature as Paul had. We have cause for concern when we don’t have the kind of intensity that Paul had. If we fail to struggle as Paul did in chapter 7 there must be a reason.
Have we taken the sins that blew Paul’s mind & broke his heart & relabeled them so they won’t seem so bad? Those who can identify with Paul here are blessed & the way I see it those who can’t are to be pitied. Some might even feel Paul needed to be put in a remedial class so he could learn not to feel so bad about his sin nature. Could the truth be that it’s not Paul who has the problem but us, because we don’t take sin seriously enough?
Paul has told us that sin is something we can’t fully understand. But we don’t have to understand it to know it’s a dilemma & it’s something God hates. A young homosexual had been saved & one day he was talking to a group of ministers & he said something very important. “Don’t try to understand homosexuality & don’t try to identify with me in terms of my homosexuality. You can’t & shouldn’t understand. Just try to understand homosexuality as sin, due to the flesh.”
I believe this young man was right. Whatever the sin might be the solution is the same. God has provided a righteousness we can’t produce ourselves. It’s the cross of Calvary, God’s Word & the power of the Holy Spirit. We need not look for any other solution.
I always look for very simple illustrations because that’s the way my mind works. I think I’ve found a way, at least in part to describe this thing called the dual nature of man.
Go with me to a high mountain deep in the wilderness where the majestic Eagles make their nests & are often seen sitting on high rocks or gliding gracefully through the air.
We spot a large eagle sitting high on his perch, & we realize as we watch him that, in one way he’s as bound by the law of gravity as we are. If he fell off his perch & made no effort to fly he’d be dead weight & perish on the rocks in the valley below. As we watch the Eagle, he stands up & with a powerful thrust pushes his body out & over the cliff & starts to free-fall. We watch the big bird as gravity takes hold & he drops like a rock.
When it seems like the eagle is being pulled by gravity toward destruction on the rocks below, all of the sudden he shoots out his mighty wings. When the eagle spreads his wings, everything changes.
His trajectory is no longer downward; he’s riding on the wind. What has happened? The eagle has introduced another law that cancels out the law of gravity & that law is the Law of Aerodynamics. The eagle flies around in the canyon & we watch him as he intermittently pulls his wings in & free-falls, then unfolds his wings to call on the law of aerodynamics.
The eagle knows nothing of the law of Aerodynamics & he doesn’t need to know. One day he was timid & afraid but that was before his mother taught him to fly. He understands there’s a downward pull & it would be possible for him to become a rock & go down to his death, but he trusts his wings to save him from that.
Thus it is with the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. We don’t need to wholly understand the theology of the benefits we have in Christ. All we need to do is commit spiritually just as that eagle does physically & the power over our sinful nature is at our disposal.
Question; -Who will deliver me from this body of death?
Answer: -The very spirit that raised the dead body of Jesus Christ from the grave is the spirit that dwells in you & will give life to our mortal bodies.-Romans 8:11
Every Blessing,
John
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Offended Christians
By John Stallings
…..Love is not touchy. 1 Corinthians 13: 5-- J.B Philips translation
What is the devil’s most deadly & deceptive trap?
What tool of Satan imprisons countless Christians, severs relationships, widens existing breaches between people in families & churches--& is a leading cause of disunity? It’s the trap of offense.
Offense is described as-“an act of causing anger, hurt feelings, resentment, displeasure, or an affront.”
If caught in its early stages it can be dealt with before much damage is done but the deeper the offense & the longer it’s allowed to fester, the greater the chance that it will turn into a poisonous root of bitterness & bury itself deep within the soul. The result will be a harden heart against people & ultimately God Himself.
When an offense becomes a stronghold, an individual will develop a pattern through which all incoming information gets processed & then they start filtering everything through past hurts, rejections & past injuries.
Offended people feel justified in withholding forgiveness from the offender.
Offended people feel justified in gossiping to others about the offense.
Offended people feel justified in enlisting sympathizers in their cause & turning other people against the offender.
Offended people will produce much fruit, namely; anger, outrage, jealousy, resentment, strife, bitterness, hatred, envy & broken relationships.
Offended people often don’t know they’ve fallen into the offense trap.
Offended people feel; “I was mistreated or misjudged—therefore I’m justified in my behavior.”
Very often offended Christians [or Christians so-called] will refuse to be a part any longer of the Christian community. The people with whom they meet & rub shoulders are other offended folk. Sunday to them becomes a day for sleeping late or visiting relatives & friends or a day at the beach. It’s not uncommon for these offended Christians to give up Bible reading & Bible study & God becomes a relic of their past, although they are known to continue to talk religious & carry a strong attitude of self-righteousness. The point of justification for the dismissal of God from their lives is that they’ve been hurt somewhere along the way & there are “too many hypocrites in the church.” This argument is simply an evasive tactic to justify one’s negative feelings toward others & of God Himself.
Satan knows how easy it is for all of us to hold on to grudges & he does everything in his power to remind us of the injustices done to us, real or imaginary. He knows that if he can get us to allow unforgiveness to remain in our hearts it gives him a foothold.
People get offended by the words or actions of others, & often sermons. They feel every sermon is intentionally aimed at them. They might say; “no one spoke to me, the pastor shook my hand but his eyes were on another person.” Daily we all are presented with tons of opportunities to get offended every single second of our lives.
People who become offended in a church, usually move on to another church. Since they never deal with their spirit of offense, they keep moving around looking for a perfect church; a church that will never hurt their feelings. The truth of the matter is there is no such thing as a church that will never hurt our feelings.
CONSIDER THE LOWLY PORCUPINE
If you’re walking through the woods & you hear a rattling sound, step lightly. It could be a deadly rattlesnake but you could also be in the proximity of a rodent called the porcupine.
The adult porcupine is about three feet long & weighs between 20 & 30 pounds. It’s known to rustle its quills to warn a potential predator to back off. In a worse case scenario [small animals such as dogs usually get the worst injuries] you could end up trying to pull out a bunch of barbed quills. The porcupines don’t have to aim perfectly either because they have on average 30,000 quills to throw, with fish-hook like barbs in them, located all over their bodies except their faces. [Thanks Wikipedia.]
When threatened the porcupine attacks by moving backward or sideways into the aggressor & the quills lodge in the aggressor’s skin. Every time the pierced victim moves, the quills penetrate further into its body. If the quills pierce vital organs the victim can die.
HAVE YOU NOTICED THERE ARE PORCUPINE PEOPLE?
We’ve all taken some quills along the way & to be truthful we’ve all thrown a few quills. There are some people who- through the look on their face & their body language seem to be saying,-“You take a chance if you mess with me. I have plenty of quills & I won’t hesitate to use them.” These “quill throwers” are raspy & harsh & if you have even the shortest of encounters with them you will doubtless come away carrying quills.
We meet “quill throwers” in all levels of life. They are in hospitals, doctor’s offices, schools, restaurants, department stores, driving down hi-ways & even in churches. You probably have one or two in your extended family.
Not only are there “Quill throwers,” there are also “Quill carriers.” If you’ve ever seen a church fight or for that matter a family feud you are aware of this. Quill carriers are folk who’ve taken some quills in life & have never gotten rid of them. Many times it’s because they don’t want to be healed. They savor the pain caused by quills.
GOD’S WORD SPEAKS TO THE PORCUPINE PROBLEM
In 1 Peter 4: there is what some call “The Peter Prescription.” Verse 8 says;--Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.
Notice Peter says—ABOVE ALL-love each other deeply. ……This is a biblical mandate! It means make every effort, -- go all out—make it priority one—love as if your life depended on it.
