By John Stallings
Numbers 27:1-11
Recently I read the top ten reasons God made woman.
10. Adam seemed to always be lost in the Garden.
9. Adam needed someone to hand him the T.V remote, not to see what was on but to see what else was on.
8. When Adam needed a new fig-leaf, he’d never order one without a wife.
7. Adam would without question forget garbage night.
6. Adam would never make a doctor's appointment for himself.
5. Adam would have never gone through the pain of childbirth.
4. With Eve, Adam would have someone to blame if things went wrong.
3. Men left alone get into all kinds of trouble.
2. Adam would never remember where he kept his garden tools.
1. After making Adam God said, “I can do better than that.”
In Numbers 27, after the forty years in the wilderness, & toward the end of Moses’ life, there is a fascinating story of five sisters, Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah, the daughters of a man named Zelophehad. This man was of the tribe of Manasseh who died during the wilderness journey.
He had five daughters but no sons. In order to perpetuate their fathers name by means of the allotted share of the Promised Land that would have gone to him, & then to his sons if he had any, Zelophehad’s daughters approached Moses & asked if the land might be given to them instead.
Up to that time there was no provision made in the law for property or possessions to be passed down to women when there were no living male sons.
These daughters were facing the stark reality that the system & its policies were set up in such a way that some were going to be left out of the promise from the very start, & that included them. They came because Israelite customs threaten to erase their father’s memory. Their claim is both affectionate & courageous.
The story is interesting first of all because it wasn’t customary for women to approach Moses in this way. These women came to petition Moses to change things, indeed to if necessary make a new law that would do away with this injustice which in truth made second class citizens of women. These young women were women of faith & came to Moses in such humility & presented their case so convincingly, that Moses had to take the matter to God for directions on how to handle it. God told Moses the women were right & that a new law should be written to see to it that in such future cases, women would receive the same benefits that man received when it came to family inheritance.
Let’s consider five specific stand-out principles that could work for us all when it comes to seeing change effected in our lives & our world. The first thing about these daughters of Zelophehad was;
1.THEY KNEW THEIR IDENTITY.
They not only knew who they were from a human standpoint, they knew they were daughters of covenant. They knew who they were in God & they knew God is not a respecter of persons. They were daughters of the Most High God & approached Moses with Faith.
They knew before the verse was written the meaning of 1 Peter 2:9—But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an Holy nation a peculiar people that ye should show forth the praises of Him who hath called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.
THEY WEREN'T CONFUSED ABOUT A GENDER GAP.
What an example they set for women & as a matter fact all people. It’s always been sad to me to see women who feel somehow they're second class citizens. To be frank, in the 21st century, women are in many quarters, underpaid, under valued & under appreciated. You see women almost everywhere wearing t-shirts that carry the message that they are sexual objects. They seem to feel that if they don’t pass the test of sensuality they need to have re-constructive surgery so that they can measure up to what men & society think they should be.
Sadly many young men also seem to be plagued with an identity crisis. Though I’m not an expert on the subject, I’ve heard that the style of wearing their trousers hanging so low [pants on the ground] they seem in danger of falling off came from prisons where the men have to wear hand-me-downs. Another explanation for the style would be, God forbid,- it transmits to other males their availability for sexual contact.
I doubt that the naive kids who style & profile through the Malls have the slightest clue of where the style they are wearing really comes from. But again it points to a confused generation of youth who haven’t a clue who they are & were meant to be.
These five daughters of Zelophehad knew who they were and set a good example for all women to come by recognizing who they were as daughters of God, made in His image & commanding every bit as much respect as men.
They knew the meaning of Galatians 3:28……..For in Christ there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ.
Romans 8: 16-17 says,-The spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. And if children then heirs; and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together.
They understood;
2 Corinthians 5:20 which says,--Now then we are Ambassadors for Christ……
They understood;
1 Peter 2:9,--But ye are a chosen generation a royal priesthood an holy nation a peculiar people……
2. THESE WOMEN TOOK THE INITIATIVE.
The five sisters saw a challenge when they realized that property rights were passed on through males of the same ethnic clan. They saw that whatever was about to be celebrated by the allotting of land to the people, it didn’t include them. When their father died, if they had been sons they would have inherited his portion of the land. If they had been brothers they’d have been able to share in their brothers’ land. If they had been married they’d have gone to live on their husband’s land. If they had been widowed their husbands family would have taken care of them. But being that they had no father, no brother, no husband & no in-laws, they had no rights to any land. They were coming into the land of promise but it was clear that they didn’t count for anything & they’d remain forever disconnected from the land & from sustainable life.
They looked through the dark foreboding window of the future & realized that they were invisible, at least when it came to possessing any earthly goods.
They approached Moses & Eleazar the priest at the door of the Tabernacle in front of the congregation. What makes this so spectacular is that there was no forum for Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah, to voice their grievance. A woman’s place was in the home. For them to act outside the system was to take a great risk, the risk of being rejected by the rest of the community. Even Moses’ own sister was stricken with leprosy for daring to question her brother’s judgment as God’s spokesman.
Some might have seen this request as confrontational, out of order or disrespectful but God judged their motive. They were doing their part in preserving the inheritance of their father.
How did these girls know their rights as heirs to their father’s inheritance? I believe it was because they spent time at their father’s feet as he shared with them the promises of God to Abraham, Isaac, & Jacob. God had promised to preserve the legacy. They were assured of their birthright because of the time spent with their father. Zelophehad had built faith in his daughters that God would keep His word.
They understood Hebrews 4:16 before it was written,--Let us come boldly therefore the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.
These five sisters with no precedent, no rights, no authority & no testosterone go ahead & take action & initiative. They had the right stuff to go before Moses & take on the legal system in the most public place possible with imagination & grace.
Everyone heard them plead their case to Moses. These women respected the Shekina Glory in the tabernacle but it didn’t cause them to be intimidated. They knew they were right in what they were requesting so they proceeded.
INITIATIVE MEANS SEEING A NEED & DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT WITHOUT WAITING TO BE PRESSURED.
They approached Moses with boldness not arrogance, & with confidence not pride. They didn’t have the attitude of militant feminists nor were they presumptuous.
A little boy had played in the mud until he was almost covered with it from head to toe. As he entered his house his mother playfully asked, “Who’s that little boy coming in my house?” The boy answered, “Well the lady next door was right. She said I was so dirty my mother wouldn’t recognize me.”
These five daughters didn’t have an identity crisis. They recognized exactly who they were & without being cocky about it, they took the initiative. They took action. And not only did they approach Moses with no fear, they were successful & actually got things changed. There was no anger in what they did. They weren’t all worked up & in a rage. Had they done that, nothing would have changed as a matter of fact they would have set their cause back.
James 1:21says –For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.
1 Peter 3:4 says—But let it be the hidden man of the heart in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek & quiet spirit which is in the sight of God of great price.
These women weren’t pushy & brassy. They had courage but they also were in possession of their emotions & they showed humility. Have you noticed that we can’t get much done of any consequence if we’re angry? Anger just makes other people angry. If you & I aren’t being successful in getting our ideas implemented we should stop & ask ourselves if we’re going about it in the right way. We also should realize that not much will happen in our lives until we move on our ideas.
I heard the story of an immigrant who came to America years ago. He’d never seen a cafeteria before so he walked into one & sat down, waiting to be served. A man was watching him & figured he was confused so he walked up & told him how a cafeteria worked. He could just go up to the buffet & get anything he wanted & then go pay for it. The man later said he then understood what America was all about. He could have anything he was willing to pay for but no one was going to get it for him. He’d have to go get it himself.
That’s what initiative is all about. Just do it.
3. THESE WOMEN BROKE WITH TRADITION.
There can be no question that while their father was alive, they were going to have an inheritance & they had probably dreamed about what their share of land would look like. However when he died, all that evaporated & since no mention is made of a mother, they were now no doubt orphans. The girls had probably spent a lot of time talking about their plight; this seems to me to be a valid female approach to dealing with things of importance. In their discussions it probably came up that the land was being given to Israel by God so in truth no one was earning their share. Grace was involved here much more than law & they had faith to believe that God was going to work for them in the matter. But they were smart enough to realize that a few "sacred cows" would have to be slaughtered if they were going to have any chance at all in an inheritance. The definition of a sacred cow is: Once a rule is in place it's very difficult to replace that rule even though the original reason for the rule has disappeared."
It wasn’t customary for women to go to Moses. There was nothing in the law to pass an inheritance down to women so in essence they were asking that another law be written. How nervy can you get? Obviously pretty nervy. But it worked. They got Moses so shook-up that he had to go & pray about it. Long before women actually had any rights at all these women were asking for equal dignity for women. Long before the phrase was coined, they were asking Moses to “think outside the box.”
I read about a young married woman who was cooking a ham for her family. As she proceeded to cut the ham in two, her little girl came by & asked her why she was doing it. The mom confessed that she didn’t know but she’d go call her mom & asked why she always cooked ham that way. Her mother said she didn’t really know either; her mom had always cut hams in two before cooking them. The mother called the grandmother who was quite old & asked her why she’d always prepared a ham by cutting it two pieces & she answered, “Oh, the reason I always cut hams in two was because I didn’t have a pot large enough to cook a ham in one piece.”
So a tradition was born in that family & people were going through the motions not recognizing there was no longer a valid reason to be doing it.
These daughters of Zelophehad knew nothing had been written about their need so everyone was just following a tradition; a tradition that needed changing.
Sometimes people will pray for supernatural discernment when all that is needed is a little common sense. The sisters knew that there was the written law but there was also such a thing as the spirit of the law & the spirit of the law said they should be treated as fairly as anyone else. We can get so hung-up in our traditions that we don’t realize how silly we look doing things just because that’s the way we’ve always done them.
In 2 Corinthians 3:7 Paul said, “Who has made us able ministers of the New Testament; not of the letter but of the spirit: for the letter killeth but the spirit giveth life.
Legalists will write a rule for everything. When that happens, everything gets in bondage & boxed in to rule keeping, consequently all joy evaporates. The Bible doesn’t speak on every little issue we face; if it did it would be so big it would take a box-car to carry it. What God expects us to do in those cases is use our sanctified common sense & follow the spirit of the law. If a person accidentally shoots another person & it is very obvious that it was an accident, a judge isn’t going to treat it like a murder. If it’s demonstrable that it was an accident the judge will use the spirit of the law to judge the person. Intent & motivation are always carefully examined.
If you want to see a depressed group of people, go into a church that’s bound up by laws, rules & regulations & you’ll see the saddest sight you can imagine. Where the spirit of the Lord is there is liberty & joy in the Holy Ghost. There’s no need for God’s people to get all bound up with legalism when all we have to do in cases where there’s no written direction is read the intent of God’s law.
If you want to know what legalism really looks like read Matthew 23 & you’ll not only read the best description available anywhere about what makes legalists tick. You’ll also see Jesus excoriating the Pharisees until you can almost smell the hide burning. He scolded them because all they could think about was their traditions. If you haven’t read that chapter lately you should re-read it.
In the book of Revelation we hear Jesus speaking to the seven churches about hearing-- “what the spirit is saying to the church.” Yes- God’s written word is true. Yes -it’s all written under the Spirit’s directive. Yes -it’s all profitable to living victorious lives. But Jesus is saying that God is still speaking to the churches in the 21st century & we need to have keen listening ears.
These women motivated Moses to think & to pray. You have probably observed that women have a talent for building fires under men.
4. THEY MOTIVATED LEADERSHIP
When these women got through presenting their petition; all Moses could do was go pray. When I think about these sisters I can’t help but think about Barak & Deborah. Mention is made of Barak in Hebrews eleven. When I think about them it also brings to mind Abigail & the way she confronted David when he was on his way to kill her weak husband & probably all the males in her family. Abigail confronted David & taught him mercy, saving him from untold regrets.
In 1859 a woman by the name of Sarah J. Hale petitioned the Government to have a special day of Thanksgiving. She had to jump through a lot of hoops but the bottom line is that today we men have a full day of eating turkey & watching football because of this woman.
My mother was, by any standards a very strong woman. When my sister & I were in junior high & high school the pressure was constantly put on us to learn to dance. My mothers answer to that was, “you teach my kids reading, writing & arithmetic & I’ll teach them the social graces.” Though she was called on to confront several school systems in several different states she always prevailed & her children never graced a dance floor.
My wife Juda has taken my mothers place & she stands as a sentry in my life calling me to do more than I think I can do. She often throws me out of the boat and says “walk.” When you look at my life don’t give me too much credit. The credit goes to great women who saw in me more than I ever saw in myself & pushed me to excel.
How often have I heard the admonition-“you’re thinking too small?”
5. THE DAUGHTERS OF ZELOPHEHAD'S ACTION BENEFITED OTHERS.
It would have been risky to approach Moses in private. It would have looked like they were trying to get a better, maybe secret deal for themselves. [Don’t you just despise those back-room secret deals?] By coming to him publicly their petition becomes an action to effect change on behalf of the whole community. These sisters were using their heads & being extraordinarily creative, & along the way, filing one of the earliest law suits on record.
Notice that Moses came out of his prayers & announced- “These women are right.” What they started has benefited women across the ages up to this day.
I think of Rosa Parks. In 1955 she’d had it up to her neck with being treated like a poodle dog so she refused to move to the back of the city bus. History will show that by taking the stand she took, all women were blessed. Frankly the entire human race was blessed because she refused to be treated like a second class citizen that day in Montgomery Alabama. Likewise, the daughters of Zelophehad didn’t do what they did for strictly selfish reasons. They knew what they were doing would help women of many coming generations.
These daughters knew that they and all others were priests under God & because of their persistence a new law was written not only for them but to secure rights to property for generations to come.
Thank God for women & thank God for the differences that are woven into our lives by our creator. Without these differences life would be rather lack-luster. Thank God for the woman’s touch even though it historically has been somewhat underappreciated. As for me, I’ve appreciated women since I first found out they weren’t men.
I recently wrote an article in my blog called-“I hope you dance.” It was inspired by the country song of the same name. Dancing in the song was really synonymous with being engaged with life, not sitting on the sidelines letting life with all its opportunities pass us by.
Life isn’t meant to be feared, it’s meant to be lived with gusto. I’m always amazed when I read Christ’s parable about the talents that a business man gave his servants. When he returned he expected to see that they had invested his money & made it grow for him. The servant who was given one talent went & hid it while the others immediately went & put the money to work to see an increase. When the master returned he commended the ones who’d wisely invested his money & chastised the one who’d played it safe & put the money in a hole in the ground.
The reason it surprises me when I read this parable is that you just wouldn’t think Jesus, being so spiritually oriented would have financial investments on his mind. Of course the parable, like all of Christ’s parables has many shades of meaning. Not only was He stressing wise money management, He was reminding us that God expects a return on the talents & abilities He’s given us, whatever they may be. If we don’t use what we’ve been given we’ll have to face God someday & explain why we allowed His investment in us to stagnate.
The daughters of Zelophehad were shining examples of being engaged with the realities of life. They had the courage & initiative to take the bull by the horns -as it were -& effect change, not only for themselves but for future generations. Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah, didn’t change everything but they did make a significant difference in their rights as well as others that would be beneficiaries of this legal change.
