By John Stallings
One second. One mistake. One firing of a missile in the midst of the war.
The missile cannot come back. The weapon is now headed for you. And the one who fired it is on your side. It is war. You’ve been hit by “friendly fire.” It is the flack that we take from our own side.
And this is not Baghdad or the Battle of the Bulge or Pork Chop Hill. I am speaking of the many walking wounded in the body of Christ who’ve been hurt by other believers, people who have been battered and bruised by the betrayal of a Christian. Much as Malcus, the man whose ear was severed by Simon Peter’s sword, you’ve been hurt by a “good person.”
This hurt is no mistake. They meant to say those words. They meant to plot against you. They meant to bring you down. And you will never be exactly the same. The years you’ve spent building a great reputation will now be burned before your very eyes. You will suffer with this for the rest of your life. You might not go back to any church for quite some time. You will lick your wounds. You will be possessed for the rest of your life by the memory of the pain. And the pain can turn into malignant bitterness.
We’ve all been hurt at one time or another. Sometimes its friendly fire and sometimes the misguided bomb intended for the enemy that lands right smack dab in the middle of our hearts
Our parents hurt us, our children, our marriage partners, the people at work, the dog down the street. Hurts come easy.
Look at the biblical record: Noah was hurt, Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, David, Jesus, Peter, Paul...I could go right on down the line. None of us are so holy, so good, and so perfect so as to avoid hurt. The majority of people that I’ve tried to help over the years were in need of help because of some hurt they experienced.
Though I’m not an expert on addictions, it seems to me that in the overwhelmingly majority of cases, the substances people get hooked on aren’t as much the problem as is finding a way to quell the hurt that racks the individual.
Hurts come from a variety of sources and due to a variety of reasons:
• The loss of a loved one, through death, divorce, or breakup.
• An emotional or physical attack from some other person.
• Long-term emotional or physical abuse that may or may not be currently happening.
• An unanswered prayer.
• An unmet expectation.
• A slight or offense from a coworker, a church member, classmate….
• Your boss fails to notice a job well done.
• A friend says something thoughtless and cruel.
Hurts can range from some of the most terrible things imaginable to the slight offenses of some passing moment. So, what do we do when we are stung by such hurts? I’ll try my best under God to offer some light on this question.
1. DON’T CURSE THE HURT
Joseph Richardson, a New York millionaire, lived and died in a house only five feet wide – believe it or not. It was called the "Spit House." It was called that because you could stand against one wall and spit all the way across to the other wall. Mr. Richardson owned a very narrow lot of land. Since it was of no use to him, he decided to sell it to one of the neighborhood owners. The neighbor, however, did not want to pay Joseph what he felt the property was worth. Therefore, to spite the neighbor, Richardson put up this so-called “Spit House” which disfigured the whole block. Then he condemned himself to a life of discomfort by spending the rest of his life in it. Do you and I have any “spit houses” in our lives? “Spite house” would be just as apropos.
A woman left instructions in her will for the executor to take one dollar from her estate, invest it, and pay the interest to her husband, "as evidence of my estimate of his worth."
Another woman bequeathed her divorced husband one dollar to buy a rope with which he would hopefully hang himself.
Banks have long printed checks in a wide spectrum of colors. Some, as you know, have offered checks with floral or scenic backgrounds. The modest-sized Bank of Marin in Marin Country, California, has gone one step further. Its customers can simply bring in their own photograph or drawing and have it printed onto a standard check form.
Undeterred by the higher cost, more than 500 customers signed up for the illustrated checks. But perhaps the most imaginative (and vindictive) customer is the one who ordered special checks to be used solely for making his alimony payments. They show him kissing his beautiful new wife.
How about one more: Consider this Swedish man. When his wife filed for divorce, he cashed in all their investments -- worth $81,300 -- and burned the cash. There was nothing left for either of them but a pile of ashes. In each instance, really, who hurt worse -- the hater or the hated? It is pretty obvious, isn't it?
QUESTION;
• How many acts of disrespect does it take, how many years of dishonor must be lived out, before one has fully repaid a mother or father for being an alcoholic, an abuser, an absentee parent?
• How many put downs will it take until the other person is sufficiently put down?
• How many checks showing the man kissing his new wife will it take before the debt is paid in full?
Sometimes repayment is impossible! Faith plays a part here. If I truly believe that God fights my battles for me, then I can leave the matter up to Him. If I do not believe that, then I must take matters into my own hands.
• Hebrews 10:30 says, “For we know Him who said, ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ and again, the Lord will judge His people….”
• Deuteronomy 32:35 adds, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay. In due time, their foot will slip; their day of disaster is near and their doom rushes upon them.”
• Romans 12:17-19 says, “Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,' says the Lord.”
Revenge belongs to who? God! The fact is, when you retaliate against another person, then God stops acting on your behalf. If you’re disciplining one of your children and I come and intentionally get in your way, you would no doubt stop spanking your child and discipline me. God operates the same way.
Romans 12:14 offers a better way to handle hurts. Paul says “Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse.” The opposite of blessing is cursing. To bless means to speak positively to/about those who are speaking negatively about you. Build up those who are tearing you down.
Encourage those who discourage you. Look at the example of Jesus. Isaiah 53:3-7 notes:
“He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.”
Jesus did not curse them. He could have, but He didn’t. He blessed instead of cursed. He died praying for His enemies. He died praying for their forgiveness. His example is our standard.
Have you noticed that today mental health professionals hammer away at the point: it's not what happens to us that determines the quality of our lives; it's how we respond to what happens to us that counts? The quality of our lives is mediated through our point-of-view, our mind-set, responses and assumptions.
2. DON’T REHEARSE THE HURT
In the late 1990s, Pete Peterson was appointed U.S. ambassador to Vietnam.
Peterson had served six years as a prisoner of war in the dreaded "Hanoi Hilton" prison camp. When asked how he could return to the land where he'd endured years of starvation, brutality and torture, he replied, "I'm not angry. I left that at the gates of the prison when I walked out in 1972. I just left it behind me and decided to move forward with my life.
Job 5:2 (Good News), “to worry yourself to death with resentment would be a foolish thing to do.”
Resentment is one of the great killers of our modern age. When you’ve got resentment, you’re focusing on the past, not on the present or the future.
Ephesians 4:31 says “Get rid of all bitterness, anger, slander along with every form of malice.”
1 Corinthians 13:4-5 (God’s Word translation) says, “Love is patient. Love is kind. Love isn't jealous. It doesn't sing its own praises. It isn't arrogant. It isn't rude. It doesn't think about itself. It isn't irritable. It doesn't keep track of wrongs.”
The Message puts it this way:
“Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.
Love doesn't strut,
Doesn't have a swelled head,
Doesn't force itself on others,
Isn't always "me first,"
Doesn't fly off the handle,
Doesn't keep score of the sins of others….”
Every time we review a hurt, it gets bigger. For instance, let’s say that someone criticizes you. Criticism hurts. I know. But if you keep thinking about the criticism, in time you begin to think that the whole world’s against you. The event gets blown all out of proportion. It gets magnified every time you rehearse it.
Quite honestly, I have known some very angry, bitter people. It’s almost as if they have all of their past and current hurts stand in review each and every morning. They inspect them, rehearse them, and make their vows before them.
• “I will get even with him even if it is the last thing I do…!”
• “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth…!”
• “He got me once, I will get him back twice!”
• “She will live to regret the time that she hurt me. I do not get mad, I just get even!”
Every day it is the same evil thing – rehearsal time.
ANTWONE FISHER
Here’s a short illustration from the movie “Antwone Fisher.” Based on a true story, the film tells of a young man who grew up in an abusive foster home. Over the years, Antwone grew bitter towards his natural family for giving him up. By the time he enlisted in the Navy, his anger got him into so many fist fights that he was sent to Navy psychologist Jerome Davenport, played by Denzel Washington who becomes a father figure to Antwone.
After they have built trust with each other, Antwone shares a powerful poem with Davenport. At this critical juncture, his counselor raises the key issue that Antwone must deal with to find healing.
The conversation takes place just after the Thanksgiving meal at his counselor's house. Antwone gives Davenport a folded piece of paper, and Davenport reads it aloud thoughtfully.
"Who will cry for the little boy
Lost and all alone?
Who will cry for the little boy
Abandoned without his own?
Who will cry for the little boy?
He cried himself to sleep.
Who will cry for the little boy
Who never had for keeps?
Who will cry for the little boy
Who walked the burning sand?
Who will cry for the little boy
The boy inside the man?
Who will cry for the little boy
Who knew well hurt and pain?
Who will cry for the little boy
Who died and died again?
Who will cry for the little boy?
A good boy he tried to be.
Who will cry for the little boy
Who cries inside of me?
Davenport says, "This is excellent, Antwone. You're good because you’re honest. You are more honest than most people. Even in your anger—the only thing you’re not honest with yourself about is your need to find your own family. Your natural family. You're upset with them because you feel they didn't come to your rescue. Maybe they didn't know."
Antwone replies bitterly, "How could they not have known?"
Davenport says, "That's the question you need to ask.”
Antwone says, "Why do I have to forgive?"
Davenport answers, "To free yourself, so you can get on with your life."
I like those last two lines. “Why do I have to forgive?” Davenport answers, “To free yourself, so you can get on with your life.”
3. DON’T NURSE THE HURT
Let me put it bluntly:
• Hatred is nothing more than a slow form of suicide. It can and will kill.
• Someone once put it this way, “It is not what we eat as much as what eats us that kills a person.”
“Seeking revenge is like taking poison and hoping the other person is going to die.” Or as the Chinese say: “If you're not willing to forgive, you better get ready to dig two graves."
During World War II, the U.S. submarine Tang surfaced under cover of darkness to fire on a large Japanese convoy off the coast of China. Since previous raids had left the American vessel with only eight torpedoes, the accuracy of each shot was essential. The first seven silent missiles were on target.
But when the eighth was launched, it suddenly veered off course. Instead of hitting its intended target, it boomeranged back unseen to strike the crew that had launched it. Too late, the emergency alarm to submerge rang out. Within a matter of seconds, the U.S. sub received a direct hit and sank almost instantly.
In the same way, we're also capable, while intent on attacking others, of doing irreparable damage to ourselves. The missiles of anger and hate we launch can return to hurt us. Again, anger can be a poison that kills.
Whenever we nurse a hurt, we give life to it. In short, we encourage it to grow and grow. How do we do this?
• By showing it off to others.
• By parading it around for others to see.
• By enlisting people to share in the offense.
• By emphasizing it, by exaggerating it.
• By feeding it.
And how do we feed a hurt, you ask?
• We feed it self-pity.
• We feed it anger.
• We feed it bitterness.
• We feed it hate!
The more that we feed it, the more it grows until the hurt can literally become all consuming. Someone has written that "blowing out the other fellow's candle won't make yours shine any brighter!"
Ephesians 4:26-27 “Don’t let the sun go down while you’re still angry and do not give the devil a foothold.” It’s OK to be angry. Anger is a legitimate response to hurt. However, it is important to remember that anger must have a time limit. It can’t go on and on and on and last forever. When we hold on to anger for an extended period of time, it can turn into bitterness, resentment, or even hatred. All of those things are sin. Job 18:4 therefore warns, “You’re only hurting yourself with your anger.”
You cannot please everybody. In fact, in trying to please everybody you’re guaranteeing you’re going to be hurt. Just about the time you get Person A pleased, Person B gets upset. Just about the time Person B gets satisfied, Person A gets upset. You have seen it happen.
Even God can’t please everybody. One person is praying for rain today. Someone else is saying they want it to be sunny. You get two people on opposite sides of the ballgame both praying for their team to win. This is an election year. Millions of people are going to pray for the Democratic candidate to win in November while millions more are going to pray for the Republican candidate to win. Whose prayer does God answer? Which group does He please and which group does He disappoint?Again, even God can’t please everybody. Only a fool would try to accomplish what even God can’t do. Give up your hurts – now – to God. Vengeance belongs to Him anyway.
No longer curse your hurt, rehearse your hurt, or nurse your hurt. Instead, just hand them over to God today -- once and for all. In other words, forgive.
Don’t place absolute trust in people.
Scripture says- “Thus says the LORD: Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart departs from the LORD” (Jer. 17:5).
In the interest of balance, you and I must come to terms with the fact that everyone is human and will fail you at sometime or another. Even the pastor will make mistakes. The only one you can trust entirely without fail is God.
Realizing that any human can fall short, the degree of trust we place in people must be limited and will depend on their track record. The more we get to know a person’s character and the history of their behavior, we’ll be able to determine how trustworthy they are. This is one of the reasons why the scriptures tell us to get to know our pastors and spiritual leaders — so from their godly lifestyle, we’ll be able to trust their leadership. “And we urge you, brethren, to know those who labor among you, and are over you in the Lord and admonish you.” (1 Thess. 5:12).
There’s a difference between “love” and “trust.”
Remember that love and forgiveness is granted unconditionally, but trust must be “earned.” Trust is the acquired confidence in a person’s actions. We certainly can, and should trust persons who show trustworthy behavior, but because all men have the potential for failure, we should never put an infallible sense of trust in anyone but God.
When the Clock Stops
My first pastorate was a very small church in West Florida. One of my families was a poor family who lived in an old house on the banks of the Swanee River. I would go to visit periodically and we would sit in their living room and talk. One day I noticed that the clock was wrong. It said nine o’clock when, in fact, it was noon. I said nothing. But I saw the same thing the next month and then the next month. Finally, I said something to the husband and wife. Tears came to their eyes. “That was the moment our boy died ten years ago,” they told me. The clock had stopped in their lives.
