By John Stallings
Did you know…..?
……….the book of Romans doesn’t have any stories about Jesus? The book of Romans doesn’t contain any stories about the apostle Paul like the book of Acts does, & Paul wrote Romans.
The book of Romans has no stories, period! The book of Romans only has ideas, great sweeping theological ideas, & all the ideas are about Christ; the mind, heart & incarnation of Christ.
Many scholars believe the book of Romans to be the greatest work ever written. It was certainly written by the greatest Christian, Paul, on the greatest subject- salvation.
Romans was written by the Apostle Paul in approximately 58 A.D. Hundreds of books have been written about Paul’s letter to the Romans however it reads more like a theological essay than a letter.
It’s not my intention to try to analyze the book for I can’t, any more than babies could analyze their mother’s milk. They drink it for nourishment & life. I come to this letter again & again to drink deeply of it, to digest as much of it as I can & to get to know the Lord more intimately, until His nature is formed in me.
The themes of Romans include, sin & death, sanctification, grace, faith, righteousness, justification, redemption, resurrection, glorification, spiritual gifts & respect for government.
In her book, Joni, Joni Erickson Todd describes coming to grips with her paralysis. At the age of 15 Joni was paralyzed from the neck down as a result of a diving accident. Joni lay unclothed on a hospital cart & she wanted to cover herself, which in the past had been an easy task. But now, try as she may she couldn’t get her arms & legs to respond to her wishes. She knew in her mind what she wanted to do but her body was unresponsive, something most of us can only relate to in small ways.
In Romans Paul describes a much bigger problem & deeper frustration; the agony that our sinful flesh doesn’t want to respond to God’s Law, & that our natural bodies or flesh man, constantly wage war against our Spirit man.
ROMANS CHAPTER 7 IS ONE OF THE MOST MISUNDERSTOOD CHAPTERS IN THE BIBLE.
In this great chapter, Paul tackles the problem of our sinful nature. He says in essence; “I don’t understand my own actions. I do the very thing I hate. The good things I want to do I don’t do but the bad things, the things I hate- I end up doing. I’m a miserable person. Who’s going to rescue me from this awful situation, this life of sin, this body of death?”
Some of our tender spiritual nerves & sensibilities get pinched when we read these words of Paul because he’s talking about the most depressing & hopeless aspects & realities of our lives. Some people even interpret chapter seven to mean to live the Christian life is impossible.
However Paul doesn’t dwell on our weakness in this chapter to bring us down, quite the contrary. He’s preparing us for God’s provision for living righteously which comes in chapter eight.
CHAPTER 7 INTRODUCED A CONUNDRUM
A conundrum is a problem or puzzle, something that’s truly unsolvable. The following is a conundrum;
There was a church in the process of calling a new pastor. They interviewed two candidates; we’ll call them candidates Smith & Jones. The congregation voted to call Pastor Jones but the church secretary mistakenly sent the letter of acceptance to Pastor Smith. Pastor Smith was so happy to leave the church where he Pastored that he immediately resigned & wrote to the new church to tell them he was coming.
Only then did the church realize they had sent the wrong man the letter of call. What to do? Do you tell Pastor Smith that he wasn’t elected & leave him without a church? Or do you take Rev. Smith knowing all the while the congregation’s choice was Pastor Jones? He’s going to find out anyway isn’t he?
It’s a conundrum! There seems to be no answer that will satisfy everyone, no matter how determined a problem-solver you may be. I couldn’t help but smile when I learned what the church did to solve their problem. They took Rev. Smith as their Pastor & fired the church secretary! It figures.
Have you ever snuck into the kitchen in the quiet of the night when everyone was asleep & raided the fridge? Have you ever made yourself a chocolate sundae with nuts, after midnight? What I’ve learned is, especially if you have a sweet-tooth, you just have to quit buying certain things & “fat-proof” your kitchen. Someone has said; “the best way to lose weight is eat all you want of everything you don’t want.”
You & I know exactly what the Apostle Paul is talking about in Romans 7.
Years ago a lady shared a story about her experience with her unsaved husband. She’d been going regularly to Wednesday night prayer meeting & was having no problems with him. One night she went with friends to get a bite to eat after prayer meeting & came home a little late. Her husband asked where she’d been & she flew into a rage, telling him that he knew where she’d been; she’d been to prayer meeting. In her defensiveness she attacked him with the words, “You go fishing or golfing with your friends & come home when you want to.” On further reflection she asked herself “why?” Why did I need to verbally attack the person I deeply love? My lower nature & instincts just took over.”
We all know how true it is. The exact scripts may vary but the stories of our lives are closely similar. “We met the enemy & the enemy is us.”
I read a story some time ago about Victor Hugo, who wrote that famous story Les Miserables, which was a favorite Broadway play for years. He was supposed to write every morning but something would get inside of him & get in the way. He would go for a walk, putter in the garden & around the house; anything but write. Hugo finally solved the problem by telling his servant to take his clothes away every night so he’d be forced to stay in his room in the morning & write.
Again we may laugh but it’s because we all know how true it is of our old nature. It’s the age- old clash between our best intentions & reality.
WE SEEM TO BE A BUNDLE OF CONTRADICTIONS
A Christian is, so to speak, a “split-personality.” We are a living battleground on which good & evil vie for mastery. The inner conflict is disturbing but it doesn’t have to be defeating. Most of us strongly desire to be more spiritual don’t we? We want to have a deeper interior with God. We make resolution after resolution to wake up in the morning & read the Bible & pray. I could describe what happens but it would just be needless pain because we all already know.
I want to organize my life so that I can identify with the poor & hurting in this world. I for years have wanted to so arrange things that I could give a larger percentage of my income away to the needy. But what do I do? Too often, the same thing I’ve done for forty years, & that’s to accumulate more stuff. I know what I should do but do I do it? Truthfully-not often enough. What’s wrong?
I want to eat more simply. But I don’t do it, not for long. I want to get off the “ice cream wagon” but, though I’m watching my sugar a lot closer these days, I seem to have some of the same problems at this stage of my life that I had in my early twenties. I want to be able to sit down to a meal of veggies & have no meat with it. Really! I’d like to love vegetables more than I like meat. I want to get off all starches & off salt & sugar & I want to get up in the morning & do my exercises. But is that what I do? Not nearly often enough.
Lust isn’t always sexual lust. Anything that we hunger for that isn’t what God wants for us is lust. [1 Cor.10:6.] There are lots of feelings I have that I know I shouldn’t have but I have them from time to time anyway. To be frank, in reality we all have them. We all have these inner struggles, you have yours & I have mine.
Paul had the most dramatic conversion of anyone on record & probably was the greatest Christian who ever lived. He wrote these words about not doing what he should do, but doing what he doesn’t want to do at the very high point of his life. He was fifty-five to sixty-five years old. He’d been a Christian for more than thirty years & was certainly a mature Christian. He had a fervent prayer life, saw many miracles take place & even by secular standards left some of the greatest writing every penned.
Here was Paul who’d spoken courageously to governments, kings & rulers; was thrown into prison, beaten & stoned. Here was Paul, at the top of his A game saying, “I don’t get it. I just do not get it. I do the things that I hate. And the very things that I want to do, I don’t do. What’s wrong with me? I’m such a wretched person.”
I read that animal trainers can do some remarkable things with African Zebras in captivity. The problem is, the animal is easily frightened. “Flight to life” is his specialty. The Zebras main defense is to get away. He’s mostly always leaving. This was necessary in the African jungle but to the trainers who would never harm the animal, it’s their biggest headache. You can take the Zebra out of Africa but you can’t take Africa out of the Zebra.
Likewise, you can take people out of sinful situations, but you can’t completely take the propensity for sin out of them. The conflicting natures within us are very real. One can be reborn as a child of God but we can’t completely rid ourselves of our old nature that loves to sin. Paul said it best—“So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin. [Rom.7:25]
The truth is- you & I are in a “Great War.” We’re in a war with our flesh, our will & our old nature. We’re still encased in a fleshly body. We say we’re going to lose 10 pounds but we eat ice-cream sundaes. We say we’re going to get up a little earlier in the morning & pray but our resolutions don’t last. We set out to Fast for a few days but then we start having visions of “Whopper-Burgers with cheese” flying all around our heads.
Here’s the truth; our Old Man died with Christ on the cross but we still carry a dead guy with us as long as we’re in a fleshly body. When we choose to live according to the dictates of the flesh we’re constantly giving “mouth-to-mouth” to our Old Man. But here’s some good news, & it’s contained in chapter eight. If we lean on fleshly weapons we’ll fail, but if we lean on the Holy Spirit a whole new dynamic gets interjected into the picture.
There’s a new reality T.V show called “Moment of Truth” on the Fox Channel. Contestants are asked before the show a series of personal questions & their truthfulness is tested by lie detector. When they appear on the program they can win $500,000 if they answer each question correctly. The questions are so dark & personal they can reveal things that are potentially destructive especially to family members.
Recently a young woman appeared on the program hoping to win money so she had to respond truthfully. She admitted to having slept around with other men & wanted to marry someone else for fame & fortune. This admission devastated & humiliated her husband, a New York City police officer, before 8 million people on Network T.V. She was about to pocket $200,000 dollars when she lied on the next question & lost everything. The next question was if she thought she was a good person & she said “yes” & that lie cost her everything. Her sin resulted in pain, guilt & shame & has threatened to destroy the love her husband had for her.
