John Stallings Wisdom and Wit

HAS THE GOSPEL FAILED??

2012-02-10T09:08:00.005-05:00

By John Stallings

Surveying America today we see a wicked world, a weak church & unconverted multitudes. The reasons God could chastise our nation are nearly endless.

Many ministries & individuals are putting forth an effort to stem the tide of unrighteousness but a far higher number of lukewarm Christians sit on the sidelines expecting someone else to do the work & make the sacrifices.

We are killing babies by the millions in our abortion clinics. Laws have been passed to protect those who engage in these savage acts of butchery. We sugar-coat this horror with words like “pro-choice” & “a woman’s right to choose.”

We kicked God out of the public school system & replaced Christianity with the false teaching of evolution. Many young people have turned away from God because they’ve been falsely told evolution proves the Bible wrong.

Our schools indoctrinate children to believe homosexuality is a morally acceptable life-style. This is in conflict with God’s Word & is often done against the wishes of the parents. Our society is so inundated by sexual imagery that many of both sexes admit to sexual addictions.

NASA spent billions of dollars ransacking space trying to find the origins of life in hopes of finding some proof that man can comfortably be his own God, while all the answers to what they seek have been right under their noses for thousands of years in the Bible.

All kinds of “new age” philosophies are sweeping our country. Many states sponsor lotteries in spite of the fact that it’s nothing but gambling, a sin that dooms more people than many other addictions combined.

Far to many folk would rather have a known serial adulterer & rapist in the White House than a person who has a sense of morality as well as a Christian testimony. Partially for this reason premarital sex as well as having a baby out of wedlock have lost the stigma they had just a few decades ago.

Stay at home mothers are mocked by society as being out of touch with the way a modern woman should be living her life. Corporal punishment which is strongly supported by the Bible has come under secular liberal attack & because of this children are disrespectful toward their parents & other authority figures.

Divorce rates are high.

Fathers in large numbers are failing to teach & train their children & dump this responsibility on already over- burden wives, or on the church, or it doesn’t get done at all.

T.V shows are filled with openly gay characters who shamelessly parade their lifestyle before a morally anesthetized nation. Our society is far more interested in sports & other entertainment than they are Godly matters. Every sign the Roman Empire evidenced before it crumbled into the dustbin of history is seen in today’s America.

ALL THIS RAISES A QUESTION; HAS THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST FAILED? HAS THE GOSPEL FAILED?

After all there’s a church on every other corner in America not to mention the fact that Christian television & radio saturate our airwaves. Christian book stores stocked with the finest of spiritual reading are easily assessable to most Americans. If the aforementioned sins go unchecked in our beloved nation there has to be a reason.

Is the gospel we believe to be so powerful only performing a holding action? What is the answer to this conundrum? Perhaps we’ll find the answer by examining some of the parables of Jesus.

Some of Jesus’ richest teachings are found in the parables. He used parables for several reasons; to reveal, to conceal & to bring his teachings from head knowledge to heart knowledge. When Jesus wanted to separate truth-seekers from curiosity-seekers He used parables. Parables are also hyperbole all of us use because sometimes words can’t convey the true feelings of the heart. For instance when we say to someone, “I love you so much I could eat you up,” we’re using hyperbole. When we say “we’re so hungry we could eat a horse” we’re using hyperbole.

Matthew 13 contains several parables so let’s delve into them & see if we can find any answers to the question, “has the gospel failed?”

First is the parable of THE SOWER. In this parable Jesus tells us that the sower is the witness, the seed is the gospel & the soils are the hearts of men. There are four soils; the hard heart, the shallow heart, the worldly heart & the receptive heart. Again, the sower is the witness or the person who plants the seed, the seed is the gospel or the Word of God & the soil is the heart where the seed falls.

Notice that only one of the four soils is responsive to the gospel. What was Jesus teaching us here? The lesson I see is that if the seed doesn’t take root & spring up, it’s not the seeds fault; it’s the fault of the soil. Some seed falls on soil that receives, protects & nurtures it but most of the seed “fails” because it falls on the wrong soil. This doesn’t change our responsibility to take the gospel to the world but certainly Jesus was giving us a template that the gospel will only be successful when it falls on fertile soil.

When Jesus walked the earth 2,000 years ago He wasn’t personally “successful” with everyone He came in contact with. The Rich Young Ruler came running to Christ but when he was challenged to give up everything & follow Him, he couldn’t do it. Did Jesus fail where this young man was concerned? Certainly we can’t say Jesus failed. The failure lies at the feet of the young man & his unwillingness to commit to Christ. He was so concerned about finding eternal life that he ran to Jesus but in the final analysis he loved his possessions more, & went away sorrowful.Notice that Jesus didn't go after the young man & try to convince him to change his mind.

In 1967 I was privileged to visit Athens Greece & stand on Mars hill where Paul preached in Acts 17. Embarrassed as I am to say it, I used to have pictures of me standing on the hill striking a “preacher pose.” I’m not sure where those photos went but they vanished somewhere along the way.

One thing we didn’t do while in the beautiful city of Athens was to visit the ruins of the church Paul planted there. I visited the ruins of the churches in Philippi, Corinth, Ephesus & Colosse. In almost every city we visited we viewed the ruins of the ancient Christian church.

If I were to ask you to turn to Paul’s letter to the Athenians, you’d quickly remind me there isn’t such a book. Why is there no letter to the church in Athens? Well; Paul didn’t build a church there. He planted a church in just about every place he visited but Athens. Why was there no church in Athens? I’m sure it wasn’t Paul’s fault. I’m sure Paul would have been especially anxious to have a church in this metropolis city teeming with false gods & false teaching. If you read Acts 17 you’ll find the Athenians mocked Paul when he preached the Resurrection of Jesus. They were just not that interested in the gospel Paul preached, it’s just that simple. You & I know the gospel didn’t fail, Athens failed to receive the gospel.

Juda & I were ministering in a church a few years back where the people could best be described as “DOA,” dead on arrival. Good people, but DOA. I would struggle to preach each night & I understood what our good black preachers mean when they say “You’re not helping me preach.”

One day Juda, who was almost as frustrated as I was asked me, “Why don’t you preach that sermon you preached last week in that other church?” I said, “The sermon I preached tonight WAS that sermon.” There it is in a nutshell; the unresponsiveness of the church we were in made the exact message sound differently than when it was preached to open receptive folk.

This parable teaches us to sow gospel seed everywhere possible but not to expect everyone to receive it, because they won’t.

WHEAT AND WEEDS

The next parable Jesus tells in Matthew 13 is the parable of the wheat & the tares. Many people look at the church, see hypocrites & say, “I’ m not going back to church because there’re too many hypocrites there.” I have often told people “if there’s a hypocrite between you & God the hypocrite is closer to God than you are.” Jesus made it plain that the devil had sowed the tares.

I think it apparent that we can’t call Christianity a failure because of hypocrites. I’ve also told people who quit God & His church because of the tares, “I’d rather spend a few years of my life in a church with a few hypocrites than to die unsaved & spend all eternity with them.”

I’ve known people who quit watching Christian T.V because of some inconsistency they saw in someone. One man I knew quit watching TBN because he saw a young man in a band with long hair that “looked like a hippy.” That was against his principles so he stopped watching Christian T.V. Of course I didn’t make any points with him when I asked him if he quit watching CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN or FOX when he saw someone on there who wasn’t dressed or coiffed according to his standards. His answer included a few coughs & a lot of throat clearing but as you might expect, “he’d never thought of it that way.”

One thing to remember is that church leadership should have a different standard of dress & overall conduct than those who sit in the pew. If we go to a church & see people shabbily, or perhaps less than modestly dressed (unless it's totally ridiculous)sitting in the pews, that's understandable. What are we going to do, drag them to the door & give them the bum's rush? The Gospel will raise these folk to another level if given the chance. However, it's a different "kettle of fish" to see people on platforms slopping around or presenting themselves in a less than & exemplary manner. The people on the platform or podium after all represent what the church stands for & we need no one to tell us what that looks like.

Why should the church be subjected to criticism when they do what they’re called to do --reach the lost? Isn’t that a strange standard to force on the church, when it should be a place where all can come & hear the gospel? Some people want to clean the fish before they catch them. Jesus told us in this parable not to go around judging & pulling up tares, but to let the wheat & tares grow until the day God separates them. 1 Cor. 3:11-15.

Obviously God gave us these instructions because none of us are qualified to tell wheat from tares. Would you want that job? If you’d have tried to guess which of Jesus’ disciples would betray Him do you think you’d have chosen His treasurer? You & I might have well picked Peter or Thomas as the betrayer. I’m glad I don’t have that job.

So the gospel hasn’t failed because of an unconverted world or because of hypocrites?

What can we learn from the next parable, the parable of LEAVEN? Physically leaven is an old lump of dough in a high state of fermentation or a substance that causes dough to rise. Leaven is used in the Bible as a type of evil. Yeast would be our modern equivalent of leaven. Leaven, like yeast had a stealthy quality & a small amount of it could greatly affect a large amount of dough. In Exodus 12:8 & Leviticus 2:4 God told the people to make sure the Passover Lamb & other ceremonial meals were eaten without leaven.

In 1 Corinthians 5 when telling the church to deal with immorality within their ranks, Paul tells them to “purge out that leaven.” In Matthew 16:11 Jesus warned about the leaven of the Pharisees, which was their false teachings of Legalism & Liberalism. In Mark 8:15 He warned of the leaven of Herod, which symbolized worldliness.

Leaven works quietly & insidiously just as sin does. Jesus is teaching here that sin in society, even in small amounts has an awesomely devastating effect on the whole of society. The multitudinous multiplying of the leaven of sin in our world doesn’t surprise God. If sin wasn’t as cursedly potent as it is there would have been no reason for Jesus to die on the cross. The proliferation of evil doesn’t mean that God’s work has failed, been thwarted or frustrated, it just means there’s sin in the world & it will be here until Jesus comes back & fumigates the earth.

Next Jesus gives the parable of the DRAGNET. This one must have been a familiar & vivid picture to the disciples, after all Peter, Andrew, James, & John had been fishermen before Christ called them.

Jesus said the kingdom of God is like a large net that’s cast into the sea. In those days the fishermen would drag a net along the bottom of a body of water between two boats. The wide net would catch all manner of fish, then they’d bring the net to shore & some were kept & some were thrown back into the sea.

The church today is doing the same thing in our “sea,” which of course is the world. The gospel is preached & there is no partiality to race, sex, wealth, education, intelligence, ethnicity or beauty. The churches mandate isn’t judicial but declarative, in that we don’t do the separating, that’s God’s job.

Having grown up in Florida, I know what it means to fish in the ocean & catch all manner of creatures. We caught blow-fish, all puffed up (I might add some people caught in the gospel net are puffed up with pride.) We caught Eels that would slither & slide away; we caught Dog fish & Cat fish, Grunts & Croakers. You had to be careful handling some of these sea creatures because they could bite, sting or stick you.

The gospel net pulls in all sorts of people, & just as with fishermen, some stay & some leave. Some would be useable & some would not. No fisherman expects to keep everything he catches. Jesus is saying the gospel hasn’t failed because we don’t keep all we bring in. There’s always the question of why some people leave the church. Jesus told His disciples in response to this question, “They went out from us because they were not of us.”

As in the other parables, all this will be settled at the end of the age when God separates the spiritual “sheep from the goats.”

The last parable I’ll speak about is the TREASURE IN THE FIELD. As in all the parables, there are many out flashings of truth from this story but the basic truth of this parable is that the man who found the treasure went & sold everything he had to buy the field where the treasure was buried.

I don’t want this blog to turn into an Epistle so suffice to say, this man was willing to sell everything he had to buy this treasure. The treasure Christ alluded to in this parable is the riches of God’s kingdom & of His gospel.

When we look at the treasures in Christ, the truth is, some are willing to sell out to follow Him & some aren’t. Some will pay full price & others deem the price too high. Carnal people trample all over this field & don’t even know it’s there. Jesus also said that when the man found the treasure he covered it up temporarily to go buy the field.

That’s exactly what Jesus was doing by using the parables, He was covering up the treasure from those who weren’t interested enough to seek for it.

The gospel hasn’t failed because some don’t see the value of it or aren’t willing to pay the price to claim it.

Paul said, --But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost. In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ who is the image of God should shine unto them. --2 Corinthians 3:3-4

Blessings,

John

Five Mistakes Christians Make

2012-01-31T10:53:00.003-05:00

By John Stallings

A couple had two boys ages 8 & 10 who were mischievous. If there was any trouble around they were usually involved.

A new preacher came to town that’d had success with disciplining problem children so they asked if he would speak to the boys.

The minister agreed to see the two so the mother sent her 8 year old first in the morning, with the older boy to visit in the afternoon.

The preacher had a big booming voice so the youngster’s eyes grew large as he asked him sternly, “Son, where is God?” The kid’s mouth dropped open but he had no response, sitting there in wide-eyed shock. So the minister asked again, “Where is God?”

Finally the preacher stood in front of the boy & shook his finger in his face & asked again as loud as he could, “SON, TELL ME, WHERE IS GOD?”

The boy screamed & bolted from the room, ran home & got in the closet slamming the door behind him. His older brother found him in the closet & asked him “What happened?” The younger brother gasping for breath replied, “We’re in big trouble this time dude. God’s missing--& they think we did it!” I realize this story doesn’t necessarily fit here but I think it’s hilarious & I wanted to tell it.

When people get desperate, or think they are, it’s amazing what they are willing to do. For example, a wife has been faithful to her husband for years, but because he isn’t as attentive as he should be, she throws discretion to the wind & has an affair.

Or a Christian young man, unwilling to continue to wait to find a Christian mate gives in & marries a woman whose faith is dubious if she even has faith. Or a Christian teenager fed-up with inconsistent parents, rebels & starts taking drugs & having promiscuous sex. The aforementioned are acceptable ways of coping by much of the world. The theme that permeates many popular songs & much of television & movies is; “whatever gets you through the night.”

Recently I was watching Jay Leno in his “man on the street” skit. He asked a man to name one of the Ten Commandments & he replied, “Freedom of speech.” A woman was asked to complete this sentence, “Let him that is without sin……. The answer came, “have a good time.”

Is our society in trouble or not? But not only are the unsaved in trouble these days, many Christians are so desperate for answers they cook up remedies for their problems that are worse than the problems themselves.

Here are some ways even Christian’s are ruining their lives.

1. ALLOWING EMOTIONS TO OVERRULE GOOD SENSE

Recently I heard a financial expert say;-“most people will never buy a car in their lifetime where their emotions aren’t deeply involved.”

I can relate to that statement although we’ve put over one-hundred thousand miles on our present car & almost a quarter of a million miles on the car we owned before that.

We do far too many things because of our emotions. Actions usually follow feelings like baby ducks follow their mother but that doesn’t mean the mother knows where she’s going.

The other day we were driving on I-4 in Orlando & suddenly came on a wall of tail- lights. We feared the worst but when we got close enough to see the problem it was a mother duck, out in the middle of one of the world’s busiest Super-hi-ways with about ten baby ducks following her. They were cute little rascals but that mother duck didn’t have clue-one as to where she was going nor how much danger she & her babies were in. I don’t know about you but I’ve learned that my emotions usually don’t know where they’re going either.

I won’t belabor it here because I’ve talked about it so much but letting our emotions rule us is always a bad idea, because our emotions & moods can change in 15 minutes for no apparent reason.

I’D LIKE YOU TO IMAGINE A SCENARIO FOR A MOMENT.

Picture a young woman, an immigrant from another country. She’s unfamiliar with the culture & the language but she’s eager to succeed & get ahead. She finds a position working for a wealthy couple in their large home. They are God-fearing people & she feels valued there & is treated like a family member.

But as time goes by she notices problems between the couple. She tells herself it’s none of her business but soon she finds her boss stopping to talk to her as she works. He confides to her there are problems in the marriage & becomes more & more affectionate towards her, which starts to make her uncomfortable.

But to whom can she turn? She has no friends & no support network. She’s completely dependant on her employers for everything. As the boss’s advances become more obvious the young girl wonders what to do. If they fire her she could be out on the street without a job or a roof over her head. This is supposed to be a good & upright man & a respectable citizen. One day her employer comes right out & lets her know he wants her to take his wife’s place in his affections & in his bed.

Did you imagine this story was taking place in a sprawling mansion of a multimillionaire? A high-rise in a big city penthouse apartment? Would it surprise you to know the original story I based this anecdote on happened in a tent made of animal skins at a desert oasis almost four thousand years ago?

Of course it was a different time & customs were different. A slave girl belonged to her owners & there was no such thing as human rights or a place to report sexual harassment. Polygamy was common & a man had a prefect right to have another wife or concubine if he wished, especially if his first wife was unable to have children.

ABRAM AND SARAH

In Genesis chapter 16 there’s this story of Abram & Sarah & their desperation to have a child. Sarah, - are you listening, - Sarah concocted the idea that her husband should have a child through their young Egyptian slave girl Hagar. How foolish does that sound to you?

Though this practice wouldn’t have raised a single eyebrow in that time & among the folk of that day, Abram & Sarah [I know her name was Sarah at this point but I’ll call her by the name that’s most familiar to us,] were abandoning their faith in God’s promise he’d made them by a covenant in chapter 15. Abram & Sarah, so faithful in their lives to this point are now scheming according to the flesh & not according to faith in something that will result in disaster for them & all who would come after them. They were making the mistake of doing God’s business for God.

It’s interesting to note in this story that when Sarah is laughing Hagar is crying & when Hagar laughs, Sarah weeps. Their fortunes & prospects are always moving in opposite directions. Note also that Sarah & Hagar both speak but never to each other. Hagar speaks to God & Sarah speaks to her husband but no one but God addresses Hagar by name. The people around her speak about her but never to her & never call her by name. You may be interested to know Hagar is the only woman in the Bible who dares to give God a name when she calls Him “El-Roi,” meaning “The God Who Sees.”

Getting back to emotional thinking, emotions will say things like; “Well I don’t know what God thinks but I’m going to do this anyway.” Or, “I don’t care if I do go to hell, its hell to live in this condition anyway.” Before you use that last line as an excuse, I’d advise you to go back & read the eighty words that were spoken from hell in Luke 16:23-31.

The second foolish thing Christians do to mess up their lives is;

2. THEY LISTEN TO THOSE WHO ARE UNFAMILIAR WITH THE WORD OF GOD.

Psalm 1:1 says, How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked.

In verse 2-4 of Genesis 16, the deed was done. Abram & Sarah at last would have the child they’d wanted for so long. The house would soon be filled with the sounds of happiness. Sounds like its right out of a story-book doesn’t it?

But the euphoria was short-lived. Trouble was already brewing. Before the child saw the light of day tension filled the house so thick you could cut it with a knife. What was meant to produce happiness would end up producing nearly endless sorrow in areas they never expected.

Verse 2 says, -So Abram listened to the voice of Sarah.

You may say, “What’s wrong with a man listening to his wife?” Nothing; unless his wife doesn’t understand the will of God. God had spoken to Abram when he left Ur, when he left Haran, & when He made the covenant with him to give him a son. The revelation was made solely to Abram, & Sarah knows far less the he does.

It may surprise you to know how many people when seeking advice, will actually seek out either weak believers or those who don’t know God’s Word at all. As a matter of fact the surest way to make an enemy of some people is step in & tell them what the Bible says.

In Galatians 4 Paul says, --Before you received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus Himself. Where then is that sense of blessing you had... Have I therefore become your enemy by telling you the truth?

I blame Abram for what happened here just as much as Sarah, in fact he shirked his responsibility big-time when he simply didn’t refuse what she suggested & remind her of what God had promised.

The third thing Christians do to mess up their lives is;

3. THEY BLAME OTHERS FOR THINGS THEY BRING ON THEMSELVES.

Surely when the trouble started because of what Sarah & Abram did they recognized their fault & owned up to all this, right? Wrong!

After the baby comes Hagar is suddenly elevated from the position of slave to second wife. She now had two things to hold over Sarah’s head; she’s younger & she can have babies. From Sarah’s vantage point this wasn’t the way it was supposed to work out.

But when we resort to fleshly schemes things never work out like we expected.

Whew! But there’s a bright spot here. As soon as it dawned on her what she’d done, Sarah humbled herself & went to her husband & apologized for her ill-fated suggestion. Right? Wrong again! She blamed Abram. That’s right, she’s blaming him. It’s hard to believe that this is the same woman who’s held up to us in the New Testament as a model wife. But to be fair, everyone in this story is just doing what comes “naturally” not obeying God & doing things His way.

It’s very common for people to blame others when their own chickens come home to roost. A sure sign of spiritual immaturity is when people refuse to accept responsibility for their own actions.

I used the story in a message some time ago about a small airline operating out of South America. Most of the clients were missionaries who were shuttled around in the light planes owned & operated by this fledgling air-transport company.

One day one of the planes took off carrying several missionaries & two well known Bible translators to a remote area. The plane had been airborne just a few minutes when it burst into flames & crashed killing all aboard.

When the news reached the headquarters of the little airline where the plane took off & all the planes were serviced, a Christian mechanic took the news hard. The reason he took the news so hard was he remembered his hands were the last to touch the ill-fated aircraft before it left. As he contemplated it, he remembered that in the process of servicing the plane, he’d left a cap off a gas tank. He’d made a mental note to come back & secure the cap but had forgotten to do so.

One of the things that made the story so unusual was that the mechanic didn’t have to tell his story to anyone, but he was convinced his mistake had caused the plane to crash. I was impressed by that story for so many reasons, not the least of which was that mechanic was one in ten-thousand who’d implicate themselves when it would have been easier to just keep quiet about the part they played in the tragedy.

However, life seems to happen less in a linear manner than cyclical, & this man knew in his heart that in the long run he’d be more a candidate for God’s grace to help put it behind him & experience healing if he was open & honest about his mistake, rather than just bottling it all up inside himself.

If we can’t come clean about our mistakes we’re much more likely to repeat them. Many people stagger through life from one crisis to the next, battered, bruised & taken advantage of & it never occurs to them that they hold the key to changing things, but they’re too proud to admit they’re wrong. The wife blames the husband as Sarah did here & as Adam did in the Garden when he told God, The woman thou gavest to be with me she gave me from the tree & I ate.

The fourth thing Christians do to mess-up their life is;

4. THEY COMPROMISE THEIR CONVICTIONS FOR THE SAKE OF KEEPING PEACE.

Doesn’t it seem to you that its time for Abraham to take the bull by the horns in this story? Isn’t it about time he administered the Word of God to his bickering family?

He could have started by saying, “Guys, this all started because I let it happen. I didn’t have to consent to this fleshly scheme but I did & I was wrong. But Sarah, honey, I need you to own up to your guilt & admit it was your idea in the beginning. You brought this on yourself so its high-time you stopped pointing your finger at everyone but yourself; OK? You should have stopped & considered how Hagar was going to react in all this. And Oh, Hagar, girl you need to climb off your high-horse & remember you’re still a servant in this house & you must treat Sarah with respect because she’s my wife.”

So does Abraham start sorting it all out & put things back in order in his house? Nope! Abram turns out to be more of a push-over than a patriarch in this situation. Let’s face it; Abram didn’t want to deal with two bickering women so it’s much easier in this incidence for him to be a mouse than a man.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not advocating that men be overbearing with their wives, a thousand times no. But the husband is supposed to be the leader of his home & sadly many men don’t even know what that means. Godly pastors are preaching & teaching it all over America but men aren’t showing up to hear it. In America’s homes today about the only way a man’s going to rise up & breath fire is if someone misplaces the TV remote. Wives are frustrated, children are exasperated & many men are pusillanimous passives.

Twice during the difficult years of this story Hagar left Abraham’s camp. Once was just before Ishmael’s birth when she ran away because of conflicts that arose between herself & her mistress Sarah. On this occasion an angel from the Lord told her to go back to Abram & Sarah—perhaps because as a runaway slave she’d have no means of support & care for her baby outside their household.

The angel also told her she’d bear a son & that she should call him Ishmael the name that means “God hears.” Fourteen years later Hagar left Abram’s home again this time Ishmael was a young man. Not surprisingly his stock in the family had gone down with the birth of the promised child Isaac. The conflict was so bad Abram sent them away but God spoke to Hagar again & provided water when her son was dying of thirst. God also provided encouragement for her & Ishmael as he led them into a new life. Certainly Hagar was marginalized if not victimized in this situation, a woman without value & standing in the eyes of man. Though God didn’t plan to send the promised son through her, & she wasn’t the lawful wife of Abram, He didn’t see her as insignificant, nor ignore her. God saw her, He spoke to her & he reached out & touched this woman who had no reason to believe her life was of any value to anybody.

Most people know that what we are seeing in the Middle East today, the bombings that are in the news almost daily is the fruit of Hagar’s son Ishmael being born; the fruit of what went on ‘behind the tent flaps” of Abram & Sarah’s household so many years ago when they left God out of their planning & took up fleshly methods rather than rely on the promises of God.

The fifth thing Christians do to mess-up their life is;

5. THEY JUST AREN’T WILLING TO WAIT FOR THE GOOD THINGS GOD HAS FOR THEM.

Nobody likes to wait. As a matter of fact our culture hates to wait. Waiting isn’t one of our strong traits. Make us wait too long & we’re pretty sure something is wrong. Waiting frustrates us, makes us mean, challenges our faith & tempts us to lose hope. There’s a name for people who can patiently wait without going nutso. They’re called saints. Many people however if forced to wait too long, give up & become cynics making the decision to just coast through life. They become permanently disappointed with God & man.

Here’s where young people get in trouble in our materialistic society. They look at what mom & dad have, maybe three cars, an RV, a five bedroom house, flat-screen TVs all over the place, plus a quarter of a million in their retirement account. Not understanding that it took the parents 45 years of working their fingers to the bone to accumulate what they have, the young person sets out to have what the parents have, but they want it NOW!

And just how are these young folk going to do this? Easy! ---Think with me about the credit card you have in your wallet or purse. Did you know it’s a “time machine?” Oh yes, that card at least for a while can reach out & grab the future & pull it right into your present. I’ll bet you never thought about it that way did you? Each day people are charging their way into the future because they’re too impatient to wait for the future to come.

Saving is such a slow & tedious way to work toward home ownership that people have signed for mortgages they can barely afford. Also it’s hard for young people to wait for marriage to have sex so fewer & fewer couples are waiting.

Are you waiting for something big to happen in your life, your marriage, your health, finances or even your ministry? Will you let me tell you something extremely important? Here it is;--LIFE IS PRETTY MUCH A WAITING GAME. Let me go a little further. Life is slow, tedious, many times mundane & is so full of waiting if you’re not careful it can cause you to do something crazy; that is if you don’t know what I’ve just told you. Life includes seasons of running & seasons of waiting with a lot more valley time than mountain-top time.

If you’ve read many of my messages you’ve heard me say—God isn’t a time-dweller & isn’t impressed with time as we are. He calls on us to wait.

God wants us to wait in humility because He’s the king & we’re His subjects. He’s in charge. He knows when the time is right.

Waiting doesn’t mean we’ve been bad or that God is angry at us. Waiting doesn’t mean we’re lost or that God is punishing us.

Let us not grow weary of waiting like Abram & Sarah did & produce Ishmaels in our lives. Let’s not try to jump from mountain-top to mountain-top so we can live on a “false high” all the time.

Waiting doesn’t necessarily even mean that we are in need of repentance of some sin. Waiting just means that we need to be faithful & continue serving God in life’s routines.

In Hagar’s grief & agony, in her shame & hopelessness she cried out to the God of the helpless & the hopeless. The God who saw Hagar also sees you. He sees your need. He sees, knows & cares about your feelings & wants you to reach out to Him. Will you turn to Him? This story reminds us there’s a wonderful wideness in God’s unassailable love.

I invite you to remember with me this marvelous verse;

But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run & not be weary & they shall walk & not faint.—Ish. 40:31

Blessings,

John

Lord It's Hard To Be Humble!

2012-01-16T11:02:00.005-05:00

By John Stallings

Maybe you heard the story of the turtle that lived up north & wanted to go south for the winter.

Smart turtle that he was, he hatched up the idea to get two birds that would be going south anyway to help him. His idea was to ask these strong fliers each to carry the end of a stick in their mouths while he bit down with his mouth on the middle of the stick.

The idea was great & the thousand miles- plus trip passed without incident until they were coming in for a landing in Miami. As they flew low over the heads of the hundreds of spectators, people were saying, “Wow, what a great idea. I wonder whose idea that was?”

Wanting the credit, the turtle opened his mouth to say, “It’s my idea.” That act of pride was the death of him. Oh, Lord, it’s hard, even for a turtle, to be humble.

One time a fly crawled into the ear of a horse pulling a generals chariot. He looked around then said to the horse, “My, aren’t we raising a lot of dust?” Then there was the flea on the back of the Elephant & as they passed over a hanging bridge he said, “Boy, didn’t we make that bridge shake?” The last one concerns a woodpecker that was pecking on a large tree when lightening struck the tree knocking it down. Flying away the woodpecker thought out loud, “My, look at what I did to that tree.” Lord it’s hard to be humble.

Did you ever have an old song that you really didn’t even like get stuck in your head? It happens to me occasionally.

Maybe you remember Mac Davis’ song;

Oh, Lord it’s hard to be humble, when you’re perfect in every way, I can’t wait to look in the mirror; I get better looking each day.

To know me is to love me, I must be a-------man [when I hum the song I put—wonderful---in that blank spot.]
Oh, Lord It’s hard to be humble, but I’m doing the best that I can.

Most of us smile when we hear this song. We smile, though we’d never admit it, because somewhere deep inside us all lurks the feeling that we’re special, we’re the smartest, the coolest, the richest, the quickest, the most unique or the most popular.

Ted Turner, founder of CNN once told an interviewer, with a straight face, “You know, if I had a little more humility I’d be just about perfect, don’t you think? Lord, it’s hard to be humble. [Even when you’re stupid enough to give The United Nations a billion dollars.]

When we were kids we’d go to school & boast that our dads were stronger, richer, & smarter than anyone else’s dad. In our teen years we wanted to have the right jeans, the right shoes, the right bracelet etc. so we’d be accepted by the right people.

Parents are just about as bad in boasting about their children & play a perpetual game of one-upsmanship. It goes something like this; “Are your kids smart? Well my kids are smarter, wiser, more athletic & more popular. As a matter of fact don’t get me started on my grand kids. As you might expect they’re super-stars, brilliant & class officers. Did your children go to a community college? Well mine got into Harvard.”

We also like to boast about the town where we live. It goes; “Is your city or area where you live an outstanding place to live? Well my city has a famous baseball team, hockey team, basketball or football team & when the team becomes number one our joyous fans almost riot with feelings of supremacy.” Lord it’s hard to be humble.

What about our churches? With God on our side, church folk love to let the world know that they are happier, more content, more fulfilled, more secure, more successful, more blessed & more at peace than other folk. Their attitude is, “it’s hard to be humble when you go to a church like mine. You say your pastor is on the radio? Well my pastor is on T.V [& by inference that makes him a better preacher.] We dress right, eat right, speak right, believe right, & do right a little bit more than most anybody we know.” Lord it’s hard to be humble.

Often when some of these deliriously happy church folk get disgruntled, & maybe they have an offended/hurt pastor leading them, they leave the happy church where they were once so joyous & start a new even happier church. And don’t underestimate these people. Before you can say-cat in a hat- they’ll have a beautiful new building built as a monument to the proposition that they were right in making their move.

I don’t mean to be judgmental because sometimes its best when people part ways. Even Paul & Barnabas split up because they couldn’t agree about Mark. However sometimes I think these churches should have on their marquee; --“Church of the disgruntled brethren.”

What’s amazing about all of this is that we church folk convince the outsider that we do actually have it together. We convince them so well that they’re afraid to visit. People who aren’t part of the church drive by & see the huge parking lot stretched out like a free-way & think, “You know, I might not mind going there, but when I look at those steps & think about walking through those big doors, & then I think of all the happy people in there who’ve got it all together, it intimidates me. And besides, I never could sing very well anyway. Plus, I don’t think I could pass the dress code.”[Just in case you’re wondering, there isn’t any—that I know of.]

Some outsiders may flip that attitude & they say, “I’ve read about all the scandals these religious folk have had & I know of some divorces that have taken place among them & I’ve seen their kids fighting at school, & to tell you the truth I feel superior to these hypocrites. These church folk aren’t any better than anyone else; at least I don’t make a big profession.” There thought is; “Lord they ought to be humble; they’re so imperfect in every way.”

Many things the critics of the church say are true. To my knowledge Christians aren’t prettier, happier, wealthier, stronger, smarter, & more physically fit than others. Left on our own, we’re tempted & grapple with our imperfections; we struggle with the same sins, sorrows, & shortcomings as do non-churched people. Just having our name on a church roster doesn’t cause us to sprout wings & start walking on water & go around with a “glory-knot” on the back of our head [ladies hair do] & with a hymn on our lips all the time.

The biggest difference between those in the church & out of it is the fact that we by the Holy Spirit’s power have been graciously brought to Jesus Christ & saved. We, who once were lost, now have been found. None of this makes us better than anyone it just means we’ve responded by faith to the same call others have heard who didn’t respond. We by faith now have a heaven-sent substitute, our Redeemer Jesus Christ. Someone may say, “You Christians aren’t that good,” & they’d be right, but Jesus is “That-Good.”

PRIDE IS AT THE ROOT OF ALL CONFLICT

I repeat -pride is at the root; pride is the cause of almost all conflict. Proverbs 13:10 says;

Only by pride comes contention.

If you’re having conflict in your marriage, or family it’s being caused by pride. The same goes for the church. Pride won’t let things go. Pride won’t forgive. Pride keeps score. Pride puts pressure on people. Parental pride can force a boy to play football when doesn’t even like the game.

Proverbs 28:25 says;

He that is of a proud heart stirs up strife……

Pride is arrogant & obnoxious. Pride will cause you to be rude. When I counsel young people about marriage one of the things I suggest is, watch how the object of your affection treats people in public. Watch how they treat servers in restaurants or people who help them at airports. If they treat others badly you can mark it down they have a spirit of pride & that’s exactly how they’ll treat you after marriage. Rude people are being driven by pride. Pride makes us judgmental. Pride points out everyone else’s errors but isn’t it strange how hard it is for us to see ourselves?

Rick Warren tells the story of a grade school principle that made a royally big mistake. He got on the speaker & said to the entire school—“I was wrong. I’m sorry. Please forgive me.” He became the most popular principle in the history of the school. The kids all said, “I wish I had a dad like that.” And there were probably lots of women who also wished they had a husband like that. Lord it’s so hard to be humble.

GETTING OFF THE ‘PRIDE HIGH-HORSE’ IS THE SECRET OF RECONCILIATION

Swallow your pride & be willing to say- “I was wrong.” Pride prevents personal growth. The moment your head puffs up you stop growing. I stop growing.

Proverbs 11:2 says;

Pride leads to disgrace but with humility comes wisdom.

Proverbs 10:17 says;

Anyone willing to be corrected is on the pathway to life, but anyone refusing has lost his chance.

Have you ever known someone that wouldn’t get help in parenting, in their marriage, in their taxes, with an addiction or anything else? Really now, that’s nothing but pride.

When I break a bone I’m going to a bone expert. I believe in divine healing but if I don’t have the faith to get a healing I’m not going to lay around & die, neither will I allow anyone I care about to do so. That’s nothing but stubborn, obstinate, bull-headed PRIDE.

It’s prideful self-absorption that brings so much stress & tension into our lives. We sit around thinking about ourselves so much, no wonder we’re miserable.

When I was pastoring my first church I was always miserable, wondering what the people really thought of me. One day I read something that turned my life around. It said, “Don’t worry about what people think of you. If you knew how seldom they did you’d be shocked.”

Proverbs 25:29 says;

The fear of man is a trap.

Everything in our culture says “it’s all about you. You’re the best. You deserve it. You’re the greatest. Have it your way. Focus on your image."

I’ve shared with you that Juda & I watch the T.V show American Idol now & then. We’ve noticed that each year the contestants [not all of them] get more & more unteachable & won’t take counsel from the judges. It’s not that I think the judges are always right, but they’re obviously there for some reason.

Certainly it’s good for a youngster to have self confidence & be able to think for themselves. But it makes me uneasy for anyone who won’t take advice at anytime about anything. I guess it’s because I’ve seen so many lives ruined that way.

I used to think a person can do anything they want to if they work hard enough at it. I no longer say that. Even with my Global Positioning, I can still get hopelessly lost. Almost every time I travel I get humbled. Even with a map & GP I can still get lost, consequently I’m never going to be a pilot. I seem to have this horrible sense of direction. [Sometimes.]