The pain of friendly fire can stop the clock. This happens to people who get hurt and who fail to turn it over to God. The clock stops. They go through life, month after month, year after year, but the clock stopped in their lives way back when they were hurt. Today it’s popular to be a victim. But being a victim is not a good way to live because life cannot go forward when the clock has stopped at the point of our last betrayal.
What’s the most religious or spiritual thing you can do in a case like this? I would say unequivocally, the most spiritual thing you an I can do in all cases of hurt is to….
Forgive.
There was a time in my life and ministry, when some things came together to bring pain. I can’t relate many details. They’re too painful to me and too personal for others.
I was hurt and I brooded over my pain. For a while I was unforgiving in my heart toward several individuals. The pain festered for a long time. I would say, “These folk have hurt me and ruined something good for me.”
I was wrong. There is no resurrection for those who suffer without Gethsemane submission. There is no new life. There is only the grave. If that is your story, it doesn’t have to end that way. There is always a Gethsemane moment available for you. For me, I found my Gethsemane in a small apartment where I lived alone from nearly two years. I said, “Lord, this is in your hands now. Not that person. Not those people.”
One day, I saw the shadow of a cross coming over me. I knew crucifixion was coming and it came. I felt moments when the Father had abandoned me. But in my heart of hearts I knew He had abandoned His Son, so that He would never abandon me. I knew that for new green shoots to again appear in my life I had to embrace the thing that had come against me, to release and forgive those who may have seemed to bring the hammer and the nails and the cross. I cried and I cried. The tomb opened. I rose, and I lived again.
It didn’t take years of counseling. It took one moment of saying, “I want to know Him and the power of His resurrection in my life. I want take up my cross and follow Him, to claim Him as Sovereign King even in my rejection and my betrayals.”
God will transform you if you’ve been hurt, wounded, abandoned, sinned against, or betrayed. You and I can go from a victim to a victor by trusting in the One who was hurt, wounded, and rejected. The question isn’t, How do we stop hurt from coming? The question is, what do we do with it -for it will surely come to us? The question may also be put, Will I remain a victim, or will I move on to being a victor with Christ?
There is an answer; there is a way to healing. But I warn you, it will involve another kind of pain — the pain of Christ’s cross. As Paul says, “I Die daily.” But that cross will bring resurrection, and the new life He brings will also make the clock start ticking again.
Jesus Christ has transformed the cross from an instrument of destruction to an instrument of salvation ordained by God.
In Him there can be no more victims — only victors. Remember His words as he read from the scroll of Isaiah…..
God's Spirit is on me; He's chosen me to preach the Message of good news to the poor, Sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, To set the burdened and battered free…….Luke 4:18—The Message
Blessings,
John
Saturday, April 28, 2018
Saturday, April 21, 2018
Are You Too Irritable?
By John Stallings
Did you know there are some “respectable sins?” These are sins that we don’t take very seriously. Irritability is one of those sins.
Irritability is-- a strong sense of annoyance or exasperation or impatience over, too often, the slightest little provocation. - An irritable person is an impatient person. We all can be irritable at times but an irritable person is irritable most of the time.
An irritable person is no fun to be with because you have to walk on eggshells for fear of setting them off. But if the irritable person is in your family or your work place, you have no choice but to coexist with them.
Ask yourself this:
Are you upset with someone or with some circumstance a lot of the time? If the answer is yes then you’re most likely an irritable person. It’s rather simple; 1 Peter 4:8 says—Love covers a multitude of sins. If that be true & we know it is, how much more should it cover a multitude of acts that irritate? Proverbs 19:11 says,--its one’s glory to overlook an offense.
If we’re irritable, it’s probably something that we indulge in at home because we can get away with it. If we tried it at church or at work there would be repercussions that we don’t want so we restrain ourselves. At home we let loose, wanting everyone around us to conform to our expectations. Let’s be clear; society sets boundaries with respect to irritability so we live within the boundaries. The reason we might act differently at home is “because we can.”
Let’s go a little deeper. As parents we can be irritable when our kids are slow in responding to our training. I’ve seen & heard good Christian parents get so irritated with their children they talk to them like they were heathens. “How many times do I have to tell you to clean your room?” Or, “When are you gonna stop playing with your food?” When you tell your kids to do something over & over its easy to become irritable when they don’t seem to be learning the lessons you want them to. The real problem here is that when we become impatient & irritable, we have outbursts that don’t teach our kids anything—they only humiliate them & teach them just the opposite of what we want them to learn.
How are you when you’re in your car driving to work, especially when you get behind a “sit low-drive slow” driver? How are you when you’re waiting in line at the bank or the store? How do you deal with it when you’re in line at the post office to buy a few stamps & the lady in front of you is mailing twenty packages to Timbuktu? Friend, though it may sound funny, its not, & you & I need to acknowledge & repent of our impatience & irritability as the sin that it is.
In Paul’s love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13, when he starts to describe love he could have started several different ways, but he starts off by telling us first & foremost that love is patient. Think about that the next time someone annoys you. There is no doubt about it in Paul’s mind; the attitude of patience is one we should cultivate & the attitude of irritability is one we should stamp out of our lives. Irritability may be acceptable to us- but it’s not acceptable to God.
I make an effort to be as open & candid as possible about my personal faults, or should I say, as candid as is prudent without giving my readers “information overload.”
I’ve always been a laid back kind of guy but in the spirit of soul- cleansing, I must say as I’ve gotten older, I’ve become more irritable. A case in point happened last month. I was expecting a royalty check from California & it was late. I called to check it out & was told “The checks in the mail.” Each day the money didn’t come I grew a little more annoyed & irritated. It wasn’t as if we didn’t have food on the table or were in any danger of that happening, it was “just the principle of the thing.”
Cutting to the chase, the money finally came but it was almost a month late. I don’t know how many calls I made to the West Coast or how many emails I sent but let me tell you- my “righteous indignation” was stirred up.
Juda has got to be one of the calmest people on the planet & she handles delay & disappointment much better than I do. The one exception being when the lawn-guy let’s the grass get too high before he cuts it.
Isn’t it interesting that we all have our thresholds for frustration & getting a little panicky?
THE ANOINTING OF GOD’S SPIRIT CAN BREAK THE YOKE OF IRRITABILITY.
In the 23rd Psalm, in the 5th verse, we’re told, The Lord, our good shepherd-- anoints our head with oil.
If you’ve ever been around live stock, you know that certain things can irritate them. Bugs; flies, gnats & mosquitoes can so aggravate a cow or a sheep that they’ll deliberately run into a tree or wall & injure, even kill themselves to get relief.
Fortunately the shepherd has a remedy for annoying insects. He pours an oil-like substance on the head of the animal & the fragrance keeps the insects away. The oil is a repellent that removes the aggravation, restlessness & irritability.
Animals can get rather testy & irritable when mating enters the equation. Sheep are calm & placid, even passive most of the time. But in mating season, the Rams strut around the pasture flexing their necks to make them swell trying to gain the attention of the prettiest ewe in the flock. When he catches a ewe’s eye he tosses his head back & says, “I want ewe, babe.” About that time the ewe’s boyfriend meanders over & tells her to go some place safe because a fight’s about the break out. Then some old-fashioned head-butting takes place.
The shepherd has just the thing to handle this situation. He pours oil on the Ram’s head so that when they butt heads, rather than crashing full force into each other, the greasy substance causes the Rams to glance off each other. This makes the Rams feel stupid but it dissipates the blows to their heads causing little physical damage.
Often sheep will be cut by thorns or sharp rocks as they graze. The shepherd will regularly inspect his sheep searching for cuts & abrasions. He must prevent the wound from getting infected. A little bit of linseed oil mixed with sulphur rubbed on the sheep’s wound heals them. In many sheep-rearing countries, the entire flock is paraded through a ‘sheep-dip” to take care of the problem.
Just as the sheep have many irritants, there are many things in our lives that get on our last nerve. Maybe it’s another person who ruins our peaceful existence. It may be some other distraction that drives us up the wall. Did you notice it wasn’t large things like Lions that gave the sheep the most misery? Likewise with us; it isn’t the gigantic things that get to us but rather the day-by-day swarms of frustrations & disappointments which slowly wear us down & break our spirit.
Because of the way the economy is these days; there are the problems of the stock market, house devaluations, & food prices all of which can get under our skin. For me it’s the shredding of the Constitution that is ever increasingly becoming a problem.
God through His Holy Spirit can anoint us so that we are able to handle these persistent pests that plague us.
Also, the sheep get irritated with one another. Many of our irritations & problems stem from the difficulties we have in relationships. Your boss didn’t give you a raise. Your husband didn’t notice your new dress. You were criticized unfairly. Your neighbor’s yard is a mess & he doesn’t seem to care. Your ex-spouse delights in trying to make your life miserable. Before we know it, we can get our “back up” & start head-butting people.
Like sheep, when we’re being pestered, we don’t sleep well; we don’t eat well; & we might even hit our head against a tree a few times. I’ve been a follower of news for a long time & I can’t remember a day when so many folk were snapping & committing multiple murders. Again, a lot of this stems from the unstable environment we currently live in.
MOSES
Moses is one of the most shining examples in the Bible of the toll an irritable & fractious spirit can take on an individual. Moses struggled with his temper throughout his life.
At the age of forty when he should have been a mature man, his temper got the best of him when he saw an Egyptian beating up on a Hebrew. Moses killed the Egyptian which put his picture in all the Egyptian post-offices & he had to flee & spend the next 40 years learning patience in the back side of the desert.
Moses wasn’t an ignoramus either, because Acts 7:22 says he was educated in all the learning of the Egyptians.
Sad to say this isn’t the last time we see his temper on display. When Moses came down from Mt. Sinai with the Ten Commandments & saw the people had gone back to idol worship, he blew his cool & threw the two tablets down at the foot of the mountain & broke them. But this wasn’t smart- because the tablets were written by the hand of God.
A QUESTION TO ASK YOURSELF
Moses had to go back to the mountain & this time he had the arduous task of putting the Commandments down himself. A good question for you & me to ask ourselves is-what are we going to have to do over because we allowed anger & frustration to get the better of us?
The final act that got Moses in trouble with God was when the people were murmuring & wishing they were dead at Kadesh. God instructed Moses to go to a rock & speak to it & water would come out for the people. Did Moses obey God? Nope! Moses really got sassy with the people on this occasion. He was so furious & stressed out that his shoulders were up around his ears & instead of speaking to the rock; he struck it twice with his rod.
Water came out so abundantly that the people & all their animals were able to slake their thirst. But this was one temper tantrum God wasn’t going to overlook. God told Moses that because he didn’t hallow Him before the people, he wouldn’t be allowed to lead them into the Promised Land.
ONE OF THE SWEETEST OF GOD’S PROMISES
One of the most precious verses in the Bible is;
Did you know there are some “respectable sins?” These are sins that we don’t take very seriously. Irritability is one of those sins.
Irritability is-- a strong sense of annoyance or exasperation or impatience over, too often, the slightest little provocation. - An irritable person is an impatient person. We all can be irritable at times but an irritable person is irritable most of the time.
An irritable person is no fun to be with because you have to walk on eggshells for fear of setting them off. But if the irritable person is in your family or your work place, you have no choice but to coexist with them.
Ask yourself this:
Are you upset with someone or with some circumstance a lot of the time? If the answer is yes then you’re most likely an irritable person. It’s rather simple; 1 Peter 4:8 says—Love covers a multitude of sins. If that be true & we know it is, how much more should it cover a multitude of acts that irritate? Proverbs 19:11 says,--its one’s glory to overlook an offense.
If we’re irritable, it’s probably something that we indulge in at home because we can get away with it. If we tried it at church or at work there would be repercussions that we don’t want so we restrain ourselves. At home we let loose, wanting everyone around us to conform to our expectations. Let’s be clear; society sets boundaries with respect to irritability so we live within the boundaries. The reason we might act differently at home is “because we can.”
Let’s go a little deeper. As parents we can be irritable when our kids are slow in responding to our training. I’ve seen & heard good Christian parents get so irritated with their children they talk to them like they were heathens. “How many times do I have to tell you to clean your room?” Or, “When are you gonna stop playing with your food?” When you tell your kids to do something over & over its easy to become irritable when they don’t seem to be learning the lessons you want them to. The real problem here is that when we become impatient & irritable, we have outbursts that don’t teach our kids anything—they only humiliate them & teach them just the opposite of what we want them to learn.
How are you when you’re in your car driving to work, especially when you get behind a “sit low-drive slow” driver? How are you when you’re waiting in line at the bank or the store? How do you deal with it when you’re in line at the post office to buy a few stamps & the lady in front of you is mailing twenty packages to Timbuktu? Friend, though it may sound funny, its not, & you & I need to acknowledge & repent of our impatience & irritability as the sin that it is.
In Paul’s love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13, when he starts to describe love he could have started several different ways, but he starts off by telling us first & foremost that love is patient. Think about that the next time someone annoys you. There is no doubt about it in Paul’s mind; the attitude of patience is one we should cultivate & the attitude of irritability is one we should stamp out of our lives. Irritability may be acceptable to us- but it’s not acceptable to God.
I make an effort to be as open & candid as possible about my personal faults, or should I say, as candid as is prudent without giving my readers “information overload.”
I’ve always been a laid back kind of guy but in the spirit of soul- cleansing, I must say as I’ve gotten older, I’ve become more irritable. A case in point happened last month. I was expecting a royalty check from California & it was late. I called to check it out & was told “The checks in the mail.” Each day the money didn’t come I grew a little more annoyed & irritated. It wasn’t as if we didn’t have food on the table or were in any danger of that happening, it was “just the principle of the thing.”
Cutting to the chase, the money finally came but it was almost a month late. I don’t know how many calls I made to the West Coast or how many emails I sent but let me tell you- my “righteous indignation” was stirred up.