It may be painful to hear but the main reason we are super-bothered by others & the quills they throw at us is simple; we just don’t have the “love covering” we need to absorb the hurt & lighten up about the barbs thrown at us.
Notice Peter doesn’t say love covers-up sins, but love covers-over a multitude of sins.
When we don’t forgive others who trespass against us, or hit us with quills, the reason is—there’s not enough love to “cover it over.” Again…Love covers over a multitude of sins.
Love gets a little confusing because we mean all kinds of different things when we talk about love. I love to fish & I love chocolate ice cream however I have a much deeper commitment to my wife than I do those things. But I use the same word, love.
In the church we’re always saying-God is love-therefore we should love too but what do we mean when we say that? When we step out of the spiritual realm we have Hollywood & T.V presenting movies about love like Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve got mail, Titanic, Friends, & Dawson’s Creek. These things can’t help but affect us, & some of our expectations grow out of watching them. Harlequin Romance Magazines sells 130 million books each year; books purporting to tell us about love. Some of it might be good & some of it bad so it’s important that we understand what we’re really talking about when we speak of love.
In 1 Corinthians, Paul wrote to a church that had all the spiritual gifts but they argued constantly. They had asserted how smart & gifted they were & so Paul had been critiquing this complicated & conflicted Corinthian church. The Love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13 comes as almost an intrusion in the flow of the letter. Paul took great care to explain to them that though they had all these phenomenal gifts, anything minus love equals nothing. Zero.
When we think of love in the way the world presents it we’re usually talking about romantic love which is based on physical desirability. This love assumes that the loved- one is attractive & it assumes incredible emotional intensity so that one can’t help but pursue the loved one. But this is a far cry from what Paul is talking about because he writes love is more than an emotion. It’s capable of even loving the unlovable.
Sometimes when we use the word love we’re speaking of tolerance; you do your thing & I’ll do mine. Tolerance is good but it’s not the kind of love Paul is talking about. Sometimes love will compel us to be intolerant & demand change in an individual. Sometimes love will have to be tough, as in intervening in the life of a loved one who’s bound by drugs or other substances. It’s clear that tolerance isn’t the kind of love Paul’s talking about.
Sometimes love will be used as a cause; we love the environment so we wear wrist- bands & T-shirts to protest things that hurt the environment, but this isn’t the love Paul is talking about. Some of the meanest people in the world parade behind the banner of love for this or that cause & in crusading for tolerance; they can be so intolerant they’re downright dangerous. John Lennon wrote a song called “Give peace a chance,” & all the time he was at war with the Beatles. Their personal relationships were in shambles & they were calling the world to peace. Like the man who said, “I love mankind- its people I hate.”
The love Paul speaks about isn’t even friendship. Sometimes people will get sentimental & feel they have so much in common with an individual that they’ll say, “I love you.” There might even be an awkward hug & a few tears because the friendship touches them in such a way as to be thought of as love. Like two drunks in a bar who get a little lubricated & say, “I love you, man.” This isn’t the kind of love Paul is talking about.
As a matter of fact Paul isn’t going to let us guess what he’s talking about, he gets very concrete about love. He says love is patient. It can relax in the present. Love is willing to accept slow change & to try again. Love is patient & kind. Love is warm & sympathetic. It sees & feels the difficulties of the other person. It’s not cold & analytical. Love is kind & doesn’t envy. Love doesn’t boast & isn’t proud. Love avoids abrasive & inflammatory language. Love listens. Love is a dialogue. Love doesn’t scold a person like they were a family pet. Love isn’t easily angered. Love is more than biting the tongue; it works at the inner core of us.
Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes & perseveres. Love is constantly hoping for change in people & doesn’t give up after one good try. Love is going to try & try & try again. Love isn’t what we hear celebrities talk about on The Oprah Show.
Have you ever thought about the fact that right in the middle of the happy, romantic & love-filled marriage vows we start talking about better or worse, richer or poorer, sickness & in health? Just when we’re speaking of this feel-good love, we imagine those terrible scenarios. Why do we do that? It’s because deep inside we all want love that is secure. Deep down we know there is real, all embracing love. We want that love for ourselves & we want to be able to give it too. And so there it is in the vows- in the marriage ceremony.
But keep in mind; the love Paul speaks about is bigger than married love because he’s not talking to married couples. He’s talking to the church & he’s telling them this is the kind of loving relationships they should have. It’s the kind of love God loves us with.
FORGIVING THE QUILL THROWERS
These next words will be some of the most important words you’ll ever read because if you & I don’t get this thing called forgiveness right, we’ll miss the heart of the gospel. I am swinging this axe with great humility because I find forgiveness such a struggle. More than once in my life I’ve had people I trusted to prove unworthy of that trust by doing everything in their power to hurt me. As you know these kinds of people almost never ask forgiveness. But even in cases where I’ve been asked to forgive, & I’ve given that forgiveness to the best of my ability, I’d be less than honest if I didn’t say I still struggle with it. As Paul said, “I die daily.”
There’s no greater passage in the entire Bible that opens the heart of God on forgiveness than the narrative in Matthew chapter eighteen. I’m sure you’re familiar with it.
Even the disciples were having a hard time with forgiveness, so Peter came out & laid the difficulty of it right at the feet of Jesus. The Rabbinic teaching of the day said you should forgive someone up to three times & after that you could stop forgiving. To be on the safe side Peter doubled that & added one for magnanimity sake. He asked, “Lord when somebody messes me over, how many times should I allow that to happen before I stop forgiving them? Seven times?”
Jesus said, “No, Not seven times. Seventy times seven.” We’d be missing the point here if we think Jesus was talking about a literal number. Jesus was actually talking here about how grace should operate in the life of the believer when it comes to the difficulty of forgiveness.
So Jesus told a simple, crystal-clear, scintillating parable & explained the issue of forgiveness to His disciples as well as you & me. We don’t have to be rocket scientists, bible scholars or great theologians to get the point of this parable.
It’s a story about a king & his servant. The king has loaned his servant money & decides to call in the loan. It’s pay-back time. Servant A is the first man we meet. He has run up a whopping tab, roughly 12 million dollars. The point is, it’s such a vast sum it’s impossible to pay back. The servant is unable to pay so the king took the next step & ordered the servant & his wife & children to be sold into slavery & his entire estate to be put on the auction block. At least the king can salvage a little bit of money on this deal.
But the servant begins to beg for mercy. He’s trying to buy time. He’s hoping the king will cut him some slack. He literally pleads for his life. Then the most unexpected thing happens; like a bolt from the blue the king totally forgives & cancels the entire debt. Suddenly servant, wife, children, & estate are off the auction block.
Now put yourself in that servant’s shoes. How would you be feeling at that moment? When somebody gives you a break in traffic aren’t you more likely then to give someone else a break? But after all that forgiveness, servant A leaves as if nothing good has happened.
Enter servant B. Servant B owes servant A about $1.80 in today’s money. Like a scene from The Godfather, servant A says to servant B, “I’m going to remove your kneecaps unless you pay up.” Servant A shows servant B no mercy, instead he has servant B thrown into prison. We can agree that servant A is a jerk.
But there are always other eyes watching & someone went & told the king the whole story. Now for the second time servant A is called before the king. The king has another turn-around & this time his pity has turned to anger. He lowers the boom on servant A & throws him in prison.