Everybody needs something in their life that they’re a total failure at. It keeps us humble. As for me there are only a few things I’m any good at. Another one of my pet peeves is Golf. The holes are too small & the equipment is wholly inadequate for the job. There’s plenty of frustration in life without adding Golf. There are lots of things you & I are never going to be because we don’t have the innate talent. The Beatles had some good advice, “Let it be.”

I fight pride every day in any manifestations that I see cropping up in my life. My wife helps me in the areas I can’t see. Along the way I’ve also had a few others to help me? Don’t you love it when that happens? In truth, other people can’t humble us, we must humble ourselves. Others can humiliate us but we must humble ourselves.

Don’t ever ask God to humble you. Bend your knee & bow your head & pray, “Oh Lord, I humble myself before you. I humble myself before you. Lord, help me get my stubborn pride out of the way so I can continue to grow & be a blessing to others.”

Here’s another tip from a man with a lot of scars, - don’t pray things like “Lord, if I’ve sinned or done anything wrong….” Trust me; you don’t have to say “if.” If you can’t think of anything to confess get out your bible & start reading & you’ll eventually hit it! The Bible judges the thoughts & intent of the heart.

Pride is based on a false image of yourself. Humility is based on a true & realistic factor. There is a good kind of pride, a pride that will move us toward excellence, never perfection. Good pride is rejoicing in what God is doing in & through you. Good pride won’t let you go to the Mall with your hair looking like last years birds nest, or shine one shoe & leave the other unshined.

As we’ve said, bad pride is selfish & stubborn, holds on to grudges & won’t admit when we’re wrong. This kind of prideful life brings no glory to God.

GOD HATES PRIDE

The Bible says;

God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. James 4:6

If you & I are proud we’ve got God & the Devil both against us. Pride got the Devil kicked out of heaven.

Humility has gotten a bad-rap in our generation. I mean, when we think of humility we often think of allowing ourselves to be used as doormats. But that’s not Bible humility. Truly humble people aren’t people who’re always putting themselves down. Humble people are just people who have been empowered by God to make the needs of others the priority in their lives.

Humble people don’t have inferiority complexes. They are secure in who God made them. In fact humility is a mark of an emotionally mature person. We can think of it this way; humility isn’t thinking less of yourself, it’s simply thinking about yourself less.

Humility isn’t just something a person has; it’s something a person does. Remember Forrest Gump’s words-“Momma always said, stupid is as stupid does.” Likewise, humble is-as humble does.

At Ronald Reagan’s funeral, the elder President Bush told a very interesting little story about Mr. Reagan when he was in the hospital recovering from a gunshot wound he received during the assassination attempt in 1981.

Just days after the surgery that repaired his life-threatening injuries, his aides discovered him on his hands & knees in his hospital room, wiping water from the floor. Bush said of Reagan, “He did this because he was worried that his nurse would get in trouble.” Bush said, “I knew him well enough to know he never thought he’d be seen doing that.”

The last words & deeds of a person before they die take on larger than life proportions. We’ll bend down to listen to the final fleeting words that fall from the lips of a loved one, memorializing those last words or actions.

The night before Jesus was taken into custody & the final chapter of His Passion began, He could have done many things. He could have had a final teaching session, impressing on His disciples again the necessity of remaining faithful to the mandate of getting the gospel to all nations.

But in those final moments, instead of words, Jesus chose an act. Obviously He felt this was the most important thing He could do with those precious moments. And what did He do? He wrapped a towel around Himself, knelt & washed the feet of His band of rough-hewn disciples.

He was saying through that act, that the disciples must understand theirs was a mission of humility & serving & without that, in the final analysis there would be no completion of His earthly mission.

Pride, self-involvement, ego & elitism won’t accomplish His work but the attitude & action of loving & serving will.

Listen to these words about our blessed Lord Jesus;

Who being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made Himself of no reputation, & took upon Himself the form of a servant, & was made in the likeness of men:
And being found in fashion as a man he humbled Himself & became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
Therefore God hath highly exalted Him, & given Him a name which is above every name.
That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow of things in heaven & things in earth & things under the earth: And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. –Philippians 2:6-11

If you & I as Christians do or say things that are misunderstood by some to sound like we’re maybe a little too excited, it’s just that we’re not ashamed or embarrassed by what happened to our Savior in the simple stable or at the shameful crucifixion on Golgotha’s chalky brow.

We praise our heavenly Father who was able to send His Son down to earth having cattle for his first companions & thieves for His last, & wash us from our sins.

Lord, it’s hard to be humble when we have a savior who’s perfect in every way.

Blessings,

John

Take A Little Honey!

2012-01-05T16:49:00.005-05:00

By John Stallings

He was an ambitious & clever liar. He was a cheat, a crook, a gyp, a con artist, a flim-flam man, a fraud, a fake, a phony, a trickster & a swindler.

He was selfish & egotistical, cold, calculating, scheming, conniving tricky & sly.

We often speak of “bottom feeders,” describing people who are low-down. Well, before God changed him he would be said to have reached the lowest possible place, sunk a little lower & was looking up through the bottom.

He was the younger of twin brothers who came out of his mother’s womb holding his older brother’s heal. His name really meant “grabber” before God changed it & he spent a good part of his life grabbing everything that wasn’t nailed down. If there ever was an unlikely candidate for sainthood it was this man yet he was the third of Israel’s “holy three.”

He had twelve sons & at least one daughter but unfortunately there were no women’s groups in those days to help keep up, so the fairest sex didn’t count. Most of the world is still this way. Who is this man? Right-it’s Jacob.

Among Jacob’s twelve sons was a gifted boy, a boy who was a dreamer, a boy called Joseph. Not only was Joseph a dreamer, he was a naive, unsuspecting, trusting dreamer. In fact Joseph was so young, inexperienced & naive, he wasn’t aware of a thing called jealousy. This almost proved deadly for him.

DREAMERS HAVE TO BE CAREFUL

Dreamers must be careful who they share their dreams with. There are “non-dreamers” who specialize in seeing that other people’s dreams don’t come true. In fact, these dream killers actually think they’re doing God a favor when they kill the dreams of the dreamer. If you share your heart with them there’s a good chance you’ll end up with blasted hopes & shattered dreams.

Don’t waste your dreams on the dreamless.

Joseph’s jealous brothers plotted to kill him but changed their minds & ended up putting him in a pit. Don’t miss this next point;

-- After they put their brother in a pit, they took a lunch break. Isn’t it interesting that some people are so heartless that they can attack you to the point that you are so emotionally & physically damaged that your heart is hanging on the outside of your body, & sit down to eat as though nothing has happened? As a matter of fact they’re so mean spirited they actually get a morbid sense of satisfaction out of the harm they bring to you.

But let’s move the story on. This group of slimy brothers saw a group of Ishmaelites on their way to Egypt & sold Joseph into slavery. In their minds they’d gotten rid of the dreamer but they failed to realize that Joseph was a special son of destiny. God had a plan for Joseph & that plan involved bringing him from the pit to the palace. It would be an understatement to say; -- these boys will see Joseph again.

You’ll remember that Joseph went to work at Potiphar’s house in Egypt & in the course of time Potiphar’s wife falsely accused him of rape & he landed in jail.

Years went by & it looked like Joseph would rot in prison. Meanwhile back in Canaan, Jacob & his sons are experiencing a drought. The lakes & rivers are drying up & the people are perishing & the rain won’t visit the land.

Jacob hears there’s corn & grain in Egypt & decides to send his sons down to buy all the food they can get. Unbeknownst to them, Joseph is not only alive; he’s interpreted Pharaoh’s dream & gives warning of a coming famine. He tells the king how to prepare for it by storing up food during seven years of plenty in preparation for the coming seven year famine. At last Joseph gets a break. He not only gets out of jail, he’s now second in command in all of Egypt.

Before Jacob’s sons leave for Egypt, he tells them to take gifts including myrrh, spices, balm, along with money to buy grain. But then in Genesis 43:11, he added;

---Take a little honey with you. Egypt wasn’t famous for honey but Canaan was known as a land that “flowed with milk & honey.” Honey was also used as a medium of exchange.

LOOK WITH ME AT FOUR WORDS-- “TAKE A LITTLE HONEY,”-- AS A METAPHOR FOR CHEERFULNESS, - JOY, - KINDNESS, -COMPASSION & CONSIDERATION.

Things aren’t looking good right now in our country & good-cheer is going to be necessary to survive. We’ve fought a war that’s lasted longer than the 2nd World War. We’ve seen real estate devalued & it looks like the dollar is suffering the same fate. I can’t be far off the mark to say America has the “flu” & it’s far from certain that the big doses of “antibiotics” being pumped into her [borrowed money] is going to save the patient.

2012 by all predictions is going to be rough for millions of people, especially if the economy doesn’t pick up before unemployment insurance gives out. As we face this coming year, I can’t think of anything more important than, by God's Grace maintaining a sunny, happy attitude. Here’s where the honey helps.

A lady was late for work & she was driving behind a man who was intent on not exceeding the speed limit. She honked a few times but it did no good & he just kept the same speed.

As they approached a light it turned yellow & it was one of those times when you could get through if you pushed the envelope a little. The man slowed down & stopped & the light turned red.

This was the last straw for the woman. She went ballistic & started yelling, blowing her horn, cursing & worse. A cop pulled up & ordered her out of the car with her hands in the air. He arrested her & took her downtown where he put her in a holding cell.

About two hours later he came back & let the now calm woman out. He apologized to her & said he verified that the car was hers. She asked why he’d arrested her in the first place. He explained that when he pulled up behind her she was cursing & yelling & coming completely unhinged. He said he looked at the Christian license plate holder, the silver fish emblem & the “honk if you love Jesus” bumper sticker & he thought it was obvious that she’d stolen the car.

Sometimes we Christians react to things around us is such a way as to appear anything but Christians don’t we? What kind of testimony is it for the Lord when we don’t have a dab of honey on us?

I’m not talking about giddiness. If we act too happy people will think we don’t understand the problem. The honey of which I speak is that deep settled peace & joy that can’t help but be contagious.

I’m not advocating that we go around acting like we’ve just had a Valium smoothie or just landed in “The Sea of Tranquility.” However, a Christian who’s a chronic complainer, a dispenser of disillusionment, & a purveyor of pessimism needs to examine the boat in which he is crossing the sea of life & see if perhaps he’s sprung a leak.

I acknowledge that there’s enough in this world to make a person sour, somber, cynical, bitter & sad especially if we dwell on the ingratitude, misunderstanding, misrepresentation, failure & hypocrisy of others. But often the greatest problem is our own attitude, not the objective situation. Carrying a little honey can make all the difference.

Jesus was a “Man of sorrows & acquainted with grief & He felt more pain & loneliness than you & I will ever feel, yet He said, --My peace I leave with you…..” James said,--Count it all joy when ye fall into divers testing…..James 1:2. This is actually a command to carry a little honey.

THE HONEY OF COMPASSION AND CONSIDERATION

Author Somerset Maugham had a mother who was celebrated internationally for her exquisite beauty. His father however looked like he fell out of the ugly tree & hit every limb on the way down. People would often ask Maugham’s mother why she chose such a physically unattractive man. This sounds rather crass but its non-the-less true. She would always answer this way;-“He has never hurt my feelings.”

That would be a rather hard standard for most of us to live up to [sad to say I’ve failed the test more than I’d like to admit,] but the greater question is; how many married people even try to keep from tongue- lashing their spouse at the drop of a hat, & they’ll drop the hat themselves?

Could it be the divorce rate is so high because of something as seemingly simple as consideration?

Recently I heard a news report that said young people actually have physical fights while they’re out on dates. I was shocked. The report didn’t say that the girls were fighting the boys off to keep from being raped; that would be understandable. It was couples who’d been dating only a short time or were on their first date who got into shouting matches that ended in physical violence. The report said that more boys reported being physically attacked by girls than visa versa.

What does this kind of behavior portend for the institution of marriage? Unmarried people should begin now to learn to treat the opposite sex with honor & respect. It’s a habit they’ll need when they’re married. As an example, if little boys are taught at home to put the toilet seat down it won’t be a problem for them to be considerate of their wives & put the toilet seat down when they’re married.

MORE MARRIAGES DIE FROM INFLEXIBILITY THAN EVER DIE FROM ADULTERY, ALCOHOLISM OR ABUSE.

Marriage is constant negotiation & compromise from where we set the thermostat to where we go to eat. 1 Corinthians 13:5 says,--Love does not demand its own way. [LB.]

I can remember when I was a young preacher, I used to preach stem-winding sermons in an effort to lift the lid on Hell & allow the folk to smell the smoke. I was overly zealous & sometimes went too far in tanning the hides of the faithful. When I heard other preachers & they really burned-hides I’d say, “Now that’s what I call preaching.”

Please don’t misunderstand, I believe the Word should be preached without compromise, & the whole council should be declared without fear or favor, but I’ve learned that a little honey goes a long way. Through the years I’ve discovered that a little humor also helps.

Only unwise preachers say things like, “If you can’t see that you don’t have the brains of a Billy-goat.” Or, “You don’t have enough sense to pound sand in a rat-hole.” Or this one, --“Anybody with one eye & half sense can see my point.” A "one word" put down that seems to have surficed lately is simply calling people "stupid." Not good!!

I heard about a preacher who saw a man he knew was unsaved at a filling station pumping gas while smoking a cigarette. This of course is a very unwise thing to do, to say the least. The preacher yelled out, “If you don’t think there’s a hell, just blow yourself up with that cigarette & gasoline & you’ll change your mind in less than five seconds.”

This minister didn’t care what anybody thought, he felt everyone else was wrong & he was always right. This kind of behavior sounds a lot like the Pharisee’s of Jesus’ day to me. We don’t have to be vipers to tell people the truth. When we’re dealing with men’s immortal souls, often a little honey will help the medicine go down. Don’t you agree?

TAKE THE HONEY OF JOY WITH YOU

The Bible has many references to joy; the NASB uses joy in 170 verses & the KJV uses it 155 times. There are 15 different Hebrew words & 8 Greek words to describe joy & some are used as a noun & a verb. We recently celebrated Christmas & how many times did we sing “Joy to the world, the Lord has come?”

But Christmas to some people isn’t joyful at all. What if joy doesn’t come, what do we do then? The problem is- joy isn’t a commodity that can be produced or bought, sold or stolen. We can’t download joy. We can’t get it on discount at Penny’s. We can’t win it in a lawsuit or turn it on with a remote control. We can’t earn it or inherit it.

Joy is a gift we can only receive, an expression of God’s free grace. We can’t tell joy what to do. We can’t control it. We can’t manufacture it. Joy can’t be bought at any price.

We spent the day at Disney World a couple of months ago & I didn’t see a single face with joy on it. Most of the kids were frowning if not crying & most adults had looks of consternation on their faces, rushing from one place to the next as if trying to beat the clock & cram everything possible into one day.

We can get a certain sense of happiness in life from things we do; a good job, a successful relationship, a nice vacation or good health. But joy is different. Joy is as unpredictable as the one who bestows it. Happiness we can try to achieve but joy we can only receive.

It’s like the difference in contentment & peace….achievement & fulfillment…. Affection & love…optimism & hope…getting a cure & getting a healing….making a commitment & being born again. We are all on a journey to find joy but in truth it’s joy that must come to us.

Weeping may endure for a night but JOY COMES in the morning. Psalm 30:5

We can’t have joy unless we live close to the Lord, seek His face not His hands & feast upon His words, precepts & principles. Then we can be “honey carriers” letting the sweetness of Christ be manifest to the joyless ones we encounter each day.

THE HONEY OF KINDNESS

For God’s sake - be kind. The honey of kindness is essential if people are going to get along. Have you noticed the rudeness & ill-manners in our world? The “honey of human kindness” is desperately needed.

Let me tell you one of the most beautiful stories in the Bible.

There was once a boy who lived in ancient Israel about 1,000 years before Christ named Mephibosheth, son of Jonathan, grandson of King Saul, the first king of Israel.

Up until the age of five, Mephibosheth lived at home with his parents. Outside this small family circle national events were moving quickly toward a day of trouble. His grandpa Saul was losing his grip both on his sanity & on his kingdom. He was enraged by David’s popularity & chased him for years trying to kill him.

One day the Philistines killed Saul & Jonathon on the battlefield & when this news reached Jonathon’s home, Mephibosheth’s nurse grabbed him up & took off running. This was a brutal time & when one leader won a victory over another, they would systematically kill all the man’s family to prevent later uprisings.

Mephibosheth’s nurse knew David would now be king, & she knew of the hostility between Saul & David, so in her haste to protect Mephibosheth, she began to run, but accidentally dropped him & he was permanently injured. We’re not sure of the nature of the injury but the upshot was he was lame in both feet.

Now 15 or 20 years have passed & David is consolidated in his power as king. There is peace all around & David finally has time to do some thinking. If you want to see why David was –a man after God’s own heart—you’ll find it in this story.

You’ll remember how much David loved Jonathan, Saul’s son. One day out of the blue, David asks—Is there anyone still left of the house of Saul to whom I can show kindness for Jonathan’s sake?”

Isn’t that beautiful? David wants to bless some relative, any relative of Saul—FOR JONATHAN’S SAKE!

Here is David holding all the cards with absolute power & he wants to show kindness to a relative of Saul, a man who tried to destroy him, because of his love for the man’s son Jonathan.

Well, Mephibosheth is Saul’s grandson so his name is given to David. Mephibosheth is located living in a little backwater town of Lo Debar. He was brought to live in David’s palace & eat at his table with the rest of David’s family, --for the rest of his life.

I know you see the parallel between you & me & Mephibosheth. Just as he, we were poor, needy & crippled by sin, but God, out of his great heart of love has invited us to come to his table where all manner of good things are spread; to come & dine, the only requirement being that we accept by faith the full & free pardon of our sins.

I remember an old song we used to sing when I was a boy;

Jesus has a table spread where the saints of God are fed, He invites His chosen people come & dine.

We like Mephibosheth will always eat at His table.

This superlative act of kindness on David’s part was done, not because of his love for Mephibosheth. Jonathan was dead & David couldn’t show kindness to him, so he did the next best thing & showed kindness to his cripple son,--For Jonathan’s sake.

Listen to Matthew 25:40….Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of mine, even the least of them, you did it to me.

If you & I can’t think of any other reason to carry the honey of kindness, we should be kind—FOR GOD”S SAKE!

When we’re kind to someone for God’s sake we won’t go unrewarded. Listen to Mark 9:41,--For whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because of your name as followers of Christ, he shall not lose his reward.

I think the strongest statement in the Bible about love is 1 John 4:8;

He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for GOD IS LOVE.

Does that verse strike a chord deep within your heart & humble you as it does me? I hope so.

As we enter this New Year, will you join me in taking the honey of kindness, joy, love & forgiveness each & every day by God’s grace?

King David was prepared to show the kindness of God to a cripple who didn’t deserve it. Certainly David was under no obligation to do what he did; he did it for Jonathan’s sake.

Yes, you & I will meet the unlovely& the unlovable on our journey in 2012 We will again be hurt by the insensitivity & downright hostility of others. That’s more or less a given. The question is will we take enough honey with us to be able to show kindness toward others, FOR GOD”S SAKE?

Blessings & happy New Year,

And don’t forget to “take a little honey.”

Blessings,

John

Getting Unstuck For A New Year

2011-12-27T21:05:00.003-05:00

By John Stallings

In the movie, “Forest Gump” you may remember the part of the movie where Forest decides to go for a run.

He first runs to the end of the driveway. Then he runs into town. Then he runs to the county line & then he runs to the state line. Then he runs across half the United States to Santa Monica California.

Then Forest decides to turn around & run some more. This time he runs across the country to a lighthouse in Maine. He keeps running until people notice. He’s in the media, on magazine covers & starts to build a following. People start to run with him & follow him wherever he goes.With a full beard & dirty, grungy clothes, Forest finds himself with a large number of followers who will go wherever he goes.

One day, Forest stops running. Standing in the middle of a road he speaks to his followers. They wait with bated breath for his words of wisdom. They lean toward him waiting for the words to fall from his lips.Forest speaks like no man ever spoke before, sharing these words of unprecedented wisdom, I hope you’re sitting because this is big; Forest says, “I’m kind of tired. I think I’m gonna go home now.” He walks through his followers who part like the Red Sea.

Though the movie was first & foremost a comedy, I think, & certainly it was just a movie, there’s something here that rings a serious bell. You can’t help but feel sorry for these people following Forest, mostly because they have nothing better to do. They have no direction in their lives. These folk put their faith & hope in Forest & he has nothing to offer them.

WE HAVE A GUIDE

As we embark on the year 2012, we aren’t like the people in the movie Forest Gump, - so empty, - so lost -that we would follow someone who’s going nowhere in particular. Forest had a good heart, but really had no clue where he was going & why. We’re told in scripture & we know experientially that the Holy Spirit who resides within us will Guide us into all truth. We have God, His Son Jesus & The Holy Spirit to fill our lives with meaning & give us guidance.

STUCK

The greatest challenge of the coming New Year will be letting go of the past in order to grasp a new future. It’s not as easy as it sounds because we as human beings have a way of getting stuck. Many people find that though they want passionately to believe things can be different, a new beginning always seems to move just out of reach. They find themselves slipping back into the bondage of the past.In Philippians 3:13-14 Paul said….

but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind & reaching forth for those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

If you saw the movie Groundhog Day; you have a perfect example of a man who’s stuck, living the same day over & over. I don’t think there is anyone who isn’t, or hasn’t been stuck. Maybe our “stuckness” centers on a tangible such as buying, eating, drinking, drugging, worrying, fretting, gambling, risks, sex, love, books, movies, television, ideas, work, or power. Or maybe what we’re experiencing is a general malaise or vertigo that we can’t put our finger on.

Being stuck is sort of a twilight zone of sameness with no seeming ability to affect any kind of change. We yearn for new vistas but seem to be fresh out of ideas as to how and where to find them. We look down the road and see no chance of anything but more of the same.

We all know what it’s like to be in a car that’s stuck, either in snow, sand or mud. My heart bled these past few weeks as I watched the folk in the northeastern states being victimized by the white stuff.Though we love white Christmases, too much of a good thing can be devastating.

But being emotionally and spiritually stuck is worse. It’s the realization that we’re not moving forward, and we feel paralyzed. There are projects we know we need to start or finish, but we’re seemingly trapped and frozen in place.

Few of us will grow in our Christian lives in a steady, gradual, upward slope from birth to death. Granted there will be seasons of seemingly effortless growth but there will also be seasons where we somehow get “stuck” at one level and can’t “break out” to the next level.Something’s getting in the way!It's my contention that part of what impedes our personal and spiritual growth are the "stuck" places in our life.

There are varieties of reasons we get stuck but whatever they might be, our personal growth diminishes the longer we remain stuck. We can get stuck in our past, in our pain, in our problems, in our perspectives or in our life patterns.I get stuck sometimes, don’t you? It is not usually an absence of options, but a plethora of them. One gets stuck in the process of choosing & then shuts down.We can sometimes get stymied. That implies being thwarted by some outside force.

Certainly outside forces influence us negatively or positively, but the reality is that most of the stymieing comes from within. We are afraid. We are afraid of the shame, embarrassment, & disappointment that failure will bring & the increased responsibility of success. Therefore, we are timid, tenuous, and terrorized by fear of the decisions we might make or actions we might take. After all, we might make a mistake. We might produce mediocre work. We might open a can of worms. Our "mights take away our might.”

Maybe a large challenge comes up, -we get discouraged & we freeze. We put our plans on hold & break our pattern of discipline.Sometimes “being stuck” is a signal that something has gone wrong; somehow we’ve missed it, and we’re terribly off course. This is not always the case; as a matter of fact, feeling stuck is a condition that can be good for us. For one thing, a prime prerequisite for getting unstuck is to be stuck. When we’re stuck, we’ve lost our momentum and are forced, at least temporarily, to stop and assess our lives.

Feeling stuck acts as an inward summons or call. We face the fact that we are dissatisfied with where we are. We see the utter futility of our situation, and, if we are wise, we reach for another level to satisfy the desire for change. At that point, we are reaching for that which really satisfies, and, in so doing, we are calling out for God. So that’s why I say that being stuck isn’t really a bad thing. What has happened is, because of the stuck feelings, we have begun to readjust our lives, looking for a clearer perspective. In a way we are calling out, “What’s next for me, God?

PEOPLE GET STUCK IN THE PAST

Some people live in the past and seem to revel in the hurts of yesterday. They won’t shake loose from their past failures or calamities because, to them, the past is more important than the present. When you talk to them, you quickly see they are totally caught up with & committed to keeping the past more real than the present. They are stuck. What decade was it that Ronnie Millsap was lost in? Was it the sixties? I liked the song but always forget the decade. Oh well, it matters not; the important things is he was stuck.

In John 5, Jesus saw a man sitting beside the pool of Bethesda. He had been sitting there for thirty-eight years, trying to be first into the water after it was troubled by the angel. Jesus came along and heard the man’s story and immediately saw that he was stuck. I would say that thirty-eight years of sitting in the same spot, whining about the same problem is really being stuck. It didn’t cross the man’s mind that there was another way. When Jesus was able to get him to quit worrying about his past defeats and disappointments & look to Him, the man was healed, & he carried his bed away.

WE CAN GET STUCK IN OLD PATTERNS AND HABITS.

It’s not hard to develop bad habits (sometimes sinful), but more often people are just bogged in ruts. Some give up, figuring they can’t change, so why try? Perhaps because of resentment or a negative thought pattern they’ve been in so long, they think their situation could never change. Perhaps they’ve come to believe their lot in life is already static, & nothing can ever be different.

MAYBE YOU’RE STUCK FINANCIALLY OR WITH SOME OTHER PHYSICAL NEED.

In John 2, Jesus attended a wedding in Cana of Galilee, & they had run out of wine. The people were stuck with no libation, & obviously it put the wedding planners in a bit of an embarrassing spot. They were stuck with no wine. Though Jesus’ time had not yet come to do miracles, He responded to the need & performed His first miracle by turning water into wine. When we are stuck financially, emotionally, or in any other way, we should immediately turn to Jesus, knowing He’ll always be responsive to our needs.

YOU MAY BE STUCK WITH A FALSE ASSUMPTION

In Joel 2:23-32, the prophet speaks to a people who are stuck in despair, feeling things will never get better. He tells them to look up and be glad for God is going to do great things for them. They have a great future if they’ll rise up and take hold of it by faith.He says in verse 25,-

-And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the , and the caterpillar, and the , my great army which I sent among you. 26And ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and praise the name of the LORD your God, that hath dealt wondrously with you: and my people shall never be ashamed. 27And ye shall know that I am in the midst of Israel and that I am the LORD your God, and none else: and my people shall never be ashamed.28And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.

In I Kings 17 we read the story of Elijah being sent to the home of the widow of Zarephath. A famine was in progress, & the only thing she had was just enough meal to make a cake for herself & her son, then die of slow starvation. This poor little widow woman was indeed stuck. Elijah asked her to make him a little cake first, and at that point she had a choice. She could believe the word of the man of God or do it her way, & no doubt die. When she opted to obey, she was given a miracle supply of oil & meal that lasted for many days.

When things are going bad & we are stuck in some situation or other, we should always listen for Gods voice. He’ll have a plan to get us unstuck. [He has a fleet of spiritual tow-trucks that can be on your case before you can say “Gesundheit”.] The only thing the widow had to do was exercise obedience, & her need was met. To get unstuck, you & I will often have to make that same choice--to obey God.

SOMETIMES BEING STUCK IS JUST PURE PROCRASTINATION.

We develop a habit of putting things off until it finally turns into resistance to tasks that are unpleasant to us. Though we don’t enjoy thinking about it, sometimes we can become stubborn, which started as a childhood-survival technique we may have developed to ward off controlling people. We learned early that we can resist certain things, & people can do nothing but accept our resistance. Perhaps we even enjoyed seeing how it frustrated others when we used those powers of resistance. This may have worked as a child, but it isn’t necessary now, and if we don’t recognize what’s happening, it can be a tool of the devil to sabotage our motivation. Now it translates to pure, old, mule-headed stubbornness, keeping us from the changes we should make.

MAYBE WE ARE STUCK BECAUSE WE ARE RESISTING CHANGE.

Are you stuck at the beginning of the great New Year, 2012?

HERE ARE A FEW HELPFUL HINTS FOR GETTING UNSTUCK.

1. Look at your situation realistically. Does anything in the aforementioned apply? Ask God to help you see what’s really stopping your progress.

2. Look for the bottlenecks in your situation & address them.

3. Develop a “what’s next” mentality. God will show you His will if you seek Him.

4. Don’t hesitate to go to people you respect & enlist their prayers & advice. Don’t forget to seek God.

5. When you get temporarily stuck on a project, walk away for a while, & you’ll come back to it with a new perspective. But do come back.

6. Home run king, Henry Aaron, had this advice: In a slump, keep swinging.

7. Help others with their problems, & yours will seem smaller.

8. Take care of yourself spiritually, emotionally, & physically.

9. Start each day with God’s Word & a prayer for guidance.

LET ME GIVE YOU A LIST OF IMPORTANT QUESTIONS FOR THE NEW YEAR

1. What’s the most humanly impossible thing you’ll ask God to do for you this coming year?

2. What’s the single most important thing you need to happen to improve the spiritual quality of your family?

3. What spiritual discipline do you most want to make progress in & what will you do about it?

4. What’s the biggest time-waster in your life & what will you do about it in the coming year?

5. For whose salvation will you most fervently pray in the coming year?

6. How could you improve your prayer life in 2012?

7. What will you do in 2012 that will matter most in 10 years? In eternity?

8. What will you do differently by God’s grace this coming year?

9. What’s the most important decision you need to make in 2012?

10. What area of your life needs simplifying & how will you do it?

11. What important need do you feel burdened to meet in 2012?

12. What habit would you like to establish in 2012?

13. Who do you most want to encourage this year?

14. What’s the most important financial goal you need to meet & how will you go about doing it?

15. How can you improve the quality of your work life?

16. What will you endeavor to do to bless your pastor or others who minister to you?

17. What book in addition to the bible do you want to read?

18. What’s your biggest regret of 20111 & what will you do about it in 2012?

19. What important trip would you want to take this year?

20. What skill do you want to learn or improve?

21. To what need or ministry will you give to in an unprecedented way in 2012?

22. What biblical doctrine do you want to better understand?

23. If those who know you best gave you advice, what advice would that be?

24. Would they be right?

25. What will you do about it?You are looking for ways to make progress in your life. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t have read these little tips by such a non-expert as I.

If we keep reaching, the best is yet to come.

In Saskatchewan there’s a sign by the side of a muddy road which reads:

CHOOSE YOUR RUT CAREFULLY, YOU’LL BE IN IT A LONG TIME.

Happy New Year,

Blessings,

John

The Baby With Four Names

2011-12-20T16:57:00.005-05:00

By John Stallings

There are lots of people with three names.

Among them are, Sandra Day-O'Conner, US Supreme Court Judge, Jaquelyn Kennedy Onasis, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Tommy Lee Jones, Billy Bob Thornton, Billy Ray Cyrus, James Earl Jones, and Sara Jessica Parker.

Of course we can’t forget those with one name like Madonna, or Cher or Elvis.

One of the many important decisions confronting new parents is, “What shall we call our baby?” Most new parents spend hours debating this question. We all realize that names matter. Shall the new baby be named after his father, his uncle, a favorite friend? Should he be given a name that happens to be popular at the moment? Or one that simply sounds good?

Charles Phillip Arthur George

Names are important because once you pick out a name the child will be stuck with it for a long, long time! Babies have no voice in the selection of their names. They have to live with them — to live them down or live them up.

Every so often you’ll run across a person with multiple names, such as Charles Phillip Arthur George Windsor. That’s sounds odd until you discover it’s Prince Charles. If you say that’s a heavy load to lay on a baby, remember He’s royalty and He needs a long name.
So it is with Jesus.

Even before His birth, He was a child with many names. The prophet Isaiah, writing 700 years before He was born, prophesied that Messiah would have four names:

“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6).

We know that there are many other names for Jesus; however this verse reveals four of those names. Each one features an aspect of His character. They teach who He is and how He can help us. One of our beloved carols is cast in a plaintive question:

“What child is this, who laid to rest, on Mary’s lap is sleeping?”
Listen to Isaiah’s divinely-inspired answer. These four names speak to us about wisdom, power, security, and assurance. The first name is…

1. WONDERFUL COUNSELOR

Literally this title means “a wonder of a counselor.” It speaks of the wisdom of his plan. The word “wonderful” means “astonishing” or “extraordinary.” The writers of the Old Testament used it for acts of God which man cannot understand. The word “counselor” means “advisor” or “ideal ruler.”

There are several professions that make their living giving advice to others but they can’t claim perfection. Psychiatrists routinely make $150 (and sometimes $350) an hour for their counsel. Much of it is good, some not so good. But the Lord goes to no one for advice. And when anyone comes to him, He gives them the counsel they need.

He is therefore the perfect teacher and the ultimate counselor. This gives us insight into his working. His plans are not our plans, His ways not our ways. He will accomplish things beyond human comprehension and He will do it in ways we cannot fathom. He will do the greatest work ever accomplished and He will do it seamlessly. A violent death would not be man’s way to victory but it was God’s plan and our Lord carried it out perfectly.

As the Wonderful Counselor, He gives great direction to His people. Those who follow him will not walk in darkness but in the blazing light of day. In this tiny baby we see all the wisdom of God wrapped in swaddling clothes.What Child is This? He is the Wonderful Counselor. Then He’s the…

2. MIGHTY GOD

This speaks of the “Power of Accomplishment.” It is first of all a statement of deity. The baby born in the manger is not just the Son of God; He is also God the Son. All the fullness of God dwells in the Lord Jesus Christ. As the ancient creeds declare, He is “very God of very God.”

That can never be said of any mere human baby. Something else is important in this title. The word translated “mighty” is the word gibo, which means “strong one” or “the powerful, valiant warrior.” Thus the term “mighty God is actually a military title. He is the God who fights for his people! At the Incarnation, God took the form of human flesh. That’s why one of his names is Immanuel–God with us.

Now take the first two titles together and what do you have?

As the Wonderful Counselor — He makes the Plans.
As the Mighty God —He makes the plans Work.

All of his wonderful plans will be carried out with all of God’s infinite might. There is in this little baby’s arms flailing around in His crude bassinet all the strength of Deity. The power of God is in those tiny fists. He has strength which is divine. The omnipotence of God is at His command. Whatever He desires, He is able to achieve.

Carl Sagan Meets Jesus

When we meet Jesus, we meet God. If He is not the “mighty God,” then we are deceived and it is blasphemy to worship him. There is no middle ground here.

If He is not God, we are fools to worship Him. If He is God, we are fools not to.

Some time back renowned astronomer Carl Sagan died. He is best remembered for his famous PBS series called “Cosmos” in which he evangelized for his evolutionary views, especially the notion that the universe is billions and billions of years old. He repeatedly said that he didn’t believe in the afterlife. However, he also said he wasn’t an atheist because he didn’t know enough to rule out the possibility of God. I would argue that God never gave a human being the power to be a real atheist, but that’s another article.

Carl Sagan is an evolutionist no longer. And at this moment he is neither an atheist nor an agnostic, for he has met the Mighty God whom he refused to worship in this life. Despite his great learning and his notable achievements, Carl Sagan died a fool’s death because he would not bow before the Babe of Bethlehem.

HERE’S THE REAL REASON MANY PEOPLE RESENT MANGER SCENES IN THE PUBLIC SQUARE…

Banning manger scenes or other Christmas scenes from public places has nothing whatsoever to do with being “politically correct” or offending people of other religions. Let’s do a post-mortem on the real reason some people fight so hard to call Christmas trees “Holiday trees” and say “Season’s greetings,” or “Happy holidays” taking all mention of Christ out of Christmas.

Christmas is the great dividing line of the human race. No wonder some people want all mention of Christmas expunged from our public schools and from our public life, indeed from human consciousness. They understand that Christians believe Christmas is based on the belief that at Bethlehem, God Incarnate slipped out of timelessness into time, to land in the arms of a virgin girl. Now, if this is true, then unbelievers have problems.

When a person says there is no God, rejecting Christianities tenants, they are telling themselves they can live like the devil then die like a dog. How “very nice” for them. They want to believe that at death, that’s it, it’s over. They’ll never be faced with standing before a Holy God being judged based on what they did with their life, and especially what they did with Jesus.

These “atheists” may never darken a church door. They can live their lives and never open a Bible. They never have to even hear the name of God or Jesus Christ except in cursing. But once a year, here comes Jesus again. And that’s every year, for about a month. More toasters will be sold in Jesus’ name than any name in history. More turkey and Ham will be sold in His name and more money will be spent in His name than any other name. The only way these folk could escape it would be to leave the planet.

