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Friday, January 30, 2015
Most Read Blogs Of 2014
By John Stallings
1. Is anyone born
gay? 3/14
2. When we all get
to heaven 4/14
3. Dottie Rambo and
me 11/14
4. Holy
bounce-ology 11/14
5. Putting the
world’s most influential evangelist to the bible test 11/14
6. The man who
kissed the door of heaven and went to hell
10/14
7. A woman named
somebody 10/14
8. Serious
salvation 8/14
9. You might be a
Pharisee if…6/14
Sunday, January 11, 2015
When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Lemonade!
By John Stallings
For this cause I left you in Crete. Titus 1:5
" Part of the hospital’s roof blew off.
Power was lost. Snakes swarmed in the waters that flooded some hallways. We lost our generator within 24 hours. We could not get fuel. We had to “hand-bag ventilate” patients,”
Dr. Albert Barracas said,
"In the midst of this chaos, the hospital’s doctors worked around the clock, putting their patient’s health above their own."
Such heroic stories abound in the midst of the death, destruction & displacement of Hurricane Katrina, the storm which in 2005 landed a cruel blow to the Gulf Coast region of the United States. Katrina led many Americans to do some extraordinary things.Sadly because Katrina was turned into a political football, much of this heroism has been lost.
One thing for sure, the great city of Houston was the unsung hero, especially the homes that took in house guests. Among all those in Houston who sacrificed is Kirby Robinson who took in 27 unexpected house guests.
LEMONADE
There’s an old saying; “when life hands you a lemon, make lemonade.” These ordinary people made the best of a bad situation. They made lemonade.Many, many people have chosen to “take lemons & make lemonade.” Because they did the world is a much better & safer place to live. MADD was founded because Candy Lightner’s daughter was killed by a drunk driver. Polly Klass’s father Marc has made a huge impact on child abuse laws & Nancy Brinker has raised money & awareness for breast cancer victims in memory of her sister through the Susan B. Anthony Foundation.
There are still hundreds of men & women fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan today who would rather be home with their families but instead are making lemonade, making the best of a bad situation, which by definition is what all wars are.
“Popular” actress Sally Field made a cheap, sassy remark about our war involvement at the Emmys which had to be “bleeped.” In essence she expostulated that if mothers ruled the world there’d be no more -----wars. First of all I doubt the truthfulness of that statement & secondly, she failed to mention that if we didn’t stand up to the terrorists, most women would be barefoot, pregnant, illiterate & would all be wearing Muslim head gear.
Have you ever been in a bad situation you couldn’t alter, improve or get out of? I heard a man say once that he finally gave up on changing people but he kept a long list of candidates just in case he ever decided to try again.
TITUS IN CRETE
Right after the two Timothy’s there’s the little “post card” sized book called Titus. Though it only contains 46 verses it’s still a powerhouse because it’s chocked full of rich theology pertaining to salvation & Christian maturity.But Titus also contains an intriguing story about a young preacher caught on the horns of a dilemma. Paul is writing to Titus his young protégé’ whom he’s left on the island of Crete & as we read between the lines some interesting facts emerge.Crete is a small oblong island off the coast of Greece with a spine of rough- hewn mountains running right down the middle of it.
Today’s Crete is a picturesque island humming with commerce & would be a delightful stop on any Greek island tour, but evidently in Paul & Titus’ day it left much to be desired.Paul left young Titus on the island on one of their missionary trips & Titus has failed to develop any kind of traction so he wants to leave. That last statement was probably an understatement; Titus is begging to leave. His attitude has become--“anywhere but Crete.”
Scholars believe Paul’s little letter to Titus was written in response to a letter Titus previously wrote him asking to be moved. But of course we don’t have that letter. That’s O.K., we’re on solid ground because of evidence we’ll piece together.
I can relate to Titus here for more than one reason not the least of which is that I’ve always had some sort of anxiety on small islands. No offense to the good people of Key West Florida but for some reason I’ve almost always had a bad feeling when I went & had to stay there more than a night or two. I first visited Key West as a boy of about ten when my father conducted a revival there. Then in the sixties, seventies & eighties I would go back regularly for preaching engagements. Though I don’t know exactly why, and I acknowledge some wonderful people live there, I’m usually a little depressed in Key West.
The reason I say almost always is that we went down to Key West in the mid-nineties with extended family for a visit & that heavy feeling didn’t hit me then. Also, we stopped-over there for one day & night on a 2003 Cruise & I was o.k. with Key West both times. Maybe I’m getting better or maybe Key West is.
Anyway, Key West people are great & we were always treated well by them. I think my feelings have something to do with the 100 plus mile drive over water on a two lane road that caused me to feel I’d never get out of there alive. Other problems are, Key West is about two & one half miles long & a half-mile wide (of course they’ve been enlarging the place for years—dredging) & Miami, the nearest city of any size is several hours north.
There’s something about an island, maybe it’s island fever & maybe that was part of Titus’s problem with Crete, I don’t know. But it’s almost certain that Titus wrote to Paul & said “get me out of here.” In this little letter we have Paul’s response; “No chance buddy, you’re going to stay in Crete.”
Paul agrees with Titus—get this—Paul agrees Crete is a bad place. In verses 10-14 of chapter one Paul tells Titus that even one of their prophets has said terrible things about his own people in Crete. He called them liars, evil beasts & slow bellies or gluttons. Wow! But still Paul refuses to let young Titus off the hook; he stays in Crete!
No matter who we are, we’ve all been to Crete symbolically. Crete is the place we want to leave but can’t. Crete is the place of discouragement & desire to give up & quit. Crete is the place of bad circumstances & extreme weariness. Crete is the place of outward opposition & inward despair. Crete is symbolic of any place that’s getting on your last nerve & you’d give almost anything to get away. Crete represents a place of suffering, a hopeless situation with impossible people.
The problem is you can’t leave. You’re stuck. All the whining in the world isn’t going to change the facts.The only way you can catalogue Crete & make any sense of it is, “You’re going to have to make lemonade. You’re going to have to make the best of a bad situation.” A friend of mine humorously says his favorite scripture verse is, “Grin & bear it.” If that were really a verse, it would be tailor made for Crete.
These ancient Cretans must have been “hum-dingers.” If you mentioned the name Crete people would automatically think of dishonesty, overindulgence & laziness. (Titus 1:12)Paul offers to Titus his reasons for leaving him in Crete. You might call it Paul’s CRETIAN FORMULA.”Titus must stay in Crete because;
1. TITUS NEEDS CRETE!
What!? Yes, this terrible place called Crete was going to build character & endurance in Titus. We hear more these days about deliverance than we do development but God is greatly invested in our spiritual maturity. How are we ever going to see God work miracles for us if we are constantly leaving the place where the miracle is needed?
When we pray for God to make us sweet we expect Him to turn over a bucket of honey in our soul, but instead God sends “sister sandpaper” along to test our patience. When we want to be more loving God sends the unlovely into our lives. Isn’t it strange how that works? That’s God again, turning man’s wisdom on its head. We want spiritual strength & stamina so God sends us to his “spiritual gym,”-- pressure.
I heard a man tell about going into a potters shop once while visiting Israel. The potter opened his Kiln & let him see the different vessels that were at different stages of baking. The man asked the potter how he knew when it was time to take a vessel out of the heat, whereupon the potter reached in a got one of the vessels & thumped it. He said, “When I thump the vessel & it doesn’t ‘sing” or have that certain sound, back into the oven it goes.” That man left the potters shop carrying with him the following lesson; --when God puts us in the fire, if we want out, we’d better “sing” or we go right back in.
We have the tribe of Gad with us today. You might wonder who the tribe of Gad is. They’re the millions of Christians who’re in “Spiritual orbit” gadding from one place to the other looking for that perfect situation. They are looking for smooth sailing. If we could see the kingdom of God the way God sees it, we’d see something comparable to millions of fleas hopping & popping up & down trying to leave the circumstances they’re in. God’s challenge to us is, “If you want to grow & mature, stay in Crete.”
Titus isn’t in Crete to be punished but perfected.Titus isn’t in Crete to be miserable but to become mature.Titus isn’t in Crete to be comfortable but to be conformed to the image of Christ.Titus will learn patience in Crete & that will lead to perfection.Titus will face tough opposition in Crete, & someday thank God for all he endured.Yes, Titus needed Crete, but also;
2. CRETE NEEDED TITUS.
In the second chapter of Titus Paul tells Titus just how much the people of Crete need him. The women, men & young people desperately need him, his teaching & his example.Titus was young so maybe we’ll give him a little slack here, but what did he want, a beach ministry? Did he want to ride a gravy train with biscuit wheels? I’ve heard people say if things went bad for America we should all move to the country, hide out & grow tribulation food. That sounds good but then who will minister to all the human need? Who’ll be around when people need spiritual answers? When things get bad in the world are we called to retreat to hiding places & let the world do the best it can? No! We are the salt & light department.
What if every Doctor said; “You know I’m tired of sick people. I’m sick of listening to people whine all day long. I want to be around healthy people from now on?” What then would sick people do?What if every teacher said; “I’m tired of being around uneducated & ignorant people. I want to spend the rest of my life around smart people?”What if our policemen & women got tired of keeping us safe & said, “I’m sick of dealing with the worst of humanity & fearing for my life at every traffic stop. I want to quit & spend the rest of my life around good, upstanding law-abiding folk?”What if our fire-fighters got tired of fires & left their jobs to go become farmers? If all these public servants said, “get me out of Crete” we’d all be in trouble.
What if Jesus had said; “Father, I’m tired of these human beings. They don’t like me, they don’t even know who I am & I’m definitely not appreciated. Even my home town of Nazareth ran me off. I don’t think this whole thing is working. Please let me come back to heaven, this is just too hard?” Jesus even said that He could have done that but aren’t we glad He stayed with His mission until all of man’s sin debt was paid? Jesus made the best of not only a bad situation but a situation that defies description because He was constrained by love to finish His task.Paul told Titus in chapter two verse 14;
---Who gave Himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity, & purify unto himself a peculiar people zealous of good works.
In chapter three of Titus, Paul reminds him that he used to be foolish, deceptive, lustful, pleasure loving, envious hateful & malicious. Then He gives to Titus & also to us the great verse about our free salvation;
Not by works of righteousness which we have done but according to His mercy He saved us, by the washing of regeneration & renewing of the Holy Ghost….The third thing Paul stressed to Titus was;
3. GOD NEEDS YOU IN CRETE.
God uses people to reach people. God needs Titus to be in Crete for a witness of His love. In spite of their bad reputation, in spite of their seeming unlovely ness, God still loves them & wants to redeem them & that’s why He needs Titus to be there.If there were ever a place you’d think would be beyond God’s love it would be Crete. But Titus’ presence there proves Crete mattered to God. How could God love Crete?It’s not that Cretans are lovable; it’s because God is love.God loved Crete not because of what they were but what He is.His love is not dependent on their character but His character.
In Titus 1:5 Paul tells Titus to “set in order” things that were wanting. A medical term is used here; like a doctor setting a bone. He’s telling Titus to put relationships back together among the Cretans. We don’t think of setting a bone as healing but in truth it’s a very vital part of the healing process.
A lot of people are sick because they’re “out of joint” in their relationships & wont properly heal until they’re back in place like a doctor sets a bone in place.In Ephesians 6:18 Paul tells the church there;Praying always with all prayer & supplication in the Spirit & watching thereunto with all PERSEVERANCE & supplication….The word perseverance means to persist or endure in spite of elements arrayed against you. From its Latin roots the word literally means “through severity.”
In an age of instant oatmeal & microwave popcorn we’re not too big on perseverance. Before we can persevere we need to be in severe circumstances.Perseverance was what Paul was asking of Titus in Crete. But Paul wasn’t asking Titus to do anything he didn’t do & with regularity.
Listen to 2 Corinthians 11:24—Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night & a day I have been in the deep; journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; In weariness & painfulness in watchings often, in hunger & thirst in fastings often in cold & nakedness. Beside those things that are without that, which cometh upon me daily, -- the care of all the churches.
One of the necessary elements of perseverance is TIME. Time is a requirement for us to say we’ve persevered. When a child asks “are we there yet,” without a sufficient amount of time passing, you know they’re not doing too good at persevering. Time is where we have our biggest problems & not coincidentally, time is one of the things God uses to test us. The very fact that we live in time not timelessness helps us to realize that everything has a lifespan & so will our trials & tribulations.
Paul said,--For our light affliction which is but for a moment worketh in us a far more exceeding & eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen but at the things that are not seen….2 Cor. 4:17-18
Life is often rough & if you are blessed to sails its seas for long you’ll hit a storm or two. Don’t jump ship or ask God to discharge you. Maybe you’re living in Crete or working in Crete. Maybe your marriage seems like Crete to you.For Titus to be successful in Crete he was going have to trust in God. Trusting will help us in Crete like nothing else.
Psalm 37:5 states; --Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in Him; and He shall bring it to pass.
Don’t pray for a better place, pray for strength to stay where you are & prevail. Don’t get into the spiritual fetal position. God is making you into the kind of person He wants you to be & when you’ve been tried you’ll come forth as pure gold.If you have to, take that old bitter lemon and make lemonade-but.....
STAY IN CRETE.
Blessings,
John
For this cause I left you in Crete. Titus 1:5
" Part of the hospital’s roof blew off.
Power was lost. Snakes swarmed in the waters that flooded some hallways. We lost our generator within 24 hours. We could not get fuel. We had to “hand-bag ventilate” patients,”
Dr. Albert Barracas said,
"In the midst of this chaos, the hospital’s doctors worked around the clock, putting their patient’s health above their own."
Such heroic stories abound in the midst of the death, destruction & displacement of Hurricane Katrina, the storm which in 2005 landed a cruel blow to the Gulf Coast region of the United States. Katrina led many Americans to do some extraordinary things.Sadly because Katrina was turned into a political football, much of this heroism has been lost.
One thing for sure, the great city of Houston was the unsung hero, especially the homes that took in house guests. Among all those in Houston who sacrificed is Kirby Robinson who took in 27 unexpected house guests.
LEMONADE
There’s an old saying; “when life hands you a lemon, make lemonade.” These ordinary people made the best of a bad situation. They made lemonade.Many, many people have chosen to “take lemons & make lemonade.” Because they did the world is a much better & safer place to live. MADD was founded because Candy Lightner’s daughter was killed by a drunk driver. Polly Klass’s father Marc has made a huge impact on child abuse laws & Nancy Brinker has raised money & awareness for breast cancer victims in memory of her sister through the Susan B. Anthony Foundation.