Though a show like this is personally repugnant to me & I’ve only surfed by it a few times, I don’t think a more perfect illustration could be found of the depth of depravity & sin unregenerate man is in before a holy God. Thanks be unto God for His Holy Spirit who gives us power beyond our fleshly appetites.
CHAPTER SEVEN IS A PRELUDE TO CHAPTER EIGHT
The agony of Romans 7 is a prerequisite for the ecstasy of Romans 8. Romans 8 is one of the finest chapters in the Bible. When we move into this chapter we discover Paul talking about the power of the Holy Spirit. Victory in the Christian life is possible not by our human struggle but by yielding our lives to & allowing the Holy Spirit to take over for us. [Rom.8:13.] The Spirit comes in & gives us strength & helps us gain victory over things like judgmental attitudes, bad tempers, alcoholism, & food & drug addictions. The power of the Holy Spirit helps us get control of those destructive behaviors that are hurting us in so many ways.
In Romans 8, Paul talks about the Holy Spirit coming to strengthen us & help us do right. Listen;
There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit. Roman 8:1
Conversion to Christ doesn’t solve all our problems, indeed it results in some problems we never had before. Before our conversion to Christ we weren’t in opposition with sin. Quite the contrary we were slaves to sin & in opposition with God. Now as Christians our animosity toward God has ended & a new animosity—toward sin—has begun. Paul’s struggle was because of his conversion to Christ on the Damascus Turnpike.
Like Paul, until we hate sin we won’t turn from it & until we reach the end of ourselves we won’t turn to God. We have cause to be concerned when we don’t have the agony over our sin nature as Paul had. We have cause for concern when we don’t have the kind of intensity that Paul had. If we fail to struggle as Paul did in chapter 7 there must be a reason.
Have we taken the sins that blew Paul’s mind & broke his heart & relabeled them so they won’t seem so bad? Those who can identify with Paul here are blessed & the way I see it those who can’t are to be pitied. Some might even feel Paul needed to be put in a remedial class so he could learn not to feel so bad about his sin nature. Could the truth be that it’s not Paul who has the problem but us, because we don’t take sin seriously enough?
Paul has told us that sin is something we can’t fully understand. But we don’t have to understand it to know it’s a dilemma & it’s something God hates. A young homosexual had been saved & one day he was talking to a group of ministers & he said something very important. “Don’t try to understand homosexuality & don’t try to identify with me in terms of my homosexuality. You can’t & shouldn’t understand. Just try to understand homosexuality as sin, due to the flesh.”
I believe this young man was right. Whatever the sin might be the solution is the same. God has provided a righteousness we can’t produce ourselves. It’s the cross of Calvary, God’s Word & the power of the Holy Spirit. We need not look for any other solution.
I always look for very simple illustrations because that’s the way my mind works. I think I’ve found a way, at least in part to describe this thing called the dual nature of man.
Go with me to a high mountain deep in the wilderness where the majestic Eagles make their nests & are often seen sitting on high rocks or gliding gracefully through the air.
We spot a large eagle sitting high on his perch, & we realize as we watch him that, in one way he’s as bound by the law of gravity as we are. If he fell off his perch & made no effort to fly he’d be dead weight & perish on the rocks in the valley below. As we watch the Eagle, he stands up & with a powerful thrust pushes his body out & over the cliff & starts to free-fall. We watch the big bird as gravity takes hold & he drops like a rock.
When it seems like the eagle is being pulled by gravity toward destruction on the rocks below, all of the sudden he shoots out his mighty wings. When the eagle spreads his wings, everything changes.
His trajectory is no longer downward; he’s riding on the wind. What has happened? The eagle has introduced another law that cancels out the law of gravity & that law is the Law of Aerodynamics. The eagle flies around in the canyon & we watch him as he intermittently pulls his wings in & free-falls, then unfolds his wings to call on the law of aerodynamics.
The eagle knows nothing of the law of Aerodynamics & he doesn’t need to know. One day he was timid & afraid but that was before his mother taught him to fly. He understands there’s a downward pull & it would be possible for him to become a rock & go down to his death, but he trusts his wings to save him from that.
Thus it is with the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. We don’t need to wholly understand the theology of the benefits we have in Christ. All we need to do is commit spiritually just as that eagle does physically & the power over our sinful nature is at our disposal.
Question; -Who will deliver me from this body of death?
Answer: -The very spirit that raised the dead body of Jesus Christ from the grave is the spirit that dwells in you & will give life to our mortal bodies.-Romans 8:11
Every Blessing,
John
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Offended Christians
By John Stallings
…..Love is not touchy. 1 Corinthians 13: 5-- J.B Philips translation
What is the devil’s most deadly & deceptive trap?
What tool of Satan imprisons countless Christians, severs relationships, widens existing breaches between people in families & churches--& is a leading cause of disunity? It’s the trap of offense.
Offense is described as-“an act of causing anger, hurt feelings, resentment, displeasure, or an affront.”
If caught in its early stages it can be dealt with before much damage is done but the deeper the offense & the longer it’s allowed to fester, the greater the chance that it will turn into a poisonous root of bitterness & bury itself deep within the soul. The result will be a harden heart against people & ultimately God Himself.
When an offense becomes a stronghold, an individual will develop a pattern through which all incoming information gets processed & then they start filtering everything through past hurts, rejections & past injuries.
Offended people feel justified in withholding forgiveness from the offender.
Offended people feel justified in gossiping to others about the offense.
Offended people feel justified in enlisting sympathizers in their cause & turning other people against the offender.
Offended people will produce much fruit, namely; anger, outrage, jealousy, resentment, strife, bitterness, hatred, envy & broken relationships.
Offended people often don’t know they’ve fallen into the offense trap.
Offended people feel; “I was mistreated or misjudged—therefore I’m justified in my behavior.”
Very often offended Christians [or Christians so-called] will refuse to be a part any longer of the Christian community. The people with whom they meet & rub shoulders are other offended folk. Sunday to them becomes a day for sleeping late or visiting relatives & friends or a day at the beach. It’s not uncommon for these offended Christians to give up Bible reading & Bible study & God becomes a relic of their past, although they are known to continue to talk religious & carry a strong attitude of self-righteousness. The point of justification for the dismissal of God from their lives is that they’ve been hurt somewhere along the way & there are “too many hypocrites in the church.” This argument is simply an evasive tactic to justify one’s negative feelings toward others & of God Himself.
Satan knows how easy it is for all of us to hold on to grudges & he does everything in his power to remind us of the injustices done to us, real or imaginary. He knows that if he can get us to allow unforgiveness to remain in our hearts it gives him a foothold.
People get offended by the words or actions of others, & often sermons. They feel every sermon is intentionally aimed at them. They might say; “no one spoke to me, the pastor shook my hand but his eyes were on another person.” Daily we all are presented with tons of opportunities to get offended every single second of our lives.
People who become offended in a church, usually move on to another church. Since they never deal with their spirit of offense, they keep moving around looking for a perfect church; a church that will never hurt their feelings. The truth of the matter is there is no such thing as a church that will never hurt our feelings.
CONSIDER THE LOWLY PORCUPINE
If you’re walking through the woods & you hear a rattling sound, step lightly. It could be a deadly rattlesnake but you could also be in the proximity of a rodent called the porcupine.
The adult porcupine is about three feet long & weighs between 20 & 30 pounds. It’s known to rustle its quills to warn a potential predator to back off. In a worse case scenario [small animals such as dogs usually get the worst injuries] you could end up trying to pull out a bunch of barbed quills. The porcupines don’t have to aim perfectly either because they have on average 30,000 quills to throw, with fish-hook like barbs in them, located all over their bodies except their faces. [Thanks Wikipedia.]
When threatened the porcupine attacks by moving backward or sideways into the aggressor & the quills lodge in the aggressor’s skin. Every time the pierced victim moves, the quills penetrate further into its body. If the quills pierce vital organs the victim can die.
HAVE YOU NOTICED THERE ARE PORCUPINE PEOPLE?
We’ve all taken some quills along the way & to be truthful we’ve all thrown a few quills. There are some people who- through the look on their face & their body language seem to be saying,-“You take a chance if you mess with me. I have plenty of quills & I won’t hesitate to use them.” These “quill throwers” are raspy & harsh & if you have even the shortest of encounters with them you will doubtless come away carrying quills.
We meet “quill throwers” in all levels of life. They are in hospitals, doctor’s offices, schools, restaurants, department stores, driving down hi-ways & even in churches. You probably have one or two in your extended family.
Not only are there “Quill throwers,” there are also “Quill carriers.” If you’ve ever seen a church fight or for that matter a family feud you are aware of this. Quill carriers are folk who’ve taken some quills in life & have never gotten rid of them. Many times it’s because they don’t want to be healed. They savor the pain caused by quills.
GOD’S WORD SPEAKS TO THE PORCUPINE PROBLEM
In 1 Peter 4: there is what some call “The Peter Prescription.” Verse 8 says;--Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.
Notice Peter says—ABOVE ALL-love each other deeply. ……This is a biblical mandate! It means make every effort, -- go all out—make it priority one—love as if your life depended on it.
It may be painful to hear but the main reason we are super-bothered by others & the quills they throw at us is simple; we just don’t have the “love covering” we need to absorb the hurt & lighten up about the barbs thrown at us.
Notice Peter doesn’t say love covers-up sins, but love covers-over a multitude of sins.
When we don’t forgive others who trespass against us, or hit us with quills, the reason is—there’s not enough love to “cover it over.” Again…Love covers over a multitude of sins.