The story is over for servant A & B but it’s not over for Peter & it’s not over for you & me. Jesus says, -- “Unless you & I forgive our brothers & sisters from the heart we’re going to wind up just like servant A.” And, oh, how God has forgiven the debt that you & I have run up. It’s far greater than 12 million dollars. The results of the tab are eternal death & separation from God in hell.
GOD IS EXTREMELY OBSESSIVE ABOUT FORGIVENESS
God is so obsessive that He mandates & orders forgiveness & just like any other scriptural mandate it’s for our own good. God knows that you & I will never be able to move toward wholeness, live victoriously & be healed until we let go of resentment, give up on revenge, & let Him take the quills out we’ve collected over the years.
The mistake we make is to look at the person who has wronged us & what they’ve done to us. This parable reminds us that’s a mistake. We need to look at who God is & what He’s done for us. There are no limits to forgiveness because there’s no limit to God’s grace.
The following is nothing new to most Christians but I have a feeling if we really took it seriously it would change the way we view the Lord’s Prayer.
Right in the middle of the Lord’s Prayer is a phrase that you & I, if we’re not careful will pray mindlessly. “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” Have we honestly thought about what we’re asking God to do here? Have you ever felt like falling silent at this point? We’re asking God to forgive us, to treat us --exactly the way we deal with other folks who’ve wronged us.
THE MOST PROFOUND, PUREST, HIGHEST, & FINEST EXAMPLE OF FORGIVENESS IN THE BIBLE HAPPENED WHEN JESUS HUNG ON THE CROSS.
He was condemned to death by evil men who plotted against him & produced lying witness to convict Him. As He surveyed the howling mob cheering His suffering, the man who knew no sin, the only innocent man who ever walked this sin cursed planet uttered the words that still ring across the centuries; “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.” [Luke 23:34] Those 11 tortured words sweep away all our nonsensical excuses & reveal the barrenness of our hearts. They rip the cover off our unrighteous unforgiveness & show it for what it is.
Many of us say, “If only the people who hurt me would show some remorse, some sorrow, then maybe I would forgive them.” But consider Jesus on the cross. No one seemed sorry, quite the contrary-- they laughed, mocked & jeered Him. They hurled insults at Him. The people who killed Him were pleased with themselves. Pilate washed his hands of the whole sordid affair. The Jewish leaders hated Him with a fierce irrational hatred. They were happy to see Him suffer & die.
Evil was in the air that day. The forces of darkness had done their work & Jesus would soon be in a tomb. No one said, “I was wrong, this is a mistake.” And yet He said, “Father forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing,” --this is precisely what we must say to the quill throwers; the people who hurt us deliberately & repeatedly.
We must say it to those who intentionally attack us.
We must say it to those who casually & thoughtlessly wound us.
We must say it to those closest to us, to our husband or wife, to our children, to our parents, to our friends, to our neighbors, to our brothers & sisters.
“Father forgive them” is what we must say if we want to follow Christ.
Every Blessing,
John
…..Love is not touchy. 1 Corinthians 13: 5-- J.B Philips translation
What is the devil’s most deadly & deceptive trap?
What tool of Satan imprisons countless Christians, severs relationships, widens existing breaches between people in families & churches--& is a leading cause of disunity? It’s the trap of offense.
Offense is described as-“an act of causing anger, hurt feelings, resentment, displeasure, or an affront.”
If caught in its early stages it can be dealt with before much damage is done but the deeper the offense & the longer it’s allowed to fester, the greater the chance that it will turn into a poisonous root of bitterness & bury itself deep within the soul. The result will be a harden heart against people & ultimately God Himself.
When an offense becomes a stronghold, an individual will develop a pattern through which all incoming information gets processed & then they start filtering everything through past hurts, rejections & past injuries.
Offended people feel justified in withholding forgiveness from the offender.
Offended people feel justified in gossiping to others about the offense.
Offended people feel justified in enlisting sympathizers in their cause & turning other people against the offender.
Offended people will produce much fruit, namely; anger, outrage, jealousy, resentment, strife, bitterness, hatred, envy & broken relationships.
Offended people often don’t know they’ve fallen into the offense trap.
Offended people feel; “I was mistreated or misjudged—therefore I’m justified in my behavior.”
Very often offended Christians [or Christians so-called] will refuse to be a part any longer of the Christian community. The people with whom they meet & rub shoulders are other offended folk. Sunday to them becomes a day for sleeping late or visiting relatives & friends or a day at the beach. It’s not uncommon for these offended Christians to give up Bible reading & Bible study & God becomes a relic of their past, although they are known to continue to talk religious & carry a strong attitude of self-righteousness. The point of justification for the dismissal of God from their lives is that they’ve been hurt somewhere along the way & there are “too many hypocrites in the church.” This argument is simply an evasive tactic to justify one’s negative feelings toward others & of God Himself.
Satan knows how easy it is for all of us to hold on to grudges & he does everything in his power to remind us of the injustices done to us, real or imaginary. He knows that if he can get us to allow unforgiveness to remain in our hearts it gives him a foothold.
People get offended by the words or actions of others, & often sermons. They feel every sermon is intentionally aimed at them. They might say; “no one spoke to me, the pastor shook my hand but his eyes were on another person.” Daily we all are presented with tons of opportunities to get offended every single second of our lives.
People who become offended in a church, usually move on to another church. Since they never deal with their spirit of offense, they keep moving around looking for a perfect church; a church that will never hurt their feelings. The truth of the matter is there is no such thing as a church that will never hurt our feelings.
CONSIDER THE LOWLY PORCUPINE
If you’re walking through the woods & you hear a rattling sound, step lightly. It could be a deadly rattlesnake but you could also be in the proximity of a rodent called the porcupine.
The adult porcupine is about three feet long & weighs between 20 & 30 pounds. It’s known to rustle its quills to warn a potential predator to back off. In a worse case scenario [small animals such as dogs usually get the worst injuries] you could end up trying to pull out a bunch of barbed quills. The porcupines don’t have to aim perfectly either because they have on average 30,000 quills to throw, with fish-hook like barbs in them, located all over their bodies except their faces. [Thanks Wikipedia.]
When threatened the porcupine attacks by moving backward or sideways into the aggressor & the quills lodge in the aggressor’s skin. Every time the pierced victim moves, the quills penetrate further into its body. If the quills pierce vital organs the victim can die.
HAVE YOU NOTICED THERE ARE PORCUPINE PEOPLE?
We’ve all taken some quills along the way & to be truthful we’ve all thrown a few quills. There are some people who- through the look on their face & their body language seem to be saying,-“You take a chance if you mess with me. I have plenty of quills & I won’t hesitate to use them.” These “quill throwers” are raspy & harsh & if you have even the shortest of encounters with them you will doubtless come away carrying quills.
We meet “quill throwers” in all levels of life. They are in hospitals, doctor’s offices, schools, restaurants, department stores, driving down hi-ways & even in churches. You probably have one or two in your extended family.
Not only are there “Quill throwers,” there are also “Quill carriers.” If you’ve ever seen a church fight or for that matter a family feud you are aware of this. Quill carriers are folk who’ve taken some quills in life & have never gotten rid of them. Many times it’s because they don’t want to be healed. They savor the pain caused by quills.
GOD’S WORD SPEAKS TO THE PORCUPINE PROBLEM
In 1 Peter 4: there is what some call “The Peter Prescription.” Verse 8 says;--Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.
Notice Peter says—ABOVE ALL-love each other deeply. ……This is a biblical mandate! It means make every effort, -- go all out—make it priority one—love as if your life depended on it.