There are still hundreds of men & women fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan today who would rather be home with their families but instead are making lemonade, making the best of a bad situation, which by definition is what all wars are.
“Popular” actress Sally Field made a cheap, sassy remark about our war involvement at the Emmys which had to be “bleeped.” In essence she expostulated that if mothers ruled the world there’d be no more -----wars. First of all I doubt the truthfulness of that statement & secondly, she failed to mention that if we didn’t stand up to the terrorists, most women would be barefoot, pregnant, illiterate & would all be wearing Muslim head gear.
Have you ever been in a bad situation you couldn’t alter, improve or get out of? I heard a man say once that he finally gave up on changing people but he kept a long list of candidates just in case he ever decided to try again.
TITUS IN CRETE
Right after the two Timothy’s there’s the little “post card” sized book called Titus. Though it only contains 46 verses it’s still a powerhouse because it’s chocked full of rich theology pertaining to salvation & Christian maturity.But Titus also contains an intriguing story about a young preacher caught on the horns of a dilemma. Paul is writing to Titus his young protégé’ whom he’s left on the island of Crete & as we read between the lines some interesting facts emerge.Crete is a small oblong island off the coast of Greece with a spine of rough- hewn mountains running right down the middle of it.
Today’s Crete is a picturesque island humming with commerce & would be a delightful stop on any Greek island tour, but evidently in Paul & Titus’ day it left much to be desired.Paul left young Titus on the island on one of their missionary trips & Titus has failed to develop any kind of traction so he wants to leave. That last statement was probably an understatement; Titus is begging to leave. His attitude has become--“anywhere but Crete.”
Scholars believe Paul’s little letter to Titus was written in response to a letter Titus previously wrote him asking to be moved. But of course we don’t have that letter. That’s O.K., we’re on solid ground because of evidence we’ll piece together.
I can relate to Titus here for more than one reason not the least of which is that I’ve always had some sort of anxiety on small islands. No offense to the good people of Key West Florida but for some reason I’ve almost always had a bad feeling when I went & had to stay there more than a night or two. I first visited Key West as a boy of about ten when my father conducted a revival there. Then in the sixties, seventies & eighties I would go back regularly for preaching engagements. Though I don’t know exactly why, and I acknowledge some wonderful people live there, I’m usually a little depressed in Key West.
The reason I say almost always is that we went down to Key West in the mid-nineties with extended family for a visit & that heavy feeling didn’t hit me then. Also, we stopped-over there for one day & night on a 2003 Cruise & I was o.k. with Key West both times. Maybe I’m getting better or maybe Key West is.
Anyway, Key West people are great & we were always treated well by them. I think my feelings have something to do with the 100 plus mile drive over water on a two lane road that caused me to feel I’d never get out of there alive. Other problems are, Key West is about two & one half miles long & a half-mile wide (of course they’ve been enlarging the place for years—dredging) & Miami, the nearest city of any size is several hours north.
There’s something about an island, maybe it’s island fever & maybe that was part of Titus’s problem with Crete, I don’t know. But it’s almost certain that Titus wrote to Paul & said “get me out of here.” In this little letter we have Paul’s response; “No chance buddy, you’re going to stay in Crete.”
Paul agrees with Titus—get this—Paul agrees Crete is a bad place. In verses 10-14 of chapter one Paul tells Titus that even one of their prophets has said terrible things about his own people in Crete. He called them liars, evil beasts & slow bellies or gluttons. Wow! But still Paul refuses to let young Titus off the hook; he stays in Crete!
No matter who we are, we’ve all been to Crete symbolically. Crete is the place we want to leave but can’t. Crete is the place of discouragement & desire to give up & quit. Crete is the place of bad circumstances & extreme weariness. Crete is the place of outward opposition & inward despair. Crete is symbolic of any place that’s getting on your last nerve & you’d give almost anything to get away. Crete represents a place of suffering, a hopeless situation with impossible people.
The problem is you can’t leave. You’re stuck. All the whining in the world isn’t going to change the facts.The only way you can catalogue Crete & make any sense of it is, “You’re going to have to make lemonade. You’re going to have to make the best of a bad situation.” A friend of mine humorously says his favorite scripture verse is, “Grin & bear it.” If that were really a verse, it would be tailor made for Crete.
These ancient Cretans must have been “hum-dingers.” If you mentioned the name Crete people would automatically think of dishonesty, overindulgence & laziness. (Titus 1:12)Paul offers to Titus his reasons for leaving him in Crete. You might call it Paul’s CRETIAN FORMULA.”Titus must stay in Crete because;
1. TITUS NEEDS CRETE!
What!? Yes, this terrible place called Crete was going to build character & endurance in Titus. We hear more these days about deliverance than we do development but God is greatly invested in our spiritual maturity. How are we ever going to see God work miracles for us if we are constantly leaving the place where the miracle is needed?
When we pray for God to make us sweet we expect Him to turn over a bucket of honey in our soul, but instead God sends “sister sandpaper” along to test our patience. When we want to be more loving God sends the unlovely into our lives. Isn’t it strange how that works? That’s God again, turning man’s wisdom on its head. We want spiritual strength & stamina so God sends us to his “spiritual gym,”-- pressure.
I heard a man tell about going into a potters shop once while visiting Israel. The potter opened his Kiln & let him see the different vessels that were at different stages of baking. The man asked the potter how he knew when it was time to take a vessel out of the heat, whereupon the potter reached in a got one of the vessels & thumped it. He said, “When I thump the vessel & it doesn’t ‘sing” or have that certain sound, back into the oven it goes.” That man left the potters shop carrying with him the following lesson; --when God puts us in the fire, if we want out, we’d better “sing” or we go right back in.
We have the tribe of Gad with us today. You might wonder who the tribe of Gad is. They’re the millions of Christians who’re in “Spiritual orbit” gadding from one place to the other looking for that perfect situation. They are looking for smooth sailing. If we could see the kingdom of God the way God sees it, we’d see something comparable to millions of fleas hopping & popping up & down trying to leave the circumstances they’re in. God’s challenge to us is, “If you want to grow & mature, stay in Crete.”
Titus isn’t in Crete to be punished but perfected.Titus isn’t in Crete to be miserable but to become mature.Titus isn’t in Crete to be comfortable but to be conformed to the image of Christ.Titus will learn patience in Crete & that will lead to perfection.Titus will face tough opposition in Crete, & someday thank God for all he endured.Yes, Titus needed Crete, but also;
2. CRETE NEEDED TITUS.
In the second chapter of Titus Paul tells Titus just how much the people of Crete need him. The women, men & young people desperately need him, his teaching & his example.Titus was young so maybe we’ll give him a little slack here, but what did he want, a beach ministry? Did he want to ride a gravy train with biscuit wheels? I’ve heard people say if things went bad for America we should all move to the country, hide out & grow tribulation food. That sounds good but then who will minister to all the human need? Who’ll be around when people need spiritual answers? When things get bad in the world are we called to retreat to hiding places & let the world do the best it can? No! We are the salt & light department.
What if every Doctor said; “You know I’m tired of sick people. I’m sick of listening to people whine all day long. I want to be around healthy people from now on?” What then would sick people do?What if every teacher said; “I’m tired of being around uneducated & ignorant people. I want to spend the rest of my life around smart people?”What if our policemen & women got tired of keeping us safe & said, “I’m sick of dealing with the worst of humanity & fearing for my life at every traffic stop. I want to quit & spend the rest of my life around good, upstanding law-abiding folk?”What if our fire-fighters got tired of fires & left their jobs to go become farmers? If all these public servants said, “get me out of Crete” we’d all be in trouble.
What if Jesus had said; “Father, I’m tired of these human beings. They don’t like me, they don’t even know who I am & I’m definitely not appreciated. Even my home town of Nazareth ran me off. I don’t think this whole thing is working. Please let me come back to heaven, this is just too hard?” Jesus even said that He could have done that but aren’t we glad He stayed with His mission until all of man’s sin debt was paid? Jesus made the best of not only a bad situation but a situation that defies description because He was constrained by love to finish His task.Paul told Titus in chapter two verse 14;
---Who gave Himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity, & purify unto himself a peculiar people zealous of good works.
In chapter three of Titus, Paul reminds him that he used to be foolish, deceptive, lustful, pleasure loving, envious hateful & malicious. Then He gives to Titus & also to us the great verse about our free salvation;
Not by works of righteousness which we have done but according to His mercy He saved us, by the washing of regeneration & renewing of the Holy Ghost….The third thing Paul stressed to Titus was;
3. GOD NEEDS YOU IN CRETE.
God uses people to reach people. God needs Titus to be in Crete for a witness of His love. In spite of their bad reputation, in spite of their seeming unlovely ness, God still loves them & wants to redeem them & that’s why He needs Titus to be there.If there were ever a place you’d think would be beyond God’s love it would be Crete. But Titus’ presence there proves Crete mattered to God. How could God love Crete?It’s not that Cretans are lovable; it’s because God is love.God loved Crete not because of what they were but what He is.His love is not dependent on their character but His character.
In Titus 1:5 Paul tells Titus to “set in order” things that were wanting. A medical term is used here; like a doctor setting a bone. He’s telling Titus to put relationships back together among the Cretans. We don’t think of setting a bone as healing but in truth it’s a very vital part of the healing process.
A lot of people are sick because they’re “out of joint” in their relationships & wont properly heal until they’re back in place like a doctor sets a bone in place.In Ephesians 6:18 Paul tells the church there;Praying always with all prayer & supplication in the Spirit & watching thereunto with all PERSEVERANCE & supplication….The word perseverance means to persist or endure in spite of elements arrayed against you. From its Latin roots the word literally means “through severity.”
In an age of instant oatmeal & microwave popcorn we’re not too big on perseverance. Before we can persevere we need to be in severe circumstances.Perseverance was what Paul was asking of Titus in Crete. But Paul wasn’t asking Titus to do anything he didn’t do & with regularity.
Listen to 2 Corinthians 11:24—Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night & a day I have been in the deep; journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; In weariness & painfulness in watchings often, in hunger & thirst in fastings often in cold & nakedness. Beside those things that are without that, which cometh upon me daily, -- the care of all the churches.
One of the necessary elements of perseverance is TIME. Time is a requirement for us to say we’ve persevered. When a child asks “are we there yet,” without a sufficient amount of time passing, you know they’re not doing too good at persevering. Time is where we have our biggest problems & not coincidentally, time is one of the things God uses to test us. The very fact that we live in time not timelessness helps us to realize that everything has a lifespan & so will our trials & tribulations.
Paul said,--For our light affliction which is but for a moment worketh in us a far more exceeding & eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen but at the things that are not seen….2 Cor. 4:17-18
Life is often rough & if you are blessed to sails its seas for long you’ll hit a storm or two. Don’t jump ship or ask God to discharge you. Maybe you’re living in Crete or working in Crete. Maybe your marriage seems like Crete to you.For Titus to be successful in Crete he was going have to trust in God. Trusting will help us in Crete like nothing else.
Psalm 37:5 states; --Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in Him; and He shall bring it to pass.
Don’t pray for a better place, pray for strength to stay where you are & prevail. Don’t get into the spiritual fetal position. God is making you into the kind of person He wants you to be & when you’ve been tried you’ll come forth as pure gold.If you have to, take that old bitter lemon and make lemonade-but.....
STAY IN CRETE.
Blessings,
John
Sunday, December 7, 2014
ABUSE OF POWER
By John Stallings
Why did the writers have to put this story in the Bible?
It would have been so easy to leave it out. This is such an evil & appalling episode in a man’s life it could easily have been swept under the rug. Why tell everything?
Some writers & painters throughout history have reconstructed the scenes in this story to make the women a seductress, deliberately displaying her charms in front of the poor hapless man -making him a victim. They would have us believe the man in the story was lured into the relationship.
But the Bible makes it clear. The woman in this story wasn’t responsible for what happened to her. She was simply going through the ritual of taking a bath.
I’ve been sickened at times hearing preachers [few, thankfully] depict this woman preening, styling & profiling & trying to get the man’s eye. That never happened. The Bible says not one word, not one suggestion, nary even a hint that this woman has any agenda of her own nor any part to play- beyond being the object of a powerful man’s lust & greed. Sad to say the woman was “collateral damage.”
Women who live in countries where God is honored & the gospel is preached, should get down on their knees in praise & honor to a Savior that has raised their gender above the level of beasts of burden. One only has to fly mere minutes by jet from the United States to see that multitudes of women in our world are still treated as nothing more than chattel. Where the gospel goes, women are released & elevated.
WHAT WE HAVE HERE IS A ROYAL POWER-TRIP
Of course I speak of King David & Bathsheba. David was anointed king behind Saul’s back, even while Saul was still king. David was brave, strong, clever & handsome. The kind of guy legends are based on. He made Israel a nation to be reckoned with, a secure land in which to live. David was a king anointed by a prophet of God. I thought about it & I can’t think of a man alive today or for that matter- a man I’ve read about in recent history that, considering all his gifts could stand in David’s shadow. However, if David were alive today we might raise our eyebrow at his warlike tendencies & we’d definitely raise them at the story we’re considering now.
Having risen from his siesta one afternoon, David noticed Bathsheba, the wife of one of his most devoted men, Uriah. He called for her & seduced her. On discovering that she was pregnant he made arrangements to get the husband brought home on leave so it would look as if he was the father.
But it didn’t work & David ended up having Uriah murdered, bringing Bathsheba into his harem, as if he didn’t have enough wives already. Power had finally gotten to David’s head. He had come to see himself as someone who could use power to get whatever he wanted. One brave soul, the prophet Nathan dared to criticize him & to his credit David accepted the criticism & repented.
But the consequences of David’s abuse of power were horrific for all concerned. Bathsheba lost not only her husband but also her child & was obliged to marry the killer of her husband & her seducer. All she could do was bow to David’s power, the oppressor & the oppressed inexorably bound together.
In this one act, an act that more than qualifies as a terrible sin plus a hideous crime, David sets himself up as a paradigm of the abuse of power. If there ever was a power grab this was it & Bathsheba fell victim to it. It all happened very quickly. There is nothing I can find in the story that says David is interested in anything more than a one night, or afternoon stand with Bathsheba. No love or affection is mentioned & no lasting relationship is desired. David is done with her until she sends him the message, “I’m pregnant.” That changes everything. This thing isn’t over.