The book of numbers doesn’t record the reaction of the sisters when they won their case but I think I know what it was. Of course, they danced.
What is it you believe that God has called you to do? Have you been sitting at your father’s feet daily? Are you waiting for your next assignment? Don’t let any man, women or world system intimidate you or victimize you into believing you are only a woman. You are a daughter of Zion. Arise & shine for your light has come. The glory of the Lord has risen upon you -Ish.60:1-2. Take your rightful place & claim your God given heritage. Your reward will be great because you’ll receive your inheritance & that will be time well spent.
In closing here’s a poem to mothers, wives, & all the loyal, loving hearted women who have graced our lives & made them richer; women who’ve indeed been- the wind beneath our wings. It’s called;
WHEN YOU THOUGHT I WASN’T LOOKING.
When you thought I wasn’t looking I saw you hang my first painting on the refrigerator & then I knew how proud you were of me.
When you thought I wasn’t looking I saw you feed a stray cat & I thought how wonderful it was to have such a kind heart.
When you thought I wasn’t looking I noticed you baked my favorite cake & I was so glad you were my mother.
When you thought I wasn’t looking I saw tears come from your eyes & I knew you had a soft heart & it made me love you more & I said I wanted to be just like you.
When you thought I wasn’t looking I saw how much you cared for me & all our family & I wanted to say thanks for all the things you did,
---when you thought I wasn’t looking.
Blessings,
John
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Monday, January 11, 2010
Just Do It!
By John Stallings
Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you. John 5:14--NIV
A successful young lawyer was driving one day & a policeman pulled him over for not coming to a complete stop at a stop sign. The young man argued technicalities for a living so he thought he’d engage the young cop in some of his courtroom expertise.
The lawyer said, “I slowed down & no one was coming, & I moved on after looking both ways, why isn’t that enough?” The young man was doing what I see drivers do every day & that’s the “rolling stop.”
The lawyer said, “Why don’t you give me a good, practical reason why it’s so important that I come to a complete stop when I can slow down to a “snails pace,” look carefully & move on with great caution?” The educated to the hilt lawyer was asking the unsophisticated policeman to give him an illustration of the difference in slowing down, almost stopping, & coming to a complete stop.
The policeman asked the man to step out of his vehicle & when he did he proceeded to pull out his Billy-club & began hitting the young man repeatedly. As he swung the Billy-club across the back of the lawyer’s neck he asked, “Now, -- you tell me the difference in stopping & just slowing down.”
Some of the better truths in the story of Jesus healing the man at the pool of Bethesda happen after the man was healed & entered the temple, encountering the Pharisees.
In John 5:14, Jesus later found the man in the temple & spoke to him. Jesus had already dealt with the man in “grace” & now He applied “truth,” telling him to stop sinning or something worse would happen to him. Notice;
JESUS FOUND THE MAN IN THE TEMPLE
The narrative seems clear to me that Jesus went looking for the man He’d recently healed. It’s amazing how Jesus can always find us. Though we sometimes want to feel we went looking for Him, the fact is, God came searching for us. Do you know why it’s often said that Christianity isn’t a religion? Answer; religion is defined as, “Man’s search for God.”
In the strictest sense, a person can be praying to a bird or the Sun & be said to be practicing religion. Mankind is & has always been on a cosmic search for God.
But in Christianity, man wasn’t searching for God, but rather God came searching for man. It was happening all through the Old Testament through the prophets & other phenomenon, & it culminated in Christ coming to earth to dwell among men & die on the cross.
Paul said in Romans 3:11, --there is none that seeketh after God.
The Psalmist said in Psalm 14:3—there is none that doeth good, no not one.
Over & over it’s been demonstrated that when an individual sinks so far into sin all seems hopeless, --“man’s extremity is God’s opportunity,” & God finds that person.
WHEN JESUS FOUND THIS MAN IN THE TEMPLE, HE SAID, “STOP SINNING OR SOMETHING WORSE MAY HAPPEN TO YOU.”
STOP-SINNING!! Here’s one of the most profound theological commands ever uttered. Are you ready?
STOP IT!!
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the YOUTUBE video on STOP IT with comedian Bob Newhart. If not, take six minutes & watch it. He’s at his funniest, stuttering, brilliant best.
Newhart plays a very different kind of Psychiatrist who charges five dollars for a five minute session. A woman comes into his office & unburdens her phobia about being buried alive in a box. Newhart asks her if anyone had ever threatened to bury her in a box or if there was any real basis for the fear & she says there isn’t. Then he looks at her & says; STOP IT!
Newhart’s finished in three minutes but he can’t break a five dollar bill for the woman so she stays for two more minutes to get her monies worth. She tells him she doesn’t think his advice is going to work for her, & he says, “O.k. if the two words aren’t enough for you I’ll give you ten words,
“STOP IT OR I’LL BURY YOU ALIVE IN A BOX.”
That little skit is humorous but in reality it speaks volumes.
We could read the Bible through & memorize every word of it but until we, as an act of our will make the decision to forsake sin & put it to death, we’ll never be victorious over sin. At some point we have to stop the action, habit or sin because no one else can do it for us.
Are you thinking negatively? STOP IT!!
Are you over-spending? STOP IT!!
Are you overworking? STOP IT!!
Are you gossiping? STOP IT!!
Are you judging others? STOP IT!!
Are you obsessive/ compulsive? STOP IT!!
Do you think your opinions are always best? STOP IT!!
Do you lose your temper? STOP IT!!
Are you overeating? STOP IT!!
Are you indulging in a secret sin? STOP IT!!
It’s like the man who went to the Doctor & told him when he lifted his arm a certain way it hurt. The Doctor, said, “Stop lifting it like that.”
I heard about a man who was having trouble with his voice. He went to a throat specialist, & after a long series of tests, the doctor told the man, the only thing I can tell you is; you talk too much. Stop it!”
Years ago I heard comedian George Burns, nearly one hundred at the time, tell about developing a condition that caused him to constantly clear his throat with a little short cough. He’d been doing it for thirty years & mentioned to his doctor that he was concerned about the cough especially since he smoked cigars. The doctor told him he could easily get rid of the cough for him & gave him instructions, “Stop doing it.” Burns said “that was fifty years ago & I’ve never coughed since.” They aren’t making doctors like that any more.
Here’s the best way I’ve ever found to lose weight; STOP EATING SO MUCH!!
You can do it the low-carb way, which is the way we’ve done it for the last few years, or you can eat 1,000 to 1,500 calories a day but however you do it, you’ve got to STOP EATING SO MUCH.
You may have a problem that isn’t a sin-- it’s just a bad habit but you can handle it the same way, JUST STOP IT!!
DON’T TRY TO MODIFY OR REDEFINE SIN, OR SLOW IT DOWN, JUST STOP IT!
In the seventies Dr. Karl Mennineger wrote a very good book called, “Whatever became of sin?” He talked about this problem of rationalizing sin or calling it by another name. Over thirty years later the problem has grown exponentially. Our society now has a hard time labeling things right or wrong. When President Ronald Reagan called The Soviet Union an evil empire, it upset a lot of people because they couldn’t come to terms with calling certain things or nation’s evil.
When I read Dr. Mennineger’s book in the mid-seventies, I humbly answered his question thusly; “Sin went to the doctor & was diagnosed as a disease. Sin went to the psychiatrist & was diagnosed as a dysfunction.” Some people choose to try to modify their sin or cut down on it, like ordering a half-order of something in a restaurant. But the edict of heaven is still, STOP IT.
Jesus tells the paralyzed man,--SIN NO MORE!
You may think a Christian can’t sin but as long as we have a robe of flesh we will have a bent toward sin. The Lord’s Prayer says-- forgive us our sins; it doesn’t say –forgive them their sins.
You can be saved, sanctified & filled with heaven’s sweet Holy Ghost but you still have to STOP SINNING!! You can pray until your hair turns green but you still have to STOP SINNING!!
You can fast until you are skin & bones & God will certainly grant you His grace & power but at some point you’ll still have to make the decision to STOP SINNING!!
In Romans 8:13 Paul says, --For if ye live after the flesh ye shall die but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the flesh ye shall live. The word mortify comes from the same word that we get the word mortician. This is what must be done to sin.
It’s possible to be “too spiritual,” expecting to sit passively by while God comes in & takes the evil desires & temptations out of our way. He won’t do that but He’ll always create an escape hatch for us to escape the temptation. Of course we’ll have to take the time to look for His way of escape.
Listen how Paul handles a situation where a person has a problem with stealing;
Does he say to the person: “You know, stealing is so ingrained in you & you’ve been so defeated by it, the only hope you have to being victorious over stealing is to have the Lord come in & deal with it for you?” No! What does Paul say? Listen to Ephesians 4:28;
Let him that stole, steal no more! --- JUST STOP IT! Now that’s some deep theology, wouldn’t you agree?
Paul deals much the same way when it comes to growth in grace & spiritual maturity. He tells us in 1 Corinthians that he was at one time young & immature like everyone else. There were the same weaknesses & childishness in Paul’s life that all of us know about.
But did Paul say, “Well, I went to a great revival meeting & went forward & do you know what? God came & instantaneously took away all my childish ways in a heart-beat?”
No. What did Paul say? He said, -When I became a man I put away childish things.-1 Cor.13:11
Paul is saying that as an act of his will, he put away from him the juvenile things that were holding him back.
Paul also tells us how he was able to deal with his day by day attitudes. But he didn’t say;--“You know, I had such a problem with my attitude, I didn’t know what I was going to do.” He didn’t say; “I was always miserable & constantly complaining about my accommodations, the food, and the beverages & really just about everything in my life. But, you know, one night in prayer, God just came into the room & touched me. And since that night, I’m just as contented as one of those old contented cows, anywhere God puts me.”? No! Paul didn’t say that.
What Paul said was;
……For I have LEARNED, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. Phil.4:11
Paul didn’t get his sweet disposition in a miraculous manner. No Sir! He had to cultivate it. He had to learn it. Have you seen these spiritual babies that are waiting for God to work a miracle & transform them from a miserable Christian to a happy camper? God isn’t going to do for us what, through prayer, study of His word, & bringing our flesh into subjection, we should be doing for ourselves.
AN OLD TESTAMENT WAY OF DEALING WITH SIN
In 1 Samuel 15, Samuel anointed Saul & gave him instructions to kill all the Amalekites. While God doesn’t need me to come to His defense, there was a reason for this seemingly cruel order to be given. These folk, a nomadic race & descendants of Esau, were the mortal enemies of the Israelites. This was the people who attacked Israel in the famous battle when Aaron & Hur had to hold up Moses’ arms. God had already told Moses he would utterly blot out the memory of these people from under heaven.
The bloody Amalekites were one of the reasons the Israelites disobeyed God & balked at entering the Promised Land. God’s anger burned against these people because they hated Him & detested Israel. In short, the Amalekites were very bad people & Saul was to be God’s instrument to execute judgment on them.
As we know, Saul didn’t obey the clear command of God & motivated by covetousness he kept all their best possessions & actually spared their king, king Agag. Maybe Saul’s pride led him to want a “king on a string.”
The disobedience by Saul was so serious to God that He sent Samuel to tell him God was taking the throne of Israel from him & his descendants forever. We don’t usually think of Samuel, that great prophet of God who was called as a youngster under the tutelage of Eli, as a harsh & vindictive man.
But what Samuel later did about this miscarriage of God’s justice is shocking. He coolly said, “Bring me Agag!” Agag thought he was safe & came to Samuel & cheerfully told him he was glad the threat of death had passed. Obviously Samuel wasn’t amused. Do you know what Samuel did then? He took a sword & cut Agag to pieces. 1 Sam.15:32-33.
This might seem cruel & merciless, but let there be no mistake; this was an act of divine judgment to show the holy wrath of an indignant God against a cruel & incorrigible people.
For proof, you only have to go to the end of the book of 1 Samuel not long afterwards, to see the reinvigorated fragments of the Amalekites were still running around the countryside, eating, drinking & pillaging & still causing trouble for Israel. It was they who raided David’s town Ziklag & took his family captive. David caught up with them & got his family back, fighting them all night long into the next morning killing all but four hundred of them.
I can’t think of a more perfect illustration of what sin can & will do if not dealt with harshly. Like the Amalekites, sin if not mortified has a way of reviving, regrouping & launching new & unexpected attacks at the worst times & in the most unexpected ways.
Let’s be real here; living a pure life is difficult today & sexual temptation is one of the strongest. Did Jesus talk about that? Yes He did & He gave us three ways to break the power of sin in our lives.
1. LOOK AWAY
In Matthew 5:27-30, Jesus said;
Ye have heard that it was said of them of old time, “Thou shall not commit adultery: But I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a women to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.
And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.
And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.
Jesus is saying that looking at someone lustfully is just as detrimental to our heart & soul as if we had physically committed adultery. If you allowed contempt & hate to build up in your heart against a person it would create a barrier between you even if you never acted on those feelings. Likewise, having lustful thoughts hurts us spiritually if we never act on them because seeing someone as a sexual object builds the wrong feelings & motivations. We realize that thoughts precede actions & thinking about something paves the way to acting it out.
Look away, divert your eyes. Looking refers to one who continues to look with deliberate intent. We can’t live in a world without visual temptations but we don’t have to stare. We can always get up & leave a theater. We can put a book aside & not finish it. Even though we rented a movie, if it gets weird we don’t have to watch it.
If you go on a diet the last place you need to go is to the Dairy Queen or Wendy’s. If you’re counting calories the last thing you need is to go somewhere they have luscious pictures of Lobster Primavera on the menu. Then Jesus said;
2. CUT IT OUT.
If your eye or hand offends, put them away from you. Now we know Jesus isn’t actually speaking of mutilation here, He’s speaking figuratively. What He’s saying is whatever causes you to sin, get rid of it.
I’ve heard of good honorable people who can’t have a computer because of the temptation to log onto a porn channel. Not having a computer prevents them from communication with relatives, checking their bank accounts, checking news stories, driving directions to different locations, purchasing things conveniently, using the spiritual materials that are available online, knowing what’s happening to ministries around the world, & a multitude of other good things. But they can’t trust themselves to have those conveniences because it could open a door for a temptation they feel might be their spiritual downfall.
There are others who can’t have cable T.V because they don’t trust their ability to change the channel. Some people won’t listen to certain kinds of music & even terminate romantic relationships that are leading them into tempting situations.
There are people who haven’t had a drink for years & won’t go places where alcohol is served because it’s a temptation they don’t want to have to deal with. We might look at these folk critically but the bottom line is; whether it’s canceling AOL, having cable television disconnected, transferring to another department at work, whatever is necessary to keep out of a situation that causes temptation to sin, it’s wise to cut it out. It’s better to go dateless, have no television, not get a promotion & forego the knowledge the internet could supply than to be trapped in sin.
3. GUARD YOUR HEART
David said; Create in me a pure heart O God….Psalm 51:10
I realize that temptation is a matter of the heart not just our surroundings & certainly our heart must be dealt with but in the case of many people, they feel by eliminating certain sources of temptation they get along better & give themselves the opportunity to focus on the real issues, the state of their heart.
God wants to purify our hearts so that dating isn’t a problem, surfing the internet isn’t a problem or working with an attractive member of the opposite sex isn’t a problem. But we have to do our part. In order to be victorious, we’ve got to eliminate certain distractions, learn to look away from temptations, learn to avoid sinful situations, & learn to focus on the work he wants to do in us.
