By John Stallings
A pastor worked in his study all through Christmas Eve preparing for the Christmas morning service.
Being very tired he dozed off & dreamt of a world to which the Savior had never come. In his dream he was looking around his home but there were no Christmas decorations, no candles or Christmas wreaths.
He walked into his study & thumbed through his library but found no books about Jesus, & the Bible he found ended at Malachi. He noticed that the last words of the Bible were, LEST I COME & SMITE THE EARTH WITH A CURSE. He walked out unto the streets & found no church spires pointing heavenward.
He went back inside & a knock on the door brought a request to visit a dying mother. He went to her bedside but could find no comforting scriptures, for the gospels were not there. Paul’s comforting letters that included passages about life beyond the grave were missing. There was no promise beyond the grave. Even John’s book of Revelation was not there.
He could only bow his head & weep in hopeless desperation. Two days later he stood by the mother’s grave & conducted her burial but he could give no word of changed hearts & glorious resurrections, only, “ashes to ashes & dust to dust.” It was just one long, last, final farewell.
Suddenly nearby music awoke him from his sleep & he was sobbing uncontrollably. He realized he was hearing his own church choir in the sanctuary next door practicing for their Christmas service & singing “Oh come let us adore Him.” The fact was, Jesus had come & His coming had split history in two, giving hope for eternal life to all who trust in Him.
WHAT WOULD A WORLD WITHOUT CHRIST LOOK LIKE?
Had Christ not come we’d have no New Testament, no gospel, no church, no Lord’s Day, no repentance, no forgiveness of sins, no changed & transformed hearts & lives & no hope of His eternal presence.
The angel wouldn’t have told Mary, -With God nothing is impossible.
The angels wouldn’t have sung to the shepherds, Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, good will to men.
One of my favorite secular Christmas songs has always been Ervin Berlin’s White Christmas. Though it’s always been a dream of mine, I can’t say that I ever experienced a white Christmas. In the last few years that dream has faded & been replaced with the desire to celebrate each year, a Right Christmas.
What does a right Christmas look like?
A RIGHT CHRISTMAS IS BEAUTIFULLY SIMPLE & SIMPLY BEAUTIFUL.
Have you ever tried to explain the real meaning of Christmas to a child? It isn’t easy. There is so much tradition mixed up with spiritual truth that it’s sometimes hard to tell Jesus from Santa Claus & the Wise men from the snowmen.
The very young have puzzled looks on their faces as they try to sort it all out. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight….Christmas is baby Jesus’ birthday, but I get the presents?” They end up thinking;-“Is this a great religion or what?”
THE MOST NEGLECTED CHRISTMAS VERSE OF ALL
There is one verse that for me sums up the real meaning of Christmas better than any verse in the Bible. Within this short verse we find the answer to the question, what is the right attitude about Christmas & --What is a right Christmas?
And here is the verse---11 Corinthians 8:9: For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich.
Let’s examine this verse for in it I believe we find the essence of a right attitude toward Christmas.
A. HE WAS RICH
I read last week that Wal-Mart is the richest & most successful business that’s ever existed on planet earth. My computer even knows who Wal-mart is because it just corrected my spelling of the name.
This brings up a question in my mind: “Why don’t we let Wal-mart bail out General Motors?” But I digress. Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-mart was a “rich-en.” He was among the group of old boys who would light their cigars with a hundred dollar bill. The average rich ride first class. The medium rich charter a jet. The super rich own the jet. The incredibly rich own the airline.
But Jesus Christ owns the skies. The Bible says---HE WAS RICH! This is speaking of what He had in heaven before He came to earth. You can take the richest men who ever lived, the most powerful rulers who ever lived, the wisest men who ever lived, the mightiest generals who ever lived, the strongest athletes in every sport, the most spell-binding orators, the greatest political leaders & any other great men on earth, calculate their wealth…power…skill…genius…wisdom…insight…& ability. Whatever that vast sum comes to, Jesus had more in heaven. No man or collection of men could touch Him. The pre-existent Jesus Christ wasn’t a pauper but a man who lived in glorious untold splendor.
He Was Rich!!
B. HE BECAME POOR
When you & I celebrate a right Christmas we keep in mind the lowly baby Jesus who became poor. Exactly what does that mean? He was rich in eternity but He became poor when He moved into time. He left heaven for a remote village in a forgotten province, to join a despised race, to be born of an obscure teenage peasant girl in a stable, wrapped in rags & placed in a feeding-trough instead of a crib.
But Jesus didn’t act “high & mighty.” He knew it all but wasn’t a “know it all.” He owned all the stuff but never did “strut His stuff.” He wasn’t a “name-dropper.” He wasn’t a showoff. He never asked people, “Want me to beam you into the 21st century?” Jesus could have constantly been saying things like, “I’ve got some property on Jupiter.” But Jesus’ purpose wasn’t to show-off but to show-up. Jesus was holding the entire Universe together but you couldn’t tell it by watching or listening to Him. He wasn’t like that.
Here is the creator of the universe who looked no different than the guy down the street. Jesus became poor & pitched His tent among us for a while. He didn’t Lord it over us but loved us so much He was willing to die for us. He wasn’t on an ego trip he was on a rescue mission. A right Christmas is one that remembers that we are something special to God.
Notice that Jesus became poor. You & I are made poor by circumstances but Jesus of His own free will became poor. The man who was richer than any man has ever been gave it up freely & became poorer than any man has ever been.
If we have a right Christmas we’ll be remembering that the heart of it all, the heart of the gospel is that the richest person in the universe of His own free will became poorer than the poor.
I love the story of the atheist who would never go to church with his Christian family. One Christmas season, his wife & children were readying themselves to go to Sunday morning service & pleaded with him to go just this once. It was a special Christmas service & there’d be beautiful music.
The unbelieving man refused to go, as usual, telling his family it would just be a waste of time for him that Christmas was just a silly old tradition about a man who never really existed.
The family left for church leaving the father sitting in his recliner near a large picture window that overlooked a big back yard. It was snowing & the sight of the flakes building up on the barn behind the house was breathtaking. He thought how much it looked like a Norman Rockwell painting.
Then something happened that almost startled him out of his chair. A flock of about twenty birds, not seeing the glass window, flew right into it, leaving several of them wounded & flapping around on the ground. The man, pitying the poor birds slowly got up & walked toward the window to get a better look. He stood & watched the birds slowly regain their composure & then begin to wander around the backyard in a state of confusion. He went & dressed & got some bread from the kitchen thinking he’d try to feed the birds if they’d allow him to get close enough.
His worst fears were realized when he approached the dazed & confused birds when they fluttered away, seeing every move he made as a threat to them. This went on for quite some time & the man finally had an idea. If he could open the big barn doors, & get the nearly frozen birds to go in they could have shelter from the blistering winds & maybe live to fly again.
The man slowly moved across the barnyard & opened the doors, placing the bread crumbs on the ground hoping the birds natural survival instinct would kick in. The man tried every trick he could think of to get those disoriented birds to see that life was within their reach just a few feet away, but the birds stubbornly refused to co-operate.