Just a few words about sexual sins; in today’s culture, people seem to think sexual sins are just about like all the others. We even say-in the eyes of God; sexual sin is a sin alright but so is lying & stealing. However, we’d do well not to be so blasé on this subject. Sexual sin has many consequences other sins don’t have, such as feelings of guilt, self-condemnation, anxiety, damaged self-esteem, hypocrisy, emptiness, anger, depression, dishonesty, wasted time, diminished effectiveness, regret, abortion, crime, punishment, disease & death. Sexual sin harms our testimony & our usefulness to God.
But, there’s good news. We have a God who will forgive us of every sin & remove it from us as far as the east is from the west. However, it’s always good to keep the aforementioned things in mind less like David; we are tricked into thinking that our actions won’t have any negative repercussions. As we’ve shown, all sin is sin but sexual sins have a different stigma & the long term effect can certainly be more devastating.
It seems to be difficult if not impossible, outside the grace of God for a human being with power to maintain their integrity. If we look closely at Abuse of Power it takes on the attributes of a plague, a rampant- infectious disease. It takes extraordinary integrity, insight, & strength of character to have power & not abuse it.
People in power somehow have always felt above the law. Social mores & legal codes that the rest of us follow to maintain order in our society don’t apply to them. They assume that respecting others & their rights no longer applies. They feel that to show their power, maintain it & accomplish their agendas they can break all the rules, thinking that the end justifies the means.
Here’s something interesting.
In 2 Samuel 11, we are given the details of David’s sin with Bathsheba. Earlier in this piece when I questioned why the writers of the Bible would include David’s awful sin, maybe you thought, “Stallings, the writers didn’t have any choice. God saw to it that this sin was to be exposed.”
If this was your thought, I would then direct you to 1 Chronicles 20 where the same story is again told but told a little differently. Chronologically this passage of scripture speaks of the exact time in David’s life but the entire disastrous episode with Bathsheba & Uriah is left out. The whole catastrophic story in David’s life & career is glossed over. Thankfully in 2 Samuel 11the story is preserved in detail. In this passage we get a complete picture of David as a human being.
In the interest of full disclosure, it very well might be the writer of first Chronicles felt it best not to commit overkill on the subject of David’s sin with Bathsheba. It’s possible that leaving it out in this passage was saying-we already know that part so why obsess over it? Anyway, the point remains that all this could have been hushed-up but God saw fit to let the world know about it.
Keep in mind this is David we’re talking about. David the anointed one, -whose linage will produce the Messiah. In getting a full & complete picture of David’s life we are allowed the chance to find ourselves in him. We’re allowed to see what it means to fail, what the consequences are & how God relates to us in the midst of our failings, working to redeem us & the damage we’ve done.
Again, women in David’s time were considered property, first of their fathers, & later their husbands. Which may explain why the narrative says nothing about Bathsheba’s reaction to any of this, or why she goes so calmly to David afterward to tell him she’s pregnant, or why after the mourning for her husband is over, following his death in battle, there’s no mention of resistance on her part to becoming a part of David’s harem.
A CLOSER LOOK AT POWER
Have you ever considered how much frustration & anger manifests because we feel powerless in a situation? Power is a dynamic in every relationship. Power exists in national & international relationships as well as on a smaller scale of relationships within our families, our colleagues or employees & our friends. In each of these relationships we are faced with a choice between using that power to serve our own needs & wants & using it to meet the needs of others. We can empower each other or try to overpower each other.
YOU AND I MAY NOT BE COMPLETELY INNOCENT HERE
We’ll get back to David but we may need to do a “mirror check” right about now. We all have power of some sort. Maybe it’s parental power, the power of a caregiver, pastoral power, chairman of a committee or company, a therapist’s power or the power of an attorney or banker. We all have power of some kind & none of us are immune to the temptations to abuse it.
Maybe that’s the reason the Bible writers preserved this horrendous chapter of David’s life. God, ever the great storyteller, must have felt this true story would be a warning to us all.
Fear of losing power is scary to many people because there’s a myth that somehow there isn’t enough power to go around, so you & I both can’t have it. This is crazy on its face. If I have power that doesn’t mean you can’t have it. Like oxygen, there’s enough power to go around. The real issue is how we’ll use that power.
The Bible trumpets & teaches us emphatically that the abuse of power is almost as common as breathing in the human family. In that respect --“all have sinned & come short of the glory of God.”
NABOTH’S VINEYARD
In the book of 1 Kings there’s the story of a little guy named Naboth. It’s not a pleasant story. It’s a story of the abuse of power. King Ahab wants Naboth’s little vineyard because it’s so close to his palace. Ahab’s wife Jezebel schemes to get it for him by having Naboth falsely accused & killed. Once Naboth is dead, Ahab takes possession of the little plot of land but soon Elijah finds out about it & pronounces God’s judgment on him for it.
Naboth refused to sell his land because he got it as a result of an inheritance. As a matter of fact, he tells Ahab, “The Lord forbid that I should give you my ancestral inheritance.” There are many places to “hang our theological hats” in this story.
We have here a henpecked husband & a conniving, manipulative wife. Although Ahab repented, & acknowledged his sin he still didn’t’ escape the consequences of his deeds. Elijah told Jezebel that soon dogs would lick her blood from the street & that indeed was the case in short order. This is just another example of God looking with disdain on the powerful throwing their weight around & it will always culminate in judgment.
SARAH, ABRAHAM AND HAGAR
What can these three teach us about abuse of power? The story is in Genesis 16. Our matriarch feels powerless to bear children so she suggests her husband & Hagar, their servant girl produce a child. Isn’t this the most harebrained idea that ever came down the pike?
This is never going to work. When Hagar has the child Sarah feels she’s been lowered in Hagar’s eyes. After all, Hagar is pregnant with Abraham’s seed. She becomes furious & asked her husband to intercede & old Abe doesn’t use his power right. As a matter of fact he gives his power away to his wife -& Sarah, in her pitiful jealous rage deals harshly with the servant girl.
Now on the Lam, Hagar runs into the desert & she is soon sitting & crying because her son is near death. God intervenes for Hagar & sends an angel to save them. God is the only one in this story who uses His power for good.
IMHO THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION ABUSES POWER
Some things about the president haven’t shocked me. I knew he’d never so much as ran a candy store .
However, I’ll have to admit that even I have been shocked by president Obama’s clueless ness about the mood of Americans & what they want. The man who smashed the Clinton machine, almost from the time he walked into the Oval office has been disjointed & alienated from the people who put him there.
The recent"shellacking" handed to president Obama, by giving the Senate to his opponents, IMHO, was such a shock to his system that he immediately confirmed the old saying that "Denial is more than a river in Egypt."
To me it seems like he doesn’t care that huge chunks of the country have given up on him. When a large percentage of the country are saying they don’t want ObamaCare, nor do they approve of the way He's bypassing Congress in the illegal alien situation , can we categorize Obama’s uncaring attitude to what the country wants as anything other than abuse of power, when he persists in ramming things down the throats of the people-all in the name of, “I don’t give up?”
What do you call it when voters by a large margin have said for months they don’t want his brand of healthcare so he pushes it even harder? I call it abuse of power. People thought he & his Chicago buddies would deliver bipartisanship bur he insists on giving his hard-left allies the keys to the kingdom.
Obama supporters worry about terrorism so he wants to close Gitmo & move the worst of the worst to the homeland. His approval ratings drop like a rock & over 60% say the country is on the wrong track & he responds by giving himself a “good solid B-plus” for his first years. Each & every day new voices in his own party are saying-“he just doesn’t get it.”
The story we’re considering about ancient king David is obviously a story from the distant past. But when you look at some of its salient points & compare them with our current president, it seems shockingly similar, especially as regards abuse of power. To be fair, I must say Obama isn't the first to do this & probably won't be the last.
When something goes wrong, it’s not Obama’s fault. - “greedy” insurance companies, doctors who cut off limbs just for the money, special interests, the media—have all taken their turns being blamed for what he hasn’t fixed. One thing for sure—the buck doesn’t stop at Obama’s desk.
BACK TO DAVID
It seems that being God’s anointed isn’t enough to save David from his own nature. When David hears Bathsheba is pregnant, he must now go into damage-control mode. He sends word to Joab his general & asks him to send Uriah back from the battlefield for consultations with the king.
You have to admit David has come up with a rather simple plan to take care of his problem.
THINGS GET OUT OF CONTROL
Up to now David has been in control of his life, but watch how that control slips away from him. Now everything is basically in the hands of others.
Understand that I don’t take a super-spiritual attitude about sexual temptations. I’ve always been as red-blooded as other normal men & certainly know what temptation is. But I’ve never really understood how a preacher could commit adultery & think he’s going to walk away from it as if it never happened. Doesn’t he know anything about human nature? Better yet, doesn’t he understand women any better than that?
I’ve often said, “If I ever, God forbid, commit adultery, I hope I’d have a better excuse than—“I thought she’d keep the secret, I thought she wouldn’t tell.” What does an individual whose committed adultery do when the phone rings late at night or a mysterious knock comes at their door? There are many warnings given in God’s word about sexual sins, but if that wasn’t the case, if the Bible was silent about it, to me one of the reasons not to do it, other than concerns about your own character, & your love for your spouse, would be-you have to put your life & reputation in another person’s hands, & like David, your life isn’t your own anymore.
Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband came back from battle & David did everything he could to get the boy to go home but noooooo—he wasn’t going home. He turns out to have more integrity than the king. He’s a straight-up kind of guy. Since he couldn’t get Uriah to go home, David’s cover story starts to fall apart. His scheme didn’t work. Isn’t this about as repulsive a story as you’ve ever heard?
DAVID’S FINAL, UGLY ACT OF POWER ABUSE
David orders Uriah into one of the sharpest areas of battle & gets him killed. David has solved his problem or so he thinks. At last he can breathe freely again. His neck is out of the noose. Or is it? God is still going to face him with his sin by sending Nathan. The sword will never depart from David’s house.
So the last word hasn’t been spoken yet in David’s tangled web. David feels a relief but a relief that won’t last.
That human beings will abuse power seems to be a given. A fact of life. Let’s be honest... David’s actions were appalling but hardly stand out from what the leaders of our day do routinely.
Though we pray we’ll never do anything on the scale of what David did, we can find ourselves in this story; coveting what isn’t rightly ours; forgetting who we are & whose we are, hurting or stepping on others to get what we want; taking great measures to cover up what we’ve done; using others who seem nameless & inconsequential like Bathsheba for our own gain.
How we or anyone uses their power is a choice we make. The choice can only be truly made by staying in touch with the real power through prayer & communion with God.
David & his family paid a heavy price for his abusive moment of self-indulgence but God wasn't finished with him just as He isn't finished with us. He's in this project called humanity for the long haul. I think it no accident that hundreds of years after David passed; Matthew began his gospel with a list of ancestors of Jesus. He did something rarely if ever done in Jewish genealogies; he named a number of women among Jesus’ ancestors & one of them is Bathsheba.
Matthew understood that no abuse can ever thwart God’s power to redeem & create new beginnings.
That should give us hope that even the destructive consequences of our own abuses of power may be forgiven & redeemed as well.
Blessings,
John
Why did the writers have to put this story in the Bible?
It would have been so easy to leave it out. This is such an evil & appalling episode in a man’s life it could easily have been swept under the rug. Why tell everything?
Some writers & painters throughout history have reconstructed the scenes in this story to make the women a seductress, deliberately displaying her charms in front of the poor hapless man -making him a victim. They would have us believe the man in the story was lured into the relationship.
But the Bible makes it clear. The woman in this story wasn’t responsible for what happened to her. She was simply going through the ritual of taking a bath.
I’ve been sickened at times hearing preachers [few, thankfully] depict this woman preening, styling & profiling & trying to get the man’s eye. That never happened. The Bible says not one word, not one suggestion, nary even a hint that this woman has any agenda of her own nor any part to play- beyond being the object of a powerful man’s lust & greed. Sad to say the woman was “collateral damage.”
Women who live in countries where God is honored & the gospel is preached, should get down on their knees in praise & honor to a Savior that has raised their gender above the level of beasts of burden. One only has to fly mere minutes by jet from the United States to see that multitudes of women in our world are still treated as nothing more than chattel. Where the gospel goes, women are released & elevated.
WHAT WE HAVE HERE IS A ROYAL POWER-TRIP
Of course I speak of King David & Bathsheba. David was anointed king behind Saul’s back, even while Saul was still king. David was brave, strong, clever & handsome. The kind of guy legends are based on. He made Israel a nation to be reckoned with, a secure land in which to live. David was a king anointed by a prophet of God. I thought about it & I can’t think of a man alive today or for that matter- a man I’ve read about in recent history that, considering all his gifts could stand in David’s shadow. However, if David were alive today we might raise our eyebrow at his warlike tendencies & we’d definitely raise them at the story we’re considering now.
Having risen from his siesta one afternoon, David noticed Bathsheba, the wife of one of his most devoted men, Uriah. He called for her & seduced her. On discovering that she was pregnant he made arrangements to get the husband brought home on leave so it would look as if he was the father.
But it didn’t work & David ended up having Uriah murdered, bringing Bathsheba into his harem, as if he didn’t have enough wives already. Power had finally gotten to David’s head. He had come to see himself as someone who could use power to get whatever he wanted. One brave soul, the prophet Nathan dared to criticize him & to his credit David accepted the criticism & repented.
But the consequences of David’s abuse of power were horrific for all concerned. Bathsheba lost not only her husband but also her child & was obliged to marry the killer of her husband & her seducer. All she could do was bow to David’s power, the oppressor & the oppressed inexorably bound together.
In this one act, an act that more than qualifies as a terrible sin plus a hideous crime, David sets himself up as a paradigm of the abuse of power. If there ever was a power grab this was it & Bathsheba fell victim to it. It all happened very quickly. There is nothing I can find in the story that says David is interested in anything more than a one night, or afternoon stand with Bathsheba. No love or affection is mentioned & no lasting relationship is desired. David is done with her until she sends him the message, “I’m pregnant.” That changes everything. This thing isn’t over.
Just a few words about sexual sins; in today’s culture, people seem to think sexual sins are just about like all the others. We even say-in the eyes of God; sexual sin is a sin alright but so is lying & stealing. However, we’d do well not to be so blasé on this subject. Sexual sin has many consequences other sins don’t have, such as feelings of guilt, self-condemnation, anxiety, damaged self-esteem, hypocrisy, emptiness, anger, depression, dishonesty, wasted time, diminished effectiveness, regret, abortion, crime, punishment, disease & death. Sexual sin harms our testimony & our usefulness to God.