Love gets a little confusing because we mean all kinds of different things when we talk about love. I love to fish & I love chocolate ice cream however I have a much deeper commitment to my wife than I do those things. But I use the same word, love.
In the church we’re always saying-God is love-therefore we should love too but what do we mean when we say that? When we step out of the spiritual realm we have Hollywood & T.V presenting movies about love like Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve got mail, Titanic, Friends, & Dawson’s Creek. These things can’t help but affect us, & some of our expectations grow out of watching them. Harlequin Romance Magazines sells 130 million books each year; books purporting to tell us about love. Some of it might be good & some of it bad so it’s important that we understand what we’re really talking about when we speak of love.
In 1 Corinthians, Paul wrote to a church that had all the spiritual gifts but they argued constantly. They had asserted how smart & gifted they were & so Paul had been critiquing this complicated & conflicted Corinthian church. The Love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13 comes as almost an intrusion in the flow of the letter. Paul took great care to explain to them that though they had all these phenomenal gifts, anything minus love equals nothing. Zero.
When we think of love in the way the world presents it we’re usually talking about romantic love which is based on physical desirability. This love assumes that the loved- one is attractive & it assumes incredible emotional intensity so that one can’t help but pursue the loved one. But this is a far cry from what Paul is talking about because he writes love is more than an emotion. It’s capable of even loving the unlovable.
Sometimes when we use the word love we’re speaking of tolerance; you do your thing & I’ll do mine. Tolerance is good but it’s not the kind of love Paul is talking about. Sometimes love will compel us to be intolerant & demand change in an individual. Sometimes love will have to be tough, as in intervening in the life of a loved one who’s bound by drugs or other substances. It’s clear that tolerance isn’t the kind of love Paul’s talking about.
Sometimes love will be used as a cause; we love the environment so we wear wrist- bands & T-shirts to protest things that hurt the environment, but this isn’t the love Paul is talking about. Some of the meanest people in the world parade behind the banner of love for this or that cause & in crusading for tolerance; they can be so intolerant they’re downright dangerous. John Lennon wrote a song called “Give peace a chance,” & all the time he was at war with the Beatles. Their personal relationships were in shambles & they were calling the world to peace. Like the man who said, “I love mankind- its people I hate.”
The love Paul speaks about isn’t even friendship. Sometimes people will get sentimental & feel they have so much in common with an individual that they’ll say, “I love you.” There might even be an awkward hug & a few tears because the friendship touches them in such a way as to be thought of as love. Like two drunks in a bar who get a little lubricated & say, “I love you, man.” This isn’t the kind of love Paul is talking about.
As a matter of fact Paul isn’t going to let us guess what he’s talking about, he gets very concrete about love. He says love is patient. It can relax in the present. Love is willing to accept slow change & to try again. Love is patient & kind. Love is warm & sympathetic. It sees & feels the difficulties of the other person. It’s not cold & analytical. Love is kind & doesn’t envy. Love doesn’t boast & isn’t proud. Love avoids abrasive & inflammatory language. Love listens. Love is a dialogue. Love doesn’t scold a person like they were a family pet. Love isn’t easily angered. Love is more than biting the tongue; it works at the inner core of us.
Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes & perseveres. Love is constantly hoping for change in people & doesn’t give up after one good try. Love is going to try & try & try again. Love isn’t what we hear celebrities talk about on The Oprah Show.
Have you ever thought about the fact that right in the middle of the happy, romantic & love-filled marriage vows we start talking about better or worse, richer or poorer, sickness & in health? Just when we’re speaking of this feel-good love, we imagine those terrible scenarios. Why do we do that? It’s because deep inside we all want love that is secure. Deep down we know there is real, all embracing love. We want that love for ourselves & we want to be able to give it too. And so there it is in the vows- in the marriage ceremony.
But keep in mind; the love Paul speaks about is bigger than married love because he’s not talking to married couples. He’s talking to the church & he’s telling them this is the kind of loving relationships they should have. It’s the kind of love God loves us with.
FORGIVING THE QUILL THROWERS
These next words will be some of the most important words you’ll ever read because if you & I don’t get this thing called forgiveness right, we’ll miss the heart of the gospel. I am swinging this axe with great humility because I find forgiveness such a struggle. More than once in my life I’ve had people I trusted to prove unworthy of that trust by doing everything in their power to hurt me. As you know these kinds of people almost never ask forgiveness. But even in cases where I’ve been asked to forgive, & I’ve given that forgiveness to the best of my ability, I’d be less than honest if I didn’t say I still struggle with it. As Paul said, “I die daily.”
There’s no greater passage in the entire Bible that opens the heart of God on forgiveness than the narrative in Matthew chapter eighteen. I’m sure you’re familiar with it.
Even the disciples were having a hard time with forgiveness, so Peter came out & laid the difficulty of it right at the feet of Jesus. The Rabbinic teaching of the day said you should forgive someone up to three times & after that you could stop forgiving. To be on the safe side Peter doubled that & added one for magnanimity sake. He asked, “Lord when somebody messes me over, how many times should I allow that to happen before I stop forgiving them? Seven times?”
Jesus said, “No, Not seven times. Seventy times seven.” We’d be missing the point here if we think Jesus was talking about a literal number. Jesus was actually talking here about how grace should operate in the life of the believer when it comes to the difficulty of forgiveness.
So Jesus told a simple, crystal-clear, scintillating parable & explained the issue of forgiveness to His disciples as well as you & me. We don’t have to be rocket scientists, bible scholars or great theologians to get the point of this parable.
It’s a story about a king & his servant. The king has loaned his servant money & decides to call in the loan. It’s pay-back time. Servant A is the first man we meet. He has run up a whopping tab, roughly 12 million dollars. The point is, it’s such a vast sum it’s impossible to pay back. The servant is unable to pay so the king took the next step & ordered the servant & his wife & children to be sold into slavery & his entire estate to be put on the auction block. At least the king can salvage a little bit of money on this deal.
But the servant begins to beg for mercy. He’s trying to buy time. He’s hoping the king will cut him some slack. He literally pleads for his life. Then the most unexpected thing happens; like a bolt from the blue the king totally forgives & cancels the entire debt. Suddenly servant, wife, children, & estate are off the auction block.
Now put yourself in that servant’s shoes. How would you be feeling at that moment? When somebody gives you a break in traffic aren’t you more likely then to give someone else a break? But after all that forgiveness, servant A leaves as if nothing good has happened.
Enter servant B. Servant B owes servant A about $1.80 in today’s money. Like a scene from The Godfather, servant A says to servant B, “I’m going to remove your kneecaps unless you pay up.” Servant A shows servant B no mercy, instead he has servant B thrown into prison. We can agree that servant A is a jerk.
But there are always other eyes watching & someone went & told the king the whole story. Now for the second time servant A is called before the king. The king has another turn-around & this time his pity has turned to anger. He lowers the boom on servant A & throws him in prison.
The story is over for servant A & B but it’s not over for Peter & it’s not over for you & me. Jesus says, -- “Unless you & I forgive our brothers & sisters from the heart we’re going to wind up just like servant A.” And, oh, how God has forgiven the debt that you & I have run up. It’s far greater than 12 million dollars. The results of the tab are eternal death & separation from God in hell.
GOD IS EXTREMELY OBSESSIVE ABOUT FORGIVENESS
God is so obsessive that He mandates & orders forgiveness & just like any other scriptural mandate it’s for our own good. God knows that you & I will never be able to move toward wholeness, live victoriously & be healed until we let go of resentment, give up on revenge, & let Him take the quills out we’ve collected over the years.
The mistake we make is to look at the person who has wronged us & what they’ve done to us. This parable reminds us that’s a mistake. We need to look at who God is & what He’s done for us. There are no limits to forgiveness because there’s no limit to God’s grace.
The following is nothing new to most Christians but I have a feeling if we really took it seriously it would change the way we view the Lord’s Prayer.
Right in the middle of the Lord’s Prayer is a phrase that you & I, if we’re not careful will pray mindlessly. “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” Have we honestly thought about what we’re asking God to do here? Have you ever felt like falling silent at this point? We’re asking God to forgive us, to treat us --exactly the way we deal with other folks who’ve wronged us.
THE MOST PROFOUND, PUREST, HIGHEST, & FINEST EXAMPLE OF FORGIVENESS IN THE BIBLE HAPPENED WHEN JESUS HUNG ON THE CROSS.
He was condemned to death by evil men who plotted against him & produced lying witness to convict Him. As He surveyed the howling mob cheering His suffering, the man who knew no sin, the only innocent man who ever walked this sin cursed planet uttered the words that still ring across the centuries; “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.” [Luke 23:34] Those 11 tortured words sweep away all our nonsensical excuses & reveal the barrenness of our hearts. They rip the cover off our unrighteous unforgiveness & show it for what it is.
Many of us say, “If only the people who hurt me would show some remorse, some sorrow, then maybe I would forgive them.” But consider Jesus on the cross. No one seemed sorry, quite the contrary-- they laughed, mocked & jeered Him. They hurled insults at Him. The people who killed Him were pleased with themselves. Pilate washed his hands of the whole sordid affair. The Jewish leaders hated Him with a fierce irrational hatred. They were happy to see Him suffer & die.
Evil was in the air that day. The forces of darkness had done their work & Jesus would soon be in a tomb. No one said, “I was wrong, this is a mistake.” And yet He said, “Father forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing,” --this is precisely what we must say to the quill throwers; the people who hurt us deliberately & repeatedly.
We must say it to those who intentionally attack us.
We must say it to those who casually & thoughtlessly wound us.