Finally the man, not able to stand the bitter cold had to give up & go back inside to warm himself. As he stood at the window & watched the birds, still wandering aimlessly around the yard, the thought came to him; there was only one way he could ever hope to get those birds to go into the barn, but it wasn’t within his power to do it.
The only way the birds could be saved was if he himself could become a bird, join the little flock & lead them into the safety of the barn.
When his family returned from church, the man shared the experience with them. Through that visual experience with the birds God had shown him the meaning of Christmas. Bethlehem was about God wrapping himself in human flesh & becoming a man. He entered the human race & became poor like us so that we would hear Him saying, “I love you.” Immanuel—God with us.
C. THAT WE MIGHT BECOME RICH
Here is “The right Christmas” message,—Jesus became poor so that we who were poor might become rich. Think abut that. All the riches & grace of God is available to me by virtue of my relationship with Jesus Christ. All the power & all the right standing with God are mine through Him.
You may say, “You don’t deserve that.” Indeed I don’t but that’s the grace of our Lord Jesus. If I deserved it I wouldn’t need Jesus, but through my relationship with Him suddenly I’m a rich man.
The theologians have a word for it. They call it the doctrine of imputation. He takes my sin & I take His righteousness. That’s grace by association.
Do you remember the wedding of Lady Diana & Prince Charles? We saw a T.V movie about it recently. Diana didn’t exactly come from poverty but compared to the royal family, her family was poor. But now, by virtue of her marriage to Prince Charles, all the wealth, all the prestige, all the power, all the pomp & glory of the royal family belong to her. Once she was an outsider; now she has access to the Queen. Did she earn such a lofty standing? No. It was imputed to her by virtue of her relationship to Prince Charles. Imputed honor- imputed wealth -& imputed standing.
What do you call a poor girl who marries a prince? You call her “Your Highness.”
So it is that when we came to Jesus we were spiritual paupers. Our hands were empty & our pockets were bare. We had nothing to offer & no claim to make. All our lives it had been, one step forward & two steps back but when we came to Him, we were fed, clothed, filled, forgiven, & crowned with every good thing.
Jesus took away our rags & placed around us His own righteousness. Everything that was against us was gone & everything we lacked we now have. All this happened because of Christmas. He who was rich became poor for my sake, that through His poverty I might be rich.
The Son of God became a son of man in order that the sons of men might become the sons of God.
Again, what is a right Christmas?
A—He was rich
B---He became poor
C---That we might become rich
And that’s the true meaning of Christmas.
Only one thing remains. Have you found the Christ of Christmas & asked Him to be your Savior? Have you placed your trust in Him? Have you given up your spiritual poverty for the riches He offers to you?
One of my favorite Christmas songs is “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” I love this verse;
How silently, how silently
This wondrous gift was giv’n
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessing of His heav’n.
No ear may hear His coming,
But in the world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive Him still,
The dear Christ enters in.
And so He does! May that be our experience as we all enjoy,
A RIGHT CHRISTMAS!
Merry Christmas everyone!
Blessings,
John
Monday, December 14, 2009
Monday, November 30, 2009
Broke-Back Christianity
By John Stallings
I know little about the gay culture but I’m aware of -"BrokeBack Mountain" the movie that came out some time back about two gay cowboys.
Despite a tidal wave of publicity the film didn’t do all that well financially. I didn’t see the movie but I’m told both the cowboys are married but one of them is depicted as being interested in other men.
This gay man’s wife is called a “beard.” A Wickipedia entry says; “A beard is a female companion used to hide a gay man’s sexuality in public is if she & the gay man were a heterosexual couple.”
In politics today the same phenomenon exists. Many different groups look for “cover stories” that are socially acceptable to hide their true identity.
As an example, there’s a group called RINO’S, a group of Republicans who like to call themselves Republicans but think & vote like Democrats. They consequently are called RINO’s--Republicans in name only. Conversely, there are Democrats who maintain their affiliation for personal reasons or political expediency but are very likely to cross the aisle from time to time. They are called DINO’S.
Sadly there are many people & even groups who use the term “Christian” as religious symbolism but they are no more Christians than the “Broke-Back boys” are real cowboys. Maybe we could call them CINO’S-Christian in name only.
ONE OF THE MOST SOBERING STATEMENTS JESUS MADE
….In Matthew 7:21-23 Jesus said—Not everyone who says to me Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of God but he who does the will of my father who is in heaven will enter.
Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord did we not prophesy in your name, & in your name cast out devils, & in your name perform many miracles? And then I will say to them, I never knew you; depart from me, you who practice lawlessness.
SURVEYING AMERICA TODAY WE SEE A WEAK CHURCH
In 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 folk, Broke-back Christians at worst, & lukewarm Christians at best, sit on the sidelines expecting someone else to do the work & make the sacrifices.
Our nation 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.
I read recently that many American colleges have courses that teach in essence the message that America is a “repressive hellhole.” Maybe that attitude trickles down from a president who apologizes for us all over the globe.
NASA is spending 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. 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.
Approximately half of the nation 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 pregnancy out of wedlock have lost the stigma they had just a few years 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.
A football game is a very good analogy of America. There are 22 men on the field who desperately need rest & 70,000 people in the stands who desperately need some exercise.
ALL THIS RAISES A QUESTION; HAS THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST FAILED? HAS CHRISTIANITY 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.
THE PARABLES
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 an answer 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 seeds fail because they fall 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. He 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. Now watch this carefully. One thing we didn’t do while in the beautiful city of Athens was to visit the ruins of a 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. But we didn’t visit any rocky ruins of the Athenian 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? Answer-- 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. But if you read Acts 17 you’ll find the Athenians mocked Paul when he preached the Resurrection of Jesus. They were 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.
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’s 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.”
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. Also see 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 is the world. The gospel is preached & there is no partiality to race, sex, wealth, education, intelligence, ethnicity or beauty. The church’s 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 too.) 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.
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 COUNTERFEIT PROVES THE REAL EXISTS
No one that I’ve heard of has ever made fake or counterfeit pennies. They aren’t very valuable. No one has ever made fake three dollar bills because real three dollar bills don’t exist. The fact that one counterfeits something proves the real exists & is valuable.
The gospel hasn’t failed because there are many “Broke-back Christians” who never were truly converted. Some don’t see the value of the authentic Christian life or aren’t willing to pay the price to claim it.
Remember Jesus’ words---On that day…..?
The day will come when you & I will stand before God & give account of our stewardship of the life He gave us.
The troubling thing about Jesus’ statement is He seems to be speaking of people who genuinely think they are ready to enter heaven but too late they realize that’s not the case.
Jesus said in Matthew 7:14; ...Straight is the gate & narrow is the way which leadeth unto life & few there be that find it.
Paul admonishes us; Examine yourselves whether ye be in the Faith. Prove yourselves….2 Corinthians 13:5
Blessings,
John
I know little about the gay culture but I’m aware of -"BrokeBack Mountain" the movie that came out some time back about two gay cowboys.
Despite a tidal wave of publicity the film didn’t do all that well financially. I didn’t see the movie but I’m told both the cowboys are married but one of them is depicted as being interested in other men.