But, there’s good news. We have a God who will forgive us of every sin & remove it from us as far as the east is from the west. However, it’s always good to keep the aforementioned things in mind less like David; we are tricked into thinking that our actions won’t have any negative repercussions. As we’ve shown, all sin is sin but sexual sins have a different stigma & the long term effect can certainly be more devastating.
It seems to be difficult if not impossible, outside the grace of God for a human being with power to maintain their integrity. If we look closely at Abuse of Power it takes on the attributes of a plague, a rampant- infectious disease. It takes extraordinary integrity, insight, & strength of character to have power & not abuse it.
People in power somehow have always felt above the law. Social mores & legal codes that the rest of us follow to maintain order in our society don’t apply to them. They assume that respecting others & their rights no longer applies. They feel that to show their power, maintain it & accomplish their agendas they can break all the rules, thinking that the end justifies the means.
Here’s something interesting.
In 2 Samuel 11, we are given the details of David’s sin with Bathsheba. Earlier in this piece when I questioned why the writers of the Bible would include David’s awful sin, maybe you thought, “Stallings, the writers didn’t have any choice. God saw to it that this sin was to be exposed.”
If this was your thought, I would then direct you to 1 Chronicles 20 where the same story is again told but told a little differently. Chronologically this passage of scripture speaks of the exact time in David’s life but the entire disastrous episode with Bathsheba & Uriah is left out. The whole catastrophic story in David’s life & career is glossed over. Thankfully in 2 Samuel 11the story is preserved in detail. In this passage we get a complete picture of David as a human being.
In the interest of full disclosure, it very well might be the writer of first Chronicles felt it best not to commit overkill on the subject of David’s sin with Bathsheba. It’s possible that leaving it out in this passage was saying-we already know that part so why obsess over it? Anyway, the point remains that all this could have been hushed-up but God saw fit to let the world know about it.
Keep in mind this is David we’re talking about. David the anointed one, -whose linage will produce the Messiah. In getting a full & complete picture of David’s life we are allowed the chance to find ourselves in him. We’re allowed to see what it means to fail, what the consequences are & how God relates to us in the midst of our failings, working to redeem us & the damage we’ve done.
Again, women in David’s time were considered property, first of their fathers, & later their husbands. Which may explain why the narrative says nothing about Bathsheba’s reaction to any of this, or why she goes so calmly to David afterward to tell him she’s pregnant, or why after the mourning for her husband is over, following his death in battle, there’s no mention of resistance on her part to becoming a part of David’s harem.
A CLOSER LOOK AT POWER
Have you ever considered how much frustration & anger manifests because we feel powerless in a situation? Power is a dynamic in every relationship. Power exists in national & international relationships as well as on a smaller scale of relationships within our families, our colleagues or employees & our friends. In each of these relationships we are faced with a choice between using that power to serve our own needs & wants & using it to meet the needs of others. We can empower each other or try to overpower each other.
YOU AND I MAY NOT BE COMPLETELY INNOCENT HERE
We’ll get back to David but we may need to do a “mirror check” right about now. We all have power of some sort. Maybe it’s parental power, the power of a caregiver, pastoral power, chairman of a committee or company, a therapist’s power or the power of an attorney or banker. We all have power of some kind & none of us are immune to the temptations to abuse it.
Maybe that’s the reason the Bible writers preserved this horrendous chapter of David’s life. God, ever the great storyteller, must have felt this true story would be a warning to us all.
Fear of losing power is scary to many people because there’s a myth that somehow there isn’t enough power to go around, so you & I both can’t have it. This is crazy on its face. If I have power that doesn’t mean you can’t have it. Like oxygen, there’s enough power to go around. The real issue is how we’ll use that power.
The Bible trumpets & teaches us emphatically that the abuse of power is almost as common as breathing in the human family. In that respect --“all have sinned & come short of the glory of God.”
NABOTH’S VINEYARD
In the book of 1 Kings there’s the story of a little guy named Naboth. It’s not a pleasant story. It’s a story of the abuse of power. King Ahab wants Naboth’s little vineyard because it’s so close to his palace. Ahab’s wife Jezebel schemes to get it for him by having Naboth falsely accused & killed. Once Naboth is dead, Ahab takes possession of the little plot of land but soon Elijah finds out about it & pronounces God’s judgment on him for it.
Naboth refused to sell his land because he got it as a result of an inheritance. As a matter of fact, he tells Ahab, “The Lord forbid that I should give you my ancestral inheritance.” There are many places to “hang our theological hats” in this story.
We have here a henpecked husband & a conniving, manipulative wife. Although Ahab repented, & acknowledged his sin he still didn’t’ escape the consequences of his deeds. Elijah told Jezebel that soon dogs would lick her blood from the street & that indeed was the case in short order. This is just another example of God looking with disdain on the powerful throwing their weight around & it will always culminate in judgment.
SARAH, ABRAHAM AND HAGAR
What can these three teach us about abuse of power? The story is in Genesis 16. Our matriarch feels powerless to bear children so she suggests her husband & Hagar, their servant girl produce a child. Isn’t this the most harebrained idea that ever came down the pike?
This is never going to work. When Hagar has the child Sarah feels she’s been lowered in Hagar’s eyes. After all, Hagar is pregnant with Abraham’s seed. She becomes furious & asked her husband to intercede & old Abe doesn’t use his power right. As a matter of fact he gives his power away to his wife -& Sarah, in her pitiful jealous rage deals harshly with the servant girl.
Now on the Lam, Hagar runs into the desert & she is soon sitting & crying because her son is near death. God intervenes for Hagar & sends an angel to save them. God is the only one in this story who uses His power for good.
IMHO THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION ABUSES POWER
Some things about the president haven’t shocked me. I knew he’d never so much as ran a candy store .
However, I’ll have to admit that even I have been shocked by president Obama’s clueless ness about the mood of Americans & what they want. The man who smashed the Clinton machine, almost from the time he walked into the Oval office has been disjointed & alienated from the people who put him there.
The recent"shellacking" handed to president Obama, by giving the Senate to his opponents, IMHO, was such a shock to his system that he immediately confirmed the old saying that "Denial is more than a river in Egypt."
To me it seems like he doesn’t care that huge chunks of the country have given up on him. When a large percentage of the country are saying they don’t want ObamaCare, nor do they approve of the way He's bypassing Congress in the illegal alien situation , can we categorize Obama’s uncaring attitude to what the country wants as anything other than abuse of power, when he persists in ramming things down the throats of the people-all in the name of, “I don’t give up?”
What do you call it when voters by a large margin have said for months they don’t want his brand of healthcare so he pushes it even harder? I call it abuse of power. People thought he & his Chicago buddies would deliver bipartisanship bur he insists on giving his hard-left allies the keys to the kingdom.
Obama supporters worry about terrorism so he wants to close Gitmo & move the worst of the worst to the homeland. His approval ratings drop like a rock & over 60% say the country is on the wrong track & he responds by giving himself a “good solid B-plus” for his first years. Each & every day new voices in his own party are saying-“he just doesn’t get it.”
The story we’re considering about ancient king David is obviously a story from the distant past. But when you look at some of its salient points & compare them with our current president, it seems shockingly similar, especially as regards abuse of power. To be fair, I must say Obama isn't the first to do this & probably won't be the last.
When something goes wrong, it’s not Obama’s fault. - “greedy” insurance companies, doctors who cut off limbs just for the money, special interests, the media—have all taken their turns being blamed for what he hasn’t fixed. One thing for sure—the buck doesn’t stop at Obama’s desk.
BACK TO DAVID
It seems that being God’s anointed isn’t enough to save David from his own nature. When David hears Bathsheba is pregnant, he must now go into damage-control mode. He sends word to Joab his general & asks him to send Uriah back from the battlefield for consultations with the king.
You have to admit David has come up with a rather simple plan to take care of his problem.
THINGS GET OUT OF CONTROL
Up to now David has been in control of his life, but watch how that control slips away from him. Now everything is basically in the hands of others.
Understand that I don’t take a super-spiritual attitude about sexual temptations. I’ve always been as red-blooded as other normal men & certainly know what temptation is. But I’ve never really understood how a preacher could commit adultery & think he’s going to walk away from it as if it never happened. Doesn’t he know anything about human nature? Better yet, doesn’t he understand women any better than that?
I’ve often said, “If I ever, God forbid, commit adultery, I hope I’d have a better excuse than—“I thought she’d keep the secret, I thought she wouldn’t tell.” What does an individual whose committed adultery do when the phone rings late at night or a mysterious knock comes at their door? There are many warnings given in God’s word about sexual sins, but if that wasn’t the case, if the Bible was silent about it, to me one of the reasons not to do it, other than concerns about your own character, & your love for your spouse, would be-you have to put your life & reputation in another person’s hands, & like David, your life isn’t your own anymore.
Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband came back from battle & David did everything he could to get the boy to go home but noooooo—he wasn’t going home. He turns out to have more integrity than the king. He’s a straight-up kind of guy. Since he couldn’t get Uriah to go home, David’s cover story starts to fall apart. His scheme didn’t work. Isn’t this about as repulsive a story as you’ve ever heard?
DAVID’S FINAL, UGLY ACT OF POWER ABUSE
David orders Uriah into one of the sharpest areas of battle & gets him killed. David has solved his problem or so he thinks. At last he can breathe freely again. His neck is out of the noose. Or is it? God is still going to face him with his sin by sending Nathan. The sword will never depart from David’s house.
So the last word hasn’t been spoken yet in David’s tangled web. David feels a relief but a relief that won’t last.
That human beings will abuse power seems to be a given. A fact of life. Let’s be honest... David’s actions were appalling but hardly stand out from what the leaders of our day do routinely.
Though we pray we’ll never do anything on the scale of what David did, we can find ourselves in this story; coveting what isn’t rightly ours; forgetting who we are & whose we are, hurting or stepping on others to get what we want; taking great measures to cover up what we’ve done; using others who seem nameless & inconsequential like Bathsheba for our own gain.
How we or anyone uses their power is a choice we make. The choice can only be truly made by staying in touch with the real power through prayer & communion with God.
David & his family paid a heavy price for his abusive moment of self-indulgence but God wasn't finished with him just as He isn't finished with us. He's in this project called humanity for the long haul. I think it no accident that hundreds of years after David passed; Matthew began his gospel with a list of ancestors of Jesus. He did something rarely if ever done in Jewish genealogies; he named a number of women among Jesus’ ancestors & one of them is Bathsheba.
Matthew understood that no abuse can ever thwart God’s power to redeem & create new beginnings.
That should give us hope that even the destructive consequences of our own abuses of power may be forgiven & redeemed as well.
Blessings,
John
Saturday, November 22, 2014
Praise report about John Stallings' song..."Love grew where the blood fell"
By
Paul Davis
Music
is a powerful avenue for bringing about change in the lives of men. In the
Bible we see examples of how the children of Israel
We
also see that David was able to set King Saul free from being tormented by
devils as he played his harp. The prophet Elisha called for a minstrel to come
when he was asked to bring the Word of the Lord in the
midst
of a situation.
When Jesus and His disciples finished the Last
Supper, they sang a hymn together before they left their gathering before Christ’s
trials.
Today
we have the testimony of a song in our midst that worked to bring about a great
blessing in a gathering of believers.
Recently
the brethren in Africa
were gathered for a conference in a large meeting hall in Abuja , Nigeria
Suddenly, a brother stepped forward to the
microphone and
started to sing the verses of the song, which were not well known by
the congregation. Immediately, the power of the Holy Ghost
began to flood into the auditorium.
All
those gathered
came under the influence of the Holy Spirit and under the
anointing of the words that were being sung. The
whole strength of the meetings was sealed in that
Instant,
because the song about His shed Blood was sung
with the anointing of the Spirit of the living God.
May
this song be a blessing to you and all in your house.
The Benson Company inNashville Tennessee
The Benson Company in
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
Characteristics Of People Making Progress
by John Stallings
But grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ . . .
2 Peter 3:18
Have you ever seen the birth of a calf or a foal?
It usually doesn’t happen in a house or hospital. Painkillers, doctors, nurses, and delivery tables aren’t part of the process. It’s a raw, wild event, and no one is there to help the little animal make its entrance into the world.
When I’ve seen this process, the little creatures are practically born on their feet, and they don’t have to wait a year to learn to walk. It takes place within minutes, and then no one teaches the animal where to go. It knows instinctively where to go to get its first meal. No one tells it where the meal is located. The mother simply stands there calmly waiting for the little one to find its food.
No human being is born knowing that much within minutes of its birth. The baby may someday be an astronaut or brain surgeon, but, at the moment of birth, it knows nothing. Though the baby will someday be a thinking person with possibly a genius IQ, in infancy it must be taught everything, because it’s not equipped with instincts like animals. Yet the baby has something special the animal doesn’t have, and that’s a little mind.
Animals can’t appreciate a fine painting or a Beethoven concerto. Dogs may howl in response to the music, but they don’t understand what they’re hearing. Animals can’t read, though they’ve tried to get some of the primates to do so. Animals can’t acquire scientific knowledge, make decisions, render judgments, and display discipline. They can’t gain access to God, enjoy an actual relationship with Him, and be enlightened by His Spirit. That’s reserved for you and me.
SPIRITUAL GROWTH ISN’T AUTOMATIC.
Human beings grow and develop physically, and it’s hoped they will grow spiritually and emotionally, but it’s not automatic. Many people never grow beyond a certain point emotionally and spiritually, yet this development is the only way to have a full, happy, and productive life.
The writer of Hebrews 5:12-13 says, You have been Christians a long time now, and you ought to be teaching others. Instead you need someone to teach you again the basic things a beginner must learn about the scriptures. You are like babies who drink only milk and cannot eat solid food. And a person who is living on milk isn’t far along in the Christian life and doesn’t know much about doing what is right.
“Growing in grace” sounds like an oxymoron. How can you grow in something you’ve been given? It sounds like other oxymorons; i.e., act naturally, definite maybe, unbiased opinion, military intelligence—(oops!) or temporary tax cut.
God intends for us to grow in grace; it’s a command in 2 Peter 3:18, when Peter tells us to Grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Did you notice these were Peter’s last words to us? The last words a man speaks are usually considered important. When William Wallace of Braveheart fame, the thirteenth century Scottish patriot died, his final word was “freedom.” Peter was crucified upside down shortly after writing these words and his dying wish was to see Christians growing.