We must say it to those closest to us, to our husband or wife, to our children, to our parents, to our friends, to our neighbors, to our brothers & sisters.
“Father forgive them” is what we must say if we want to follow Christ.
Every Blessing,
John
…..Love is not touchy. 1 Corinthians 13: 5-- J.B Philips translation
What is the devil’s most deadly & deceptive trap?
What tool of Satan imprisons countless Christians, severs relationships, widens existing breaches between people in families & churches--& is a leading cause of disunity? It’s the trap of offense.
Offense is described as-“an act of causing anger, hurt feelings, resentment, displeasure, or an affront.”
If caught in its early stages it can be dealt with before much damage is done but the deeper the offense & the longer it’s allowed to fester, the greater the chance that it will turn into a poisonous root of bitterness & bury itself deep within the soul. The result will be a harden heart against people & ultimately God Himself.
When an offense becomes a stronghold, an individual will develop a pattern through which all incoming information gets processed & then they start filtering everything through past hurts, rejections & past injuries.
Offended people feel justified in withholding forgiveness from the offender.
Offended people feel justified in gossiping to others about the offense.
Offended people feel justified in enlisting sympathizers in their cause & turning other people against the offender.
Offended people will produce much fruit, namely; anger, outrage, jealousy, resentment, strife, bitterness, hatred, envy & broken relationships.
Offended people often don’t know they’ve fallen into the offense trap.
Offended people feel; “I was mistreated or misjudged—therefore I’m justified in my behavior.”
Very often offended Christians [or Christians so-called] will refuse to be a part any longer of the Christian community. The people with whom they meet & rub shoulders are other offended folk. Sunday to them becomes a day for sleeping late or visiting relatives & friends or a day at the beach. It’s not uncommon for these offended Christians to give up Bible reading & Bible study & God becomes a relic of their past, although they are known to continue to talk religious & carry a strong attitude of self-righteousness. The point of justification for the dismissal of God from their lives is that they’ve been hurt somewhere along the way & there are “too many hypocrites in the church.” This argument is simply an evasive tactic to justify one’s negative feelings toward others & of God Himself.
Satan knows how easy it is for all of us to hold on to grudges & he does everything in his power to remind us of the injustices done to us, real or imaginary. He knows that if he can get us to allow unforgiveness to remain in our hearts it gives him a foothold.
People get offended by the words or actions of others, & often sermons. They feel every sermon is intentionally aimed at them. They might say; “no one spoke to me, the pastor shook my hand but his eyes were on another person.” Daily we all are presented with tons of opportunities to get offended every single second of our lives.
People who become offended in a church, usually move on to another church. Since they never deal with their spirit of offense, they keep moving around looking for a perfect church; a church that will never hurt their feelings. The truth of the matter is there is no such thing as a church that will never hurt our feelings.
CONSIDER THE LOWLY PORCUPINE
If you’re walking through the woods & you hear a rattling sound, step lightly. It could be a deadly rattlesnake but you could also be in the proximity of a rodent called the porcupine.
The adult porcupine is about three feet long & weighs between 20 & 30 pounds. It’s known to rustle its quills to warn a potential predator to back off. In a worse case scenario [small animals such as dogs usually get the worst injuries] you could end up trying to pull out a bunch of barbed quills. The porcupines don’t have to aim perfectly either because they have on average 30,000 quills to throw, with fish-hook like barbs in them, located all over their bodies except their faces. [Thanks Wikipedia.]
When threatened the porcupine attacks by moving backward or sideways into the aggressor & the quills lodge in the aggressor’s skin. Every time the pierced victim moves, the quills penetrate further into its body. If the quills pierce vital organs the victim can die.
HAVE YOU NOTICED THERE ARE PORCUPINE PEOPLE?
We’ve all taken some quills along the way & to be truthful we’ve all thrown a few quills. There are some people who- through the look on their face & their body language seem to be saying,-“You take a chance if you mess with me. I have plenty of quills & I won’t hesitate to use them.” These “quill throwers” are raspy & harsh & if you have even the shortest of encounters with them you will doubtless come away carrying quills.
We meet “quill throwers” in all levels of life. They are in hospitals, doctor’s offices, schools, restaurants, department stores, driving down hi-ways & even in churches. You probably have one or two in your extended family.
Not only are there “Quill throwers,” there are also “Quill carriers.” If you’ve ever seen a church fight or for that matter a family feud you are aware of this. Quill carriers are folk who’ve taken some quills in life & have never gotten rid of them. Many times it’s because they don’t want to be healed. They savor the pain caused by quills.
GOD’S WORD SPEAKS TO THE PORCUPINE PROBLEM
In 1 Peter 4: there is what some call “The Peter Prescription.” Verse 8 says;--Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.
Notice Peter says—ABOVE ALL-love each other deeply. ……This is a biblical mandate! It means make every effort, -- go all out—make it priority one—love as if your life depended on it.
It may be painful to hear but the main reason we are super-bothered by others & the quills they throw at us is simple; we just don’t have the “love covering” we need to absorb the hurt & lighten up about the barbs thrown at us.
Notice Peter doesn’t say love covers-up sins, but love covers-over a multitude of sins.
When we don’t forgive others who trespass against us, or hit us with quills, the reason is—there’s not enough love to “cover it over.” Again…Love covers over a multitude of sins.
Love gets a little confusing because we mean all kinds of different things when we talk about love. I love to fish & I love chocolate ice cream however I have a much deeper commitment to my wife than I do those things. But I use the same word, love.
In the church we’re always saying-God is love-therefore we should love too but what do we mean when we say that? When we step out of the spiritual realm we have Hollywood & T.V presenting movies about love like Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve got mail, Titanic, Friends, & Dawson’s Creek. These things can’t help but affect us, & some of our expectations grow out of watching them. Harlequin Romance Magazines sells 130 million books each year; books purporting to tell us about love. Some of it might be good & some of it bad so it’s important that we understand what we’re really talking about when we speak of love.
In 1 Corinthians, Paul wrote to a church that had all the spiritual gifts but they argued constantly. They had asserted how smart & gifted they were & so Paul had been critiquing this complicated & conflicted Corinthian church. The Love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13 comes as almost an intrusion in the flow of the letter. Paul took great care to explain to them that though they had all these phenomenal gifts, anything minus love equals nothing. Zero.
When we think of love in the way the world presents it we’re usually talking about romantic love which is based on physical desirability. This love assumes that the loved- one is attractive & it assumes incredible emotional intensity so that one can’t help but pursue the loved one. But this is a far cry from what Paul is talking about because he writes love is more than an emotion. It’s capable of even loving the unlovable.
Sometimes when we use the word love we’re speaking of tolerance; you do your thing & I’ll do mine. Tolerance is good but it’s not the kind of love Paul is talking about. Sometimes love will compel us to be intolerant & demand change in an individual. Sometimes love will have to be tough, as in intervening in the life of a loved one who’s bound by drugs or other substances. It’s clear that tolerance isn’t the kind of love Paul’s talking about.
Sometimes love will be used as a cause; we love the environment so we wear wrist- bands & T-shirts to protest things that hurt the environment, but this isn’t the love Paul is talking about. Some of the meanest people in the world parade behind the banner of love for this or that cause & in crusading for tolerance; they can be so intolerant they’re downright dangerous. John Lennon wrote a song called “Give peace a chance,” & all the time he was at war with the Beatles. Their personal relationships were in shambles & they were calling the world to peace. Like the man who said, “I love mankind- its people I hate.”
The love Paul speaks about isn’t even friendship. Sometimes people will get sentimental & feel they have so much in common with an individual that they’ll say, “I love you.” There might even be an awkward hug & a few tears because the friendship touches them in such a way as to be thought of as love. Like two drunks in a bar who get a little lubricated & say, “I love you, man.” This isn’t the kind of love Paul is talking about.
As a matter of fact Paul isn’t going to let us guess what he’s talking about, he gets very concrete about love. He says love is patient. It can relax in the present. Love is willing to accept slow change & to try again. Love is patient & kind. Love is warm & sympathetic. It sees & feels the difficulties of the other person. It’s not cold & analytical. Love is kind & doesn’t envy. Love doesn’t boast & isn’t proud. Love avoids abrasive & inflammatory language. Love listens. Love is a dialogue. Love doesn’t scold a person like they were a family pet. Love isn’t easily angered. Love is more than biting the tongue; it works at the inner core of us.
Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes & perseveres. Love is constantly hoping for change in people & doesn’t give up after one good try. Love is going to try & try & try again. Love isn’t what we hear celebrities talk about on The Oprah Show.
Have you ever thought about the fact that right in the middle of the happy, romantic & love-filled marriage vows we start talking about better or worse, richer or poorer, sickness & in health? Just when we’re speaking of this feel-good love, we imagine those terrible scenarios. Why do we do that? It’s because deep inside we all want love that is secure. Deep down we know there is real, all embracing love. We want that love for ourselves & we want to be able to give it too. And so there it is in the vows- in the marriage ceremony.
But keep in mind; the love Paul speaks about is bigger than married love because he’s not talking to married couples. He’s talking to the church & he’s telling them this is the kind of loving relationships they should have. It’s the kind of love God loves us with.
FORGIVING THE QUILL THROWERS
These next words will be some of the most important words you’ll ever read because if you & I don’t get this thing called forgiveness right, we’ll miss the heart of the gospel. I am swinging this axe with great humility because I find forgiveness such a struggle. More than once in my life I’ve had people I trusted to prove unworthy of that trust by doing everything in their power to hurt me. As you know these kinds of people almost never ask forgiveness. But even in cases where I’ve been asked to forgive, & I’ve given that forgiveness to the best of my ability, I’d be less than honest if I didn’t say I still struggle with it. As Paul said, “I die daily.”