This gay man’s wife is called a “beard.” A Wickipedia entry says; “A beard is a female companion used to hide a gay man’s sexuality in public is if she & the gay man were a heterosexual couple.”
In politics today the same phenomenon exists. Many different groups look for “cover stories” that are socially acceptable to hide their true identity.
As an example, there’s a group called RINO’S, a group of Republicans who like to call themselves Republicans but think & vote like Democrats. They consequently are called RINO’s--Republicans in name only. Conversely, there are Democrats who maintain their affiliation for personal reasons or political expediency but are very likely to cross the aisle from time to time. They are called DINO’S.
Sadly there are many people & even groups who use the term “Christian” as religious symbolism but they are no more Christians than the “Broke-Back boys” are real cowboys. Maybe we could call them CINO’S-Christian in name only.
ONE OF THE MOST SOBERING STATEMENTS JESUS MADE
….In Matthew 7:21-23 Jesus said—Not everyone who says to me Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of God but he who does the will of my father who is in heaven will enter.
Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord did we not prophesy in your name, & in your name cast out devils, & in your name perform many miracles? And then I will say to them, I never knew you; depart from me, you who practice lawlessness.
SURVEYING AMERICA TODAY WE SEE A WEAK CHURCH
In 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 folk, Broke-back Christians at worst, & lukewarm Christians at best, sit on the sidelines expecting someone else to do the work & make the sacrifices.
Our nation 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.
I read recently that many American colleges have courses that teach in essence the message that America is a “repressive hellhole.” Maybe that attitude trickles down from a president who apologizes for us all over the globe.
NASA is spending 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. 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.
Approximately half of the nation 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 pregnancy out of wedlock have lost the stigma they had just a few years 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.
A football game is a very good analogy of America. There are 22 men on the field who desperately need rest & 70,000 people in the stands who desperately need some exercise.
ALL THIS RAISES A QUESTION; HAS THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST FAILED? HAS CHRISTIANITY 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.
THE PARABLES
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 an answer 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 seeds fail because they fall 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. He 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. Now watch this carefully. One thing we didn’t do while in the beautiful city of Athens was to visit the ruins of a 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. But we didn’t visit any rocky ruins of the Athenian 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? Answer-- 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. But if you read Acts 17 you’ll find the Athenians mocked Paul when he preached the Resurrection of Jesus. They were 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.
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’s 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.”
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. Also see 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 is the world. The gospel is preached & there is no partiality to race, sex, wealth, education, intelligence, ethnicity or beauty. The church’s 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 too.) 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.
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 COUNTERFEIT PROVES THE REAL EXISTS
No one that I’ve heard of has ever made fake or counterfeit pennies. They aren’t very valuable. No one has ever made fake three dollar bills because real three dollar bills don’t exist. The fact that one counterfeits something proves the real exists & is valuable.
The gospel hasn’t failed because there are many “Broke-back Christians” who never were truly converted. Some don’t see the value of the authentic Christian life or aren’t willing to pay the price to claim it.
Remember Jesus’ words---On that day…..?
The day will come when you & I will stand before God & give account of our stewardship of the life He gave us.
The troubling thing about Jesus’ statement is He seems to be speaking of people who genuinely think they are ready to enter heaven but too late they realize that’s not the case.
Jesus said in Matthew 7:14; ...Straight is the gate & narrow is the way which leadeth unto life & few there be that find it.
Paul admonishes us; Examine yourselves whether ye be in the Faith. Prove yourselves….2 Corinthians 13:5
Blessings,
John
Monday, November 23, 2009
A Great Realtor Has Exciting Prospects-Act Now!
By
John Stallings
I'm happy to 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 HEAVEN'S 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 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 PERMANENT 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.
Have a happy & blessed Thanksgiving,
John
John Stallings
I'm happy to 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 HEAVEN'S 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 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 PERMANENT 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.
Have a happy & blessed Thanksgiving,
John
Thursday, November 19, 2009
DITHERING
By John Stallings
A few weeks 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 few weeks 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
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Five Mistakes Christians Make
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
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
Sunday, October 25, 2009
America's Greatest Sin!
By John Stallings
Recently I heard a Christian economist explaining how America got into the financial trouble we’re now in.
the end of his rather lengthy presentation, he said something that I wasn’t expecting to hear. I was shocked. He said, - I paraphrase—ABORTION is at the root of all our problems. America could come out of this problem in a few years but the one thing that would stop us from getting the American dream back would be soon there won’t be enough people alive to have a robust work force. We’ve killed them all. --This man wasn’t on an “anti-abortion kick,” as a matter of fact he only mentioned abortion in passing. His field of expertise is economics.
He said something else that almost floored me; -“our only hope is the Latin-Americans & other ethnic groups who are still having lots of children.”- I might add Muslims to that list, because they’ve always had large families. For every person who’s retired today & drawing Social Security, there are several working people, forced to pay the bill, though they themselves will never collect Social Security. The government has been up front about the fact that S.S in all likelihood won’t be there for the Baby Boomers. Why? Not enough people in the work force to support it. If you don’t believe in the Biblical principle of sowing & reaping, then you could say the Karma Wagon is about to back up on our face.
Friend, I’m not saying this man is correct in all he said, & you & I can agree or disagree. But stop & think; can you see how America has fallen for a big lie from hell- that we needed to stop having children? The motive might have been selfishness but it resulted in the same thing, a lack of new Americans being born. What follows naturally then is the promotion of abortion as essentially a method of birth control to bring zero population growth into fruition. The thought Satan has in mind is the destruction of America’s future.
AMERICA’S GREATEST SIN IS ABORTION!!
God’s words are simple…I have set before you life & death, blessings & curses…..CHOOSE LIFE!-Duet.30:20
I spoke in a church a while back & somewhere in my sermon I said- “An election is coming & I’d like to tell you how to vote!” That got their attention. The good folk grew so pale you’d have thought five double-hump Camels had just walked into the room. I almost considered not making my next statement for fear that some of the weaker saints would have strokes. I was certain I’d wounded if not killed one of their sacred cows but I forged on; “First of all VOTE! Then I added- “VOTE CHRISTIANITY! No man ever has nor ever will get my vote who believes in abortion.” What happened next really stunned me. The congregation en masse gave those statements a standing ovation. I later learned that the church never mentioned politics nor gave the people any inkling of how to vote. To me it’s simple; vote your convictions. Yes, how you vote is between you & God & God is never going to tell you to vote to kill babies.
Who in the world could be offended at us when we say we’re going to vote Christianity to the best of our ability? We can’t always know everything there is to know about a candidate, unless they have a voting record, & sometimes people will change. But as much as is possible, we as Christians should vote Christianity.
When speaking of abortion, I’ve heard people say;
“There isn’t enough food to feed multitudes of new people! All those babies will someday starve.” That’s not only a lie it’s a crazy lie!! There’s plenty of food around & we can grow more if we need it. Let me qualify that statement. Having a food surplus isn’t really a big deal; that is if the government will get out of the way & let farmers do what they do best. At present one of the most fertile areas of farm land in California has had vital water supplies shut down leaving farmers with little or no work because the Liberals in Washington are afraid of doing harm to a small fish. The last time this happened I believe it was a snail-darter & or a frog or Spotted Owl. May God help us!! Some folk have a good heart but their head is screwed on wrong.