In fact, it’s easy to understand why Peter might have this concern. He had let the Lord down and had a cussing fit, denying he ever knew Jesus. Peter knew what the consequences of immaturity were and was eager that others be spared the pain it brought him.
We aren’t meant to remain spiritual babies (Ephesians 4:14). I have been privileged to raise three beautiful girls from babyhood to adults, and as you know, babies are all incredibly cute. A baby who crawls and drools is cute, but an eighteen year old who crawls and drools is a different story. Just as parents live to see their child grow up, God also wants to see His children grow up.
Christian maturity is of utmost importance because it’s “proof of life.” A painting or photograph doesn’t grow. The stake that holds a young sapling doesn’t grow, but the sapling is expected to grow. Lack of growth in the Christian life warns of false profession, backsliding, and hypocrisy.
HERE ARE SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF PEOPLE MAKING PROGRESS.
Spiritually- and emotionally-mature people can love and respect others without having to change them or becoming critical and judgmental. They don’t expect anyone to be perfect in meeting their needs whether it is their spouse, boss, friend, or parent. They love and respect people for who they are – not what they can give them or how they behave. They take responsibility for their own thoughts, decisions, opinions, goals, and actions, regardless of the approval or disapproval of others.
When stressed, they don’t fall into a victim mentality or blame others. They can state their own beliefs and values to those who don’t agree with them without being adversarial. They can accurately assess their strengths and weaknesses and have no problem discussing them with others. Deeply in tune with their own feelings, they can move into the emotional worlds of others, meeting them at the place of their feelings, needs, and concerns. They are convinced that they are absolutely and unconditionally loved by God and consequently have nothing to prove. They can have equal relationships with others as opposed to “one-up-one-down” relationships.
THERE’S A DIFFERENCE IN GROWING UP AND GETTING OLDER.
We may be tempted to think because we’ve been around a long time this gives us automatic entitlement to maturity. Not necessarily! You can have a tree you think looks mature in your garden, but when the winds come, you discover its roots are not very deep at all, and it blows down. It will be in the fires of testing that our maturity, or lack of it, will be revealed.
A school teacher was hoping to be promoted to the job of vice principal, but when she was passed over for the post she complained that she had the most seniority and experience. “I’ve been teaching for 20 years,” she told the school board chairman. With gentleness and wisdom he replied, “You haven’t been teaching 20 years; you’ve taught one year 20 times.”
One sign of spiritual maturity is the ability to properly process emotions. Many who should be mature are constantly ruled by anger, sadness, or hurt. They whine, complain, distance themselves, blame others, and use sarcasm like children when they don’t get their way. They are highly defensive to criticism or differences of opinion, and they expect to be taken care of while using other people as objects.
Emotional volatility is a dead giveaway to immaturity. This is evidenced by temper tantrums, explosive behavior, low frustration tolerance, over-sensitivity, unreasonable jealousy, inability to forgive, and mood swings. Not to be ruled by emotions doesn’t mean we don’t have them, but as we mature, we learn how, when, and where to express them and the proper degree of expression.
Mature people can deal constructively with reality, the need for change, and find more satisfaction in giving than receiving. Mature people have learned to relate well to others and enjoy them and can have satisfying relationships. An outgoing personality is another dead giveaway to maturity. Maturity is practically a prerequisite for a happy, fulfilling life.
Spiritually- and emotionally-mature people know the best way to deal with a problem is to deal head on. A person’s level of maturity can be related to the degree to which they face their problems or avoid them. Maturity confronts – immaturity avoids. A mature person’s sense of security permits him to consider the needs of others while immaturity thinks mainly of self.
An immature person curses the rain, but the mature person views life as a learning experience, and when things don’t go well; he looks for the soft spot in the problem that will allow him to succeed anyway. When frustrated, the immature person looks for someone to blame, while the mature person looks for solutions. Immature people attack people, while mature people attack problems. A mature person’s approach to life is to believe he can do all God asks of him and will succeed if he is consistent.
JESUS IS OUR MATURITY ROLE MODEL.
Luke 2:52 says, And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.
Let’s look at Jesus’ example as he looks at Jerusalem and laments in Matthew 23:37.
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her. How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.
Notice the maturity in the way Jesus handled this. Would you or I have done this? Or would we have just zapped them because they weren’t learning and had gone so wrong? If it were our creation, how would we have reacted? Jesus showed some feelings here, but He still reacted in a measured and restrained way. Jesus had divine power, and He could have gathered the people up and forced them to see it His way, but He didn’t. He is satisfied to let mankind come to its own decisions. Jesus has emotions here, but has them under control.
In Luke 22:43-44 we read about another time when Jesus was under deep stress. He went off and prayed.
Then an angel from heaven appeared unto Him strengthening Him. And being in agony, he prayed the more earnestly. Then His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.
You see, it’s okay to feel deeply about things like Christ did. That’s a natural response – to hurt and have feelings, but the feelings didn’t divert Him from His mission to die for mankind on the cross.
LET’S LOOK AT PAUL’S VISION OF CHRISTIAN MATURITY.
In 1 Corinthians 13:11 Paul says,
When I was a child I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man I put away childish things.
Paul is telling us there’s a time to grow up.
Verse 12 - For now we see through a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.Verse 13 - And now abideth faith, hope, and love these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Paul is telling us how important it is for us to grow and mature in God so that we might be love motivated. A child is a little “black hole” of selfishness. A child doesn’t yet know what’s out there in the big world and thinks everything revolves around him. Gradually and incrementally the child’s world opens up. The very nature of maturity is moving outside of self into the larger world of others. Paul is using this analogy with the Corinthians saying you can’t always be a child. What a child must do physically, we must do spiritually.
When you look at Paul’s life, he’s a good example of growing in grace. Watch the progression of his growth. As he ages and grows, he starts to talk about his sense of unworthiness. He wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:9 and calls himself the “least of all the apostles.” Later he writes in Ephesians 3:8 calling himself “the least of all God’s people.” At the end of his life he writes in 1Timothy 1:15 that he is “the worst of sinners.” The closer Paul gets to God, the smaller he is in his own sight.
LET’S LOOK AT PETER’S VISION OF MATURITY.
2 Peter 1:5-8
But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness; to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness, love; for if these are yours and abound, you will neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Verse 9 - For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed for his old sins.
Verses 10 and 11- Therefore brethren, be ever more diligent to make your calling and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble.
For so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
So Peter says here, I want you to grow and develop in these areas. Now all this seems like a lot of work, and it is, but God isn’t rushing us. Spiritual maturity doesn’t come easily, and it doesn’t come overnight. You wonder if it’s worth it. It depends on what you want out of life and where you’re headed in life. Some people shy away from going deeper with God out of fear it will be too much sacrifice and too hard on the flesh. Their attitude is “There Be Dragons.” But as the scriptures tell us, the benefits more than compensate for the effort experienced.
IN ROMAN 12, THERE ARE 20 MARKS OF THE MATURING CHRISTIAN.
1. YOUR MIND IS BECOMING RENEWED SO YOU CAN EMPATHIZE WITH OTHERS. (Verse 1)
2. YOU ARE WILLING TO SEE THE BODY OF CHRIST GROW AND RECOGNIZE ALL HAVE A PLACE. (Verses 4-7)
3. YOU MORE AND MORE HATE EVIL AND CLING TO THAT WHICH IS GOOD. (Verse 9)
4. RELATIONSHIPS ARE STARTING TO MEAN MORE TO YOU THAN THINGS. (Verse 10)
5. YOU’RE BECOMING MORE PATIENT AND LESS PANICKY. (Verse 12)
6. YOU ARE HELPING OTHERS MORE. (Verse 13)
7. YOU’RE MORE ABLE TO BLESS THEM THAT CURSE YOU. (Verse 14)
8. YOUR TONGUE IS UNDER CONTROL. (JAMES 3:1-2)
9. YOU ARE STARTING TO FEEL HOW OTHERS FEEL – NOT THE WAY THEY FEEL, BUT HOW THEY FEEL. (Verses 14-15)
10. YOU ARE WILLING TO ASSOCIATE WITH LOWLY PEOPLE. (Verse 16)
11. YOU AREN’T CONCEITED ANYMORE. (Verse 16)
12. YOU HAVE A “NO-PAY-BACK” MENTALITY. (Verse 17)
13. HARMONY BECOMES THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN YOUR LIFE. (Verse 16)
14. MORE AND MORE YOU HATE CONFUSION. (Verses 18-19)
15. YOU BEGIN TO UNDERSTAND OTHERS’ DIFFERENCES; YOU STOP SAYING, “WHY CAN’T THEY BE MORE LIKE ME?” (Verse 18)
16. YOU ARE EXTENDING YOURSELF MORE – SHARING YOURSELF MORE. (Verse 1)
17. YOU’RE EXAMINING YOURSELF MORE. (Verse 3)
18. YOU’RE EDUCATING YOURSELF MORE. (Verse 3)
19. YOU’RE SEEING YOUR GIFT, NOT AS CHRISTMAS GIFTS ALL WRAPPED UP, BUT A GIFT FOR YOU TO HELP OTHERS. (Verses 5-8)
20. YOU’RE ENJOYING LIFE MORE. (Galatians 5:22 … Fruit of the Spirit is JOY)
SPIRITUAL GROWTH IS NOT ALL OUR HARD WORK.
I’ve had the occasion when flying in past years to be able to go to the front of the airplane and look in the cockpit where the pilots were. (I don’t think that’s allowed these days.) I had pictured the pilot with both hands on the wheel looking intensely into the windshield. I was shocked to see the pilots relaxing, talking, hands off the controls, not even looking where the plane was going. The pilot took off and landed the plane, but other than that, he really didn’t do much. Of course I was always glad the pilots were there. Most of the time, the pilot isn’t flying the plane hands-on; the automatic pilot takes over that job.
Though we’ve said that growth isn’t automatic, this process is similar to what God does in us when he reprograms our minds and transforms the way we think. We used to do things our way, but as God renews us, we start doing things in ways that please Him. A sinner doesn’t have to wear a note on his sleeve reminding him to curse and tell off-color jokes; he just does it naturally. It’s the same way with the Christian. Once His mind and nature is changed, he doesn’t have to “try to do the right thing.” He does the right thing automatically as he walks with God. The pilot can always override the automatic pilot and take the plane into his own hands. Likewise, we must choose daily if we’ll yield ourselves to God and let Him “do the driving.” That’s what Romans 12:1-2 is all about.
I found a television show I really liked once, and I found myself organizing my week around seeing it. I would race home to be sure not to miss the show, and often I’d tape it so I could watch it later if I couldn’t be there when it aired. One day it dawned on me that I was being programmed, and my life was being arranged by people who didn’t exist in a plot that really wasn’t that good and that didn’t honor God. I was spending more time thinking about the fictional people on that stupid show than I was my own life. The Holy Spirit so convicted me that, though I still enjoy watching some television, I’ve never allowed myself to get that caught up again.
How do we transform our minds? Simple! We read and study God’s word. Remember Peter said to grow in grace and in THE KNOWLEDGE of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. If we really want to grow in God, we must get to know The Book and live according to it. The Bible speaks to every situation you and I will ever face. As we get to know Jesus and His word better, His divine Holy Spirit gives us all we’ll need to live a holy life and grow in Him.
Let me reiterate: Growing spiritually isn’t automatic. You can’t drift into being a stronger Christian; it takes work. It won’t just happen by itself, and much of your success will depend on how much you love Jesus. God was so pleased with His Son Jesus; His desire is to “bring many sons to glory.” It’s His plan to grow you and me until we think, act, and feel just like He does.
If a person has studied classical music for 30 years yet never sits down and plays the masters’ compositions but only plays Chopsticks, wouldn’t that be odd? Pro musicians associate with other pros. They show they are pros by their love for music and the time they put into it. They work on their craft constantly and spend hours practicing, trying to improve. That’s love! That’s devotion!
CAN WE, AS DISCIPLES OF JESUS CHRIST, DO LESS?
ASK YOURSELF WHAT STEPS YOU NEED TO TAKE TODAY TO GROW IN GOD.
Blessings,
John
But grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ . . .
2 Peter 3:18
Have you ever seen the birth of a calf or a foal?
It usually doesn’t happen in a house or hospital. Painkillers, doctors, nurses, and delivery tables aren’t part of the process. It’s a raw, wild event, and no one is there to help the little animal make its entrance into the world.
When I’ve seen this process, the little creatures are practically born on their feet, and they don’t have to wait a year to learn to walk. It takes place within minutes, and then no one teaches the animal where to go. It knows instinctively where to go to get its first meal. No one tells it where the meal is located. The mother simply stands there calmly waiting for the little one to find its food.
No human being is born knowing that much within minutes of its birth. The baby may someday be an astronaut or brain surgeon, but, at the moment of birth, it knows nothing. Though the baby will someday be a thinking person with possibly a genius IQ, in infancy it must be taught everything, because it’s not equipped with instincts like animals. Yet the baby has something special the animal doesn’t have, and that’s a little mind.
Animals can’t appreciate a fine painting or a Beethoven concerto. Dogs may howl in response to the music, but they don’t understand what they’re hearing. Animals can’t read, though they’ve tried to get some of the primates to do so. Animals can’t acquire scientific knowledge, make decisions, render judgments, and display discipline. They can’t gain access to God, enjoy an actual relationship with Him, and be enlightened by His Spirit. That’s reserved for you and me.
SPIRITUAL GROWTH ISN’T AUTOMATIC.
Human beings grow and develop physically, and it’s hoped they will grow spiritually and emotionally, but it’s not automatic. Many people never grow beyond a certain point emotionally and spiritually, yet this development is the only way to have a full, happy, and productive life.
The writer of Hebrews 5:12-13 says, You have been Christians a long time now, and you ought to be teaching others. Instead you need someone to teach you again the basic things a beginner must learn about the scriptures. You are like babies who drink only milk and cannot eat solid food. And a person who is living on milk isn’t far along in the Christian life and doesn’t know much about doing what is right.
“Growing in grace” sounds like an oxymoron. How can you grow in something you’ve been given? It sounds like other oxymorons; i.e., act naturally, definite maybe, unbiased opinion, military intelligence—(oops!) or temporary tax cut.