Please understand the Christian life isn’t a cut & dried proposition, a life that we live in our own strength. While It’s true that we can never abandon our responsibility to mortify our own sin, as Christians, God’s Spirit is always with us working in us, both to will & to of His good pleasure. Phil.2:13. If we have a desire to do right in the first place, it’s God’s spirit that has come along side us to give us that desire.
In a very real sense, it’s as simple as this; “Walk in the Spirit & you will not carry out the desires of the flesh. Gal.5:16.
Let us therefore cleanse ourselves from all defilement of the flesh & spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. -- 2 Cor.7:1
“When we all get to heaven” we’ll be rid of the flesh, but like the Amalekites, until totally eradicated, sin can always come screaming back with hellish fury when least expected.
Paul said, -But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway. 1 Cor.9:27.
We might as well accept the fact that we have a stalker named sin & it’s our duty, with the daily faithful assistance of the Holy Spirit, to mortify it, until we rest in gloryland.
Blessings,
John
Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you. John 5:14--NIV
A successful young lawyer was driving one day & a policeman pulled him over for not coming to a complete stop at a stop sign. The young man argued technicalities for a living so he thought he’d engage the young cop in some of his courtroom expertise.
The lawyer said, “I slowed down & no one was coming, & I moved on after looking both ways, why isn’t that enough?” The young man was doing what I see drivers do every day & that’s the “rolling stop.”
The lawyer said, “Why don’t you give me a good, practical reason why it’s so important that I come to a complete stop when I can slow down to a “snails pace,” look carefully & move on with great caution?” The educated to the hilt lawyer was asking the unsophisticated policeman to give him an illustration of the difference in slowing down, almost stopping, & coming to a complete stop.
The policeman asked the man to step out of his vehicle & when he did he proceeded to pull out his Billy-club & began hitting the young man repeatedly. As he swung the Billy-club across the back of the lawyer’s neck he asked, “Now, -- you tell me the difference in stopping & just slowing down.”
Some of the better truths in the story of Jesus healing the man at the pool of Bethesda happen after the man was healed & entered the temple, encountering the Pharisees.
In John 5:14, Jesus later found the man in the temple & spoke to him. Jesus had already dealt with the man in “grace” & now He applied “truth,” telling him to stop sinning or something worse would happen to him. Notice;
JESUS FOUND THE MAN IN THE TEMPLE
The narrative seems clear to me that Jesus went looking for the man He’d recently healed. It’s amazing how Jesus can always find us. Though we sometimes want to feel we went looking for Him, the fact is, God came searching for us. Do you know why it’s often said that Christianity isn’t a religion? Answer; religion is defined as, “Man’s search for God.”
In the strictest sense, a person can be praying to a bird or the Sun & be said to be practicing religion. Mankind is & has always been on a cosmic search for God.
But in Christianity, man wasn’t searching for God, but rather God came searching for man. It was happening all through the Old Testament through the prophets & other phenomenon, & it culminated in Christ coming to earth to dwell among men & die on the cross.
Paul said in Romans 3:11, --there is none that seeketh after God.
The Psalmist said in Psalm 14:3—there is none that doeth good, no not one.
Over & over it’s been demonstrated that when an individual sinks so far into sin all seems hopeless, --“man’s extremity is God’s opportunity,” & God finds that person.
WHEN JESUS FOUND THIS MAN IN THE TEMPLE, HE SAID, “STOP SINNING OR SOMETHING WORSE MAY HAPPEN TO YOU.”
STOP-SINNING!! Here’s one of the most profound theological commands ever uttered. Are you ready?
STOP IT!!
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the YOUTUBE video on STOP IT with comedian Bob Newhart. If not, take six minutes & watch it. He’s at his funniest, stuttering, brilliant best.
Newhart plays a very different kind of Psychiatrist who charges five dollars for a five minute session. A woman comes into his office & unburdens her phobia about being buried alive in a box. Newhart asks her if anyone had ever threatened to bury her in a box or if there was any real basis for the fear & she says there isn’t. Then he looks at her & says; STOP IT!
Newhart’s finished in three minutes but he can’t break a five dollar bill for the woman so she stays for two more minutes to get her monies worth. She tells him she doesn’t think his advice is going to work for her, & he says, “O.k. if the two words aren’t enough for you I’ll give you ten words,
“STOP IT OR I’LL BURY YOU ALIVE IN A BOX.”
That little skit is humorous but in reality it speaks volumes.
We could read the Bible through & memorize every word of it but until we, as an act of our will make the decision to forsake sin & put it to death, we’ll never be victorious over sin. At some point we have to stop the action, habit or sin because no one else can do it for us.
Are you thinking negatively? STOP IT!!
Are you over-spending? STOP IT!!
Are you overworking? STOP IT!!
Are you gossiping? STOP IT!!
Are you judging others? STOP IT!!
Are you obsessive/ compulsive? STOP IT!!
Do you think your opinions are always best? STOP IT!!
Do you lose your temper? STOP IT!!
Are you overeating? STOP IT!!
Are you indulging in a secret sin? STOP IT!!
It’s like the man who went to the Doctor & told him when he lifted his arm a certain way it hurt. The Doctor, said, “Stop lifting it like that.”
I heard about a man who was having trouble with his voice. He went to a throat specialist, & after a long series of tests, the doctor told the man, the only thing I can tell you is; you talk too much. Stop it!”
Years ago I heard comedian George Burns, nearly one hundred at the time, tell about developing a condition that caused him to constantly clear his throat with a little short cough. He’d been doing it for thirty years & mentioned to his doctor that he was concerned about the cough especially since he smoked cigars. The doctor told him he could easily get rid of the cough for him & gave him instructions, “Stop doing it.” Burns said “that was fifty years ago & I’ve never coughed since.” They aren’t making doctors like that any more.
Here’s the best way I’ve ever found to lose weight; STOP EATING SO MUCH!!
You can do it the low-carb way, which is the way we’ve done it for the last few years, or you can eat 1,000 to 1,500 calories a day but however you do it, you’ve got to STOP EATING SO MUCH.
You may have a problem that isn’t a sin-- it’s just a bad habit but you can handle it the same way, JUST STOP IT!!
DON’T TRY TO MODIFY OR REDEFINE SIN, OR SLOW IT DOWN, JUST STOP IT!
In the seventies Dr. Karl Mennineger wrote a very good book called, “Whatever became of sin?” He talked about this problem of rationalizing sin or calling it by another name. Over thirty years later the problem has grown exponentially. Our society now has a hard time labeling things right or wrong. When President Ronald Reagan called The Soviet Union an evil empire, it upset a lot of people because they couldn’t come to terms with calling certain things or nation’s evil.
When I read Dr. Mennineger’s book in the mid-seventies, I humbly answered his question thusly; “Sin went to the doctor & was diagnosed as a disease. Sin went to the psychiatrist & was diagnosed as a dysfunction.” Some people choose to try to modify their sin or cut down on it, like ordering a half-order of something in a restaurant. But the edict of heaven is still, STOP IT.
Jesus tells the paralyzed man,--SIN NO MORE!
You may think a Christian can’t sin but as long as we have a robe of flesh we will have a bent toward sin. The Lord’s Prayer says-- forgive us our sins; it doesn’t say –forgive them their sins.
You can be saved, sanctified & filled with heaven’s sweet Holy Ghost but you still have to STOP SINNING!! You can pray until your hair turns green but you still have to STOP SINNING!!
You can fast until you are skin & bones & God will certainly grant you His grace & power but at some point you’ll still have to make the decision to STOP SINNING!!
In Romans 8:13 Paul says, --For if ye live after the flesh ye shall die but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the flesh ye shall live. The word mortify comes from the same word that we get the word mortician. This is what must be done to sin.
It’s possible to be “too spiritual,” expecting to sit passively by while God comes in & takes the evil desires & temptations out of our way. He won’t do that but He’ll always create an escape hatch for us to escape the temptation. Of course we’ll have to take the time to look for His way of escape.
Listen how Paul handles a situation where a person has a problem with stealing;
Does he say to the person: “You know, stealing is so ingrained in you & you’ve been so defeated by it, the only hope you have to being victorious over stealing is to have the Lord come in & deal with it for you?” No! What does Paul say? Listen to Ephesians 4:28;
Let him that stole, steal no more! --- JUST STOP IT! Now that’s some deep theology, wouldn’t you agree?
Paul deals much the same way when it comes to growth in grace & spiritual maturity. He tells us in 1 Corinthians that he was at one time young & immature like everyone else. There were the same weaknesses & childishness in Paul’s life that all of us know about.
But did Paul say, “Well, I went to a great revival meeting & went forward & do you know what? God came & instantaneously took away all my childish ways in a heart-beat?”
No. What did Paul say? He said, -When I became a man I put away childish things.-1 Cor.13:11
Paul is saying that as an act of his will, he put away from him the juvenile things that were holding him back.
Paul also tells us how he was able to deal with his day by day attitudes. But he didn’t say;--“You know, I had such a problem with my attitude, I didn’t know what I was going to do.” He didn’t say; “I was always miserable & constantly complaining about my accommodations, the food, and the beverages & really just about everything in my life. But, you know, one night in prayer, God just came into the room & touched me. And since that night, I’m just as contented as one of those old contented cows, anywhere God puts me.”? No! Paul didn’t say that.
What Paul said was;
……For I have LEARNED, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. Phil.4:11
Paul didn’t get his sweet disposition in a miraculous manner. No Sir! He had to cultivate it. He had to learn it. Have you seen these spiritual babies that are waiting for God to work a miracle & transform them from a miserable Christian to a happy camper? God isn’t going to do for us what, through prayer, study of His word, & bringing our flesh into subjection, we should be doing for ourselves.
AN OLD TESTAMENT WAY OF DEALING WITH SIN
In 1 Samuel 15, Samuel anointed Saul & gave him instructions to kill all the Amalekites. While God doesn’t need me to come to His defense, there was a reason for this seemingly cruel order to be given. These folk, a nomadic race & descendants of Esau, were the mortal enemies of the Israelites. This was the people who attacked Israel in the famous battle when Aaron & Hur had to hold up Moses’ arms. God had already told Moses he would utterly blot out the memory of these people from under heaven.
The bloody Amalekites were one of the reasons the Israelites disobeyed God & balked at entering the Promised Land. God’s anger burned against these people because they hated Him & detested Israel. In short, the Amalekites were very bad people & Saul was to be God’s instrument to execute judgment on them.
As we know, Saul didn’t obey the clear command of God & motivated by covetousness he kept all their best possessions & actually spared their king, king Agag. Maybe Saul’s pride led him to want a “king on a string.”
The disobedience by Saul was so serious to God that He sent Samuel to tell him God was taking the throne of Israel from him & his descendants forever. We don’t usually think of Samuel, that great prophet of God who was called as a youngster under the tutelage of Eli, as a harsh & vindictive man.
But what Samuel later did about this miscarriage of God’s justice is shocking. He coolly said, “Bring me Agag!” Agag thought he was safe & came to Samuel & cheerfully told him he was glad the threat of death had passed. Obviously Samuel wasn’t amused. Do you know what Samuel did then? He took a sword & cut Agag to pieces. 1 Sam.15:32-33.
This might seem cruel & merciless, but let there be no mistake; this was an act of divine judgment to show the holy wrath of an indignant God against a cruel & incorrigible people.
For proof, you only have to go to the end of the book of 1 Samuel not long afterwards, to see the reinvigorated fragments of the Amalekites were still running around the countryside, eating, drinking & pillaging & still causing trouble for Israel. It was they who raided David’s town Ziklag & took his family captive. David caught up with them & got his family back, fighting them all night long into the next morning killing all but four hundred of them.
I can’t think of a more perfect illustration of what sin can & will do if not dealt with harshly. Like the Amalekites, sin if not mortified has a way of reviving, regrouping & launching new & unexpected attacks at the worst times & in the most unexpected ways.
Let’s be real here; living a pure life is difficult today & sexual temptation is one of the strongest. Did Jesus talk about that? Yes He did & He gave us three ways to break the power of sin in our lives.
1. LOOK AWAY
In Matthew 5:27-30, Jesus said;
Ye have heard that it was said of them of old time, “Thou shall not commit adultery: But I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a women to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.
And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.
And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.
Jesus is saying that looking at someone lustfully is just as detrimental to our heart & soul as if we had physically committed adultery. If you allowed contempt & hate to build up in your heart against a person it would create a barrier between you even if you never acted on those feelings. Likewise, having lustful thoughts hurts us spiritually if we never act on them because seeing someone as a sexual object builds the wrong feelings & motivations. We realize that thoughts precede actions & thinking about something paves the way to acting it out.
Look away, divert your eyes. Looking refers to one who continues to look with deliberate intent. We can’t live in a world without visual temptations but we don’t have to stare. We can always get up & leave a theater. We can put a book aside & not finish it. Even though we rented a movie, if it gets weird we don’t have to watch it.
If you go on a diet the last place you need to go is to the Dairy Queen or Wendy’s. If you’re counting calories the last thing you need is to go somewhere they have luscious pictures of Lobster Primavera on the menu. Then Jesus said;
2. CUT IT OUT.
If your eye or hand offends, put them away from you. Now we know Jesus isn’t actually speaking of mutilation here, He’s speaking figuratively. What He’s saying is whatever causes you to sin, get rid of it.
I’ve heard of good honorable people who can’t have a computer because of the temptation to log onto a porn channel. Not having a computer prevents them from communication with relatives, checking their bank accounts, checking news stories, driving directions to different locations, purchasing things conveniently, using the spiritual materials that are available online, knowing what’s happening to ministries around the world, & a multitude of other good things. But they can’t trust themselves to have those conveniences because it could open a door for a temptation they feel might be their spiritual downfall.
There are others who can’t have cable T.V because they don’t trust their ability to change the channel. Some people won’t listen to certain kinds of music & even terminate romantic relationships that are leading them into tempting situations.
There are people who haven’t had a drink for years & won’t go places where alcohol is served because it’s a temptation they don’t want to have to deal with. We might look at these folk critically but the bottom line is; whether it’s canceling AOL, having cable television disconnected, transferring to another department at work, whatever is necessary to keep out of a situation that causes temptation to sin, it’s wise to cut it out. It’s better to go dateless, have no television, not get a promotion & forego the knowledge the internet could supply than to be trapped in sin.
3. GUARD YOUR HEART
David said; Create in me a pure heart O God….Psalm 51:10
I realize that temptation is a matter of the heart not just our surroundings & certainly our heart must be dealt with but in the case of many people, they feel by eliminating certain sources of temptation they get along better & give themselves the opportunity to focus on the real issues, the state of their heart.
God wants to purify our hearts so that dating isn’t a problem, surfing the internet isn’t a problem or working with an attractive member of the opposite sex isn’t a problem. But we have to do our part. In order to be victorious, we’ve got to eliminate certain distractions, learn to look away from temptations, learn to avoid sinful situations, & learn to focus on the work he wants to do in us.