There’s no greater passage in the entire Bible that opens the heart of God on forgiveness than the narrative in Matthew chapter eighteen. I’m sure you’re familiar with it.
Even the disciples were having a hard time with forgiveness, so Peter came out & laid the difficulty of it right at the feet of Jesus. The Rabbinic teaching of the day said you should forgive someone up to three times & after that you could stop forgiving. To be on the safe side Peter doubled that & added one for magnanimity sake. He asked, “Lord when somebody messes me over, how many times should I allow that to happen before I stop forgiving them? Seven times?”
Jesus said, “No, Not seven times. Seventy times seven.” We’d be missing the point here if we think Jesus was talking about a literal number. Jesus was actually talking here about how grace should operate in the life of the believer when it comes to the difficulty of forgiveness.
So Jesus told a simple, crystal-clear, scintillating parable & explained the issue of forgiveness to His disciples as well as you & me. We don’t have to be rocket scientists, bible scholars or great theologians to get the point of this parable.
It’s a story about a king & his servant. The king has loaned his servant money & decides to call in the loan. It’s pay-back time. Servant A is the first man we meet. He has run up a whopping tab, roughly 12 million dollars. The point is, it’s such a vast sum it’s impossible to pay back. The servant is unable to pay so the king took the next step & ordered the servant & his wife & children to be sold into slavery & his entire estate to be put on the auction block. At least the king can salvage a little bit of money on this deal.
But the servant begins to beg for mercy. He’s trying to buy time. He’s hoping the king will cut him some slack. He literally pleads for his life. Then the most unexpected thing happens; like a bolt from the blue the king totally forgives & cancels the entire debt. Suddenly servant, wife, children, & estate are off the auction block.
Now put yourself in that servant’s shoes. How would you be feeling at that moment? When somebody gives you a break in traffic aren’t you more likely then to give someone else a break? But after all that forgiveness, servant A leaves as if nothing good has happened.
Enter servant B. Servant B owes servant A about $1.80 in today’s money. Like a scene from The Godfather, servant A says to servant B, “I’m going to remove your kneecaps unless you pay up.” Servant A shows servant B no mercy, instead he has servant B thrown into prison. We can agree that servant A is a jerk.
But there are always other eyes watching & someone went & told the king the whole story. Now for the second time servant A is called before the king. The king has another turn-around & this time his pity has turned to anger. He lowers the boom on servant A & throws him in prison.
The story is over for servant A & B but it’s not over for Peter & it’s not over for you & me. Jesus says, -- “Unless you & I forgive our brothers & sisters from the heart we’re going to wind up just like servant A.” And, oh, how God has forgiven the debt that you & I have run up. It’s far greater than 12 million dollars. The results of the tab are eternal death & separation from God in hell.
GOD IS EXTREMELY OBSESSIVE ABOUT FORGIVENESS
God is so obsessive that He mandates & orders forgiveness & just like any other scriptural mandate it’s for our own good. God knows that you & I will never be able to move toward wholeness, live victoriously & be healed until we let go of resentment, give up on revenge, & let Him take the quills out we’ve collected over the years.
The mistake we make is to look at the person who has wronged us & what they’ve done to us. This parable reminds us that’s a mistake. We need to look at who God is & what He’s done for us. There are no limits to forgiveness because there’s no limit to God’s grace.
The following is nothing new to most Christians but I have a feeling if we really took it seriously it would change the way we view the Lord’s Prayer.
Right in the middle of the Lord’s Prayer is a phrase that you & I, if we’re not careful will pray mindlessly. “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” Have we honestly thought about what we’re asking God to do here? Have you ever felt like falling silent at this point? We’re asking God to forgive us, to treat us --exactly the way we deal with other folks who’ve wronged us.
THE MOST PROFOUND, PUREST, HIGHEST, & FINEST EXAMPLE OF FORGIVENESS IN THE BIBLE HAPPENED WHEN JESUS HUNG ON THE CROSS.
He was condemned to death by evil men who plotted against him & produced lying witness to convict Him. As He surveyed the howling mob cheering His suffering, the man who knew no sin, the only innocent man who ever walked this sin cursed planet uttered the words that still ring across the centuries; “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.” [Luke 23:34] Those 11 tortured words sweep away all our nonsensical excuses & reveal the barrenness of our hearts. They rip the cover off our unrighteous unforgiveness & show it for what it is.
Many of us say, “If only the people who hurt me would show some remorse, some sorrow, then maybe I would forgive them.” But consider Jesus on the cross. No one seemed sorry, quite the contrary-- they laughed, mocked & jeered Him. They hurled insults at Him. The people who killed Him were pleased with themselves. Pilate washed his hands of the whole sordid affair. The Jewish leaders hated Him with a fierce irrational hatred. They were happy to see Him suffer & die.
Evil was in the air that day. The forces of darkness had done their work & Jesus would soon be in a tomb. No one said, “I was wrong, this is a mistake.” And yet He said, “Father forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing,” --this is precisely what we must say to the quill throwers; the people who hurt us deliberately & repeatedly.
We must say it to those who intentionally attack us.
We must say it to those who casually & thoughtlessly wound us.
We must say it to those closest to us, to our husband or wife, to our children, to our parents, to our friends, to our neighbors, to our brothers & sisters.
“Father forgive them” is what we must say if we want to follow Christ.
Every Blessing,
John
Friday, January 2, 2009
A New Way To Count Your Blessings
By John Stallings
A man bought a brand new Alpha Romeo & was so proud of it he wanted to celebrate.
So he went to his Catholic priest & asked, “Father, will you bless my new Alpha Romeo?” The priest said, “certainly, but what’s an Alpha Romeo?” “Never mind said the man, you wouldn’t understand.”
Then he went to a United Methodist Church & asked the pastor “Sir, would you bless my Alpha Romeo?” He said, “Certainly I will but what kind of dog is an Alpha Romeo?”
Exasperated, the man saw a Unitarian Church down the block & walked in & asked the pastor, “I just bought a new Alpha Romeo. Would you bless it?”
The Unitarian minister jumped up & exclaimed, “Fantastic! Would you give me a ride in it? Oh, wait, uh, what’s a blessing?”
There are probably others like me who’ve never seen an Alpha Romeo, & certainly have never gone for a ride in one, but we know exactly what a blessing is.
The Hebrew word for “bless” & “blessings” in its various usages is often the form of the word “esher,” which simply means “happiness.” Forms of that word are found more than forty times in scripture, including the statement of David in Psalm 144:15—Happy are the people whose God is the Lord.
But there’s another Hebrew word for “bless” found in the Old Testament about four-hundred times. It’s the word “barak” & it reflects something promised to someone lower in rank. A parent would promise to give his or her estate to a child. A slave-owner would pledge to bless his slave at a point in the future by setting him or her free. Most important for us, it refers to the promise of God, given to those who TRUST in Him.
You’ve probably seen the following article because it’s made the rounds via the internet. If I knew who to give credit for it I would gladly do so. I have somewhat revised & edited it.
“If you live in America & your parents are still alive & still married, you are very rare.
If you have clothes on your back, food in your fridge, a roof over your head & a place to sleep you’re richer than 75% of this world. If you have money in the bank & in your wallet, you’re among the top 8% of the worlds wealthy.
If you woke up this morning with more health than illness you are more blessed than the million who’ll not survive this week. If you’ve never been to jail, been in a war, been tortured or been so hungry you’d gladly eat from a dumpster, you’re ahead of 500 million people in the world. If you can go to church without fear of arrest, torture or death you’re more blessed than 3 billion in the world.”
On the average, if you did the math, you’d in all probability count 90 major blessing categories with roughly 10 real problems. That’s—90/10. This is good to know & to keep uppermost in our minds because it shows that our blessings exceed our problems.
As a matter of fact, looking at life with the attitude of counting our blessings, not our problems will change us from negative to positive thinkers in a heartbeat. To put it even more succinctly, the attitude of counting our blessings will cause us to be happier & have enough spiritual victory to constructively face our problems.
ADVERTISING PROMOTES DISCONTENT
We have a whole industry in the U.S devoted to fanning the flames of discontent. Last year in the America, 143.3 billion dollars was spent on advertising. Of the 180 countries for which we have statistics, that’s greater than the entire Gross National Product of all but 35 of them. [Wickipedia.org.]
The whole point of advertising is to make us unhappy with what we have, leaving us with the feeling that it’s outdated & old fashioned. The message we get pounded with is to discard what we have & buy something different. We see prettier houses, newer appliances & more appealing material things of every kind.
A world system encourages us to focus on what we don’t have so we’ll go out & regularly spur the economy. But if we act on this negativity, it will be impossible for us to be happy because we dwell on what we don’t have rather than what we do have. See how that works? So in actuality, we have to learn to live the exact opposite of what our society encourages; always keeping our blessings uppermost in our minds
COUNTING OUR BLESSINGS
I’ve found that when we’re thankful for what we have its hard to be mad at people. There’s just something positive that happens to us when we’re thankful. Angry people are people who feel that somehow life hasn’t been fair to them. But the truth is, they have enough to make them happy if they knew how to appreciate it. If people lost everything they had for a few days & got it back, that would cure them.