Juda has got to be one of the calmest people on the planet & she handles delay & disappointment much better than I do. The one exception being when the lawn-guy let’s the grass get too high before he cuts it.
Isn’t it interesting that we all have our thresholds for frustration & getting a little panicky?
THE ANOINTING OF GOD’S SPIRIT CAN BREAK THE YOKE OF IRRITABILITY.
In the 23rd Psalm, in the 5th verse, we’re told, The Lord, our good shepherd-- anoints our head with oil.
If you’ve ever been around live stock, you know that certain things can irritate them. Bugs; flies, gnats & mosquitoes can so aggravate a cow or a sheep that they’ll deliberately run into a tree or wall & injure, even kill themselves to get relief.
Fortunately the shepherd has a remedy for annoying insects. He pours an oil-like substance on the head of the animal & the fragrance keeps the insects away. The oil is a repellent that removes the aggravation, restlessness & irritability.
Animals can get rather testy & irritable when mating enters the equation. Sheep are calm & placid, even passive most of the time. But in mating season, the Rams strut around the pasture flexing their necks to make them swell trying to gain the attention of the prettiest ewe in the flock. When he catches a ewe’s eye he tosses his head back & says, “I want ewe, babe.” About that time the ewe’s boyfriend meanders over & tells her to go some place safe because a fight’s about the break out. Then some old-fashioned head-butting takes place.
The shepherd has just the thing to handle this situation. He pours oil on the Ram’s head so that when they butt heads, rather than crashing full force into each other, the greasy substance causes the Rams to glance off each other. This makes the Rams feel stupid but it dissipates the blows to their heads causing little physical damage.
Often sheep will be cut by thorns or sharp rocks as they graze. The shepherd will regularly inspect his sheep searching for cuts & abrasions. He must prevent the wound from getting infected. A little bit of linseed oil mixed with sulphur rubbed on the sheep’s wound heals them. In many sheep-rearing countries, the entire flock is paraded through a ‘sheep-dip” to take care of the problem.
Just as the sheep have many irritants, there are many things in our lives that get on our last nerve. Maybe it’s another person who ruins our peaceful existence. It may be some other distraction that drives us up the wall. Did you notice it wasn’t large things like Lions that gave the sheep the most misery? Likewise with us; it isn’t the gigantic things that get to us but rather the day-by-day swarms of frustrations & disappointments which slowly wear us down & break our spirit.
Because of the way the economy is these days; there are the problems of the stock market, house devaluations, & food prices all of which can get under our skin. For me it’s the shredding of the Constitution that is ever increasingly becoming a problem.
God through His Holy Spirit can anoint us so that we are able to handle these persistent pests that plague us.
Also, the sheep get irritated with one another. Many of our irritations & problems stem from the difficulties we have in relationships. Your boss didn’t give you a raise. Your husband didn’t notice your new dress. You were criticized unfairly. Your neighbor’s yard is a mess & he doesn’t seem to care. Your ex-spouse delights in trying to make your life miserable. Before we know it, we can get our “back up” & start head-butting people.
Like sheep, when we’re being pestered, we don’t sleep well; we don’t eat well; & we might even hit our head against a tree a few times. I’ve been a follower of news for a long time & I can’t remember a day when so many folk were snapping & committing multiple murders. Again, a lot of this stems from the unstable environment we currently live in.
MOSES
Moses is one of the most shining examples in the Bible of the toll an irritable & fractious spirit can take on an individual. Moses struggled with his temper throughout his life.
At the age of forty when he should have been a mature man, his temper got the best of him when he saw an Egyptian beating up on a Hebrew. Moses killed the Egyptian which put his picture in all the Egyptian post-offices & he had to flee & spend the next 40 years learning patience in the back side of the desert.
Moses wasn’t an ignoramus either, because Acts 7:22 says he was educated in all the learning of the Egyptians.
Sad to say this isn’t the last time we see his temper on display. When Moses came down from Mt. Sinai with the Ten Commandments & saw the people had gone back to idol worship, he blew his cool & threw the two tablets down at the foot of the mountain & broke them. But this wasn’t smart- because the tablets were written by the hand of God.
A QUESTION TO ASK YOURSELF
Moses had to go back to the mountain & this time he had the arduous task of putting the Commandments down himself. A good question for you & me to ask ourselves is-what are we going to have to do over because we allowed anger & frustration to get the better of us?
The final act that got Moses in trouble with God was when the people were murmuring & wishing they were dead at Kadesh. God instructed Moses to go to a rock & speak to it & water would come out for the people. Did Moses obey God? Nope! Moses really got sassy with the people on this occasion. He was so furious & stressed out that his shoulders were up around his ears & instead of speaking to the rock; he struck it twice with his rod.
Water came out so abundantly that the people & all their animals were able to slake their thirst. But this was one temper tantrum God wasn’t going to overlook. God told Moses that because he didn’t hallow Him before the people, he wouldn’t be allowed to lead them into the Promised Land.
ONE OF THE SWEETEST OF GOD’S PROMISES
One of the most precious verses in the Bible is;
Great peace have they which love thy law & nothing shall offend them. Ps.119:165
In a way it seems strange to promise something as valuable as peace to someone who-“Loves God’s law.”
Let me illustrate it this way; If I were to go down & buy my wife a Betty Crocker cookbook, & she took it & carried it everywhere she went & talked about nothing else but that cookbook, I’d worry about her. If every time I looked around I saw her lovingly thumbing through the book of recipes & making notes, I’d think it a little strange.
When I asked her about the gift I’d given her, if her eyes pooled with tears & she’d say, “I love this cookbook. I love the way the pages feel. I even love how the type fits on the pages. Oh, how I love this book. It’s hard to keep from crying every time I pick up this wonderful cookbook. You may have noticed that I read it six or seven times a day but I just can’t help it.” I think you’d agree if that happen, it would be beyond strange.
But let’s make one small change & say the recipe book is her grandmother’s old cookbook. Each recipe is hand written by her & the pages are worn & stained from the cooking she did so many years ago. As Juda turned the pages she could remember the recipes & how scrumptious they were. If that were the case, knowing how much Juda’s grandmother meant to her, I wouldn’t think it at all strange for her to be sentimental about the old book. To her its more than words on a page, it’s a reminder of family relationships & a precious symbol that spans several generations.
You & I don’t love God’s law because its ink on paper, we love it because of who wrote it & our relationship to Him.
THE PROMISE—NOTHING SHALL OFFEND THEM!
God has promised if we love His Word, if we meditate on it, nothing will upset our applecart. Nothing will destroy our peace. Nothing will irritate us. Nothing will offend us or “get under our skin.” I submit to you friend that’s a promise that’s almost too good to be true. Nothing will get us all bent out of shape & cause us to be edgy, angry or frustrated.
I’ll be very frank with you; when I read this verse I almost unconsciously want to downgrade it like; --Not very many things will offend—or—most things won’t bother us but a few things can still get us ticked off. That of course is the flesh not wanting to take God’s Word at face value, wanting to make excuses for the tendency we all have for our wrong attitudes.
This verse doesn’t promise us that we’ll never have things to happen that will hurt & disappoint us. It doesn’t promise that we’ll never have to deal with irregular people & be pushed to the breaking point. It doesn’t promise that we’ll never spend time in the “spiritual burn unit.”
There will still be stumbling blocks for us to overcome because Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.
But if you love God’s Law, [the Bible] you won’t be up-ended by anything this life can hand you. When the stumbling blocks come, you may step over them, you may walk around them or God will give you the grace to walk through them. God can emotionally make you “Vice president of the “happy to be here” club.
In any case, you won’t stumble, you won’t fall & you won’t be destroyed by the changing circumstances of life.
God will give you poise & He’ll give you peace.
How wonderful is the promise;
Great peace have they which love thy law & nothing shall offend them.
Blessings,
John
Tuesday, April 17, 2018
Special Milestone ...11 Year Anniversary Of This Blog.
Dear Friends,
In April of 2007 we started this blog and dedicated it to communicating the reality of the living Christ and his ability to meet any and all human need.
At this writing nearly 500 articles have been published.
Listed below, not necessarily in any particular order are some of the countries who've found us. I stand totally amazed at this. As you can see, readership reaches around the world.
Our only motivation was and is a desire to be fuel on God's fires and declare to the best of our ability the Whole Counsel of God... We also strive to be readable and relevant. This motivation captured me as a boy and will by His Grace continue to do so until He comes or calls.
May the truths shared here be a source of spiritual help and blessing to all who read!
Every Blessing,
John
United States,
United Kingdom,
Albania,
Algeria,
Angola,
Anguilla,
Antigua and Barbuda,
Argentina,
Armenia,
Aruba,
Austria,
Australia,
Azerbaijan,
Bahrain,
Brunei,
Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Belgium,
Bulgaria,
Georgia,
Jordan,
Bahamas,
Brazil,
Barbados,
Belize,
Belarus,
Botswana,
Bangladesh,
Bolivia,
Cayman Islands,
Curacao,
Crete,
Cambodia,
Cameroon,
Greece,
Colombia,
Chile,
Costa Rico,
Croatia,
Czech Republic,
Ecuador,
Dominican Republic,
El Salvador,
Estonia,
Finland,
Congo [GRC]
Norway,
Netherlands,
Netherlands Antilles,
Nepal,
Peru,
Puerto Rico,
Panama,
Papua New Guinea,
Germany,
Grenada,
Canada,
Russia,
S. Korea,
Sweden,
Egypt,
Israel,
Panama,
Ukraine,
China,
Hong Kong,
Honduras,
Indonesia,
Oman,
Fiji,
Spain,
Ireland,
Iceland,
Suriname,
Portugal,
France,
New Zealand,
Switzerland,
Swaziland,
Poland,
Georgia,
Lebanon,
Latvia,
Slovenia,
Senegal,
Macedonia {FYROM}
Moldova,
Myanmar {Burma}
Sweden,
St.Marten,
Saint Kitts and Nevis,
St.Vincent & Grenadines,
Tanzania,
Denmark,
Ireland,
Pakistan,
Kazakhstan,
Kuwait,
Iraq,
Iran,
Taiwan,
Hungary,
Turkey,
Turkmenistan.
Cyprus,
India,
Italy,
Jamaica,
Mexico,
Monaco,
Norway,
Trinidad and Tobago,
Thailand,
Romania,
Singapore,
Switzerland,
S. Africa,
St. Lucia,
Namibia,
Kenya,
Serbia,
Syria,
Ghana,
Guernsey,
Philippines,
Slovakia,
Taiwan,
Thailand,
Uganda,
Uruguay,
Paraguay,
Japan,
Lithuania,
Luxembourg,
Lesotho,
Malaysia,
Mauritius,
Morocco,
Montenegro,
Moldova,
Macau,
Romania,
Nicaragua,
Nigeria,
New Caledonia,
Venezuela,
Vietnam,
Samoa,
Saudi Arabia,
Sri Lanka, Asakivia,
Slovakia,
Tunisia,
Turks and Caicos islands
United Arab Emirates,
Uzbekistan,
Qatar,
Zambia, and
Zimbabwe.
If you've been blessed by the blog, please take a moment to let us know.--johnjudastallings@gmail.com
Blessings in Christ,
John
Saturday, April 14, 2018
"Regrets, I've Had A Few..........."
By John Stallings
Sarah was rich.
She had inherited twenty million dollars, plus she had an additional income of one thousand dollars a day. That was a lot of money in the late 1800s.
Sarah was well known & powerful. Her name would open any door in America & all sorts of organizations clamored for her support.
Sarah was rich, well known, powerful, and miserable. Her only daughter died at five weeks of age & her husband died leaving her with her name, her money, her memories & her guilt.
Sarah chose a strange way to deal with her guilt. She moved from Connecticut to San Jose
California & bought an eight-room farmhouse on one-hundred sixty acres. Over the years I’ve passed in front of this house several times but have never seen inside. Sarah hired sixteen carpenters & put them to work. For the next thirty-eight years the craftsmen labored every day, twenty-four hours a day to build a mansion.
This place has a macabre touch, even when driving by it. Each window has thirteen panes, each wall thirteen panels, each closet thirteen hooks, & each chandelier thirteen globes. Corridors in the house snake randomly some leading nowhere. One door opened to a blank wall & one to a fifty-foot drop. One set of stairs led to a ceiling that had no door. Trap doors. Secret passageways. Tunnels. This was no retirement home for Sarah; it was a castle for her past.
There were visitors…… The visitors came each night. Legend has it that every evening a servant would pass through the secret labyrinth that led to the bell tower. He would ring the bell…to summon the spirits. Sarah would then enter the “blue room,” a room reserved for her night time guests. Together they would linger until 2:00 a.m. Then Sarah would return to her quarters & the ghosts would return to their graves.
What guests, what ghosts? Indians & soldiers killed on the U.S frontier by bullets from the most popular rifle in America---the Winchester. What had brought millions of dollars to Sarah Winchester had brought death to them. So Sarah spent her remaining years providing a home for the dead.
You could visit the Winchester mansion if you wished to & walk the halls & see its remains if you’re into poltergeist, & see first hand what unresolved guilt can do to a human being. Truth be told, we don’t have to “know the way to San Jose” to see such a spectacle. We can see lives imprisoned by yesterday’s guilt & shame in our own cities. Lives haunted by failure are all around us. They are just down the street or down the hall. Do you know any Sarah Winchesters?
Frank Sinatra sang the song “My way” back in 1969, & it became his signature song.
Actually Paul Anka wrote the song. In the song was the line... “Regrets…I’ve had a few…but then again…too few to mention...” It was a song sung to celebrate a tough life, a full life, a planned life, a life where a man stands tall, takes the blows, relies on himself & does it his way.