I’ve heard people say—
“We’re running out of room on the planet.” That’s the silliest lie yet. Have you driven around the US lately? Have you ever driven through Texas? In some parts of Texas there’s so much space if you get a good pair of glasses you can see next week’s train coming today. Have you been to Australia, or New Zealand? I haven’t but they tell me these places are sparsely populated. I went to China in 1981 & as I remember there were lots of open spaces there. Have you done any flying lately in the US & oversees? In some places the cities are crowded but mostly what you see as you look out the window is open space. Yes there probably are unlivable areas but certainly there’s still plenty of room on this earth.
Al Gore’s movie about Climate Change is another ridiculous lie. I believe we should be good stewards of the beautiful planet God has given us but the Polar Bears are doing fine & will continue to as long as we respect them as God’s creatures. In reality, the biggest source of pollution in many ways is the earth itself. In the middle of our oceans oil can be seen seeping up from the bottom where it’s leaking out. There are places on the planet where you can walk along & see ponds of oil just lying on the top-soil. You can’t walk the countryside without getting oil on your shoes.
Again this doesn’t mean we should squander our natural resources. Common sense tells us fossil fuels will probably run out someday but not someday soon. If & when that happens we can start building engines that can run on water, air, cooking oil, animal dung & a myriad of other substances. You will no doubt remember that the bomb Timothy McVeigh used to flatten the Alfred P. Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City was made partially of cow dung. Who’d have thunk it?
I’ve heard people say— “if we said anything about abortion in our church people would leave.” That’s o.k. There are other places they could go where they won't take a stand on anything.
I’ve heard people say—“churches should stick to preaching the gospel.” Well, the gospel is based on truth & sometimes we must expose the sins that make the gospel necessary.
I’ve heard people ask--- “if we preach this, won’t we offend people?” Maybe; but we need to hear the bad news or we’ll never appreciate the good news.
I’ve heard people say—“If we preach against the sins of our day we just might lose our tax exempt status.” Well then we could do what the vast majority of churches do around the world that never had a tax exemption in the first place.
We’ve slaughtered 51 million Americans through abortion. How many great musicians, scientists, ministers, architects, economists, inventors etc. were in that great multitude? The sad thing is, we’ve killed our answers & thereby we may just have killed our future.
SHOULD WE BE SINGLE ISSUE VOTERS?
Most of us approach various candidates by saying, -What are his/her qualifications for office? I’m not at all sure that’s the best way to do it. What about asking,--What, if anything disqualifies this person from holding office? Is there any issue he/she stands for that is so wrongheaded that I wouldn’t vote for them no matter what else he does or doesn’t believe?
What if a candidate were to say, -“I’m running on a platform that supports bribery as a matter of public policy?” Would we say that man is disqualified for office no matter what else he might believe? What if a candidate said rape isn’t so bad & we should repeal the rape laws? Would you vote for that man? What if a candidate says he is a racist & says that black people should be denied the right to vote & he believes slavery should be legal in America? Would you vote for that man? Would it matter if he added that he was pro-life? I don’t think so, do you?
What if a woman was to marry a man & the day before the marriage he told her he believes adultery is O.K & while he does love her he intends to cheat on her? Wouldn’t you agree that if a man told his sweetheart that it would be a deal-breaker no matter what other good qualities he brings to the table?
Here’s a question; what do you feel disqualifies a man from holding public office? I believe a man who stands up & says he’ll do everything in his power to promote abortion here in America & in other parts of the world disqualifies himself from any position of public office. It’s the same as the endorsement of racism, fraud, or bribery, except that abortion, or child-killing is more serious than those.
There are laws against intentionally maiming dogs & cats. Thank God!! And there are laws that protect a wide range of endangered species. But what about the unborn? Jesus said
….whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better that a millstone were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.—Matt.18:6
These are solemn words telling us that those who deliberately hurt little children will someday face the Lord.
THE STRONGEST STATEMENT ON GOD’S PRENATAL CARE IN ALL THE BIBLE.
Psalm 139:13-14 says;- For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise thee for I am fearfully & wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works & that my soul knoweth right well.
How much does God know about the unborn baby growing in the womb? Everything! Like a skillful weaver God takes the tiny hands & legs & joins them together. He forms the heart & then sets it beating. He watches out for the little thumb to make sure it finds the mouth.
Who makes babies? God does!
What else but satanic can we call a law the kills an eight week fetus? An eight-week old fetus has a beating heart, an EKG, brain waves, thumb-sucking, pain sensitivity, finger grasping, & genetic humanity. But under our present laws an unborn baby isn’t a human person with rights under the 14th Amendment which says that “no state shall deprive any person of life without due process of law.” Why then is it that it’s illegal to maim, or mutilate an animal [who would want to?] but the sensitive unborn baby has no rights at all?
Isn’t it strange that there are quotas on porpoises & whales but it’s always open season on unborn babies? If you destroy the egg of a bald eagle you can be fined $5000: if you destroy an unborn baby you’ll make about $350. Do you think that our ghettos or crime ridden streets are the most dangerous places in America? Think again. A baby in its mother’s womb has a one in three chance of making it out alive. Isn’t it a little schizophrenic that today in America a 14 year old girl may not buy cigarettes or alcohol or attend an x-rated movie; in some places she can’t even get her ears pierced without her mother’s permission? But she can have an abortion. Again doesn’t this sound like “an evil plan,” a satanic plot to you?
This may surprise you but I actually agree with Marlo Thomas & Barbara Streisand on an important issue. During the last election they said-“One candidate should be elected because of his position on abortion & one defeated for the same reason.” They were right of course but they weren’t thinking exactly as I was. They had the candidates backward.
I WONDER-DO WOMEN KNOW THESE THINGS? DO THEY KNOW WHAT THEY’RE DOING IN AN ABORTION?
I’m not wondering if they lack intelligence. I just wonder if they close their eyes to the truth like some do with tobacco, gluttony, drunkenness, or other dangerous substances. They’re not going to expose themselves to in-depth information on the subject.
An encouraging bit of information is that there are actually fewer abortions since the sonogram became available, probably because the future mom can see the little person growing inside her. From the moment of conception a baby has as individual identity. The baby has its own set of genes & chromosomes. At 19 days after conception the eyes begin to develop. At 24 days the heart begins beating. At 30 days the unborn baby is an inch long yet he has a brain, eyes, ears, mouth, kidneys, & liver. At 35 days his fingers have formed & at 40 days brain waves can be detected & recorded. In the tenth week after conception the baby squints, swallows & hiccups & has fingerprints that will stay with him for the rest of his life.
By the fourth month his ears are functioning, he begins to suck his thumb & he can hear his mother’s voice for the first time. By the seventh month he can see & hear & taste & touch. He recognizes his mother’s voice when he hears it. By the ninth month the baby weights between six & nine pounds & his heart pumps 300 gallons of blood per day. He is now capable of life outside the womb if only he gets the chance.