God intends for us to grow in grace; it’s a command in 2 Peter 3:18, when Peter tells us to Grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Did you notice these were Peter’s last words to us? The last words a man speaks are usually considered important. When William Wallace of Braveheart fame, the thirteenth century Scottish patriot died, his final word was “freedom.” Peter was crucified upside down shortly after writing these words and his dying wish was to see Christians growing.
In fact, it’s easy to understand why Peter might have this concern. He had let the Lord down and had a cussing fit, denying he ever knew Jesus. Peter knew what the consequences of immaturity were and was eager that others be spared the pain it brought him.
We aren’t meant to remain spiritual babies (Ephesians 4:14). I have been privileged to raise three beautiful girls from babyhood to adults, and as you know, babies are all incredibly cute. A baby who crawls and drools is cute, but an eighteen year old who crawls and drools is a different story. Just as parents live to see their child grow up, God also wants to see His children grow up.
Christian maturity is of utmost importance because it’s “proof of life.” A painting or photograph doesn’t grow. The stake that holds a young sapling doesn’t grow, but the sapling is expected to grow. Lack of growth in the Christian life warns of false profession, backsliding, and hypocrisy.
HERE ARE SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF PEOPLE MAKING PROGRESS.
Spiritually- and emotionally-mature people can love and respect others without having to change them or becoming critical and judgmental. They don’t expect anyone to be perfect in meeting their needs whether it is their spouse, boss, friend, or parent. They love and respect people for who they are – not what they can give them or how they behave. They take responsibility for their own thoughts, decisions, opinions, goals, and actions, regardless of the approval or disapproval of others.
When stressed, they don’t fall into a victim mentality or blame others. They can state their own beliefs and values to those who don’t agree with them without being adversarial. They can accurately assess their strengths and weaknesses and have no problem discussing them with others. Deeply in tune with their own feelings, they can move into the emotional worlds of others, meeting them at the place of their feelings, needs, and concerns. They are convinced that they are absolutely and unconditionally loved by God and consequently have nothing to prove. They can have equal relationships with others as opposed to “one-up-one-down” relationships.
THERE’S A DIFFERENCE IN GROWING UP AND GETTING OLDER.
We may be tempted to think because we’ve been around a long time this gives us automatic entitlement to maturity. Not necessarily! You can have a tree you think looks mature in your garden, but when the winds come, you discover its roots are not very deep at all, and it blows down. It will be in the fires of testing that our maturity, or lack of it, will be revealed.
A school teacher was hoping to be promoted to the job of vice principal, but when she was passed over for the post she complained that she had the most seniority and experience. “I’ve been teaching for 20 years,” she told the school board chairman. With gentleness and wisdom he replied, “You haven’t been teaching 20 years; you’ve taught one year 20 times.”
One sign of spiritual maturity is the ability to properly process emotions. Many who should be mature are constantly ruled by anger, sadness, or hurt. They whine, complain, distance themselves, blame others, and use sarcasm like children when they don’t get their way. They are highly defensive to criticism or differences of opinion, and they expect to be taken care of while using other people as objects.
Emotional volatility is a dead giveaway to immaturity. This is evidenced by temper tantrums, explosive behavior, low frustration tolerance, over-sensitivity, unreasonable jealousy, inability to forgive, and mood swings. Not to be ruled by emotions doesn’t mean we don’t have them, but as we mature, we learn how, when, and where to express them and the proper degree of expression.
Mature people can deal constructively with reality, the need for change, and find more satisfaction in giving than receiving. Mature people have learned to relate well to others and enjoy them and can have satisfying relationships. An outgoing personality is another dead giveaway to maturity. Maturity is practically a prerequisite for a happy, fulfilling life.
Spiritually- and emotionally-mature people know the best way to deal with a problem is to deal head on. A person’s level of maturity can be related to the degree to which they face their problems or avoid them. Maturity confronts – immaturity avoids. A mature person’s sense of security permits him to consider the needs of others while immaturity thinks mainly of self.
An immature person curses the rain, but the mature person views life as a learning experience, and when things don’t go well; he looks for the soft spot in the problem that will allow him to succeed anyway. When frustrated, the immature person looks for someone to blame, while the mature person looks for solutions. Immature people attack people, while mature people attack problems. A mature person’s approach to life is to believe he can do all God asks of him and will succeed if he is consistent.
JESUS IS OUR MATURITY ROLE MODEL.
Luke 2:52 says, And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.
Let’s look at Jesus’ example as he looks at Jerusalem and laments in Matthew 23:37.
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her. How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.
Notice the maturity in the way Jesus handled this. Would you or I have done this? Or would we have just zapped them because they weren’t learning and had gone so wrong? If it were our creation, how would we have reacted? Jesus showed some feelings here, but He still reacted in a measured and restrained way. Jesus had divine power, and He could have gathered the people up and forced them to see it His way, but He didn’t. He is satisfied to let mankind come to its own decisions. Jesus has emotions here, but has them under control.
In Luke 22:43-44 we read about another time when Jesus was under deep stress. He went off and prayed.
Then an angel from heaven appeared unto Him strengthening Him. And being in agony, he prayed the more earnestly. Then His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.
You see, it’s okay to feel deeply about things like Christ did. That’s a natural response – to hurt and have feelings, but the feelings didn’t divert Him from His mission to die for mankind on the cross.
LET’S LOOK AT PAUL’S VISION OF CHRISTIAN MATURITY.
In 1 Corinthians 13:11 Paul says,
When I was a child I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man I put away childish things.
Paul is telling us there’s a time to grow up.
Verse 12 - For now we see through a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.Verse 13 - And now abideth faith, hope, and love these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Paul is telling us how important it is for us to grow and mature in God so that we might be love motivated. A child is a little “black hole” of selfishness. A child doesn’t yet know what’s out there in the big world and thinks everything revolves around him. Gradually and incrementally the child’s world opens up. The very nature of maturity is moving outside of self into the larger world of others. Paul is using this analogy with the Corinthians saying you can’t always be a child. What a child must do physically, we must do spiritually.
When you look at Paul’s life, he’s a good example of growing in grace. Watch the progression of his growth. As he ages and grows, he starts to talk about his sense of unworthiness. He wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:9 and calls himself the “least of all the apostles.” Later he writes in Ephesians 3:8 calling himself “the least of all God’s people.” At the end of his life he writes in 1Timothy 1:15 that he is “the worst of sinners.” The closer Paul gets to God, the smaller he is in his own sight.
LET’S LOOK AT PETER’S VISION OF MATURITY.
2 Peter 1:5-8
But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness; to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness, love; for if these are yours and abound, you will neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Verse 9 - For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed for his old sins.
Verses 10 and 11- Therefore brethren, be ever more diligent to make your calling and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble.
For so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
So Peter says here, I want you to grow and develop in these areas. Now all this seems like a lot of work, and it is, but God isn’t rushing us. Spiritual maturity doesn’t come easily, and it doesn’t come overnight. You wonder if it’s worth it. It depends on what you want out of life and where you’re headed in life. Some people shy away from going deeper with God out of fear it will be too much sacrifice and too hard on the flesh. Their attitude is “There Be Dragons.” But as the scriptures tell us, the benefits more than compensate for the effort experienced.
IN ROMAN 12, THERE ARE 20 MARKS OF THE MATURING CHRISTIAN.
1. YOUR MIND IS BECOMING RENEWED SO YOU CAN EMPATHIZE WITH OTHERS. (Verse 1)
2. YOU ARE WILLING TO SEE THE BODY OF CHRIST GROW AND RECOGNIZE ALL HAVE A PLACE. (Verses 4-7)
3. YOU MORE AND MORE HATE EVIL AND CLING TO THAT WHICH IS GOOD. (Verse 9)
4. RELATIONSHIPS ARE STARTING TO MEAN MORE TO YOU THAN THINGS. (Verse 10)
5. YOU’RE BECOMING MORE PATIENT AND LESS PANICKY. (Verse 12)
6. YOU ARE HELPING OTHERS MORE. (Verse 13)
7. YOU’RE MORE ABLE TO BLESS THEM THAT CURSE YOU. (Verse 14)
8. YOUR TONGUE IS UNDER CONTROL. (JAMES 3:1-2)
9. YOU ARE STARTING TO FEEL HOW OTHERS FEEL – NOT THE WAY THEY FEEL, BUT HOW THEY FEEL. (Verses 14-15)
10. YOU ARE WILLING TO ASSOCIATE WITH LOWLY PEOPLE. (Verse 16)
11. YOU AREN’T CONCEITED ANYMORE. (Verse 16)
12. YOU HAVE A “NO-PAY-BACK” MENTALITY. (Verse 17)
13. HARMONY BECOMES THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN YOUR LIFE. (Verse 16)
14. MORE AND MORE YOU HATE CONFUSION. (Verses 18-19)
15. YOU BEGIN TO UNDERSTAND OTHERS’ DIFFERENCES; YOU STOP SAYING, “WHY CAN’T THEY BE MORE LIKE ME?” (Verse 18)
16. YOU ARE EXTENDING YOURSELF MORE – SHARING YOURSELF MORE. (Verse 1)
17. YOU’RE EXAMINING YOURSELF MORE. (Verse 3)
18. YOU’RE EDUCATING YOURSELF MORE. (Verse 3)
19. YOU’RE SEEING YOUR GIFT, NOT AS CHRISTMAS GIFTS ALL WRAPPED UP, BUT A GIFT FOR YOU TO HELP OTHERS. (Verses 5-8)
20. YOU’RE ENJOYING LIFE MORE. (Galatians 5:22 … Fruit of the Spirit is JOY)
SPIRITUAL GROWTH IS NOT ALL OUR HARD WORK.
I’ve had the occasion when flying in past years to be able to go to the front of the airplane and look in the cockpit where the pilots were. (I don’t think that’s allowed these days.) I had pictured the pilot with both hands on the wheel looking intensely into the windshield. I was shocked to see the pilots relaxing, talking, hands off the controls, not even looking where the plane was going. The pilot took off and landed the plane, but other than that, he really didn’t do much. Of course I was always glad the pilots were there. Most of the time, the pilot isn’t flying the plane hands-on; the automatic pilot takes over that job.
Though we’ve said that growth isn’t automatic, this process is similar to what God does in us when he reprograms our minds and transforms the way we think. We used to do things our way, but as God renews us, we start doing things in ways that please Him. A sinner doesn’t have to wear a note on his sleeve reminding him to curse and tell off-color jokes; he just does it naturally. It’s the same way with the Christian. Once His mind and nature is changed, he doesn’t have to “try to do the right thing.” He does the right thing automatically as he walks with God. The pilot can always override the automatic pilot and take the plane into his own hands. Likewise, we must choose daily if we’ll yield ourselves to God and let Him “do the driving.” That’s what Romans 12:1-2 is all about.
I found a television show I really liked once, and I found myself organizing my week around seeing it. I would race home to be sure not to miss the show, and often I’d tape it so I could watch it later if I couldn’t be there when it aired. One day it dawned on me that I was being programmed, and my life was being arranged by people who didn’t exist in a plot that really wasn’t that good and that didn’t honor God. I was spending more time thinking about the fictional people on that stupid show than I was my own life. The Holy Spirit so convicted me that, though I still enjoy watching some television, I’ve never allowed myself to get that caught up again.
How do we transform our minds? Simple! We read and study God’s word. Remember Peter said to grow in grace and in THE KNOWLEDGE of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. If we really want to grow in God, we must get to know The Book and live according to it. The Bible speaks to every situation you and I will ever face. As we get to know Jesus and His word better, His divine Holy Spirit gives us all we’ll need to live a holy life and grow in Him.
Let me reiterate: Growing spiritually isn’t automatic. You can’t drift into being a stronger Christian; it takes work. It won’t just happen by itself, and much of your success will depend on how much you love Jesus. God was so pleased with His Son Jesus; His desire is to “bring many sons to glory.” It’s His plan to grow you and me until we think, act, and feel just like He does.
If a person has studied classical music for 30 years yet never sits down and plays the masters’ compositions but only plays Chopsticks, wouldn’t that be odd? Pro musicians associate with other pros. They show they are pros by their love for music and the time they put into it. They work on their craft constantly and spend hours practicing, trying to improve. That’s love! That’s devotion!
CAN WE, AS DISCIPLES OF JESUS CHRIST, DO LESS?
ASK YOURSELF WHAT STEPS YOU NEED TO TAKE TODAY TO GROW IN GOD.
Blessings,
John
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Where Would You Like To Be One Year From Today?
By John Stallings
Elisha said to her, “This time next year you’re going to be nursing an infant son….. 2Kings 4: 16-- The Message
Because we’re created for eternity, all of us have dreams.
A little girl dreams of someday becoming a ballerina. A little boy wants to grow up & be a fireman.A young woman dreams of becoming a lawyer. A stay- at- home mom dreams of running her own business. A single mom dreams of someday being able to stay at home & take care of her kids. A business man dreams of one day owning his own business.Some want a new truck or a piece of land.Still others dream of “making it” in singing, acting or sports.Some want to raise kids to be successful in life.
Each of us has the desire for more of life, to do more, to accomplish more & get more out of our lives.One thing we all have in common; everyone has & needs dreams. Someone has said, “If you have no dream, how you will ever have a dream come true?” Dreams deliver us to a new reality. We need to follow our dreams, and never stop dreaming, though we reach 100 years of age. What dreams languish in your heart today? W.H Murray said, “Whatever your dream began it, for boldness has magic in it.” How true. We are drawn by our dreams.
DREAMS CAN SOMETIMES BE TRICKY
There seems to be a principle about dreams that they are born, die and then surprisingly they come to life again. Every song and sermon I’ve ever written has gone through a cycle; the birth, - attacks of doubt about its validity, --death, --and resurrection. I write the song, get excited about it, and sleep on it for awhile, and then excitement starts to wane. Then, sometimes almost immediately, sometimes weeks or months later, the feeling I had about the song reignites. The danger of this is that in the cooling period, a lot of worthwhile writing can drop through the cracks and be lost. None the less, this is the way it works with me, and I would guess others.
In the book of Second Kings the fourth chapter there is a great story with just such a dynamic; the birth, death & resurrection of a dream. The story unfolds among four characters; Elisha, God’s prophet, Gehazi, his assistant, the Shunammite woman, a noble, wealthy & pious woman, and her miracle son. Each of these characters has modern day counterparts which makes the story more intriguing & allows it to be instructive for Christian living.Elisha, God’s servant, who was Elijah’s successor, is presented in an extremely positive light in the biblical record & it’s almost impossible to find a word of negativity spoken of him or his actions.