This song is nonsense of course.
But it was the kind of nonsense that people bought & bought into, a life where I’m in control & I call the shots, a life with few if any regrets.
In truth, there is no such thing as a life lived with no regrets in the literal sense because we all fall short in so many ways. Only Jesus could say “It is finished” & know that He had perfectly completed all that God had for Him to do & He never made a single mistake doing it. The rest of us will struggle with a sense of failure, of jobs left undone, of projects left unfinished, of dreams unfulfilled, of steps not taken, or roads not traveled, or decisions made that now seem like wrong choices. I see no way to escape this.
There are many things we can look back on with joy & cling to them as “precious memories.” But sadly there are certain events in all of our lives that we remember with regret. While it would be wonderful to live a life of no regrets, it isn’t in the realm of possibility. By the time one reaches old age, & generally long before, one can look back & see things he wishes he’d done differently. Sometimes the regretful experiences are only mildly disturbing but other things can so upset a life that they lead to mental breakdown or illness.
In any life & in any family, even the best of them, there are regrets. Things don’t always turn out right. Parents disappoint us. Children don’t always turn out the way we hope. As hard as we try we can’t always get it together & make things turn out right. Things happen. People change. Words get said that can never be taken back. And our lives are forever altered.
Let’s go back & look at some famous men in the Bible & see if they had any regrets.
ADAM
There can be no doubt that our great ancestor had deep regrets. After all he lived in paradise & had access to the tree of life, meaning he was looking at unending life. He didn’t have to do any hard labor because everything was there for the taking. God walked with Adam in the garden, so for a time he had full fellowship with Him. Adam gave it all up.
I can imagine that many times as he toiled, he thought about how he blew it. He gave up the good life & exchanged it for fighting thorns & thistles & realized that his destiny now was to be dust himself. I can’t imagine Adam seeing how his children suffered & coming to terms with the magnitude of what he’d done wouldn’t have filled him with regret for his transgression.
SAMUEL
I can’t recall of a single passage in the Bible that speaks ill of Samuel. He was God’s man & he judged Israel all the days of his life. Samuel was a prophet who we find in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews along with the others in faith’s hall of fame. But Samuel in his old age made his sons judges over Israel & they were a deep disappointment to him to say the least. When a child goes wrong, the first thing a parent wonders is where they went wrong in their parenting. It would be hard to imagine anything more regrettable that would cut a man deeper than this one.
ANCIENT ISRAEL
God delivered these folk from Egyptian slavery & offered them the Promised Land & they had so little faith they turned back from Canaan into the wilderness. What regrets they must have had as they wandered back & forth, up & down until everyone above twenty was dead.
DAVID
David was the common shepherd boy who stood up to the Philistines & killed their giant warrior with a sling. When the Lord saw that Saul was unfit to continue to lead Israel David was crowned king. Under David’s rule the nation of Israel went from a backwater group of nomads to the shining star of the Mid East.
Though David was a great man & Israel’s greatest king, he stumbled into gross sin with Bathsheba. He had a great record but sadly it was marred by adultery, lying & murder. In many ways it’s hard to accept that a man who was after God’s own heart could have such a blot on his record. The majesty of much of David’s life wasn’t sufficient to erase the ugliness of his transgressions. We don’t have to wonder if David had regrets. All we have to do is read what he wrote, especially the forty-first & fifty-first Psalms to see the evidence of his regrets relating to his moral breakdown.
The Lord sent the prophet Nathan to face the king with his sin & David repented. True repentance is a dynamic, life changing experience that looks forward not backward.
I love the words David wrote in Psalm 103: 12—As far as the east is from the west so far has God removed our transgressions from us. David could well have adopted Frank Sinatra’s song, “regrets I’ve had a few…...” & so might you.
David reaped a lot through his children. Absalom, a son David loved murdered Amnon, another son of David. A while later Absalom tried to take the kingdom away from his father. David had to flee the save his own life. Later when Absalom was killed in battle & David got the news, he wept—“O Absalom my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!” What sorrow, what regret. Later, David’s son Solomon had another son of David’s put to death, Adonijah.
Moving into the New Testament we first look at;
JUDAS
It would be difficult to conceive of anyone having more regrets than did this turncoat & traitor. Though Judas did take the blood-money back & throw it at his accomplices, his deep regret is evidenced in his suicide. But think about this; Judas has been in hell for many hundreds of years & has had all this time to think about & regret what he did. Not only that, he still has all eternity to wallow in hell’s flames & wish he’d never been born.
THE APOSTLE PETER
Here’s another on our list of people who had deep regrets. In one way Peter did worse than Judas because he swore an oath that he never knew Jesus. As an aside, the difference in these two men I believe is the cross. By that I mean if Judas had gotten the revelation of what Christ’s death meant, he might not have taken his own life. If he’d lived long enough to see that the very essence of Calvary was to offer full & free pardon, he might have held on until he could be forgiven like Peter did.
Peter’s life & experience is an encouragement to all those who need to repent & turn around. Peter spent the rest of his life trying to erase the memory in his mind & in the mind of others of his failure. As sad as his failure was, his life after Christ forgave him was exemplary. Peter went on, according to tradition, to be crucified upside down for his Lord. May we all be as successful as Peter.
PAUL
Paul’s life is so well known that we need not spend all that much time with him here. Do you think Paul had any regrets? In Acts 22, when he described how he persecuted Christians, he said, “I persecuted this way—to the death.Vr.4. What did he mean by…to the death? One wonders how many orphans he left because of the killing & jailing sprees he conducted. He was on his way to wreak more havoc when God put him under arrest on the Damascus Turnpike. Do you think those regrets ever completely passed from his thoughts as he lived day to day? I don’t think so. If ever a man lived who must have longed to rewrite his past it had to be Paul. But he was able to get victory by turning his past over to Christ. He died out to self & let faith in the living Lord renew his life.
There are so many others that we could mention, but;
THE QUESTION BECOMES WHAT WILL WE DO WITH OUR FAILURES?
Though God can forgive & forget everything that has been wrong in our lives, we aren’t that capable. The Lord has been able to bury all our yesterdays but maybe we haven’t been able to bury them that deeply. Our horizons are shorter. We may still get troubling thoughts & try as we may we can’t get the thoughts outside our head & hearts.
IF ONLY
Maybe these words keep playing in our head…if only. If only I’d heeded the advice of my parents I wouldn’t be where I am. If only I’d been paying attention I wouldn’t have these problems. If only, if only, if only. To have appropriate & legitimate feelings of regret is one thing. But to allow our failures to shape & dominate us forever is something different.
On May 6, 1954, Roger Bannister was the first man to run a mile in less than 4 minutes. Within 2 months John Landy eclipsed the record & on August 7, 1954 the two met together for a historic race. As they moved into the last lap, Landy held the lead. It looked as if he’d win but as he neared the finish he was haunted by the question “where is Bannister?” As he turned to look Bannister took the lead.
Landy later told a reporter, “If only I hadn’t looked back I would have won.” The devil wants us to look back & dwell on the past but we need to keep our eyes trained on the future.
The prophet Joel said, I will restore to you the years that the locusts have wasted. The life Christ gives to us isn’t about constantly ransacking the archives of our lives. It’s about standing face to face with the resurrected Christ & saying… “We’re not going to talk about this anymore.” There’s no way you & I can recreate segments of our private histories, we’re stuck with them. We can’t alter a painful past any more than we can control a threatening future. But God recreates our past by forgiving it.
So the key is to say, “I’m not going to live in the past. I won’t let my yesterdays define who I am today. By God’s grace I’ll go forward one day at a time, one step at a time, trusting God to lead me, following the Lord to the best of my ability, believing that with Christ the best is always yet to come. In the spiritual life it’s not where we’ve been but where we’re going that matters.
Grab hold of God’s pardon & rejoice in knowing that Jesus Christ is your advocate & there are no accusations coming from heaven.
Your forgiveness & your future are grounded in the love of Christ.
Blessings,
John
Sarah was rich.
She had inherited twenty million dollars, plus she had an additional income of one thousand dollars a day. That was a lot of money in the late 1800s.
Sarah was well known & powerful. Her name would open any door in America & all sorts of organizations clamored for her support.
Sarah was rich, well known, powerful, and miserable. Her only daughter died at five weeks of age & her husband died leaving her with her name, her money, her memories & her guilt.
Sarah chose a strange way to deal with her guilt. She moved from Connecticut to San Jose
California & bought an eight-room farmhouse on one-hundred sixty acres. Over the years I’ve passed in front of this house several times but have never seen inside. Sarah hired sixteen carpenters & put them to work. For the next thirty-eight years the craftsmen labored every day, twenty-four hours a day to build a mansion.
This place has a macabre touch, even when driving by it. Each window has thirteen panes, each wall thirteen panels, each closet thirteen hooks, & each chandelier thirteen globes. Corridors in the house snake randomly some leading nowhere. One door opened to a blank wall & one to a fifty-foot drop. One set of stairs led to a ceiling that had no door. Trap doors. Secret passageways. Tunnels. This was no retirement home for Sarah; it was a castle for her past.
There were visitors…… The visitors came each night. Legend has it that every evening a servant would pass through the secret labyrinth that led to the bell tower. He would ring the bell…to summon the spirits. Sarah would then enter the “blue room,” a room reserved for her night time guests. Together they would linger until 2:00 a.m. Then Sarah would return to her quarters & the ghosts would return to their graves.
What guests, what ghosts? Indians & soldiers killed on the U.S frontier by bullets from the most popular rifle in America---the Winchester. What had brought millions of dollars to Sarah Winchester had brought death to them. So Sarah spent her remaining years providing a home for the dead.
You could visit the Winchester mansion if you wished to & walk the halls & see its remains if you’re into poltergeist, & see first hand what unresolved guilt can do to a human being. Truth be told, we don’t have to “know the way to San Jose” to see such a spectacle. We can see lives imprisoned by yesterday’s guilt & shame in our own cities. Lives haunted by failure are all around us. They are just down the street or down the hall. Do you know any Sarah Winchesters?
Frank Sinatra sang the song “My way” back in 1969, & it became his signature song.
Actually Paul Anka wrote the song. In the song was the line... “Regrets…I’ve had a few…but then again…too few to mention...” It was a song sung to celebrate a tough life, a full life, a planned life, a life where a man stands tall, takes the blows, relies on himself & does it his way.
This song is nonsense of course.
But it was the kind of nonsense that people bought & bought into, a life where I’m in control & I call the shots, a life with few if any regrets.
In truth, there is no such thing as a life lived with no regrets in the literal sense because we all fall short in so many ways. Only Jesus could say “It is finished” & know that He had perfectly completed all that God had for Him to do & He never made a single mistake doing it. The rest of us will struggle with a sense of failure, of jobs left undone, of projects left unfinished, of dreams unfulfilled, of steps not taken, or roads not traveled, or decisions made that now seem like wrong choices. I see no way to escape this.
There are many things we can look back on with joy & cling to them as “precious memories.” But sadly there are certain events in all of our lives that we remember with regret. While it would be wonderful to live a life of no regrets, it isn’t in the realm of possibility. By the time one reaches old age, & generally long before, one can look back & see things he wishes he’d done differently. Sometimes the regretful experiences are only mildly disturbing but other things can so upset a life that they lead to mental breakdown or illness.
In any life & in any family, even the best of them, there are regrets. Things don’t always turn out right. Parents disappoint us. Children don’t always turn out the way we hope. As hard as we try we can’t always get it together & make things turn out right. Things happen. People change. Words get said that can never be taken back. And our lives are forever altered.
Let’s go back & look at some famous men in the Bible & see if they had any regrets.
ADAM
There can be no doubt that our great ancestor had deep regrets. After all he lived in paradise & had access to the tree of life, meaning he was looking at unending life. He didn’t have to do any hard labor because everything was there for the taking. God walked with Adam in the garden, so for a time he had full fellowship with Him. Adam gave it all up.
I can imagine that many times as he toiled, he thought about how he blew it. He gave up the good life & exchanged it for fighting thorns & thistles & realized that his destiny now was to be dust himself. I can’t imagine Adam seeing how his children suffered & coming to terms with the magnitude of what he’d done wouldn’t have filled him with regret for his transgression.
SAMUEL
I can’t recall of a single passage in the Bible that speaks ill of Samuel. He was God’s man & he judged Israel all the days of his life. Samuel was a prophet who we find in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews along with the others in faith’s hall of fame. But Samuel in his old age made his sons judges over Israel & they were a deep disappointment to him to say the least. When a child goes wrong, the first thing a parent wonders is where they went wrong in their parenting. It would be hard to imagine anything more regrettable that would cut a man deeper than this one.
ANCIENT ISRAEL
God delivered these folk from Egyptian slavery & offered them the Promised Land & they had so little faith they turned back from Canaan into the wilderness. What regrets they must have had as they wandered back & forth, up & down until everyone above twenty was dead.
DAVID
David was the common shepherd boy who stood up to the Philistines & killed their giant warrior with a sling. When the Lord saw that Saul was unfit to continue to lead Israel David was crowned king. Under David’s rule the nation of Israel went from a backwater group of nomads to the shining star of the Mid East.
Though David was a great man & Israel’s greatest king, he stumbled into gross sin with Bathsheba. He had a great record but sadly it was marred by adultery, lying & murder. In many ways it’s hard to accept that a man who was after God’s own heart could have such a blot on his record. The majesty of much of David’s life wasn’t sufficient to erase the ugliness of his transgressions. We don’t have to wonder if David had regrets. All we have to do is read what he wrote, especially the forty-first & fifty-first Psalms to see the evidence of his regrets relating to his moral breakdown.