The last few verses of Romans the first chapter mirror our times, especially the sins we embraced as a people when we turned away from God. The Greek word astorgos translated in the KJV as “without natural affection,” & in some translations with the word “heartless.” It was used in the first century for parents who abandoned their children by exposing them to the elements. Such cruelty isn’t natural. To treat your own children with such callous unconcern reveals that you are without natural affection. Seen in that light abortion isn’t just another sin, it’s the mark of a depraved & godless society.
ABORTION IS WRONG BECAUSE IT’S WRONG TO KILL BABIES
Abortion is as simple yet profound as that, & I know of no other conclusion that’s consistent with the Christian faith. I made up my mind where I stood on the abortion issue a long time ago but I can’t nor would I compel your conscience. You have to make up your own mind.
But I also have to say, I have always been & will continue to be a thorn in the devils side on this subject. There are many who are ambivalent on this because they don’t want to be “crusaders.” They say things like “I’m against abortion but I don’t want to impose my views on others.”
Let’s use that logic in other areas of moral values. How would you respond to someone who said;
“I’m against slavery but I don’t think we should go overboard & make it illegal?” Or;
“I’m against slavery but I’m not offended if you still own a few slaves. After all I’m not going to be a radical on the subject."-Or;
“I’m against slavery but other issues are much more important.”
If a person said that & then added, “Oh, by the way, I’m pro-life,” would that matter? No it wouldn’t & shouldn’t. Support for slavery is an absolute disqualifying issue for any leader, it doesn’t matter how good his other positions might be. Don’t you agree? I feel the same way about abortion & I will not nor have I ever voted for anyone who believes it permissible to kill the unborn.
I got an email some time ago from a lady who’d read one of my earlier blogs. [I’ve checked back & don’t really know what she read that convicted her.] This lady was distraught because she’d had an abortion & wondered if God had turned His back on her. I assured her He hadn’t & ministered to her the best I could. If you’ve had an abortion at any time in your life, all you can do is ask God’s forgiveness & determine never to have another one. Try under God to put it behind you & move on. Don’t give yourself a life-sentence because God doesn’t get any glory from that. Just like any other sin He is faithful & just to forgive us. It’s always Satan who drags up our past. He won’t point out anything new we might need to pray about because that would be helping us. But make no mistake,
ABORTION WAS HATCHED IN THE HALLS OF HELL!
We live fairly close to an abortion clinic & almost every day when we pass we see people outside on the sidewalk with signs engaged in peaceful demonstrations. Once in a while we see a large refrigerated truck backing up to the building; as a matter of fact the truck is so large it usually blocks traffic for some time.
Knowing some things I know, that I won’t drag your mind into, I always get a queasy feeling because in my heart I know the cargo that truck has backed up to load on. This whole business is the work of Satan & those who profit from it. The people who traffic in this awful enterprise will someday face God in judgment.
Especially despicable in my view are politicians who use words such as “Freedom” & “choice” & are doing it for crass political gain. I closed my last blog with this verse but it seems appropriate here;
The thief comes to steal kill & destroy: I have come that they might have life & have it to the full. John 10:10.
One more verse; the one we started with;
…..Chose life! God commands us to choose life. This is a command for individuals, families, churches, cities, states & nations.
Blessings,
John
Recently I heard a Christian economist explaining how America got into the financial trouble we’re now in.
the end of his rather lengthy presentation, he said something that I wasn’t expecting to hear. I was shocked. He said, - I paraphrase—ABORTION is at the root of all our problems. America could come out of this problem in a few years but the one thing that would stop us from getting the American dream back would be soon there won’t be enough people alive to have a robust work force. We’ve killed them all. --This man wasn’t on an “anti-abortion kick,” as a matter of fact he only mentioned abortion in passing. His field of expertise is economics.
He said something else that almost floored me; -“our only hope is the Latin-Americans & other ethnic groups who are still having lots of children.”- I might add Muslims to that list, because they’ve always had large families. For every person who’s retired today & drawing Social Security, there are several working people, forced to pay the bill, though they themselves will never collect Social Security. The government has been up front about the fact that S.S in all likelihood won’t be there for the Baby Boomers. Why? Not enough people in the work force to support it. If you don’t believe in the Biblical principle of sowing & reaping, then you could say the Karma Wagon is about to back up on our face.
Friend, I’m not saying this man is correct in all he said, & you & I can agree or disagree. But stop & think; can you see how America has fallen for a big lie from hell- that we needed to stop having children? The motive might have been selfishness but it resulted in the same thing, a lack of new Americans being born. What follows naturally then is the promotion of abortion as essentially a method of birth control to bring zero population growth into fruition. The thought Satan has in mind is the destruction of America’s future.
AMERICA’S GREATEST SIN IS ABORTION!!
God’s words are simple…I have set before you life & death, blessings & curses…..CHOOSE LIFE!-Duet.30:20
I spoke in a church a while back & somewhere in my sermon I said- “An election is coming & I’d like to tell you how to vote!” That got their attention. The good folk grew so pale you’d have thought five double-hump Camels had just walked into the room. I almost considered not making my next statement for fear that some of the weaker saints would have strokes. I was certain I’d wounded if not killed one of their sacred cows but I forged on; “First of all VOTE! Then I added- “VOTE CHRISTIANITY! No man ever has nor ever will get my vote who believes in abortion.” What happened next really stunned me. The congregation en masse gave those statements a standing ovation. I later learned that the church never mentioned politics nor gave the people any inkling of how to vote. To me it’s simple; vote your convictions. Yes, how you vote is between you & God & God is never going to tell you to vote to kill babies.
Who in the world could be offended at us when we say we’re going to vote Christianity to the best of our ability? We can’t always know everything there is to know about a candidate, unless they have a voting record, & sometimes people will change. But as much as is possible, we as Christians should vote Christianity.
When speaking of abortion, I’ve heard people say;
“There isn’t enough food to feed multitudes of new people! All those babies will someday starve.” That’s not only a lie it’s a crazy lie!! There’s plenty of food around & we can grow more if we need it. Let me qualify that statement. Having a food surplus isn’t really a big deal; that is if the government will get out of the way & let farmers do what they do best. At present one of the most fertile areas of farm land in California has had vital water supplies shut down leaving farmers with little or no work because the Liberals in Washington are afraid of doing harm to a small fish. The last time this happened I believe it was a snail-darter & or a frog or Spotted Owl. May God help us!! Some folk have a good heart but their head is screwed on wrong.
I’ve heard people say—
“We’re running out of room on the planet.” That’s the silliest lie yet. Have you driven around the US lately? Have you ever driven through Texas? In some parts of Texas there’s so much space if you get a good pair of glasses you can see next week’s train coming today. Have you been to Australia, or New Zealand? I haven’t but they tell me these places are sparsely populated. I went to China in 1981 & as I remember there were lots of open spaces there. Have you done any flying lately in the US & oversees? In some places the cities are crowded but mostly what you see as you look out the window is open space. Yes there probably are unlivable areas but certainly there’s still plenty of room on this earth.
Al Gore’s movie about Climate Change is another ridiculous lie. I believe we should be good stewards of the beautiful planet God has given us but the Polar Bears are doing fine & will continue to as long as we respect them as God’s creatures. In reality, the biggest source of pollution in many ways is the earth itself. In the middle of our oceans oil can be seen seeping up from the bottom where it’s leaking out. There are places on the planet where you can walk along & see ponds of oil just lying on the top-soil. You can’t walk the countryside without getting oil on your shoes.