Most of us will miss out on life’s big prizes, such as The Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize, the Oscars, the Tony’s, & the Emmys. But we’re all eligible for life’s small pleasures; A pat on the back, a nine pound bass, a full moon, an empty parking space, a crackling fire, a great meal, a glorious sunset, & hot soup.
Do you thank God each morning for the very fact that He woke you up & you’re alive & kicking? Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but every day above ground is a good day.
AMERICA
Let’s talk about how blessed we are to be Americans. I know we’re going through some rough times right now, & we have many challenges but we still live in a blessed country. Many of us make more in one week than some people in other countries make in an entire year.
If you’ve ever traveled outside the U.S you know there’s just no place on earth like this land. Because of my experience in overseas travel, I can’t help but be upset when I hear people criticizing America. Every time I’ve visited a foreign country I’ve felt like kissing the ground when I got home. Don’t misunderstand me; It wasn’t because I didn’t have a great time or that I wasn’t with some wonderful people, it’s just that outside America there are so many things you have to be aware of.
I’m not running down other countries; however I truly believe that if everyone in the U.S would travel abroad for a few weeks, we’d have a lot more folk loving & respecting this great nation in which we live.
This is going to get a little “nitty-gritty” but there are a few things we need to be reminded of. Most everywhere you go outside America you have to watch the food you eat & the water you drink. When we stop at a rest stop here in the States we just assume there’ll be a fairly clean bathroom & certainly there’ll be some toilet paper. Am I right? But in many countries I’ve visited, the bathroom will be a hole in the ground. Forget the paper. Even if it’s available you have to pay extra for it. I could tell you stories.
We just take the good things for granted in our great country don’t we? When we go to the store the produce is sparklingly clean & abundant. There are several varieties of apples, oranges, grapefruit, lettuce, carrots, tomatoes & we can be almost certain the produce has been handled in a sanitary way. I learn about a new fruit or vegetable almost every time I go to the store.
In other countries; -- not so fast; you have to be careful what you eat. You pick up a piece of fruit in Mexico & eat it & you’ll probably get “Montezuma’s revenge.” You drink the water & you’ll get so sick that you’ll pray to die for about two weeks until its run its course—no pun intended. You may be safe in foreign countries if you go to certain upscale hotels to eat but I’ve seen my family all get sick overseas eating in carefully selected places. That’s just the way it is.
If you go to the Middle East, you’ll get Pharaoh’s revenge if you’re not careful. I’ve traveled with large groups when everyone in the group had diarrhea. I can tell you for sure, in most third world countries, all you have to do is smell the air & you know they’re not doing things just right when it comes to waste disposal.
In many foreign countries you have to watch to keep from stepping in filth on the streets. I don’t live in a rich community but in our neighborhood it’s illegal for a person to walk their dog & allow it to foul up the streets or other people’s yards. And dogs are not allowed to run loose in the neighborhood. I’m amazed at how clean the streets are kept & often find myself giving thanks that I live in a country with such high standards & so many resources.
I’m not for a moment going to suggest that America hasn’t made its mistakes. But you & I know-- this country doesn’t try to take over other countries, even when we win a war with them. A lot of folk got all bent out of shape over America liberating 50 million people in Iraq & Afghanistan, as if we committed a crime in doing so.
But look what Sadam Hussein did in invading Kuwait. What do you think he’d have done if he had the power America has? Its been said that if a nation wants to be rebuilt, all they have to do is attack us & when we finish kicking their posterior, we’ll go in & rebuild their country. You may remember, that’s what the Marshall plan was all about after World War 11.
FREEDOM!!!
We live in a land of freedom. Think about this; if you were found with a Bible in Saudi Arabia you could & probably would be decapitated. As you well know we have freedom of religion in this country. Do you think for a moment that people are this free everywhere?
I repeat, we are truly a free people. Have you ever had anyone to question your comings & goings? No one monitors when we go, where we go & how we go. It’s not that way in many parts of the world. In moving around in other countries, I’ve had the people at customs read every scrap of paper I had in my briefcase. We can ask questions in America & we can criticize the leadership. We can even run down our leaders without being shot or hanged. Try that in Iran. Cuba’s Castro pulls people out of bed in the middle of the night & throws them in jail for writing a poem he didn’t like.
We’ve grown up with these freedoms & we just take them for granted, but folks if we’re not vigilant we could very well lose what we have. Your pastor can stand in the pulpit & preach the gospel without the fear of going to jail for it, now that’s freedom much of the world doesn’t have.
I know there are corrupt cops but don’t we have relatively good law enforcement in this country? In some countries where I’ve been, if you have a “fender-bender,” you could be pulled from your car & beaten by the onlookers. You might have a wreck & call the law & a few hours later two cops show up, then stand around & discuss it between themselves. Also, bribery in law enforcement is huge in many foreign countries.
In one Caribbean country, Juda & I had our music CDs impounded at customs & we couldn’t afford to pay the entrance fee to get them into the country. The local pastor who’d invited us for meetings had a brother who was returning from New York & he was on our flight. When he saw what was happening he paid the fees & got us through customs. We later paid him back.
On my list of blessings is the medical care we have in this country. In the last couple of months we’ve had to avail ourselves of local ER facilities because of blood pressure issues Juda experienced. Thankfully she’s fine now but I can’t say enough positive things about the intense care she received. What a blessing it is to know when we need help in the middle of the night there is at our disposal a bevy of medically trained young men & women whose sole aim it is to make us comfortable while, irregardless of our rank in society they do all possible to save our lives & extend their length.
A NEW CONCEPT IN COUNTING YOUR BLESSINGS
As a rule, when we think of our blessings we automatically think of things God has added to our lives. But we should also be thankful for the things we no longer have to have. What if you sat down & made a list of things you used to think you couldn’t live without but now know you can? It could be a dream you had for your life that consumed all your energy but God has taken it from you & you have found, “Yes, I can live without that.”
It may be a new job you just had to have or a new account you set your hopes on. It may be a person around whom you built your life but now that person is gone. It was difficult for you to let go but you did, & now you’re stronger for it. It may be something you fought for, strived for, lived for, worked for & when you got it you found it wasn’t as important as you once thought.
Your list may contain things that were quite proper in themselves. Most of the things on your list will not be bad or evil or sinful. It’s anything that has happened in your life in the last year about which you can say, “God has shown me that I don’t have to have that in order to be happy.”
And what about times of pain & suffering which seemed to be for no good purpose but turned out to be blessings in disguise? That too should be on your list of blessings.
Have you ever thought about how important it is to have hope in this life? Do you know how many people don’t have any hope in life at all? There may be someone reading this piece that only has a slight glimmer of hope for their future.
SPIRITUAL BLESSINGS
In Ephesians 1:3 Paul wrote; Blessed be the God & father of our Lord Jesus Christ who hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ….
In order to have these blessings we must accept & obey Christ. This means believing in Him as the Son of God & confessing faith in His name before men, after which He adds us to His church. If you aren’t a Christian let me urge you to trust Christ right now for your salvation.
Paul also said, ---We aren’t like those who have no hope?
1 Peter 1:3 says,--Blessed be God & Father of our Lord Jesus Christ which according to His abundance has begotten us again to a lively HOPE by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
THE BLESSINGS OF THE CHURCH
What about the church itself? Do you thank God for the blessing of the church? Do you thank God for your brothers & sisters? Many times I think about the great gospel workers who went before us. Many of them risked their lives & are now on the ropes financially because of all the years they spent beating the bushes to see folk saved & blessed.
Do we thank God for each other? Do we pray for each other? Are we thankful that we have places we can come together & hear beautiful music & sing songs of worship? God’s people are a blessing, don’t you agree?
Some time ago I came across a letter written by a woman named Lois Kaufman after the death of her husband & her two subsequent tumor operations. [The letter was published in the Biblical Bulletin, a publication of the Biblical Theological Seminary in Hatfield Pennsylvania.] She says;
Dear Jesus,
I’ve written a lot of “Thank yous” lately but this is my first one to you. Until now I didn’t appreciate your gifts to me these past several months.
Thank you for taking Don home to be with you. Now I’ll never be concerned with what the future holds for him. His days are guaranteed. Thank you for giving him such a wonderful Christmas. Thank you for making his last birthday last Sunday his very best.
Thank you for putting me in the hospital three weeks after he died & showing me the way you could use his death in my life. I wasn’t always sure how to approach others with the Gospel, but now you have given me so many openings I can hardly handle them all.
Thank you for my recent surgery & for the lessons it taught me. Especially for showing me how much I needed you. Thanks for letting me see what it’s like to face surgery & suffering without you as I watched the difference in the lives of my roommates.
Thank you for the lessons Becky & Lori [her daughters] have learned from this. I could never have taught them the way you did. That’s because of the great Teacher you are. I can’t wait to see what you give them on their heavenly report cards.
You know Jesus; I wouldn’t have planned my life this way. In fact, I would have planned it just the opposite. I would have sought to avoid death’s knocks. I would have ducked out on the surgeries & tried to pretend Christians were kept well by you all the time. But I would have missed out on so much.
The kids are sorry they couldn’t be with their daddy on father’s day but we were glad he could be with both his earthly & heavenly Father this year.
Oh, I could go on with this letter, but I could never cover everything I have to thank you for. So I’ll send more, but for now please accept this as a beginning.
GRATEFULLY YOURS,
LOIS
A song was written in 1897 called “Count your blessings.” The words were written by Johnson Oatman Jr. & the music was written by Edwin Excell. I remember singing it in church as a kid.
It seemed like just another song to me at the time but I’ve begun to understand its importance. Here’s the chorus;
Count your blessings name them one by one,
Count your blessings see what God has done.