Please understand the Christian life isn’t a cut & dried proposition, a life that we live in our own strength. While It’s true that we can never abandon our responsibility to mortify our own sin, as Christians, God’s Spirit is always with us working in us, both to will & to of His good pleasure. Phil.2:13. If we have a desire to do right in the first place, it’s God’s spirit that has come along side us to give us that desire.
In a very real sense, it’s as simple as this; “Walk in the Spirit & you will not carry out the desires of the flesh. Gal.5:16.
Let us therefore cleanse ourselves from all defilement of the flesh & spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. -- 2 Cor.7:1
“When we all get to heaven” we’ll be rid of the flesh, but like the Amalekites, until totally eradicated, sin can always come screaming back with hellish fury when least expected.
Paul said, -But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway. 1 Cor.9:27.
We might as well accept the fact that we have a stalker named sin & it’s our duty, with the daily faithful assistance of the Holy Spirit, to mortify it, until we rest in gloryland.
Blessings,
John
Saturday, January 2, 2010
How To Stop A Fight
By John Stallings
I heard about a man who was standing in court in front of a judge.
The poor man was cut, had two black eyes, [that’s the limit] a broken nose & various other scrapes & bruises all over his body. The judge asked him if he’d please describe the man who beat him so brutally.
This man who was obviously hurting all over said, “Judge, if it’s alright with you, I’d rather not describe the man. That’s what I was doing when he beat me up.”
Carnal men simply are unable to live in peace. The Bible says…the way of peace have they not known. Romans 3:17.
One of the greatest churches in America is presently being torn apart by strife & infighting. To make things even worse, the family who founded the church is at the forefront of the battle.
I speak of The Crystal Cathedral in Orange County California. My understanding is that the son of the founding pastor Rev. Robert H. Schuller—Rev. Robert A. Schuller, who was on track to take over for his father soon has left the church under fire from other family members who serve in various positions in the church.
Recently I saw the younger Schuller interviewed on The Pat Robinson Show & it was difficult for him to hide his hurt with what has transpired. Of course I’m not privy to what has gone on behind the scenes there. All I know is that this break-up not only makes me feel terrible for them but has disappointed millions of others around the world. One headline I saw was…
It’s clear that the elder Schuller’s carefully orchestrated leadership transition, planned over a decade has stumbled badly.”
Pastor James tells us;
Those conflicts & disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? You want something & you don’t get it so you’re prepared to kill for it. You have ambitions that you can’t satisfy so you fight to get your way by force.-James 4:1-3
My first thought is, to stop a fight….
1. AVOID THE FIGHT IN THE FIRST PLACE
How much happiness & joy do we derive by debate, bickering & fighting? Not much! Many people insist on having the “last word” in an argument. The real winner is the person who just doesn’t get into the fight.
Authorities inform us that one of the characteristics of this age is the unwillingness on the part of many to admit they could be wrong.
The Bible speaks of such a generation. Could it refer to this age? –This is a generation that are pure in their own eyes, and yet is not washed from their filthiness. Proverbs 30:12.Proverbs 14; 12 says—There is a way that seemeth right unto a man but the end thereof are the ways of death.
Proverbs 12:15 tells us—The way of a fool is right in his own eyes but he that hearkens unto counsel is wise.
To save face seems to be the most important thing to many & they’ll defend their view at any cost, even if it’s wrong. To contend with people like this is futile. We need to have a proper perspective of the real values of life & that doesn’t include winning arguments.
No one ever really wins a fight. Have you ever noticed that? What good have two people done if they have a fight & both lose a couple of teeth & have to be taken to the hospital? Only the most primitive type of people could see any sense in that.
One of my favorite Old Testament scriptures is Psalm 133: 1-Behold how good & pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.
The Bible instructs—If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. Romans 12:18.
In The Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said…Blessed are the peace makers. Matt.5:9. He didn’t say, blessed are the –peacekeepers. It’s fairly easy to keep the peace when you already have it, but making peace is something altogether different.
Neither did Jesus say, -- Blessed are the peace-fakers. Some people will look at a situation coming apart at the seams & say, -Problem? I don’t see a problem.” Denial isn’t what’s called for when war or the danger of war looms around us. Honesty is called for.
You may remember that well before the Second World War, English Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain visited Germany & met Hitler. He came home & said;
“Sure he’s building planes, he’s building bombs, he’s building artillery & everyone is goose-stepping in black shirts but he’s really a nice guy.” History reveals that Chamberlain was a –Peace-faker.
Hitler was a peace-breaker & he was getting ready to try to roll his war machine all around the world & put people under the jack-boot of despotism.
Secondly, to stop a fight we must….
2. RECOGNIZE THE VALUE OF PEACE
We live in a world baptized in greed & dedicated to treachery. Into this world filled with violence, hate & selfishness Jesus sends us to be peacemakers. As bad as things are, this is the only world we have & if we’re going to be true to our Lord, we must be peacemakers.
I heard about a lady who was always stirring up trouble who died & her pastor was conducting her funeral. As the funeral was about to start, the pastor stepped to the lectern & just then there was a great thunder-clap that shook the whole building. The preacher looked up & said, “Well, she arrived.”
DEBATE
I know we live in a country where debate is considered a good thing, & within certain perimeters it is. But if we’re not careful debate can be taken too far. You & I should strive to be as agreeable as possible. What does it mean to be an “agreeable person?” It just means you’re not always taking the opposite of things to try to show you’re the smartest person in the room.
Did you know the Bible puts people who have a debating spirit in a class of undesirables? Romans 1:29 says—being filled with unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, DEBATE, deceit, malignity, whisperers….
Have you ever met a person who always takes the opposite viewpoint of everything you say? I call them –“Black-whiters.” If you say black, they’ll automatically say white.
My dad was a good man & a very good father but he had a habit that really rubbed me the wrong way. If I’d make a statement, he’d say the very opposite. He didn’t mean anything by it, it was just a habit he’d let himself get into. If I said, “This hot weather is killing me,” he’d invariably say, “Well I’d rather it be hot than to be freezing to death.” If I said, “I really love Buicks, he’d blurt out, “But the Pontiacs are a little better car.” On & on it went.
One day we were fishing in a small boat. I made a casual statement, & you guessed it, dad came out with something to counter what I’d just said.
With a voice choked with emotion, I said, “Dad, have you noticed that you always say just the opposite of everything I say, & I while I’m at it, you do mom & Barbara [my sister] the same way. I know you love us but it’s getting very irritating & it makes a person feel like never again saying anything in your presence.” Guess what he said. He said, “I don’t do that!” I said, “See, you just did it again.”
My dad was old-school, meaning, if you were his kid you didn’t get sassy with him. But he was also big on attitude. He knew I loved, respected & had a healthy fear of him so I got by with it. I wish I could tie a pretty bow on it & say he changed that day, but that might be exaggerating just a bit. To be very honest, I wasn’t keyed in to his immediately changing, I was opening my heart to him.
In retrospect, I think I became a man that day in dad’s eyes, though he never mentioned it again. I also know that as the decades went by we had a good relationship & if I may say so, I think he went to his grave very proud of the son he raised.
Some might feel I went too far. But my feeling was that I was being a peacemaker, & I think by the grace of God it turned out that way because my heart & motivations were right.
Most people desire to live in peace & have a strong aversion to an atmosphere of contention. If we sincerely love & want to live in peace & our hearts are right before God, there’s a way to settle our differences without compromising our convictions, all the while avoiding hostile situations that can arise because of trivial issues.
3. CHOOSE YOUR BATTLES
The first thing to consider when an issue arises is-how important is the issue at hand---really? If one can accurately evaluate that, he will be far ahead of the curve on the way to achieving real peace-a goal the Bible teaches is a tremendous blessing for all involved.
Over the past holiday season, Juda & I enjoyed several family gatherings. One Christmas party especially stands out in my memory.
The subject came up of Tiger Woods. This shouldn’t be too surprising to you. We’ve all been subjected recently to this panoply of human frailty. We all had our opinions about Tiger & how he failed- etc.
During the discussion, a family member said only half-way joking “Well, personally I like the words of the wise philosopher, old Hank Williams; “Mind your own business.” I had to agree. I remember that song from nearly 60 years ago.
Does this mean that I can close my eyes to what Tiger apparently did? A thousand times no! As I see it his wife has Biblical grounds to wash him out of her hair. I don’t hesitate to say were I his wife I’d be outta-there. But again, what business is it of mine? I’m busy keeping my life & attitudes right. God could take Tiger, turn his life around & use him mightily. I pray He does.
4. BE WILLING TO ASSUME HALF THE RESPONSIBILITY IN ANY ISSUE.
Often when two people are arguing, fully believing the other party is wrong; a neutral arbitrator can hear them out & find that both parties are at fault. Yet both parties refuse to accept the fact that they could be at least partially at fault.
I’ve observed over the years that the one who believes they’re right 100% & won’t give an inch will never have peace. Again, matters of spiritual conviction should never be compromised but many of the things we fight about don’t involve spiritual matters.
During the Christmas Holidays I visited with a young lady who was forced to leave her husband, at least for the time being. I said all I felt I could say to comfort her, but in the final analysis, I was very careful not to say too much because I don’t know all the facts. What I will say is that any man or woman who stays in the house with someone who’s out to harm them or perhaps kill them is very foolish.
5. EMOTIONAL CONTROL IS A KEY TO DWELLING TOGETHER IN PEACE.
I’ve seen people go off the beam & completely lose control of their emotions. Those types of outbursts aren’t to be taken lightly. All you need to do is watch 15 minutes of news a week & you’ll know that dealing with disagreements in that way often leads to bloodshed. They may only be kicking & screaming now but Satan hitch-hikes on emotional fits & is very capable of causing a person to pick up a gun & start shooting. Just this week two well known basketball players pulled guns on each other. If it weren’t so tragic it would be sort of funny.
These volatile emotions occur because of real or imagined wrongs & the Bible has many warnings to avoid this. Listen to Ecc.16:22
…..be not hasty in thy spirit to be angry: for anger resteth in the bosom of fools.
One of the many characteristics of a fool is the inability to control emotions. It’s a downright shame for a person to allow their emotions to cause them to have fussing & cussing fits.
Listen to Proverbs 12:16, A fool’s wrath is presently known but a prudent man covereth shame.
6. DON’T HOLD GRUDGES
The individual who continues to nurse a grudge will never find peace & will be a constant walking powder-keg ready to explode.
Jesus made it plain;- For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. Matt.6:14-15
We think we can talk about people behind their back & it won’t get back to the person but that’s just not the case.
Have you ever heard the expression—“A little bird told me?” Did you know this comes from the Bible? Listen,
Curse not the king, no not in thy thought: and curse no the rich in thy bedchamber: for a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter. Eccl.10:20.
The Bible strongly emphasizes the importance of putting hard feelings behind us & not holding a grudge.
7. PRAY FOR THE MIND & SPIRIT OF CHRIST.
The natural mind --the mind we were born with doesn’t exactly revel in the things of God. Paul tells us;
They that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life & peace. Because the carnal mind is at enmity with God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. Romans 8:5-7
To be able to live up to what God expects of us we must not be moving in the flesh but in the Spirit. We may have good intentions & desire to do wonderful things but we may as well face the fact that we can’t do them on our own. Jesus even told His disciples—The Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. Matt. 26:21
Paul also says—let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus; Who being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God; But made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.-Phil 2:5-8
Let’s face it. Getting along & having peace with people can be a taxing ordeal. We all have the capacity to be whiny, self-centered, illogical, uncaring nincompoops. Our response can often be to just hunker down, find a few people we can tolerate & leave the rest to fend for themselves. We defend this approach by saying that we’re just not patient & wish we had a bigger heart like others seem to have.
We are capable of placing people on the shelf & saying they’re just too difficult to deal with. But this isn’t an option for the Christian. Jesus gave us a commandment to love one another with no exceptions. He didn’t tell us to love others unless they are irritating, annoying, disagreeable, or unpleasant.
In 2010 you & I need to work on loving one another. But we can’t just “gut it out” & try to do it in our own strength. If we do this we’re sunk before we begin. The love of Christ however gives us hope.
REPAIRERS OF THE BREACH
Listen to Isaiah 58:12…..And thou shall be called, The repairers of the breach, The restored of paths to dwell in.
Jesus said--Peacemakers shall be called the Sons of God.
In other words, God looks at them & says, - “That’s one of my boys/girls.” You & I know that peace is hard to make & even harder to keep. It’s easier to walk away from the problem.
Or we give it the old college try & get rebuffed or even attacked & criticized for our efforts. So we tend to despair & give up before we get started.
We all can do sometime in the area of peacemaking.
You’ve got a phone. Make a call.
You’ve got paper. Write a letter.
You’ve got a computer. Send an email.
You’ve got a kitchen. Make a meal.
You’ve got a wallet. Give some money.
You’ve got two hands. Put them to work for others.
You’ve got two feet. Go visit someone in pain.
You’ve got two ears. Listen for the cries of the wounded.
You’ve got two lips. Preach the gospel of peace.
You’ve probably heard this little poem;
I am only one, but I am one.
I can’t do everything, but I can do something.
What I can do, I ought to do.
And what I ought to do, by the grace of God,
I will do!
He was the greatest peacemaker of all time…and they crucified Him. He was called The prince of peace, yet He hung on a Roman cross. He preached the Gospel of Peace & died in an act of cruel violence.
Because of Adam’s fall, we were in a fight with God. He sent His son to stop the fight.
Peacemaking is expensive. It cost God His only Son!
Blessings,
John
I heard about a man who was standing in court in front of a judge.
The poor man was cut, had two black eyes, [that’s the limit] a broken nose & various other scrapes & bruises all over his body. The judge asked him if he’d please describe the man who beat him so brutally.
This man who was obviously hurting all over said, “Judge, if it’s alright with you, I’d rather not describe the man. That’s what I was doing when he beat me up.”
Carnal men simply are unable to live in peace. The Bible says…the way of peace have they not known. Romans 3:17.
One of the greatest churches in America is presently being torn apart by strife & infighting. To make things even worse, the family who founded the church is at the forefront of the battle.
I speak of The Crystal Cathedral in Orange County California. My understanding is that the son of the founding pastor Rev. Robert H. Schuller—Rev. Robert A. Schuller, who was on track to take over for his father soon has left the church under fire from other family members who serve in various positions in the church.
Recently I saw the younger Schuller interviewed on The Pat Robinson Show & it was difficult for him to hide his hurt with what has transpired. Of course I’m not privy to what has gone on behind the scenes there. All I know is that this break-up not only makes me feel terrible for them but has disappointed millions of others around the world. One headline I saw was…
It’s clear that the elder Schuller’s carefully orchestrated leadership transition, planned over a decade has stumbled badly.”
Pastor James tells us;
Those conflicts & disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? You want something & you don’t get it so you’re prepared to kill for it. You have ambitions that you can’t satisfy so you fight to get your way by force.-James 4:1-3
My first thought is, to stop a fight….
1. AVOID THE FIGHT IN THE FIRST PLACE
How much happiness & joy do we derive by debate, bickering & fighting? Not much! Many people insist on having the “last word” in an argument. The real winner is the person who just doesn’t get into the fight.
Authorities inform us that one of the characteristics of this age is the unwillingness on the part of many to admit they could be wrong.