Again this doesn’t mean we should squander our natural resources. Common sense tells us fossil fuels will probably run out someday but not someday soon. If & when that happens we can start building engines that can run on water, air, cooking oil, animal dung & a myriad of other substances. You will no doubt remember that the bomb Timothy McVeigh used to flatten the Alfred P. Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City was made partially of cow dung. Who’d have thunk it?
I’ve heard people say— “if we said anything about abortion in our church people would leave.” That’s o.k. There are other places they could go where they won't take a stand on anything.
I’ve heard people say—“churches should stick to preaching the gospel.” Well, the gospel is based on truth & sometimes we must expose the sins that make the gospel necessary.
I’ve heard people ask--- “if we preach this, won’t we offend people?” Maybe; but we need to hear the bad news or we’ll never appreciate the good news.
I’ve heard people say—“If we preach against the sins of our day we just might lose our tax exempt status.” Well then we could do what the vast majority of churches do around the world that never had a tax exemption in the first place.
We’ve slaughtered 51 million Americans through abortion. How many great musicians, scientists, ministers, architects, economists, inventors etc. were in that great multitude? The sad thing is, we’ve killed our answers & thereby we may just have killed our future.
SHOULD WE BE SINGLE ISSUE VOTERS?
Most of us approach various candidates by saying, -What are his/her qualifications for office? I’m not at all sure that’s the best way to do it. What about asking,--What, if anything disqualifies this person from holding office? Is there any issue he/she stands for that is so wrongheaded that I wouldn’t vote for them no matter what else he does or doesn’t believe?
What if a candidate were to say, -“I’m running on a platform that supports bribery as a matter of public policy?” Would we say that man is disqualified for office no matter what else he might believe? What if a candidate said rape isn’t so bad & we should repeal the rape laws? Would you vote for that man? What if a candidate says he is a racist & says that black people should be denied the right to vote & he believes slavery should be legal in America? Would you vote for that man? Would it matter if he added that he was pro-life? I don’t think so, do you?
What if a woman was to marry a man & the day before the marriage he told her he believes adultery is O.K & while he does love her he intends to cheat on her? Wouldn’t you agree that if a man told his sweetheart that it would be a deal-breaker no matter what other good qualities he brings to the table?
Here’s a question; what do you feel disqualifies a man from holding public office? I believe a man who stands up & says he’ll do everything in his power to promote abortion here in America & in other parts of the world disqualifies himself from any position of public office. It’s the same as the endorsement of racism, fraud, or bribery, except that abortion, or child-killing is more serious than those.
There are laws against intentionally maiming dogs & cats. Thank God!! And there are laws that protect a wide range of endangered species. But what about the unborn? Jesus said
….whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better that a millstone were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.—Matt.18:6
These are solemn words telling us that those who deliberately hurt little children will someday face the Lord.
THE STRONGEST STATEMENT ON GOD’S PRENATAL CARE IN ALL THE BIBLE.
Psalm 139:13-14 says;- For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise thee for I am fearfully & wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works & that my soul knoweth right well.
How much does God know about the unborn baby growing in the womb? Everything! Like a skillful weaver God takes the tiny hands & legs & joins them together. He forms the heart & then sets it beating. He watches out for the little thumb to make sure it finds the mouth.
Who makes babies? God does!
What else but satanic can we call a law the kills an eight week fetus? An eight-week old fetus has a beating heart, an EKG, brain waves, thumb-sucking, pain sensitivity, finger grasping, & genetic humanity. But under our present laws an unborn baby isn’t a human person with rights under the 14th Amendment which says that “no state shall deprive any person of life without due process of law.” Why then is it that it’s illegal to maim, or mutilate an animal [who would want to?] but the sensitive unborn baby has no rights at all?
Isn’t it strange that there are quotas on porpoises & whales but it’s always open season on unborn babies? If you destroy the egg of a bald eagle you can be fined $5000: if you destroy an unborn baby you’ll make about $350. Do you think that our ghettos or crime ridden streets are the most dangerous places in America? Think again. A baby in its mother’s womb has a one in three chance of making it out alive. Isn’t it a little schizophrenic that today in America a 14 year old girl may not buy cigarettes or alcohol or attend an x-rated movie; in some places she can’t even get her ears pierced without her mother’s permission? But she can have an abortion. Again doesn’t this sound like “an evil plan,” a satanic plot to you?
This may surprise you but I actually agree with Marlo Thomas & Barbara Streisand on an important issue. During the last election they said-“One candidate should be elected because of his position on abortion & one defeated for the same reason.” They were right of course but they weren’t thinking exactly as I was. They had the candidates backward.
I WONDER-DO WOMEN KNOW THESE THINGS? DO THEY KNOW WHAT THEY’RE DOING IN AN ABORTION?
I’m not wondering if they lack intelligence. I just wonder if they close their eyes to the truth like some do with tobacco, gluttony, drunkenness, or other dangerous substances. They’re not going to expose themselves to in-depth information on the subject.
An encouraging bit of information is that there are actually fewer abortions since the sonogram became available, probably because the future mom can see the little person growing inside her. From the moment of conception a baby has as individual identity. The baby has its own set of genes & chromosomes. At 19 days after conception the eyes begin to develop. At 24 days the heart begins beating. At 30 days the unborn baby is an inch long yet he has a brain, eyes, ears, mouth, kidneys, & liver. At 35 days his fingers have formed & at 40 days brain waves can be detected & recorded. In the tenth week after conception the baby squints, swallows & hiccups & has fingerprints that will stay with him for the rest of his life.
By the fourth month his ears are functioning, he begins to suck his thumb & he can hear his mother’s voice for the first time. By the seventh month he can see & hear & taste & touch. He recognizes his mother’s voice when he hears it. By the ninth month the baby weights between six & nine pounds & his heart pumps 300 gallons of blood per day. He is now capable of life outside the womb if only he gets the chance.
The last few verses of Romans the first chapter mirror our times, especially the sins we embraced as a people when we turned away from God. The Greek word astorgos translated in the KJV as “without natural affection,” & in some translations with the word “heartless.” It was used in the first century for parents who abandoned their children by exposing them to the elements. Such cruelty isn’t natural. To treat your own children with such callous unconcern reveals that you are without natural affection. Seen in that light abortion isn’t just another sin, it’s the mark of a depraved & godless society.
ABORTION IS WRONG BECAUSE IT’S WRONG TO KILL BABIES
Abortion is as simple yet profound as that, & I know of no other conclusion that’s consistent with the Christian faith. I made up my mind where I stood on the abortion issue a long time ago but I can’t nor would I compel your conscience. You have to make up your own mind.
But I also have to say, I have always been & will continue to be a thorn in the devils side on this subject. There are many who are ambivalent on this because they don’t want to be “crusaders.” They say things like “I’m against abortion but I don’t want to impose my views on others.”