Now, if they’re not careful they’ll hear Christ’s name coming out of their own mouth, and we couldn’t have that. A manger scene isn’t only about a cute little baby. Who could be offended by that? The entire world loves a baby. But baby Jesus is different. If you accept that manger scene then you’ve got to accept that God exists, the miracle of the virgin birth, and the rest that goes along with it. This is too painful for them because when you extrapolate it out, you’re faced with things like- one day giving account for yourself to God and then issues like what your eternal address will be, - heaven or hell.

If we take out manger scenes and the name of Christ, we’ve erased some of the best gospel preaching imaginable, and to these people that’s a good thing.

In this tiny baby we see the power of God sleeping on Mary’s lap. What Child is this? He is the Mighty God. He is also…

3. THE EVERLASTING FATHER

In the Hebrew the phrase is literally “the Father of Eternity.” This speaks of the purpose of his coming.

He is before, above, and beyond time. He is the possessor of eternity. He is eternally like a father to his people. This is not a statement about the Trinity, but about the character of our Lord. All that a good father is, Jesus is to his people.

Because He’s like a father, -caring for his people. Because He owns eternity, He can give us eternal life. That’s so important for those of us who live on this sin-cursed planet. No one lives forever. Sooner or later we will also find our own place in the graveyard. We’re not immortal, but transitory. We’re here today, gone tomorrow. A dead Christ will do us no good. Dying men need an undying Christ.

Here’s a key phrase: He is a father forever! That’s important to me because I had a father, but not a father forever. I had a father, but he is gone now… He was a very good man, but he was not a father forever. . I am father to daughters but not a father forever. I will someday pass away. All human fathers must go. But Jesus is a father forever! He’ll outlast the stars in the heavens.

When our children need anything, we run to help them. If they cry, we go. If they want us, we will come to them. We would never kick them out. They belong to us. They are ours, in a manner of speaking. What we are in a poor way to them, Jesus is in a perfect way to all who believe in Him.

In this tiny baby we see the love of God sleeping in a stable. What child is this? He is the everlasting Father and he’s also…

4. PRINCE OF PEACE

The phrase literally means “the prince whose coming brings peace” This speaks of the effect of his coming. This final title is the climax of all that has gone before. The word “prince” means something like “General of the Army.” It speaks of his high position. The word “peace” speaks of his basic nature.

Recently I read that there are more wars raging right now than at any time this century. All over globe there are ethnic conflicts and tribal wars. Closer to home not a day goes by without word that someone else has been murdered in America. We see so much killing that it no longer surprises us—or even bothers us.

In Florida where I live, just this week a man, embittered because his wife had lost her teaching job went to a school-board meeting intent on killing several school board officials. The video has been played over and over with the warning about its violence. He was a very angry man but thankfully a bad shot and was gunned down by officials. This video will probably go viral on YouTube.
We’re practically immune to violence because we live in a violent world.

Isaiah 9:6 tells us that God’s plan for world peace is focused on a one person—a baby asleep in a manger in Bethlehem. He is the ultimate man of peace.

· In the past, His coming made peace with God*
. In the present, those who come to Him find peace in their heart when Christ comes in.
· In the future, His second coming will usher in a kingdom of peace. There is no peace today. -So much strife and bloodshed. He is not a failure. We are.

Christ is no warrior, no greedy conqueror, and no empire builder. He came to bring peace. He did. He does. He will.

In this tiny baby we see the peace of God welcomed by angels and shepherds. What child is this? He is the Prince of Peace.

In this one verse you have the four names of Jesus. This is what they mean to us today:
If you are confused…He is the Wonderful Counselor.If you are weak…..He is the Mighty God.If you are scared……He is the Everlasting Father.If you are disturbed….He is the Prince of Peace.

You never know what may happen in the world because a baby was born. No doubt the Innkeeper didn’t know who he was turning away. Even Mary couldn’t fully imagine what it all meant that night. But that baby born in Bethlehem has become the centerpiece of human history. We even divide time itself by his coming—B.C. and A.D.

What child is this? He is … the Wonderful Counselor … the Mighty God … the Everlasting Father … the Prince of Peace.

“For to us”

The most important part of our verse is the first three words……."For to us” The gift of Christ is a personal gift from God to us. A gift requires a response. If I put a gift under your tree, you may acknowledge it, may admire it, may even thank me for it, but it isn’t yours until you open it and take it for your own.

Why Would God Visit Us?

Mankind has made a total mess of things. We blew our one shot at immortality—and now the graveyards are filling up. But God is not finished with us yet. Go to Psalm 8 and find these words;

“What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?”
David seems to say; why bother with people like us? We ruined Eden, you gave us another chance, and we fouled up so badly that you sent a flood to wipe out the human race except for one family. Why not just hit the delete button on the human race? Why not just admit that this was an experiment that didn’t work out? No one could blame God if He decided to get rid of us all and start over again.

David’s question comes to the very heart of Christmas—What is man that God should pay attention to us? What is man that God should care about us after we’ve failed so miserably? Why should God care about us at all?

The New King James Version renders verse 4 this way: “What is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him?” Why would God care enough to visit people like us? It is right at this point that we see the glory and wonder and mystery of the gospel.

Jesus visited us to become like us in his nature. That’s the Incarnation. That’s Bethlehem. That’s Christmas. He came into this world as a tiny baby, born in a stable, in an obscure village, born in poverty, unwanted by the world. He was just another face in the crowd. Few knew that He was coming. No one cared that He had arrived. Jesus “had” to do this. In order to truly “visit” us, He had to become like us.

Jesus tasted death because that is our common destiny… Jesus could not have truly “visited” us if He had held himself back from “the last enemy” that confronts us—death. In order to be fully human, He had to taste death. Jesus suffered and died because that was the only way He could save us. Only by dying could He give us life.

Jesus came to restore all that we had lost in Eden. The Bible calls Jesus “the last Adam.” One of the verses of “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” calls him the “Second Adam from above.” He came to reverse the curse that we brought upon ourselves. Now in heaven He is crowned with glory and honor. One day all those who believe in Jesus will share that glory with him.

God said, “I will not leave you alone. I will not let you destroy yourself, each other, and the world I have made. I love you too much to let you alone.” So He sent prophets. We killed them. He wrote letters. We ignored them. He told us how to live—and we said, “Who are you to tell us what to do?” We mocked the God who made us, we broke his laws, we said we didn’t need him, and we made up our own gods that we liked much better because they looked so much like us.

Oh, we made a mess of things. God had every reason to kill us all. But he didn’t. He said, “I love you too much to let you go.” And after we had trashed everything, God said, “I’m coming down there so you’ll know once and for all how much I love you.” We didn’t pay any attention; it didn’t even make sense to us. How could God visit us? But He did—and He came to the world in a very strange way. He entered a virgin’s womb and came out as a baby, born in Bethlehem, a baby named Jesus, born to save us from our sins.

So He came as a baby, and when He grew up, we butchered Him, slaughtered Him and murdered Him on a cross. That’s the thanks we gave to God for visiting us. But we were wrong about everything. After we killed Him, He came back from the dead—proving that He was right all along and we were really wrong—dead wrong about everything—and still God loved us and came from heaven to earth on the greatest rescue mission in history.
He came because we blew it so badly.He came and we killed him.He died and became our Savior.

WHAT A STORY! WHAT A CHRIST!

That’s the good news of Christmas: God has done it all. The only thing left to you and me is to believe. God wrapped up his Son in swaddling clothes and said to the whole world, “This is my Christmas gift to you.”

Someone rightly called Christmas “the happiest holiday.” But it will only be truly happy for those who truly believe in Jesus. I cannot prove to you that what I have said is true. You will have to decide that for yourself. But I can say without any reservation that I have staked my life on the truth that Jesus is the Christ, the incomparable Son of God.

Christmas matters because truth matters. And the heart of the truth is that God did not leave us alone, but in our misery He came to visit us one dark night in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago.

Christmas is all about who we are, and who God is, and how far God will go to reach us.

Blessings,

John

Merry Christmas!

DITHERING

2011-12-12T08:29:00.003-05:00

By John Stallings

A few years ago former Vice President Cheney brought the word dithering to center stage describing our current President’s protracted agonizing over putting more troops in Afghanistan.

You be the judge on that.

The dictionary defines dithering as-“To act irresolutely; to act in fear and trembling.”
Maybe we’ve all been guilty of that from time to time, sometimes out of fear & worry & sometimes just not being able to come to a conclusion regarding a matter.

One man was asked if he had trouble making decisions. He hesitated for a few seconds & answered, “Well, yes & no.”

A dense fog that covers a seven-city- block area one-hundred feet deep is composed of less than one glass of water divided into sixty thousand million drops. Not much is there but it can cripple an entire city.

This is emblematic of worry & how something so vague & foggy can become so confusing to the mind.

I heard about a very good man who experienced a nervous breakdown. This man would work all day, come home & walk straight to his bedroom, then sit for hours & cry. Obviously he wasn’t available spiritually, physically or in any way to his wife & family. When has wife would come in to try to talk to him he’d express to her his worry about whether their son who had been killed was saved, & shed tears over the prospects of his being in hell.

He’d agonize & wonder if his mother & father made it to heaven or were they burning in hell. I think you’d probably agree that this sort of thing is abnormal, but in truth this is what can happen to any of us if we allow anxiety, fear & worry to crawl into the saddle & dig their spurs into our side. Worry & fear can turn us into obsessive /compulsive thinkers suffering from paralysis by analysis.

We weren’t created with the capacity to worry all the time & be mentally & spiritually well. Fear isn’t native to us, faith is. We just live better with confidence & faith than we do with fear & worry. I heard an eminent doctor say recently, “We don’t know why people who worry & fret die earlier than those who maintain good cheer, but they do.” Think about that. That isn’t a snake oil salesman trying to hype us up, but a medical man who lives in the trenches with the issues of life & death 24/7/365.
This is why Paul wrote in Philippians 4:6-7,
Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer & thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God, and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts & your mind through Christ Jesus.

A worry- wart will spend as much as 30% of their time just worrying. Contrary to what some people think, worry is actually a form of action. It’s endless- “Dithering.” Worry is incessant mental rehearsal convincing a person they’re moving toward a solution. Energy is spent uselessly & vitality is drained.

A good way of describing worry is its like shoveling smoke. Energy is used up but nothing of value is accomplished. It’s like spending time wishing skunks didn’t stink. But a person can’t just tell themselves to quit worrying. I’ve had the experiencing of trying to quit worrying on my own & it’s much like telling yourself not to think about elephants. Every time I’ve tried that a whole group of elephants showed up wearing pink sunglasses. We must exchange our thoughts for God’s thoughts & fill our minds with God’s Word.

Recently several of our greatest television preachers & pastors have gone to heaven. None of them were as my grandmother used to say, “Dead with old age.” They were getting a little older but I would have expected them to live far longer than they did. Now I know that I’m not God & it isn’t my business to second guess their deaths, but I can’t help but wonder if they passed too soon.

Psalm 116:15 says, Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.

I can’t tell you how many funerals I‘ve preached using this verse as a comfort to the families, that “God was standing at the portico of glory, beckoning for his child to finally be home with Him.” One day a minister friend of mine told me, “John, did you know that word precious actually means costly?” Well, that put it all in a different light. Now we see God presented with the high cost of losing great & effective people in His kingdom.

I’ve heard people talk about why God took their loved one, & they’ll say, “Well, you know heaven must be lonely & they needed another flower to bloom in God’s bouquet. I know God must have needed another tenor singer in heavens choir.” Dear friend, if there’s any place in the universe that isn’t lonely its heaven.

Let’s go back to the ministers who’ve died lately & apply something my dad used to believe & speak of often. He studied the lives of all the famous preachers of the last one-hundred years. D.L Moody, the famous evangelist died at age 62. Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the great London pastor who was called “the prince of preachers” died at 58. The last year or two of Spurgeon’s life he was so sickly he spent most of his time in the South of France & mailed his sermons back to be read in his church.

My dad’s theory & I think he was right, was that stress brought on by too much popularity killed these men. They were in such world- wide demand that they abused their bodies traveling too much & working too hard. Also these men knew little about how diet & exercise affect the body so they spent most of their lives sitting & studying, hence many of them died with what doctors used to call, “Fatty heart deterioration.” One thing for sure, our bodies can’t tell the difference if we’re stressing out over little mundane things or if we’re being crushed by the weight of hurting humanity. Helping people is a noble cause but if we let people’s problems, even their spiritual problems get inside us; it can prove deadly.

There are certain natural laws of good mental & physical health we can’t break & do well, just as we couldn’t jump off a bridge on our way to church & expect the law of gravity to be suspended for us.

A few years ago I lost one of my best preacher friends & we were about the same age. I knew him from a boy I always considered him to be in much better physical shape than I ever was. He was never a smidgen overweight through all the years I knew him. On a Sunday evening he was getting ready to go to church & had a heart attack & was dead before the paramedics could get him to the hospital. I can’t prove this is true but I’ve always believed that stress killed him. He was super-conscientious, a perfectionist, & very “military” in his thinking.

Let’s look at some things that cause anxiety & also a few ways to fight it.

1. A need to control can cause anxiety.

This quality can morph into a malignant motivation if not watched. Sometimes we can get over- inflated ideas of our own importance & forget the world will go on quite nicely when we’re gone. This thought helps us stay in touch with reality.

2. Deal with facts not hobgoblins.

A very sharp, intelligent person can think of more things to worry about before he/she put their feet in the floor in the morning that a “duller-knife” can conjure up in a week. But statistics say the person with the not-so-high IQ may well be more successful & will probably live longer.

Philippians 4:8-9 says,---Finally brethren, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of a good report, if there be any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy-meditate on these things. The things which you learned & received & heard & saw in me, these do, & the God of peace will be with you.

3. Humble yourself and pray.

1 Peter 5:6-7 says,--Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him for he cares for you.Pride turned angels into devils. We need to let God search us & see what’s inside us. Pride will install itself in our hearts & cause us to be self-absorbed & unable to see our lives in proper perspective. When we become self-absorbed, we’ll see our problems in a warped light.

Cain told God when he was approached about killing Able that he feared “everyone was going to kill him.” Of course this sprang from his guilt, because how could everyone kill him? A person can only be killed once the last time I checked. This was paranoia in Cain, aggravated by his pride. The devil will try to make us think “everyone” is against us, when it just isn’t true.
One man said, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.”

A young man went to his dad & told him he felt everyone hated him. The father answered him by saying, “Son, don’t say that, everyone hasn’t met you yet.”

Other people have more to do than to go around thinking how to hurt & defeat us, don’t you think?

4. Release all your worries to God & rest in Him.

1 Peter 5:10 says, “But may the God of all grace who called us to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a little while establish, strengthen & settle you.”When I was seven or eight I remember asking my mother one day, “Mom am I saved?” Her answer stills reverberates in my mind. She answered, “Son, nobody can answer that question but you.” I had said the sinners prayer & been baptized but I still had that haunting question. What struck home with me was that it was actually my decision & no one but me could make it. My eternal destiny was in my own hands.

In 1 Kings 18:21 Elijah asked the people on Mount Carmel to make a decision. He told them if they wanted to serve Baal to go on & serve him, or if they decided to go with God, they should make a decision & stop halting between two opinions. He was saying in essence, stop dithering.

James said…For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea, driven with the wind & tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord. A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. James 1: 6-8.

There are many landmines in the path of the believer not the least of which is procrastination. What decision do you need to make today? Will you make it & get on with your life or will you succumb to,

DITHERING?

Blessings,

John

A Message From Jesus To Oprah

2011-12-06T22:10:00.003-05:00

By John Stallings

Dear Oprah, it would be redundant to say I know everything about you as I do everyone else alive on planet earth.

I know that you were born to Vernon Winfrey & Vernita Lee in 1954 in Kosciusko Mississippi & you didn’t have auspicious beginnings.

You were named after Oprah from the book of Ruth in the Old Testament but the midwife misspelled your name when she was filling out the birth certificate. [Obviously I was never surprised that your name was really Harpo spelled backwards.]

You’ve done well in the money department amassing a 1.5 billion net worth. I know money isn’t the only measure of success, it’s not even a very good measure, but it’s certainly one measure. Abraham, Jacob, David & Solomon were wealthy. As you know, I’ve always been more concerned with what people did with the money they had, than how much they had.

One day a rich & successful young man came running to me telling me of his desire for eternal life. When I told him to go sell all he had & give to the poor, he went away very sad because he had many possessions. I wasn’t trying to make a poor man out of a rich man that day. Proverbs 19:17 says, He that hath pity on the poor lendeth unto the Lord; and that which he hath given will he pay him again.

I realize that you’re the object of criticism because of the vast amounts of money you make, but I also see you’ve been very generous with your money. I have no problem with people making large sums of money. I’m looking at your heart & what interests me is whether you have the money or the money has you. Like any good parent, I take pleasure in seeing my kids be successful, & remember, we pave our streets with gold in heaven.

I don’t expect everyone to be Billy Graham or Mother Theresa; neither do I expect everyone to take a vow of poverty. Quite the contrary. I have great expectations for everyone & expect each individual to have great accomplishments even though they won’t all translate into great amounts of money. I’ve given everyone gifts but they are diverse gifts & certainly people should use their talents & abilities to the fullest extent.

I take joy in the fact that you’ve come so far from that pig farm in rural Mississippi, knowing you spent the first third of your childhood living in poverty, both rural in Mississippi & ghetto in Milwaukee. Don’t even imagine that I’ve forgotten you were raped at 9 & were by your own admission out of control in those years.

Your website says the Oprah Show is the highest rated talk show in T.V history, seen by 46 million viewers each day in the U.S in 205 markets & in 134 countries. In fact your show has been the number one talk show for 21 consecutive seasons. Since its beginning in 1986 it has received 32 Emmy awards.

I know that you’re one of the most influential women in the world. Vanity Fair Magazine made this statement “Oprah Winfrey arguably has more influence on the culture than any university president, politician, or religious leader except perhaps the Pope.”

When you put your seal on a book in your club it’s guaranteed to become a major best seller. When you smile & nod at a guest who is teaching on any spiritual subject, people take it as a personal endorsement from the lady whom they invite into their homes as a friend on a daily basis.

And because you offer such a mix of New Age, Eastern, contemplative & past life teachings, you have the potential to influence people’s spiritual life & consequentially their eternal life. Here’s where you walk on a slippery-slope!

Oprah, on the opening of your website is the statement: “Want to get in Touch with your Soul? Oprah sits down with leading spiritual thinkers & authors to talk about matters of the soul.”

But now comes a warning, Oprah. Since you were raised in church, you may remember what I told the Church in Ephesus, in the book of Revelation the second chapter.

Just as I’ve congratulated you, I congratulated them on all their accomplishments. I told them I was proud of their good works, their labor, & their patience. I complimented them for not tolerating evil, even exposing & purging out hypocritical apostles because they were found to be liars.

I expressed to the church my deep appreciation for their unflagging patience for my names sake & their standing firm when things got hard. But if you recall, I then told them I had something against them,-they had forsaken their first love. In other words, in their haste to do so many good & noble things, they stopped loving me like they used to love me. Then I called on this church in Ephesus to repent & return & start loving me like they did in their early days.

Oprah, I have the identical message for you. I remember you way back at that Faith United Mississippi Baptist Church when you were just a girl where they used to call you “Miss Jesus” or “The preacher.” The kids did it mostly out of jealousy because they knew how much you loved me & longed to serve me.

I also remember later when you moved in with your father in Nashville & you would go faithfully to the Progressive Missionary Baptist Church. You spoke in church now & then & once you even traveled to Los Angeles to speak to a church youth group. You were quite the young preacher.

I was thrilled about the incident one night in 1986 when you were in church after you’d begun to get well known because of your T.V show. A man asked for your autograph, & you said, “I don’t do autographs in church. Jesus is the star here.”

But these days Oprah, things aren’t right between us. You’ve gotten so far away from your first love for me that you’ve actually said some hurtful things. You made the statement, “Jesus didn’t come to tell us how divine He was, but to teach that divinity was within us.” You also said, “One of the biggest mistakes we make is to believe there is only one way. There are many diverse ways to God.” Oprah, have you forgotten what I said?—I am the Way, the truth & the life. No one can come to the father except through me. [John 14:6]

Then you even went further with it saying, “There couldn’t possibly be only one way…does God care about your heart or whether you called His Son Jesus?” Actually Oprah, He does & so do I.

Have you forgotten who I am? Have you forgotten when I was baptized by John, a Dove came & sat on my shoulder & my father spoke out of heaven & said, this is my beloved Son in whom I’m well pleased?”

Have you forgotten these words? -There is salvation in no one else! God has given no other name under heaven by which we must be saved. [Acts 4:12.]

Don’t you remember my saying, everyone who acknowledges me publicly here on earth I will also acknowledge before my heavenly Father, but everyone that denies me here on earth I will also deny before my father in heaven? [Matt.10:32-33.]

Oprah, I love you as I do everyone I’ve created but I must tell you you’ve put yourself in great danger by assuming the roll of teacher. My brother James made it clear that to take on the mantle of a teacher is a dangerous thing because teachers will be held accountable for what they tell people. [James 3:1]

Don’t forget, you have a congregation of many millions. Be careful what you teach & watch what you say! You’ll have to answer for every word of it at Judgment. You may say you’re not a teacher but the masses see you that way. You might not be preaching the gospel but you’re certainly preaching a gospel.

Remember, my words in Mark 9:42—But if you cause one of these little ones who trusts me to fall into sin, it would be better for you to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone hung around your neck? Remember Oprah that according to survey expert George Barna—you have an 83% favorability among born-again Christians.

The teachings on your show run the gamut from New Age, Eastern religions, self-help & reincarnation. Shirley McClain has spoken on your show describing how to meditate-- going inside yourself, asking your own “intuitive Self” to seek answers to life’s questions.

Oprah, you said, “When you are connected to your higher Self, knowing you can do anything you want to do-is what other people describe as “born again.” Oprah, Oprah, this isn’t what I described as being born again. This has nothing to do with my words in John 3:3-6 when I spoke one night to Nicodemus. He asked how a man could go back into his mother’s womb & be born again & I replied-I assure you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water & of the Spirit. --Humans can only reproduce human life but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life.

I know you’ve done a lot of good & have achieved a lot personally & professionally. I also know that you believe the teachings you espouse on your programs & in the books you so wholeheartedly recommend. You feel they only complete & compliment the Gospel, but the Gospel doesn’t need completing, it’s already complete.

You can’t substitute “presence” for me & I’m not the “God presence” or “self’ as it’s called in Eastern religions. Neither can you make a mix of Buddhism & Islamic thought, & then sprinkle in a misapplied Bible verse or two.

Oprah, you’re doing what you’re doing in the name of tolerance, & Satan is having a field day. No one wants to be accused of intolerance. But you see, there’s no connection between light & darkness. Heaven asks you the same question Elijah asked the people on Mt. Carmel, how long will you waver between two opinions?

I give to you the same message I give to all nations & all people; turn from your sin & receive my forgiveness. My hands are extended toward you, just humble yourself & receive my mercy.

Satan is playing for keeps & desires to drag as many as possible into eternal hellfire with him.

The choice is yours. As I told the Church at Laodicea, -- I stand at the door & knock: if any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him and will sup with him and he with me. [Rev.3:20]

Love, Jesus of Nazareth

Special Comments!!

2011-12-06T10:04:00.000-05:00

Dear reader,

I regret the fact that it’s been so long since I posted a new blog. A little over a week ago my wife Juda tripped and fell in a Cracker Barrel parking lot sustaining a rather bad break in her right arm [her dominate arm] and cracks in her left hand and wrist. We’re talking about a lady with a cast on one arm and the other arm in a sling.

Welcome to the world of “Juda can’t do much of anything,” and “John is doing most everything, much of which he doesn’t know how to do.” But I’m learning fast.

We’ve had some help but I’ve been doing the Lion’s share of the work. As I’ve always said about babies, they’re not “a lot of trouble,” but they do need “lots of care.” Of course Juda isn’t a baby but at a time like this the same goes for a spouse who’s incapacitated. This has left me little time to write but I’ll have a new message up and posted in a day or two.

We are fine and Juda is feeling better and we have every reason to believe she’ll be as good as new in a week or so. We covet your prayers that my lovely wife will continue to experience a speedy recovery.

Watch for my new post-It may come as early as tonight.

Blessings,

John

Move To Praise Avenue!!

2011-11-22T16:40:00.008-05:00

By John Stallings

It is with pleasure that I tell you that I represent Glory Realtors Inc., an exciting investment opportunity.

Let me quickly confess that I haven’t always lived there but have visited enough to honestly be able to present it to you as a wonderful place to live.

I am trying to persuade as many people as possible to buy property on Praise Avenue. I don’t know where you live now but it would be safe to say many of you live in exclusive residential areas. Maybe you live on,

Complain Court,

Lamentation lane,

Grumble Gables,

or Barely Getting by Boulevard, down at the end of the street, next to

Ain’t It Awful Ally.

However, I’m asking you to pack up, sell out, and move to Praise Avenue.

“Why should I do that? You ask. Good question. When an intelligent person decides to relocate, he does it for good reasons, so let me give you several reasons to make this move.

REASON #1:

WE ARE COUNSELED BY GOD’S WORD TO LIVE ON PRAISE AVENUE.

Psalm 135:1 says, “Praise ye the Lord. Praise ye the name of the Lord; praise him O ye servants of the Lord.”

Psalm 106:1 says, “Praise ye the Lord. O give thanks to the Lord; for he is good; for his mercy endureth forever.

Psalm 103:1 says, “Bless the Lord, O my soul; and all that is within me bless his holy name.”

Psalm 100:4 says, “Enter into his gates with thanksgiving and into his courts with praise.”

Many other places in Gods word implore us to live on Praise Avenue.

Psalm 96:1-6 tells us; “Sing unto the Lord a new song all the earth. Sing unto the Lord, bless his name; show forth his salvation from day to day. Declare his glory among the heathen, his wonders among all people; For the Lord is great, and greatly to be praised. He is to be feared above all Gods. For all the gods of the world are; but the Lord made the heavens. Honor and majesty are before him: strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.”

REASON #2:

SOMEONE WHO WE SUPREMELY LOVE WANTS US TO LIVE ON PRAISE AVENUE.

When you love someone, you are always looking for ways to please them. You will have a keen listening ear to each and every suggestion because you know that some special day such as a birthday or Christmas is coming up and you don’t want to miss an opportunity to please the one you love. If you catch the slightest hint, you will file it away until you can fulfill that desire.

Some people are terribly hard to please, but look how easy our God has made it for us. He has plainly told us that He craves our love and praise so much that if we build him a house of praise He’ll be quick to inhabit it. To be frank, the very reason He created us was so that the creature could praise the creator. When a child climbs in his fathers lap and gives him love, the father receives great joy from it. Likewise our God receives genuine pleasure when we respond to His love for us with expressions of worship and praise.

REASON #3:

WE WILL GREATLY BENEFIT FROM THE MOVE TO PRAISE AVENUE.

Nothing blesses us in every way more than praise does. Note that God is always seeking to do us, His children good. A close investigation of all Gods commandments will prove that they are all designed for our benefit. If you feel that God isn’t answering your prayers, maybe you could make a change and start mingling more praise with your petitions and see what happens. When you and I start to recognize the goodness and mercies of God He will then start to consider our wants and needs more. Praise benefits us in another way, in that it will always make the devil run.

Have you ever noticed that if you are talking to a person about someone they don’t have much affection for, the more you say positive about that person, the more uncomfortable the person is who doesn’t like them. If you don’t stop building that person up, you’ll soon lose your audience. That’s what praise does to Satan. He so despises God that he won’t be around long when we start to praise the Lord.

REASON #4:

THE LANDLORD ON PRAISE AVENUE WILL KEEP US SAFE AT ALL TIMES.

As soon as you make the move to praise avenue, you’ll get a protection policy, not that you’ll never have a problem, but that God will always go through it with you. Someone might ask; if I already have problems and a move to praise avenue won’t guarantee no problems, why should I move? The answer is simple. If we try to solve life’s problems by ourselves, we are sure to end up in trouble. But if we live on Praise Avenue, God will fight our battles for us. The bottom line is; without praise, life will sooner or later become too much for us.

Think about how faithful God has always been to wake you in the morning as well as sustain, protect and provide for you with such regularity. Think how he’s blessed you with sight, hearing, and the ability to move around and enjoy life. If you saw the movie The Passion, it reminded you of what Jesus went through to purchase our salvation.

Should we not sing with the songwriter?

MERCY THERE WAS GREAT AND GRACE WAS FREE.
PARDON THERE WAS MULTIPLIED TO ME,
THERE MY BURDENED SOUL FOUND LIBERTY,
AT CALVARY.

REASON #5:

MOVING TO PRAISE AVENUE WILL EXPRESS OUR FAITH IN GOD.

Our ability to burst into praise regardless of the circumstances is truly a measure of the quality and quantity of our faith in God. If we believe that God is both willing and able to do “exceedingly abundantly above all we could ask or think,” if we believe that our lives are in his care, if we really believe that nothing comes to us except what in His providence He allows, why would we not praise him in bad times as well as good?

As the old song goes, “anyone can sing when the suns shining bright, but you need a song in your heart at night.”

When you live on praise Avenue, you may be “troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted but not forsaken; cast down but not destroyed.” 2 Corinthians 4:8-9.

You see, even in the darkest circumstances, we can praise God because we know that all things are not good, but “all things work together for good to them that love God. “Romans 8:28. When we believe Him, we turn everything over to Him and praise Him for whatever he does.

Some well known Old Testament residents of Praise Avenue are Jehoshaphat and his army, who were surrounded by three hostile armies. The story says, “Then Jehoshaphat appointed singers unto the Lord and that should praise the beauty of holiness as they went out before the army, and to say “ Praise the Lord; for his mercy endureth forever.” 2 Chronicles 20:19-21.

Notice that Jehoshaphat put his full trust in the word of the Lord, not stationing the praisers behind the army where they’d have some measure of protection. No, they were stationed before the army relying on the fact that their praises would be suitable habitation for an all-powerful God who would fight their battle for them.

Two well known New Testament occupants of Praise Avenue are Paul and Silas. They had been thrown in jail in Philippi on trumped up charges. They had been flogged and their backs were sore and swollen. Their feet were in hard, brutal stocks. Every movement added more pain. By all rights they’d have been complaining but they weren’t. Instead they decided to praise God. And God, the mighty deliverer responded to those praises. The record says that suddenly a great earthquake came and the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s hands were loosed. Hallelujah!!!

The fact that God shows up when we praise is a good reason to keep praising, isn’t it?

REASON #6:

LIVING ON PRAISE AVENUE WILL ALLOW US TO PRACTICE FOR HEAVENS CHIEF ACTIVITY.

You can read Revelation 5:11-14 and Revelation 19 for a lifestyle of the redeemed as pictured by John the Revelator. In Revelation 5:11-13 John gets a glimpse on the inside of heaven and paints a word picture of a glorious service in heaven. He says;

“And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne, and the beasts, and the elders; and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing. And every creature that was in heaven, and on the earth and under the earth, and such as are in the sea and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing and honor and glory be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb forever and ever.” Hallelujah!!!

I don’t know how many trillions that is but let’s say that John saw more angels praising God than our minds can comprehend.

Aren’t you glad that this old world isn’t our home; we’re just pilgrims passing through. We have got a lot to look forward to because according to John, we’ll join the saints of all the ages and engage in Praising God throughout the ceaseless ages of eternity.

So I’ll tell you what. In the light of all we’ve said, I have decided to move to praise Avenue and I’m inviting all of you to move with me. Regardless of our problems, let us praise the Lord.

God forbid, but if you sprain your ankle, praise him that he’s Jehovah Rophe, the mighty healer.

God forbid, but if you are dead broke, and the bills are high, and funds low, praise God he’s Jehovah Jireh, our provider.

God forbid, but if your spouse runs out on you or your children turn their backs on you, praise God he’s Jehovah Shammah and he’ll never leave you or forsake you.

God forbid, but if one day the devil, the accuser of the brethren, mounts a massive offensive against you and you feel your filthy rag of righteousness is filthier than ever, praise God that Jehovah Tsidkenu is only a prayer away and is eager to cover you with his robe of righteousness.

Have you ever noticed that the last five Psalms start with the words, “Praise ye the Lord?”
Reading these Psalms gives us the principles for improving the emotional landscape of our minds and the attitude structure of our hearts, so that we may have a blessed and happy life. The One-hundred fiftieth Psalm says;

PRAISE GOD IN HIS SANCTUARY,
PRAISE HIM IN THE FIRMAMENT OF HIS POWER,
PRAISE HIM FOR HIS MIGHTY ACTS,
PRAISE HIM ACCORDING TO HIS ABUNDANT GREATNESS,
PRAISE HIM WITH THE BLAST OF THE HORN,
PRAISE HIM WITH THE PSALTERY AND HARP,
PRAISE HIM WITH THE TIMBREL AND DANCE,
PRAISE HIM WITH STRINGED INSTRUMENTS AND PIPE,
PRAISE HIM WITH LOUD-SOUNDING CYMBALS,
PRAISE HIM WITH CLANGING CYMBALS;
LET EVERY THING THAT HATH BREATH PRAISE THE LORD,
HALLELUJAH.

I IMPLORE YOU, AS I AM DOING, TO MAKE THE PERMINENT MOVE TO PRAISE AVENUE SO THAT WE CAN,

…. “BLESS THE LORD AT ALL TIMES AND LET HIS PRAISE BE CONTINUALLY BE IN OUR MOUTHS.” Psalm 34:1.

Blessings,

John

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!

" I See Dead People "

2011-11-14T18:15:00.008-05:00

By John Stallings

Many times I’ve seen dead animals in the road and unfortunately have hit some of them myself when driving.

It’s not a pleasant experience to see the carcasses of those unfortunate creatures that have fallen prey to the dangers of modern life. If you do much hi-way driving you’ll see this “road kill” in every state in the country.

The valley of dry bones in Ezekiel chapter 37 was perhaps Ezekiel’s most famous vision. To say he "saw dead carcasses" was an understatement. What he saw in this dismal valley of dry bones was, to say the least, a gruesome vision that shook him to his core; a scary sight of utter annihilation and holocaust.

Ezekiel was one of the most visionary prophets, subject to long trances where he was uncommunicative, after which he’d describe amazing images. He was a street preacher who delivered basically a “turn or burn” message. If you heeded his message, you could learn, turn and be saved. If you didn’t heed, you’d burn. He was the son of a Zadokite priest.

Ezekiel went into captivity at the age of eight & was called by God to be a prophet at age thirty. To say that Ezekiel was a little weird is like saying the ocean is a little wet. When God called the prophet Amos to preach he just said “Yes.” It took Ezekiel over three chapters to tell about his calling. It’s as if the whole universe had to get involved. Did he ever have a flair for the dramatic? The vision he had of the valley full of dry bones is one of the most dramatic ever penned. In his vision this strange preacher goes to a grave-yard to preach a sermon.

All of the prophets did odd things but Ezekiel takes the cake. He was known to lie on his side for 390 days at the time eating nothing but one, 8 ounce meal a day that was cooked over manure. He shaved his head as well as his beard. You might call Ezekiel eccentric, for when his wife died an untimely death he was strangely catatonic, almost mute & showed no sorrow. He was a young contemporary of Jeremiah, but while Jeremiah was preaching in Jerusalem, Ezekiel was preaching in Babylon. Ezekiel uses incredible detail in his writing & his message was that God wasn’t through judging Israel. He uses the phrase “Know that I am God” sixty-five times in the book.

LETS BACK UP A BIT

What made this dry bones vision important was that Israel had been attacked, defeated and devastated. The War Wagons of their enemy had pretty much plowed their nation under, and most of its population had been marched off like common criminals to a strange land. What was worse and made the defeat so complete was the loss of the temple, the official dwelling place of God and symbol of National identity. The temple’s precious metals had been looted and razed like a shack, and it became a heap of ruins. It was a fate worse than death and for all practical purposes, a viable Israel was now extinct.

VALLEY OF DEATH

The gutsy young Ezekiel preached in the streets for 22 years, calling the people of Israel from judgment to repentance. In Ezekiel 37, God puts his hand on Ezekiel and leads him down into the middle of this valley of bleached dry bones. For God to whisk men away like this isn’t all that unusual, for in Acts 8:39 --the spirit of the Lord caught Phillip away and he was found later at Azotus preaching.

But what did this valley full of dead bones mean? Why was God showing Ezekiel this scene of mass carnage & catastrophe; what was the point of it? Common sense told him the bones were proof that life once existed; that these bones were once living organisms filled with the life of God. The mystifying thing was that all there is to see are bones that have been dead so long they’re bleached white, lying all over this large valley, dislocated and disjointed. The buzzards had done their work well.