The Bible speaks of such a generation. Could it refer to this age? –This is a generation that are pure in their own eyes, and yet is not washed from their filthiness. Proverbs 30:12.Proverbs 14; 12 says—There is a way that seemeth right unto a man but the end thereof are the ways of death.
Proverbs 12:15 tells us—The way of a fool is right in his own eyes but he that hearkens unto counsel is wise.
To save face seems to be the most important thing to many & they’ll defend their view at any cost, even if it’s wrong. To contend with people like this is futile. We need to have a proper perspective of the real values of life & that doesn’t include winning arguments.
No one ever really wins a fight. Have you ever noticed that? What good have two people done if they have a fight & both lose a couple of teeth & have to be taken to the hospital? Only the most primitive type of people could see any sense in that.
One of my favorite Old Testament scriptures is Psalm 133: 1-Behold how good & pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.
The Bible instructs—If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. Romans 12:18.
In The Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said…Blessed are the peace makers. Matt.5:9. He didn’t say, blessed are the –peacekeepers. It’s fairly easy to keep the peace when you already have it, but making peace is something altogether different.
Neither did Jesus say, -- Blessed are the peace-fakers. Some people will look at a situation coming apart at the seams & say, -Problem? I don’t see a problem.” Denial isn’t what’s called for when war or the danger of war looms around us. Honesty is called for.
You may remember that well before the Second World War, English Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain visited Germany & met Hitler. He came home & said;
“Sure he’s building planes, he’s building bombs, he’s building artillery & everyone is goose-stepping in black shirts but he’s really a nice guy.” History reveals that Chamberlain was a –Peace-faker.
Hitler was a peace-breaker & he was getting ready to try to roll his war machine all around the world & put people under the jack-boot of despotism.
Secondly, to stop a fight we must….
2. RECOGNIZE THE VALUE OF PEACE
We live in a world baptized in greed & dedicated to treachery. Into this world filled with violence, hate & selfishness Jesus sends us to be peacemakers. As bad as things are, this is the only world we have & if we’re going to be true to our Lord, we must be peacemakers.
I heard about a lady who was always stirring up trouble who died & her pastor was conducting her funeral. As the funeral was about to start, the pastor stepped to the lectern & just then there was a great thunder-clap that shook the whole building. The preacher looked up & said, “Well, she arrived.”
DEBATE
I know we live in a country where debate is considered a good thing, & within certain perimeters it is. But if we’re not careful debate can be taken too far. You & I should strive to be as agreeable as possible. What does it mean to be an “agreeable person?” It just means you’re not always taking the opposite of things to try to show you’re the smartest person in the room.
Did you know the Bible puts people who have a debating spirit in a class of undesirables? Romans 1:29 says—being filled with unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, DEBATE, deceit, malignity, whisperers….
Have you ever met a person who always takes the opposite viewpoint of everything you say? I call them –“Black-whiters.” If you say black, they’ll automatically say white.
My dad was a good man & a very good father but he had a habit that really rubbed me the wrong way. If I’d make a statement, he’d say the very opposite. He didn’t mean anything by it, it was just a habit he’d let himself get into. If I said, “This hot weather is killing me,” he’d invariably say, “Well I’d rather it be hot than to be freezing to death.” If I said, “I really love Buicks, he’d blurt out, “But the Pontiacs are a little better car.” On & on it went.
One day we were fishing in a small boat. I made a casual statement, & you guessed it, dad came out with something to counter what I’d just said.
With a voice choked with emotion, I said, “Dad, have you noticed that you always say just the opposite of everything I say, & I while I’m at it, you do mom & Barbara [my sister] the same way. I know you love us but it’s getting very irritating & it makes a person feel like never again saying anything in your presence.” Guess what he said. He said, “I don’t do that!” I said, “See, you just did it again.”
My dad was old-school, meaning, if you were his kid you didn’t get sassy with him. But he was also big on attitude. He knew I loved, respected & had a healthy fear of him so I got by with it. I wish I could tie a pretty bow on it & say he changed that day, but that might be exaggerating just a bit. To be very honest, I wasn’t keyed in to his immediately changing, I was opening my heart to him.
In retrospect, I think I became a man that day in dad’s eyes, though he never mentioned it again. I also know that as the decades went by we had a good relationship & if I may say so, I think he went to his grave very proud of the son he raised.
Some might feel I went too far. But my feeling was that I was being a peacemaker, & I think by the grace of God it turned out that way because my heart & motivations were right.
Most people desire to live in peace & have a strong aversion to an atmosphere of contention. If we sincerely love & want to live in peace & our hearts are right before God, there’s a way to settle our differences without compromising our convictions, all the while avoiding hostile situations that can arise because of trivial issues.
3. CHOOSE YOUR BATTLES
The first thing to consider when an issue arises is-how important is the issue at hand---really? If one can accurately evaluate that, he will be far ahead of the curve on the way to achieving real peace-a goal the Bible teaches is a tremendous blessing for all involved.
Over the past holiday season, Juda & I enjoyed several family gatherings. One Christmas party especially stands out in my memory.
The subject came up of Tiger Woods. This shouldn’t be too surprising to you. We’ve all been subjected recently to this panoply of human frailty. We all had our opinions about Tiger & how he failed- etc.
During the discussion, a family member said only half-way joking “Well, personally I like the words of the wise philosopher, old Hank Williams; “Mind your own business.” I had to agree. I remember that song from nearly 60 years ago.
Does this mean that I can close my eyes to what Tiger apparently did? A thousand times no! As I see it his wife has Biblical grounds to wash him out of her hair. I don’t hesitate to say were I his wife I’d be outta-there. But again, what business is it of mine? I’m busy keeping my life & attitudes right. God could take Tiger, turn his life around & use him mightily. I pray He does.
4. BE WILLING TO ASSUME HALF THE RESPONSIBILITY IN ANY ISSUE.
Often when two people are arguing, fully believing the other party is wrong; a neutral arbitrator can hear them out & find that both parties are at fault. Yet both parties refuse to accept the fact that they could be at least partially at fault.
I’ve observed over the years that the one who believes they’re right 100% & won’t give an inch will never have peace. Again, matters of spiritual conviction should never be compromised but many of the things we fight about don’t involve spiritual matters.
During the Christmas Holidays I visited with a young lady who was forced to leave her husband, at least for the time being. I said all I felt I could say to comfort her, but in the final analysis, I was very careful not to say too much because I don’t know all the facts. What I will say is that any man or woman who stays in the house with someone who’s out to harm them or perhaps kill them is very foolish.
5. EMOTIONAL CONTROL IS A KEY TO DWELLING TOGETHER IN PEACE.
I’ve seen people go off the beam & completely lose control of their emotions. Those types of outbursts aren’t to be taken lightly. All you need to do is watch 15 minutes of news a week & you’ll know that dealing with disagreements in that way often leads to bloodshed. They may only be kicking & screaming now but Satan hitch-hikes on emotional fits & is very capable of causing a person to pick up a gun & start shooting. Just this week two well known basketball players pulled guns on each other. If it weren’t so tragic it would be sort of funny.
These volatile emotions occur because of real or imagined wrongs & the Bible has many warnings to avoid this. Listen to Ecc.16:22
…..be not hasty in thy spirit to be angry: for anger resteth in the bosom of fools.
One of the many characteristics of a fool is the inability to control emotions. It’s a downright shame for a person to allow their emotions to cause them to have fussing & cussing fits.
Listen to Proverbs 12:16, A fool’s wrath is presently known but a prudent man covereth shame.
6. DON’T HOLD GRUDGES
The individual who continues to nurse a grudge will never find peace & will be a constant walking powder-keg ready to explode.
Jesus made it plain;- For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. Matt.6:14-15
We think we can talk about people behind their back & it won’t get back to the person but that’s just not the case.
Have you ever heard the expression—“A little bird told me?” Did you know this comes from the Bible? Listen,
Curse not the king, no not in thy thought: and curse no the rich in thy bedchamber: for a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter. Eccl.10:20.
The Bible strongly emphasizes the importance of putting hard feelings behind us & not holding a grudge.
7. PRAY FOR THE MIND & SPIRIT OF CHRIST.
The natural mind --the mind we were born with doesn’t exactly revel in the things of God. Paul tells us;
They that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life & peace. Because the carnal mind is at enmity with God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. Romans 8:5-7
To be able to live up to what God expects of us we must not be moving in the flesh but in the Spirit. We may have good intentions & desire to do wonderful things but we may as well face the fact that we can’t do them on our own. Jesus even told His disciples—The Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. Matt. 26:21
Paul also says—let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus; Who being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God; But made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.-Phil 2:5-8
Let’s face it. Getting along & having peace with people can be a taxing ordeal. We all have the capacity to be whiny, self-centered, illogical, uncaring nincompoops. Our response can often be to just hunker down, find a few people we can tolerate & leave the rest to fend for themselves. We defend this approach by saying that we’re just not patient & wish we had a bigger heart like others seem to have.
We are capable of placing people on the shelf & saying they’re just too difficult to deal with. But this isn’t an option for the Christian. Jesus gave us a commandment to love one another with no exceptions. He didn’t tell us to love others unless they are irritating, annoying, disagreeable, or unpleasant.
In 2010 you & I need to work on loving one another. But we can’t just “gut it out” & try to do it in our own strength. If we do this we’re sunk before we begin. The love of Christ however gives us hope.
REPAIRERS OF THE BREACH
Listen to Isaiah 58:12…..And thou shall be called, The repairers of the breach, The restored of paths to dwell in.
Jesus said--Peacemakers shall be called the Sons of God.
In other words, God looks at them & says, - “That’s one of my boys/girls.” You & I know that peace is hard to make & even harder to keep. It’s easier to walk away from the problem.
Or we give it the old college try & get rebuffed or even attacked & criticized for our efforts. So we tend to despair & give up before we get started.
We all can do sometime in the area of peacemaking.
You’ve got a phone. Make a call.
You’ve got paper. Write a letter.
You’ve got a computer. Send an email.
You’ve got a kitchen. Make a meal.
You’ve got a wallet. Give some money.
You’ve got two hands. Put them to work for others.
You’ve got two feet. Go visit someone in pain.
You’ve got two ears. Listen for the cries of the wounded.
You’ve got two lips. Preach the gospel of peace.
You’ve probably heard this little poem;
I am only one, but I am one.
I can’t do everything, but I can do something.
What I can do, I ought to do.
And what I ought to do, by the grace of God,
I will do!
He was the greatest peacemaker of all time…and they crucified Him. He was called The prince of peace, yet He hung on a Roman cross. He preached the Gospel of Peace & died in an act of cruel violence.
Because of Adam’s fall, we were in a fight with God. He sent His son to stop the fight.
Peacemaking is expensive. It cost God His only Son!
Blessings,
John
Thursday, December 31, 2009
America Shrugs- HealthCare- Obama's Crown Jewel.
By John Stallings
There is a knock at the front door.
Peeking through the window a mother sees a man & woman both in uniform. They are agents of health-care reform.
“Excuse me ma’am” says the man, “Our records show that your eleven-year old daughter hasn’t been immunized for genital warts.
“And your four year old still needs the chicken-pox vaccine” says the woman.
“He won’t be allowed to start kindergarten unless he gets that shot, you know” says the man—smiling from ear to ear.
“So can we please come in?” asks
the woman. “We have the vaccines right here,” she says, lifting up the medical bag. “We can give your kids the shots right now.”
Is this a scene from the over-heated imagination of a conspiracy theorist? Or does it actually exist in the health-care reform bill approved recently by the Senate?
The actual language in the bill says;--“Authorizes a demonstration program to improve immunization coverage. Under this program, CDC will provide grants to states to improve immunization coverage of children, adolescents and adults through the of evidence-based interventions that are recommended by the Community Preventive Services task force such as reminders or recalls for patients or providers or home visits.”
Can we say, “Forced immunization?”
Should ObamaCare pass, it will mean slavery to a system that won't look like anything we've ever seen. Freedoms are already being lost left right & center. In a nut-shell—No more private sector insurance.
Other than our spouse, family members, & maybe a few close friends, what other relationship do we have closer than with our family Doc? In the not too distant future, should the door on Obama’s ship slam shut with all of us inside, we’ll never see our doctor again, & in all probability we’ll never again see the same doc twice.
If a restaurant near your home started advertising free food & beverages, what do you suppose would happen? Right! There would immediately be constant lines at that restaurant stretching for blocks.
This would go on for a short time. What do you suppose would happen next? Right again. The restaurant would start rationing their food. They’d have to because of the overwhelming demand. People who weren’t even hungry would nonetheless stand in that line. Obviously now the restaurant would start turning people away. If they persisted in giving away food, they’d have to find outside financial support to help them pay for it.
I could go on with that analogy but I think you see my point.
Let's take a close look at what the Democrat Party has waiting in the wings should they be successful at ramming this socialized health care down our throats. Most of the physicians I've spoken to are opposed to UHC, for one reason because they don't want to become Government employees. They'd also like to keep the medical profession something they even recognize & want to continue to be rewarded both financially & intellectually.
From what I’m able to glean, the road to becoming a physician is one of the most demanding & expensive among all the professions. The cost of eight years of college, then three to six years in residency would leave them about $140,000 in debt. Of course what the medical student looks forward to is the appealing salary they’ll get someday to compensate for all the hard work & money spent. That perk or reality would disappear after the enactment of Universal Health Care.
What would immediately appear however would be a huge new tax burden hung around the necks of already jaded & tapped out American taxpayers. By the way--if Obama-care is signed into law, the tax consequence will begin April 15, 2010.
Doctors who now get frustrated working within the guidelines of Medicaid, Medicare & HMOs, would find ever increasing aggravations with the adoption of universal health care. The way doctors would be paid now; “single payer” would be set by the federal government & would be appreciatively lower than they currently receive. Everything in America that pertains to health care would be paid out of one huge pot, thus the name “single payer.”
Now the doctors would be answerable to a group of politicians & the freedom they had to practice medicine as an art/science, i.e. treat patients as individuals, would leave & have in its place federally mandated guidelines for certain procedures across the board. Now you have a group of highly trained doctors being forced to treat each patient the same even though they might feel certain patients would benefit from an alternative type of treatment. We’re talking about a “one size fits all” approach. But people are different & don’t respond the same to medicines & protocols.
Let’s go back to our restaurant illustration when all those people came looking for that free food, stifling the place. Likewise, under “free-health care” now people would be jamming every medical facility. Because there isn’t a fee, people who before would have thought twice about going to a doctor, now will visit the doctor with minor problems that really don’t require medical attention. So you have people being turned away & you also have longer waiting lists.
Personally I need no further proof of the aforementioned than the experience I’ve had as a minister. From time to time my particular denomination would seek to secure group insurance policies for its constituents but the coverage would generally be discontinued after a few months. Though a letter would be sent to the ministers not to start taking their families to doctors for things that weren’t serious, invariably they’d do it anyway; and this in a church group that believes strongly in divine healing. It’s just human nature.
In 2007, in Canada where they have “free health care” the average wait was 18.3 weeks for surgical treatment. In the U.S the wait is just a couple of weeks. Under universal health care, Doctors will lose the fulfillment of being able to help every sick or injured person & the order of the day would become summarily turning people away due to full schedules.
Many jobs in the U.S would be eliminated by the removal of the current insurance companies. In short, in this writer’s view, “free” universal health care would be a bad deal for all America.