The Lord sent the prophet Nathan to face the king with his sin & David repented. True repentance is a dynamic, life changing experience that looks forward not backward.
I love the words David wrote in Psalm 103: 12—As far as the east is from the west so far has God removed our transgressions from us. David could well have adopted Frank Sinatra’s song, “regrets I’ve had a few…...” & so might you.
David reaped a lot through his children. Absalom, a son David loved murdered Amnon, another son of David. A while later Absalom tried to take the kingdom away from his father. David had to flee the save his own life. Later when Absalom was killed in battle & David got the news, he wept—“O Absalom my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!” What sorrow, what regret. Later, David’s son Solomon had another son of David’s put to death, Adonijah.
Moving into the New Testament we first look at;
JUDAS
It would be difficult to conceive of anyone having more regrets than did this turncoat & traitor. Though Judas did take the blood-money back & throw it at his accomplices, his deep regret is evidenced in his suicide. But think about this; Judas has been in hell for many hundreds of years & has had all this time to think about & regret what he did. Not only that, he still has all eternity to wallow in hell’s flames & wish he’d never been born.
THE APOSTLE PETER
Here’s another on our list of people who had deep regrets. In one way Peter did worse than Judas because he swore an oath that he never knew Jesus. As an aside, the difference in these two men I believe is the cross. By that I mean if Judas had gotten the revelation of what Christ’s death meant, he might not have taken his own life. If he’d lived long enough to see that the very essence of Calvary was to offer full & free pardon, he might have held on until he could be forgiven like Peter did.
Peter’s life & experience is an encouragement to all those who need to repent & turn around. Peter spent the rest of his life trying to erase the memory in his mind & in the mind of others of his failure. As sad as his failure was, his life after Christ forgave him was exemplary. Peter went on, according to tradition, to be crucified upside down for his Lord. May we all be as successful as Peter.
PAUL
Paul’s life is so well known that we need not spend all that much time with him here. Do you think Paul had any regrets? In Acts 22, when he described how he persecuted Christians, he said, “I persecuted this way—to the death.Vr.4. What did he mean by…to the death? One wonders how many orphans he left because of the killing & jailing sprees he conducted. He was on his way to wreak more havoc when God put him under arrest on the Damascus Turnpike. Do you think those regrets ever completely passed from his thoughts as he lived day to day? I don’t think so. If ever a man lived who must have longed to rewrite his past it had to be Paul. But he was able to get victory by turning his past over to Christ. He died out to self & let faith in the living Lord renew his life.
There are so many others that we could mention, but;
THE QUESTION BECOMES WHAT WILL WE DO WITH OUR FAILURES?
Though God can forgive & forget everything that has been wrong in our lives, we aren’t that capable. The Lord has been able to bury all our yesterdays but maybe we haven’t been able to bury them that deeply. Our horizons are shorter. We may still get troubling thoughts & try as we may we can’t get the thoughts outside our head & hearts.
IF ONLY
Maybe these words keep playing in our head…if only. If only I’d heeded the advice of my parents I wouldn’t be where I am. If only I’d been paying attention I wouldn’t have these problems. If only, if only, if only. To have appropriate & legitimate feelings of regret is one thing. But to allow our failures to shape & dominate us forever is something different.
On May 6, 1954, Roger Bannister was the first man to run a mile in less than 4 minutes. Within 2 months John Landy eclipsed the record & on August 7, 1954 the two met together for a historic race. As they moved into the last lap, Landy held the lead. It looked as if he’d win but as he neared the finish he was haunted by the question “where is Bannister?” As he turned to look Bannister took the lead.
Landy later told a reporter, “If only I hadn’t looked back I would have won.” The devil wants us to look back & dwell on the past but we need to keep our eyes trained on the future.
The prophet Joel said, I will restore to you the years that the locusts have wasted. The life Christ gives to us isn’t about constantly ransacking the archives of our lives. It’s about standing face to face with the resurrected Christ & saying… “We’re not going to talk about this anymore.” There’s no way you & I can recreate segments of our private histories, we’re stuck with them. We can’t alter a painful past any more than we can control a threatening future. But God recreates our past by forgiving it.
So the key is to say, “I’m not going to live in the past. I won’t let my yesterdays define who I am today. By God’s grace I’ll go forward one day at a time, one step at a time, trusting God to lead me, following the Lord to the best of my ability, believing that with Christ the best is always yet to come. In the spiritual life it’s not where we’ve been but where we’re going that matters.
Grab hold of God’s pardon & rejoice in knowing that Jesus Christ is your advocate & there are no accusations coming from heaven.
Your forgiveness & your future are grounded in the love of Christ.
Blessings,
John
Friday, April 6, 2018
Mountian Dew
By John Stallings
It is like the Dew on Mount Hermon….Psalm 133:3
On April 13, 1984, in Durango, Colorado Ruthie & Verena Cady were born, joined at the chest & sharing a three-chambered heart.
On July 22, 1991, the seven year old Siamese twin girls died within 15 minutes of each other.
“Ruthie died 15 minutes ahead of Verena,” Mrs. Cady said. During the next few minutes the surviving seven year old twin talked with her mother.
Mrs. Cady said, “Verena talked about the whole thing. She said,
“This is the time we’re going to be dying.” “She asked me to get daddy & she gave me a list of friends she wanted to send flowers to. She asked to be cremated because she didn’t want to be in a box, she wanted to be free.”
The twins were connected from the sternum to the navel & shared a three –chambered heart which prevented doctors from separating them. Most Siamese twins die at birth. Doctors told Mrs. Cady & her husband, Peter, that if the girls lived a year it would be a miracle.
The twins studied at an elementary school & sang in a church choir. Their favorite activity was biking on a custom two-set tricycle that let one pedal & the other relax, their parents said.
“They could laugh at life,” said their mother, who wrote a 1989 cover article about the twins for People magazine. “They were almost always happy & smiling.”
They looked alike, smiled alike & wore identical shirts & bathing suits that their mother would stitch together.
“They had two completely different personalities, but they complimented each other,” said Mrs. Cady.
The girls would alternate days on which each would make the major decisions. They learned to compromise. “When you can’t get away from the other person you’re arguing with, you solve it quickly,” their mother said.
For the first two years when the family lived in Colorado, the sleeping girls would awake every hour because Durango’s 6,500-foot elevation made breathing difficult. The family later moved to Rhode Island where Mr. Cady was offered a college teaching job.
Does that story tug at your heart-strings? It certainly does mine.
Though these girls had different nervous systems & personalities, they were sustained by the same heart & literally needed each other to survive.
"MAKE THEM ONE…"
I think Verena & Ruth have something to teach Christians because we’re also all part of the same body. If you think that’s extreme, turn to John seventeen & read the priestly prayer Christ prayed before going to the cross. He pleads & prays to His Father that His children might be unified as He & His father are. In verse 21 He prays; -Make them one.
The founder of a business that grew to a billion dollars in annual revenues expressed the power of teamwork in this way; “If you could get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time.”
The church or the body of Christ is in a similar position. We’re all in the same boat; a lifeboat. Many of us have our oars in the water but sadly we aren’t all rowing in the same direction.
Satan really only has one weapon & that’s division. Anywhere you have a Difference there is a great opportunity for Division.
You can have division between white & black, tall & short, fat & skinny, men & women, educated & uneducated, rich & poor, Democrats & Republicans, Liberal & Conservative, outgoing & incoming, worldly & spiritual, Northern & Southern etc.
When Satan sees a Difference he goes to work to create the Division, in families, churches, businesses & nations.
PSALMS
Psalms help us in a unique way because every human emotion has its echo in the book. In them we learn that God cares about the circumstances of our lives, our reaction to every experience & about our relationships with one another. The Psalms are rich in imagery & figures of speech.
The Psalms touch us at the deepest levels of our being & probe all human experiences, also possessing the capacity to lift up our eyes to see God & our brothers & sisters.
PSALM 133--I dearly love this Psalm’s simplicity as well as its profound content.
Behold how good & how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.
It is like the precious ointment upon the head that ran down upon the beard even Aaron’s beard: that went down to the skirts of his garments.
As the DEW of HERMON, & as the dew that ascended upon the MOUNTAINS of Zion: for there the Lord commanded the blessing, even life for evermore.
This Psalm is about unity but David doesn’t provide a road-map for going from disunity to unity. He doesn’t leave a trail of “Holy bread-crumbs” for us to follow; he just speaks about how glorious solidarity & unity is.
I heard about a Scottish Presbyterian who was stranded on an island in the middle of the south pacific. For years he lived alone on the island. When he was picked up the captain of the rescue ship said to him, “I thought you were alone on this island.” “I was,” replied the castaway. “Then why are there three huts on the beach?” “Well, the first one is my house, and the second one is my church.” “What about the other one?”
“Oh, that’s my old church.”
Although we love to sing about being one, Christians are mostly united about our love of dividing. If you doubt this, check the Wikipedia article called, List of Christian Denominations. Christians not only disagree, we enjoy our disagreements. How else could you explain so many different “flavors” marching under the “Christian banner?”
The first word in Psalm 133 is;
BEHOLD…..
It is like the Dew on Mount Hermon….Psalm 133:3
On April 13, 1984, in Durango, Colorado Ruthie & Verena Cady were born, joined at the chest & sharing a three-chambered heart.
On July 22, 1991, the seven year old Siamese twin girls died within 15 minutes of each other.
“Ruthie died 15 minutes ahead of Verena,” Mrs. Cady said. During the next few minutes the surviving seven year old twin talked with her mother.
Mrs. Cady said, “Verena talked about the whole thing. She said,
“This is the time we’re going to be dying.” “She asked me to get daddy & she gave me a list of friends she wanted to send flowers to. She asked to be cremated because she didn’t want to be in a box, she wanted to be free.”
The twins were connected from the sternum to the navel & shared a three –chambered heart which prevented doctors from separating them. Most Siamese twins die at birth. Doctors told Mrs. Cady & her husband, Peter, that if the girls lived a year it would be a miracle.
The twins studied at an elementary school & sang in a church choir. Their favorite activity was biking on a custom two-set tricycle that let one pedal & the other relax, their parents said.
“They could laugh at life,” said their mother, who wrote a 1989 cover article about the twins for People magazine. “They were almost always happy & smiling.”
They looked alike, smiled alike & wore identical shirts & bathing suits that their mother would stitch together.
“They had two completely different personalities, but they complimented each other,” said Mrs. Cady.
The girls would alternate days on which each would make the major decisions. They learned to compromise. “When you can’t get away from the other person you’re arguing with, you solve it quickly,” their mother said.
For the first two years when the family lived in Colorado, the sleeping girls would awake every hour because Durango’s 6,500-foot elevation made breathing difficult. The family later moved to Rhode Island where Mr. Cady was offered a college teaching job.
Does that story tug at your heart-strings? It certainly does mine.
Though these girls had different nervous systems & personalities, they were sustained by the same heart & literally needed each other to survive.
"MAKE THEM ONE…"
I think Verena & Ruth have something to teach Christians because we’re also all part of the same body. If you think that’s extreme, turn to John seventeen & read the priestly prayer Christ prayed before going to the cross. He pleads & prays to His Father that His children might be unified as He & His father are. In verse 21 He prays; -Make them one.
The founder of a business that grew to a billion dollars in annual revenues expressed the power of teamwork in this way; “If you could get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time.”
The church or the body of Christ is in a similar position. We’re all in the same boat; a lifeboat. Many of us have our oars in the water but sadly we aren’t all rowing in the same direction.
Satan really only has one weapon & that’s division. Anywhere you have a Difference there is a great opportunity for Division.
You can have division between white & black, tall & short, fat & skinny, men & women, educated & uneducated, rich & poor, Democrats & Republicans, Liberal & Conservative, outgoing & incoming, worldly & spiritual, Northern & Southern etc.
When Satan sees a Difference he goes to work to create the Division, in families, churches, businesses & nations.
PSALMS
Psalms help us in a unique way because every human emotion has its echo in the book. In them we learn that God cares about the circumstances of our lives, our reaction to every experience & about our relationships with one another. The Psalms are rich in imagery & figures of speech.
The Psalms touch us at the deepest levels of our being & probe all human experiences, also possessing the capacity to lift up our eyes to see God & our brothers & sisters.
PSALM 133--I dearly love this Psalm’s simplicity as well as its profound content.
Behold how good & how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.
It is like the precious ointment upon the head that ran down upon the beard even Aaron’s beard: that went down to the skirts of his garments.
As the DEW of HERMON, & as the dew that ascended upon the MOUNTAINS of Zion: for there the Lord commanded the blessing, even life for evermore.
This Psalm is about unity but David doesn’t provide a road-map for going from disunity to unity. He doesn’t leave a trail of “Holy bread-crumbs” for us to follow; he just speaks about how glorious solidarity & unity is.
I heard about a Scottish Presbyterian who was stranded on an island in the middle of the south pacific. For years he lived alone on the island. When he was picked up the captain of the rescue ship said to him, “I thought you were alone on this island.” “I was,” replied the castaway. “Then why are there three huts on the beach?” “Well, the first one is my house, and the second one is my church.” “What about the other one?”
“Oh, that’s my old church.”
Although we love to sing about being one, Christians are mostly united about our love of dividing. If you doubt this, check the Wikipedia article called, List of Christian Denominations. Christians not only disagree, we enjoy our disagreements. How else could you explain so many different “flavors” marching under the “Christian banner?”
The first word in Psalm 133 is;
BEHOLD…..
The word behold tells us to stop, look, listen. The next word is;
HOW….
You’ll notice the word HOW occurs twice in the first sentence. Generally when we use the word HOW, we’re raising a question. The scriptures are replete with HOWS.
HOW can two walk together except they be agreed?