Many questions flood our minds here. Did this valley have a name? How long had the bones been there? Why had their families not given them a decent burial? Who had these people been and what lesson did they have to teach? These & a few more questions probably came to Ezekiel’s mind as he walked around the valley. Also, being human, another thing crossed his mind; this thing looks hopeless.

Here is a valley full of the bones of some past large army that were obviously badly defeated in battle. What was God going to show his man here? One of the symbolic lessons of the bones had to be the potential and possibility that had been squandered.

YOU’VE VISITED THIS VALLEY

We’ve all been to this valley where you walk knee-deep in the brokenness of the world.

Cancer struck close by in our lives and all at once we saw dry bones.

Our project fell apart and all at once we saw dry bones.

Our dreams were destroyed and there, facing us were dry bones.

A career is ended and we see dry bones.

The family breadwinner is laid off and there are dry bones.

Relationships are lost and we see dry bones.

A son or daughter is killed in war and suddenly you see dry bones.

All at once the devil takes the word "hopeless "- and tacks it above everything in our lives. We don’t know the reason; all we know is that we’re walking down the valley of dry bones. The most casual glimpse of our world today, especially if you see it through the prism of television news reveals dry bones. Perhaps you hadn’t thought about it but as you read this, maybe you’re in some kind of dry bones situation.

THIS VALLEY REPRESENTS VERY BIG AND VERY COMPLICATED PROBLEMS.

Ezekiel says, “and behold they were very many and they were very dry.”

That lets us know we’re not dealing with some small thing here; it had been a gigantic army in bygone days and obviously had been terribly defeated and decimated.

Maybe the dry bones in your life aren’t a small thing either, but rather a very big problem that’s going to need a very big intervention from God. Perhaps some awful thing has made inroads into your family and Satan tells you it’s hopeless.

THIS SITUATION SEEMED CRAZY

Not only were the problems very bad, Ezekiel says the bones were scattered. They weren’t skeletons intact; the picture is of bones that were in a configuration which hardly made sense. Have you ever felt that not only was your situation dead and very dry, it was so multi-leveled and complicated that you were almost embarrassed how warped, dysfunctional and unexplainable it was? It’s like a plate of spaghetti, lying there all tangled up on the plate, and you feel almost embarrassed because things have gotten so crazy. Have you ever felt that your circumstances were even too much for God? They never are, and that’s also one of things this story teaches us.

WHY DID EZEKIEL HAVE TO GO OUT INTO THE MIDDLE OF THIS VALLEY?

Why couldn’t God have passed him over it, given him a bird’s- eye view and whisked him away? Why did he sit him down in the midst of this horrific place? God operates on the principle that some problems can’t be dealt with from a distance. None of us relish going among the dead. We’d prefer to be with the living, at least among people that have a little life in them, but often God puts us right there so we can see how really messed-up things are. God never intended for His church to be a cloistered group of over-pious people separated from the suffering of this world.

It’s easier to send provisions to foreign countries than it is to send our sons and daughters. Many people have no problem writing a large check for missions but they resent scooting down the pew in church to let the downtrodden and needy sit next to them.

THE BIG QUESTION….

After Ezekiel gets into this valley & has a good look around & gets a close- up of all this carnage, God pops a question to him;

…can these bones live?

But this question isn’t asked to get information. As so often when God asks a question, he’s after something deeper. In the Garden of Eden God asked Adam and Eve “Where are you.”? Remember the question God directed toward Cain after he killed Abel; “What have you done with your brother?” It’s like the question Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” This is the kind of rhetorical question we’re dealing with.

As we read this story, we find that we’re being asked a question too.

* Can these bones live?

* Is there any reason for hope here?

* Can anything good come from something this terrible situation?

Sometimes we lie awake at night and ask ourselves questions about things in our lives, and the lives of our friends and maybe even the world. “Is there any reason for hope, honest to goodness hope, that isn’t rooted in shallow sentimental optimism or total denial? Can these bones live? It’s a big question, and of course Ezekiel is baffled, and answers in a way that puts the problem back in God’s lap. Only God knows the answer so Ezekiel answers, O Lord God, thou knowest.

GOD’S REMEDY; EZEKIEL, --PROPHESY TO THESE BONES.

God tells Ezekiel to start prophesying and preaching to these dead dry bones. To the natural mind, this was very foolish; to walk among these long dead, chalky white bones, talking, encouraging, coaching and cajoling them to rise up and live. The only thing powerful enough to bring this army back to life was the Word of the Lord.

FOR EZEKIEL IT WAS NOW REALITY TIME.

He must speak to dead people. It wasn’t time for manipulation. A big resume’ couldn’t put flesh back on these bones. No artificial flesh or prayer clothes laid over these bones was going to work. No magic or incantations would work either. These weren’t sick people they were stone cold dead; not people, but chalky bones. No slick solutions were going to do one wit of good in this valley, only words of prophecy accompanied by the mighty power of God.

I heard about a man who went day after day to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. Some tourist’s had been observing him until one day one of them asked the old man how long he’d been coming to the wall to pray. He answered that he’d been coming there for 60 years. Then they asked him if he felt he’d ever gotten a prayer answered and the old man thought a moment and replied, “not that I can recall.” One of the tourists asked him how he felt about that & the old man retorted, “Well. It’s like talking to a brick wall.” The old gentleman then just shook his head and sadly walked away.

It is obvious that if Ezekiel is going to pray over these dry bones in his own strength he’s going to be talking to a wall. But Ezekiel began to prophesy and say exactly what God had instructed; “O ye dry bones hear the word of the Lord.” The driest bones are those who haven’t heard the Word of God. Ezekiel said these same words twice, and then he heard a noise, and a shaking and a movement began, and the bones started to come together. The word of God had again proven its creative power, just as it had on creation day when God said, “Let there be light.”

Now look what Ezekiel had. God had put flesh and sinew on the skeletons and wrapped skin around them but now he had a great big crowd of dead people lying deathly still. There was absolutely no life in them. There was a form, but no force. What Ezekiel now had on his hands was a perfect picture of what Paul told Timothy end-time religion would look like. He said it would….

“Have a form of Godliness, but denying the power thereof; from such turn away.” 2 Tim. 3:5.

In other words, they would have the form but no force.

So we must speak to the dry bones of our lives and Prophesy to them but we can’t do it in our strength or in our name, for there is no power without God’s power.

Then another part of this story unfolds. God told Ezekiel to prophecy to the wind. God tells Ezekiel in verse 9, “Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord God; Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” The bodies, even though they are now covered with flesh, are only cadavers and it will take the wind to breathe life into them.

IN SCRIPTURE, THE WIND IS A TYPE OF THE SPIRIT OF GOD.

The Hebrew word RUACH is used for breath, wind and spirit. When the wind came into that dry dead valley, the Holy Spirit came, as on the day of Pentecost, when one of the evidences that the Holy Spirit had arrived was the sound of a rushing mighty wind. It was the breath of God that was required to bring life, just as in John 20:22 when Jesus breathed on His disciples and they received the Holy Ghost.

After the Holy Ghost was poured out on the day of Pentecost, the disciples who had been cowering with fear were filled with power from on high to be witnesses for Christ, and to be willing to ultimately give their lives for Him.

Preachers can’t change hearts and lives. The powerful wind of the Holy Spirit must come and complete the job. Without the anointing of the spirit, sermons are dry and lifeless. All preaching is dependent upon God’s Holy Spirit to speak to the hearts of individuals and prepare them to except Christ as Savior.

Ephesians 2:1-4 depicts lost, sinful man as exactly like the dry bones in Ezekiel’s valley. We were …. Dead in trespasses and sins, but God has quickened us (or breathed life into us) together with Christ.

AN EXCEEDING GREAT ARMY ROSE UP-- NOT A MOB.

Ezekiel practiced simple obedience and prophesied and when he did, God raised up these dead bones to become an exceeding great army. God’s power transcends the power of death and the grave. They didn’t manifest as an unruly mob but as an organized, disciplined army, ready to march to battle. An army carries the thought of obedience under a General. Then God told Ezekiel what all of this represented. He told him in the eleventh verse…Son of man these bones are the whole house of Israel.

This had all been an allegory depicting how Israel who was in captivity was going to be brought back and reborn. In verse 14 God tells Ezekiel about Israel,

“And shall put my spirit in you, and ye shall live, and I shall place you in your own land: then shall ye know that I the Lord have spoken it, and performed it, saith the Lord.”

Remember, this is God dealing with a nation. He deals with nations and He deals with individuals.

THERE IS HOPE IN EVERY SITUATION

Ezekiel couldn’t see the wind but he began to see the dance of trees and grass and fields of wildflowers as they responded to the caressing winds. Then he witnessed the army as it began to spring to life also.

What is God saying to you through this story? For one thing he wants us to see things from another perspective. They look hopeless to us but not to him. What would be a crushing debt to me would be pocket change to Bill Gates.

Have you given up hope? Do you think the best years of your life are behind you? Do you feel that God has forgotten you? Get up from your heap of discarded dreams. Let the Holy Spirit breathe new life into your soul and you will see God’s spirit move into your valley of dry bones and show-out in ways you would have never believed. You’ll find yourself dancing once again, responding to the breeze of God’s Holy Grace. God specializes in dry bones, lifeless souls, impossible situations, dead ends and dashed hopes.

MULTITUDES ARE LANGUISHING; WAITING FOR YOU & ME TO START BELIEVING THAT GOD CAN REVIVE US, & THAT DRY, DEAD BONES CAN LIVE AGAIN.

Blessings,

John

Offended Christians

2011-11-04T22:19:00.006-04:00

By John Stallings

…..Love is not touchy. 1 Corinthians 13: 5-- J.B Philips translation

What’s the devil’s most deadly & deceptive trap?

What tool of Satan imprisons countless Christians, severs relationships, widens existing breaches between people in families & churches--& is a leading cause of disunity? It’s the trap of offense.

Offense is described as-“an act causing anger, hurt feelings, resentment, displeasure, or an affront.”

If caught in its early stages it can be dealt with before much damage is done but the deeper the offense & the longer it’s allowed to fester, the greater the chance that it will turn into a poisonous root of bitterness & bury itself deep within the soul. The result will be a harden heart against people & ultimately God Himself.

When an offense becomes a stronghold, an individual will develop a pattern through which all incoming information gets processed & then they start filtering everything through past hurts, rejections & past injuries.

Offended people feel justified in withholding forgiveness from the offender.
Offended people feel justified in gossiping to others about the offense.
Offended people feel justified in enlisting sympathizers in their cause & turning other people against the offender.
Offended people will produce much fruit, namely; anger, outrage, jealousy, resentment, strife, bitterness, hatred, envy & broken relationships.
Offended people often don’t know they’ve fallen into the offense trap.
Offended people feel; “I was mistreated or misjudged—therefore I’m justified in my behavior.”

Very often offended Christians [or Christians so-called] will refuse to be a part any longer of the Christian community. The people with whom they meet & rub shoulders are other offended folk. Sunday to them becomes a day for sleeping late or visiting relatives & friends or a day at the beach.

It’s not uncommon for these offended Christians to give up Bible reading & Bible study & God becomes a relic of their past, although they are known to continue to talk religious & carry a strong attitude of self-righteousness. The justification for the dismissal of God from their lives is that they’ve been hurt somewhere along the way & there are “too many hypocrites in the church.” This argument is simply an evasive tactic to justify one’s negative feelings toward others & of God Himself.

Satan knows how easy it is for all of us to hold on to grudges & he does everything in his power to remind us of the injustices done to us, real or imaginary. He knows that if he can get us to allow unforgiveness to remain in our hearts it gives him a foothold.

People get offended by the words or actions of others, & often sermons. They feel every sermon is intentionally aimed at them. They might say; “no one spoke to me, the pastor shook my hand but his eyes were on another person.” We all are presented with tons of opportunities to get offended every single second of our lives.

People who become offended in a church, usually move on to another church. Since they never deal with their spirit of offense, they keep moving around looking for a perfect church; a church that will never hurt their feelings. The truth of the matter is there is no such thing as a church that will never hurt our feelings.

CONSIDER THE LOWLY PORCUPINE

If you’re walking through the woods & you hear a rattling sound, step lightly. It could be a deadly rattlesnake- but you could also be in the proximity of a rodent called the porcupine.

The adult porcupine is about three feet long & weighs between 20 & 30 pounds. It’s known to rustle its quills to warn a potential predator to back off. In a worse case scenario [small animals such as dogs usually get the worst injuries] you could end up trying to pull out a bunch of barbed quills. The porcupines don’t have to aim perfectly either because they have on average 30,000 quills to throw, with fish-hook like barbs in them, located all over their bodies except their faces. [Thanks Wikipedia.]

When threatened the porcupine attacks by moving backward or sideways into the aggressor & the quills lodge in the aggressor’s skin. Every time the pierced victim moves, the quills penetrate further into its body. If the quills pierce vital organs the victim can die.

HAVE YOU NOTICED THERE ARE PORCUPINE PEOPLE?

We’ve all taken some quills along the way & to be truthful we’ve all thrown a few quills. There are some people who- through the look on their face & their body language seem to be saying,-“You take a chance if you mess with me. I have plenty of quills & I won’t hesitate to use them.” These “quill throwers” are raspy & harsh & if you have even the shortest of encounters with them you will doubtless come away carrying quills.

We meet “quill throwers” in all levels of life. They are in hospitals, doctor’s offices, schools, restaurants, department stores, driving down hi-ways & even in churches. You probably have one or two in your extended family.

Not only are there “Quill throwers,” there are also “Quill carriers.” If you’ve ever seen a church fight or for that matter a family feud you are aware of this. Quill carriers are folk who’ve taken some quills in life & have never gotten rid of them. Many times it’s because they don’t want to be healed. They savor the pain caused by quills.

GOD'S WORD SPEAKS TO THE PORCUPINE PROBLEM

In 1 Peter 4: there is what some call “The Peter Prescription.” Verse 8 says;--Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.

Notice Peter says—ABOVE ALL-love each other deeply. ……This is a biblical mandate! It means make every effort, -- go all out—make it priority one—love as if your life depended on it.

It may be painful to hear but the main reason we are super-bothered by others & the quills they throw at us is simple; we just don’t have the “love covering” we need to absorb the hurt & lighten up about the barbs thrown at us.

Notice Peter doesn’t say love covers-up sins, but love covers-over a multitude of sins.
When we don’t forgive others who trespass against us, or hit us with quills, the reason is—there’s not enough love to “cover it over.” Again…Love covers over a multitude of sins.

Love gets a little confusing because we mean all kinds of different things when we talk about love. I love to fish & I love chocolate ice cream however I have a much deeper commitment to my wife than I do those things. But I use the same word, love.

In the church we’re always saying-God is love-therefore we should love too but what do we mean when we say that? When we step out of the spiritual realm we have Hollywood & T.V presenting movies about love like Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve got mail, Titanic, Friends, & Dawson’s Creek. These things can’t help but affect us, & some of our expectations grow out of watching them. Harlequin Romance Magazines sells 130 million books each year; books purporting to tell us about love. Some of it might be good & some of it bad so it’s important that we understand what we’re really talking about when we speak of love.

In 1 Corinthians, Paul wrote to a church that had all the spiritual gifts but they argued constantly. They had asserted how smart & gifted they were & so Paul had been critiquing this complicated & conflicted Corinthian church. The Love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13 comes as almost an intrusion in the flow of the letter. Paul took great care to explain to them that though they had all these phenomenal gifts, anything minus love equals nothing. Zero.

When we think of love in the way the world presents it we’re usually talking about romantic love which is based on physical desirability. This love assumes that the loved- one is attractive & it assumes incredible emotional intensity so that one can’t help but pursue the loved one. But this is a far cry from what Paul is talking about because he writes love is more than an emotion. It’s capable of even loving the unlovable.

Sometimes when we use the word love we’re speaking of tolerance; you do your thing & I’ll do mine. Tolerance is good but it’s not the kind of love Paul is talking about. Sometimes love will compel us to be intolerant & demand change in an individual. Sometimes love will have to be tough, as in intervening in the life of a loved one who’s bound by drugs or other substances. It’s clear that tolerance isn’t the kind of love Paul’s talking about.

Sometimes love will be used as a cause; we love the environment so we wear wrist- bands & T-shirts to protest things that hurt the environment, but this isn’t the love Paul is talking about. Some of the meanest people in the world parade behind the banner of love for this or that cause & in crusading for tolerance; they can be so intolerant they’re downright dangerous. John Lennon wrote a song called “Give peace a chance,” & all the time he was at war with the Beatles. Their personal relationships were in shambles & they were calling the world to peace. Like the man who said, “I love mankind- its people I hate.”

The love Paul speaks about isn’t even friendship. Sometimes people will get sentimental & feel they have so much in common with an individual that they’ll say, “I love you.” There might even be an awkward hug & a few tears because the friendship touches them in such a way as to be thought of as love. Like two drunks in a bar who get a little lubricated & say, “I love you, man.” This isn’t the kind of love Paul is talking about.

As a matter of fact Paul isn’t going to let us guess what he’s talking about, he gets very concrete about love. He says love is patient. It can relax in the present. Love is willing to accept slow change & to try again. Love is patient & kind. Love is warm & sympathetic. It sees & feels the difficulties of the other person. It’s not cold & analytical. Love is kind & doesn’t envy. Love doesn’t boast & isn’t proud. Love avoids abrasive & inflammatory language. Love listens. Love is a dialogue. Love doesn’t scold a person like they were a family pet. Love isn’t easily angered. Love is more than biting the tongue; it works at the inner core of us.

Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes & perseveres. Love is constantly hoping for change in people & doesn’t give up after one good try. Love is going to try & try & try again. Love isn’t what celebrities talk about on The Oprah Show.

Have you ever thought about the fact that right in the middle of the happy, romantic & love-filled marriage vows we start talking about better or worse, richer or poorer, sickness & in health? Just when we’re speaking of this feel-good love, we imagine those terrible scenarios. Why do we do that? It’s because deep inside we all want love that is secure. Deep down we know there is real, all embracing love. We want that love for ourselves & we want to be able to give it too. And so there it is in the vows- in the marriage ceremony.

But keep in mind; the love Paul speaks about is bigger than married love because he’s not talking to married couples. He’s talking to the church & he’s telling them this is the kind of loving relationships they should have. It’s the kind of love God loves us with.

FORGIVING THE QUILL THROWERS

These next words will be some of the most important words you’ll ever read because if you & I don’t get this thing called forgiveness right, we’ll miss the heart of the gospel. I am swinging this axe with great humility because I find forgiveness such a struggle. More than once in my life I’ve had people I trusted to prove unworthy of that trust by doing everything in their power to hurt me. As you know these kinds of people almost never ask forgiveness. But even in cases where I’ve been asked to forgive, & I’ve given that forgiveness to the best of my ability, I’d be less than honest if I didn’t say I still struggle with it. As Paul said, “I die daily.”

There’s no greater passage in the entire Bible that opens the heart of God on forgiveness than the narrative in Matthew chapter eighteen. I’m sure you’re familiar with it.

Even the disciples were having a hard time with forgiveness, so Peter came out & laid the difficulty of it right at the feet of Jesus. The Rabbinic teaching of the day said you should forgive someone up to three times & after that you could stop forgiving. To be on the safe side Peter doubled that & added one for magnanimity's sake. He asked, “Lord when somebody messes me over, how many times should I allow that to happen before I stop forgiving them? Seven times?”

Jesus said, “No, Not seven times. Seventy times seven.” We’d be missing the point here if we think Jesus was talking about a literal number. Jesus was actually talking here about how grace should operate in the life of the believer when it comes to the difficulty of forgiveness.

So Jesus told a simple, crystal-clear, scintillating parable & explained the issue of forgiveness to His disciples as well as you & me. We don’t have to be rocket scientists, bible scholars or great theologians to get the point of this parable.

It’s a story about a king & his servant. The king has loaned his servant money & decides to call in the loan. It’s pay-back time. Servant A is the first man we meet. He has run up a whopping tab, roughly 12 million dollars. The point is, it’s such a vast sum it’s impossible to pay back. The servant is unable to pay so the king took the next step & ordered the servant & his wife & children to be sold into slavery & his entire estate to be put on the auction block. At least the king can salvage a little bit of money on this deal.

But the servant begins to beg for mercy. He’s trying to buy time. He’s hoping the king will cut him some slack. He literally pleads for his life. Then the most unexpected thing happens; like a bolt from the blue the king totally forgives & cancels the entire debt. Suddenly servant, wife, children, & estate are off the auction block.

Now put yourself in that servant’s shoes. How would you be feeling at that moment? When somebody gives you a break in traffic aren’t you more likely then to give someone else a break? But after all that forgiveness, -servant A leaves as if nothing good has happened.

Enter servant B. Servant B owes servant A about $1.80 in today’s money. Like a scene from The Godfather, servant A says to servant B, “I’m going to remove your kneecaps unless you pay up.” Servant A shows servant B no mercy, instead he has servant B thrown into prison. We can agree that servant A is a jerk.

But there are always other eyes watching & someone went & told the king the whole story. Now for the second time servant A is called before the king. The king has another turn-around & this time his pity has turned to anger. He lowers the boom on servant A & throws him in prison.

The story is over for servant A & B but it’s not over for Peter & it’s not over for you & me. Jesus says, -- “Unless you & I forgive our brothers & sisters from the heart we’re going to wind up just like servant A.” And, oh, how God has forgiven the debt that you & I have run up. It’s far greater than 12 million dollars. The results of the tab are eternal death & separation from God in hell.

GOD IS EXTREMELY OBSESSIVE ABOUT FORGIVENESS

God is so obsessive that He mandates & orders forgiveness & just like any other scriptural mandate it’s for our own good. God knows that you & I will never be able to move toward wholeness, live victoriously & be healed until we let go of resentment, give up on revenge, & let Him take the quills out we’ve collected over the years.

The mistake we make is to look at the person who has wronged us & what they’ve done to us. This parable reminds us that’s a mistake. We need to look at who God is & what He’s done for us. There are no limits to forgiveness because there’s no limit to God’s grace.

The following is nothing new to most Christians but I have a feeling if we really took it seriously it would change the way we view the Lord’s Prayer.

Right in the middle of the Lord’s Prayer is a phrase that you & I, if we’re not careful will pray mindlessly. “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” Have we honestly thought about what we’re asking God to do here? Have you ever felt like falling silent at this point? We’re asking God to forgive us, to treat us --exactly the way we deal with other folks who’ve wronged us.

THE MOST PROFOUND, PUREST, HIGHEST, & FINEST EXAMPLE OF FORGIVENESS IN THE BIBLE HAPPENED WHEN JESUS HUNG ON THE CROSS.

He was condemned to death by evil men who plotted against him & produced lying witness to convict Him. As He surveyed the howling mob cheering His suffering, the man who knew no sin, the only innocent man who ever walked this sin cursed planet uttered the words that still ring across the centuries; “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.” [Luke 23:34] Those 11 tortured words sweep away all our nonsensical excuses & reveal the barrenness of our hearts. They rip the cover off our unrighteous unforgiveness & show it for what it is.

Many of us say, “If only the people who hurt me would show some remorse, some sorrow, then maybe I would forgive them.” But consider Jesus on the cross. No one seemed sorry, quite the contrary-- they laughed, mocked & jeered Him. They hurled insults at Him. The people who killed Him were pleased with themselves. Pilate washed his hands of the whole sordid affair. The Jewish leaders hated Him with a fierce irrational hatred. They were happy to see Him suffer & die.

Evil was in the air that day. The forces of darkness had done their work & Jesus would soon be in a tomb. No one said, “I was wrong, this is a mistake.” And yet He said, “Father forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing,” --this is precisely what we must say to the quill throwers; the people who hurt us deliberately & repeatedly.

We must say it to those who intentionally attack us.

We must say it to those who casually & thoughtlessly wound us.

We must say it to those closest to us, to our husband or wife, to our children, to our parents, to our friends, to our neighbors, to our brothers & sisters.

“Father, forgive them” is what we must say if we want to follow Christ.

Blessings,

John

Something Went Wrong

2011-10-29T19:39:00.018-04:00

By John Stallings

On Nov. 18, 1995, Itzhak Perlman, the violinist came on stage to give a concert at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City.

People who’ve been to a Perlman concert know that getting on stage is no small achievement for him. He was stricken as a child with polio & so he has braces on both legs & walks with the aid of two crutches. To see him walk across the stage one step at a time, painfully & slowly is an unforgettable sight.

Then he sits down, slowly, puts his crutches on the floor, undoes the clasps on his legs, tucks one foot back & extends the other foot forward. Then he bends down & picks up the violin, puts it under his chin, nods to the conductor & proceeds to play.

By now the audience is used to his ritual. They sit quietly as he makes his way across the stage to his chair. They wait until he’s ready to play.

But this time, something went wrong. Just as he finished the first few bars, one of his strings on his violin broke. You could hear it snap- it went off like gunfire across the room. There was no mistaking what that sound meant. People who were there that night said, “We figured he’d have to get up, put on the clasps again, pick up the crutches & limp his way off stage-to either find another violin or else find another string for this one."

But he didn’t. Instead he waited a moment closed his eyes & then signaled the conductor to start again. The orchestra began & he played from where he’d left off. He played with such passion & purity as they had never heard before. Of course anyone "knows" it’s impossible to play a symphonic work with just three strings. But that that night Itzhak Perlman refused to know that. Folk could see him modulating, changing, and recomposing the piece in his head.

When he finished there was an awesome silence in the room. Then there was an extraordinary outburst of applause from every corner of the room. And then the people rose & cheered. He smiled, wiped the sweat from his brow, raised his bow to quiet the crowd, & then he said not boastfully, but in a quiet , pensive reverent tone, “You know, sometimes it’s the artist’s task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left.”

What a powerful line that is.

VERY OFTEN IN THIS FAST-PACED WORLD IN THE MIDDLE OF AN ALL-OUT EFFORT ON OUR PART, SOMETHING GOES WRONG.

Maybe it’s our health, or a relationship or a financial setback. Sometimes it seems that our whole world has come crashing down on us. Whatever has happened, we must carry on in spite of it to make the best music possible.

Sometimes were are tempted to think if we are good enough, pray enough, pure-minded enough & giving enough we will somehow escape trouble. Perfection, even if we could achieve it won’t guarantee trouble won’t come knocking at our door.

I remember a story my parents told me about their evangelistic endeavors when they first started in ministry. I had two sisters, Barbara & Marveline, & I was the only one too young to remember those days. My father bought a small Gospel tent & was traveling the south with it. We were staying in an old house out in the country that had been loaned to my parents for the duration of the series of meetings in La Grange, Georgia. One night my mother was awakened in her sleep & impressed to move the pallet where I was sleeping in close proximity to an open window. At almost the instant she moved me a brick sailed through the window & landed where my head had been. Though that qualified as a small miracle, it was the late thirties & my parents survived on miracles.

The revival in that small Georgia town was going well; overflow crowds & many being saved. The revival was extended several times & stretched into weeks. Then one night something went wrong. My oldest sister Marveline, who had been fighting kidney disease, came down with a serious kidney infection & to make a long story short, she died in that town. Our little family had to lay her in a grave in LaGrange, Ga. To re-cap, my oldest sister died & was buried in a small town while her parents were conducting perhaps the greatest spiritual awakening the city had ever seen.

God has never explained that to me & I don’t believe He ever explained it to my parents. Being human, even though we are limited in our ability to grasp eternal realities, we expect God to explain His reasons to us. Trouble will come our way there’s no doubt about that, & sooner or later something in our lives will go wrong. The question is how will we respond to it when it comes? My mom, who was very young herself, responded by vowing to never put her foot inside another church as long as she lived. She was on a “slow burn” with a God who would take her beloved child while her whole family was doing all they knew to follow His leading.

Suffice to say all that changed a year later while attending a funeral of a friend. Mom heard the speaker give an illustration of a mother sheep that refused to cross a raging stream. Her baby lamb had to be transported to the other side of the stream, making the mother sheep willing to risk her life to be with her little one. Once this revelation came to mom; that she had a daughter waiting for her on the other side, she spent the rest of her life in the service of the Lord.

Jeremiah went to the potter’s house in 18:1-11 & gets an illustration for his next sermon to Israel. As he observed the potter, he notes that as the clay is being fashioned on the potter’s wheel, something went wrong. The potter sees an imperfection in his creation & just stops. He mars the clay & starts over. Jeremiah sees something besides clay in this illustration & proceeds to use it as a parallel to Israel & her rebellion & imperfections. But God isn’t through with Israel & will continue to mold & work with them.

Jeremiah’s story is reminiscent of The Garden of Eden when God stooped down, got some clay & fashioned man with His own hands. But you don’t need me to remind you that in that beautiful lush garden where everything was just perfect, something went wrong. Adam & Eve were tempted by Satan & broke the command of God not to eat of one tree & it resulted in Man being banished from the Garden. We call that the “fall.” Just like the potter, God wasn’t so out-done that He had to throw man (the clay) away. No, he kept a hands-on relationship with man. He made them clothes out of animal skins, a foreshadowing of what would come later at Calvary when His Son would be offered as the final sacrifice for mans sin & transgression. God seems to be at His best when something goes wrong.

“Something went wrong!”

This is the story of the history of God’s people & it will doubtless be the story of our lives. We try so hard. We have all our “ducks in a row” but in spite of all our efforts to the contrary, something inexplicably goes wrong. We ask “why is this happening?” “Where is God in all this?” “Why doesn’t He step in & do something?” Some people even put this exceedingly unhealthy spin on it, “How could God do this to me?” Another unhealthy response is to blame others when things go wrong instead of looking inward & upward. We find ourselves up to our ears in the proverbial Alligators & realize too late that we should have drained the swamp.

JOB

Job was a real man who lived in the land of Uz. His problems are so many its hard to select a few verses that share all of them. Job is one of the hero’s of the Bible. He was rich. He had ten children. He was upright before the Lord. Each morning he would make a sacrifice for each of his ten children in case they had sinned. Somewhat like a movie, there are two stories going on at the same time. One is the story of Job & his problems. The other is the story between God & Satan.

We are aware of both. Job was not. One day Satan shows up when the angels are before God. Imagine thousands & thousands of angels have gathered in the presence of God Himself to report on their activities. This is mind-numbing. All of creation is being held accountable to God. In this scene, Satan-fallen-rebellious-Satan-is permitted-is also allowed to come into God’s presence. Hold on to this truth; ---during the trials & tribulations of our lives, always there are dimensions that we don’t see. There’s always more than meets the eye & we need to stay keenly aware of this fact.

God says to Satan, have you ever considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him. He is blameless & upright, a man who fears God & shuns evil. God brags about Job. Does God ever brag about us? Remember, Job isn’t aware of this conservation. We are aware of why Job is hurting, but Job is not.

Then Satan speaks. He says, “Of course he serves you, you protect him.” So God allows Satan to harm what Job has but not Job personally. To give you an idea of God’s supremacy to Satan; Osama bin Laden didn’t come to President Bush & ask for permission to fly planes into the World Trade Center. No enemy ever asks for permission to attack. And yet here is Satan asking God for permission to attack Job. There can be no doubt that Satan did the dirty work but God allowed it. Then something goes wrong! Job's trouble starts.

One day a messenger comes & tells him that “his oxen & donkeys have been carried off, all his servants are dead & I alone am left to tell you.” While he was speaking another servant came & reported that fire from the sky has burned up all the sheep & servants & I alone am left alive to tell you.” Then Job is advised that all of his ten children are dead, killed in a house collapse. Job tears his robes, shaves his head & falls to the ground in worship & declares,

“Naked came I from my mother’s womb & naked will I depart. The Lord gave & the Lord has taken away, may the name of the Lord be praised.” Job 1:21. Job still doesn’t say anything foolish. What a man!

Satan has failed. So he goes to God again & says, “Job hasn’t failed because you haven’t touched him personally. You’ve only touched his possessions & children.” Then Satan is given permission to hurt Job but not take his life. Isn’t it a comfort to know that God sets the limits on how much we can be troubled?

The Apostle Paul writes in 1 Cor.10:13, God is faithful who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you can bear, but will with the temptation provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it.

When we’re hanging on by a thread we need to be reminded that God always has His protecting hands around us. He knows what we can bear. I once heard country singer Loretta Lynn say in an interview—“They say God won’t put more on you than you can stand, but it’s not true.” Well, Loretta’s wrong about that. God isn’t going to allow us to be hurt & wronged so bad that our trust in Him will be destroyed. Here’s a promise you can hang your hat on; God sets the boundaries.

But then something else goes wrong! Job develops sores over his entire body. Next we see him scraping pieces of broken pottery over his body with his wife telling him to curse God & die.

There sure isn’t any encouragement at home.

But let’s not be too hard on Mrs. Job. We need to cut her a little slack. She’s been through a lot. Overnight she’s gone from being the wife of one of the most respected men in the east to a homeless outcast. Like Job, she’s lost everything, including her ten children. Now her once proud husband is sitting in the street suffering from a debilitating disease. His name has become synonymous with tragedy. The town looks at him with disgust. So Mrs. Job has been through a lot.

The problem with Mrs. Job is that she has caved into Satan’s attack. She no longer looks at God as good, she now sees Him as detached & uncaring. The one person Job should have been able to look to for comfort & support now becomes a tool in Satan’s hand. She becomes a part of Job’s humiliation-his test.

She rips into Job’s heart. Her advice is assisted suicide. “Forget your faith in this uncaring God-get Him really ticked off & God will kill you.” But Job says to her, -you speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Job refuses to buy it & holds onto His faith in God.

Seemingly everything goes wrong; But why?

Now Jobs friends Eliphaz, Bildad & Zopharare are going to “help.” His wife wasn’t any help; maybe his friends can bring a little comfort. They sit with Job for a week in silence. When God isn’t forthcoming with an answer, his friends start to speak up. In short, they feel Job has sinned. There is an obvious dark side to his personality. He has brought on himself the torture he’s under. What “brilliant observations” they share with Job. It’s true that sin brings punishment however righteous people experience pain as well. It’s so easy to be simplistic & assume that a hurting person has caused their own pain. Of course we don’t appreciate this logic applied to us.

If you listen to some of the modern day ministers you’d get the idea that if you’re not healthy & wealthy something’s wrong with your faith. Maybe we should ask the early Christians who were eaten by lions about pain & suffering. Do you think it was because they didn’t know how to trust God or maybe there was sin in their lives? Hebrews 11:38 says “The world wasn’t worthy of these martyred Christians.

We can read the story of Job so easily. We are aware of the conversation between God & Satan, this helps with the why. Job was able to witness to the devil himself about the boundless, sustaining grace of God. We also know the end of the story about the restoration of his possessions & having ten new children. Still we know he suffered. His wife didn’t help. His friends didn’t help. What helped Job?

For one thing Job went to the right place with his questions; he went to God. Job didn’t allow his pain to push him from God. When something goes wrong, some people will run from God, avoiding the church & God’s people. Job listened to God. God never told him about the conversation with Satan, & He never gives an explanation, but only asks Job to trust Him. Job got that lesson for he said -Though he slay me yet will I trust Him. Job 13:15. God did however have quiet a conversation with Job. If you haven’t read chapters 38-41 of Job lately, reread them. They’re amazing. God’s Word doesn’t answer all our questions but it does tell us all God wants us to know.

Do you remember how it all ends up? In the end God blesses Job’s socks off. He lives to 140 years with blessings that went way beyond what was taken away. ----Job 41:17 says, -- Job died an old man & full of days.

SOMETHING WENT WRONG--- IN NAZARETH

I can’t imagine my friends & loved ones rejecting me can you? I’m sure we’d be shattered.

But that’s precisely what happened to Jesus. Mark 6:1-6 is one of the most awesome passages in Holy Writ. Jesus returned to His home town & the first day He arrived something went wrong. He friends & neighbors rejected Him. He had been enormously successful since He left his hometown. He had healed & restored a mentally ill man, a feverish old woman, a paralytic, a woman with a twelve year hemorrhage, & a dead little girl. He had reached across the boundaries & barriers of His society & welcomed the unwelcome, touched the untouchables, & ate with sinners. He had painted a picture of the Kingdom of God.

So everywhere He went there were huge crowds pressing into Him. People were bringing the sick & elderly to Him. All day long & into the evening they came, even following along the lake shore as He & His friends sailed from place to place in Peter’s boat. Everyone knew about Him, was talking about Him & had an opinion about Him.

And now for the first time since He left—since the day He walked away from the carpenters shop to be baptized by His cousin John—now for the first time Jesus came home to Nazareth. His parents’ village, where Mary had been born & where Joseph had been a carpenter. It’s a small town & everyone had heard the rumors about Him. They were His neighbors & watched Him as he grew up. These are the people Jesus met when He joined His friends in the old synagogue on the first Sabbath of His homecoming.