Another downside to “free” health care would be that the government would make decisions for the patient & make rules that the patient must follow. For instance, under this plan, a man could be told to report for a prostate examination at 7: am on Monday morning or risk losing further care. A woman could be told when to report to have a mammogram & if she failed to show, her medical care could be affected.
My wife & I are with an HMO & though we’re happy with the plan, we’re pressured to have more & more tests & take medications we don’t want to take, & won’t. This would be but a small sample of what the face of “free” health care would look like. I realize it sounds harsh to say anything the government runs isn't done very well but I would invited the reader to drive around to the public housing areas or "projects" in their town & look them over. These are government run. Is that the way we want our health care to look?
There are stories coming out of the UK, who’ve long been on free health care, that smokers are told to quit smoking or surgery will be refused. I’m not a smoker but if a government can make rules against smokers, they can conceivably refuse health care to individuals who don’t eat at least five or six veggies a day or get from 20-40 minutes of aerobic exercise at least three times a week.
“Die in Britain, survive in the U.S” was the cover article of the February 2005 issue of The Spectator, a British magazine in which James Bartholomew details the downside of Britain’s free health care system;
“Among women with breast cancer for example, there’s a 46% chance of dying in Britain vs. a 25% chance in the U.S. Britain has one of the worst survival rates in the advanced world, while Americas has the best.”
He continues, “If you’re a man diagnosed with prostate cancer, you have a 57% chance of it killing you in Britain. In the United States the chance drops to 19%.” Again, reports Bartholomew, “Britain is at the bottom of the class & America is at the top.”
Explains Bartholomew, “This is why those who are rich enough often to go to America, leaving behind even private health care. The reason for that is in America you’re more likely to be treated & further, you’re more likely to get better treatment.”
In America, if you’ve had a heart attack, you are given beta-blockers compared to fewer than one-third in Britain. Similarly, American patients are more likely than British patients to have a heart condition diagnosed with an angiogram, more likely to have an artery widened with angioplasty & more likely to get back on their feet by way of a by-pass.
“In the main, Britain’s universal health care system has evolved into a ramshackle structure where even having a test, beyond an x-ray tends to be a rare extravagant event,” writes Bartholomew. “In Britain 36% of patients have to wait more than four months for non-emergency surgery. In the U.S 5% do. In Britain, 40% of cancer patients do not see a cancer specialist.”
Bartholomew tells about a woman named Peggy, an American radiologist who went to Britain to meet her English boyfriend’s family. While she was there, her boyfriend’s father found blood in his urine & went to a local National Health Service hospital in which no CT scans or cystoscopy tests were done. The patient had asthma & lay in his hospital bed with breathing difficulties but still didn’t see a specialist. He was told it would take six weeks. Short of six weeks he was discharged from the hospital. Back home before his appointment with a consultant he died of an asthma attack.
Bartholomew reports that Peggy was “surprised at how ‘accepting’ her boyfriend’s family was.” “What we saw was an unexpected passivity, a lethal submissiveness to systemic incompetence & tragedy, a reaction that seemed poles apart from how things happen in the U.S.” She didn’t say too much because she didn’t want to come across as a pushy, arrogant American but she was thinking that “in America we’d go nuts if we were told we’d have to wait six weeks to see a specialist. Expectations are so much higher.”
As far as the elderly, [and some have suggested that age would start at around fifty] they can just forget it if UHC becomes law. Obama himself has said that-" those old people will have to be given pain pills instead of expensive medical procedures."-Check this out on youtube.
As a footnote on Canada, the average wait for a simple MRI is three months. In Manitoba the median wait for neurosurgery is 15.2 months. For chemotherapy in Saskatchewan patients can expect to be in line for 10 weeks. At last report 10,000 cancer patients who waited an average of two months for radiation treatment have filed a class action lawsuit against Quebec’s hospitals.
Anyone who has a heart will immediately think as I did; what about all those who can’t afford health care? Let’s take a look at the numbers we’re given.
We hear & read a good bit about the 47 million Americans who don’t have health insurance & anecdotal evidence usually accompanies the figure, dramatizing the tragedy. It’s implied if not bluntly stated that this denotes a scandalous shortcoming of our society, our government & our capitalist way of life. The message is – “these Americans are your friends & neighbors & they don’t have health care.”
But Census data shows that 9.5 million of the uninsured listed themselves as “Not a citizen”: they aren’t Americans. The number of uninsured now drops to 37.1 million, about 12% of the population. The Census data also shows that there are 8.3 million uninsured that make between $50,000 & $74,000 per year & 8.7 million who make more than $75,000 per year. That’s roughly 17 million people who ought to be able to “afford” health insurance. Should we count those who can afford health insurance among the uninsured?
So 37.1 minus 8.7 minus 8.3 now leaves us with roughly 20 million people without health insurance which is approximately 7 % of the population, a far cry from the 16% we’ve been told by the socialized medicine lobby & the compliant media who are obviously too lazy to examine the facts.
The Kaiser Family Foundation which is frequently a source for the mainstream media says that Americans who don’t qualify for existing government programs & who make $50,000 a year total actually no more than 5% of our population. Also the number of uninsured American “floats” & 45% will be uninsured for only approximately four months.
This information begs the question; if all this be so, & universal health care has been an abysmal flop around the world, why would intelligent & conscientious politicians want to try it in the U.S? I won’t presume to have that answer in its entirety, but a couple of answers come to mind. Many politicians feel with a more centralized, omnipotent government things work better. It also militates toward a grand design of getting the people more & more under government control. The proponents of universal health care feel that it has yet to be done by the right people; i.e. –them.
When Mr. Obama talks about change, you can be sure what he's always had in mind was some incarnation of universal health care. This, if it happens will be a quantum leap for America toward the abyss of socialism. Mr. Obama seems genial enough but we knew from the get-go--he’s far, far Left.
It’s a well known fact among serious observers that a major reason communism shriveled up & died in Russia is that people quit working. The reason they quit working is hard work only pays off in a free-enterprise system. But as you probably know, in the last few years, they've moved back toward the free-market system. As a matter of fact more millionaires are now being produced in places like Russia, China & India than in America. This sounds hard to believe but motor-car companies like Rolls Royce, Bentley etc. report that the lions share of their sales are coming from what we used to think of as third world nations.
There’s an ocean of material on the internet about the pros & cons of so-called free universal health care so you need not take my word for anything. But consider this;
In Canada, while thousands of baby-boomers & the elderly wait for knee & hip replacement surgery, a dog can get a joint replacement operation at a veterinary hospital done in a matter of weeks.
But the real danger of adopting a system like the one in Canada & Britain is not just long waits for medical treatment. Americans would pay much higher taxes & lose important liberties while turning over personal, life-and-death decisions to government bureaucrats.
This article doesn’t presume to bore down particularly deep into the universal health care question because I'm obviously not an expert on the subject, but hopefully it will give some food for thought.
The ultimate question is; does it make sense to destroy, [though imperfect,] the best medical care the world has ever seen because 5 out of 100 don’t have adequate access to it?
THE MIRACLE OF CHRISTMAS EVE-2009
On Christmas Eve of 2009, “Tracy Hermanstorfer went into cardiac arrest & stopped breathing during labor” said Dr. Stephanie, a maternal fetal medicine specialist’s at Memorial Hospital in Colorado Springs Colorado.
“She had no signs of life. No heartbeat, no blood pressure, she wasn’t breathing,” said Dr. Martin. “The baby was… it was basically limp, with a very slow heart rate.”
She said she couldn’t explain the mother’s cardiac arrest or recovery.
“We did a thorough evaluation & can’t find what explains what happened,” she said.
While one team worked on saving Mrs. Hermanstorfer, another team of medics set to work on the child.
Moments later Mike Hermanstorfer was stunned when he saw his son show signs show signs of life & learned his wife has inexplicably started breathing again.
“My legs went out from underneath me,” he said. “I had everything in the world taken from me, & in an hour & a half I had everything given me.”
Mr. Hermanstorfer credits “The hand of God.”
This was a miracle given to us in 2009. I wonder, would this have happened if ObamaCare was a legal bill?
When this mother was found with no pulse, heartbeat or any other sign of life, would a doctor have been quickly summoned & asked to establish the time of death? Would the “death-panels” have been consorted to decide if this woman & her baby would be denied life? Would a C section immediately be performed to save the child? I think we all know the answer to that question.
If you're getting anywhere close to mid-life & you feel UHC really doesn't involve you, & so you defer being pro-active in this effort because you can't see yourself needing things like cat-scans, MRIs, knee, hip or any joint replacements etc.- may God bless you & may you be correct in your assessment.
But if you see the dangers of all this, & you believe with the final passage of this unjust health care bill many of the freedoms will disappear that young men & women have fought & died to protect, & you just haven’t taken the time to write & call your representatives letting them know in no uncertain terms where you stand, I trust & pray you’ll reconsider & let your voice be heard.
Friend I have nothing to sell , I'm motivated by a firm conviction that this struggle is about so much more than "health care"....it's a battle for the soul & the future of this great republic.
If you & I work together & pray, God has promised to hear from heaven & heal our land.
Blessings,
John
There is a knock at the front door.
Peeking through the window a mother sees a man & woman both in uniform. They are agents of health-care reform.
“Excuse me ma’am” says the man, “Our records show that your eleven-year old daughter hasn’t been immunized for genital warts.
“And your four year old still needs the chicken-pox vaccine” says the woman.
“He won’t be allowed to start kindergarten unless he gets that shot, you know” says the man—smiling from ear to ear.
“So can we please come in?” asks
the woman. “We have the vaccines right here,” she says, lifting up the medical bag. “We can give your kids the shots right now.”
Is this a scene from the over-heated imagination of a conspiracy theorist? Or does it actually exist in the health-care reform bill approved recently by the Senate?
The actual language in the bill says;--“Authorizes a demonstration program to improve immunization coverage. Under this program, CDC will provide grants to states to improve immunization coverage of children, adolescents and adults through the of evidence-based interventions that are recommended by the Community Preventive Services task force such as reminders or recalls for patients or providers or home visits.”
Can we say, “Forced immunization?”
Should ObamaCare pass, it will mean slavery to a system that won't look like anything we've ever seen. Freedoms are already being lost left right & center. In a nut-shell—No more private sector insurance.
Other than our spouse, family members, & maybe a few close friends, what other relationship do we have closer than with our family Doc? In the not too distant future, should the door on Obama’s ship slam shut with all of us inside, we’ll never see our doctor again, & in all probability we’ll never again see the same doc twice.
If a restaurant near your home started advertising free food & beverages, what do you suppose would happen? Right! There would immediately be constant lines at that restaurant stretching for blocks.
This would go on for a short time. What do you suppose would happen next? Right again. The restaurant would start rationing their food. They’d have to because of the overwhelming demand. People who weren’t even hungry would nonetheless stand in that line. Obviously now the restaurant would start turning people away. If they persisted in giving away food, they’d have to find outside financial support to help them pay for it.
I could go on with that analogy but I think you see my point.
Let's take a close look at what the Democrat Party has waiting in the wings should they be successful at ramming this socialized health care down our throats. Most of the physicians I've spoken to are opposed to UHC, for one reason because they don't want to become Government employees. They'd also like to keep the medical profession something they even recognize & want to continue to be rewarded both financially & intellectually.
From what I’m able to glean, the road to becoming a physician is one of the most demanding & expensive among all the professions. The cost of eight years of college, then three to six years in residency would leave them about $140,000 in debt. Of course what the medical student looks forward to is the appealing salary they’ll get someday to compensate for all the hard work & money spent. That perk or reality would disappear after the enactment of Universal Health Care.
What would immediately appear however would be a huge new tax burden hung around the necks of already jaded & tapped out American taxpayers. By the way--if Obama-care is signed into law, the tax consequence will begin April 15, 2010.
Doctors who now get frustrated working within the guidelines of Medicaid, Medicare & HMOs, would find ever increasing aggravations with the adoption of universal health care. The way doctors would be paid now; “single payer” would be set by the federal government & would be appreciatively lower than they currently receive. Everything in America that pertains to health care would be paid out of one huge pot, thus the name “single payer.”
Now the doctors would be answerable to a group of politicians & the freedom they had to practice medicine as an art/science, i.e. treat patients as individuals, would leave & have in its place federally mandated guidelines for certain procedures across the board. Now you have a group of highly trained doctors being forced to treat each patient the same even though they might feel certain patients would benefit from an alternative type of treatment. We’re talking about a “one size fits all” approach. But people are different & don’t respond the same to medicines & protocols.
Let’s go back to our restaurant illustration when all those people came looking for that free food, stifling the place. Likewise, under “free-health care” now people would be jamming every medical facility. Because there isn’t a fee, people who before would have thought twice about going to a doctor, now will visit the doctor with minor problems that really don’t require medical attention. So you have people being turned away & you also have longer waiting lists.
Personally I need no further proof of the aforementioned than the experience I’ve had as a minister. From time to time my particular denomination would seek to secure group insurance policies for its constituents but the coverage would generally be discontinued after a few months. Though a letter would be sent to the ministers not to start taking their families to doctors for things that weren’t serious, invariably they’d do it anyway; and this in a church group that believes strongly in divine healing. It’s just human nature.
In 2007, in Canada where they have “free health care” the average wait was 18.3 weeks for surgical treatment. In the U.S the wait is just a couple of weeks. Under universal health care, Doctors will lose the fulfillment of being able to help every sick or injured person & the order of the day would become summarily turning people away due to full schedules.
Many jobs in the U.S would be eliminated by the removal of the current insurance companies. In short, in this writer’s view, “free” universal health care would be a bad deal for all America.
Another downside to “free” health care would be that the government would make decisions for the patient & make rules that the patient must follow. For instance, under this plan, a man could be told to report for a prostate examination at 7: am on Monday morning or risk losing further care. A woman could be told when to report to have a mammogram & if she failed to show, her medical care could be affected.
My wife & I are with an HMO & though we’re happy with the plan, we’re pressured to have more & more tests & take medications we don’t want to take, & won’t. This would be but a small sample of what the face of “free” health care would look like. I realize it sounds harsh to say anything the government runs isn't done very well but I would invited the reader to drive around to the public housing areas or "projects" in their town & look them over. These are government run. Is that the way we want our health care to look?
There are stories coming out of the UK, who’ve long been on free health care, that smokers are told to quit smoking or surgery will be refused. I’m not a smoker but if a government can make rules against smokers, they can conceivably refuse health care to individuals who don’t eat at least five or six veggies a day or get from 20-40 minutes of aerobic exercise at least three times a week.
“Die in Britain, survive in the U.S” was the cover article of the February 2005 issue of The Spectator, a British magazine in which James Bartholomew details the downside of Britain’s free health care system;
“Among women with breast cancer for example, there’s a 46% chance of dying in Britain vs. a 25% chance in the U.S. Britain has one of the worst survival rates in the advanced world, while Americas has the best.”
He continues, “If you’re a man diagnosed with prostate cancer, you have a 57% chance of it killing you in Britain. In the United States the chance drops to 19%.” Again, reports Bartholomew, “Britain is at the bottom of the class & America is at the top.”