HOW shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?
HOW long shall you halt between two opinions?
HOW shall I know this? Zacharias, Elisabeth’s husband asked this.
HOW can this be? Mary asked the angel.
But in Psalm 133, neither of the HOWS raises a question & this is very unusual. Both the HOWS make an imperative statement accentuated by closing with an exclamation point. Behold how;
GOOD AND PLEASANT…..
Its not every day that we find anything that’s both good & pleasant. Visiting the dentist is good but it isn’t pleasant. Eating a healthy diet with plenty of fiber is good but it’s not always pleasant. Driving the speed limit is good, but many of you aggressive drivers who’ll read this know it’s not always pleasant.
David doesn’t say it will be easy to live in unity. There’ll be times when we have to work hard at staying unified. As an example, marriage is constant negotiation; from where to keep the thermostat to which restaurant we go to eat. Like the twin girls, we are constantly engaged in the give & take of relationships.
I believe it’s healthy to have disagreements but the key is how we handle them. Married folk know where all their spouses “buttons” are. We could get up any morning & start a fight with our spouse if that’s what we wanted. But if we’re wise, once we learn where those buttons are, we try to stay off of them. There’s a difference between unity & uniformity. God never called us to uniformity, but rather is calling us in all our relationships, to unity.
The Psalmist seems to stand in total awe & amazement as he gives us the message; there is nothing so sweet as this intangible-untouchable-indefinable-unexplainable-unclassifiable-indescribable- unspeakable thing called UNITY!
UNITY is sweet, good & Pleasant. In other words, how sweet it is!
The Hebrew word for pleasant is a musical synonym for harmony. I enjoy music of almost all kinds but the one thing I can’t stand is when music has no harmony or things are out of tune.—Behold how good & how pleasant it is for brethren to;
DWELL…
The word dwell means residency, a continuation & a perpetuating harmony. Unity is to dwell among us, not just be an occasional visitor, an ever-present resident, not a temporary guest. Brethren should dwell together;
IN UNITY…
Unity is good for us –body, mind, soul & spirit. I can’t understand people who foolishly add stressful things to their lives when we have enough problems with the world the flesh & the devil. It makes no sense to waste time dwelling on bitterness & grudges, stinking thinking & other toxic thoughts & patterns.
UNITY IS LIKE…
Now David describes Unity by using two similes, oil & dew. First it’s like OIL. The Oil spoken of here is special oil the priest used in the tabernacle. This oil was a preparation made of four different spices, which gave it a special fragrance, & was prohibited for use elsewhere. The Old Testament priesthood was a type of the New Testament church, pastors & leaders.
Most of you are familiar with the priesthood of all believers. When The Psalms were written the priests were the primary communicators with God but Jesus changed all that with His death & resurrection. Now we can all have the oil of the Holy Spirit poured out on us. The “it” refers to the unity we can experience & the special blessings that accompany it.
OIL lubricates dry bones, loosens the frozen nuts & bolts, soothes rough skin & softens hard hearts in the body of Christ.
When this oil starts flowing it doesn’t stop. It flowed from Aaron’s head down the beard over the collar & onto his robe. There’s an inexhaustible supply of oil.
David could have used other examples. The reason he uses Aaron is he was someone special; a high priest. So too is this unity we can experience- something special. Through Aaron’s anointing he was qualified to serve as priest & with the Holy Spirit’s anointing we are also qualified to do the work of God.
Have you ever been in a fighting church? I’ve been in lots of them & they have a terrible odor. The fragrance of Jesus, the great high priest isn’t among them. The most important thing a church can have is the fragrance of unity. The preaching doesn’t have to be great nor the buildings elaborate, but the fragrance of unity is indispensable.
Satan wants our homes & churches to be models of Balkanization, factions & disunity. Have you ever visited in a fighting home? I have. I’ve been in homes as guest & felt so bound up I almost choked. You can ask someone to pass the gravy & when you hear the words coming out of your mouth you say, “What in the world did I say that for?” All I did was ask for the gravy & the words seemed to go into a synthesizer & emerged sounding like something echoing through the forests of Transylvania.
Tension is palpable, & can’t be hidden. I’d rather be in Alabama with a banjo on my knee than to be where strife resides. The first thing that hits you in the face when you enter one of these homes is the tension between the personalities in conflict.
But you can also feel love & sense unity. You can walk into a home or a church & feel the fragrance of Christ’s unity radiating from people.
UNITY IS LIKE THE “DEW ON MT. HERMON….”
I’ve visited Israel three times, as a matter of fact on our first visit we left just a few days before the six day war of 1967. When you look at your map of Palestine, you see a long piece of real estate & way up in the North East corner, almost directly across from Beirut, is Mount Hermon.
Mount Hermon is the highest point in the region—9,200 feet above sea level. Very little rain falls in this arid region but heavy dew falls each morning providing the moisture necessary for life & growth. There is such heavy, penetrating dew it makes the area abnormally lush & green on the slopes & up on the mountain. This dew makes the desert bloom.
Again David illustrates how rich the blessings will be when this “unity dew” falls on us. This dew will so penetrate us that it will moisten our minds, wash away worries & dampen the dusty demons that try to gain entrance.
This dew drenches everything. Everything gets covered with it. And so it is when the dew of unity comes.
Homes & churches that are filled with conflict & controversy are nothing less than a tragedy for everyone involved.
Some people think that they can talk trash around their kids & it will not affect them. Here’s the truth; if you talk negatively about your pastor, or anyone else around your kids, the person talked about will be able to feel it, literally see it in the kid’s eyes when they’re around them.
A few years ago Juda & I were pastoring a small church in the South & there was a young couple in the church with several small children. This couple just didn’t like us, period. That’s hard to understand given the fact that I’m so lovable. I knew they were angry at us but one Sunday Morning I walked up to greet the mother. She was holding her small child in her arms & when the baby saw me he began kicking & screaming almost uncontrollably.
The boy, just a few months old pitched a conniption- fit right there. Later I was sharing it with Juda & to my total shock she said the same thing had happened when she tried to speak to the lady. Both times the baby, who as I remember wasn’t even talking yet, reacted the same.
We all know this can happen with children but I’d never seen it so distinctly in evidence in a child that small. It wasn’t imaginary. The mother was extremely embarrassed & I’ll always believe she understood exactly what was happening. The couple had other children, the oldest had gotten old enough to be able to hide it, but the younger one, & the baby just couldn’t do it. Because of the attitude of the parents toward us we instinctively knew what the problem was with the youngest one. Make no mistake; when there is negative talk in the home, even the youngest somehow soak it up & it gets in their spirit.
I remember thinking, dear God, if people only understood the damage they do to their children when they allow bickering, fighting, hostility, criticism & strife to reign in their homes.
The converse is also true; when parents speak well of their church at home the children will be happier about attending & they will have the same sweet spirit their parents have.
Some people seem to think we’ve been given the ministry of demolition but they have it wrong; it’s the ministry of reconciliation that God has given us.-2 Cor.5:18
There’s a vast difference between being a peace lover, a peace keeper or a peace-maker. We all enjoy peace & it doesn’t take that much effort to keep peace, if it’s already on the scene. However it takes initiative, concern, prayer, tact & sometimes vulnerability to make peace where there isn’t any. When we do all possible to promote peace, we’re protecting what is cherished in the heart of Jesus, that for which He prayed in John 17.
Let me give some advice here that I’ve garnered over more than half a century of ministry. If someone comes to you wanting to dish out slander & gossip; they have just given you the biggest insult possible. Why? Because they’ve assumed that your ears are garbage cans.
We should say this when that happens; “Hey, wait a minute here, you’ve just insulted me. You’re handing out verbal garbage so that implies that you think I’m a garbage can. Don’t ever insult me like that again.”
THE HIGH COST OF DISUNITY
When reading Psalm 133, I often wonder if David was talking out of his experience with his brothers. Remember how abusively his brother talked to him when he went down to visit on the battle line, when he defeated Goliath? Perhaps he was ruminating about how it felt to have so much jealousy in his home life. He also could have been referring to Israel, which had a civil war & split in half forming the Northern & Southern kingdoms.
Ladies & gentlemen, let’s try with all diligence to cultivate a healthy self/critical spirit, instead of being so hard on one another. There used to be a saying, “Don’t criticize until you can show-how.”
When I was a kid, I used to occasionally try to use an axe, a hoe, a shovel or a rake. [Not at the same time.] My dad was raised on the farm, & he was an artist with all those tools.
I remember him occasionally critiquing me in a nice way about how I was using the tools. Then he’d proceed to take the axe, hammer, or shovel out of my hands & demonstrate how to use it. The thing I remember about all his work was the ease with which he did it. I would sling the axe with all my might & make very little impact. He’d lift it up & let it fall a certain way & huge chunks would fly. My point is he felt free to correct me because he could turn around & model a more effective way to do it.
If you have a “bone to pick” with your church or your fellow Christian, before you point out their failures, ask yourself if you know how to do better than they the thing you’re criticizing. When we cultivate that healthy self/critical attitude we’ll soon realize there’s room for improvement within all of us.
As with my father, show a better way & people will usually take it but let’s make sure we’re exemplifying in our own lives the things we’re trying to straighten out in others. Anyone can “point out the gap” but what is needed is someone to “stand in the gap.” When we’re overly critical of someone, Romans 2:1 says it’s a guarantee that we’re harboring that same thing in our own lives; consequently we’re quick to spot it in others.
I well remember one of the first funerals I conducted as a young pastor. The deceased was a long-standing member of the church. I did some research & when I spoke to members of the congregation, I heard, “Oh that family doesn’t get along.”
I also learned that I couldn’t get the family together so I had to meet most of them separately, & they all had different things they wanted me to say about the deceased. I had to walk a tight-rope as I navigated the family’s “land-mines.”
I learned much later that this—“celebration of their family member’s life”—was the last time that family would ever sit together in the same room.
Lastly, Psalm 133 tells us; where unity dwells;
THERE GOD COMMANDED THE BLESSING, EVEN LIFE FOR EVERMORE
Did you know the Lord has commanded blessings to come upon you & me when we’re at peace with our brothers & sisters in the Lord?
Is there someone you can’t quite get along with? Pray for that person. Go out of your way to be a blessing to them. Do your best to walk in peace & unity. The world will know we’re true followers of Christ when we do this.
Make the decision to live in peace with your brothers & sisters if the only thing you can agree on is “Jesus is Lord!”
Focus on the love you have for God & for seeing people come to know Him. As you focus on walking in peace & unity, you’ll walk into the place of blessing the Lord has commanded for you.
Endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit, in the bond of peace. Eph.4:3
Blessings,
John
Sunday, April 1, 2018
Nip/ Tuck, Comb And Pluck
By John Stallings
“Beauty? Let me tell you something...
Being thought of as “a beautiful woman” has spared me from nothing in life, no heartache, no trouble. Love has been difficult. Beauty is essentially meaningless, and it is always transitory.”
Who do think spoke these words? She has been among People magazine’s 50 most beautiful people. No-it’s not Phyllis Diller, or Diva Clinton or even Drama Queen Pelosi. Her name? - Halle Berry.
I won’t even comment on the possibilities of what Sandra Bullock could add here if she was so disposed. You have to feel for the poor woman because she waited until she was in her late thirties or early forties to marry, hoping to pick the right man. Known globally for outward beauty, she probably kissed a lot of frogs before she found her “prince” who turned out to be a jerk.
According to a fairly recent article in the Chicago Tribune, inner beauty may not be enough these days. Did we ever think it was in America?
In an article Wendy Donahue called “When Inner Beauty Simply Isn’t Enough,” the author reports on the growing popularity of plastic surgery to improve personal appearance.
“Blame the Baby Boomers for turning 50 at the rate of about 5 million a year or the Hollywood Foreign Press for awarding a best Golden Globe to an “Extreme-makeover” soap opera.
But like it or not, the nip/tuck trend has and is spreading like wildfire in this country. The numbers are now in the millions according to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. It’s not just Palm Beach socialites having procedures, at the end of the day everyone wants to look better.”
A female comedian recently said; “The doctor said he couldn’t give me a face lift -but he could lower my body.”
BEAUTY- FROM GOD’S POINT OF VIEW
I’m not critical of a woman for at least trying for physical beauty, as long as she doesn’t go too far. You might say, “Brother, who decides when it’s “too far?” I don’t believe anyone should try to be a judge in matters like this unless it gets totally ridiculous. However, even a child can look at a woman and know they have on too much make-up.
We once knew a wonderful lady who wore too much make-up. She was a warm and compassionate woman who loved God with her whole heart. If I were sick, I’d much rather have her pray for me than some of the “great and highly favored men of faith” on T.V. But this dear lady wore too much make-up. It must have taken her hours to get it all on and there must have been long hours in the “repair shop.”
One night in church a little 4 year old boy walked up to her and said, “You look like a clown.” The little fellow didn’t have a mean bone in his body and wasn’t being critical, he was just being honest. As you know, young children “calls em like they sees em.” His mother was devastated because she had no idea her little angel had that in him. I’m thinking he had a hard time sitting down for a few days after that.
Fortunately the lady took no offense and thought the whole thing was funny. I can’t say with any certainty that women are vainer than men in the area of personal appearance, but women probably put more emphasis on their appearance than most men do.
Women, -“get ready” for bed at night. That’s a feminine thing to do. They have their nighttime rituals. It takes them time to get ready for bed. I don’t know a man who gets ready for bed. Men don’t know how to get ready for bed, we just go to bed. Juda and I can arrive at a motel at three in the morning and she’ll busy around in the bathroom for a minimum of thirty minutes. Her mother taught her to take her make-up off before she goes to bed and it’s coming off, no matter what.