Was he proud to be there? I think so. Was he a little nervous when they asked Him to read & interpret? This was a tense, homecoming moment. When Jesus was handed the scroll to read, Mark tells us that the people asked several sarcastic questions. Where did this young man get all this? Is this not the carpenter’s son, the son of Mary? Usually men were known as their fathers son’s so when they referred to Jesus as “Mary’s son” it was the same as what we would call a “bastard.”

These people took big-time offense at Jesus. Jesus responded not by being argumentative but by stating the obvious—“Prophets aren’t honored in their own hometowns.” Mark cuts-to-the-chase & tells us He could do no great works there. Nothing changed in that village. Nothing new emerged. There was no revival. Life quickly returned to normal; and why not? They had rejected Jesus.

And now what I think is one of the saddest verses in the New Testament—He went about the villages teaching. That is, He left His own home town & never returned.

Jesus set the example here for the way we should act when it’s people who do us wrong. Being human we might be tempted to try to even the score. As we’ve seen Jesus never did that. We must remember that God is watching. He has known about the injustice all along so never run ahead of Him with your own solutions. If you have tried to do the right thing time & again, God is aware of that fact. What goes around comes around. We’ve all seen people try to hurt others & in the end they themselves get hurt. God is patient, so we must be patient.

But when God’s patience has run out, & we never know when that’s going to happen, when God sees that people have hurt us & should be forthcoming with an apology but they refuse to “get it,” He moves in & does what only God can do in a way only God can do it. When God starts moving it’s a fearful thing to behold & you’ll be glad you did right when things start to happen. We should let our hurts go & God will deal with them for us.

……Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning. -Psalm 30:5

Don’t panic when something snaps in your life. Play on like Perlman. Turn to God in your time of despair.

Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the Lord delivers him out of them all. -Psalm 34:19

God is our refuge & strength: a very present help in time of need.- Psalm 46:1

Blessings,

John

The Importance Of Doing Something

2011-10-21T17:23:00.009-04:00

By John Stallings

Do you know how to swim?

Living in Florida with the ocean, lakes and rivers, and every other house with a swimming pool, you seldom meet a person who doesn’t know how to swim. But there are millions of people who don’t. Many of them sadly around the world have never been near enough water to even try.

Pretend you’re one of those people. The most water you’ve ever been in was in a bathtub. Now you decide you want to learn to swim, but the only pool available is ten feet deep everywhere; there is no shallow end. I think you’d be a little reluctant to just dive in.

I could tell you that the water would support you, that you would float. I could show you in an encyclopedia that the density of the human body is ever so slightly less than that of water. I could explain Bernoulli’s laws and Pascal’s laws, and Archimedes’ principle, so that you would become intellectually convinced that your body would float. ... Now are you going to jump in? Probably not. You believe me when I tell you that you can float. But you’re not ready to act on it yet.

You can tell me that you have absolute faith in what I have told you. You can quote back to me all the scientific details. You can study books on swimming, and quote them back to me word for word, chapter and verse. You can tell me how much you love swimming. But until you get wet, it doesn’t mean a thing. Faith without works is dead.

HEALING AT POOL OF BETHSEDA

Some of the better truths in the story of Jesus healing the man at the pool of Bethesda happen after the man was healed & entered the temple, encountering the Pharisees.

In John 5:14, Jesus later found the man in the temple & spoke to him. Jesus had already dealt with the man in “grace” & now He applied “truth,” telling him to stop sinning or something worse would happen to him.

Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you. John 5:14—NIV

Notice;

JESUS FOUND THE MAN IN THE TEMPLE

The narrative seems clear to me that Jesus went looking for the man He’d recently healed. It’s amazing how Jesus can always find us. Though we sometimes want to feel we went looking for Him, the fact is, God came searching for us. Do you know why it’s often said that Christianity isn’t a religion? Answer; religion is defined as, “Man’s search for God.”

In the strictest sense, a person can be praying to a bird or the Sun & be said to be practicing religion. Mankind is & has always been on a cosmic search for God.

But in Christianity, man wasn’t searching for God, but rather God came searching for man. It was happening all through the Old Testament through the prophets & other phenomenon, & it culminated in Christ coming to earth to dwell among men & die on the cross.

Paul said in Romans 3:11, --there is none that seeketh after God.

The Psalmist said in Psalm 14:3—there is none that doeth good, no not one.

Over & over it’s been demonstrated that when an individual sinks so far into sin all seems hopeless, --“man’s extremity is God’s opportunity,” & God finds that person.

WHEN JESUS FOUND THIS MAN IN THE TEMPLE, HE SAID SOMETHING INTERESTING! HE SAID…..

“STOP SINNING OR SOMETHING WORSE MAY HAPPEN TO YOU.”

STOP-SINNING!! Here’s one of the most profound theological commands ever uttered. Are you ready?

STOP!

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the YOUTUBE video on STOP IT with comedian Bob Newhart. If not, take six minutes & watch it. He’s at his funniest, stuttering, brilliant best.

Newhart plays a very different kind of Psychiatrist who charges five dollars for a five minute session. A woman comes into his office & unburdens her phobia about being buried alive in a box. Newhart asks her if anyone had ever threatened to bury her in a box or if there was any real basis for the fear & she says there isn’t. Then he looks at her & says; STOP IT!

Newhart’s finished in three minutes but he can’t break a five dollar bill for the woman so she stays for two more minutes to get her monies worth. She tells him she doesn’t think his advice is going to work for her, & he says, “O.k. if the two words aren’t enough for you I’ll give you ten words,

“STOP IT OR I’LL BURY YOU ALIVE IN A BOX.”

That little skit is humorous but in reality it speaks volumes.

We could read the Bible through & memorize every word of it but until we, as an act of our will make the decision to forsake sin & put it to death, we’ll never be victorious over sin. At some point we have to stop the action, habit or sin because no one else can do it for us.

Are you thinking negatively? STOP IT!!

Are you over-spending? STOP IT!!

Are you overworking? STOP IT!!

Are you gossiping? STOP IT!!

Are you judging others? STOP IT!!

Are you obsessive/ compulsive? STOP IT!!

Do you think your opinions are always best? STOP IT!!

Do you lose your temper? STOP IT!!

Are you overeating? STOP IT!!

Are you indulging in a secret sin? STOP IT!!

It’s like the man who went to the Doctor & told him when he lifted his arm a certain way it hurt. The Doctor, said, “Stop lifting it like that.”

I heard about a man who was having trouble with his voice. He went to a throat specialist, & after a long series of tests, the doctor told the man, the only thing I can tell you is; you talk too much. Stop it!”

Years ago I heard comedian George Burns, nearly one hundred at the time, tell about developing a condition that caused him to constantly clear his throat with a little short cough. He’d been doing it for thirty years & mentioned to his doctor that he was concerned about the cough especially since he smoked cigars. The doctor told him he could easily get rid of the cough for him & gave him instructions, “Stop doing it.” Burns said “that was fifty years ago & I’ve never coughed since.” They aren’t making doctors like that any more.

Here’s the best way I’ve ever found to lose weight; STOP EATING SO MUCH!!

You can do it the low-carb way, which is the way we’ve done it for the last few years, or you can eat 1,000 to 1,500 calories a day but however you do it, you’ve got to STOP EATING SO MUCH.

You may have a problem that isn’t a sin-- it’s just a bad habit but you can handle it the same way, JUST STOP IT!!

DON’T TRY TO MODIFY OR REDEFINE SIN, OR SLOW IT DOWN, JUST STOP IT!

In the seventies Dr. Karl Mennineger wrote a very good book called, “Whatever became of sin?” He talked about this problem of rationalizing sin or calling it by another name. Over thirty years later the problem has grown exponentially. Our society now has a hard time labeling things right or wrong. When President Ronald Reagan called The Soviet Union an evil empire, it upset a lot of people because they couldn’t come to terms with calling certain things or nation’s evil.

When I read Dr. Mennineger’s book in the mid-seventies, I humbly answered his question thusly; “Sin went to the doctor & was diagnosed as a disease. Sin went to the psychiatrist & was diagnosed as a dysfunction.” Some people choose to try to modify their sin or cut down on it, like ordering a half-order of something in a restaurant. But the edict of heaven is still, STOP IT.

Jesus tells the paralyzed man,--SIN NO MORE!

You may think a Christian can’t sin but as long as we have a robe of flesh we will have a bent toward sin. The Lord’s Prayer says-- forgive us our sins; it doesn’t say –forgive them their sins.

You can be saved, sanctified & filled with heaven’s sweet Holy Ghost but you still have to STOP SINNING!! You can pray until your hair turns green but you still have to STOP SINNING!!

You can fast until you're skin & bones & God will certainly grant you His grace & power but at some point you’ll still have to make the decision to STOP SINNING!!

In Romans 8:13 Paul says, --For if ye live after the flesh ye shall die but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the flesh ye shall live.

The word mortify comes from the same word that we get the word mortician. This is what must be done to sin.

It’s possible to be “too spiritual,” expecting to sit passively by while God comes in & takes the evil desires & temptations out of our way. He won’t do that but He’ll always create an escape hatch for us to escape the temptation. Of course we’ll have to take the time to look for His way of escape.

Listen how Paul handles a situation where a person has a problem with stealing;

Does he say to the person: “You know, stealing is so ingrained in you & you’ve been so defeated by it, the only hope you have to being victorious over stealing is to have the Lord come in & deal with it for you?” No! What does Paul say? Listen to Ephesians 4:28;

Let him that stole, steal no more! --- JUST STOP IT! Now that’s some deep theology, wouldn’t you agree?

Paul deals much the same way when it comes to growth in grace & spiritual maturity. He tells us in 1 Corinthians that he was at one time young & immature like everyone else. There were the same weaknesses & childishness in Paul’s life that all of us know about.

But did Paul say, “Well, I went to a great revival meeting & went forward & do you know what? God came & instantaneously took away all my childish ways in a heart-beat?”

No. What did Paul say? He said, -When I became a man I put away childish things.-1 Cor.13:11

Paul is saying that as an act of his will, he put away from him the juvenile things that were holding him back.

Paul also tells us how he was able to deal with his day by day attitudes. But he didn’t say;--“You know, I had such a problem with my attitude, I didn’t know what I was going to do.” He didn’t say; “I was always miserable & constantly complaining about my accommodations, the food, and the beverages & really just about everything in my life. But, you know, one night in prayer, God just came into the room & touched me. And since that night, I’m just as contented as one of those old contented cows, anywhere God puts me.”? No! Paul didn’t say that.

What Paul said was;

……For I have LEARNED, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. Phil.4:11

Paul didn’t get his sweet disposition in a miraculous manner. No Sir! He had to cultivate it. He had to learn it. Have you seen these spiritual babies that are waiting for God to work a miracle & transform them from a miserable Christian to a happy camper? God isn’t going to do for us what, through prayer, study of His word, & bringing our flesh into subjection, we should be doing for ourselves.

AN OLD TESTAMENT WAY OF DEALING WITH SIN

In 1 Samuel 15, Samuel anointed Saul & gave him instructions to kill all the Amalekites. While God doesn’t need me to come to His defense, there was a reason for this seemingly cruel order to be given. These folk, a nomadic race & descendants of Esau, were the mortal enemies of the Israelites. This was the people who attacked Israel in the famous battle when Aaron & Hur had to hold up Moses’ arms. God had already told Moses he would utterly blot out the memory of these people from under heaven.

The bloody Amalekites were one of the reasons the Israelites disobeyed God & balked at entering the Promised Land. God’s anger burned against these people because they hated Him & detested Israel. In short, the Amalekites were very bad people & Saul was to be God’s instrument to execute judgment on them.

As we know, Saul didn’t obey the clear command of God & motivated by covetousness he kept all their best possessions & actually spared their king, king Agag. Maybe Saul’s pride led him to want a “king on a string.”

The disobedience by Saul was so serious to God that He sent Samuel to tell him God was taking the throne of Israel from him & his descendants forever. We don’t usually think of Samuel, that great prophet of God who was called as a youngster under the tutelage of Eli, as a harsh & vindictive man.

But what Samuel later did about this miscarriage of God’s justice is shocking. He coolly said,

“Bring me Agag!” Agag thought he was safe & came to Samuel & cheerfully told him he was glad the threat of death had passed.

Obviously Samuel wasn’t amused. Do you know what Samuel did then? He took a sword & cut Agag to pieces. 1 Sam.15:32-33.

This might seem cruel & merciless, but let there be no mistake; this was an act of divine judgment to show the holy wrath of an indignant God against a cruel & incorrigible people.

For proof, you only have to go to the end of the book of 1 Samuel not long afterwards, to see the reinvigorated fragments of the Amalekites were still running around the countryside, eating, drinking & pillaging & still causing trouble for Israel. It was they who raided David’s town Ziklag & took his family captive. David caught up with them & got his family back, fighting them all night long into the next morning killing all but four hundred of them.

I can’t think of a more perfect illustration of what sin can & will do if not dealt with harshly. Like the Amalekites, sin if not mortified has a way of reviving, regrouping & launching new & unexpected attacks at the worst times & in the most unexpected ways.

Let’s be real here; living a pure life is difficult today & sexual temptation is one of the strongest. Did Jesus talk about that? Yes He did & He gave us three ways to break the power of sin in our lives.

1. LOOK AWAY

In Matthew 5:27-30, Jesus said;

Ye have heard that it was said of them of old time, “Thou shall not commit adultery: But I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a women to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.
And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

Jesus is saying that looking at someone lustfully is just as detrimental to our heart & soul as if we had physically committed adultery. If you allowed contempt & hate to build up in your heart against a person it would create a barrier between you even if you never acted on those feelings. Likewise, having lustful thoughts hurts us spiritually if we never act on them because seeing someone as a sexual object builds the wrong feelings & motivations. We realize that thoughts precede actions & thinking about something paves the way to acting it out.

Look away, divert your eyes. Looking refers to one who continues to look with deliberate intent. We can’t live in a world without visual temptations but we don’t have to stare. We can always get up & leave a theater. We can put a book aside & not finish it. Even though we rented a movie, if it gets weird we don’t have to watch it.

If you go on a diet the last place you need to go is to the Dairy Queen or Wendy’s. If you’re counting calories the last thing you need is to go somewhere they have luscious pictures of Lobster Primavera on the menu. Then Jesus said;

2. CUT IT OUT.

If your eye or hand offends, put them away from you. Now we know Jesus isn’t actually speaking of mutilation here, He’s speaking figuratively. What He’s saying is whatever causes you to sin, get rid of it.

I’ve heard of good honorable people who can’t have a computer because of the temptation to log onto a porn channel. Not having a computer prevents them from communication with relatives, checking their bank accounts, checking news stories, driving directions to different locations, purchasing things conveniently, using the spiritual materials that are available online, knowing what’s happening to ministries around the world, & a multitude of other good things. But they can’t trust themselves to have those conveniences because it could open a door for a temptation they feel might be their spiritual downfall.

There are others who can’t have cable T.V because they don’t trust their ability to change the channel. Some people won’t listen to certain kinds of music & even terminate romantic relationships that are leading them into tempting situations.

There are people who haven’t had a drink for years & won’t go places where alcohol is served because it’s a temptation they don’t want to have to deal with. We might look at these folk critically but the bottom line is; whether it’s canceling AOL, having cable television disconnected, transferring to another department at work, whatever is necessary to keep out of a situation that causes temptation to sin, it’s wise to cut it out. It’s better to go dateless, have no television, not get a promotion & forego the knowledge the Internet could supply than to be trapped in sin.

3. GUARD YOUR HEART

David said; Create in me a pure heart O God….Psalm 51:10

I realize that temptation is a matter of the heart not just our surroundings & certainly our heart must be dealt with but in the case of many people, they feel by eliminating certain sources of temptation they get along better & give themselves the opportunity to focus on the real issues, the state of their heart.

God wants to purify our hearts so that dating isn’t a problem, surfing the Internet isn’t a problem or working with an attractive member of the opposite sex isn’t a problem. But we have to do our part. In order to be victorious, we’ve got to eliminate certain distractions, learn to look away from temptations, learn to avoid sinful situations, & learn to focus on the work he wants to do in us.

Please understand the Christian life isn’t a cut & dried proposition, a life that we live in our own strength. While It’s true that we can never abandon our responsibility to mortify our own sin, as Christians, God’s Spirit is always with us working in us, both to will & to of His good pleasure. Phil.2:13. If we have a desire to do right in the first place, it’s God’s spirit that has come along side us to give us that desire.

In a very real sense, it’s as simple as this; “Walk in the Spirit & you will not carry out the desires of the flesh. Gal.5:16.

Let us therefore cleanse ourselves from all defilement of the flesh & spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. -- 2 Cor.7:1

“When we all get to heaven” we’ll be rid of the flesh, but like the Amalekites, until totally eradicated, sin can always come screaming back with hellish fury when least expected.

Paul said, -But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway. 1 Cor.9:27.

We might as well accept the fact that we have a stalker named sin & it’s our duty, with the daily faithful assistance of the Holy Spirit, to mortify it, until we rest in gloryland.

Blessings,

John

The First Rock

2011-10-14T16:37:00.003-04:00

By John Stallings

“It’s a terrible thing for a sinner to fall into the hands of his fellow sinners.”—F.B Myer

Recently I was shocked & saddened to learn that an acquaintance of mine, the pastor of a church in a city not too far from where we live was arrested for soliciting sex from an undercover police woman. We ministered in this man’s church on a Sunday several years back but hadn’t heard much if anything from him in recent years.

Juda & I did have the opportunity to have a couple of meals with him & his lovely wife while we were with them in the late nineties. They treated us with kindness & respect & I have to tell you we’re still stunned over this news.

The thoughts that flood my mind are; how does a man call his wife to drive fifty miles one way to a large city & bail her preacher husband out of jail at 2:a.m, especially in the light of what he was charged with. It happened on a Friday night. How does he explain it to his wife? How does a preacher walk into the pulpit of the church he built & explain this to well over one thousand people on the next Sunday.

It’s not a “he-said-she- said” deal. There’s no plausible deniability built in here. Law enforcement had apprehended him, they had video & audio tape, they cuffed him, finger-printed him & there was one of those awful mug-shots. Caught red-handed. -- [Whatever that means.] We’re earnestly praying for this man & his wife & kids & church family.

As I pondered this the last few days, my mind went to the story of the woman caught in the act of adultery, in John 8:1-11. The religious leaders of the day, the “teachers of the law” & Pharisees brought her to Jesus & crudely threw her down at His feet as He addressed a large crowd. It’s easy to see that though these men were religious they weren’t godly & their motivations & intentions weren’t good. As the story unfolds we discover that they were proud, self-confident, arrogant, ruthless, cunning, clever, calculating, & hypocritical to the core. The Feast of the Tabernacles had just come to an end which meant that great crowds were still in Jerusalem.

This story is so popular that even those who rarely read the Bible know about it. Though its 2,000 years old the story still captures our imagination. Our culture has even picked up on the line-“Casting the first stone,” & you’ll often hear it used. No wonder the Bible is still relevant to our day; this story could have happened this week.

A woman has been caught in the very act of adultery by a bunch of rock-throwing legalists. Like the minister I spoke about, she couldn’t deny it because of the circumstances of her situation. Maybe she was sleeping with another woman’s husband or maybe she was a prostitute & earned her living from what they call “the world’s oldest profession.”

Either way she was caught in the act. She knew what it meant to be caught like this. She knew she’d broken Jewish law, she knew she was wrong & she knew the penalty. She knew she’d be taken outside the city where the whole religious community would throw rocks at her until she was dead. After all she was guilty, plain & simple.

Boy was she guilty! She’d been guilty as long as she could remember. All her friends would know how guilty she was now & the unkindest cut of all was; now they were going to tell Jesus on her. To her, [that is-up until now]-Jesus was just another religious leader.

The people who’d caught this woman were “rules driven” folk. They were all about doing the “right thing.” They were “squeaky clean.” Black is black & white is white. They couldn’t remove the sin so they were going to remove the sinner.

I’ve always had a tendency to view these people a little on the mean & cruel side. So harsh, so cut & dried. That’s true in one way but in reality, legally, they were right. They were disgruntled & hostile. The woman’s breaking of a very important law in their society made them angry & they had every right to be doing exactly as they were doing; in a manner of speaking.

So they were going to take rocks in their hands & take care of God’s business here, & if Jesus didn’t take vengeance they certainly would get the job done. They were people with a strong sense of justice & if something had to be done they were going to do it.

There was really no need for a trial here. There was no need for a jury. There was no need to wait for a verdict. She knew it & they knew it; she was dead.

But there are lots of unanswered questions here. Who was this woman? We don’t know. Was this a basically good woman who had a weakness & had just gone astray? We don’t know. Maybe she had just made some bad choices & had ended up hurting the people she loved most. Was she single, engaged, or married? We don’t know. Is she young or middle aged? We don’t know. Had she had any previous relationships with any of her accusers? We don’t know.

How did they catch her in the “act of adultery?” We can’t be sure but it’s almost certain something fishy is going on here. The law was clear that she’d committed a capitol offense but it also states it must be a detailed & precise case with two eyewitness testimonies.

Where is the man, after all “it takes two to Tango.” Adultery by definition requires two people. Was this a set-up? Did they by prearrangement let the man go free? Let’s not forget, all this was done to put Jesus on the spot so they could very well have set up the adultery. They were hoping to impale Jesus on the horns of a dilemma & it might have worked with an ordinary teacher but not with Jesus.

One thing we do know; this woman was now about to be publicly exposed & her reputation was going to be dragged through the mud.

At this point Jesus enters the story. In some ways this resembles one of those T.V reality shows. Jesus was going about His business, preaching to a large crowd in the Temple when all at once this real life drama imposed itself on Him. How would Jesus respond with no preparation at all? All at once the heat is on & Jesus stands right in the middle of a drama with a woman’s life hanging in the balance.

Imagine with me for a moment that you, like the members of this mob have a rock in your hand. Feel the weight of that rock. Maybe you can also remember someone who’s hurt or humiliated you & the pain from the incident stills lingers with you. Feel that rock. Maybe your spouse cheated on you or hurt you in some other way. Maybe you’ve been abused or abandoned with more responsibility & baggage than you can carry.

You try not to hate the person but you surely hate what they did to you. Maybe you were hurt by your parents. Maybe it’s a business partner who took money from you. Maybe that’s why you’ve got a rock in your hand right now. Maybe you’d love to find some way to get back at that person & you’re going to have to make the decision to hold the rock, drop it, or throw it. Hold that imaginary rock for awhile & let’s look at what Jesus did.

Jesus doesn’t suffer from mental blocks. He’s always ready with the answer. Aren’t you glad you know Him? It would be an understatement to say that Jesus saw right through these people & knew exactly where they were coming from. They told Him what Moses’ law required & asked Him what he thought. Was this Jesus a compromiser? Maybe they could trip Him up.

Jesus knelt & started writing in the dust with His finger. As a matter of fact, during this dramatic event He knelt down twice & wrote on the ground with His finger. We don’t know what He wrote but He wrote something. Could He have been ignoring these men, hoping they’d go away? Was He trying to buy time? Did He kneel down & momentarily drop his head toward the earth because He was embarrassed for the women? Maybe He was embarrassed for this blood- thirsty mob. There was a lot for a sensitive person to be embarrassed about. Think about it; all of this happened so quickly we are left to wonder what the poor woman was wearing if much of anything.

Or could it be that He wrote a message? We don’t know but I think so. I think what He wrote was very relevant & very telling. He could have started writing The Ten Commandments, knowing these boys had broken a few of them. Or He might have started writing sins like anger, pride, greed, arrogance or lack of love. Either way, it got their attention. Then Jesus uttered one of His most famous statements; “Let those who’ve never sinned throw the first rock.”

Jesus was saying in essence, “If you’re not living in a glass house, go ahead & throw the first rock.” In recent years we have heard this statement of Jesus used to justify prominent people & the way they use it is far removed from the way Jesus used it & meant it.

Have you ever noticed that those with the least moral authority in their lives are often quickest to tear out the throats of other people? It’s as if they think no one is going to remember or point out that they don’t have the credibility for the job. That never ceases to amaze me.

In fact, in another place Jesus plainly said. “Judge not or you too will be judged.” If you want to start playing God, you’d better be sinless yourself. If we’ve ever needed forgiveness & mercy for our actions maybe that should govern the way we respond to somebody else.

CONSIDER HOW POWERFUL THE “FIRST ROCK” IS

The first rock is an extremely influential rock. It has an awesome power. If the first rock is never thrown then no stones will be thrown. The first rock isn’t going to kill the victim but it will open the door for the others to throw their rocks. I often think about the terrible violence in our public schools & wonder if the “first rock” was the violent video games that made our kids feel comfortable with violence. I believe in a way violence & sexuality in our movies, television & music are truly the “first rocks” that have opened the door to a landslide of sinful rocks that threaten to bury a generation of youth.

The “first rock” of gossip & slander often open the door that will result in a person’s life being destroyed. The first rock of criticism or unnecessary murmuring in a church will give permission to others to throw their rocks & soon unity is buried under a pyramid of broken fellowship.

The “First lie told” is often the first rock that starts an individual down the broad road to deception & hypocrisy.

The “First drink” is often the first rock that opens the door to alcoholism for multitudes of people.

The “First flirtation” sometimes opens the door to a life of sexual promiscuity. There are some things God doesn’t want us to do even once.

Ephesians 5:3 says, --But fornication & all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not be ONCE named among you…..

Jesus knew the law said this woman should be stoned to death but He also knew the throwing of those rocks was, in the long run, not only going to create damage for the woman, it was also going to damage those who threw them. He also knew that behind this little vignette was more than met the eye. It wasn’t exactly an open-&-shut-case.

Jesus knew the incredible damage holding bitterness & hatred inside & trying to exact revenge takes on people. I mean, how is holding hate against someone who hurt you in the past, even though the pain is real, helping your life? Will throwing that rock bring you joy & bring more of God’s blessings to your life or will it just cause more hurt & frustration in your life & the lives of those around you?

DO YOU HAVE A ROCK YOU’RE READY TO THROW?

Here’s what I think Jesus is saying to you & me today; do you have a rock in your hand? Go ahead-- Throw it. Take vengeance, for after all you’ve convinced yourself that your cause is “righteous.” But know this. That rock, in the long run is going to create more trouble for you than it ever is for the person you hurt with it. Before you throw the rock, look at your own life, because you too will ultimately need love & grace & forgiveness for your sins & mistakes.

Let’s watch this story play out. The accusers slip away quietly, beginning with the older first & then they all went away. They dropped their rocks when they saw the damage they were about to cause & when they’d gotten a good look at their own need for forgiveness.

It’s interesting that the older ones went first. Maybe it was because the longer you hold hate & hurt & judgment the more you realize how heavy it is... The more real the pain-the more costly the price of holding it is. Hopefully there was a little more maturity in the older ones.

If that’s you & God is talking to you—drop your rock. Don’t hold it one moment longer. Let a new era of your life begin.

“NEITHER DO I CONDEMN YOU-GO & SIN NO MORE”

After the mob leaves it’s only the woman & Jesus standing in the middle of the crowd. He simply says, “Where are your accusers?” Didn’t anyone condemn you? Then neither do I.” I have this visual of this woman sitting on the ground, embarrassed & sick & tired of life. She’s sitting there crying & feeling guilty. Then I see Jesus lift her head & say something like, “Daughter, you’re not going to die today & not on this hill. Go & live all your tomorrows different than you lived today.”

In the eyes of Jesus, this woman looked better than the men who were accusing her. No doubt these men were troubled by what Jesus said. They saw a “slam dunk” but it all came to naught. They wanted to talk about the woman but Jesus wanted to talk about them. They wanted to talk about the law as it relates to outward behavior but Jesus wanted to talk about the law as it related to their hearts.

It’s easy to see why she looked bigger to Jesus than her accusers. She denied nothing & they admitted nothing. Jesus didn’t smooth over this woman’s sin & dismiss it as if unimportant. He forgave her but told her to get out of the sin business. If we are not walking in God’s plan for our lives, we’re in danger of damaging our souls.

Isaiah said, --Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are as red as crimson, they shall be as wool. Ish. 1:8

There is more to this story than the obvious dismissal of charges. This woman saw in Jesus an authority she had to respect though she’d never met Him before. She waited patiently for His verdict.

In Christ she saw a man who was different from all other men, a man who treated her with grace & not contempt. Why didn’t she leave when the Pharisees left? Because she knew she was a sinner & she didn’t try to hide it.

Let’s go back to that rock that you & I may be holding in our hands. As we hold the rock, lets ask a question; do we really want to be like Jesus?

If you saw the movie Forrest Gump, you’ll no doubt remember the scene when he & his lifetime love Jenny went back to the house where she grew up & was sexually abused by her father. She stood in front of the house for quite a long time with tears running down her cheeks, hurling rocks at it as if to somehow ease the pain she felt for all the years she was a helpless victim of her abusive father.

Forrest, who was supposed to be educable slow said to Jenny, “You know, sometimes there just aren’t enough rocks.”

That statement showed more insight than would be expected from the not-so-smart Forrest.

And the same is true for you & me. There just aren’t enough rocks if we take vengeance into our hands for the pain we’ve known on our journey.

So let’s ponder a scripture or two.

For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world…..John 3:17.

Let’s also consider….Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus..... Romans 8:1

And let us not forget the words of Jesus in this story,

Neither do I condemn thee, go & sin no more.

As we drop the rocks, let’s run to The Rock.

Whether we are holding a rock getting ready to throw it, or whether we’ve been almost destroyed by the rocks someone has thrown at us, Christ & His restoring love is our only answer.

I pray everyone who reads this will give some thought to the wonderful mercy God has shown all of us, through “The Rock Christ Jesus.”

I love Dottie Rambo’s song, “I go to the rock.”

I GO TO THE ROCK OF MY SALVATION,

I GO TO THE STONE THAT THE BUILDERS REJECTED,

I GO TO THE MOUNTIAN & THE MOUNTIAN STANDS BY ME.

WHEN ALL AROUND ME IS SINKING SAND, ON CHRIST THE SOLID ROCK I STAND,

WHEN I NEED A SHELTER WHEN I NEED A FRIEND,

I GO TO THE ROCK.

Blessings,

John

Love Will Keep Us Together

2011-10-11T17:31:00.005-04:00

By John Stallings

It had been more than 500 years since they laid old Jacob to rest in the cave of Machpelah.

These were eventful years for Jacob’s descendants. There were the hard years of Egyptian bondage culminated by God’s gracious deliverance, and the forty years of wilderness wanderings culminated by the great conquest of Canaan. Then there were the strange years of sin, servitude, and salvation - the period of the Judges.

That gloomy era provides the backdrop for perhaps the most beautiful love story in the Bible, the story of Ruth and Boaz.

“Now it came about in the days when the judges governed, that there was a famine in the land. And a certain man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the land of Moab with his wife and his two sons” [Ruth 1:1].

That man, named Elimelech, died in Moab, leaving his wife, Naomi, and their two sons, Mahlon and Chileon. The boys married Moabite women, and then, in what seemed to be a tragic twist of fate, both of them died, leaving Naomi in a strange land with only her two Moabite daughters-in-law, Ruth and Orpah.

When Naomi heard that God had prospered her people back in Bethlehem with food, she decided to return home.

Orpah remained in Moab but Ruth wouldn't hear of it. She was one of those rare persons who loved deeply and selflessly, and she loved her mother-in-law. Her now famous words were-

For where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God” (Ruth 1:16). Her God was about to direct her to a wonderful man with whom she would be united.

THOSE “PESKY” MOTHER-INLAWS

I think it of interest to point out here-as if we weren’t already aware of it- that many a woman who loves her husband can’t seem to love his mother. And men seem to have the same problem with their wives’ mothers. Just reflect on all the mother-in-law jokes that have circulated through the years. Where does love like Ruth’s come from? It comes from the “Lord of all Love.”

If you want that kind of love in your life, you’ll have to cultivate a close personal relationship with Him just as Ruth did. We human beings are among other things, “great reflectors.” Our attitudes and dispositions will reflect who and what we spend the most time with. It would be futile to tell folk we spend an appreciable amount of time with God if we’re fractious and unloving. When we get to know God and understand how much He gave for us, we are encouraged to give of ourselves for the good of others, even our in-laws, and maybe even our “Outlaws and By-laws.” When we do that, tension and turmoil begin to dissolve into harmony and happiness.

NEVER TOO EARLY

It’s never too soon to learn these lessons of love. We should begin teaching them to our children very early in their lives. The training ground for love is the home. A loving relationship with parents and brothers and sisters will prepare them to love their mates and their mates’ parents as they should. If a person comes from an unloving home it’s difficult for them to give or to receive love. Children will not know how to love when they marry unless they show love to those with whom they live right now.

But it all begins with our love affair with the Lord. When we have experienced the love of God, we will express it in our family relationships—parents, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, children, and in-laws. Ruth is ready for a beautiful love affair with Boaz because she is in love with her Lord and that love is spilling out to others in her life.

The first thing that strikes us about these two whom God brought together by His grace is their spiritual preparation. Although Elimelech’s family was out of the center of God’s will and out of the place of God’s blessing, they did accomplish something worthwhile. Through their testimony, this young Moabite named Ruth turned from worshiping Chemosh, the God of the Moabites, with all the abominable practices associated with his worship, and put her trust in the one true and living God. “Your God shall be my God,” she boldly declared. And it was evident to all who knew her that she had come to enjoy an intimate relationship with the Lord God of Israel.

Sometime later, Boaz would say to her, “May the Lord reward your work, and your wages be full from the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to seek refuge” [Ruth 2:12]. Her trust in God and her love for God were the sources of an inner strength and beauty that could not be hidden and of a love for others that could not be suppressed.

Consider what Ruth did. Instead of brooding over the loss of her own husband, she devoted herself to meeting the needs of her mother-in-law, to filling the void in Naomi’s life, to helping her the best she could. That meant leaving her home, her family, and her friends, moving to another land as a despised foreigner and living in poverty and privation. And for what? Love and concern for her mother-in-law were her only apparent motives. Boaz pointed that out later in the story:

“All that you have done for your mother-in-law after the death of your husband has been fully reported to me, and how you left your father and your mother and the land of your birth, and came to a people that you did not previously know” (Ruth 2:11).

PRINCE CHARMING APPEARS

Now let’s meet the Prince Charming in Ruth’s future. The story implies that Boaz is much older than she [Ruth 3:10]. We don’t know whether he was a bachelor or a widower, but we do know that he was a man of God. The Lord was an important part of his daily life. He thought often about the Lord, spoke freely of Him. Without question Boaz made the Lord part of his everyday business dealings.

Listen to him greet his reapers in the field. “May the Lord be with you,” he said. And they responded, “May the Lord bless you” [Ruth 2:4]. To Ruth he declared, “May you be blessed of the Lord, my daughter” [Ruth 3:10]. And again, “I will redeem you, as the Lord lives” [Ruth 3:13]. All the people who attended his wedding acknowledged his dependence upon God for his future posterity: “May the Lord make the woman who is coming into your home like Rachel and Leah, both of whom built the house of Israel” [Ruth 4:11].

The first requirement for a successful marriage is that the husband recognizes God in the equation. One reason so many marriages are floundering is because the husbands aren’t prepared spiritually for their task. They spent little or no time studying the Word, memorizing it, discovering how it applied to their lives, and learning from it what their responsibilities as Christian husbands and fathers would be. The Lord was not part of their daily living. And when they walked to the altar they were still spiritual babies, ill-prepared to assume the spiritual leadership of their homes. It’s no surprise that their marriages are in trouble.

IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO CHANGE

Men, if you have wasted the years until now, there is no time to lose. Start cultivating a personal walk with Jesus Christ. Spend time regularly studying the Scriptures and learning from them how God wants you to live your life and discharge your responsibilities. Begin consulting Him about everything. If you are involved in an unhappy marital situation, the damage can be repaired, but the place to begin is with this matter of daily involvement with God. Other efforts will fail until our hearts are right with Him and we are growing in His likeness.

Let me stop here for a moment and explain the preceding few words. Someone might say, “Well brother, I’ve known of marriages that lasted for over 60 years and neither of the individuals were Christians nor did they even own a Bible.” That might very well be so, but here’s the truth about marriages like that; if you check them out, you’ll find that though they weren’t Christians, they were, perhaps unknowingly, utilizing the skills and principles laid out for us in God’s Word for a successful marriage. The husband had to be a loving and respectful provider for his family and the wife had to be to some degree a respectful, loving and submitted wife. What a pity if such a thing were true that a couple would live lives circumspect enough to almost be Christians, but never having trusted Christ as their Lord and Savior. They’d have nothing to look forward to at the end but an eternity lost without God.

Obviously, spiritually Ruth and Boaz were both ready. So we turn from their spiritual preparation to their sterling courtship. Naomi and Ruth had now arrived in Bethlehem, and the problem facing them was how to find enough food to eat. Isn’t it enlightening that though we expect so much from life, the folk in most Bible stories are consumed with just getting enough food to stay alive?