Explains Bartholomew, “This is why those who are rich enough often to go to America, leaving behind even private health care. The reason for that is in America you’re more likely to be treated & further, you’re more likely to get better treatment.”
In America, if you’ve had a heart attack, you are given beta-blockers compared to fewer than one-third in Britain. Similarly, American patients are more likely than British patients to have a heart condition diagnosed with an angiogram, more likely to have an artery widened with angioplasty & more likely to get back on their feet by way of a by-pass.
“In the main, Britain’s universal health care system has evolved into a ramshackle structure where even having a test, beyond an x-ray tends to be a rare extravagant event,” writes Bartholomew. “In Britain 36% of patients have to wait more than four months for non-emergency surgery. In the U.S 5% do. In Britain, 40% of cancer patients do not see a cancer specialist.”
Bartholomew tells about a woman named Peggy, an American radiologist who went to Britain to meet her English boyfriend’s family. While she was there, her boyfriend’s father found blood in his urine & went to a local National Health Service hospital in which no CT scans or cystoscopy tests were done. The patient had asthma & lay in his hospital bed with breathing difficulties but still didn’t see a specialist. He was told it would take six weeks. Short of six weeks he was discharged from the hospital. Back home before his appointment with a consultant he died of an asthma attack.
Bartholomew reports that Peggy was “surprised at how ‘accepting’ her boyfriend’s family was.” “What we saw was an unexpected passivity, a lethal submissiveness to systemic incompetence & tragedy, a reaction that seemed poles apart from how things happen in the U.S.” She didn’t say too much because she didn’t want to come across as a pushy, arrogant American but she was thinking that “in America we’d go nuts if we were told we’d have to wait six weeks to see a specialist. Expectations are so much higher.”
As far as the elderly, [and some have suggested that age would start at around fifty] they can just forget it if UHC becomes law. Obama himself has said that-" those old people will have to be given pain pills instead of expensive medical procedures."-Check this out on youtube.
As a footnote on Canada, the average wait for a simple MRI is three months. In Manitoba the median wait for neurosurgery is 15.2 months. For chemotherapy in Saskatchewan patients can expect to be in line for 10 weeks. At last report 10,000 cancer patients who waited an average of two months for radiation treatment have filed a class action lawsuit against Quebec’s hospitals.
Anyone who has a heart will immediately think as I did; what about all those who can’t afford health care? Let’s take a look at the numbers we’re given.
We hear & read a good bit about the 47 million Americans who don’t have health insurance & anecdotal evidence usually accompanies the figure, dramatizing the tragedy. It’s implied if not bluntly stated that this denotes a scandalous shortcoming of our society, our government & our capitalist way of life. The message is – “these Americans are your friends & neighbors & they don’t have health care.”
But Census data shows that 9.5 million of the uninsured listed themselves as “Not a citizen”: they aren’t Americans. The number of uninsured now drops to 37.1 million, about 12% of the population. The Census data also shows that there are 8.3 million uninsured that make between $50,000 & $74,000 per year & 8.7 million who make more than $75,000 per year. That’s roughly 17 million people who ought to be able to “afford” health insurance. Should we count those who can afford health insurance among the uninsured?
So 37.1 minus 8.7 minus 8.3 now leaves us with roughly 20 million people without health insurance which is approximately 7 % of the population, a far cry from the 16% we’ve been told by the socialized medicine lobby & the compliant media who are obviously too lazy to examine the facts.
The Kaiser Family Foundation which is frequently a source for the mainstream media says that Americans who don’t qualify for existing government programs & who make $50,000 a year total actually no more than 5% of our population. Also the number of uninsured American “floats” & 45% will be uninsured for only approximately four months.
This information begs the question; if all this be so, & universal health care has been an abysmal flop around the world, why would intelligent & conscientious politicians want to try it in the U.S? I won’t presume to have that answer in its entirety, but a couple of answers come to mind. Many politicians feel with a more centralized, omnipotent government things work better. It also militates toward a grand design of getting the people more & more under government control. The proponents of universal health care feel that it has yet to be done by the right people; i.e. –them.
When Mr. Obama talks about change, you can be sure what he's always had in mind was some incarnation of universal health care. This, if it happens will be a quantum leap for America toward the abyss of socialism. Mr. Obama seems genial enough but we knew from the get-go--he’s far, far Left.
It’s a well known fact among serious observers that a major reason communism shriveled up & died in Russia is that people quit working. The reason they quit working is hard work only pays off in a free-enterprise system. But as you probably know, in the last few years, they've moved back toward the free-market system. As a matter of fact more millionaires are now being produced in places like Russia, China & India than in America. This sounds hard to believe but motor-car companies like Rolls Royce, Bentley etc. report that the lions share of their sales are coming from what we used to think of as third world nations.
There’s an ocean of material on the internet about the pros & cons of so-called free universal health care so you need not take my word for anything. But consider this;
In Canada, while thousands of baby-boomers & the elderly wait for knee & hip replacement surgery, a dog can get a joint replacement operation at a veterinary hospital done in a matter of weeks.
But the real danger of adopting a system like the one in Canada & Britain is not just long waits for medical treatment. Americans would pay much higher taxes & lose important liberties while turning over personal, life-and-death decisions to government bureaucrats.
This article doesn’t presume to bore down particularly deep into the universal health care question because I'm obviously not an expert on the subject, but hopefully it will give some food for thought.
The ultimate question is; does it make sense to destroy, [though imperfect,] the best medical care the world has ever seen because 5 out of 100 don’t have adequate access to it?
THE MIRACLE OF CHRISTMAS EVE-2009
On Christmas Eve of 2009, “Tracy Hermanstorfer went into cardiac arrest & stopped breathing during labor” said Dr. Stephanie, a maternal fetal medicine specialist’s at Memorial Hospital in Colorado Springs Colorado.
“She had no signs of life. No heartbeat, no blood pressure, she wasn’t breathing,” said Dr. Martin. “The baby was… it was basically limp, with a very slow heart rate.”
She said she couldn’t explain the mother’s cardiac arrest or recovery.
“We did a thorough evaluation & can’t find what explains what happened,” she said.
While one team worked on saving Mrs. Hermanstorfer, another team of medics set to work on the child.
Moments later Mike Hermanstorfer was stunned when he saw his son show signs show signs of life & learned his wife has inexplicably started breathing again.
“My legs went out from underneath me,” he said. “I had everything in the world taken from me, & in an hour & a half I had everything given me.”
Mr. Hermanstorfer credits “The hand of God.”
This was a miracle given to us in 2009. I wonder, would this have happened if ObamaCare was a legal bill?
When this mother was found with no pulse, heartbeat or any other sign of life, would a doctor have been quickly summoned & asked to establish the time of death? Would the “death-panels” have been consorted to decide if this woman & her baby would be denied life? Would a C section immediately be performed to save the child? I think we all know the answer to that question.
If you're getting anywhere close to mid-life & you feel UHC really doesn't involve you, & so you defer being pro-active in this effort because you can't see yourself needing things like cat-scans, MRIs, knee, hip or any joint replacements etc.- may God bless you & may you be correct in your assessment.
But if you see the dangers of all this, & you believe with the final passage of this unjust health care bill many of the freedoms will disappear that young men & women have fought & died to protect, & you just haven’t taken the time to write & call your representatives letting them know in no uncertain terms where you stand, I trust & pray you’ll reconsider & let your voice be heard.
Friend I have nothing to sell , I'm motivated by a firm conviction that this struggle is about so much more than "health care"....it's a battle for the soul & the future of this great republic.
If you & I work together & pray, God has promised to hear from heaven & heal our land.
Blessings,
John
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Getting Unstuck For A New Year
By John Stallings
In the movie, “Forest Gump” you may remember the part of the movie where Forest decides to go for a run.
He first runs to the end of the driveway. Then he runs into town. Then he runs to the county line & then he runs to the state line. Then he runs across half the United States to Santa Monica California.
Then Forest decides to turn around & run some more. This time he runs across the country to a lighthouse in Maine. He keeps running until people notice. He’s in the media, on magazine covers & starts to build a following. People start to run with him & follow him wherever he goes.
With a full beard & dirty, grungy clothes, Forest finds himself with a large number of followers who will go wherever he goes.
One day, Forest stops running. Standing in the middle of a road he speaks to his followers. They wait with bated breath for his words of wisdom. They lean toward him waiting for the words to fall from his lips.
Forest speaks like no man ever spoke before, sharing these words of unprecedented wisdom, I hope you’re sitting because this is big; Forest says, “I’m kind of tired. I think I’m gonna go home now.” He walks through his followers who part like the Red Sea.
Though the movie was first & foremost a comedy, I think, & certainly it was just a movie, there’s something here that rings a serious bell. You can’t help but feel sorry for these people following Forest, mostly because they have nothing better to do. They have no direction in their lives. These folk put their faith & hope in Forest & he has nothing to offer them.
WE HAVE A GUIDE
As we embark on the year 2010, we aren’t like the people in the movie Forest Gump, - so empty, - so lost -that we would follow someone who’s going nowhere in particular. Forest had a good heart, but really had no clue where he was going & why.
We’re told in scripture & we know experientially that the Holy Spirit who resides within us will Guide us into all truth. We have God, His Son Jesus & The Holy Spirit to fill our lives with meaning & give us guidance.
STUCK
The greatest challenge of the coming New Year will be letting go of the past in order to grasp a new future. It’s not as easy as it sounds because we as human beings have a way of getting stuck. Many people find that though they want passionately to believe things can be different , a new beginning always seems to move just out of reach. They find themselves slipping back into the bondage of the past.
In Philippians 3:13-14 Paul said….but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind & reaching forth for those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
If you saw the movie Groundhog Day; you have a perfect example of a man who’s stuck, living the same day over & over. I don’t think there is anyone who isn’t, or hasn;'t been stuck. Maybe our “stuckness” centers on a tangible such as buying, eating, drinking, drugging, worrying, fretting, gambling, risks, sex, love, books, movies, television, ideas, work, or power. Or maybe what we’re experiencing is a general malaise or vertigo that we can’t put our finger on.
Being stuck is sort of a twilight zone of sameness with no seeming ability to affect any kind of change. We yearn for new vistas but seem to be fresh out of ideas as to how and where to find them. We look down the road and see no chance of anything but more of the same. We all know what it’s like to be in a car that’s stuck, either in snow, sand or mud, but this is worse. It’s the realization that we’re not moving forward, and we feel paralyzed. There are projects we know we need to start or finish, but we’re seemingly trapped and frozen in place.
Few of us will grow in our Christian lives in a steady, gradual, upward slope from birth to death. Granted there will be seasons of seemingly effortless growth but there will also be seasons where we somehow get “stuck” at one level and can’t “break out” to the next level.
Something’s getting in the way!
It's my contention that part of what impedes our personal and spiritual growth are the "stuck" places in our life. There are varieties of reasons we get stuck but whatever they might be, our personal growth diminishes the longer we remain stuck. We can get stuck in our past, in our pain, in our problems, in our perspectives or in our life patterns.
I get stuck sometimes, don’t you? It is not usually an absence of options, but a plethora of them. One gets stuck in the process of choosing & then shuts down.
We can sometimes get stymied. That implies being thwarted by some outside force. Certainly outside forces influence us negatively or positively, but the reality is that most of the stymieing comes from within. We are afraid. We are afraid of the shame, embarrassment, & disappointment that failure will bring & the increased responsibility of success. Therefore, we are timid, tenuous, and terrorized by fear of the decisions we might make or actions we might take. After all, we might make a mistake. We might produce mediocre work. We might open a can of worms. Our "mights take away our might.”
Maybe a large challenge comes up, -we get discouraged & we freeze. We put our plans on hold & break our pattern of discipline.
Sometimes “being stuck” is a signal that something has gone wrong; somehow we’ve missed it, and we’re terribly off course. This is not always the case; as a matter of fact, feeling stuck is a condition that can be good for us. For one thing, a prime prerequisite for getting unstuck is to be stuck. When we’re stuck, we’ve lost our momentum and are forced, at least temporarily, to stop and assess our lives.
Feeling stuck acts as an inward summons or call. We face the fact that we are dissatisfied with where we are. We see the utter futility of our situation, and, if we are wise, we reach for another level to satisfy the desire for change. At that point, we are reaching for that which really satisfies, and, in so doing, we are calling out for God. So that’s why I say that being stuck isn’t really a bad thing. What has happened is, because of the stuck feelings, we have begun to readjust our lives, looking for a clearer perspective. In a way we are calling out, “What’s next for me, God?
PEOPLE GET STUCK IN THE PAST
Some people live in the past and seem to revel in the hurts of yesterday. They won’t shake loose from their past failures or calamities because, to them, the past is more important than the present. When you talk to them, you quickly see they are totally caught up with & committed to keeping the past more real than the present. They are stuck. What decade was it that Ronnie Millsap was lost in? Was it the sixties? I liked the song but always forget the decade. Oh well, it matters not; the important things is he was stuck.
In John 5, Jesus saw a man sitting beside the pool of Bethesda. He had been sitting there for thirty-eight years, trying to be first into the water after it was troubled by the angel. Jesus came along and heard the man’s story and immediately saw that he was stuck. I would say that thirty-eight years of sitting in the same spot, whining about the same problem is really being stuck. It didn’t cross the man’s mind that there was another way. When Jesus was able to get him to quit worrying about his past defeats and disappointments & look to Him, the man was healed, & he carried his bed away.
WE CAN GET STUCK IN OLD PATTERNS AND HABITS.
It’s not hard to develop bad habits (sometimes sinful), but more often people are just bogged in ruts. Some give up, figuring they can’t change, so why try? Perhaps because of resentment or a negative thought pattern they’ve been in so long, they think their situation could never change. Perhaps they’ve come to believe their lot in life is already static, & nothing can ever be different.
MAYBE YOU’RE STUCK FINANCIALLY OR WITH SOME OTHER PHYSICAL NEED.
In John 2, Jesus attended a wedding in Cana of Galilee, & they had run out of wine. The people were stuck with no libation, & obviously it put the wedding planners in a bit of an embarrassing spot. They were stuck with no wine. Though Jesus’ time had not yet come to do miracles, He responded to the need & performed His first miracle by turning water into wine. When we are stuck financially, emotionally, or in any other way, we should immediately turn to Jesus, knowing He’ll always be responsive to our needs.
YOU MAY BE STUCK WITH A FALSE ASSUMPTION
In Joel 2:23-32, the prophet speaks to a people who are stuck in despair, feeling things will never get better. He tells them to look up and be glad for God is going to do great things for them. They have a great future if they’ll rise up and take hold of it by faith.
He says in verse 25,--And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpillar, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you. 26And ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and praise the name of the LORD your God, that hath dealt wondrously with you: and my people shall never be ashamed. 27And ye shall know that I am in the midst of Israel and that I am the LORD your God, and none else: and my people shall never be ashamed.28And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.
In I Kings 17 we read the story of Elijah being sent to the home of the widow of Zarephath. A famine was in progress, & the only thing she had was just enough meal to make a cake for herself & her son, then die of slow starvation. This poor little widow woman was indeed stuck. Elijah asked her to make him a little cake first, and at that point she had a choice. She could believe the word of the man of God or do it her way, & no doubt die. When she opted to obey, she was given a miracle supply of oil & meal that lasted for many days. When things are going bad & we are stuck in some situation or other, we should always listen for Gods voice. He’ll have a plan to get us unstuck. [He has a fleet of spiritual tow-trucks that can be on your case before you can say “Gesundheit”.] The only thing the widow had to do was exercise obedience, & her need was met. To get unstuck, you & I will often have to make that same choice--to obey God.