Count your blessings; name them one by one,
Count your many blessings see what God has done.
Blessings,
John
A man bought a brand new Alpha Romeo & was so proud of it he wanted to celebrate.
So he went to his Catholic priest & asked, “Father, will you bless my new Alpha Romeo?” The priest said, “certainly, but what’s an Alpha Romeo?” “Never mind said the man, you wouldn’t understand.”
Then he went to a United Methodist Church & asked the pastor “Sir, would you bless my Alpha Romeo?” He said, “Certainly I will but what kind of dog is an Alpha Romeo?”
Exasperated, the man saw a Unitarian Church down the block & walked in & asked the pastor, “I just bought a new Alpha Romeo. Would you bless it?”
The Unitarian minister jumped up & exclaimed, “Fantastic! Would you give me a ride in it? Oh, wait, uh, what’s a blessing?”
There are probably others like me who’ve never seen an Alpha Romeo, & certainly have never gone for a ride in one, but we know exactly what a blessing is.
The Hebrew word for “bless” & “blessings” in its various usages is often the form of the word “esher,” which simply means “happiness.” Forms of that word are found more than forty times in scripture, including the statement of David in Psalm 144:15—Happy are the people whose God is the Lord.
But there’s another Hebrew word for “bless” found in the Old Testament about four-hundred times. It’s the word “barak” & it reflects something promised to someone lower in rank. A parent would promise to give his or her estate to a child. A slave-owner would pledge to bless his slave at a point in the future by setting him or her free. Most important for us, it refers to the promise of God, given to those who TRUST in Him.
You’ve probably seen the following article because it’s made the rounds via the internet. If I knew who to give credit for it I would gladly do so. I have somewhat revised & edited it.
“If you live in America & your parents are still alive & still married, you are very rare.
If you have clothes on your back, food in your fridge, a roof over your head & a place to sleep you’re richer than 75% of this world. If you have money in the bank & in your wallet, you’re among the top 8% of the worlds wealthy.
If you woke up this morning with more health than illness you are more blessed than the million who’ll not survive this week. If you’ve never been to jail, been in a war, been tortured or been so hungry you’d gladly eat from a dumpster, you’re ahead of 500 million people in the world. If you can go to church without fear of arrest, torture or death you’re more blessed than 3 billion in the world.”
On the average, if you did the math, you’d in all probability count 90 major blessing categories with roughly 10 real problems. That’s—90/10. This is good to know & to keep uppermost in our minds because it shows that our blessings exceed our problems.
As a matter of fact, looking at life with the attitude of counting our blessings, not our problems will change us from negative to positive thinkers in a heartbeat. To put it even more succinctly, the attitude of counting our blessings will cause us to be happier & have enough spiritual victory to constructively face our problems.
ADVERTISING PROMOTES DISCONTENT
We have a whole industry in the U.S devoted to fanning the flames of discontent. Last year in the America, 143.3 billion dollars was spent on advertising. Of the 180 countries for which we have statistics, that’s greater than the entire Gross National Product of all but 35 of them. [Wickipedia.org.]
The whole point of advertising is to make us unhappy with what we have, leaving us with the feeling that it’s outdated & old fashioned. The message we get pounded with is to discard what we have & buy something different. We see prettier houses, newer appliances & more appealing material things of every kind.
A world system encourages us to focus on what we don’t have so we’ll go out & regularly spur the economy. But if we act on this negativity, it will be impossible for us to be happy because we dwell on what we don’t have rather than what we do have. See how that works? So in actuality, we have to learn to live the exact opposite of what our society encourages; always keeping our blessings uppermost in our minds
COUNTING OUR BLESSINGS
I’ve found that when we’re thankful for what we have its hard to be mad at people. There’s just something positive that happens to us when we’re thankful. Angry people are people who feel that somehow life hasn’t been fair to them. But the truth is, they have enough to make them happy if they knew how to appreciate it. If people lost everything they had for a few days & got it back, that would cure them.
Most of us will miss out on life’s big prizes, such as The Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize, the Oscars, the Tony’s, & the Emmys. But we’re all eligible for life’s small pleasures; A pat on the back, a nine pound bass, a full moon, an empty parking space, a crackling fire, a great meal, a glorious sunset, & hot soup.
Do you thank God each morning for the very fact that He woke you up & you’re alive & kicking? Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but every day above ground is a good day.
AMERICA
Let’s talk about how blessed we are to be Americans. I know we’re going through some rough times right now, & we have many challenges but we still live in a blessed country. Many of us make more in one week than some people in other countries make in an entire year.
If you’ve ever traveled outside the U.S you know there’s just no place on earth like this land. Because of my experience in overseas travel, I can’t help but be upset when I hear people criticizing America. Every time I’ve visited a foreign country I’ve felt like kissing the ground when I got home. Don’t misunderstand me; It wasn’t because I didn’t have a great time or that I wasn’t with some wonderful people, it’s just that outside America there are so many things you have to be aware of.
I’m not running down other countries; however I truly believe that if everyone in the U.S would travel abroad for a few weeks, we’d have a lot more folk loving & respecting this great nation in which we live.
This is going to get a little “nitty-gritty” but there are a few things we need to be reminded of. Most everywhere you go outside America you have to watch the food you eat & the water you drink. When we stop at a rest stop here in the States we just assume there’ll be a fairly clean bathroom & certainly there’ll be some toilet paper. Am I right? But in many countries I’ve visited, the bathroom will be a hole in the ground. Forget the paper. Even if it’s available you have to pay extra for it. I could tell you stories.
We just take the good things for granted in our great country don’t we? When we go to the store the produce is sparklingly clean & abundant. There are several varieties of apples, oranges, grapefruit, lettuce, carrots, tomatoes & we can be almost certain the produce has been handled in a sanitary way. I learn about a new fruit or vegetable almost every time I go to the store.
In other countries; -- not so fast; you have to be careful what you eat. You pick up a piece of fruit in Mexico & eat it & you’ll probably get “Montezuma’s revenge.” You drink the water & you’ll get so sick that you’ll pray to die for about two weeks until its run its course—no pun intended. You may be safe in foreign countries if you go to certain upscale hotels to eat but I’ve seen my family all get sick overseas eating in carefully selected places. That’s just the way it is.
If you go to the Middle East, you’ll get Pharaoh’s revenge if you’re not careful. I’ve traveled with large groups when everyone in the group had diarrhea. I can tell you for sure, in most third world countries, all you have to do is smell the air & you know they’re not doing things just right when it comes to waste disposal.
In many foreign countries you have to watch to keep from stepping in filth on the streets. I don’t live in a rich community but in our neighborhood it’s illegal for a person to walk their dog & allow it to foul up the streets or other people’s yards. And dogs are not allowed to run loose in the neighborhood. I’m amazed at how clean the streets are kept & often find myself giving thanks that I live in a country with such high standards & so many resources.
I’m not for a moment going to suggest that America hasn’t made its mistakes. But you & I know-- this country doesn’t try to take over other countries, even when we win a war with them. A lot of folk got all bent out of shape over America liberating 50 million people in Iraq & Afghanistan, as if we committed a crime in doing so.
But look what Sadam Hussein did in invading Kuwait. What do you think he’d have done if he had the power America has? Its been said that if a nation wants to be rebuilt, all they have to do is attack us & when we finish kicking their posterior, we’ll go in & rebuild their country. You may remember, that’s what the Marshall plan was all about after World War 11.
FREEDOM!!!
We live in a land of freedom. Think about this; if you were found with a Bible in Saudi Arabia you could & probably would be decapitated. As you well know we have freedom of religion in this country. Do you think for a moment that people are this free everywhere?
I repeat, we are truly a free people. Have you ever had anyone to question your comings & goings? No one monitors when we go, where we go & how we go. It’s not that way in many parts of the world. In moving around in other countries, I’ve had the people at customs read every scrap of paper I had in my briefcase. We can ask questions in America & we can criticize the leadership. We can even run down our leaders without being shot or hanged. Try that in Iran. Cuba’s Castro pulls people out of bed in the middle of the night & throws them in jail for writing a poem he didn’t like.
We’ve grown up with these freedoms & we just take them for granted, but folks if we’re not vigilant we could very well lose what we have. Your pastor can stand in the pulpit & preach the gospel without the fear of going to jail for it, now that’s freedom much of the world doesn’t have.
I know there are corrupt cops but don’t we have relatively good law enforcement in this country? In some countries where I’ve been, if you have a “fender-bender,” you could be pulled from your car & beaten by the onlookers. You might have a wreck & call the law & a few hours later two cops show up, then stand around & discuss it between themselves. Also, bribery in law enforcement is huge in many foreign countries.
In one Caribbean country, Juda & I had our music CDs impounded at customs & we couldn’t afford to pay the entrance fee to get them into the country. The local pastor who’d invited us for meetings had a brother who was returning from New York & he was on our flight. When he saw what was happening he paid the fees & got us through customs. We later paid him back.
On my list of blessings is the medical care we have in this country. In the last couple of months we’ve had to avail ourselves of local ER facilities because of blood pressure issues Juda experienced. Thankfully she’s fine now but I can’t say enough positive things about the intense care she received. What a blessing it is to know when we need help in the middle of the night there is at our disposal a bevy of medically trained young men & women whose sole aim it is to make us comfortable while, irregardless of our rank in society they do all possible to save our lives & extend their length.