It may be painful to hear but the main reason we are super-bothered by others & the quills they throw at us is simple; we just don’t have the “love covering” we need to absorb the hurt & lighten up about the barbs thrown at us.
Notice Peter doesn’t say love covers-up sins, but love covers-over a multitude of sins.
When we don’t forgive others who trespass against us, or hit us with quills, the reason is—there’s not enough love to “cover it over.” Again…Love covers over a multitude of sins.
Love gets a little confusing because we mean all kinds of different things when we talk about love. I love to fish & I love chocolate ice cream however I have a much deeper commitment to my wife than I do those things. But I use the same word, love.
In the church we’re always saying-God is love-therefore we should love too but what do we mean when we say that? When we step out of the spiritual realm we have Hollywood & T.V presenting movies about love like Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve got mail, Titanic, Friends, & Dawson’s Creek. These things can’t help but affect us, & some of our expectations grow out of watching them. Harlequin Romance Magazines sells 130 million books each year; books purporting to tell us about love. Some of it might be good & some of it bad so it’s important that we understand what we’re really talking about when we speak of love.
In 1 Corinthians, Paul wrote to a church that had all the spiritual gifts but they argued constantly. They had asserted how smart & gifted they were & so Paul had been critiquing this complicated & conflicted Corinthian church. The Love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13 comes as almost an intrusion in the flow of the letter. Paul took great care to explain to them that though they had all these phenomenal gifts, anything minus love equals nothing. Zero.
When we think of love in the way the world presents it we’re usually talking about romantic love which is based on physical desirability. This love assumes that the loved- one is attractive & it assumes incredible emotional intensity so that one can’t help but pursue the loved one. But this is a far cry from what Paul is talking about because he writes love is more than an emotion. It’s capable of even loving the unlovable.
Sometimes when we use the word love we’re speaking of tolerance; you do your thing & I’ll do mine. Tolerance is good but it’s not the kind of love Paul is talking about. Sometimes love will compel us to be intolerant & demand change in an individual. Sometimes love will have to be tough, as in intervening in the life of a loved one who’s bound by drugs or other substances. It’s clear that tolerance isn’t the kind of love Paul’s talking about.
Sometimes love will be used as a cause; we love the environment so we wear wrist- bands & T-shirts to protest things that hurt the environment, but this isn’t the love Paul is talking about. Some of the meanest people in the world parade behind the banner of love for this or that cause & in crusading for tolerance; they can be so intolerant they’re downright dangerous. John Lennon wrote a song called “Give peace a chance,” & all the time he was at war with the Beatles. Their personal relationships were in shambles & they were calling the world to peace. Like the man who said, “I love mankind- its people I hate.”
The love Paul speaks about isn’t even friendship. Sometimes people will get sentimental & feel they have so much in common with an individual that they’ll say, “I love you.” There might even be an awkward hug & a few tears because the friendship touches them in such a way as to be thought of as love. Like two drunks in a bar who get a little lubricated & say, “I love you, man.” This isn’t the kind of love Paul is talking about.
As a matter of fact Paul isn’t going to let us guess what he’s talking about, he gets very concrete about love. He says love is patient. It can relax in the present. Love is willing to accept slow change & to try again. Love is patient & kind. Love is warm & sympathetic. It sees & feels the difficulties of the other person. It’s not cold & analytical. Love is kind & doesn’t envy. Love doesn’t boast & isn’t proud. Love avoids abrasive & inflammatory language. Love listens. Love is a dialogue. Love doesn’t scold a person like they were a family pet. Love isn’t easily angered. Love is more than biting the tongue; it works at the inner core of us.
Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes & perseveres. Love is constantly hoping for change in people & doesn’t give up after one good try. Love is going to try & try & try again. Love isn’t what we hear celebrities talk about on The Oprah Show.
Have you ever thought about the fact that right in the middle of the happy, romantic & love-filled marriage vows we start talking about better or worse, richer or poorer, sickness & in health? Just when we’re speaking of this feel-good love, we imagine those terrible scenarios. Why do we do that? It’s because deep inside we all want love that is secure. Deep down we know there is real, all embracing love. We want that love for ourselves & we want to be able to give it too. And so there it is in the vows- in the marriage ceremony.
But keep in mind; the love Paul speaks about is bigger than married love because he’s not talking to married couples. He’s talking to the church & he’s telling them this is the kind of loving relationships they should have. It’s the kind of love God loves us with.
FORGIVING THE QUILL THROWERS
These next words will be some of the most important words you’ll ever read because if you & I don’t get this thing called forgiveness right, we’ll miss the heart of the gospel. I am swinging this axe with great humility because I find forgiveness such a struggle. More than once in my life I’ve had people I trusted to prove unworthy of that trust by doing everything in their power to hurt me. As you know these kinds of people almost never ask forgiveness. But even in cases where I’ve been asked to forgive, & I’ve given that forgiveness to the best of my ability, I’d be less than honest if I didn’t say I still struggle with it. As Paul said, “I die daily.”
There’s no greater passage in the entire Bible that opens the heart of God on forgiveness than the narrative in Matthew chapter eighteen. I’m sure you’re familiar with it.
Even the disciples were having a hard time with forgiveness, so Peter came out & laid the difficulty of it right at the feet of Jesus. The Rabbinic teaching of the day said you should forgive someone up to three times & after that you could stop forgiving. To be on the safe side Peter doubled that & added one for magnanimity sake. He asked, “Lord when somebody messes me over, how many times should I allow that to happen before I stop forgiving them? Seven times?”
Jesus said, “No, Not seven times. Seventy times seven.” We’d be missing the point here if we think Jesus was talking about a literal number. Jesus was actually talking here about how grace should operate in the life of the believer when it comes to the difficulty of forgiveness.
So Jesus told a simple, crystal-clear, scintillating parable & explained the issue of forgiveness to His disciples as well as you & me. We don’t have to be rocket scientists, bible scholars or great theologians to get the point of this parable.
It’s a story about a king & his servant. The king has loaned his servant money & decides to call in the loan. It’s pay-back time. Servant A is the first man we meet. He has run up a whopping tab, roughly 12 million dollars. The point is, it’s such a vast sum it’s impossible to pay back. The servant is unable to pay so the king took the next step & ordered the servant & his wife & children to be sold into slavery & his entire estate to be put on the auction block. At least the king can salvage a little bit of money on this deal.
But the servant begins to beg for mercy. He’s trying to buy time. He’s hoping the king will cut him some slack. He literally pleads for his life. Then the most unexpected thing happens; like a bolt from the blue the king totally forgives & cancels the entire debt. Suddenly servant, wife, children, & estate are off the auction block.
Now put yourself in that servant’s shoes. How would you be feeling at that moment? When somebody gives you a break in traffic aren’t you more likely then to give someone else a break? But after all that forgiveness, servant A leaves as if nothing good has happened.
Enter servant B. Servant B owes servant A about $1.80 in today’s money. Like a scene from The Godfather, servant A says to servant B, “I’m going to remove your kneecaps unless you pay up.” Servant A shows servant B no mercy, instead he has servant B thrown into prison. We can agree that servant A is a jerk.
But there are always other eyes watching & someone went & told the king the whole story. Now for the second time servant A is called before the king. The king has another turn-around & this time his pity has turned to anger. He lowers the boom on servant A & throws him in prison.
The story is over for servant A & B but it’s not over for Peter & it’s not over for you & me. Jesus says, -- “Unless you & I forgive our brothers & sisters from the heart we’re going to wind up just like servant A.” And, oh, how God has forgiven the debt that you & I have run up. It’s far greater than 12 million dollars. The results of the tab are eternal death & separation from God in hell.