Gehazi, Elisha’s assistant on the other hand seems to be pretty much a hireling. We find his name popping up often & in the next chapter he takes money from Namaan the leper, money Elisha refuses to take as payment for the Syrian commanders healing. For this, God struck Gehazi & his descendants with Namaan’s leprosy. He’s a perfect type of a minister who’s in it for the money.The Shunammite woman is described as “great” or “notable”, a Hebrew word that can speak of wealth, piety, renown or all the above. Elisha periodically passed by her home as he traveled the countryside. As she became acquainted with him she perceived him to be a great man of God so she and her husband built a room or prophet’s chamber in their home for him.
This woman to me is a type of the church.Because of her hitherto childlessness, this woman could have become bitter but she was still reaching out to people & loving them. Because of her lack of children she could have blamed God for it & felt she wanted no man of God to stay in her home. She definitely had the right attitude & there must have been an atmosphere of faith & godliness in her house.
Though the Shunammite woman might not be very familiar today, she served as an important symbol in the 19th & early 20th centuries. There weren’t enough clergy for every town to have their own minister so frontier preachers maintained a circuit & served several communities which meant they were traveling all the time. My grandfather was one of these circuit riding preachers & served Tennessee & Georgia as an evangelist for the Presbyterian Church. He had only one eye, he played the violin & was later a piano teacher.In those days, numerous homes along the preacher’s way were known as “Shunammite Households” because they would maintain a “prophet’s chamber” available on a moments notice to provide food & lodging to those doing the Lord’s work.
Lest we forget the Shunammite woman’s son, he was born as a result of an Abraham-Sarah-like miracle. To me he represents Everyman, a child of the church & the individual Christian.The father in this story seems basically to be only background or “white-noise,” & he plays a “bit part.”Elisha was grateful for the kindness shown him by this Shunammite woman & in turn he wanted to bless her. When He found she had no children & her husband was old, he spoke the blessing of a child into her life.
AT FIRST THIS WOMAN DIDN’T HAVE ENOUGH FAITH TO BELIEVE GOD COULD GIVE HER A CHILD.
Elisha gave her a word of prophecy that one year from that time, she and her husband would have a son. She reacted by telling the prophet not to lie to her, showing that her faith was weak in this area. None- the- less, exactly at that time the next year the prophecy came true and she held a son in her arms. Isn’t it great that even when we don’t have enough faith, God is gracious to have mercy on us in spite of our doubts? However God expects our faith to grow so He’ll stretch us & test our faith just as He did in this woman’s case.So this Shunammite woman realized her dream & it came to fruition at the precise time Elisha told her it would happen, exactly one year from the time he prophesied it.
WHERE WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE ONE YEAR FROM NOW?
Why not take the long view and believe that one year from now you will be out of debt, greatly blessed, or maybe engaged to a great person, if you’re single, and on your way to a great future. Isn’t that better than believing that you’ve fallen into a black hole and things will never improve? There’s nothing wrong with a one year plan, because a lot can happen in one year. I’m not talking about a New Years resolution, but rather believing God for something great exactly one year from now.When this son was about 12 years old he was with his father in the field one day and suddenly the boy ran to his dad complaining of pains in his head. Though the details are scanty, most commentators believe in all probability he fell victim to a sunstroke because of direct exposure to the sun. Being a child he succumbed quickly because he probably wasn’t wearing any protective head-gear.
This is reminiscent of young Christians who expose themselves to the perils of this worlds system for long periods of time without making sure they're constantly protected by “The whole armor of God.”When the boy fell ill they took him to his mother to be comforted but within a short time he died in her arms. How many former Christian workers have we seen die in the arms of the church in the last two decades? The Shunammite woman knows her son is dead but she does a rather strange thing. She takes him up to Elisha’s room, lays him on the bed, & shuts the door. Then she goes out & shouts to her husband from a distance asking him to send her one of the servants with a donkey, she wants to go see the man of God.So now this woman has seen her dream come true, held the dream in her arms, and then sees the dream shattered & her son die right before her eyes.
THIS WOMAN STUBBORNLY REFUSED TO BECOME OFFENDED AT GOD.
This Shunammite woman doesn’t seem to accept that her child is really dead. She tells no one & in effect by putting the child in the prophet’s private room & shutting the door, she’s effectively hiding his condition from her husband, & to an extent, even from herself.Look at some of alternatives she now had: she could go into a rage, start panicking and screaming and cursing the God who had given her the gift and now so cruelly taken it from her. She could have had a melt-down & gone on a tirade saying, “Well I quit. If that’s what God does to you, I want no more to do with him.” Some people blame God when bad things happen to them. I’ve seen folk who never again darkened a church door after life dealt them a disappointment similar to this. But you don’t see those kinds of hysterics with this woman. Look what a paragon of faith she is. She doesn’t even cry or tell her husband what’s happened, probably because she knows he isn’t able to handle the situation spiritually or emotionally.
It would have been understandable if she’d gone into a rage & ranted against God & His man who’d built her up for a letdown. But this woman is a model of level-headedness. She wasn’t going to make a big scene; she was going to seek out the originator of the promise made to her. She wasn’t going to go public against the man of God & malign his character but rather she was going to him privately with her problem.She’s in mission mode now. Nothing would deter her. She climbs on the donkey & says, “Drive & go forward. Don’t slacken the pace unless I tell you to.” The servant is probably running beside her goading the little donkey with a stick. We’re not told how much trouble she had finding Elisha. It probably wasn’t all that easy because he was at Carmel about 15 miles away. But she found him and when she saw him she ran to him & fell at his feet to tell him what had happened. When some folk have trouble, they run from God. They stay out of church and hibernate, but this woman is going in the right direction; God is always the right direction.
Isaiah 55: 6-7 says, Seek ye the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near……
LONG BEFORE THE MODERN CONFESSION TEACHING, THIS WOMAN HAS A STRONG POSITIVE ATTITUDE.
Elisha must have been eternally vigilant because he wasn’t in bed sleeping; he was outside & saw her coming. He asked her if things were well with her & back at home & she answered, “All is well.” Think about that. No matter how many times I read her words I get chills down my spine. This woman acts like she’s already read Romans 4:17 hundreds of years before Paul ever penned it, by “calling things which were not as if they were.”
It’s interesting that when the Shunammite woman fell at Elisha’s feet Gehazi attempts to push her away from the prophet. The bible has little good to say about Gehazi. Though he takes the commands of the prophet & obeys them well, there’s that sense of unbelief that hovers between the lines when he’s mentioned. We know one thing for sure; he had a greed for money which finally proved his undoing. It’s sad because Gehazi had all the time in the world to soak up righteous principles from his master Elisha but he doesn’t seem to hunger for that.
He’s emblematic of people who are exposed to the church but never internalize the truth for themselves. They [especially the professional hirelings] see the church only as a place to extract dollars.Elisha was so sensitive to her need that he immediately tells Gehazi to run ahead and place his staff on the child. Here again Gehazi shows his inadequacy & spiritual impotence. The narrative doesn’t mention him praying for the boy. Even laying Elisha’s mantle on him does no good.Gehazi simply didn’t have the spiritual goods to get the job done even with Elisha’s mantel. He tried & failed once, & he gave up. Evidently he’d never heard about, “try, try again.”To me this Gehazi fits the description of those Paul speaks of in 2nd Timothy 3:8,….. Having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof.
The boy is stone cold dead.In the bible the euphemism for death is sleep. “For this cause many are weak & sickly among you & many sleep.--1 Cor. 11:30 God’s people need to be awake & alert in these days when sin & darkness abounds. Paul says in Romans 13:11-12….it is high time to wake out of sleep…..When Elisha arrives at the Shunammites house things are still the same & the boy lies dead on his bed. The boy is now with the prophet but he’s still dead.
Many people are “in the church” on a weekly basis but they remain asleep. Parking a lawnmower in a garage doesn’t make it an automobile.Unlike Gehazi, Elisha throws himself into the task of reviving the child. First he shuts the door, putting everyone outside. This is a private matter. I don’t know about you but I think we’ve been remiss in airing the church’s dirty laundry & allowing our business to be put in the streets. We have “Christian Magazines” just for this purpose. However one reason for that is we haven’t had, as the body of Christ, the spiritual power to restore anyone.
Paul told us when a Christian slips,…Brethren if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual restore such a one in the spirit of meekness, considering thyself lest thou also be tempted. Gal.6:
Maybe I’m reading it wrong but it would seem to me if people aren’t restored, it must be because there’s no one around spiritual enough to restore them. We can criticize, we can publicize but we can’t restore. It becomes much easier to just cut the fallen ones loose.Elisha knows he’s the only one that can get the job done & that any hope of life for the boy depends on his relationship with God.
Notice how hard Elisha works to get this boy healed. He stretches himself out on the child eye to eye, mouth to mouth, & hand to hand. We’ll never win the world from behind the four walls of a church. We must “press the flesh” so to speak to ever see the lost won to Christ. There are only two types of institutions that I know of who have stained or clouded glass on their windows & that’s the church & bars.For too long the church has sat behind walls & been entertained with no connection to the lost & dying in our world. Consequently we’ve lost our “street cred.”
Elisha stretches himself out on the boy the second time & this time something happens. The boy sneezes. He not only sneezes, he sneezes seven times. Do you know what a sneeze is? The dictionary defines it as—“a sudden violent, spasmodic audible expiration of breath through the nose & mouth especially as a reflex act.”A sneeze occurs as a reaction to an irritant of some kind; dust, dander, allergen etc.I did some research on sneezing & found that in sneezing, the respiratory system convulses with a blast of air traveling at the speed of 240 mph in its attempt to dislodge and expel the offending particle.
The spiritual counterpart to sneezing is repentance.Listen to 2nd Cor. 7:10-11---For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death. For behold this selfsame thing that ye sorrowed after a godly sort what carefulness it wrought in you, yea what clearing of yourselves, yea what indignation, yea what fear, yea what vehement desire, yea what zeal, yea what revenge. In all things ye have approved yourselves to be clear in this matter.
In the analogy of reviving a body to life, sneezing is a perfect picture of the individual Christian’s repentance.Why did the boy sneeze seven times? The number seven in the bible is the number of completion. The book of Revelation has seven churches, seven lampstands, seven spirits, seven eyes, seven seals, trumpets, plagues, bowls, thunders, heads, crowns, mountains, & kings. There are many other lists of seven in the bible.When the child sneezed seven times it was an example of complete repentance. One or two sneezes won’t get the job done; he must sneeze until all the impediments are completely gone.
I WANT GOD TO WORK IN MY LIFE LIKE THAT--TO STRETCH OUT & BREATHE ALL OVER ME.
What a miraculous story. A story that would never have happened if the woman had not been a fighter. What if she had gotten so caught up in the finality of death that she collapsed in despair? She could have allowed a hundred things to divert her that day and her dream would have been over. She could have gotten mad at God for what seemed like a cruel joke played on her by granting her a son and then taking him away. She could have even been angry enough at the man of God that she would never want to see him again. She could have said, “Well, the Lord gives and the Lord takes away.” She could have said, “Well I’m too old now to see another miracle, that’s it for me, after all, God works in mysterious ways.”It's one thing to bow to Gods will, we haven’t much choice, but it’s another to give up when a little more fight may win the day. The violent take it by force!
If I’m lying on my deathbed I don’t want to hear people praying, “Lord, if it be thy will, heal Him.” I don’t want my wife to pray, “Take him on Jesus, I know heavens a lonely place & you need a few more roses to bloom in your flower garden.” I’ve told Juda [jokingly] if she ever prays for me like that I’ll come back & haunt her for the rest of her life. God didn’t kill this young man, the devil did. It’s my conviction that when someone is facing death, we shouldn’t pray, “if it be thy will, heal the person, but according to thy will heal them.”
Let’s look at this story and understand that just because a dream comes, doesn’t mean it can’t and won’t slip away. However, If it does, we need to fight with everything within us to see it resurrected. There may be something in your life today that you need to fight for. Let me ask you about your dream, how much do you want it? Are you going to give up without a fight? You may have laid your dream up on a shelf and it’s been there for years. It perhaps has grown dusty and parched with age but I want to encourage you to take that dream off the shelf today and allow God to breathe life back into it. Do believe it can happen? I know it can.
WHAT ARE YOU EXPECTING IN 2015—ONE YEAR FROM NOW?
Friend, don’t settle for shallow living. Maybe you’ve seen some of the dreams you’ve had for yourself turn to nightmares so consequently you’ve began to dream dreams that are always safe & quiet requiring little risk, practically none in fact.But have you considered lately the dreams God has for you?
Listen to 1 Cor.2:9;
No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has imagined what God has prepared for them who love Him.
In the great New Testament Hall of Fame in Hebrews 11:35, the Holy Spirit brings the Shunammite woman back to our remembrance; ---Women received their dead raised to life again.God made sure the story of this woman & her son lived on for a reason. If like her, your promise has died, follow her example & stretch it out before the living God & expect a miracle.Ask the Lord to revive the promise—your life----your ministry---your job. Ask God to remove everything in your path.
Dear friend, dream big with huge faith attached to it. Most of all make sure you’re dreaming never scheming. Know that any dream worth its salt will have some opposition.
If we, like this woman, will stay positive, will keep our eye on the one who placed the dream in us, refuse to quit or become offended, act in faith & keep our love-level high, our future also holds some miraculous surprises...
ONE YEAR FROM NOW!
Blessings,
John
Elisha said to her, “This time next year you’re going to be nursing an infant son….. 2Kings 4: 16-- The Message
Because we’re created for eternity, all of us have dreams.
A little girl dreams of someday becoming a ballerina. A little boy wants to grow up & be a fireman.A young woman dreams of becoming a lawyer. A stay- at- home mom dreams of running her own business. A single mom dreams of someday being able to stay at home & take care of her kids. A business man dreams of one day owning his own business.Some want a new truck or a piece of land.Still others dream of “making it” in singing, acting or sports.Some want to raise kids to be successful in life.
Each of us has the desire for more of life, to do more, to accomplish more & get more out of our lives.One thing we all have in common; everyone has & needs dreams. Someone has said, “If you have no dream, how you will ever have a dream come true?” Dreams deliver us to a new reality. We need to follow our dreams, and never stop dreaming, though we reach 100 years of age. What dreams languish in your heart today? W.H Murray said, “Whatever your dream began it, for boldness has magic in it.” How true. We are drawn by our dreams.