But the reality is, all of us use too much “make-up.” From time to time we cover up our real selves. We struggle with authenticity. Too often we can be like the people Jesus mentioned in Matthew 15:8, in that “we honor Him with our lips but our hearts are far from Him.”
CHILD’S PLAY
Practically everything children do in the area of play have to do with pretending to be something they’re not. In fact most all toys are designed to help kids pretend in some way. Girls have toy ovens so they can pretend to cook like their mother. Boys accumulate a collection of costumes so they can pretend to be heroes like Robin Hood, The Lone Ranger, Batman or Superman.
When I was a kid I had seventeen or eighteen horses. They were all stick horses but I covered ground on them, moving as if I were astride a real galloping horse. The gunfire noises I made vocally were so “perfect” you could imagine hearing the bullets ricochet off rocks or other hard objects. It was an awesomely [childish] thing to behold.
It’s fine, even good for children to play in this way because it’s a normal part of development as individuals. Pretending is O.K for kids but the problem comes when people carry a form of this childish behavior into adulthood. All of us have been guilty of “playing pretend” in various ways. How often do we do things to make ourselves look spiritual? Some folk will ask questions to make themselves look spiritual. They will say ‘deep” things to make themselves appear to be “holy.”
When adults embrace this kind of deceitful behavior, God considers it to be a sin. As a matter of fact, pretending is another word for HYPOCRISY. In the New Testament the Greek work for “hypocrite” is ‘actor.” Pretending to be something we’re not. If you and I do that we’re hypocrites. If you want to be reminded of what Jesus thought about hypocrisy, read Matthew 23.
PETER’S ADVICE TO CHRISTIAN WIVES
In 1 Peter 3:1-6 Peter is giving advice to Christian women who want to see their unbelieving husbands saved. His advice is about mixed marriages.
Peter tells us that in the eyes of the Lord inner beauty matters more than outer beauty. Truthfully, it would be difficult to find more sensible advice than Peter gives here. He has in mind a wife who has an unsaved husband that she’s repeatedly shared the gospel with. Peter is saying that if a man doesn’t believe the Word-speaking of God’s Word, he can be won without words. Peter’s advice is “don’t nag him.”
We all hate for others to nag us especially when we know they’re right. Human nature being what it is, nagging usually drives people the other way.
Peter probably has in mind here women whose lives had been changed by the gospel. Women who were once involved in sacrifice at pagan alters, women who’d found forgiveness, freedom and dignity through the Gospel of Christ. Now these women go to church, learn the Scriptures, sing Christian songs and have a whole new set of friends. They can’t seem to stop talking about their new found faith. And here’s the poor husband. He not only doesn’t believe, he doesn’t even understand what all the fuss is about. To him, this man Jesus is just another deity. And who are these strange people his wife is hanging out with and why does she always want to go leave him on Sunday morning? And what’s all this talk about needing to be saved? And now she’s trying to drag the kids into it. “She doesn’t seem like the same girl I married.”
He’s right! She isn’t the same person he married. She’s a new creation. But he doesn’t understand that truth. All he sees is that this Jesus has messed up his wife and upset his family. And now she wants him to get into it, too.
There are probably some women reading this piece whose deepest desire is to see their husband come to Christ. And because of that intense desire the tendency is to “pour it on.” Bible verses are hanging all over the house. Books, tracks, records, tapes, Cd's, new place settings with Scripture on them are all around the table. The battle is on for a soul. But the husband feels his wife is pressuring him. Peter knows that a person can’t be nagged into the kingdom of God. He’ll either be scared off or made angry. Peter is telling Christian woman married to an unbeliever, back off. Take it easy. It’s not your job to convert him. Only God can do that. The less you say the better. Don’t make him feel like a leper in his own home. So what’s a woman to do?
WIN YOUR HUSBAND BY THE QUALITY OF YOUR LIFE.
In verse 2, Peter mentions purity and reverence. Purity speaks to the moral goodness of your life, and reverence describes your genuine love for the Lord Jesus Christ. The simple power of a godly life will be a thousand times more effective than high-pressure tactics. Is Peter guaranteeing the husband will be saved if you focus on purity and reverence? No. This is a principle not a promise. The husband still has to make the decision for himself. An atmosphere of high-pressure Christianity in your home will never get the job done but an atmosphere of love where the husband sees every day the change Christ has made in your life will. A godly wife who loves her husband is a powerful tool in the hands of the Holy Spirit.
INNER BEAUTY
Peter says, “Your beauty shouldn’t come from outward adornment such as braided hair and the wearing of gold and jewelry and fine clothes. Instead it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit.” [1 Peter 3:3-4] Women in those days would sometimes sit at the mirror and spend hours with their hair, weaving gold and silver strands into it, then changing it all around to try something else. Talk about narcissism.
Since these verses can be easily misunderstood, let’s look at this passage in other translations;
Don’t depend on things like fancy hairdos or gold jewelry or expensive clothes to make you look beautiful. Be beautiful in your heart by being gentle and quiet. This kind of beauty will last forever.-The Contemporary English Version.
From the New Living Translation: Don’t be concerned about the outward beauty that depends on fancy hairstyles, expensive jewelry, or beautiful clothes. You should be known for the beauty that comes from within, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is so precious to God.
Again, I for one am not against the desire for outward beauty. This is neither wrong nor unnatural. Everything God creates has its own sort of beauty. God gave us the desire for beauty and an ability to appreciate it. As Ray Stevens wrote-“Everything is beautiful, in its own way.” I love that song because of the truth it expresses.
The women of the world emphasize outward beauty because they’re empty inside. Their constant changing of styles is a testimony to their bankrupt values.
What makes a Christian woman beautiful? The unfading beauty of a quiet spirit. There’s a lot to ponder in that statement. It’s beauty that doesn’t depend on eye shadow or lip gloss or silk skirts or contact lens or the latest fashion. It’s a beauty that’s just as beautiful when you’re 57 as when you’re 17. It’s unfading and therefore never goes out of style and never has to be replaced.
The “gentle” spirit is one where the Christian woman lives under the control of the Holy Spirit. The word “quiet” is an unusual Greek word that means tranquil or undisturbed, like the surface of a lake on a windless afternoon. It describes a heart that isn’t easily ruffled by the cares and concerns of life.
If the husband is the head of the home, the wife is the heart of the home. She sets the tone for the entire family. She sets the tone by her own spirit. Everyone else resonates to the note she sounds. If the home is peaceful, quiet, restful, it’s because the wife has created that atmosphere. If the home is hectic, loud, disorganized and strident, it’s also because the wife has set that tone by her own spirit.
Obviously Peter isn’t suggesting that women keep quiet around the house. He isn’t describing a weak, shy, timid scared woman. It takes a strong woman to do all women have to do in this world and be able to control her emotions and deal peacefully and gently with people.
I heard a comedian say one time that he hadn’t spoken to his wife for years. He didn’t want to interrupt her. Unfortunately some wives feel they have to be loud and bombastic to accomplish what they want.
Peter leaves a clue to his real meaning at the end of verse 6, when he says that Christian wives are the daughters of Sarah “if you do what is right and do not give way to fear.” The phrase “give way to fear” suggests an emotional state that is easily rattled by problems and quickly alarmed by the “what ifs” of life.
What if things don’t work out?
What if we run out of money?
What if my husband makes a bad decision?
What if I lose my job?
What if our children get sick?
What if we can’t find a place to live?
If you aren’t careful those legitimate questions can become so huge in your mind that they can completely destroy your gentle and quiet spirit. You can give in to fear or you can have a gentle and quiet spirit but you can’t have them both at the same time.
THE EXAMPLE OF INNER BEAUTY
For this is the way holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to make themselves beautiful. They were submissive to their own husbands, like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her master. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear.-1 Peter 3:5-6.
Peter takes us back to the book of Genesis, to the story of Abraham and Sarah. From the life of Sarah he picks up one point; she called her husband “master” or “Lord.” Of course she wasn’t calling her husband Lord in the sense that he was “Lord God.” The Greek word used is kurios which could have also meant “master” or “sir” or “dear husband.” It’s a term of deep abiding respect.
There’s no passage where Sarah directly calls her husband “master” or “sir” or even “my dear husband.” The only reference to this term comes from Genesis 18. You will remember that God had promised Abraham that one day he and Sarah would have a son. That promise was made when Abraham was 75 years old and Sarah was 65. By the time we come to Genesis 18, 24 years have passed. Abraham is 99 and Sarah is 89. That’s a problem because both were well past childbearing age. Romans 4:19 says of Abraham, “his body was as good as dead’ and of Sarah, “her womb was also dead.” Now let’s pick up the story in Genesis 18:10-12.
Humanly speaking, Sarah was right. It was impossible. But God had promised a son. Note that even in her doubt; Sarah still calls Abraham “my master.” Note that verse 12 describes what Sarah was thinking as she heard the Lord’s promise. I don’t know if Sarah ever called Abraham “master’ to his face, but it doesn’t matter. She said it in her mind, which reveals her truest feelings. That’s the connection to 1 Peter 3. When old Abe said to Sarah, “let’s go to the tent a little early tonight” she said, “Okay, but I think you’re crazy.” But she went. And the rest is history.
Formula-God/Abraham/Sarah.
A woman has to ask herself; do I believe God can speak to me through my husband? God spoke to Abraham and Abraham believed God. Then Abraham spoke to Sarah and Sarah believed Abraham. Abraham believed God and Sarah believed Abraham. If you want to put it in one sentence: Sarah respected her husband enough to believe that God could speak to her through him. Not that God couldn’t have spoken directly to her; - He could. But in this case He spoke to her though Abraham. When Sarah called him master she was simply respecting him as the head of the home and was indicating that God was free to speak to her through Abraham if that’s what He wanted to do.
Here’s a point of decision every Christian wife must come to: do I believe God is able to speak to me through my husband? If the answer is no, then submission isn’t possible. If the answer is yes, then you can become a true daughter of Abraham.
ABRAHAM AND SARAH- GOOD EXAMPLES
The reason Abraham and Sarah were good examples for Peter to use was that they were both flawed people. They weren’t “plaster saints” who never made any mistakes. Abraham was a world class fibber who lied twice about his wife. Sarah was the one who dreamed up the bad idea of having Abraham sleep with their servant girl Hagar in a shortsighted attempt to help God out. These were imperfect people who nevertheless believed God and trusted each other when it mattered most.
We also know that Sarah was no “plain Jane.” She was a beautiful woman and the Egyptians saw that very clearly. That’s why Abraham lied about her being his sister so they wouldn’t kill him to gain possession of her. Genesis 12:14.
This helps us understand that Peter isn’t trying to put the “kibosh” on outward beauty. But Sarah is commended by the Lord not for her outward beauty but her inner beauty that allowed her to trust her husband in a difficult situation. When she’s willing to believe God and trust her husband her inner beauty shines much brighter.
What is God saying to all of us through this passage? Peter uses the phrase “in the same way” repeated in verse one and also verse seven. He’s pushing us back to the closing verses of chapter two when he admonishes all believers to follow in the steps of Jesus Himself.
Submission isn’t about you or your husband or boss or anyone over you. Submission is about your relationship to God. Jesus entrusted Himself to God and even while dying he had a gentle and quiet spirit. Through His righteous submission to His heavenly father He became our savior.
My next installment talks about the message Peter gives men. If it seems it’s been a little hard on women, Peter’s advice to husbands holds us men’s “feet to the fire,” and shoots straight from the shoulder to us.
A FINAL QUESTION...
Was Jesus beautiful? Isaiah 53: 2 tells us that when He was arrested and beaten He was almost beyond recognition. They beat Him until the skin hung in ribbons down his back. They pushed a crown of thorns on His bloody head and covered Him with a purple robe. It must have been hard to look at Him in that condition.
In Luke 23:46 He bowed His head and said, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”
The Father must have looked down from heaven and said, “That’s my beautiful Son.”
Jesus calls each one of us to take up our cross and follow Him. If we want to be like Him there will always be a cross of submission at the end of the road.
We can't skip the cross, but we need not fear or shrink from it.When we are like Jusus our lives will be filled with inner beauty and our prayers will be unhindered.
God will be glorified and the world will see Jesus at work in us.
Blessings,
John
“Beauty? Let me tell you something...
Being thought of as “a beautiful woman” has spared me from nothing in life, no heartache, no trouble. Love has been difficult. Beauty is essentially meaningless, and it is always transitory.”
Who do think spoke these words? She has been among People magazine’s 50 most beautiful people. No-it’s not Phyllis Diller, or Diva Clinton or even Drama Queen Pelosi. Her name? - Halle Berry.
I won’t even comment on the possibilities of what Sandra Bullock could add here if she was so disposed. You have to feel for the poor woman because she waited until she was in her late thirties or early forties to marry, hoping to pick the right man. Known globally for outward beauty, she probably kissed a lot of frogs before she found her “prince” who turned out to be a jerk.
According to a fairly recent article in the Chicago Tribune, inner beauty may not be enough these days. Did we ever think it was in America?
In an article Wendy Donahue called “When Inner Beauty Simply Isn’t Enough,” the author reports on the growing popularity of plastic surgery to improve personal appearance.
“Blame the Baby Boomers for turning 50 at the rate of about 5 million a year or the Hollywood Foreign Press for awarding a best Golden Globe to an “Extreme-makeover” soap opera.
But like it or not, the nip/tuck trend has and is spreading like wildfire in this country. The numbers are now in the millions according to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. It’s not just Palm Beach socialites having procedures, at the end of the day everyone wants to look better.”
A female comedian recently said; “The doctor said he couldn’t give me a face lift -but he could lower my body.”