GOD IS EXTREMELY OBSESSIVE ABOUT FORGIVENESS
God is so obsessive that He mandates & orders forgiveness & just like any other scriptural mandate it’s for our own good. God knows that you & I will never be able to move toward wholeness, live victoriously & be healed until we let go of resentment, give up on revenge, & let Him take the quills out we’ve collected over the years.
The mistake we make is to look at the person who has wronged us & what they’ve done to us. This parable reminds us that’s a mistake. We need to look at who God is & what He’s done for us. There are no limits to forgiveness because there’s no limit to God’s grace.
The following is nothing new to most Christians but I have a feeling if we really took it seriously it would change the way we view the Lord’s Prayer.
Right in the middle of the Lord’s Prayer is a phrase that you & I, if we’re not careful will pray mindlessly. “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” Have we honestly thought about what we’re asking God to do here? Have you ever felt like falling silent at this point? We’re asking God to forgive us, to treat us --exactly the way we deal with other folks who’ve wronged us.
THE MOST PROFOUND, PUREST, HIGHEST, & FINEST EXAMPLE OF FORGIVENESS IN THE BIBLE HAPPENED WHEN JESUS HUNG ON THE CROSS.
He was condemned to death by evil men who plotted against him & produced lying witness to convict Him. As He surveyed the howling mob cheering His suffering, the man who knew no sin, the only innocent man who ever walked this sin cursed planet uttered the words that still ring across the centuries; “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.” [Luke 23:34] Those 11 tortured words sweep away all our nonsensical excuses & reveal the barrenness of our hearts. They rip the cover off our unrighteous unforgiveness & show it for what it is.
Many of us say, “If only the people who hurt me would show some remorse, some sorrow, then maybe I would forgive them.” But consider Jesus on the cross. No one seemed sorry, quite the contrary-- they laughed, mocked & jeered Him. They hurled insults at Him. The people who killed Him were pleased with themselves. Pilate washed his hands of the whole sordid affair. The Jewish leaders hated Him with a fierce irrational hatred. They were happy to see Him suffer & die.
Evil was in the air that day. The forces of darkness had done their work & Jesus would soon be in a tomb. No one said, “I was wrong, this is a mistake.” And yet He said, “Father forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing,” --this is precisely what we must say to the quill throwers; the people who hurt us deliberately & repeatedly.
We must say it to those who intentionally attack us.
We must say it to those who casually & thoughtlessly wound us.
We must say it to those closest to us, to our husband or wife, to our children, to our parents, to our friends, to our neighbors, to our brothers & sisters.
“Father forgive them” is what we must say if we want to follow Christ.
Every Blessing,
John
Friday, January 2, 2009
A New Way To Count Your Blessings
By John Stallings
A man bought a brand new Alpha Romeo & was so proud of it he wanted to celebrate.
So he went to his Catholic priest & asked, “Father, will you bless my new Alpha Romeo?” The priest said, “certainly, but what’s an Alpha Romeo?” “Never mind said the man, you wouldn’t understand.”
Then he went to a United Methodist Church & asked the pastor “Sir, would you bless my Alpha Romeo?” He said, “Certainly I will but what kind of dog is an Alpha Romeo?”
Exasperated, the man saw a Unitarian Church down the block & walked in & asked the pastor, “I just bought a new Alpha Romeo. Would you bless it?”
The Unitarian minister jumped up & exclaimed, “Fantastic! Would you give me a ride in it? Oh, wait, uh, what’s a blessing?”
There are probably others like me who’ve never seen an Alpha Romeo, & certainly have never gone for a ride in one, but we know exactly what a blessing is.
The Hebrew word for “bless” & “blessings” in its various usages is often the form of the word “esher,” which simply means “happiness.” Forms of that word are found more than forty times in scripture, including the statement of David in Psalm 144:15—Happy are the people whose God is the Lord.
But there’s another Hebrew word for “bless” found in the Old Testament about four-hundred times. It’s the word “barak” & it reflects something promised to someone lower in rank. A parent would promise to give his or her estate to a child. A slave-owner would pledge to bless his slave at a point in the future by setting him or her free. Most important for us, it refers to the promise of God, given to those who TRUST in Him.
You’ve probably seen the following article because it’s made the rounds via the internet. If I knew who to give credit for it I would gladly do so. I have somewhat revised & edited it.
“If you live in America & your parents are still alive & still married, you are very rare.
If you have clothes on your back, food in your fridge, a roof over your head & a place to sleep you’re richer than 75% of this world. If you have money in the bank & in your wallet, you’re among the top 8% of the worlds wealthy.
If you woke up this morning with more health than illness you are more blessed than the million who’ll not survive this week. If you’ve never been to jail, been in a war, been tortured or been so hungry you’d gladly eat from a dumpster, you’re ahead of 500 million people in the world. If you can go to church without fear of arrest, torture or death you’re more blessed than 3 billion in the world.”
On the average, if you did the math, you’d in all probability count 90 major blessing categories with roughly 10 real problems. That’s—90/10. This is good to know & to keep uppermost in our minds because it shows that our blessings exceed our problems.
As a matter of fact, looking at life with the attitude of counting our blessings, not our problems will change us from negative to positive thinkers in a heartbeat. To put it even more succinctly, the attitude of counting our blessings will cause us to be happier & have enough spiritual victory to constructively face our problems.
ADVERTISING PROMOTES DISCONTENT
We have a whole industry in the U.S devoted to fanning the flames of discontent. Last year in the America, 143.3 billion dollars was spent on advertising. Of the 180 countries for which we have statistics, that’s greater than the entire Gross National Product of all but 35 of them. [Wickipedia.org.]
The whole point of advertising is to make us unhappy with what we have, leaving us with the feeling that it’s outdated & old fashioned. The message we get pounded with is to discard what we have & buy something different. We see prettier houses, newer appliances & more appealing material things of every kind.
A world system encourages us to focus on what we don’t have so we’ll go out & regularly spur the economy. But if we act on this negativity, it will be impossible for us to be happy because we dwell on what we don’t have rather than what we do have. See how that works? So in actuality, we have to learn to live the exact opposite of what our society encourages; always keeping our blessings uppermost in our minds
COUNTING OUR BLESSINGS
I’ve found that when we’re thankful for what we have its hard to be mad at people. There’s just something positive that happens to us when we’re thankful. Angry people are people who feel that somehow life hasn’t been fair to them. But the truth is, they have enough to make them happy if they knew how to appreciate it. If people lost everything they had for a few days & got it back, that would cure them.
Most of us will miss out on life’s big prizes, such as The Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize, the Oscars, the Tony’s, & the Emmys. But we’re all eligible for life’s small pleasures; A pat on the back, a nine pound bass, a full moon, an empty parking space, a crackling fire, a great meal, a glorious sunset, & hot soup.
Do you thank God each morning for the very fact that He woke you up & you’re alive & kicking? Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but every day above ground is a good day.
AMERICA
Let’s talk about how blessed we are to be Americans. I know we’re going through some rough times right now, & we have many challenges but we still live in a blessed country. Many of us make more in one week than some people in other countries make in an entire year.
If you’ve ever traveled outside the U.S you know there’s just no place on earth like this land. Because of my experience in overseas travel, I can’t help but be upset when I hear people criticizing America. Every time I’ve visited a foreign country I’ve felt like kissing the ground when I got home. Don’t misunderstand me; It wasn’t because I didn’t have a great time or that I wasn’t with some wonderful people, it’s just that outside America there are so many things you have to be aware of.