Let’s use that logic in other areas of moral values. How would you respond to someone who said;
“I’m against slavery but I don’t think we should go overboard & make it illegal?” Or;
“I’m against slavery but I’m not offended if you still own a few slaves. After all I’m not going to be a radical on the subject."-Or;
“I’m against slavery but other issues are much more important.”
If a person said that & then added, “Oh, by the way, I’m pro-life,” would that matter? No it wouldn’t & shouldn’t. Support for slavery is an absolute disqualifying issue for any leader, it doesn’t matter how good his other positions might be. Don’t you agree? I feel the same way about abortion & I will not nor have I ever voted for anyone who believes it permissible to kill the unborn.
I got an email some time ago from a lady who’d read one of my earlier blogs. [I’ve checked back & don’t really know what she read that convicted her.] This lady was distraught because she’d had an abortion & wondered if God had turned His back on her. I assured her He hadn’t & ministered to her the best I could. If you’ve had an abortion at any time in your life, all you can do is ask God’s forgiveness & determine never to have another one. Try under God to put it behind you & move on. Don’t give yourself a life-sentence because God doesn’t get any glory from that. Just like any other sin He is faithful & just to forgive us. It’s always Satan who drags up our past. He won’t point out anything new we might need to pray about because that would be helping us. But make no mistake,
ABORTION WAS HATCHED IN THE HALLS OF HELL!
We live fairly close to an abortion clinic & almost every day when we pass we see people outside on the sidewalk with signs engaged in peaceful demonstrations. Once in a while we see a large refrigerated truck backing up to the building; as a matter of fact the truck is so large it usually blocks traffic for some time.
Knowing some things I know, that I won’t drag your mind into, I always get a queasy feeling because in my heart I know the cargo that truck has backed up to load on. This whole business is the work of Satan & those who profit from it. The people who traffic in this awful enterprise will someday face God in judgment.
Especially despicable in my view are politicians who use words such as “Freedom” & “choice” & are doing it for crass political gain. I closed my last blog with this verse but it seems appropriate here;
The thief comes to steal kill & destroy: I have come that they might have life & have it to the full. John 10:10.
One more verse; the one we started with;
…..Chose life! God commands us to choose life. This is a command for individuals, families, churches, cities, states & nations.
Blessings,
John
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Who's Afraid Of Sarah Palin??
By John Stallings
When George Bush was in office we constantly heard whining & carping about how dumb, awkward & uncouth he was.
It got so bad that they gave it a name; “The Bush Derangement Syndrome.”
Maybe it stemmed from the closeness of both his elections & the fact that the first one had to go all the way to the Supreme Court.
During the Bush years people went to psychologists & counselors to try to get emotional help in just accepting Bush as their president. I could say a lot right here about our current president but I’ll resist the temptation because this article isn’t about The Bam. However, I will say, & I take no pleasure in saying it, that I predicted before the Inauguration that [ just human reasoning—no claim to a spiritual revelation here,] there was a possibility of The Bam becoming the most despised man who ever occupied the Oval Office. This was based strictly on his attitudes, acts & aspirations where the country is concerned.
I have prayed to be wrong about this & still do, but from the looks of things, it seems I’m going to be right. I really don’t think a nation gains anything by hating on its leaders & certainly for Christians it’s diametrically opposed to scripture.
But I digress from my objective because this piece is to point out the national obsessive/compulsive behavior called “Palin-itis.” The symptoms of the “ Palin-flu” are an overwhelming need to mock, demean, denigrate & ultimately destroy Sarah Palin & her family. Other manifestations are lies, bloviations, half-truths, innuendo & the ever popular “unnamed & anonymous sources.”
Then there’s the constant second guessing if not downright trashing of the lady from Wasilla because she walked away from the Governorship of Alaska in mid-term. In the mind of some people, now she’s a “quitter.” As far as I’m concerned, if I were being hounded by nuisance law-suits for which my state had to pay $500,000 in legal fees, & apparently five of these allegations were made by one women- with TWENTY ethics charges & Zero convictions, knowing myself as I do, I’d most likely be looking for a better set of circumstances.
Does the following make any sense? Maybe, just maybe -Sarah quit her Alaska job because she’s ahead of the rest of us, especially when it comes to running her own life. My fingers would shrivel up if I tried to type the stories of people in the halls of power in Washington who left one government job for a “better” one, starting with the one who now occupies the Oval Office. But I guess somehow that’s different.
Liberals have adopted a whole new set of rules for handling the Palin family. Don't you just love that? Don't you love it when folk subject you to a standard of judgement they'd never allow for themselves or their friends? I've heard her deferred to as “Cutesy” “Folksy” “Down home & dumbed down” “Hot” “Attractive appearance” & “Adorable little wink.” We waited for The National Organization of Women” to come to her defense & they did that about as quick as they “defended” Carrie Prejean. Let’s face it; it’s just not a level playing field out there these days folks.
Not only is Sarah called an ignorant hick, the people who loved her & voted for her were & are also called hicks by people who are no less than intellectual snobs confusing their intelligence with their diplomas. One of the problems we have is too many people confuse being articulate with being able to read from a teleprompter. IMHO, there are also too many people who confuse feeling with thinking & coolness with competence.
You are certainly entitled to your own opinion but you aren’t entitled to your own facts. They can get on Palin’s case for having a strong opinion about the protection of our borders & fiscal responsibility, or tweeting about “death panels” but while they are calling her those names maybe they should read up on Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, the 1940s “community organizer” who states “you may have to destroy an economy to make people dependent on government.” Unless you’ve been on an extended fishing trip you certainly know that the White House is populated by people who are disciples of Alinsky. His amoral strategy for the redistribution of wealth is one that Team Obama unequivocally embraces. One of the things you’ll find interesting also is that Alinsky’s book is dedicated to Lucifer.
Here's another quote from Alinsky; "Any revolutionary change must be proceeded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward the masses of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so future less in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past & change the future."
Thirteen years after Alinsky died some of his former students hired Barack Obama to a $13,000 a year job as a community organized. In a few years he became very proficient in the Alinsky Method of community organizing & became an instructor of the Alinsky Method.
It's true that during the Bush administration some of the groundwork was laid for the fiscal title wave that was to come. It should follow that any positive things happening now to our fiscal situation because of the big spending, Bush should get some of the credit. Call me crazy but I don’t see how that is translated into giving Team Obama leeway for exceeding a trillion dollar deficit this year alone. Two wrongs don’t make a right [although two Wrights did make an airplane.]
Just because a trench was opened up it doesn’t follow that a new fiscal Grand Canyon must be opened up in the earth. Maybe I need glasses but I can’t see where the stimulus bill has worked, nor the “shovel ready” projects, nor the “jolt” that was to happen to the economy. Spending our way to a great financial position has never worked for individuals so how does that work for a nation’s economy? Though I’m not an economist, I can read & my concern is our leadership has “guessed wrong” & what happened in California will happen to the nation in time. Suffice it to say we're at present "circling the drain" financially.
I, like you have read the Constitution & no where can I find that the government should be running insurance companies, car companies, banks, homes & health care. I also see no Constitutional precedent for a shadow government [the “czars.] I’m sure you’ve heard of MPD or multiple personality disorders, or bipolar disorders, but I’m beginning to believe some in Washington have TPD or triple-polar-disorders. I realize that last statement doesn’t make sense but then neither does the goings on in our nation’s capitol.