BEAUTY- FROM GOD’S POINT OF VIEW
I’m not critical of a woman for at least trying for physical beauty, as long as she doesn’t go too far. You might say, “Brother, who decides when it’s “too far?” I don’t believe anyone should try to be a judge in matters like this unless it gets totally ridiculous. However, even a child can look at a woman and know they have on too much make-up.
We once knew a wonderful lady who wore too much make-up. She was a warm and compassionate woman who loved God with her whole heart. If I were sick, I’d much rather have her pray for me than some of the “great and highly favored men of faith” on T.V. But this dear lady wore too much make-up. It must have taken her hours to get it all on and there must have been long hours in the “repair shop.”
One night in church a little 4 year old boy walked up to her and said, “You look like a clown.” The little fellow didn’t have a mean bone in his body and wasn’t being critical, he was just being honest. As you know, young children “calls em like they sees em.” His mother was devastated because she had no idea her little angel had that in him. I’m thinking he had a hard time sitting down for a few days after that.
Fortunately the lady took no offense and thought the whole thing was funny. I can’t say with any certainty that women are vainer than men in the area of personal appearance, but women probably put more emphasis on their appearance than most men do.
Women, -“get ready” for bed at night. That’s a feminine thing to do. They have their nighttime rituals. It takes them time to get ready for bed. I don’t know a man who gets ready for bed. Men don’t know how to get ready for bed, we just go to bed. Juda and I can arrive at a motel at three in the morning and she’ll busy around in the bathroom for a minimum of thirty minutes. Her mother taught her to take her make-up off before she goes to bed and it’s coming off, no matter what.
But the reality is, all of us use too much “make-up.” From time to time we cover up our real selves. We struggle with authenticity. Too often we can be like the people Jesus mentioned in Matthew 15:8, in that “we honor Him with our lips but our hearts are far from Him.”
CHILD’S PLAY
Practically everything children do in the area of play have to do with pretending to be something they’re not. In fact most all toys are designed to help kids pretend in some way. Girls have toy ovens so they can pretend to cook like their mother. Boys accumulate a collection of costumes so they can pretend to be heroes like Robin Hood, The Lone Ranger, Batman or Superman.
When I was a kid I had seventeen or eighteen horses. They were all stick horses but I covered ground on them, moving as if I were astride a real galloping horse. The gunfire noises I made vocally were so “perfect” you could imagine hearing the bullets ricochet off rocks or other hard objects. It was an awesomely [childish] thing to behold.
It’s fine, even good for children to play in this way because it’s a normal part of development as individuals. Pretending is O.K for kids but the problem comes when people carry a form of this childish behavior into adulthood. All of us have been guilty of “playing pretend” in various ways. How often do we do things to make ourselves look spiritual? Some folk will ask questions to make themselves look spiritual. They will say ‘deep” things to make themselves appear to be “holy.”
When adults embrace this kind of deceitful behavior, God considers it to be a sin. As a matter of fact, pretending is another word for HYPOCRISY. In the New Testament the Greek work for “hypocrite” is ‘actor.” Pretending to be something we’re not. If you and I do that we’re hypocrites. If you want to be reminded of what Jesus thought about hypocrisy, read Matthew 23.
PETER’S ADVICE TO CHRISTIAN WIVES
In 1 Peter 3:1-6 Peter is giving advice to Christian women who want to see their unbelieving husbands saved. His advice is about mixed marriages.
Peter tells us that in the eyes of the Lord inner beauty matters more than outer beauty. Truthfully, it would be difficult to find more sensible advice than Peter gives here. He has in mind a wife who has an unsaved husband that she’s repeatedly shared the gospel with. Peter is saying that if a man doesn’t believe the Word-speaking of God’s Word, he can be won without words. Peter’s advice is “don’t nag him.”
We all hate for others to nag us especially when we know they’re right. Human nature being what it is, nagging usually drives people the other way.
Peter probably has in mind here women whose lives had been changed by the gospel. Women who were once involved in sacrifice at pagan alters, women who’d found forgiveness, freedom and dignity through the Gospel of Christ. Now these women go to church, learn the Scriptures, sing Christian songs and have a whole new set of friends. They can’t seem to stop talking about their new found faith. And here’s the poor husband. He not only doesn’t believe, he doesn’t even understand what all the fuss is about. To him, this man Jesus is just another deity. And who are these strange people his wife is hanging out with and why does she always want to go leave him on Sunday morning? And what’s all this talk about needing to be saved? And now she’s trying to drag the kids into it. “She doesn’t seem like the same girl I married.”
He’s right! She isn’t the same person he married. She’s a new creation. But he doesn’t understand that truth. All he sees is that this Jesus has messed up his wife and upset his family. And now she wants him to get into it, too.
There are probably some women reading this piece whose deepest desire is to see their husband come to Christ. And because of that intense desire the tendency is to “pour it on.” Bible verses are hanging all over the house. Books, tracks, records, tapes, Cd's, new place settings with Scripture on them are all around the table. The battle is on for a soul. But the husband feels his wife is pressuring him. Peter knows that a person can’t be nagged into the kingdom of God. He’ll either be scared off or made angry. Peter is telling Christian woman married to an unbeliever, back off. Take it easy. It’s not your job to convert him. Only God can do that. The less you say the better. Don’t make him feel like a leper in his own home. So what’s a woman to do?
WIN YOUR HUSBAND BY THE QUALITY OF YOUR LIFE.
In verse 2, Peter mentions purity and reverence. Purity speaks to the moral goodness of your life, and reverence describes your genuine love for the Lord Jesus Christ. The simple power of a godly life will be a thousand times more effective than high-pressure tactics. Is Peter guaranteeing the husband will be saved if you focus on purity and reverence? No. This is a principle not a promise. The husband still has to make the decision for himself. An atmosphere of high-pressure Christianity in your home will never get the job done but an atmosphere of love where the husband sees every day the change Christ has made in your life will. A godly wife who loves her husband is a powerful tool in the hands of the Holy Spirit.
INNER BEAUTY
Peter says, “Your beauty shouldn’t come from outward adornment such as braided hair and the wearing of gold and jewelry and fine clothes. Instead it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit.” [1 Peter 3:3-4] Women in those days would sometimes sit at the mirror and spend hours with their hair, weaving gold and silver strands into it, then changing it all around to try something else. Talk about narcissism.
Since these verses can be easily misunderstood, let’s look at this passage in other translations;
Don’t depend on things like fancy hairdos or gold jewelry or expensive clothes to make you look beautiful. Be beautiful in your heart by being gentle and quiet. This kind of beauty will last forever.-The Contemporary English Version.
From the New Living Translation: Don’t be concerned about the outward beauty that depends on fancy hairstyles, expensive jewelry, or beautiful clothes. You should be known for the beauty that comes from within, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is so precious to God.
Again, I for one am not against the desire for outward beauty. This is neither wrong nor unnatural. Everything God creates has its own sort of beauty. God gave us the desire for beauty and an ability to appreciate it. As Ray Stevens wrote-“Everything is beautiful, in its own way.” I love that song because of the truth it expresses.
The women of the world emphasize outward beauty because they’re empty inside. Their constant changing of styles is a testimony to their bankrupt values.
What makes a Christian woman beautiful? The unfading beauty of a quiet spirit. There’s a lot to ponder in that statement. It’s beauty that doesn’t depend on eye shadow or lip gloss or silk skirts or contact lens or the latest fashion. It’s a beauty that’s just as beautiful when you’re 57 as when you’re 17. It’s unfading and therefore never goes out of style and never has to be replaced.
The “gentle” spirit is one where the Christian woman lives under the control of the Holy Spirit. The word “quiet” is an unusual Greek word that means tranquil or undisturbed, like the surface of a lake on a windless afternoon. It describes a heart that isn’t easily ruffled by the cares and concerns of life.
If the husband is the head of the home, the wife is the heart of the home. She sets the tone for the entire family. She sets the tone by her own spirit. Everyone else resonates to the note she sounds. If the home is peaceful, quiet, restful, it’s because the wife has created that atmosphere. If the home is hectic, loud, disorganized and strident, it’s also because the wife has set that tone by her own spirit.
Obviously Peter isn’t suggesting that women keep quiet around the house. He isn’t describing a weak, shy, timid scared woman. It takes a strong woman to do all women have to do in this world and be able to control her emotions and deal peacefully and gently with people.
I heard a comedian say one time that he hadn’t spoken to his wife for years. He didn’t want to interrupt her. Unfortunately some wives feel they have to be loud and bombastic to accomplish what they want.
Peter leaves a clue to his real meaning at the end of verse 6, when he says that Christian wives are the daughters of Sarah “if you do what is right and do not give way to fear.” The phrase “give way to fear” suggests an emotional state that is easily rattled by problems and quickly alarmed by the “what ifs” of life.
What if things don’t work out?
What if we run out of money?
What if my husband makes a bad decision?
What if I lose my job?
What if our children get sick?
What if we can’t find a place to live?
If you aren’t careful those legitimate questions can become so huge in your mind that they can completely destroy your gentle and quiet spirit. You can give in to fear or you can have a gentle and quiet spirit but you can’t have them both at the same time.
THE EXAMPLE OF INNER BEAUTY
For this is the way holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to make themselves beautiful. They were submissive to their own husbands, like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her master. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear.-1 Peter 3:5-6.
Peter takes us back to the book of Genesis, to the story of Abraham and Sarah. From the life of Sarah he picks up one point; she called her husband “master” or “Lord.” Of course she wasn’t calling her husband Lord in the sense that he was “Lord God.” The Greek word used is kurios which could have also meant “master” or “sir” or “dear husband.” It’s a term of deep abiding respect.
There’s no passage where Sarah directly calls her husband “master” or “sir” or even “my dear husband.” The only reference to this term comes from Genesis 18. You will remember that God had promised Abraham that one day he and Sarah would have a son. That promise was made when Abraham was 75 years old and Sarah was 65. By the time we come to Genesis 18, 24 years have passed. Abraham is 99 and Sarah is 89. That’s a problem because both were well past childbearing age. Romans 4:19 says of Abraham, “his body was as good as dead’ and of Sarah, “her womb was also dead.” Now let’s pick up the story in Genesis 18:10-12.
Humanly speaking, Sarah was right. It was impossible. But God had promised a son. Note that even in her doubt; Sarah still calls Abraham “my master.” Note that verse 12 describes what Sarah was thinking as she heard the Lord’s promise. I don’t know if Sarah ever called Abraham “master’ to his face, but it doesn’t matter. She said it in her mind, which reveals her truest feelings. That’s the connection to 1 Peter 3. When old Abe said to Sarah, “let’s go to the tent a little early tonight” she said, “Okay, but I think you’re crazy.” But she went. And the rest is history.
Formula-God/Abraham/Sarah.
A woman has to ask herself; do I believe God can speak to me through my husband? God spoke to Abraham and Abraham believed God. Then Abraham spoke to Sarah and Sarah believed Abraham. Abraham believed God and Sarah believed Abraham. If you want to put it in one sentence: Sarah respected her husband enough to believe that God could speak to her through him. Not that God couldn’t have spoken directly to her; - He could. But in this case He spoke to her though Abraham. When Sarah called him master she was simply respecting him as the head of the home and was indicating that God was free to speak to her through Abraham if that’s what He wanted to do.
Here’s a point of decision every Christian wife must come to: do I believe God is able to speak to me through my husband? If the answer is no, then submission isn’t possible. If the answer is yes, then you can become a true daughter of Abraham.
ABRAHAM AND SARAH- GOOD EXAMPLES
The reason Abraham and Sarah were good examples for Peter to use was that they were both flawed people. They weren’t “plaster saints” who never made any mistakes. Abraham was a world class fibber who lied twice about his wife. Sarah was the one who dreamed up the bad idea of having Abraham sleep with their servant girl Hagar in a shortsighted attempt to help God out. These were imperfect people who nevertheless believed God and trusted each other when it mattered most.
We also know that Sarah was no “plain Jane.” She was a beautiful woman and the Egyptians saw that very clearly. That’s why Abraham lied about her being his sister so they wouldn’t kill him to gain possession of her. Genesis 12:14.
This helps us understand that Peter isn’t trying to put the “kibosh” on outward beauty. But Sarah is commended by the Lord not for her outward beauty but her inner beauty that allowed her to trust her husband in a difficult situation. When she’s willing to believe God and trust her husband her inner beauty shines much brighter.
What is God saying to all of us through this passage? Peter uses the phrase “in the same way” repeated in verse one and also verse seven. He’s pushing us back to the closing verses of chapter two when he admonishes all believers to follow in the steps of Jesus Himself.
Submission isn’t about you or your husband or boss or anyone over you. Submission is about your relationship to God. Jesus entrusted Himself to God and even while dying he had a gentle and quiet spirit. Through His righteous submission to His heavenly father He became our savior.
My next installment talks about the message Peter gives men. If it seems it’s been a little hard on women, Peter’s advice to husbands holds us men’s “feet to the fire,” and shoots straight from the shoulder to us.
A FINAL QUESTION...
Was Jesus beautiful? Isaiah 53: 2 tells us that when He was arrested and beaten He was almost beyond recognition. They beat Him until the skin hung in ribbons down his back. They pushed a crown of thorns on His bloody head and covered Him with a purple robe. It must have been hard to look at Him in that condition.
In Luke 23:46 He bowed His head and said, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”
The Father must have looked down from heaven and said, “That’s my beautiful Son.”
Jesus calls each one of us to take up our cross and follow Him. If we want to be like Him there will always be a cross of submission at the end of the road.
We can't skip the cross, but we need not fear or shrink from it.When we are like Jusus our lives will be filled with inner beauty and our prayers will be unhindered.
God will be glorified and the world will see Jesus at work in us.
Blessings,
John
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