I’m not running down other countries; however I truly believe that if everyone in the U.S would travel abroad for a few weeks, we’d have a lot more folk loving & respecting this great nation in which we live.
This is going to get a little “nitty-gritty” but there are a few things we need to be reminded of. Most everywhere you go outside America you have to watch the food you eat & the water you drink. When we stop at a rest stop here in the States we just assume there’ll be a fairly clean bathroom & certainly there’ll be some toilet paper. Am I right? But in many countries I’ve visited, the bathroom will be a hole in the ground. Forget the paper. Even if it’s available you have to pay extra for it. I could tell you stories.
We just take the good things for granted in our great country don’t we? When we go to the store the produce is sparklingly clean & abundant. There are several varieties of apples, oranges, grapefruit, lettuce, carrots, tomatoes & we can be almost certain the produce has been handled in a sanitary way. I learn about a new fruit or vegetable almost every time I go to the store.
In other countries; -- not so fast; you have to be careful what you eat. You pick up a piece of fruit in Mexico & eat it & you’ll probably get “Montezuma’s revenge.” You drink the water & you’ll get so sick that you’ll pray to die for about two weeks until its run its course—no pun intended. You may be safe in foreign countries if you go to certain upscale hotels to eat but I’ve seen my family all get sick overseas eating in carefully selected places. That’s just the way it is.
If you go to the Middle East, you’ll get Pharaoh’s revenge if you’re not careful. I’ve traveled with large groups when everyone in the group had diarrhea. I can tell you for sure, in most third world countries, all you have to do is smell the air & you know they’re not doing things just right when it comes to waste disposal.
In many foreign countries you have to watch to keep from stepping in filth on the streets. I don’t live in a rich community but in our neighborhood it’s illegal for a person to walk their dog & allow it to foul up the streets or other people’s yards. And dogs are not allowed to run loose in the neighborhood. I’m amazed at how clean the streets are kept & often find myself giving thanks that I live in a country with such high standards & so many resources.
I’m not for a moment going to suggest that America hasn’t made its mistakes. But you & I know-- this country doesn’t try to take over other countries, even when we win a war with them. A lot of folk got all bent out of shape over America liberating 50 million people in Iraq & Afghanistan, as if we committed a crime in doing so.
But look what Sadam Hussein did in invading Kuwait. What do you think he’d have done if he had the power America has? Its been said that if a nation wants to be rebuilt, all they have to do is attack us & when we finish kicking their posterior, we’ll go in & rebuild their country. You may remember, that’s what the Marshall plan was all about after World War 11.
FREEDOM!!!
We live in a land of freedom. Think about this; if you were found with a Bible in Saudi Arabia you could & probably would be decapitated. As you well know we have freedom of religion in this country. Do you think for a moment that people are this free everywhere?
I repeat, we are truly a free people. Have you ever had anyone to question your comings & goings? No one monitors when we go, where we go & how we go. It’s not that way in many parts of the world. In moving around in other countries, I’ve had the people at customs read every scrap of paper I had in my briefcase. We can ask questions in America & we can criticize the leadership. We can even run down our leaders without being shot or hanged. Try that in Iran. Cuba’s Castro pulls people out of bed in the middle of the night & throws them in jail for writing a poem he didn’t like.
We’ve grown up with these freedoms & we just take them for granted, but folks if we’re not vigilant we could very well lose what we have. Your pastor can stand in the pulpit & preach the gospel without the fear of going to jail for it, now that’s freedom much of the world doesn’t have.
I know there are corrupt cops but don’t we have relatively good law enforcement in this country? In some countries where I’ve been, if you have a “fender-bender,” you could be pulled from your car & beaten by the onlookers. You might have a wreck & call the law & a few hours later two cops show up, then stand around & discuss it between themselves. Also, bribery in law enforcement is huge in many foreign countries.
In one Caribbean country, Juda & I had our music CDs impounded at customs & we couldn’t afford to pay the entrance fee to get them into the country. The local pastor who’d invited us for meetings had a brother who was returning from New York & he was on our flight. When he saw what was happening he paid the fees & got us through customs. We later paid him back.
On my list of blessings is the medical care we have in this country. In the last couple of months we’ve had to avail ourselves of local ER facilities because of blood pressure issues Juda experienced. Thankfully she’s fine now but I can’t say enough positive things about the intense care she received. What a blessing it is to know when we need help in the middle of the night there is at our disposal a bevy of medically trained young men & women whose sole aim it is to make us comfortable while, irregardless of our rank in society they do all possible to save our lives & extend their length.
A NEW CONCEPT IN COUNTING YOUR BLESSINGS
As a rule, when we think of our blessings we automatically think of things God has added to our lives. But we should also be thankful for the things we no longer have to have. What if you sat down & made a list of things you used to think you couldn’t live without but now know you can? It could be a dream you had for your life that consumed all your energy but God has taken it from you & you have found, “Yes, I can live without that.”
It may be a new job you just had to have or a new account you set your hopes on. It may be a person around whom you built your life but now that person is gone. It was difficult for you to let go but you did, & now you’re stronger for it. It may be something you fought for, strived for, lived for, worked for & when you got it you found it wasn’t as important as you once thought.
Your list may contain things that were quite proper in themselves. Most of the things on your list will not be bad or evil or sinful. It’s anything that has happened in your life in the last year about which you can say, “God has shown me that I don’t have to have that in order to be happy.”
And what about times of pain & suffering which seemed to be for no good purpose but turned out to be blessings in disguise? That too should be on your list of blessings.
Have you ever thought about how important it is to have hope in this life? Do you know how many people don’t have any hope in life at all? There may be someone reading this piece that only has a slight glimmer of hope for their future.
SPIRITUAL BLESSINGS
In Ephesians 1:3 Paul wrote; Blessed be the God & father of our Lord Jesus Christ who hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ….
In order to have these blessings we must accept & obey Christ. This means believing in Him as the Son of God & confessing faith in His name before men, after which He adds us to His church. If you aren’t a Christian let me urge you to trust Christ right now for your salvation.
Paul also said, ---We aren’t like those who have no hope?
1 Peter 1:3 says,--Blessed be God & Father of our Lord Jesus Christ which according to His abundance has begotten us again to a lively HOPE by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
THE BLESSINGS OF THE CHURCH
What about the church itself? Do you thank God for the blessing of the church? Do you thank God for your brothers & sisters? Many times I think about the great gospel workers who went before us. Many of them risked their lives & are now on the ropes financially because of all the years they spent beating the bushes to see folk saved & blessed.
Do we thank God for each other? Do we pray for each other? Are we thankful that we have places we can come together & hear beautiful music & sing songs of worship? God’s people are a blessing, don’t you agree?
Some time ago I came across a letter written by a woman named Lois Kaufman after the death of her husband & her two subsequent tumor operations. [The letter was published in the Biblical Bulletin, a publication of the Biblical Theological Seminary in Hatfield Pennsylvania.] She says;
Dear Jesus,
I’ve written a lot of “Thank yous” lately but this is my first one to you. Until now I didn’t appreciate your gifts to me these past several months.
Thank you for taking Don home to be with you. Now I’ll never be concerned with what the future holds for him. His days are guaranteed. Thank you for giving him such a wonderful Christmas. Thank you for making his last birthday last Sunday his very best.
Thank you for putting me in the hospital three weeks after he died & showing me the way you could use his death in my life. I wasn’t always sure how to approach others with the Gospel, but now you have given me so many openings I can hardly handle them all.