SOMETIMES BEING STUCK IS JUST PURE PROCRASTINATION.
We develop a habit of putting things off until it finally turns into resistance to tasks that are unpleasant to us. Though we don’t enjoy thinking about it, sometimes we can become stubborn, which started as a childhood-survival technique we may have developed to ward off controlling people. We learned early that we can resist certain things, & people can do nothing but accept our resistance. Perhaps we even enjoyed seeing how it frustrated others when we used those powers of resistance. This may have worked as a child, but it isn’t necessary now, and if we don’t recognize what’s happening, it can be a tool of the devil to sabotage our motivation. Now it translates to pure, old, mule-headed stubbornness, keeping us from the changes we should make.
MAYBE WE ARE STUCK BECAUSE WE ARE RESISTING CHANGE.
Are you stuck at the beginning of the great New Year, 2010? HERE ARE A FEW HELPFUL HINTS FOR GETTING UNSTUCK.
1. Look at your situation realistically. Does anything in the aforementioned apply? Ask God to help you see what’s really stopping your progress.
2. Look for the bottlenecks in your situation & address them.
3. Develop a “what’s next” mentality. God will show you His will if you seek Him.
4. Don’t hesitate to go to people you respect & enlist their prayers & advice. Don’t forget to seek God.
5. When you get temporarily stuck on a project, walk away for a while, & you’ll come back to it with a new perspective. But do come back.
6. Home run king, Henry Aaron, had this advice: In a slump, keep swinging.
7. Help others with their problems, & yours will seem smaller.
8. Take care of yourself spiritually, emotionally, & physically.
9. Start each day with God’s Word & a prayer for guidance.
LET ME GIVE YOU A LIST OF IMPORTANT QUESTIONS FOR THE NEW YEAR
1. What’s the most humanly impossible thing you’ll ask God to do for you this coming year?
2. What’s the single most important thing you need to happen to improve the spiritual quality of your family?
3. What spiritual discipline do you most want to make progress in & what will you do about it?
4. What’s the biggest time-waster in your life & what will you do about it in the coming year?
5. For whose salvation will you most fervently pray in the coming year?
6. How could you improve your prayer life in 2010?
7. What will you do in 2010 that will matter most in 10 years? In eternity?
8. What will you do differently by God’s grace this coming year?
9. What’s the most important decision you need to make in 2010?
10. What area of your life needs simplifying & how will you do it?
11. What important need do you feel burdened to meet in 2010?
12. What habit would you like to establish in 2010?
13. Who do you most want to encourage this year?
14. What’s the most important financial goal you need to meet & how will you go about doing it?
15. How can you improve the quality of your work life?
16. What will you endeavor to do to bless your pastor or others who minister to you?
17. What book in addition to the bible do you want to read?
18. What’s your biggest regret of 2009 & what will you do about it in 2010?
19. What important trip would you want to take this year?
20. What skill do you want to learn or improve?
21. To what need or ministry will you give to in an unprecedented way in 2010?
22. What biblical doctrine do you want to better understand?
23. If those who know you best gave you advice, what advice would that be?
24. Would they be right?
25. What will you do about it?
You are looking for ways to make progress in your life. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t have read these little tips by such a non-expert as I.
If we keep reaching, the best is yet to come.
In Saskatchewan there’s a sign by the side of a muddy road which reads:
CHOOSE YOUR RUT CAREFULLY, YOU’LL BE IN IT A LONG TIME.
Happy New Year,
Blessings,
John
In the movie, “Forest Gump” you may remember the part of the movie where Forest decides to go for a run.
He first runs to the end of the driveway. Then he runs into town. Then he runs to the county line & then he runs to the state line. Then he runs across half the United States to Santa Monica California.
Then Forest decides to turn around & run some more. This time he runs across the country to a lighthouse in Maine. He keeps running until people notice. He’s in the media, on magazine covers & starts to build a following. People start to run with him & follow him wherever he goes.
With a full beard & dirty, grungy clothes, Forest finds himself with a large number of followers who will go wherever he goes.
One day, Forest stops running. Standing in the middle of a road he speaks to his followers. They wait with bated breath for his words of wisdom. They lean toward him waiting for the words to fall from his lips.
Forest speaks like no man ever spoke before, sharing these words of unprecedented wisdom, I hope you’re sitting because this is big; Forest says, “I’m kind of tired. I think I’m gonna go home now.” He walks through his followers who part like the Red Sea.
Though the movie was first & foremost a comedy, I think, & certainly it was just a movie, there’s something here that rings a serious bell. You can’t help but feel sorry for these people following Forest, mostly because they have nothing better to do. They have no direction in their lives. These folk put their faith & hope in Forest & he has nothing to offer them.
WE HAVE A GUIDE
As we embark on the year 2010, we aren’t like the people in the movie Forest Gump, - so empty, - so lost -that we would follow someone who’s going nowhere in particular. Forest had a good heart, but really had no clue where he was going & why.
We’re told in scripture & we know experientially that the Holy Spirit who resides within us will Guide us into all truth. We have God, His Son Jesus & The Holy Spirit to fill our lives with meaning & give us guidance.
STUCK
The greatest challenge of the coming New Year will be letting go of the past in order to grasp a new future. It’s not as easy as it sounds because we as human beings have a way of getting stuck. Many people find that though they want passionately to believe things can be different , a new beginning always seems to move just out of reach. They find themselves slipping back into the bondage of the past.
In Philippians 3:13-14 Paul said….but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind & reaching forth for those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
If you saw the movie Groundhog Day; you have a perfect example of a man who’s stuck, living the same day over & over. I don’t think there is anyone who isn’t, or hasn;'t been stuck. Maybe our “stuckness” centers on a tangible such as buying, eating, drinking, drugging, worrying, fretting, gambling, risks, sex, love, books, movies, television, ideas, work, or power. Or maybe what we’re experiencing is a general malaise or vertigo that we can’t put our finger on.
Being stuck is sort of a twilight zone of sameness with no seeming ability to affect any kind of change. We yearn for new vistas but seem to be fresh out of ideas as to how and where to find them. We look down the road and see no chance of anything but more of the same. We all know what it’s like to be in a car that’s stuck, either in snow, sand or mud, but this is worse. It’s the realization that we’re not moving forward, and we feel paralyzed. There are projects we know we need to start or finish, but we’re seemingly trapped and frozen in place.
Few of us will grow in our Christian lives in a steady, gradual, upward slope from birth to death. Granted there will be seasons of seemingly effortless growth but there will also be seasons where we somehow get “stuck” at one level and can’t “break out” to the next level.
Something’s getting in the way!
It's my contention that part of what impedes our personal and spiritual growth are the "stuck" places in our life. There are varieties of reasons we get stuck but whatever they might be, our personal growth diminishes the longer we remain stuck. We can get stuck in our past, in our pain, in our problems, in our perspectives or in our life patterns.
I get stuck sometimes, don’t you? It is not usually an absence of options, but a plethora of them. One gets stuck in the process of choosing & then shuts down.
We can sometimes get stymied. That implies being thwarted by some outside force. Certainly outside forces influence us negatively or positively, but the reality is that most of the stymieing comes from within. We are afraid. We are afraid of the shame, embarrassment, & disappointment that failure will bring & the increased responsibility of success. Therefore, we are timid, tenuous, and terrorized by fear of the decisions we might make or actions we might take. After all, we might make a mistake. We might produce mediocre work. We might open a can of worms. Our "mights take away our might.”
Maybe a large challenge comes up, -we get discouraged & we freeze. We put our plans on hold & break our pattern of discipline.
Sometimes “being stuck” is a signal that something has gone wrong; somehow we’ve missed it, and we’re terribly off course. This is not always the case; as a matter of fact, feeling stuck is a condition that can be good for us. For one thing, a prime prerequisite for getting unstuck is to be stuck. When we’re stuck, we’ve lost our momentum and are forced, at least temporarily, to stop and assess our lives.
Feeling stuck acts as an inward summons or call. We face the fact that we are dissatisfied with where we are. We see the utter futility of our situation, and, if we are wise, we reach for another level to satisfy the desire for change. At that point, we are reaching for that which really satisfies, and, in so doing, we are calling out for God. So that’s why I say that being stuck isn’t really a bad thing. What has happened is, because of the stuck feelings, we have begun to readjust our lives, looking for a clearer perspective. In a way we are calling out, “What’s next for me, God?
PEOPLE GET STUCK IN THE PAST
Some people live in the past and seem to revel in the hurts of yesterday. They won’t shake loose from their past failures or calamities because, to them, the past is more important than the present. When you talk to them, you quickly see they are totally caught up with & committed to keeping the past more real than the present. They are stuck. What decade was it that Ronnie Millsap was lost in? Was it the sixties? I liked the song but always forget the decade. Oh well, it matters not; the important things is he was stuck.
In John 5, Jesus saw a man sitting beside the pool of Bethesda. He had been sitting there for thirty-eight years, trying to be first into the water after it was troubled by the angel. Jesus came along and heard the man’s story and immediately saw that he was stuck. I would say that thirty-eight years of sitting in the same spot, whining about the same problem is really being stuck. It didn’t cross the man’s mind that there was another way. When Jesus was able to get him to quit worrying about his past defeats and disappointments & look to Him, the man was healed, & he carried his bed away.
WE CAN GET STUCK IN OLD PATTERNS AND HABITS.
It’s not hard to develop bad habits (sometimes sinful), but more often people are just bogged in ruts. Some give up, figuring they can’t change, so why try? Perhaps because of resentment or a negative thought pattern they’ve been in so long, they think their situation could never change. Perhaps they’ve come to believe their lot in life is already static, & nothing can ever be different.
MAYBE YOU’RE STUCK FINANCIALLY OR WITH SOME OTHER PHYSICAL NEED.
In John 2, Jesus attended a wedding in Cana of Galilee, & they had run out of wine. The people were stuck with no libation, & obviously it put the wedding planners in a bit of an embarrassing spot. They were stuck with no wine. Though Jesus’ time had not yet come to do miracles, He responded to the need & performed His first miracle by turning water into wine. When we are stuck financially, emotionally, or in any other way, we should immediately turn to Jesus, knowing He’ll always be responsive to our needs.
YOU MAY BE STUCK WITH A FALSE ASSUMPTION
In Joel 2:23-32, the prophet speaks to a people who are stuck in despair, feeling things will never get better. He tells them to look up and be glad for God is going to do great things for them. They have a great future if they’ll rise up and take hold of it by faith.
He says in verse 25,--And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpillar, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you. 26And ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and praise the name of the LORD your God, that hath dealt wondrously with you: and my people shall never be ashamed. 27And ye shall know that I am in the midst of Israel and that I am the LORD your God, and none else: and my people shall never be ashamed.28And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.
In I Kings 17 we read the story of Elijah being sent to the home of the widow of Zarephath. A famine was in progress, & the only thing she had was just enough meal to make a cake for herself & her son, then die of slow starvation. This poor little widow woman was indeed stuck. Elijah asked her to make him a little cake first, and at that point she had a choice. She could believe the word of the man of God or do it her way, & no doubt die. When she opted to obey, she was given a miracle supply of oil & meal that lasted for many days. When things are going bad & we are stuck in some situation or other, we should always listen for Gods voice. He’ll have a plan to get us unstuck. [He has a fleet of spiritual tow-trucks that can be on your case before you can say “Gesundheit”.] The only thing the widow had to do was exercise obedience, & her need was met. To get unstuck, you & I will often have to make that same choice--to obey God.
SOMETIMES BEING STUCK IS JUST PURE PROCRASTINATION.
We develop a habit of putting things off until it finally turns into resistance to tasks that are unpleasant to us. Though we don’t enjoy thinking about it, sometimes we can become stubborn, which started as a childhood-survival technique we may have developed to ward off controlling people. We learned early that we can resist certain things, & people can do nothing but accept our resistance. Perhaps we even enjoyed seeing how it frustrated others when we used those powers of resistance. This may have worked as a child, but it isn’t necessary now, and if we don’t recognize what’s happening, it can be a tool of the devil to sabotage our motivation. Now it translates to pure, old, mule-headed stubbornness, keeping us from the changes we should make.
MAYBE WE ARE STUCK BECAUSE WE ARE RESISTING CHANGE.
Are you stuck at the beginning of the great New Year, 2010? HERE ARE A FEW HELPFUL HINTS FOR GETTING UNSTUCK.
1. Look at your situation realistically. Does anything in the aforementioned apply? Ask God to help you see what’s really stopping your progress.
2. Look for the bottlenecks in your situation & address them.
3. Develop a “what’s next” mentality. God will show you His will if you seek Him.
4. Don’t hesitate to go to people you respect & enlist their prayers & advice. Don’t forget to seek God.
5. When you get temporarily stuck on a project, walk away for a while, & you’ll come back to it with a new perspective. But do come back.
6. Home run king, Henry Aaron, had this advice: In a slump, keep swinging.
7. Help others with their problems, & yours will seem smaller.
8. Take care of yourself spiritually, emotionally, & physically.
9. Start each day with God’s Word & a prayer for guidance.
LET ME GIVE YOU A LIST OF IMPORTANT QUESTIONS FOR THE NEW YEAR
1. What’s the most humanly impossible thing you’ll ask God to do for you this coming year?
2. What’s the single most important thing you need to happen to improve the spiritual quality of your family?
3. What spiritual discipline do you most want to make progress in & what will you do about it?
4. What’s the biggest time-waster in your life & what will you do about it in the coming year?
5. For whose salvation will you most fervently pray in the coming year?
6. How could you improve your prayer life in 2010?
7. What will you do in 2010 that will matter most in 10 years? In eternity?
8. What will you do differently by God’s grace this coming year?
9. What’s the most important decision you need to make in 2010?
10. What area of your life needs simplifying & how will you do it?
11. What important need do you feel burdened to meet in 2010?
12. What habit would you like to establish in 2010?
13. Who do you most want to encourage this year?
14. What’s the most important financial goal you need to meet & how will you go about doing it?
15. How can you improve the quality of your work life?
16. What will you endeavor to do to bless your pastor or others who minister to you?
17. What book in addition to the bible do you want to read?
18. What’s your biggest regret of 2009 & what will you do about it in 2010?
19. What important trip would you want to take this year?
20. What skill do you want to learn or improve?
21. To what need or ministry will you give to in an unprecedented way in 2010?
22. What biblical doctrine do you want to better understand?
23. If those who know you best gave you advice, what advice would that be?
24. Would they be right?
25. What will you do about it?
You are looking for ways to make progress in your life. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t have read these little tips by such a non-expert as I.
If we keep reaching, the best is yet to come.
In Saskatchewan there’s a sign by the side of a muddy road which reads:
CHOOSE YOUR RUT CAREFULLY, YOU’LL BE IN IT A LONG TIME.
Happy New Year,
Blessings,
John
Monday, December 14, 2009
I'm Dreaming Of a RIGHT Christmas
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
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
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