God had made a gracious provision in the Mosaic Law for folk in their predicament. Farmers were not permitted to reap the corners of their grain fields nor gather the gleanings; they were to leave them for the poor, for foreigners, for widows and orphans [Lev. 19:9, 10; 23:22; Deut. 24:19].

Almost any way you look at it, Naomi and Ruth met those qualifications. They were poor widows and Ruth was a foreigner. Since Naomi was getting a little too old to work in the fields, Ruth asked if she might go and find the field of some kind man who would allow her to glean. Naomi gave her permission.

“So she departed and went and gleaned in the field after the reapers; and she happened to come to the portion of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the family of Elimelech” (Ruth 2:3).

When I was a boy of eleven, I picked cotton one day for about an hour mostly just to see how it felt. I remember when they weighed my cotton bag, I’d picked eleven cents worth. Ladies and gentlemen, this type of field work “ain’t easy.” Stooping and bending all day long as Ruth did as she gathered the grain into her long flowing cloak, the burden getting heavier with each stalk she gleaned, and the sun beating down on her back in that semi-tropical climate had to be awful.

A few of the bigoted hometown folks were probably taunting her because of her foreign accent, and some of the men seemed to be trying to put their hands on her [Ruth 2:9]. Every impulse in Ruth’s body urged her to flee to the purple mountains of Moab which she could see in the distance. That was home; that was where she belonged. But with quiet courage, simple modesty, and total unselfishness, she carried on.

WOULD BOAZ NOTICE RUTH?

Will Boaz notice her? He did. “Whose young woman is this?” he asked his servant who was in charge of the reapers. “She is the young Moabite woman who returned with Naomi from the land of Moab,” he replied [Ruth 2:5, 6]. Boaz lost no time in doing some nice things for Ruth. He invited her to stay in his fields and glean as much as she wanted, and to drink freely from the water pitchers provided for his own workers.

Nowhere can I find that Ruth was a beautiful woman like Sarah, Rebekah, or Rachel. We do not know whether she was or not, but we do know that she had an inner beauty, a meek and quiet spirit, an unpretentious humility that made her one of the loveliest women in Scripture. She bowed low before Boaz in genuine gratitude and said, “Why have I found favor in your sight that you should take notice of me, since I am a foreigner?” [Ruth 2:10].

Her humility was evident again when she said, “You have comforted me and indeed have spoken kindly to your maidservant, though I am not like one of your maidservants” [Ruth 2:13]. There was nothing “put on” about this. It was real. And this genuine humility, this meek and quiet spirit is one of the most valuable assets a woman can have. Peter says it is of great value in God’s sight [1 Pet. 3:4]. It might be a good trait for Christian women to ask God to help them develop.

It looks as though Boaz is getting more interested in this lovely woman as the day goes on. At mealtime he invited her to join him and his reapers for lunch, and he made sure she was served all that she wanted. When she finished eating and got up to return to work, Boaz said to his servants,

“Let her glean even among the sheaves, and do not insult her. And also you shall purposely pull out for her some grain from the bundles and leave it that she may glean, and do not rebuke her” [Ruth 2:15, 16].

So Ruth continued to glean until evening. And when she beat out what she had gleaned, it was nearly a bushel of barley. It seems as though Boaz was a kind man, thoughtful, considerate, and gentle. There are not too many of them around anymore, judging from what many women are sharing with marriage counselors. Some men have the strange notion that kindness and gentleness are effeminate traits and they go out of their way to avoid them. Not at all! They are Christ-like traits. And Christ was a rugged man’s man. Surveys show that kindness and gentleness rank near the top of the characteristics women are looking for in a husband. They would be good traits for Christian men to ask God to help them develop.

It was time to make a move. And strangely enough, in that culture it was Ruth’s move. God gave another interesting law to the Jews that required a man to marry the childless widow of his dead brother. The first son born of that union would bear his brother’s name and inherit his brother’s property [Deut. 25:5-10; Lev. 25:23-28]. If no brother was available, a more distant relative might be asked to fulfill this duty. But the widow would have to let him know that he was acceptable to be her “goel,” as they called it, -her kinsman-redeemer and provider.

Naomi told Ruth exactly how to do that. Ruth listened carefully and carried out her instructions precisely. Boaz would be sleeping on the threshing floor that night to protect his grain from thieves. After he went to sleep; Ruth tiptoed in, uncovered his feet, and laid down. By this act she was requesting Boaz to become her goel. Needless to say, Boaz was somewhat startled when he rolled over in the middle of the night and realized there was a woman lying at his feet. “Who are you?” he asked. She answered, “I am Ruth your maid. So spread your covering over your maid, for you are a close relative” [Ruth 3:9]. Spreading his cloak over her would signify his willingness to become her protector and provider. His response was immediate:

“May you be blessed of the Lord, my daughter. You have shown your last kindness to be better than the first by not going after young men, whether poor or rich. And now, my daughter, do not fear. I will do for you whatever you ask, for all my people in the city know that you are a woman of excellence” (Ruth 3:10, 11).

THIS EPISODE ISN’T “X-RATED.”

It’s important to understand that there was nothing immoral in this episode. This procedure was the custom of the day, and the record emphasizes the purity of it. In the secluded darkness of the threshing room, Boaz could have gratified his human desires and no one but Ruth would have known. But he was a godly, moral, self-disciplined, Spirit-controlled man, and he kept his hands off. Scripture says that Ruth slept at his feet until morning (Ruth 3:14). Furthermore, Ruth had the reputation of being a woman of excellence (Ruth 3:11). She had physical drives like any other normal woman, but she learned to claim God’s grace and strength to hold those drives in check until marriage.

Boaz and Ruth both knew that God’s greatest blessing in marriage would require purity before marriage. Carelessness in this area would bring guilt, loss of self-respect, and suspicion. And it could leave scars on their souls that would make their adjustment to each other in marriage most difficult.

This is a vanishing viewpoint. Satan has brainwashed our society into believing premarital sex is perfectly acceptable. Our society is paying the price for promiscuity by unprecedented marital turmoil and innumerable broken homes with all the emotional trauma they bring. God’s way is always best!

Boaz and Ruth did it God’s way. We’re not surprised to see, finally, their successful marriage. Not a great deal is actually said about their relationship with each other after the wedding, but we may assume from what we have already learned about them that their marriage was richly blessed of God. Scripture does say, “So Boaz took Ruth, and she became his wife, and he went in to her. And the Lord enabled her to conceive, and she gave birth to a son” [Ruth 4:13].

The most unusual aspect of this story is the continuing role Naomi played in their lives from this point on. As a former mother-in-law, we would expect her to drop out of the picture, but Boaz and Ruth are too loving and caring to let that happen. When their baby was born, the women of Bethlehem said to Naomi,

“Blessed is the Lord who has not left you without a redeemer today, and may his name become famous in Israel. May he also be to you a restorer of life and a sustainer of your old age; for your daughter-in-law, who loves you and is better to you than seven sons, has given birth to him” [Ruth 4:14, 15].

Then Naomi took the baby and cared for him, and the neighbor women said, “A son has been born to Naomi!” [Ruth 4:17]. Imagine that! They all considered that baby to be Naomi’s own child, and Boaz and Ruth happily permitted it. Boaz continued to provide for Naomi until her death, and he seems to have done it cheerfully. And Ruth’s love for her never waned. The women called Ruth “‘your daughter-in-law, who loves you and is better to you than seven sons.”

Now that Ruth had her husband, she could have resented her former mother-in-law as an intruder. Many women would have. But when a person is filled with the love of God, his heart is big enough to engulf more than just one special person, or even a special few. He tenderly and unselfishly reaches out to meet the needs of others as well. It is striking to observe how God’s love in Ruth’s life overcame all obstacles—poverty, racial prejudice, age disparity, physical temptations, and even mother-in-law differences.

There’s a good possibility that God’s love can solve the problems in our lives. As we come to understand and enjoy His unconditional love for us, and allow that love to flow through us, we think less and less about ourselves and more and more about others.

The problem-solving potential of that self-sacrificing, self-giving love is phenomenal.

Incidentally, isn’t it wonderful to see how God was providentially moving Ruth into a very important position? She would be King David’s great-grandmother, consequentially making her part of the linage of the coming Christ.

Blessings,

John

Don't Go To Moab!

2011-10-05T16:48:00.036-04:00

By John Stallings

Elimelech, his wife Naomi, and their two sons, Chilion and Mahlon have left their homeland because of famine.

They were refugees. They went into a new land called Moab searching for food and shelter. Like many people, because of wars, famine, or economic scarcity, they left their homeland in an attempt to begin life anew.

Moab wasn’t a nice place- to say the least. In fact in Psalm 60:8 God called Moab His wash pot, a wash basin where they would wash the guest’s feet. God said that Moab was as filthy as a wash pot. It was a place of trash. Moab was the off-spring of Lot and his oldest daughter Gen. 19:37

So Moab was born out of an incestuous relationship. God had constantly warned His people about Moab. In Jeremiah 48:11, Jeremiah prophecies about Moab and he paints a little picture. He says that Moab has been at ease from his youth. He has always been “no good”, even while he was growing up. And he says here is Jeremiah 48:11 that he has not been emptied from his lees. The picture here is that of wine making. When they made wine, they put it in a vessel and let it set for a while and while it was sitting, the trash would fall to the bottom.

Then they would take that vessel and pour it through a filter into another vessel and let it sit until more trash fell to the bottom. They would do that over and over again until the wine was crystal clear.

God said about Moab that his lees had not been emptied; that he is full of trash. God said about Moab in Zephaniah that He would destroy Moab like Sodom and Gomorrah. Moab was a not a place to be. It was a place of filth. Moab is a type, a picture of the world.

Sometimes people seeking a newer and better life think of a new land as the Promised Land. But promises don’t always work out, and the dreams can sometimes turn into nightmares. This happened for Naomi and her sons.We read the story in the book of Ruth chapter one.

Naomi’s husband Elimelech died leaving his wife and children behind. His sons eventually married wives from their adopted country. Two daughter-in-laws, Orpah and Ruth now became part of this immigrant family.

After tens years both of the sons die, leaving their mother, Naomi, their wives Orpah and Ruth alone and destitute. The cultural times meant that without men/ husbands as providers the women were alone and poor. But famine had come to Moab and Naomi decided it was time to return home. She felt that she had left with everything, and now her returning would be with nothing. In fact, her spirits and hopes were so low when she returned home, she said to the people, "do not call me Naomi but Mara." Mara means bitterness or sorrow. This statement illustrates the depths to which Naomi had plummeted. There was a deep and inconsolable sorrow and hopelessness in her soul. But let’s back up.

Naomi, realizing that there is nothing to stay in Moab for decides it’s time to go home. She releases her daughter in-laws from their family obligation, in part knowing exactly how hard it is to start life in a foreign land. Orpah decides to return to her kinfolk in Moab obviously with hopes of starting all over again. But Ruth refuses to depart from Naomi uttering some of the most memorable words in scripture:

"Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die - there will I be buried. May the Lord do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you!"

These are powerful words. Many sermons have been preached on the undying love that Ruth had for Naomi. Her love, commitment and loyalty come through poignantly and powerfully in these words of poetic verse. These words, wherever thou goest I will go- are often used in weddings, which is somewhat strange because the words weren’t spoken by a bride to a husband-to-be but rather by a daughter-in-law to her mother-in-law. To me it just goes to show how powerful those words of love and commitment really are.

I WONDER…

I wonder why one of the wives would return home and the other not? I wonder why Orpah would go home to her kinsfolk and Ruth refuse. It causes me to wonder what kind of situation Ruth came from. Was her family dead? Was the family in abject poverty and there was nothing there for her to return to? I wonder whether life for Ruth had been one of abuse, and the marriage to one of Naomi's sons was a relief from the violence and possible death. I wonder why Ruth didn’t go home. Was it because, for the first time in her life she found kindness and care under the tutelage of Naomi? Was it because she found the love of a family in the family of Naomi and didn't want to give that up? Or did she so worry about the future and well being of Naomi that she just didn't want to leave her alone to the elements? I don’t know the reasons for her not returning to her family and kinsfolk, and the scriptures give us no clues. But I do know that there was some compelling reason that she accompanied Naomi into an uncertain future and place.

LIFE CAN HAVE SOME CRAZY BOUNCES

When we think about life and living, you and I understand that life is uncertain and our futures are uncertain! We don't know what will come our way. We don't know what will happen in the next moment. One minute everything can be going along just fine, and the next moment we don't know what hit us! In one moment Naomi had a husband and two sons, and the next she had no husband. Then Naomi had two sons and two daughter in-laws, and then her sons were gone and her life uncertain and frightening. Life is like that! We don't know what twists and turns will come in our lives.

A spouse can die. A child can die. We can lose our family, just like it happened in this story. We might have to start all over again. We may have to start a new job or go back to school for more training and start a new career. We find ourselves in places where we have to make decisions, and sometimes those decisions are difficult ones.

Naomi was going back home with nothing, and Ruth was going into a foreign land with an uncertain future. Sometimes we stare into our futures with more questions than answers. At times we stand in the present moment and cannot imagine what tomorrow looks like. One thing is sure; life can come at you fast! You may remember a blog I posted some time back entitled “Life comes at you fast.” Sometimes it’s too fast for my taste. We can find ourselves looking at problems, things we don't want to face, troubles, and hardships that cause emotional trauma. Naomi and Ruth had this and more. In many of those moments there isn't anything much that we can do about what comes our way. So what do we do? How do we cope? How do we carry on?

Naomi and Ruth didn't know what was before them, but they knew what was behind. They also knew they couldn’t bring the good times back! They knew that they had to go forward because there was nowhere else to run and hide. Naomi returned home saying, "from now on call me "Mara;" bitterness or sorrow. She had lost everything, but there she stood, along with Ruth, with happier times at their backs and uncertainty ahead. It reminds me of the old lPopular song, "Side by side.”

One thing Ruth and Naomi had was love. Surround me with love and I can face some pretty awesome things if I know that love is real. If someone reminds you that they’re with you, backing you up with open hands and hearts offering to heal your hurts and soothe your worries it makes a world of difference doesn’t it? Naomi and Ruth had the love of one another with which to face the future!

FAITH

They seem to also have faith. Faith allows us to face the uncertainty of life, when it comes at you fast, and the joy is sucked out of it. Faith reminds you that whatever happens -it will be all right! Faith allows you and me to stand and face tomorrow, and another tomorrow, and another after that until the sorrow fades and the disappointment turns back to joy.

Faith allows us to face difficulty with a trust and belief that says -hold on and God will work it all out for your good and His glory. Romans 5:3-5 says:

"More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us."

Faith assures us that we can not only endure, but through our endurance our character is perfected. Through the character building experience hope starts to loom and we find that the hope is real.

Naomi and Ruth had been through some things. They faced the uncertainty and the suffering and eventually came to understand the character that God had placed in them, and through it all found it was not hopeless.

Consider the counsel of Ephesians 6.13:

"Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm."

This means that we have the stuff to face life, and take it as it comes. Faith enables us to take the lemons of life and make lemonade. There is nowhere to run so we will have to stand. Jesus also reminds us of the gift of having faith if only the size of a mustard seed. It doesn't take much faith to start a triumphant process – but it does take some faith. Faith increases if you use it, just as the mustard seed starts small and becomes a shrub where life resides. Remember Hebrews 11:1:

"Faith is the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things unseen."

In faith we can face the present and the future. We can’t go back, but we can go forward. As long as life resides in us we will have the option of going forward.

Naomi and Ruth couldn’t go back, that wasn’t an option. They had no choice, so now they will face the future with love and faith!

DON’T GO TO MOAB

This Book of Ruth is a Book about strong women. It’s a time when men were weak. The reason why I know that Naomi was a strong and unusual woman is because when she came back to Bethlehem the whole town knew her. The whole town was stirred. Another thing to notice in the narrative is that Naomi and her family weren’t starving when they left Bethlehem. By Naomi’s own admission in verse 21, she said we left full.

A STRONG WOMAN CAN LEAD A WEAK MAN TO MOAB

All too often men are so weak spiritually they throw all the decision making on the women folk. Naomi’s name means pleasant, smiling, beautiful, charming, and delightful. Men, strong women can lead you to Moab. A pleasant woman can lead a man almost anywhere. Don’t let your friends, your mama your sister your brother, take you to Moab.

You think things are messed up now. You think you’re having it hard now? Sir, you go to Moab and stay awhile and tell me how you like it there. Tradegy always comes sooner or later to people who leave the House of God for the filth of this world. Moab ruined Naomi because as you read this text and look at verse 13 she said “the hand of the Lord has gone out against me.” She said “I was responsible.” And if you notice in verse 20 she said “the Lord has dealt very bitterly with me.” And in verse 21 she said the Lord has afflicted me. She said -"the Lord has testified against me."

Naomi understood that it was her leading that got Elimelech and her two sons down into Moab. She made it back to Bethlehem but her husband died in Moab. She made it back. But her sons married women in Moab, and then her sons died in Moab. If you hang around in Moab, you can lose your family. Naomi lost her family after 10 years in Moab. Everything was gone.

MOAB WILL RUIN YOUR FINANCES

Naomi said in verse 21, “I went out full. I left Bethlehem and I did not know how blessed I was. I didn’t know what I had, but now in retrospect I can see I was full and didn’t know it." Many people don’t know they’re blessed until they go to Moab. Someone has rightly said, “You don’t miss your water until your well runs dry.” Moab will ruin your finances. She said “I went out full but now I’m empty.”

By her own admittance she says “I’m broke.” I've got nothing left, no husband, no sons, I am broke.” It reminds me of the prodigal son who left his father’s house, who by his own admission at the hog pen said, “My father's servants have bread and enough to spare and here I am desiring to eat from the hog pen. " Moab will ruin you financially. I’ve seen people leave the family of God, wipe their hands, get mad and through with God. They take off to Moab and, I’ve seen them come back. I’ve seen them go out full and come back empty.

Moab will impact the way you look. Look at verse 20. Notice that when they came back to town in verse 19, the whole city was moved. She’d been a woman of influence. The townspeople said - "is this Naomi? This can’t be Naomi. This can’t be that, gorgeous, beautiful, eloquent woman of influence who left Bethlehem. This can’t be Naomi."

Moab will even mess up your facial features. I’ve seen people who live in Moab. I’ve see what sin can do. I’ve seen how Moab can eat you up. I’ve seen what dope and substance abuse can do.

They said, Naomi, you haven’t been gone but 10 years and you look far beyond your age. Time has plowed furrows of worry across her face. That body that was like a sculptor’s dream, that figure eight has turned to a figure O. Hair that was as black as a raven’s back—time has speckled it with gray. Skin that was as smooth as a Georgia peach now looks like 10 miles of bad road. Moab will suck all the life from you. Moab will take your joy and age you, quickly.

Naomi said in verse 21 “The Lord has afflicted me.” The word afflicted in the Hebrew means to break into pieces. And sometimes in order to get you back to Bethlehem, He has to break you down. He has to break your pride. He has to tear that ego down. So she says “don’t call me Naomi,” which means beautiful, amiable and pleasant, “call me Mara,” which means bitter. It means “worn out.” "My name is not Naomi any more, it’s Mara."

YOU CAN RETURN

Let me offer a ray of hope here. You can return.

Naomi was hurt and she was lost in Moab, but she heard that God was blessing His people back in Bethlehem. The Bible says “the day you hear my voice, harden not your hearts.” I hear the Bible say “he that hath ear to hear, let him hear what the Lord is saying to him.”

Moab will wound you. Moab will weaken you. Moab will leave you without strength. When Naomi heard that God was blessing His people she said,- "I know that I've been living in Moab. I know that I did wrong and I led my husband away." But she said, "I’m going to hurry up and go back to Bethlehem/ Judah."

Let me tell you why you ought to be in a hurry. James said you ought to get in a hurry because- your life is like a vapor, it’s slowly vanishing away.

I can almost hear Naomi saying, “Lord, I know I messed up. Oh Lord, I left home with gold around my neck, but now I don’t have anything. But I’m going back to Bethlehem. I left home with children and I’ve lost them, but I’m going home to Bethlehem. I left home with a loving husband, but I lost my husband in Moab. But I’m coming back to Bethlehem.”

Are you living in Moab? You can come home today. You can come home… You may have a bad habit … Come home...You may be strung out… Come home…. You may be messed up….. Come home. You may have lost what you had…. Come home. Trouble in your life?… Come home. Family fractured?…. Come home. Finances all gone?… Come home.

God welcomes you back to Bethlehem…. Moab has wasted you… Come on back.

Come back to the father’s house.

Blessings,

John

Risky Business

2011-09-29T00:36:00.001-04:00

By John Stallings

Recently I heard Pastor John MacArthur, pastor of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley California on television relating how he’d sat by the deathbed of a 78 year old man.

The dying man was relating some of his failings in life but rejoicing in the fact that he’d confessed everything and God had forgiven him. He wasn’t worried about death or his standing before God.

Then the man added something that took MacArthur aback. He said in a matter-of-fact tone, “I’m so sorry I was never able to get the victory over pornography.”

Macarthur said, “Well, for you young people here today, especially the young men, I guess this isn’t especially encouraging news.”

RISKY!

I realize that talking about sexual matters is fraught with possible problems. I could offend people. I might embarrass somebody, including myself. The following story illustrates why I would write this post…

During a counseling session a minister asked a young man, "How often do you entertain thoughts about prophecy?"

The young man answered: "About twice a year—once around Christmas, and again some time around Easter.”

The minister then asked, “How many times in a given day do you have sexual thoughts?" You could have heard a marshmallow fall on a carpet. Silence. The young man couldn’t speak.

The obvious point is -the average person, right or wrong, rarely thinks about prophecy, but hears sermons on the subject quite often. However how many times do you hear biblically relevant preaching on human sexuality—something a large majority of people are thinking about and dealing with most all the time? Only occasionally.

Truthfully, for most healthy people, for at least a good portion of our lives, sexual thoughts aren’t that few and far between. Anything that occupies that much of our thought life and drives that much of our personality ought to be addressed, because some of those thoughts are misguided and in need of God's correction.

For a minister never to mention sex would be to desert his post at one of the most active battlefronts in our lives and culture.

Why rush in where angels tiptoe?

You just can't ignore the topic of sex. Marriages are struggling because of misleading information about this subject. Young people are making mistakes because they're getting behavioral cues from all the wrong sources. Singles are wrestling with sexual dilemmas. Sex is a subject begging for a clear Christian word. Here’s a good word for starters;

ABSTAIN

1 Thessalonians 4:3 says;

"For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality” NKJV

There are not many things from which the Bible tells us to abstain. The word itself is used only 7 times in the New Testament—3 times in the book of Acts referring to temporary restrictions, once in 1 Timothy referring to false doctrine, and once in 1 Peter. The other two times are found in 1 Thessalonians.

It’s interesting to know that the Bible does not use the word “abstain” with reference to alcohol. While there certainly are many good reasons to be cautious about alcohol and good reasons to abstain, the Bible itself does not say, “You shall abstain from alcohol.”

Whenever we see the word “abstain” in the Bible we know two things for certain:

1. It is a command of God

2. It is an absolute prohibition

Therefore, whenever we find a command to abstain in the Bible, we ought to take it seriously. It’s so simple and clear that there need be no debate about it. God commands believers to abstain from sexual immorality. Period. End of story. The command is crystal-clear.

No Difference!

No message is more needed in the church today. Several years ago the Gallup organization released a survey in which they compared the beliefs and lifestyles of evangelical Christians with the public at large The results were quite revealing. In the first place, the survey showed that there’s an enormous interest in spiritual things among the unchurched. Contrary to popular opinion, many Americans think deeply about ultimate issues and genuinely want to find meaningful answers.

Second, the survey revealed a general rise in immoral behavior. In an age when more people are attending church, there is an alarming rise in crime and unethical behavior, even among those who are very religious. One quote stuck with me: “There is little difference in ethical behavior between those who go to church and those who don’t.”

I am reminded of the words of the late evangelist Vance Havner who said - “the church has become so worldly and the world so churchy that it’s hard to tell the difference.”

Facing the Facts

There is a reason for all this. Our society has changed. If you think things have gotten worse, you’re right.

Fact—Hardcore pornography has come out of the closet and on to main street.
Fact—Through the Internet the vilest forms of pornography are now available
to young children.
Fact—Homosexuality is now seen as an acceptable alternative lifestyle.
Fact—Many mainline denominations now have openly gay clergy.
Fact—We routinely see things on television that would have shocked us 25 years ago.
Fact—Nothing much surprises us anymore.

We’ve seen it all … and seen it so often we’ve lost our ability to be shocked. Adultery … premarital sex … group sex … lesbianism … wife swapping … pornography in our local convenience stores … x-rated movies on TV … multiple marriages … quick abortions … incest … child abuse … bestiality … teen pregnancy … gay churches … televangelists who visit prostitutes … herpes … AIDS … radical sex education. And on and on the list goes.

GONE WITH THE WIND

It hasn’t always been this way. There was a day when the entire nation could be shocked by just one word. When the move “Gone With the Wind” was released in 1939, it caused an uproar because Clark Gable uttered the following line: “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a da.n.”

We’ve come a long way, baby. And not necessarily in the right direction either.

What has happened to America? When did we lose our collective sense of modesty? Why did we go morally blind? Somewhere in the last generation morality died, and public opinion eroded.

Two Words We Need to Understand 1-3

There are two words we need to understand very clearly. First, the word abstain means “to hold off from, to distance oneself from, to have nothing to do with.” You are abstaining from something when you separate yourself from it completely. Second, the phrase “sexual immorality” comes from the Greek word porneia, which is a very broad word encompassing every kind of sexual activity outside the circle of God’s will. It covers sins of the mind, body, eyes, ears and lips. It includes premarital sex, extra-marital sex, every form of homosexuality, adultery, and every form of pornography. In fact the English “pornography” comes from the Greek word porneia. Paul is telling us that Christians must abstain from a pornographic lifestyle in the broadest sense of that word.

This means there can be no “moderate immorality” and no “social adultery” and no “victimless pornography.” We are not to dabble in sexual sin in any of its various forms. To the contrary, we’re to have nothing to do with it.

In a world of impurity Christians are to be different. That’s what the word “sanctification” means. A sanctified person is a Christian whose life is “distinctively different” because it’s set apart for God.

PAUL’S DAY

Perhaps you’re wondering if things were different in Paul’s day. The answer is, they were worse, if that’s possible. In the first place Thessalonica was a seaport, which meant that people from all over the Mediterranean world stopped there in transit from one place to another. The sailors and visiting merchants brought with them the usual desires for sexual gratification. More importantly, the Greek religions of that day practiced “sacred prostitution.” That involved hiring a prostitute at a pagan temple as part of your acts of worship. This sounds sick because it is sick!

The famed orator Demosthenes described the moral climate of ancient Greece this way:

“We keep prostitutes for pleasure, we keep mistresses for day to day needs of the body, we keep wives for the begetting of children and for the faithful guarding of the home.”

Given the moral atmosphere of the day, there must have been enormous pressure on those young Christians to lower their standards to conform to the world around them. But Paul will have none of it. He orders them to abstain from every form of sexual immorality.

Two Commands We Must Obey

Verses 4-6 flesh out that command in more detail. He gives them two instructions—one positive and one negative. We must take each one to heart if we are going to be clean in a very dirty world.

# 1: Control your own body 4-5

Each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God (vv. 4-5). Verse 4 literally commands each man to “possess his own vessel/body.” To possess is to control in the sense of mastering the impulse to sin.

A God-empowered man controls his own body. When God is not in control, the body controls the man.

Paul explains his meaning in verse 5 where he mentions the “passionate lust” of the heathen.

Notice carefully the reason he gives. The heathen “do not know God.” That’s the cause of all the pain, misery, sin and debauchery in the world today. Men do not know God and therefore indulge their worst fantasies.

When men turn away from God, anything is possible. No one knows how deep men can go when they do not know God. There is no limit, no end. Because there is no check on their desires, they commit unspeakable sin.

But we know God … and that makes all the difference!

Paul was no prude. Remember that Paul was a single man living in a strange land filled with temptation. He knew all about the depth of sin. He heard the siren song, “Come on, everyone’s doing it.” He felt the desire for closeness, he longed for the thrill of intimacy.

It would have been easy for him to give in, but he didn’t. The price was too high. He was a Christian first. He knew God … and that made all the difference.

# 2: Don’t cheat another person –v.6

“In this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him.” The King James Version uses the word “defraud.” Other translations use words like “wrong” or “cheat.” The meaning may be made clear by a few examples:

*Don’t cheat your brother by sleeping with his wife.
*Don’t cheat your wife by dreaming of other women.
*Don’t cheat your boy friend or girl friend by leading them on.
*Don’t cheat your future husband or wife by giving away that which
you can never get back—your purity.
*Don’t cheat your friends by claiming to be one thing in public and something
else in private.
*Don’t cheat your family by sneaking away behind their backs.
*Don’t cheat your loved by doing anything you would be ashamed for them
to know about.

Immorality is like that. It always cheats someone else—usually someone you love very much. Just ask any wife whose husband left. Just ask any parent whose child had an affair. Just any church members who saw their pastor fall into sexual sin.

Perhaps the saddest thing about lust is that it’s never satisfied. Someone has said that lust is “the craving for salt by a man dying of thirst.” It promises everything and delivers nothing. No great release. No lasting satisfaction. Not even any swift punishment.

You always have to go back for more. It’s the law of diminishing returns. Lust forces you to keep coming back.

Three Facts God

Our text closes with three reasons why this command is so important. Each one applies directly to us today.

1. God will punish those who practice immorality. 6

“The Lord will punish men for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you.”

Sometimes He punishes the body, sometimes the mind, sometimes our speech, our eyes, often our health, and almost always our memories. Lust produces that inward deadening that is both unexpected and inevitable.

The most likely judgment is that God will simply leave a person alone to suffer the natural consequences of their sin, but we must remember that in the future what has been done in secret will be shouted from the rooftops.

2. God has called us to purity. V.7

“For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life.” Christianity is supremely the champion of purity. Our faith is utterly alien to every form of uncleanness. When Jesus comes in, he cleans house.

3. Rejecting purity means rejecting God.v. 8

“Therefore, he who rejects this instruction does not reject man but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit.” To reject means to treat with utter contempt. It is to render the commandment of God null and void.

This is what Nathan meant when he asked David, “Why did you despise the word of the Lord by doing what is evil in his eyes?” (2 Samuel 12:9)

By committing adultery and then ordering Uriah murdered to cover it up, he had treated God’s holy commands with utter contempt. He knew it was wrong and yet he did it anyway.

You and I can’t have it both ways. We must either be pure … or stop calling ourselves Christians!

All of us need to hear this message. I need it personally. No one is exempt—not the pastor nor the elders nor the staff members nor the people in the pew. This is God’s Word for all of us.

AVOIDING SEXUAL TRAPS

Sexuality 101 tells us that if we’re to avoid the many traps of Satan in sexual areas we’re going to have to have some guardrails.

A guardrail is a system designed to keep vehicles from straying into dangerous, or off-limit areas.

The guardrail is placed in an area that’s safe to drive to keep us from going into places that are unsafe to drive. A guardrail is always placed a few feet or yards away from the area of danger. Guardrails are designed to cause a little bit of damage in order to keep you from experiencing a lot of damage. We all know that on the other side of guardrails are places that are unsafe for us to go.

In order for you and me to avoid serious wreckage in our lives, we need to establish a system, a standard of personal behavior that becomes a matter of conscience.

We need moral guardrails that will help us with our friendships, our marriages, our academic, professional and just about any arena of life.

As an example, if you’re married, a good “guardrail” would be to establish that you’ll never have lunch with anyone of the opposite sex, nor will you allow yourself to be alone with them except under extremely extenuating circumstances. Think about it, if you established these kinds of guardrails, wouldn’t it be difficult for you to ever be exposed to sexual temptation?

You and I need a system that says- In this area of my life, this is as far as I’m going to go-period! I’m not going to tempt fate. You and I need to make that decision so personal that when we violate it or began to violate our own personal standard, our conscience lights up and says, “Warning, warning, warning! You’re moving towards something dangerous.” A personal standard of behavior that maybe nobody would subscribe to but you, a personal standard of behavior that’s your own, but you’re so committed to it that you actually feel guilty because your conscience lights up.

Shocking words about Sexual intimacy…

The Bible says with crystal clarity that when a guy and a girl, have sex, they are married. Paul, in one of his letters, took the Corinthians to the woodshed for visiting prostitutes. Paul’s explanation of why it’s wrong?

1 Corinthians 6:16-17:

“Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, ‘The two will become one flesh.’ But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit.”

Let’s think about this; Paul is saying that when a man and a woman have sex, they become a couple – they are married. In God’s eyes, they are married. They are one flesh, just like the very first couple. Sexual intimacy is unifying.

You and I must remember this: Sexual intimacy unites. It doesn’t even take sexual intercourse. Pardon my frankness, but, shedding clothes, stimulating one another, etc. are all forms of sexual intimacy that create permanent bonds. Such bonds can even be formed by fully clothed and simulated sex or explicit talk with another or sexual fantasies.

A lot of people are unconvinced that these last things automatically create the bond, but be careful. You do such things at your own peril because the bond could be formed before you know it. Why play with fire?

Sexual intimacy unites.

If you experiment with sex outside of marriage, you will build unity whether you intend it or want it or not. I’m not trying to guilt people here but one has to know the consequences of their action.

When two people sleep together, the body makes a promise even if the mind doesn’t?

Sexual intimacy yields unity. You have established a solemn unity. You’re married. Maybe you will deny that. Maybe you can find a way to block out God’s commands about adultery and sexual immorality and fornication. It may not even be difficult to block them out because the words you’re now reading sound so heavy handed, like they come from a different era and have no relevance now. But you will have a bond with that person until you die. You can end the affair or you can break up with the boyfriend or girlfriend, but you have established a bond that is not going away. I don’t say that to “slap you upside the head” with the wrath of God. I say it because you need to know what you are getting into. It’s risky!

Once the bond is formed, you have only two choices. First, you can try to ignore the unity that you have just built. That’s a very popular option and why not? Sex brings unity and excitement and wonderful, physical pleasure. Take away the unity and sex is still magnetic.

Sex outside of a marriage – whether it be pre-marital sex or an affair – is exciting. It is dramatic. But it’s risky. You might get a huge kick from the danger of the forbidden. All the excitement and pleasure can make you think that this thing you share with the other person must be right. We might think that sin should immediately made you feel miserable, but it doesn’t always work that way. It could be really thrilling – a drug that makes you want more and more.

But the substance to which you are addicted is excitement and it is excitement built on a gift from God that is missing an essential component. The foundation is flawed. It can’t last. It’s not real. Real sex starts with unity, not excitement, certainly not the excitement of indulging in something out of bounds.

Like macaroni and cheese, married love-isn’t particularly exotic, but very satisfying and profoundly unifying.

Base sexual intimacy on unity – on public vows, promises made to each other and to God and to all your friends and family, promises that the two of you will be one and always and only one, and now you have something to build on. And as for the thrills and excitement, well, don’t worry. That will come often enough. Maybe more than you could ak or think and over a course of many decades

You’ll remember that I said sexual intimacy in all its forms builds unity. If you have engaged in sexual intimacy, then you have built that unity with anther human being. From that point you have only two options. So far, I have only spoken about the first option. By this option, you simply try to ignore the unity and carry on. That might work for a time, but not completely.

But there’s a second option, and this is a great place to conclude.

GRACE ALWAYS RULES THE DAY!

This option is all about grace, about the loving and faithful willingness of God to forgive. Here’s some good news. You might wrestle with your past sexual behavior but it matters little where you have been or what you have done - you can always turn to the Father in heaven who forgives. He is in the business of making all things new. He can undo damage we have done to ourselves and even heal the wounds we may have inflicted on others

It’s all pictured so well in Jesus’ story about a son who disappeared with half his dad’s money. He wasted it all on drunkenness and wild living, forming more than a few permanent bonds with many different women. He came to his senses, and decided to go home. He hoped that his dad would have enough pity on him to hire him to clean the barns. Well it turns out the old man saw him coming and ran down the driveway to meet him. He hugged him and before the son could give words to his apology, the father welcomed the son, called over his shoulder to the guy at the punchbowl to start up the band.

The son was home! The son had a second chance, a fresh start and it was like the years of wandering had never happened.

Grace always rules the day for those who answer the call to come home.

Blessings,

John

Big Boy Christianity

2011-09-16T20:49:00.007-04:00

By John Stallings

Like many of you, I was captured by grace at a very young age.

By the time I was six I realized that Jesus loved me & died on the cross to save me. So I gave Him my heart & life & was born into the family of God.