Thank you for my recent surgery & for the lessons it taught me. Especially for showing me how much I needed you. Thanks for letting me see what it’s like to face surgery & suffering without you as I watched the difference in the lives of my roommates.
Thank you for the lessons Becky & Lori [her daughters] have learned from this. I could never have taught them the way you did. That’s because of the great Teacher you are. I can’t wait to see what you give them on their heavenly report cards.
You know Jesus; I wouldn’t have planned my life this way. In fact, I would have planned it just the opposite. I would have sought to avoid death’s knocks. I would have ducked out on the surgeries & tried to pretend Christians were kept well by you all the time. But I would have missed out on so much.
The kids are sorry they couldn’t be with their daddy on father’s day but we were glad he could be with both his earthly & heavenly Father this year.
Oh, I could go on with this letter, but I could never cover everything I have to thank you for. So I’ll send more, but for now please accept this as a beginning.
GRATEFULLY YOURS,
LOIS
A song was written in 1897 called “Count your blessings.” The words were written by Johnson Oatman Jr. & the music was written by Edwin Excell. I remember singing it in church as a kid.
It seemed like just another song to me at the time but I’ve begun to understand its importance. Here’s the chorus;
Count your blessings name them one by one,
Count your blessings see what God has done.
Count your blessings; name them one by one,
Count your many blessings see what God has done.
Blessings,
John
A man bought a brand new Alpha Romeo & was so proud of it he wanted to celebrate.
So he went to his Catholic priest & asked, “Father, will you bless my new Alpha Romeo?” The priest said, “certainly, but what’s an Alpha Romeo?” “Never mind said the man, you wouldn’t understand.”
Then he went to a United Methodist Church & asked the pastor “Sir, would you bless my Alpha Romeo?” He said, “Certainly I will but what kind of dog is an Alpha Romeo?”
Exasperated, the man saw a Unitarian Church down the block & walked in & asked the pastor, “I just bought a new Alpha Romeo. Would you bless it?”
The Unitarian minister jumped up & exclaimed, “Fantastic! Would you give me a ride in it? Oh, wait, uh, what’s a blessing?”
There are probably others like me who’ve never seen an Alpha Romeo, & certainly have never gone for a ride in one, but we know exactly what a blessing is.
The Hebrew word for “bless” & “blessings” in its various usages is often the form of the word “esher,” which simply means “happiness.” Forms of that word are found more than forty times in scripture, including the statement of David in Psalm 144:15—Happy are the people whose God is the Lord.
But there’s another Hebrew word for “bless” found in the Old Testament about four-hundred times. It’s the word “barak” & it reflects something promised to someone lower in rank. A parent would promise to give his or her estate to a child. A slave-owner would pledge to bless his slave at a point in the future by setting him or her free. Most important for us, it refers to the promise of God, given to those who TRUST in Him.
You’ve probably seen the following article because it’s made the rounds via the internet. If I knew who to give credit for it I would gladly do so. I have somewhat revised & edited it.
“If you live in America & your parents are still alive & still married, you are very rare.
If you have clothes on your back, food in your fridge, a roof over your head & a place to sleep you’re richer than 75% of this world. If you have money in the bank & in your wallet, you’re among the top 8% of the worlds wealthy.
If you woke up this morning with more health than illness you are more blessed than the million who’ll not survive this week. If you’ve never been to jail, been in a war, been tortured or been so hungry you’d gladly eat from a dumpster, you’re ahead of 500 million people in the world. If you can go to church without fear of arrest, torture or death you’re more blessed than 3 billion in the world.”
On the average, if you did the math, you’d in all probability count 90 major blessing categories with roughly 10 real problems. That’s—90/10. This is good to know & to keep uppermost in our minds because it shows that our blessings exceed our problems.
As a matter of fact, looking at life with the attitude of counting our blessings, not our problems will change us from negative to positive thinkers in a heartbeat. To put it even more succinctly, the attitude of counting our blessings will cause us to be happier & have enough spiritual victory to constructively face our problems.
ADVERTISING PROMOTES DISCONTENT
We have a whole industry in the U.S devoted to fanning the flames of discontent. Last year in the America, 143.3 billion dollars was spent on advertising. Of the 180 countries for which we have statistics, that’s greater than the entire Gross National Product of all but 35 of them. [Wickipedia.org.]
The whole point of advertising is to make us unhappy with what we have, leaving us with the feeling that it’s outdated & old fashioned. The message we get pounded with is to discard what we have & buy something different. We see prettier houses, newer appliances & more appealing material things of every kind.
A world system encourages us to focus on what we don’t have so we’ll go out & regularly spur the economy. But if we act on this negativity, it will be impossible for us to be happy because we dwell on what we don’t have rather than what we do have. See how that works? So in actuality, we have to learn to live the exact opposite of what our society encourages; always keeping our blessings uppermost in our minds
COUNTING OUR BLESSINGS
I’ve found that when we’re thankful for what we have its hard to be mad at people. There’s just something positive that happens to us when we’re thankful. Angry people are people who feel that somehow life hasn’t been fair to them. But the truth is, they have enough to make them happy if they knew how to appreciate it. If people lost everything they had for a few days & got it back, that would cure them.
Most of us will miss out on life’s big prizes, such as The Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize, the Oscars, the Tony’s, & the Emmys. But we’re all eligible for life’s small pleasures; A pat on the back, a nine pound bass, a full moon, an empty parking space, a crackling fire, a great meal, a glorious sunset, & hot soup.
Do you thank God each morning for the very fact that He woke you up & you’re alive & kicking? Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but every day above ground is a good day.
AMERICA
Let’s talk about how blessed we are to be Americans. I know we’re going through some rough times right now, & we have many challenges but we still live in a blessed country. Many of us make more in one week than some people in other countries make in an entire year.
If you’ve ever traveled outside the U.S you know there’s just no place on earth like this land. Because of my experience in overseas travel, I can’t help but be upset when I hear people criticizing America. Every time I’ve visited a foreign country I’ve felt like kissing the ground when I got home. Don’t misunderstand me; It wasn’t because I didn’t have a great time or that I wasn’t with some wonderful people, it’s just that outside America there are so many things you have to be aware of.
I’m not running down other countries; however I truly believe that if everyone in the U.S would travel abroad for a few weeks, we’d have a lot more folk loving & respecting this great nation in which we live.
This is going to get a little “nitty-gritty” but there are a few things we need to be reminded of. Most everywhere you go outside America you have to watch the food you eat & the water you drink. When we stop at a rest stop here in the States we just assume there’ll be a fairly clean bathroom & certainly there’ll be some toilet paper. Am I right? But in many countries I’ve visited, the bathroom will be a hole in the ground. Forget the paper. Even if it’s available you have to pay extra for it. I could tell you stories.
We just take the good things for granted in our great country don’t we? When we go to the store the produce is sparklingly clean & abundant. There are several varieties of apples, oranges, grapefruit, lettuce, carrots, tomatoes & we can be almost certain the produce has been handled in a sanitary way. I learn about a new fruit or vegetable almost every time I go to the store.
In other countries; -- not so fast; you have to be careful what you eat. You pick up a piece of fruit in Mexico & eat it & you’ll probably get “Montezuma’s revenge.” You drink the water & you’ll get so sick that you’ll pray to die for about two weeks until its run its course—no pun intended. You may be safe in foreign countries if you go to certain upscale hotels to eat but I’ve seen my family all get sick overseas eating in carefully selected places. That’s just the way it is.