DREAMS CAN SOMETIMES BE TRICKY
There seems to be a principle about dreams that they are born, die and then surprisingly they come to life again. Every song and sermon I’ve ever written has gone through a cycle; the birth, - attacks of doubt about its validity, --death, --and resurrection. I write the song, get excited about it, and sleep on it for awhile, and then excitement starts to wane. Then, sometimes almost immediately, sometimes weeks or months later, the feeling I had about the song reignites. The danger of this is that in the cooling period, a lot of worthwhile writing can drop through the cracks and be lost. None the less, this is the way it works with me, and I would guess others.
In the book of Second Kings the fourth chapter there is a great story with just such a dynamic; the birth, death & resurrection of a dream. The story unfolds among four characters; Elisha, God’s prophet, Gehazi, his assistant, the Shunammite woman, a noble, wealthy & pious woman, and her miracle son. Each of these characters has modern day counterparts which makes the story more intriguing & allows it to be instructive for Christian living.Elisha, God’s servant, who was Elijah’s successor, is presented in an extremely positive light in the biblical record & it’s almost impossible to find a word of negativity spoken of him or his actions.
Gehazi, Elisha’s assistant on the other hand seems to be pretty much a hireling. We find his name popping up often & in the next chapter he takes money from Namaan the leper, money Elisha refuses to take as payment for the Syrian commanders healing. For this, God struck Gehazi & his descendants with Namaan’s leprosy. He’s a perfect type of a minister who’s in it for the money.The Shunammite woman is described as “great” or “notable”, a Hebrew word that can speak of wealth, piety, renown or all the above. Elisha periodically passed by her home as he traveled the countryside. As she became acquainted with him she perceived him to be a great man of God so she and her husband built a room or prophet’s chamber in their home for him.
This woman to me is a type of the church.Because of her hitherto childlessness, this woman could have become bitter but she was still reaching out to people & loving them. Because of her lack of children she could have blamed God for it & felt she wanted no man of God to stay in her home. She definitely had the right attitude & there must have been an atmosphere of faith & godliness in her house.
Though the Shunammite woman might not be very familiar today, she served as an important symbol in the 19th & early 20th centuries. There weren’t enough clergy for every town to have their own minister so frontier preachers maintained a circuit & served several communities which meant they were traveling all the time. My grandfather was one of these circuit riding preachers & served Tennessee & Georgia as an evangelist for the Presbyterian Church. He had only one eye, he played the violin & was later a piano teacher.In those days, numerous homes along the preacher’s way were known as “Shunammite Households” because they would maintain a “prophet’s chamber” available on a moments notice to provide food & lodging to those doing the Lord’s work.
Lest we forget the Shunammite woman’s son, he was born as a result of an Abraham-Sarah-like miracle. To me he represents Everyman, a child of the church & the individual Christian.The father in this story seems basically to be only background or “white-noise,” & he plays a “bit part.”Elisha was grateful for the kindness shown him by this Shunammite woman & in turn he wanted to bless her. When He found she had no children & her husband was old, he spoke the blessing of a child into her life.
AT FIRST THIS WOMAN DIDN’T HAVE ENOUGH FAITH TO BELIEVE GOD COULD GIVE HER A CHILD.
Elisha gave her a word of prophecy that one year from that time, she and her husband would have a son. She reacted by telling the prophet not to lie to her, showing that her faith was weak in this area. None- the- less, exactly at that time the next year the prophecy came true and she held a son in her arms. Isn’t it great that even when we don’t have enough faith, God is gracious to have mercy on us in spite of our doubts? However God expects our faith to grow so He’ll stretch us & test our faith just as He did in this woman’s case.So this Shunammite woman realized her dream & it came to fruition at the precise time Elisha told her it would happen, exactly one year from the time he prophesied it.
WHERE WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE ONE YEAR FROM NOW?
Why not take the long view and believe that one year from now you will be out of debt, greatly blessed, or maybe engaged to a great person, if you’re single, and on your way to a great future. Isn’t that better than believing that you’ve fallen into a black hole and things will never improve? There’s nothing wrong with a one year plan, because a lot can happen in one year. I’m not talking about a New Years resolution, but rather believing God for something great exactly one year from now.When this son was about 12 years old he was with his father in the field one day and suddenly the boy ran to his dad complaining of pains in his head. Though the details are scanty, most commentators believe in all probability he fell victim to a sunstroke because of direct exposure to the sun. Being a child he succumbed quickly because he probably wasn’t wearing any protective head-gear.
This is reminiscent of young Christians who expose themselves to the perils of this worlds system for long periods of time without making sure they're constantly protected by “The whole armor of God.”When the boy fell ill they took him to his mother to be comforted but within a short time he died in her arms. How many former Christian workers have we seen die in the arms of the church in the last two decades? The Shunammite woman knows her son is dead but she does a rather strange thing. She takes him up to Elisha’s room, lays him on the bed, & shuts the door. Then she goes out & shouts to her husband from a distance asking him to send her one of the servants with a donkey, she wants to go see the man of God.So now this woman has seen her dream come true, held the dream in her arms, and then sees the dream shattered & her son die right before her eyes.
THIS WOMAN STUBBORNLY REFUSED TO BECOME OFFENDED AT GOD.
This Shunammite woman doesn’t seem to accept that her child is really dead. She tells no one & in effect by putting the child in the prophet’s private room & shutting the door, she’s effectively hiding his condition from her husband, & to an extent, even from herself.Look at some of alternatives she now had: she could go into a rage, start panicking and screaming and cursing the God who had given her the gift and now so cruelly taken it from her. She could have had a melt-down & gone on a tirade saying, “Well I quit. If that’s what God does to you, I want no more to do with him.” Some people blame God when bad things happen to them. I’ve seen folk who never again darkened a church door after life dealt them a disappointment similar to this. But you don’t see those kinds of hysterics with this woman. Look what a paragon of faith she is. She doesn’t even cry or tell her husband what’s happened, probably because she knows he isn’t able to handle the situation spiritually or emotionally.
It would have been understandable if she’d gone into a rage & ranted against God & His man who’d built her up for a letdown. But this woman is a model of level-headedness. She wasn’t going to make a big scene; she was going to seek out the originator of the promise made to her. She wasn’t going to go public against the man of God & malign his character but rather she was going to him privately with her problem.She’s in mission mode now. Nothing would deter her. She climbs on the donkey & says, “Drive & go forward. Don’t slacken the pace unless I tell you to.” The servant is probably running beside her goading the little donkey with a stick. We’re not told how much trouble she had finding Elisha. It probably wasn’t all that easy because he was at Carmel about 15 miles away. But she found him and when she saw him she ran to him & fell at his feet to tell him what had happened. When some folk have trouble, they run from God. They stay out of church and hibernate, but this woman is going in the right direction; God is always the right direction.
Isaiah 55: 6-7 says, Seek ye the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near……
LONG BEFORE THE MODERN CONFESSION TEACHING, THIS WOMAN HAS A STRONG POSITIVE ATTITUDE.
Elisha must have been eternally vigilant because he wasn’t in bed sleeping; he was outside & saw her coming. He asked her if things were well with her & back at home & she answered, “All is well.” Think about that. No matter how many times I read her words I get chills down my spine. This woman acts like she’s already read Romans 4:17 hundreds of years before Paul ever penned it, by “calling things which were not as if they were.”
It’s interesting that when the Shunammite woman fell at Elisha’s feet Gehazi attempts to push her away from the prophet. The bible has little good to say about Gehazi. Though he takes the commands of the prophet & obeys them well, there’s that sense of unbelief that hovers between the lines when he’s mentioned. We know one thing for sure; he had a greed for money which finally proved his undoing. It’s sad because Gehazi had all the time in the world to soak up righteous principles from his master Elisha but he doesn’t seem to hunger for that.
He’s emblematic of people who are exposed to the church but never internalize the truth for themselves. They [especially the professional hirelings] see the church only as a place to extract dollars.Elisha was so sensitive to her need that he immediately tells Gehazi to run ahead and place his staff on the child. Here again Gehazi shows his inadequacy & spiritual impotence. The narrative doesn’t mention him praying for the boy. Even laying Elisha’s mantle on him does no good.Gehazi simply didn’t have the spiritual goods to get the job done even with Elisha’s mantel. He tried & failed once, & he gave up. Evidently he’d never heard about, “try, try again.”To me this Gehazi fits the description of those Paul speaks of in 2nd Timothy 3:8,….. Having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof.
The boy is stone cold dead.In the bible the euphemism for death is sleep. “For this cause many are weak & sickly among you & many sleep.--1 Cor. 11:30 God’s people need to be awake & alert in these days when sin & darkness abounds. Paul says in Romans 13:11-12….it is high time to wake out of sleep…..When Elisha arrives at the Shunammites house things are still the same & the boy lies dead on his bed. The boy is now with the prophet but he’s still dead.
Many people are “in the church” on a weekly basis but they remain asleep. Parking a lawnmower in a garage doesn’t make it an automobile.Unlike Gehazi, Elisha throws himself into the task of reviving the child. First he shuts the door, putting everyone outside. This is a private matter. I don’t know about you but I think we’ve been remiss in airing the church’s dirty laundry & allowing our business to be put in the streets. We have “Christian Magazines” just for this purpose. However one reason for that is we haven’t had, as the body of Christ, the spiritual power to restore anyone.
Paul told us when a Christian slips,…Brethren if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual restore such a one in the spirit of meekness, considering thyself lest thou also be tempted. Gal.6:
Maybe I’m reading it wrong but it would seem to me if people aren’t restored, it must be because there’s no one around spiritual enough to restore them. We can criticize, we can publicize but we can’t restore. It becomes much easier to just cut the fallen ones loose.Elisha knows he’s the only one that can get the job done & that any hope of life for the boy depends on his relationship with God.
Notice how hard Elisha works to get this boy healed. He stretches himself out on the child eye to eye, mouth to mouth, & hand to hand. We’ll never win the world from behind the four walls of a church. We must “press the flesh” so to speak to ever see the lost won to Christ. There are only two types of institutions that I know of who have stained or clouded glass on their windows & that’s the church & bars.For too long the church has sat behind walls & been entertained with no connection to the lost & dying in our world. Consequently we’ve lost our “street cred.”
Elisha stretches himself out on the boy the second time & this time something happens. The boy sneezes. He not only sneezes, he sneezes seven times. Do you know what a sneeze is? The dictionary defines it as—“a sudden violent, spasmodic audible expiration of breath through the nose & mouth especially as a reflex act.”A sneeze occurs as a reaction to an irritant of some kind; dust, dander, allergen etc.I did some research on sneezing & found that in sneezing, the respiratory system convulses with a blast of air traveling at the speed of 240 mph in its attempt to dislodge and expel the offending particle.
The spiritual counterpart to sneezing is repentance.Listen to 2nd Cor. 7:10-11---For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death. For behold this selfsame thing that ye sorrowed after a godly sort what carefulness it wrought in you, yea what clearing of yourselves, yea what indignation, yea what fear, yea what vehement desire, yea what zeal, yea what revenge. In all things ye have approved yourselves to be clear in this matter.
In the analogy of reviving a body to life, sneezing is a perfect picture of the individual Christian’s repentance.Why did the boy sneeze seven times? The number seven in the bible is the number of completion. The book of Revelation has seven churches, seven lampstands, seven spirits, seven eyes, seven seals, trumpets, plagues, bowls, thunders, heads, crowns, mountains, & kings. There are many other lists of seven in the bible.When the child sneezed seven times it was an example of complete repentance. One or two sneezes won’t get the job done; he must sneeze until all the impediments are completely gone.
I WANT GOD TO WORK IN MY LIFE LIKE THAT--TO STRETCH OUT & BREATHE ALL OVER ME.
What a miraculous story. A story that would never have happened if the woman had not been a fighter. What if she had gotten so caught up in the finality of death that she collapsed in despair? She could have allowed a hundred things to divert her that day and her dream would have been over. She could have gotten mad at God for what seemed like a cruel joke played on her by granting her a son and then taking him away. She could have even been angry enough at the man of God that she would never want to see him again. She could have said, “Well, the Lord gives and the Lord takes away.” She could have said, “Well I’m too old now to see another miracle, that’s it for me, after all, God works in mysterious ways.”It's one thing to bow to Gods will, we haven’t much choice, but it’s another to give up when a little more fight may win the day. The violent take it by force!
If I’m lying on my deathbed I don’t want to hear people praying, “Lord, if it be thy will, heal Him.” I don’t want my wife to pray, “Take him on Jesus, I know heavens a lonely place & you need a few more roses to bloom in your flower garden.” I’ve told Juda [jokingly] if she ever prays for me like that I’ll come back & haunt her for the rest of her life. God didn’t kill this young man, the devil did. It’s my conviction that when someone is facing death, we shouldn’t pray, “if it be thy will, heal the person, but according to thy will heal them.”
Let’s look at this story and understand that just because a dream comes, doesn’t mean it can’t and won’t slip away. However, If it does, we need to fight with everything within us to see it resurrected. There may be something in your life today that you need to fight for. Let me ask you about your dream, how much do you want it? Are you going to give up without a fight? You may have laid your dream up on a shelf and it’s been there for years. It perhaps has grown dusty and parched with age but I want to encourage you to take that dream off the shelf today and allow God to breathe life back into it. Do believe it can happen? I know it can.
WHAT ARE YOU EXPECTING IN 2015—ONE YEAR FROM NOW?
Friend, don’t settle for shallow living. Maybe you’ve seen some of the dreams you’ve had for yourself turn to nightmares so consequently you’ve began to dream dreams that are always safe & quiet requiring little risk, practically none in fact.But have you considered lately the dreams God has for you?
Listen to 1 Cor.2:9;
No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has imagined what God has prepared for them who love Him.
In the great New Testament Hall of Fame in Hebrews 11:35, the Holy Spirit brings the Shunammite woman back to our remembrance; ---Women received their dead raised to life again.God made sure the story of this woman & her son lived on for a reason. If like her, your promise has died, follow her example & stretch it out before the living God & expect a miracle.Ask the Lord to revive the promise—your life----your ministry---your job. Ask God to remove everything in your path.
Dear friend, dream big with huge faith attached to it. Most of all make sure you’re dreaming never scheming. Know that any dream worth its salt will have some opposition.
If we, like this woman, will stay positive, will keep our eye on the one who placed the dream in us, refuse to quit or become offended, act in faith & keep our love-level high, our future also holds some miraculous surprises...
ONE YEAR FROM NOW!
Blessings,
John
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