As you might expect, I had no spiritual vocabulary & no spiritual teeth. I didn’t understand all there was to know about Jesus & still don’t. If you’d put a gun on me I couldn’t have told you what repentance or faith was. I had received the spirit of adoption whereby I could cry Abba Father or "Da-da" according to Romans 8:15, but that’s about it. I think I was pretty much a normal baby, spiritually & physically.

I remember my first “little man's” haircut & remember crying to get out of the barber chair. My kinfolk never let me forget that I was so scared all I could sobbingly say was “Feet on floor daddy, feet on floor.”Though my parents never said much about it, I can imagine the relief when I slowly began to grow up, though I also have a feeling it took quite a long time. One of the phrases I can remember hearing most from my childhood was “Johnny, be a big-boy.” Come on son, be a big-boy for daddy, or mommy.”

I can also remember that sentiment being impressed on me in non-verbal, somewhat painful ways that centered on the place where I sat down. One of the reasons a baby takes so much care is because in their world, it’s all about them & their needs. They’re always getting hurt, if not really hurt they’re getting their feelings hurt & they’re always making a mess for someone else to clean up. As much as we love our babies, we have to admit that in the home, if there’s a problem, it usually centers around the babies.

Have you ever noticed that the same is true in a church? You can count on spiritual babies to be at the center of just about every church disturbance. Acts chapter 15: 36-41 gives us a rare glimpse behind the scenes into the inner working of perhaps the greatest missionary team the Holy Spirit ever put together.This little glimpse into the lives of Paul & Barnabas shows the humanity yet spiritual maturity of the two men.

Paul needs no introduction anywhere because He’s without doubt one of the icons of Holy Writ. Barnabas however isn’t as well known but it’s good to remember that his name meant “Son of consolation” or “Encourager.” It’s rather special to be named after a gift of the spirit. i.e. Romans 12:8.Barnabas was responsible for over half the books of the New Testament. Paul wrote 13 of them, & Barnabas was the man who brought Paul to the brethren in Jerusalem. Acts 9:26-27. Mark wrote one & no doubt it was Barnabas who loved & encouraged him to continue in the faith. That’s 14, over half of the 27 books.

Have you ever heard the term “kinfolk’s complex?” The word we use today is nepotism. What both terms refer to is a prejudicial, biased leaning toward family. This problem is at the root of what’s happening in this story.On Paul & Barnabas’ first missionary trip together, John Mark the cousin of Barnabas accompanied them. Somewhere along the way John Mark decided to leave the team & return to his home in Jerusalem. We’re not told the reason for his departure however some have theorized the fires of resistance to the gospel were so hot, John Mark allowed fear to cause him to tuck-tail & run.When a second campaign was planned Barnabas suggests taking John Mark along as helper. Paul promptly nixed the idea. The scripture tells us that “sharp contention” developed between Barnabas & Paul over John Mark. Barnabas says he goes, Paul says he doesn’t go. They couldn’t agree so they split up.

As far as I’m able to discern, the two remarkable men never saw each other again.It’s impossible to read this drama & not be moved. The encouraging thing is the break-up didn’t come over doctrine. The rupture involved a personal dispute based on a judgment call. To their credit Paul nor Barnabas didn’t allow the conflict to distract them from their respective efforts of spreading the gospel. They were big-boys & exhibited “big-boy” maturity. Too often we can act like babies when we have a disagreement.If you ever raised kids you know the most glorious day was when the kids could sit at a table & feed themselves. We knew then they were becoming big boys & girls. I think God has the same feeling when He sees His kids growing up & not reacting to a speed-bump like it was a mountain.

THERE ARE TIMES WHEN SPIRITUAL MINDS & HEARTS WILL DISAGREE.

The important thing is to stay focused on the work of God. Because of the disagreement, Barnabas chose his cousin John Mark & they formed an evangelistic team. Paul chose Silas & both teams went on the road.Which team was most successful? As far as we know they were both equally successful. Some have said that Paul was just too stubborn in the matter. However we read in Acts 15:40 that the Church commended Paul & Silas, but no such commendation came for Barnabas & John Mark.Paul may have been motivated more by experience, cool logic & rationality, while Barnabas was guided by a kindred familiarity & a warm heart. Most of can relate to Barnabas and Mark here because we’ve all needed a second chance .

It’s interesting to note that later on Paul writes to Timothy & says,--Get Mark & bring him with you, for he is profitable to me in the ministry.—2 Tim.4:11. Sounds to me like "uncle Barney" got some vindication here.

We're looking here at a case of brass tacks Christian maturity. We are allowed to closely inspect how God’s choice men dealt with disagreements. Let’s look at some of the aspects of the way Paul & Barnabas settled their dispute & see what we might glean & utilize the next time we have a problem with a family member, Christian friend or worker.I think you’ll agree that 95% of our problems will be less than Paul & Barnabas’ situation so let’s see how we can disagree & still be like Jesus. Let’s see what “Big-Boy” Christianity is all about.

1. MAKE SURE YOU HAVE ALL THE INFORMATION BEFORE YOU DISAGREE.

We’ve looked closely at Paul & Barnabas’ problem & see the simple story; they disagreed over taking John Mark on this missionary trip. It’s all laid out rather simply for us don’t you agree?Proverbs 18:13 says,--he that answereth a matter before he hears it, it is folly & shame to him.

The following ad was placed in a newspaper,

“Wendell Walsh has a sewing machine for sale. It belongs to the lady who loves with him.—Ph. 359-4704 Address 67 Walnut street.”The next day the following ad appeared.—“Wendell Walsh no longer has a sewing machine for sale. I have smashed it. The owner did not love with me; she’s an elderly lady who lived in my upstairs apartment. Please don’t call 359-4704, it’s been disconnected. Please don’t go to 67 Walnut Street, I no longer live there.”What a mess, & all the confusion was caused by the mix-up of two letters, I & O.

So much pain is caused on a daily basis because someone got their facts wrong. You may remember the news story about a young woman in a beauty pageant who was crowned queen & as she walked around with the crown on her head the judges started comparing notes because they knew she wasn’t the one they voted # ONE. It was embarrassing for all concerned when they had to back-peddle & remove the crown from one woman’s head & place it on the real winners head, all because of a mistake in counting.

Paul Harvey told about one of the top national credit reporters who messed up a woman’s credit & it took her ten years to get them to clean up their mistake. After all those years of suffering the credit company finally found [admitted to] their problem & the woman was given millions in compensation, but not before wrecking her good name & her emotions in the process.It’s almost impossible to overstate the importance of having our facts straight before we allow our opinions to jell, especially when it’s something we are telling to others as the truth. There’ll be plenty of time to disagree, but first get the truth.

2. DON’T INFLATE THE IMPORTANCE OF ONE DISAGREEMENT.

Paul & Barnabas didn't over inflate the importance of the disagreement they had. How do I know that? As we’ve already stated, Paul & Barnabas had the love & grace to sit down, spread out a map & say, “You go here & I’ll go there.” Every battle isn’t Armageddon & it’s always wise to choose our battles.If you’re having a disagreement with someone, here are a few pointers that should help;

1. Check your motive. Is your problem a valid point or is it a personality problem.

2. Check your spiritual fruit. Love, joy, peace, etc.Don’t go into a disagreement until you know your love level is higher than the disagreement level.Read & reread 1 Corinthians 13.

3. Have you lifted this up to God in prayer? Prayer will set our hearts & minds right.

4. Have you searched the scriptures on this matter?—Do you know what the bible teaches about it?

5. If you disagree, don’t be disagreeable. Our positions don’t get us into trouble, our dispositions do.

3. ISOLATE THE TRUE ISSUE & STAY ON THE POINT. DON’T BROADEN THE AGENDA.

A couple [I’m sure all married folk have experienced this, I know I have] will be out driving & get into an argument over directions. Maybe the man will turn on the wrong street or make some other mistake the wife feels will put them off course. It’s important to remember it’s just that one corned not all corners for the rest of our lives.And it’s extremely important to remember that our mother-in-law has nothing to do with this corner.A couple can get into a disagreement over the wife spending money on clothes & & then she’ll say to the husband, “Well, you bought a new shotgun & you already had two guns.” Then the man might say, “I don’t like your old momma anyway.” Where did momma come from? Money, money, money, momma. Once it gets to this point old Satan has a heyday.

A person in church might come by the pastor & say, “I think the music was a little loud this morning. And while I’m at it, your tie was a little too flashy last Sunday.” I’ve seen this spirit get loose & go on to say, “And I don’t like your hair, your shoes, clothes, your car, house or kids.”You see what that is? It’s broadening the agenda.

I’m sure you know that a church of any size will have an agenda for their annual business meeting. The meeting has to be announced far enough in advance for all the folk to plan for it. Then the pastor & deacons will take all the business of the church & formulate an agenda for the meeting.As a rule after a certain time no new business will be intertained simply becaause if it wasn’t done this way, you’d have people getting up during the meeting & bringing up things that would lead the proceedings far a -field. Precious time would be wasted & people would leave all dazed & confused. Centuries of experience has taught that even the best of God’s people can get into strife if meetings like this aren’t conducted in a timely, planned & deliberate way.

Paul said,--Avoid foolish & unlearned questions for they gender strife. 2 Tim 2:23. We don’t see this happening with Paul & Barnabas. As far as we know they stayed on the one issue, worked it out & never moved out of peace.

4. LEARN HOW TO BE HONEST WITHOUT BEING BRUTAL.

In John 4:7-39, when Jesus sat down at the well & talked to the woman, he could have taken the truth & destroyed her with it. She’d had five husbands & was shacked up with one she wasn’t married to. If Jesus had thrown her past in her face, she’d have shriveled up but he didn’t. He could have said, “woman, don’t go telling people you’ve been talking to me,” but He didn’t. He allowed her to act as a messenger to go into her little town & tell the story of this man who’d told her all she’d ever done. Many people came out to see Jesus & became believers because of her testimony.

I heard about a lady who mastered the art of telling the truth without being brutal. Her husband told her one day, “Honey, I wish I could be smart, educated & handsome for you because you deserve that kind of husband.” She answered, “But I don’t want someone smart, educated & handsome, I want you.”

A young man told his dad he felt everybody in the world hated him. The dad said, “That’s silly son, everyone hasn’t met you yet.

If you watch the news at all you know that in our country, you can’t do things that appear brutal. Even if a person is caught mistreating a dog or cat, they are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Human nature recoils if we see a human being or animal being treated unfairly. Though I love the animals & believe in treating them with kindness, I have a problem with the fact that we can kill unborn babies with fewer problems than we have when cats & dogs are mistreated. But "don’t be cruel" is always a good motto.We shouldn’t make statements like; “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” or “you’re as strong as an Ox & almost as smart,” or “honey, I wish you’d lose a little weight, when you walk in front of the TV we miss three episodes.” It’s much better to learn to say; “I may be wrong but here’s what I think.”

5. NEVER BREAK YOUR PLOW OVER A STUMP!

This is a very “old school” illustration that comes from the farming culture. My father was raised on a South Georgia farm & he shared many philosophies with me that originated on “dirt poor” farms.My grandfather used to teach his sons that some of the richest soil had stumps growing in it. What the farmer had to do was plow around the stumps instead of hitting them with his relativity fragile plow. This might seem like a no-brainer because anyone can see how unwise it would be to intentionally use a light plow on an entrenched & sturdy stump. The stumps were deeply embedded & rock solid. If a farmer tried to pull one of them up with his plow he’d not only tear- up his plow but He’d break down the horse or mule pulling the plow. So the farmer would simply plow around stumps.

There will be “stumps” growing in every field we’ll ever work in be it the ministry or a secular business. These stumps will be of the human variety. They aren’t of themselves demonic, but Satan sets them in your path trying to get you to do or say something you’ll regret. It might be a kindly old aunt, grandmother, mother-in-law, boss, neighbor or any other person “planted” in your field.I remember in the first church I pastored there was a “stump” in the form of a little old lady who’d been in the church for fifty years. She was against me from the day I arrived in town & she’d sit in the congregation & glare at me when I preached. Looking back she was the best friend I ever had because at least I always knew where she stood & she kept me sharp. I would study and pray an extra hour just with sister……in mind. I knew she was looking for any mistake I might make & she’d trumpet it to the high heavens.

I challenge you to look at your life & pin-point the stumps in your “field.” Again, they aren’t necessarily Satanic, they may be some of best folk you’ll ever meet, but God has chosen to use them to challenge, chisel, sand-paper, test your patience & polish you up.We should remember that the more serious the issue, the higher our love level must be.

Paul took the time to totally expound on love in 1 Corinthians 13. He not only tells us what love is, he tells us what love isn’t. Everything you & I do & say must be filtered through that chapter & everything good we might accomplish, even if it’s being burned at the stake, If it’s not done in love, it won't count.If you need another proof-text to show if you’re dealing in love or if others are dealing with you in love, apply James’ test;

But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits without partiality, and without hypocrisy.-James 3:17

If we’re going to have any friends, hold a job long or live in anything closely resembling peace & happiness, we’ll all have to plow around a stump now & then. But some gorgeous & nutritious crops are grown in some awfully stump-filled farm land.

6. IF YOU HAVE A DISAGREEMENT WITH SOMEONE, AND IT TURNS INTO A POINT OF SEPARATION, MAYBE NOBODY WAS WRONG. MAYBE A SEPARATION IS GOOD EVEN IN GOD’S EYES.

The bible doesn’t say Paul & Barnabas were at odds about everything & on every point for life; they just had a difference of opinion on one point. Obviously God blessed both these ministering teams.Paul didn’t write poison-pen letters to the churches against Barnabas. Barnabas didn’t send letters saying “Don’t listen to Paul. I know him & he’s a scoundrel.” They just split up “and the church rolled on.”

Some churches like to Baptize by totally dunking the individual & that seems to me to be the bible way. But when you think about it, others want to sprinkle them with water. Some want to baptize folk back ways, front ways or sideways. There was such as drought in Georgia recently the Baptists were sprinkling, the Methodist’s & Episcopals were spraying from a bottle & the Catholics were offering handiwipes. Maybe I’m wrong but it seems to me whether we squirt-em, spray-em, sprinkle-em or dunk-em, we should find a way to meet in the middle because in the final analysis, we’re all heading for the same heaven.

WHAT IS ‘BIG-BOY’ CHRISTIANITY? IT’S LOOKING FOR THINGS WE CAN AGREE ON & AS MUCH AS IS POSSIBLE, LIVING PEACEFULLY.

Let me tell you about the biggest baby in the bible.We find him in Jonah 4:1-11. Jonah was furious. He lost his temper. He yelled at God, “God! I knew it-when I was back home, I knew this was going to happen! That’s why I ran off to Tarshish! I knew you were sheer grace and mercy, not easily angered, rich in love, and ready at the drop of a hat to turn your plans of punishment into a program of forgiveness!So, God, if you won’t kill them, kill me! I’m better off dead!”God said, “What do you have to be angry about?”

But Jonah just left. He went out of the city to the east and sat down in a sulk. He put together a makeshift shelter of leafy branches and sat there in the shade to see what would happen to the city.God arranged for a broad-leafed tree to spring up. It grew over Jonah to cool him off and get him out of his angry sulk. Jonah was pleased and enjoyed the shade. Life was looking up.But then God sent a worm.

By the dawn of the next day, the worm had bored into the shade tree and it withered away. The sun beat down on Jonah’s head and he started to faint. He prayed to die: “I’m better off dead!”Then God said to Jonah, “What right do you have to get angry about this shade tree?”Jonah said, “Plenty of right. It’s made me angry enough to die.”God said, “What’s this? How is it that you can change your feelings from pleasure to anger overnight about a mere shade tree that you did nothing to get? You neither planter or watered it. It grew up one night and died the next night. So, why can’t I likewise change what I feel about Nineveh from anger to pleasure, this big city of more than 120,000 childlike people who don’t yet know right from wrong, to say nothing of all the innocent animals?”

This big baby named Jonah was mad at God for blessing & forgiving the people he’d preached to.

What a contrast to the words of Jesus on the cross;

“Father, forgive them, they know not what they do."

Jonah---Not a very BIG-BOY!!

BLESSINGS,

John

Do You Have "A Bone To Pick" With God"?

2011-09-07T09:40:00.008-04:00

By John Stallings

How would you react if you learned that you were going to die soon?

Once the initial shock wore off, what feelings would you be left with? Denial? Anger? Helplessness? Maybe even hopelessness? Can you imagine yourself being calm about it?

Throughout my years in ministry I’ve met with many people who were facing the very real fact that they were in their last days of life. And as you can probably imagine, they each faced it in different ways.

In a church I was pastoring several years ago there was a man in the congregation who just learned he had a very rapid-moving blood cancer.He was in his mid--sixties. The story is too complicated to tell here but suffice it to say this man was as angry as angry can be.

I sat several times while he told me how unfair he found this whole turn of events. He and his wife had saved and planned their whole lives for retirement, hoping to travel to many wonderful places and do many wonderful things. But he was diagnosed with this cancer shortly after retirement.

Fighting cancer had become his retirement activity. And as he began to see the cancer gaining the upper hand, he came to realize that he would never be able to take any of those trips or do any of the fun activities that he had so looked forward to.

I officiated at his funeral and I’ve never experienced such a “thick fog” of deep questioning that hung in air throughout the service. I feel sure this man went to heaven but I also feel he had some questions for God when he arrived.

It turns out, lots of folks are angry, and have a bone to pick with God. Why does He allow babies to starve in third world countries, why does He allow bad things to happen, why does He -- either actively or passively -- cause so much grief?

What does it suggest when many people, according to various studies, are angry at the guy at the top?

"We find that anywhere between one third and two thirds of people we've surveyed in the United States admit they sometimes feel angry at God in response to some current thing they are suffering with, such as a cancer diagnosis," psychologist Julie Exline of Case Western Reserve University said in an interview. "It's a very high number."

Although people rarely talk about it, almost everyone experiences anger toward God at some point in their lives, commonly after the diagnosis of a serious illness, the death of a loved one or a trauma.

In fact, nearly two out of three people report that they've felt angry at God, according to a study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Many get angry because they believe that God is responsible for the negative events in their lives.

We went to see a movie a few years ago called “The Apostle.” Robert Duvall played the part of Sonny, a ragged, hot-tempered, womanizing evangelist. Mostly because of his arrogance Sonny loses his church & his wife. His wife is leaving him for his youth pastor. Mercy! Angry & broken Sonny moves back into his mother’s house where he shouts, paces & hollers to God from an upstairs window.

“Somebody, I say somebody has taken my wife. They stole my church….I don’t mean to yell at you but I’m mad at you. I can’t take it. Give me a sign Lord. Blow this pain out of me. Lord, Jehovah, if you won’t give me back my wife, give me peace. Give it to me---give it to me….give it to me. Give me peace. I’m confused. I’m mad at you. I love you Lord but I’m mad at you. I’ve always called you Jesus & you’ve always called me Sonny—what should I do?”

His prayer is so loud that a neighbor calls Sonny’s mother to complain about the noise. “That’s my son” she explains. “Ever since he was a little- bitty boy sometimes he talks to the Lord & sometimes he yells at the Lord. And tonight he happens to be yelling at Him.” Old Sonny had a real bone to pick with God.

A BONE TO PICK

If someone has a bone to pick with you, it means you've done something wrong, at least they think you have, and they’re upset and want to talk to you about it.

In my mind it conjures up a picture of a dog, going through the arduous pains of getting every last speck of meat off a bone, and it looks like it’s going to take some time.

Or maybe it’s two birds who’ve found a bone and they’re “head to head” picking this bone, multi-tasking as they gnaw, talking something out between them.

In any case, ‘I have a bone to pick with you” is rarely a sign of “good things to come.”

HAVE YOU EVER HAD A BONE TO PICK WITH GOD?

Let’s be frank; that sounds a little odd to us doesn’t it? It sounds irreverent & entirely inappropriate. Well, maybe not. There is such a thing as confrontational prayer. This kind of prayer occurs when I bring my questions, doubts, disagreements & even my complaints directly to God. Sometimes its prayer spoken out of tortured complaint, out of suffering or outrageous anger in what I perceive to be the absence of justice.

You may say “I would never talk to God in anything less than soft respectful tones. Who am I to “Haul God to court?” Excellent points.

However, as long as your heart is in the right place and your attitude is one of humility, “picking a bone with God” will revolutionize your prayer life as well as your relationship with God. You see, in prayer God wants us to engage Him. It’s almost as if He’s saying “Talk to me, engage me, respond to me. Anything is better than the silent treatment & the cold shoulder. Argue, rant, rave, stew, disagree, but do something. Or worse, don’t come to me with pious words that are empty & fake.”

Prayer is a personal & passionate conversation with God. It’s an exercise that involves both of you—the real you—not the pretend you, the false you.

There’s a fascinating story in the Old Testament that focuses on God’s conflict with the people of Israel wandering in the wilderness. Moses, who finding himself in the middle of the conflict between God and the Israelites, -has “a bone to pick with God.”

This story describes a lot of weep’n and a wail’n. The Israelites have a bone to pick and are complaining bitterly about their hardship within the hearing of the Lord. They are crying out to God. After all, the wilderness has been no picnic, and the food has been awful! God did send them manna to eat. It came down at night when the dew settled on the camp; and there was plenty of it. But that wasn’t the point. The manna tasted bad. It probably smelled like old shoes; and it got stronger the longer you cooked it. It had to be used very sparingly. It’s no wonder the Israelites complained about losing their appetite, and longed for the meat and fish, the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic of Egypt.

But look at how God deals with this. Listen to God’s answer to Israel’s complaints.

“The Lord heard you when you wailed, ‘If only we had meat to eat! We were better off in Egypt. Now the Lord will give you meat, and you will eat it. You will not eat it for just one day, or two days, or five, ten, or twenty days, but for a whole month—until it comes out of your nostrils and you loath it—because you have rejected the Lord, who is among you, and have wailed before him, saying, “Why did we ever leave Egypt.”

God is a God of love, but He’s a God of tough love. When God’s anger is stirred, God speaks and acts, and God doesn’t worry about being polite or politically correct. God makes judgments, judgments that self-serving religious people dare deconstruct at their own peril. When humans put their own will before the will of God, there are consequences.

Ever shared any of your anger with God? Have you let God in on your doubts and disappointments with Him?

Large segments of the Psalms are complaints. Yeah, complaints, good old fashioned griping, and bellyaching. You can call it “whining with just cause” if you want to. Call it whatever you want to call it but its there and it’s there repeatedly. It is what it is!

“Where are you God? Hello. Why have you abandoned me? If you are the big God you say you are why are you letting all this happen to me? Don’t you care? Aren’t you aware of my situation? Aren’t you going to do anything about it? What’s the use in worshipping you if life is going to be like this?”

JOB

Job is a put your cards on the table type of guy. He doesn’t pull any punches.

While his friends’ mouth off the traditional religious mumbo jumbo, always praise God and let Him off the hook, Job lays his case out against God.

Late in the book God pulls rank on Job and in response to Job’s bellyaching asks, “Where were you when I created the world?” In effect God says, “If you could have done a better job -Job why didn’t you make the stars and the sun and the animals and all the rest of it?”

Yes, God shuts Job up, but Job wasn’t exactly nice and patient. He was honest. He was honest to God and to his friends and to himself.

JEREMIAH

Even more confrontational with God than Job is the prophet Jeremiah. Sometimes I have to pinch myself when I read Jeremiah 20 because it’s so radical.

We read in the 20th chapter that Jeremiah tells God this: “O Lord, thou has deceived me, and I was deceived.” In other words-“God, you lied to me.”

Jeremiah walked into God’s office one day and laid his “preacher papers” on God’s desk and said, “I quit.” He was so discouraged he felt he couldn’t go on. As a matter of fact, Jeremiah said, “God, I’ll never speak your name again. From now on you’re ‘what’s His name’ in the sky.”

Of course we know that he soon hit the dirt squalling like a baby and said—“I can’t quit, I just can’t! His word is like fire shut up in my bones.” Jeremiah got his heart right and finally accepted the fact that he wasn’t God-God was God!

If our hearts are right its fine with God for us to be angry with Him providing we do certain things with that anger.

TALK TO GOD WHEN YOU’RE ANGRY WITH HIM

When Jeremiah is angry with God, what does he do? He talks to God about it. He prays. God wants us to talk to him. “Just a little talk with Jesus makes it right.”And Jeremiah's prayer is honest. God wants us to be honest. He doesn't want us to put on a “spiritually correct” performance.

It isn't that God needs us to be honest – he sees through the performance anyway. It's that we need to be honest, so that we can move forward spiritually. The more we lie to ourselves, to God, and to other people, the more impossible it is for us to move on.

One of the most important things to do when you're angry with God is to talk to God about what you're angry about. Tell God honestly where you are.

KEEP WORKING WHEN YOU’RE ANGRY WITH GOD

Another important thing to do when you're angry with God is to keep going at whatever God has given you to do. Jeremiah wanted to stop, but he didn't.

One of the things that will help us not to lose the plot spiritually is to keep going, even when we're angry. Thankfully anger is one of the quickest emotions to pass if we’ll give it a chance.

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU THINK GOD HAS PROMISED YOU

Apparently Jeremiah thought God had promised that his ministry would succeed. But he hadn't. He'd told Jeremiah what to do, but didn't give him any guarantees about the outcome.

In fact, God had warned Jeremiah right at the start that he was going to have a really tough time. You can read about it in chapter 1. God hadn't actually deceived Jeremiah, although he felt betrayed and let down.

Be careful what you think God has promised. God doesn't promise us all super-success in ministry, or financial well-being, or a marriage made in heaven, or robust physical health.

The times I've most felt angry with God have been when I've thought God had promised something, and it hasn't turned out, or hasn't gone how I expected.

But later on – maybe years later - when I calm down and look back, I realize that God never promised what I thought he'd promised. Be careful here. Check it out against the Bible.

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU SAY TO GOD

It's OK to be angry with God, and it's good to talk to God about how you feel – but be careful what you say. Anger can very easily tip over into something more dangerous.

Getting back to Job; he was obviously someone who had a raw deal from life even though he was later given double for his trouble. Like Jeremiah, Job got around to questioning what God was doing, and to cursing the day he was born.

Job's wife egged him on to curse God.

The Bible says:

'His wife said to him, “Are you still holding on to your integrity? Curse God and die!”

He replied, “You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”

In all this, Job did not sin in what he said. (Job 2:9-10).

Job was angry. Job asked questions. Job yelled at God – but he didn't sin in what he said. He didn't say that God was responsible for evil.

One of our big problems when we get angry is that we quickly lose control of what we say.

The idea here is that God is great in power, utterly in control of all that happens. Yes, he is kind and understanding towards us when we're angry with him – but he's also a God of justice and righteousness, so be careful what you say to him.

So we've said -let's get real with God:

• It's OK to be angry with God
• Talk to God while you're angry
• Keep going even when you're angry
• Be careful how you're angry

The bottom line is; we’re angry. And since no one else seems to be available to be angry at, we get angry at God.

And we feel guilty. We feel we shouldn't get angry at God! We worry that God's feelings will be hurt. Or worse yet, God will return our anger - and we all know how much better at being angry God could be!

Nonsense.

This isn't like the old saying about not teaching a pig to sing, because you won't succeed and it will only irritate the pig. Being angry at God may indeed have a salutary effect on your life. And I don't believe it will irritate God.

Confronting God? Arguing with God? Many of us were taught that when we approach God we fold our hands, and close our eyes, think good thoughts about God & say pretty words to Him. The reality is we’ve too often been told that prayer is “getting stuff from God” when in reality prayer is “getting in touch with God.”

First of all, God already knows that we’re angry - if not, then God isn't God. Being all-knowing, God is quite familiar with your anger, even before you are. Our anger will not come as a surprise to God.

Second, God knows the source of our anger. God knows the events and experiences that make us angry. God knows our emotions and feelings. God knows all about our situation. God might even share our anger!

Third, God knows why we’re angry - the feelings of helplessness, fear, confusion, and dismay that lead to our anger. God intimately knows the inner workings of our minds and spirits, and God knows our limitations. We often are angry because we’re powerless, and God knows our powerlessness.

Fourth, God can take it. Oh yes, our anger is so titanic that God’s knees will buckle before us! Nonsense. God has faced greater anger than ours and survived! God's shoulders are broad and powerful - God can certainly deal with our puny anger. We do not run the risk of harming God with our anger.

So if God already knows about our anger, understands the source of our anger, discerns why we’re angry, and can easily handle our anger, why are we reluctant or guilty about expressing our anger?

In fact, some times it’s good to vent a little. Rather than keeping it all pent up inside us, some times just letting go and yelling our heads off can be a good thing. Too often we let our anger fester inside us, building up and growing until it seeks escape in destructive and violent ways. Let off some of that steam. Tell God what you think. You just might feel better and God won't be any worse off - honest!

Then you can go about the business of seeing with a clearer mind if there might be some way for you to do something about the situation. Clear the air with God about your anger, and then sit down with God and try to figure something out. But it is often necessary to get that anger and fury out of the way first. Having done that, you can more calmly and dispassionately consider the problem about which you are angry and find ways to do something about it.

So be angry at God. God can take it. There won't be any retribution from God. And you might be able to do some clear and constructive thinking about what made you angry.

Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath…Eph.4:26

Blessings,

John

Burnout

2011-08-31T15:11:00.041-04:00

By John Stallings

A lady had a small son named Jason.

When he was 7, she sent him off to school one day and a little while later there was a knock at the door. She opened the door and it was Jason. She said “Jason, what are you doing here?”

He said, “I've quit school!”
"She said, “Why have you quit school?”
He said, "Well, school is too long, it’s too hard, and it’s boring too.”
She said, “Jason, you’ve just described life, get back on the bus!”

To me that’s funny in a cute sort of way but more importantly it underscores the fact that we’re living in a world where even the very young are becoming fidgety, restless and jaded.

Pressure and stress are far greater than they were in times past and some of it stems from the many more opportunities that are available thanks to modern technology.

BURNOUT-RUNNING ON EMPTY

Burnout as a concept creeped into our lexicon back during the Second World War. Battle fatigue became a common malady. It resulted from the prolonged stress of being on the front lines of battle without relief. The officers soon learned that they had to pull their personnel back and give them some relief, some R & R in order for them to be effective in future battles.

Today a much heard term is career burnout. It describes a very similar syndrome. If you feel that you're going into battle everyday as you go to your job, you may be burning out. You're frustrated because life isn't fun anymore. You drag yourself home each day, unable to enjoy your family because you're emotionally depleted and physically exhausted. You're in the process of being burned out.

I’m sure you’re familiar with the term “clergy burnout.” The number of men and women leaving the ministry on an almost daily basis is appalling. This is one of the real issues in the church today.

“Burn-out” is an eighties/ninety’s term for “growing weary. “Compassion fatigue” is the spiritual term.”

Not to trivialize the situation, but burnout is often more- “disillusionment than exhaustion,” and more “discouragement than fatigue.” Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

Burnout is a human response to long-term exhaustion and diminished interest, and may take months or years to manifest. Burnout is a demon born of the society and times we live in and our ongoing struggle to invest our lives with meaning. Burnout isn’t a condition that gets better by being ignored, nor is it any kind of disgrace. On the contrary, it’s a problem born of good intentions.

What exactly is burnout? It’s defined in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary as "exhaustion of physical or emotional strength or motivation usually as a result of prolonged stress or frustration."

A burned-out light bulb doesn’t produce light. Neither does a burned-out Christian! God promises that you and I will reap the harvest if we just don’t burn out.

Do God's faithful people ever tire of doing good? Apparently so. I say that because Paul addresses this very issue in Galatians.

Listen to Paul…

And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we will reap if we faint not. Gal. 6:9

As I said, burnout in a Christian is also called compassion fatigue. It's well doer's burnout. It happens sometimes when a very dedicated, committed disciple of Jesus suddenly wakes up and realized he's tired - tired of giving, tired of doing, tired of serving. He finds that the joy of service is gone.

Apparently the Apostle realized that it’s possible for the "heart" to go out of our service and perhaps cause us to give up and quit.

I. THOSE WHO MUST BE ON GUARD FOR BURNOUT…

A. Any Workers in God’s kingdom can get weary.

This passage wasn't addressed to a select few. It went out to multiple churches in Galatia.

Preachers Sunday school teachers, Missionaries, those with gifts of serving, and others are susceptible to this. It happens to all kinds of people concerned for the work of the Lord.

B. Parents sometimes get weary.

I read about a woman who telephoned a friend and asked how she was feeling. "Terrible," came the reply over the wire. "My head's splitting and my back and legs are killing me. The house is a mess, and the kids are simply driving me crazy." Very sympathetically the caller said, "Listen, go and lie down, I'll come over right away and cook lunch for you, clean up the house, and take care of the children while you get some rest. By the way, how is Sam?"
"Sam?" the complaining housewife gasped. "I have no husband named Sam."
"My heavens," exclaimed the first woman, "I must have dialed the wrong number."
There was a long pause. "Are you still coming over?" the mother asked hopefully.

Those of us with our children raised are prone to say to those with little ones, "Enjoy it, 'cause it'll be over sooner than you think." We may have forgotten that it doesn't look that way when you still have two in diapers or a house full of teenagers!

C. Those who have served a long time get tired.

Length of service doesn't always make us more faithful. We’re seeing more and more husbands/wives desert their mates. Yes, it happens in the faith, too.

When we’re discouraged our motivation for completing a task dwindles!

My father was in nursing homes the last six years of his life. I dearly loved him and he loved me. But after a year of going to visit with him almost every day, I began to lag.

For a couple of years of that time I had to drive over a hundred miles one way to visit with him but even during that time we “bent over backwards” to see him often. It was a labor of love. I knew in my heart of hearts I didn’t have to go so often but I wanted to. The fact that on many of those visits I knew he didn’t know we were there didn’t matter because I wanted to see him, I needed to see him.

Sometimes we can see others making mistakes and unwise decisions, and even give them good sound advice but when it comes to internalizing the same truth for ourselves we have a problem being objective.

One day I realized I was burning out, burning out- of all things while doing something good, something noble. Burnout leaves clues, like pulling up to “McDonald’s -To Go” window and trying to make a bank deposit. In order to survive I had to begin to pace myself. I had many other responsibilities. I had the desire, but I’d lost heart, temporarily. We adjusted our schedules and our visits and got some rest and slowly our “heart” came back. I had to deal with my mother too because she was laboring under the same compulsion that we were. We were foolishly barreling down the track trying to out-run each other.

By the grace of God we did what we had to do, acknowledging that we were only human and in the final analysis everyone was the better for it. The bottom line was, we were all on a “self-imposed” treadmill.

In times like these the Devil will try to guilt you. He’ll climb up on your back and ride you and use your ears for stirrups if you’ll allow it. He wants to either “freeze you,” or “fry you,” in to doing too much or too little. Don’t allow it!

D. Those who have seen few results can feel the weariness in well-doing.

We are a results oriented society. When you fish, you produce the stringer of trophies. When you hunt, you save the antlers. When you golf, you have your scorecards. Service to the Lord isn't always that easy to measure as far as results.

JOSHUA

When Joshua sent the soldiers to Ai after Jericho, they thought the victory would come easily. When the men of Ai routed them, the Bible says in Joshua 7: 5,

“The hearts of the people melted, and became as water.”

They were depressed. They lost heart.

Have you ever became depressed over something and said, “Oh, what’s the use anyway?” Have you ever said, “I use to really care. Now I don’t care whether I do it or not?”

We always give up in our hearts before we give up in actions! The Bible teaches in Proverbs 23: 7,“ For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.”

When we “lose heart” we are in danger of quitting. Jesus taught us in Luke 18: 1 not to “lose heart” in our prayers, “And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint.”

A wealthy woman called the manager of a concert hall. She asked, “Have you found a diamond pendant? I think I lost it in your building last night.”
The manager said, “No, we haven’t found it, but we will look. Please hold the line.”
After several minutes of searching someone found the diamond.
The manager came back on the line and said, “I’ve got good news. We found your pendant . . . Hello? . . . Hello?”
The woman became weary of waiting and had hung up.
The diamond was never claimed.

Whatever your situation tonight: THE ANSWER IS ON THE WAY . . DON’T HANG UP!

It can happen when we grow weary, thinking that non-visible results mean no results.

E. Those effected by the lethargy of others are candidates for this problem of weariness.

Cynicism is a danger to those who work next to people who don't see the real issues and/or don't care. Cynicism is an outlook that says, "Things are never going to work out. It will always be like this," etc.

F. Those experiencing temporary failures can feel weary.

Remember Elijah under the Juniper tree saying- "Lord, just kill me!" Even though the great victory on Mt. Carmel was a decisive blow to the idolatry in Elijah's day, when Jezebel didn't cow to it, Elijah melted in discouragement.

The failure was only temporary, but it took God a while to convince Elijah of it.