If you go to the Middle East, you’ll get Pharaoh’s revenge if you’re not careful. I’ve traveled with large groups when everyone in the group had diarrhea. I can tell you for sure, in most third world countries, all you have to do is smell the air & you know they’re not doing things just right when it comes to waste disposal.
In many foreign countries you have to watch to keep from stepping in filth on the streets. I don’t live in a rich community but in our neighborhood it’s illegal for a person to walk their dog & allow it to foul up the streets or other people’s yards. And dogs are not allowed to run loose in the neighborhood. I’m amazed at how clean the streets are kept & often find myself giving thanks that I live in a country with such high standards & so many resources.
I’m not for a moment going to suggest that America hasn’t made its mistakes. But you & I know-- this country doesn’t try to take over other countries, even when we win a war with them. A lot of folk got all bent out of shape over America liberating 50 million people in Iraq & Afghanistan, as if we committed a crime in doing so.
But look what Sadam Hussein did in invading Kuwait. What do you think he’d have done if he had the power America has? Its been said that if a nation wants to be rebuilt, all they have to do is attack us & when we finish kicking their posterior, we’ll go in & rebuild their country. You may remember, that’s what the Marshall plan was all about after World War 11.
FREEDOM!!!
We live in a land of freedom. Think about this; if you were found with a Bible in Saudi Arabia you could & probably would be decapitated. As you well know we have freedom of religion in this country. Do you think for a moment that people are this free everywhere?
I repeat, we are truly a free people. Have you ever had anyone to question your comings & goings? No one monitors when we go, where we go & how we go. It’s not that way in many parts of the world. In moving around in other countries, I’ve had the people at customs read every scrap of paper I had in my briefcase. We can ask questions in America & we can criticize the leadership. We can even run down our leaders without being shot or hanged. Try that in Iran. Cuba’s Castro pulls people out of bed in the middle of the night & throws them in jail for writing a poem he didn’t like.
We’ve grown up with these freedoms & we just take them for granted, but folks if we’re not vigilant we could very well lose what we have. Your pastor can stand in the pulpit & preach the gospel without the fear of going to jail for it, now that’s freedom much of the world doesn’t have.
I know there are corrupt cops but don’t we have relatively good law enforcement in this country? In some countries where I’ve been, if you have a “fender-bender,” you could be pulled from your car & beaten by the onlookers. You might have a wreck & call the law & a few hours later two cops show up, then stand around & discuss it between themselves. Also, bribery in law enforcement is huge in many foreign countries.
In one Caribbean country, Juda & I had our music CDs impounded at customs & we couldn’t afford to pay the entrance fee to get them into the country. The local pastor who’d invited us for meetings had a brother who was returning from New York & he was on our flight. When he saw what was happening he paid the fees & got us through customs. We later paid him back.
On my list of blessings is the medical care we have in this country. In the last couple of months we’ve had to avail ourselves of local ER facilities because of blood pressure issues Juda experienced. Thankfully she’s fine now but I can’t say enough positive things about the intense care she received. What a blessing it is to know when we need help in the middle of the night there is at our disposal a bevy of medically trained young men & women whose sole aim it is to make us comfortable while, irregardless of our rank in society they do all possible to save our lives & extend their length.
A NEW CONCEPT IN COUNTING YOUR BLESSINGS
As a rule, when we think of our blessings we automatically think of things God has added to our lives. But we should also be thankful for the things we no longer have to have. What if you sat down & made a list of things you used to think you couldn’t live without but now know you can? It could be a dream you had for your life that consumed all your energy but God has taken it from you & you have found, “Yes, I can live without that.”
It may be a new job you just had to have or a new account you set your hopes on. It may be a person around whom you built your life but now that person is gone. It was difficult for you to let go but you did, & now you’re stronger for it. It may be something you fought for, strived for, lived for, worked for & when you got it you found it wasn’t as important as you once thought.
Your list may contain things that were quite proper in themselves. Most of the things on your list will not be bad or evil or sinful. It’s anything that has happened in your life in the last year about which you can say, “God has shown me that I don’t have to have that in order to be happy.”
And what about times of pain & suffering which seemed to be for no good purpose but turned out to be blessings in disguise? That too should be on your list of blessings.
Have you ever thought about how important it is to have hope in this life? Do you know how many people don’t have any hope in life at all? There may be someone reading this piece that only has a slight glimmer of hope for their future.
SPIRITUAL BLESSINGS
In Ephesians 1:3 Paul wrote; Blessed be the God & father of our Lord Jesus Christ who hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ….
In order to have these blessings we must accept & obey Christ. This means believing in Him as the Son of God & confessing faith in His name before men, after which He adds us to His church. If you aren’t a Christian let me urge you to trust Christ right now for your salvation.
Paul also said, ---We aren’t like those who have no hope?
1 Peter 1:3 says,--Blessed be God & Father of our Lord Jesus Christ which according to His abundance has begotten us again to a lively HOPE by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
THE BLESSINGS OF THE CHURCH
What about the church itself? Do you thank God for the blessing of the church? Do you thank God for your brothers & sisters? Many times I think about the great gospel workers who went before us. Many of them risked their lives & are now on the ropes financially because of all the years they spent beating the bushes to see folk saved & blessed.
Do we thank God for each other? Do we pray for each other? Are we thankful that we have places we can come together & hear beautiful music & sing songs of worship? God’s people are a blessing, don’t you agree?
Some time ago I came across a letter written by a woman named Lois Kaufman after the death of her husband & her two subsequent tumor operations. [The letter was published in the Biblical Bulletin, a publication of the Biblical Theological Seminary in Hatfield Pennsylvania.] She says;
Dear Jesus,
I’ve written a lot of “Thank yous” lately but this is my first one to you. Until now I didn’t appreciate your gifts to me these past several months.
Thank you for taking Don home to be with you. Now I’ll never be concerned with what the future holds for him. His days are guaranteed. Thank you for giving him such a wonderful Christmas. Thank you for making his last birthday last Sunday his very best.
Thank you for putting me in the hospital three weeks after he died & showing me the way you could use his death in my life. I wasn’t always sure how to approach others with the Gospel, but now you have given me so many openings I can hardly handle them all.
Thank you for my recent surgery & for the lessons it taught me. Especially for showing me how much I needed you. Thanks for letting me see what it’s like to face surgery & suffering without you as I watched the difference in the lives of my roommates.
Thank you for the lessons Becky & Lori [her daughters] have learned from this. I could never have taught them the way you did. That’s because of the great Teacher you are. I can’t wait to see what you give them on their heavenly report cards.
You know Jesus; I wouldn’t have planned my life this way. In fact, I would have planned it just the opposite. I would have sought to avoid death’s knocks. I would have ducked out on the surgeries & tried to pretend Christians were kept well by you all the time. But I would have missed out on so much.
The kids are sorry they couldn’t be with their daddy on father’s day but we were glad he could be with both his earthly & heavenly Father this year.
Oh, I could go on with this letter, but I could never cover everything I have to thank you for. So I’ll send more, but for now please accept this as a beginning.
GRATEFULLY YOURS,
LOIS
A song was written in 1897 called “Count your blessings.” The words were written by Johnson Oatman Jr. & the music was written by Edwin Excell. I remember singing it in church as a kid.
It seemed like just another song to me at the time but I’ve begun to understand its importance. Here’s the chorus;
Count your blessings name them one by one,
Count your blessings see what God has done.
Count your blessings; name them one by one,
Count your many blessings see what God has done.
Blessings,
John
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