If there is a “narcissistic personality disorder,” I don’t think it belongs to Sarah Palin but to the current administration that is “boldly going where no administration has gone before.” Apologies to the Trekkies.
Afraid? Yes we should be very afraid but not of Sarah Palin. Isn’t it time to give her family a break? What is her great crime? Is it because she’s a born again Christian “home-girl” who allowed a “down syndrome” child to live, likes to hunt & has a penchant for saying “you betcha?”
If anyone is overly concerned about Sarah’s intelligent, why not google her on Cap & Trade as I’ve done or maybe take the time to read some of the other contributions she has adroitly put on the printed page.
I guess you’ve figured out by now that I’m an admirer of Sarah Palin. I’ve had people I trusted run the same back-stabbing number on me as they have on Sarah so that helps me relate to her.
Yes, I’m part of the, I believe, ever growing multitude around this globe who in spite of all that’s been done to destroy her, still like us some Sarah Palin.
Blessings,
John
When George Bush was in office we constantly heard whining & carping about how dumb, awkward & uncouth he was.
It got so bad that they gave it a name; “The Bush Derangement Syndrome.”
Maybe it stemmed from the closeness of both his elections & the fact that the first one had to go all the way to the Supreme Court.
During the Bush years people went to psychologists & counselors to try to get emotional help in just accepting Bush as their president. I could say a lot right here about our current president but I’ll resist the temptation because this article isn’t about The Bam. However, I will say, & I take no pleasure in saying it, that I predicted before the Inauguration that [ just human reasoning—no claim to a spiritual revelation here,] there was a possibility of The Bam becoming the most despised man who ever occupied the Oval Office. This was based strictly on his attitudes, acts & aspirations where the country is concerned.
I have prayed to be wrong about this & still do, but from the looks of things, it seems I’m going to be right. I really don’t think a nation gains anything by hating on its leaders & certainly for Christians it’s diametrically opposed to scripture.
But I digress from my objective because this piece is to point out the national obsessive/compulsive behavior called “Palin-itis.” The symptoms of the “ Palin-flu” are an overwhelming need to mock, demean, denigrate & ultimately destroy Sarah Palin & her family. Other manifestations are lies, bloviations, half-truths, innuendo & the ever popular “unnamed & anonymous sources.”
Then there’s the constant second guessing if not downright trashing of the lady from Wasilla because she walked away from the Governorship of Alaska in mid-term. In the mind of some people, now she’s a “quitter.” As far as I’m concerned, if I were being hounded by nuisance law-suits for which my state had to pay $500,000 in legal fees, & apparently five of these allegations were made by one women- with TWENTY ethics charges & Zero convictions, knowing myself as I do, I’d most likely be looking for a better set of circumstances.
Does the following make any sense? Maybe, just maybe -Sarah quit her Alaska job because she’s ahead of the rest of us, especially when it comes to running her own life. My fingers would shrivel up if I tried to type the stories of people in the halls of power in Washington who left one government job for a “better” one, starting with the one who now occupies the Oval Office. But I guess somehow that’s different.
Liberals have adopted a whole new set of rules for handling the Palin family. Don't you just love that? Don't you love it when folk subject you to a standard of judgement they'd never allow for themselves or their friends? I've heard her deferred to as “Cutesy” “Folksy” “Down home & dumbed down” “Hot” “Attractive appearance” & “Adorable little wink.” We waited for The National Organization of Women” to come to her defense & they did that about as quick as they “defended” Carrie Prejean. Let’s face it; it’s just not a level playing field out there these days folks.
Not only is Sarah called an ignorant hick, the people who loved her & voted for her were & are also called hicks by people who are no less than intellectual snobs confusing their intelligence with their diplomas. One of the problems we have is too many people confuse being articulate with being able to read from a teleprompter. IMHO, there are also too many people who confuse feeling with thinking & coolness with competence.
You are certainly entitled to your own opinion but you aren’t entitled to your own facts. They can get on Palin’s case for having a strong opinion about the protection of our borders & fiscal responsibility, or tweeting about “death panels” but while they are calling her those names maybe they should read up on Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, the 1940s “community organizer” who states “you may have to destroy an economy to make people dependent on government.” Unless you’ve been on an extended fishing trip you certainly know that the White House is populated by people who are disciples of Alinsky. His amoral strategy for the redistribution of wealth is one that Team Obama unequivocally embraces. One of the things you’ll find interesting also is that Alinsky’s book is dedicated to Lucifer.
Here's another quote from Alinsky; "Any revolutionary change must be proceeded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward the masses of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so future less in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past & change the future."
Thirteen years after Alinsky died some of his former students hired Barack Obama to a $13,000 a year job as a community organized. In a few years he became very proficient in the Alinsky Method of community organizing & became an instructor of the Alinsky Method.
It's true that during the Bush administration some of the groundwork was laid for the fiscal title wave that was to come. It should follow that any positive things happening now to our fiscal situation because of the big spending, Bush should get some of the credit. Call me crazy but I don’t see how that is translated into giving Team Obama leeway for exceeding a trillion dollar deficit this year alone. Two wrongs don’t make a right [although two Wrights did make an airplane.]
Just because a trench was opened up it doesn’t follow that a new fiscal Grand Canyon must be opened up in the earth. Maybe I need glasses but I can’t see where the stimulus bill has worked, nor the “shovel ready” projects, nor the “jolt” that was to happen to the economy. Spending our way to a great financial position has never worked for individuals so how does that work for a nation’s economy? Though I’m not an economist, I can read & my concern is our leadership has “guessed wrong” & what happened in California will happen to the nation in time. Suffice it to say we're at present "circling the drain" financially.
I, like you have read the Constitution & no where can I find that the government should be running insurance companies, car companies, banks, homes & health care. I also see no Constitutional precedent for a shadow government [the “czars.] I’m sure you’ve heard of MPD or multiple personality disorders, or bipolar disorders, but I’m beginning to believe some in Washington have TPD or triple-polar-disorders. I realize that last statement doesn’t make sense but then neither does the goings on in our nation’s capitol.
If there is a “narcissistic personality disorder,” I don’t think it belongs to Sarah Palin but to the current administration that is “boldly going where no administration has gone before.” Apologies to the Trekkies.
Afraid? Yes we should be very afraid but not of Sarah Palin. Isn’t it time to give her family a break? What is her great crime? Is it because she’s a born again Christian “home-girl” who allowed a “down syndrome” child to live, likes to hunt & has a penchant for saying “you betcha?”
If anyone is overly concerned about Sarah’s intelligent, why not google her on Cap & Trade as I’ve done or maybe take the time to read some of the other contributions she has adroitly put on the printed page.
I guess you’ve figured out by now that I’m an admirer of Sarah Palin. I’ve had people I trusted run the same back-stabbing number on me as they have on Sarah so that helps me relate to her.
Yes, I’m part of the, I believe, ever growing multitude around this globe who in spite of all that’s been done to destroy her, still like us some Sarah Palin.
Blessings,
John
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