G. Those who’re rejected sometimes want to quit.

Rejection hurts! When you plow your life and time into someone and they turn, not only against what you teach, but against you personally, the temptation is to say, "Never again will I put that much into another human being!"

If you’ve lived very long you understand that people will “flip” on you.

Samuel the prophet experienced this. The Israelites rejected his clear, correct teaching and clamored for a king. He got down-in-the-mouth -and that's a bad place for a prophet to be! God finally told him that they hadn't rejected him [Samuel] but they had rejected Him [God.] It's hard not to get the two confused, though.

H. Those who are lonely can become weary in well-doing.

When God came to Elijah under the Juniper tree he asked him what was wrong. He said,

"I have been very zealous for the LORD, the God of hosts; for the sons of Israel have forsaken Thy covenant, torn down Thine altars and killed Thy prophets with the sword. And I alone am left; and they seek my life, to take it away."

Doing God's work can have some lonely times.

Sometimes, in order to follow God, you and I must do it alone. It hurts to think that you're going the right way, yet everyone else thinks you’re crazy! Remember Noah?

I. The criticized and mocked can become weary.

Personal criticism always hurts. Sometimes it’s good for us, but sometimes it is unfounded and wrong.

In 1923, as Russian-born engineer Vladimir Zworykin worked on his latest invention, he was told to "spend your time on something more useful." But Zworykin didn't -- and in 1929 he obtained the first patent for his invention, color television.

Among his many achievements, Zworykin also helped perfect the electron microscope and other devices that greatly advanced medical and biological research.

He retired as director of electronic research for RCA in 1954, and in 1966 was awarded the National Medal of Science. Yet criticism marked almost all the milestones of his journey.

J. Those who get caught up in comparisons set themselves up for weariness in well doing.

This sometimes happens to small church pastors. Thousands of them are quitting. Why? It's because the big church is being held up as the standard of success. Little churches are viewed as hokey and anemic. They're on the sick list. They're useless if you listen to some folk. They'd be better off put out of their misery.

For a man who sacrifices the way many small church ministers must sacrifice in order to do the work (I’ve been there) this becomes the straw that breaks the camel's back. I can remember a time when any work for God was considered valid. The man who had the courage to go out on his own and raise up a congregation from nothing had the admiration of the entire body of Christ. Today that isn’t necessarily the case.

Preachers used to be respected by society. Their work was viewed as essential for the good of the community. Today many are held up as objects of scorn and ridicule, or made to look like idiots by the media. [When was the last time you heard a media story about the selfless deeds of some preacher? When was the last time you heard of some scandal involving a preacher?] Our young people aren't going into the ministry today like they have in the past. These are some of the reasons why.

K. Those who feel bored can burnout.

What I refer to here is the-same-old-same-old, day after day, week after week, year after year.

February 2, 1985, during the Daytona 500 Auto Race, the $250,000 car driven by professional driver Donnie Allison was only on its third lap when it rolled to a stop on the infield side of the track. Nothing was mechanically wrong with the car . . . neither was there anything wrong with the driver.

What was the problem? In all the hustle and bustle of doing everything that had to be done to prepare the car for the race . . . somebody forgot to make sure there was fuel in the car. IT WAS OUT OF GAS!

The skill of the driver and the potential of the car were completely nullified.. . simply because somebody forgot to put gas in the car.

In life, regardless of our “skill” and “potential,” if we fail to insure that we have the proper amount of “Spiritual Gas” in our Spiritual tank, WE’LL SIMPLY RUN OUT OF GAS!

IT’S SO EASY TO QUIT . . . All we have to do is keep going until we’re “running on empty!” Then, when the fuel gauge reads empty . . . we simply quit!

We go from “giving out” to “giving up!”
Cars that aren’t refueled will run out of gas.
Wells that aren’t replenished will run out of water.
Batteries that aren’t recharged lose their power.

We aren’t any different. A Christian that is not refueled, replenished, and recharged will burn out.

L. Those experiencing poor health.

As we grow older we must adjust to ailments that limit our capacity. In the process, we must also adjust our expectations of ourselves.

For many years in evangelistic work we practically lived in our car. We’d close a three or four week revival on Sunday night and then drive a thousand miles or more and start another meeting on Wednesday. Once in my early twenties, I’d spent close to a year in California preaching. We were so anxious to get back home to Florida that I drove three days and nights without sleeping. This is craziness! Then we rented a motel room and went to bed and I couldn’t sleep.

Obviously I couldn’t do anything remotely akin to that now. If we don’t slow down a little and act our age, we’ll pay the consequences in many ways. When you and I “burn the candle at both ends,” we’re not as “bright as we think.”

HOW DO WE PREVENT BURNOUT?

Here are five suggestions…

1. REST

Listen to Exodus 20: 8-10:

Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:
But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:
For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

The command to rest is just as valid as the command to work!

A “Workaholic” on a street corner held a sign: “Will work for the fun of it!” Some of us with some age on us have to ask ourselves how much fun we can stand.

Although God wants us to enjoy our work . . . He also wants us to enjoy our rest!

2: CUT YOUR WORKLOAD

Listen to Hebrews 12: 1:

“Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.”

In the old west cowboys would use branding irons to brand cattle. Sometimes they’d put too many in the fire and the fire would go out, thus, our modern day term,- too many irons in the fire! Too many “little things” will “pull us down!”

Sea-going ships have to be brought into dry dock to clean off the barnacles. A barnacle is a small crustacean that grows on the hull of the ship. It’s not big enough by itself to cause the ship any problems. However, when enough of them attached themselves to the hull, it causes so much drag that the ship is actually slowed down and has to be brought into dry dock to be cleaned.

Song of Solomon 2: 15, …The little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes.”

If we don’t let go of something we will eventually let go of everything… one way or another.

3: LOOSEN UP YOUR SCHEDULE A LITTLE BIT.

You and I must make every effort to live one day at a time.

Matthew 6: 34, “Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

We are not in a sprint . . . we are in a marathon!

4: STAY FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT.

Ephesians 5: 18: “And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit.”

Usually, when a person burns out, he has been trying to live the Christian life by the flesh rather than by the Spirit of God! The disciples didn’t acquire the power they needed even after Jesus was raised from the dead. You’ll remember they were still cowering behind closed doors. It was after Pentecost where they were filled with the Holy Spirit that they were empowered to turn the world upside down.

5. RENEW YOUR VISION

Where there is no vision, the people perish… Proverbs 29: 18:

Renowned scientist Albert Einstein was on a train.
The conductor asked to see his ticket. Einstein couldn’t find it.
The conductor assured him it would be okay, he could mail him the ticket when he found it.
Einstein told the conductor that it wouldn’t be okay . . . He needed the ticket to know where he was going! [Did the grand old man have a “Senior moment?]

Sometimes we need things to renew our vision of where we are going!

How do we prevent burn out??
1: Rest from your labor.
2: Reduce your workload.
3: Regulate your schedule.
4: Refuel your spirit.
5: Renew your vision.

But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.-Isaiah 40:31

Blessings,

John

The Young And The Restless

2011-08-26T10:07:00.004-04:00

By John Stallings

I’ve never been a fan of soap operas.

I think the reason so many people enjoy the “soaps” is they make them feel normal. Or perhaps they make them feel that others are having more problems than they are.

I can get the same feeling from the six-o’clock news or some movies for that matter.

If you like soap operas or if you just love a good story, you’re going to love this. As in the “soaps,” we need a reminder of what’s gone before….. so here it is.

God called Abraham & Sarah to leave their home country & head out to the far land of Canaan, taking with them the promise of descendants as numerous as the stars. But for decades Sarah was unable to bear children until finally the birth of Isaac.

Isaac was a late bloomer, who at forty was still living in the basement of his parent’s tent. Concerned about the future of the family lineage, Abraham sends his servant back to his homeland to seek a bride for Isaac. He finds just the right one; a beautiful, generous, energetic & determined young lady named Rebekah. She responds to the stranger & agrees to go with him to a far away land to marry another stranger.

GOTTA LOVE THIS YOUNG WOMAN CALLED REBEKAH!

Isaac married Rebekah when he was 40 years old. Speaking of soap operas…. Rebekah too was barren- so Isaac asked the Lord to let her bear children.

Have you ever noticed how many women in the Bible struggled to have children? Mary the mother of Jesus was a notable exception of course. Rebekah, like her mother-in-law Sarah, like Hannah the mother of Samuel, like Elizabeth the mother of John the Baptist, struggled with the reality that it was difficult for them to get pregnant.

God answered Isaac’s prayer & Rebekah got pregnant, but it was a difficult pregnancy. Twin boys were mixing it up inside her. In Genesis 25:22-23 when she inquired about this “young & restless” unborn duo, God answered; “you’re carrying two nations in your womb.”

These boys’ rambunctious little hands were already clawing at each other in Rebecca’s womb. They were at war before they saw the light of day.

The conflict goes on even to this day. Some say it’s the longest family feud in history.

Being a man, I can’t say much about the gynecological side of Sarah or Rebekah’s situation, [thank God] but I will make a theological comment. Isn’t it interesting that these were all women hand-picked by God to do His will in bringing the ones into the world He planned to use? But even though it was God’s will, still the process wasn’t easy. God wanted the babies to be born but it seemed so hard for them to get here.

Being willing to be used of God is a good thing but people often forget that being used of God has its struggles as well as its great blessings. Indeed, just because God is in a venture doesn’t necessarily guarantee smooth sailing. Paul got into a two-week storm on the high seas on his way to Rome.

When the twins, Jacob & Esau came out of the womb, one was red & the other was hairy. Jacob was grasping Esau’s heel. Jacob’s name actually means “Grabber” or “Supplanter.”

I don’t know if you saw the movie “Twins” with Arnold Schwarzenegger & Danny De Vito. Believe it or not in the movie the pair supposedly was twins. Jacob & Esau were a bit like that; all the testosterone seemed to go to Esau. He’s born covered with hair & loves the outdoors & was probably the captain of his high school football team. Esau was also a skillful hunter, a man of the open country. With him what you saw was what you got, & he probably wore his heart on his sleeve.

Jacob was an introvert, a quiet man preferring to stay among the tents & be near his momma. He preferred cooking to killing. He was a good cook, & loved doing needlework. He thoroughly enjoyed helping out around the house. But the kid was clever & ambitious. If he grew up today, he’d probably be big crossword puzzle guy, more of a chess player than a football player like Esau. Isn’t it interesting that all these thousands of years later we can recognize in these very different brothers people we know?

Papa Isaac loved wild game so Esau the hunter was his favorite son. Rebekah was partial to Jacob. If you’re like me you ask yourself, what kind of family was this, showing partiality & favoritism to one child over the other? Where in the world did these brothers come from anyway; one smooth & smart, the other strong & hairy?

This is a real family. This is a real mother & a real father. Maybe they’re like your parents. Maybe these words were often spoken; “Look how good your brother is doing in school. Don’t you think you’d be wise to model yourself after him a bit more?”

Family dynamics are subtle & hard to understand, let alone untangle. Back before we adopted such sophisticated words like dysfunctional, people just came out with the truth: Isaac loved Esau, but Rebekah loved Jacob.

It didn’t mean that both the parents didn’t love both the boys; it just means they each had a favorite son.

THE SIN OF FAVORITISM IS EGREGIOUS

The sin of favoritism in this family is terrible & it wounded deeply just as it does in families today. Favoritism is about as brutal & blunt an object as a person can be pummeled with. The neglected or seemingly unwanted child will often spend a lifetime yearning & competing for the love of a parent.

Just as is always the case in a family breakdown, the real crunch-time came over something trivial. In the case of Jacob & Esau, it was a bowl of stew.

This whole scene might not have happened if Isaac had taken his responsibility as a parent & transferred the birthright earlier. God had told Rebekah even before the birth of the boys that… the older would serve the younger.

One day Esau came in from working in the field & he was famished. Jacob has been puttering around the kitchen & has come up with some great smelling stew. Esau says, “Give me some of that red stuff.” Jacob says, “its not red stuff its bourguignon & you can’t have any.” “But why not” says Esau, “I’m starving.”

Esau made the worst possible deal. In Philippians 3:19 the apostle Paul speaks of those

—whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, & whose glory is in their shame who mind earthly things.

Esau traded the eternal for the temporal, the spiritual for the physical, & the unseen for the seen! Losing his birthright cost Esau his standing among God’s people. In Hebrews 12:16-17

—lest there be any fornicator or profane person as Esau who for one morsel of bread sold his birthright. For ye know that afterward when he would have inherited the blessing he was rejected for he found no place of repentance though he sought it carefully with tears.

Esau had no appreciation for what God was doing in his life. Life was about pleasure to Esau. Spiritual matters were a waste of time. Life was about pleasure.

JACOB-WHAT A GUY!

Watch carefully now as Jacob shows us his prowess in thinking on his feet. He’s a quick-witted opportunist. He’s neither afraid nor ashamed to take full advantage of the situation & he’s not above using deception & trickery.

But there’s something else. Jacob has been thinking about Esau’s birthright & what it meant. For one thing it meant he’d receive a double share of the inheritance which was intended for the eldest son. He also knows the promises that God made to Abraham & he values those promises.

But the birthright wasn’t all Jacob wanted. Not even close. I suspect that he wanted to be the one through whom the promises to Abraham would continue.

“O.K says Jacob, you give me your birthright, sign the family fortune over to me & make me the heir, make me the older brother—first born in the family & I’ll give you a little bowl of stew.”

Surely Esau is exaggerating about his hunger here. Surely he could have gotten food from one of the other tents. Maybe these brothers are still quite young & there’s an element of clowning around in what they’re doing. Maybe it starts out kidding but Jacob is deadly serious now.Whatever the exact dynamics are here, one thing we know is, Esau despised his birthright. He didn’t value it, at least not now. He was one of those people who lived for today -“for tomorrow we die.” He had no time for things like birthrights & the big picture in life. His attitude was—you can’t eat a covenant. Consequently, because Esau frivolously bartered away his birthright, the promise didn’t pass to the elder child of Isaac.

Strike one against Jacob. He has tricked his brother & taken something extremely valuable.

Isaac was old now & could no longer see so he called Esau to his bedside. “Go to the open country, kill some wild game & prepare me the tasty food I like so much so I can give you my blessing before I die” he said.

Rebekah overheard the conversation. She told her favorite son Jacob to get himself in gear fast & kill two choice goats so she can prepare her dying husband the meal the way she knows he likes it.

Jacob didn’t only want the birthright & a double portion of the family inheritance; he wanted his father’s blessing too. Jacob was crooked but not dumb. He knew the inheritance wasn’t his but he wanted it anyway. He knew that he came from a line that was promised by God to do great things.

Jacob takes the skins & covers his arms & chest with the hair so he can fool his father, thus pulling the rug out from under Esau, stealing the blessing given the oldest son---the family fortune.

Jacob fools his father & by deception gets Esau’s blessing. Jacob had hardly left his father’s tent when Esau came in with a sumptuous meal he’d prepared from the game he’d killed.

When Isaac & Esau realized they’d been duped, they both reacted violently. Papa Isaac trembled all over. He has been deceived by his youngest son. Something promised to his older son Esau. What must he have thought? How sickening this must have been for him. Esau burst out in a loud bitter cry, “Bless me, bless me too my father.” Esau wept loudly, “Please give me a blessing too.”-Gen.27:39-40

I think it could be safely said that most all who read this story will be able to relate because most all of us have been wronged & hurt by family at some point. It’s bad enough when a friend hurts us but family is supposed to be that “safe zone,” where everyone is there for one another & looks out for one another.

People get a little crazy when someone dies or is near death. It literally brings out the worst in people. Relationships have been broken with parents, children, & siblings many times over material things. Families will hurt one another to the point of splintering & fracturing beyond belief.

This sets Esau up with a grudge against his brother & his plan is to kill him. Everything is gone for him. He is wronged on so many levels. Rebekah gets wind of Esau’s intentions [have you noticed that Rebekah is the major player in this story?] & tells Jacob he’d better “get out of Dodge” -& quick.

She instructs Jacob to go 400 miles away to her brothers place, his uncle Laban & she’ll let him know when Esau is no longer mad at him. This will all blow over quickly. Right? Wrong!

On his way to Haran where his uncle lived, Jacob stopped to sleep one night, using a stone for a pillow. I think I used one of those rock pillows a while back in a motel somewhere. As I remember there was a rock garden in the mattress also.

JACOB THE DREAMER & A TITHER

Jacob dreamed a spectacular dream that night & saw a stairway stretching from heaven to earth with angels walking up & down the ladder. Standing at the top of the ladder the Lord spoke to him promising protection for his journey. Gen. 28:13-15

The next morning Jacob took the stone he’d used as a pillow & poured oil on it & named the place Bethel, “the house of God.” Ever the pragmatist Jacob made a vow—if God comes through giving him food & clothes & lets him return home safely, then the Lord will be his God & he’ll give a tenth of his blessings to God.

When Jacob gets to his uncle Laban’s house, he finds out quickly that Laban is as big a crook & double-dealer as he is. Both these men would make good Las Vegas card sharks. Old Jake is about to get a dose of his own medicine.

Jacob is thunderstruck & falls in love with pretty Rachel the youngest daughter & Laban promises her to Jacob if he’ll work for him 7 years. Jacob becomes embroiled in a fierce tug of war between Rachel & the older less beautiful Leah & has eleven kids with them & their servants. He ends up working for Laban for 20 years & in his spare time manipulates the breeding of the flocks so that he has the strong cattle & Laban has the weak ones. That’s our boy!

Laban’s sons find out about the evil plan & tell their dad & the “fat’s in the fire.” Jacob slithers out of it by saying, --turn about is fair play.

THE STORY CONTINUES

Just before it’s too late God warns Jacob it’s time to leave & head back home so Jacob loads up, slips away & heads back to Canaan. Jacob leaves his uncle’s house a very rich man.

Laban is madder than an old wet-setting hen & pursues him & asks, “Why did you deceive me? You didn’t even let me say good-bye to my daughters & grandchildren.” At this point Jacob & Laban made a truce & set up stones as a boundary, promising they’d not pass this border to harm the other.

Laban made Jacob swear an oath not to mistreat his daughters or to take any other wives. Jacob complied. Laban kissed his family, blessed them & left for home.

Jacob now sends servants ahead to tell his brother Esau he was heading home. They return with some very interesting news. Esau was coming to meet him with 400 men.

At this point Jacob freaked & divided his company into two groups so Esau wouldn’t kill everyone. Jacob sent out three waves of gifts hoping they would somehow pacify Esau. In essence -giving him some of his money back.

All Jacob could do now was wait. That night he sent his wives, servants, all his possessions & 11 sons to the other side of the Jabbok River. This river was actually a boundary between Jacob’s old life & his new life.

He remained alone that night, camping under the stars.

Jacob had a lot to think about. He probably thought about his lies, his deceptions & his fears. He had to be worried sick that his brother Esau was going to kill him. He had no way of knowing he was going to wrestle with God all night long, until daybreak. Gen. 32:24-31.

JACOB’S LIFE NOW COMES FULL-CIRCLE

Jacob, who had wrestled with his brother Esau in the womb, wrestled with him all through childhood, had been wrestling with Laban for over 20 years, wrestled for position & power & wealth was going to have to wrestle with God.

God could have left a greasy spot where Jacob used to be but God doesn’t always do what He can do, He does what He wants to do. His intention wasn’t to kill Jacob but to change him.

But in this wrestling match we find one of the redeeming aspects of Jacob’s make-up; he wouldn’t let go of God. He refused to let go until he received a blessing.

Isn’t it true that often you & I give up too quick? We can learn something from Jacob. He would grab hold & refuse to quit until he was victorious. That night God changed Jacob. He even changed his name from Jacob to Israel.

After this encounter, Jacob walked with a limp the rest of his life. When he makes an appearance in Hebrews 11, he’s at the end of his life & still ….leaning on his staff.

The next day Jacob meets Esau by himself, bowing to the ground seven times. Esau ran to meet him & embraced him, threw his arms around his neck & kissed him. And they wept…..Gen.33:3-4.

Jacob, relieved & totally frazzled out by the events of the last hours looked his brother in the eye—“Now that you have received me favorably to see your face is like seeing the face of God.-Gen.33:10

This story isn’t one we can make come together in a tidy package, wrap up & put a bow on & feel really good about. Yes these brothers did meet & seemingly patch things up. But if you follow the story after this, they went their own way & never saw each other again; neither did they see their mother again. I’m sure they had to deal with feelings of hurt, anger & bitterness for years to come.

What we can be assured of is that God is bigger than all our problems & hard feelings. Nothing is ever beyond repair with God. If we’ll allow Him to, He’ll reconcile us amid the ashes & rubble of our brokenness. God loved Jacob, He loved Esau, He loved Isaac & He loved Rebekah.

And God loves you & me. He loves each of us through the imperfections & sins of our lives. God is merciful & gracious. We might not want to give people second & third chances when they hurt us but God does. As in the lives of those in this “soap opera,” God’s will is accomplished regardless of how much we try to mess it up.

I can’t understand every little detail & every facet of what Jacob’s life meant. I wish I had more answers. But actually, all I need to do is simply to marvel at the fact that God was, & is in control & knowing that means everything to me.

I’m sure that Jacob was haunted many times by the thought that someday his brother would hang him from the nearest tree & leave him for buzzard food. After all Esau had vowed to kill him.

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED……

But a strange thing happened on the way to Jacob’s date with death; Esau’s heart was changed. Where there was bitterness there was now brotherly love. God’s tender mercies were working that day because God didn’t want to destroy, He wanted to reconcile.

God works on both ends of a situation. He not only worked all night on Jacob, he was working to change the heart & mind of Esau.

God showed Jacob, as He wants to show us through this story that regardless of the odds, & regardless of the way things might appear to be, He’s going to accomplish His ends, for our good & His glory. He doesn’t leave us to struggle through our problems alone.

If we believe that, what else matters?

Blessings,

John

If America Had Survived

2011-08-19T14:35:00.016-04:00

By John Stallings

After the great depression of the thirties America crumbled into anarchy and another civil war causing her to be fractured into three regional sub-countries: North, South and West.

So, when World War 11 exploded, America simply didn’t exist.

By 1943 the tidal wave of German power had crushed all its surrounding nations, including the United Kingdom. Soon after that, all of Africa cowered beneath the Swastika.

Then the Nazis who’d been working on nuclear weapons unleashed them on sixteen Russian cities. Twenty-five million died in the atomic blasts and with them any hope of ever again living in a stable world.

The Japanese meanwhile were pillaging China in the Far East. The Imperial army then rolled south and overwhelmed India and Pakistan making surrogate armies of their vast multitudes. They continued their blood-lust crushing Southeast Asia and Australia with unspeakable violence.

By 1944 the empire of the Rising Sun ascended over Asia to the Hawaiian Islands, and Japan’s western boundaries extended to Pakistan and central Russia. Hitler’s Third Reich ruled everywhere else.

Now the world grid of satanic control locked in place plunging the earth into impenetrable darkness. Pieces of America were pulled back into place and she was ruled by Nazi Germany and policed by German troops and the Gestapo. Hitler’s dream of marching down Pennsylvania Avenue was finally realized. Democracy wasn’t to be found anywhere on planet earth, and the whole world sank into a totalitarian “black hole” void of any freedoms.

Mein Kamf, Hitler’s life story was taught and applied in the halls of higher learning. Hitler hasn’t just replaced George Washington as America’s founding father he’s taken the place of Jesus Christ as the savior of the world. The calendars were reset to coincide with Hitler’s birth year. American children entering school sang hymns to The Fuhrer.

Americans were duped into believing that their new world having been cleansed of Jews, Gypsies and other “undesirables” has now evolved into a purer form of humanity. Dark skinned non-Europeans have learned to accept their roles as “inferiors” and are classified as “servant races.”

All liberty was gone. There existed no freedom of the press or right to protest, no balance of power in government, no political parties, and no open debate or exchange of ideas.

There existed no open vibrant Evangelical church and Pentecostal was just another word for a “mental disorder.” There were some underground churches but people attended at the risk of their life. There is no Christian music, no religious books, no spiritual media and “Billy Graham” was a common but insignificant name.

There now existed –No Israel! A world without America became a world without Jews. Jews were hiding in nooks and crannies in the remote recesses of the earth.

One can’t help but weep when looking back all those decades ago. We rightly wonder what it might have been like Had America Survived.

Even though you know the above scenario didn’t really happen, minus the grace of God and His protecting hand, something like you’ve just read certainly could have happened. Indeed it could still happen, with different circumstances of course.

LET’S TALK INTERCESSION

God desires us to stand in the gap for our nation, positioning ourselves between the failings of man and the sufficiency of God’s grace and forgiveness, and then persevere until full restoration comes.

In God’s eyes, intercessors outweigh the need for immediate judgment on a society. Consider Moses. He interceded for three million rebellious Israelites. Moses indeed pastored a “trouble church.” Although the nation hadn’t repented, God’s wrath was turned away. [Num.14]!

Daniel prayed and obtained God’s favor for thousands of exiled Jews. Why did God respond to these men; because He seeks for one person to believe in mercy and cry for it. He said …

“He searched for a man among them who would stand in the gap before me for the land that I should not destroy it.

Notice, God wasn’t looking for someone to “point-out the gap.” We have millions of folk who will gladly serve as “gap pointers” but they’re not so anxious to be “gap fillers”. God is still looking for those who’ll “stand in the gap!” Ezek. 22:30]

God is looking for a people who are spiritually mature and plainly see what’s wrong, and begin to intercede for America.

When Job prayed for his friends, God fully restored him. Over and over in God’s Word we are told to pray for, not against.” You and I are to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem” and “pray for each other that we may be healed.”

GOD’S FOUR CONDITIONS TO SAVE AMERICA

If you and I don’t want to see a scenario like the above where America slides into a living hell, we must do at least four things.

In 2nd Chronicles 7:14 God said,

“If My people, who are called by My name, will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

GOD HAS A SPECIAL MESSAGE FOR A SPECIAL PEOPLE.

He said… "If My people …

Under "if," there are four things His children called by His name are to do.

It is important that we understand fully each of them separately and then as a whole. Be assured that God is ready to do what He said He would do when we come in complete obedience with Him. “If my people which are called by my name will….

1. HUMBLE THEMSELVES

Humility simply means dependence on God, not self. This is a difficult position for any of us because we tend to depend on other factors than God only. We depend on our intellectual or physical strength. We depend on our education or our employment. We depend on family members or our friends. But God wants us, above all, to depend on Him.

Pride turned angels into devils in heaven. The bible doesn’t say-God resists prostitutes or God resists fornicators, or God resists murderers or God resists drunkards but Pastor James tells us that “God resists the proud.” A proud individual has both God and the devil against them.

Years ago Juda and I sat in the office of a well known denominational leader. We were together for a short period of time, and after a few minutes, he smiled and said something that stunned me. He said--"We're leaders,” speaking of himself and us, “and the “Little man” looks to us for answers.” Immediately my heart sank because I could hear God saying, "Don't ever let that idea cross your mind. And don’t ever let the words- the “Little man” creep into your vocabulary.”

This leader was using such high-sounding words and including us, consequently both Juda and I had to resist looking over our shoulders to see if anyone else had entered the room. The words he was using didn’t describe us at all.

If we’d been sitting in the office of the CEO of a large company and he alluded to “The little man” that would be understandable but we were sitting with a Christian leader.

At that moment, it felt as though the Lord had sent an arrow straight into my heart. I knew exactly what He was saying to me. This leader was speaking out of devilish pride. Pride brings destruction, and it does not belong in the life of a believer. At least, not the kind of pride that lifts self up and fails to glorify and honor God. Perhaps this man didn’t recognize what he had said. Or maybe he just spoke before he thought.

Or it may have been that God wanted to use this man’s words and attitude to send a word of caution to me. Regardless, pride can and does explode God's plan for our lives.

We heard a year or two later that this man had lost his leadership role and had been demoted to the boonies. I presume he went to pastor the “little people.”

Many times, we begin our Christian walk well. Our focus is set on God, and our hearts are fully committed to Him. Then without warning, pride begins to rise up, preventing us from being all God wants us to be. It tempts us to believe that we know better than God does. If left unchecked, pride will alter our attitude toward God and the route He has chosen for us to take.

Of all the sins discussed in the Bible, pride is the one with the most devastating results. If we’re not vigilant we can become prideful over the good things God has given us — jobs, children, and financial resources, etc.

Pride is at the top of the list of sins that God despises:

"Pride and arrogance and the evil way…And the perverted mouth, I hate" (Prov. 8:13).

Then God tells us to…

2. PRAY

It seems that much of the modern professing church would like to do anything except pray. Many of those who preach a lot of good doctrine and cross all their theological T's will do almost anything except pray! They'll learn Greek and teach Systematic Theology. They’ll study for doctorates and spend their time writing theological essays for seminary journals. Yet many of the very same ones don't seem to have enough time to pray!

How do I know they don't pray? It's obvious. Jesus said that what you do secretly God will reward you for openly (Mat. 6:6). When these men stand up publicly to teach and preach God's Word, if they were praying men there would be a power that would attend the spoken Word. Deep conviction from the Holy Spirit would go forth and seize the hearts of the hearers.

EPAPHRAS

We need a lot more men like Epaphras in the church today.

Paul said,

Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ Jesus, greets you, always struggling on your behalf in his prayers, that you may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God. (Col. 4:12)

The word struggling is used of Olympic competitors who trained vigorously with all their might to press through and gain the prize (cf. 1 Cor. 9:25). This man was a prayer soldier of Jesus Christ. He was intense, passionate, and full of zeal in prayer (v. 13). Yet Paul told the Colossians that “he is one of you".

This man was no superhuman. He was one of us. He was buffeted by a fallen flesh that tempted him to think prayer was drudgery. He might have been tempted to doze off once in a while when rising too early and laying his head on his bedside in prayer. Yet he still pressed on, so much so that he won the commendation of an apostle and was thought worthy by the Holy Spirit to be etched on the pages of Holy Scripture for all eternity.

This man agonized in prayer. He pressed on with focus and stamina in faith to pray the burden through and win the prize. And not only did he pray intensely for a few moments before Sunday's service. Paul said he "always" struggled and labored in prayer for the saints.

We can study less, socialize less, play less, relax less, if we will only pray more. The person who breaths the air of the secret place of the most High as a way of life is a person through whom God grants His power and anointing.

We need to return to the prayer closet! Our every blessing, our every step, our every plan, and those of our children, the future of this great Republic, everything is dependent on prayer. Do you see it? Prayer is one of the four of God’s conditions to heal us as a nation.

If you and I could really grasp (Hebrews 4:16), it would revolutionize our prayer life.

Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.

God works only in concert with the praying of His people. Both Jesus and the Holy Spirit join us when we begin to pray because they know the Father moves only in concert with the praying of His people. Then God says…..

3. SEEK MY FACE

I must confess right here that I really haven’t sought God’s face as I should have. To be honest I’ve sought His hands, asking for things more times than I should have.

Do you see any difference in seeking His hand and His face? There is a vast difference.

When you and I seek His face, we go before Him just to be with Him and not ask Him to do anything. There is a reason why it is important for us to come before Him with praise and worship. It’s important, first, to understand that adoration does not change God. God will never be any greater than He is and our worship does not add to Him at all. Adoration changes us. When we begin to praise and worship, we are changed and want to love Him more and walk with Him more closely.

When God commands us to "seek His face," He is commanding us to undergo a spiritual restoration in our hearts and in our vision -- He wants us to remove the grime of religion -- the soot of life -- the stuff of experience -- so that we can see Him as He truly is

-- We do this through His word -- we do this through His Spirit -- we do this by spending time with Him alone.

Just as Jesus had to carry His disciples up on the mountain, away from the crowds, in order for them to see Him in His glory, we need to remove ourselves from the trappings of this world and spend time with God if we are to see Him as He truly is.

Sometimes you hear folk say; “My God doesn’t let children get killed.” My God would never allow anyone to go to hell.” My God wouldn’t do this or that. When they use the words “My God” are they telling us that they’re worshipping a God of their own mental creation, not the one true High God of Heaven.

A god of our making will never bring revival -- a god of our making cannot heal or forgive or restore -- it is only when we seek out the true God of the Bible that we will see healing and restoration and revival in our land and in our homes and in our churches. The fourth of God’s conditions is….

4. TURN FROM THEIR WICKED WAYS

Remember, God is speaking to His children, not unsaved people. Do you find it strange that sin enters the equation? Do Christians have problems with sin? Most of us understand the necessity of Christians dealing with sin in their lives.

Some folk will point their finger and say -Ya’ll have sinned, but the Bible says - All Have Sinned!

Until the Christian confesses and forsakes known sin in his life, he cannot pray for the healing of his nation. The Word is plain:

"If I regard iniquity in my heart, God will not hear me" (Psalm 66:18). "

God's hand is not short that He cannot save. Neither is His ear heavy that He cannot hear, But your iniquities have separated between you and your God and your sins have hid His face from you so that He cannot hear" (Isaiah 59:1-2).

A person who wants to pray for America must confess and forsake sin if God is to hear their requests.

Becoming conscious of sin is known as conviction--and is the work of the Holy Spirit (John 18:6-11) who applies the Word of God as a mirror to let us see ourselves as God sees us. This is the beginning point in getting on praying ground.

DON’T BUNDLE YOUR SINS

If we don’t deal with specific sins and try to do it by wrapping all our sins in a bundle to present to God, we’ve simply run the lawn mower over the weed. The root is still there and the weed will come out again. The only way to get the root out is through biblical confession.

Following confession is forgiveness and cleansing (1 John 1:9). The very moment you confess your sins, your record sheet in the ledger which contained them is now clean.

ONCE WE DO THE FOUR THINGS, GOD WILL DO THREE...

1. "I will hear from Heaven."

I equate Heaven with Headquarters, where the resources are kept. It is significant that God says that He’ll open up the store house. He does not have to put us on back order.

2. "I will forgive their sin."

Unconfessed sin robs the Christian of the joy of God's salvation. That is exactly what happened to David (Psalm 51:12). When the Christian loses the joy, he doesn’t worship well, walk well, work well, witness well, or war well. A heavy load will settle on him--even if he does not know what is happening. The word forgive means to lift and remove a heavy load.

3. "I will heal their land."

PRAYER NOT POLITICS

Healing change will come only when we as God’s people accept much of the responsibility for America. We must humble ourselves and turn from our wicked ways. We must lead the way in SEEKING GOD’S FACE—remembering that God always STARTS healing revival with His people. It goes from the Christian to the church -to the community -to the county -to the country and then -to the continents. And let me just stop and ask, fellow Christian. Are you willing for it to start with you?

Alexander the Great once found out that one of his soldiers that carried the name of “Alexander” had proven to be a coward. He called the man to appear before him and told him to either live up to the name or change it. Fellow Christian...one who is called by God’s name...let’s live up to our name!

WE CAN’T EXPECT PEOPLE WHO DON’T KNOW GOD TO FIX THINGS

After all they don’t have God’s Spirit living in them as we do.

We are the salt...we are the light. The sad fact is the main reason America is where it is today is because we haven’t been doing our job. We who are called by God’s name, have not prayed long enough, have not followed Jesus closely enough, have not loved deeply enough, have not given sacrificially enough, and most of all—have not witnessed passionately enough.

We should vote for candidates who embrace Biblical convictions—but to rely only on votes and petitions is treating the symptom not the disease itself. Political remedies to our nation’s moral ills are not a real cure for the underlying spiritual problems. And of all people, Christians ought to know that. We should know that LIVES, not LAWS need to be transformed. As people who have experienced God’s grace, we should understand that a law cannot make people righteous. After all, Scripture is clear on this.

Galatians 2:21, 16 says,

“If righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain. No one is justified by works of law, but by faith in Jesus Christ.”

Wake up America!

A headline that appeared in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, February 15, 1999, should give all of us hope. The headline read, “Comatose man wakes after 7 1/2 years.” It gave the account of police officer Gary Dockery in Chattanooga, Tennessee, who had taken a bullet in the forehead and was in a coma for 7 1/2 years. What was remarkable was when he woke up, he immediately spoke clearly to his sister as if no time has passed. A family friend said, “There’s not but one way to describe it. It’s a miracle of God.” When officer Dockery awoke he asked for his sons whom he had not seen since they were 5 and 12 years old, then 12 and 19.

If a man who’d been in a coma for 7 1/2 years can wake up, there’s hope for America.

Are you concerned about the course our nation is taking under the current leadership in Washington D.C? I’m deeply concerned, thus this article. Again, let’s look at God’s four conditions…

1. HUMILITY

2. PRAYER

3. SEEK GOD’S FACE

4. TURN FROM OUR WICKED WAYS.

Some people trust in government and turn to national leaders for help but we are different.

As Psalms 20:7 says, “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.”

Blessings, and,

God bless America!

John