A NEW CONCEPT IN COUNTING YOUR BLESSINGS
As a rule, when we think of our blessings we automatically think of things God has added to our lives. But we should also be thankful for the things we no longer have to have. What if you sat down & made a list of things you used to think you couldn’t live without but now know you can? It could be a dream you had for your life that consumed all your energy but God has taken it from you & you have found, “Yes, I can live without that.”
It may be a new job you just had to have or a new account you set your hopes on. It may be a person around whom you built your life but now that person is gone. It was difficult for you to let go but you did, & now you’re stronger for it. It may be something you fought for, strived for, lived for, worked for & when you got it you found it wasn’t as important as you once thought.
Your list may contain things that were quite proper in themselves. Most of the things on your list will not be bad or evil or sinful. It’s anything that has happened in your life in the last year about which you can say, “God has shown me that I don’t have to have that in order to be happy.”
And what about times of pain & suffering which seemed to be for no good purpose but turned out to be blessings in disguise? That too should be on your list of blessings.
Have you ever thought about how important it is to have hope in this life? Do you know how many people don’t have any hope in life at all? There may be someone reading this piece that only has a slight glimmer of hope for their future.
SPIRITUAL BLESSINGS
In Ephesians 1:3 Paul wrote; Blessed be the God & father of our Lord Jesus Christ who hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ….
In order to have these blessings we must accept & obey Christ. This means believing in Him as the Son of God & confessing faith in His name before men, after which He adds us to His church. If you aren’t a Christian let me urge you to trust Christ right now for your salvation.
Paul also said, ---We aren’t like those who have no hope?
1 Peter 1:3 says,--Blessed be God & Father of our Lord Jesus Christ which according to His abundance has begotten us again to a lively HOPE by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
THE BLESSINGS OF THE CHURCH
What about the church itself? Do you thank God for the blessing of the church? Do you thank God for your brothers & sisters? Many times I think about the great gospel workers who went before us. Many of them risked their lives & are now on the ropes financially because of all the years they spent beating the bushes to see folk saved & blessed.
Do we thank God for each other? Do we pray for each other? Are we thankful that we have places we can come together & hear beautiful music & sing songs of worship? God’s people are a blessing, don’t you agree?
Some time ago I came across a letter written by a woman named Lois Kaufman after the death of her husband & her two subsequent tumor operations. [The letter was published in the Biblical Bulletin, a publication of the Biblical Theological Seminary in Hatfield Pennsylvania.] She says;
Dear Jesus,
I’ve written a lot of “Thank yous” lately but this is my first one to you. Until now I didn’t appreciate your gifts to me these past several months.
Thank you for taking Don home to be with you. Now I’ll never be concerned with what the future holds for him. His days are guaranteed. Thank you for giving him such a wonderful Christmas. Thank you for making his last birthday last Sunday his very best.
Thank you for putting me in the hospital three weeks after he died & showing me the way you could use his death in my life. I wasn’t always sure how to approach others with the Gospel, but now you have given me so many openings I can hardly handle them all.
Thank you for my recent surgery & for the lessons it taught me. Especially for showing me how much I needed you. Thanks for letting me see what it’s like to face surgery & suffering without you as I watched the difference in the lives of my roommates.
Thank you for the lessons Becky & Lori [her daughters] have learned from this. I could never have taught them the way you did. That’s because of the great Teacher you are. I can’t wait to see what you give them on their heavenly report cards.
You know Jesus; I wouldn’t have planned my life this way. In fact, I would have planned it just the opposite. I would have sought to avoid death’s knocks. I would have ducked out on the surgeries & tried to pretend Christians were kept well by you all the time. But I would have missed out on so much.
The kids are sorry they couldn’t be with their daddy on father’s day but we were glad he could be with both his earthly & heavenly Father this year.
Oh, I could go on with this letter, but I could never cover everything I have to thank you for. So I’ll send more, but for now please accept this as a beginning.
GRATEFULLY YOURS,
LOIS
A song was written in 1897 called “Count your blessings.” The words were written by Johnson Oatman Jr. & the music was written by Edwin Excell. I remember singing it in church as a kid.
It seemed like just another song to me at the time but I’ve begun to understand its importance. Here’s the chorus;
Count your blessings name them one by one,
Count your blessings see what God has done.
Count your blessings; name them one by one,
Count your many blessings see what God has done.
Blessings,
John
Friday, December 26, 2008
Take A Little Honey
By John Stallings
He was an ambitious & clever liar. He was a cheat, a crook, a gyp, a con artist, a flim-flam man, a fraud, a fake, a phony, a trickster & a swindler.
He was selfish & egotistical, cold, calculating, scheming, conniving tricky & sly.
We often speak of “bottom feeders,” describing people who are low-down. Well, before God changed him he would be said to have reached the lowest possible place, sunk a little lower & was looking up through the bottom.
He was the younger of twin brothers who came out of his mother’s womb holding his older brother’s heal. His name really meant “grabber” before God changed it & he spent a good part of his life grabbing everything that wasn’t nailed down. If there ever was an unlikely candidate for sainthood it was this man yet he was the third of Israel’s “holy three.”
He had twelve sons & at least one daughter but unfortunately there were no women’s groups in those days to help keep up, so the fairest sex didn’t count. Most of the world is still this way. Who is this man? Right-it’s Jacob.
Among Jacob’s twelve sons was a gifted boy, a boy who was a dreamer, a boy called Joseph. Not only was Joseph a dreamer, he was a naive, unsuspecting, trusting dreamer. In fact Joseph was so young, inexperienced & naive, he wasn’t aware of a thing called jealousy. This almost proved deadly for him.
DREAMERS HAVE TO BE CAREFUL
Dreamers must be careful who they share their dreams with. There are “non-dreamers” who specialize in seeing that other people’s dreams don’t come true. In fact, these dream killers actually think they’re doing God a favor when they kill the dreams of the dreamer. If you share your heart with them there’s a good chance you’ll end up with blasted hopes & shattered dreams.
Don’t waste your dreams on the dreamless.
Joseph’s jealous brothers plotted to kill him but changed their minds & ended up putting him in a pit. Don’t miss this next point;
-- After they put their brother in a pit, they took a lunch break. Isn’t it interesting that some people are so heartless that they can attack you to the point that you are so emotionally & physically damaged that your heart is hanging on the outside of your body, & sit down to eat as though nothing has happened? As a matter of fact they’re so mean spirited they actually get a morbid sense of satisfaction out of the harm they bring to you.
But let’s move the story on. This group of slimy brothers saw a group of Ishmaelites on their way to Egypt & sold Joseph into slavery. In their minds they’d gotten rid of the dreamer but they failed to realize that Joseph was a special son of destiny. God had a plan for Joseph & that plan involved bringing him from the pit to the palace. It would be an understatement to say; -- these boys will see Joseph again.
You’ll remember that Joseph went to work at Potiphar’s house in Egypt & in the course of time Potiphar’s wife falsely accused him of rape & he landed in jail.
Years went by & it looked like Joseph would rot in prison. Meanwhile back in Canaan, Jacob & his sons are experiencing a drought. The lakes & rivers are drying up & the people are perishing & the rain won’t visit the land.
Jacob hears there’s corn & grain in Egypt & decides to send his sons down to buy all the food they can get. Unbeknownst to them, Joseph is not only alive; he’s interpreted Pharaoh’s dream & gives warning of a coming famine. He tells the king how to prepare for it by storing up food during seven years of plenty in preparation for the coming seven year famine. At last Joseph gets a break. He not only gets out of jail, he’s now second in command in all of Egypt.
Before Jacob’s sons leave for Egypt, he tells them to take gifts including myrrh, spices, balm, along with money to buy grain. But then in Genesis 43:11, he added;
---Take a little honey with you. Egypt wasn’t famous for honey but Canaan was known as a land that “flowed with milk & honey.” Honey was also used as a medium of exchange.
LOOK WITH ME AT FOUR WORDS-- “TAKE A LITTLE HONEY,”-- AS A METAPHOR FOR CHEERFULNESS, - JOY, - KINDNESS, -COMPASSION & CONSIDERATION.
Things aren’t looking good right now in our country & good-cheer is going to be necessary to survive. We’ve fought a war that’s lasted longer than the 2nd World War. We’ve seen real estate devalued & it looks like the dollar is suffering the same fate. I can’t be far off the mark to say America has the “flu” & it’s far from certain that the big doses of “antibiotics” being pumped into her [borrowed money] is going to save the patient.
2012 by all predictions is going to be rough for millions of people, especially if the economy doesn’t pick up before unemployment insurance gives out. As we face this coming year, I can’t think of anything more important than, by God's Grace maintaining a sunny, happy attitude. Here’s where the honey helps.
A lady was late for work & she was driving behind a man who was intent on not exceeding the speed limit. She honked a few times but it did no good & he just kept the same speed.
As they approached a light it turned yellow & it was one of those times when you could get through if you pushed the envelope a little. The man slowed down & stopped & the light turned red.
This was the last straw for the woman. She went ballistic & started yelling, blowing her horn, cursing & worse. A cop pulled up & ordered her out of the car with her hands in the air. He arrested her & took her downtown where he put her in a holding cell.
About two hours later he came back & let the now calm woman out. He apologized to her & said he verified that the car was hers. She asked why he’d arrested her in the first place. He explained that when he pulled up behind her she was cursing & yelling & coming completely unhinged. He said he looked at the Christian license plate holder, the silver fish emblem & the “honk if you love Jesus” bumper sticker & he thought it was obvious that she’d stolen the car.
Sometimes we Christians react to things around us is such a way as to appear anything but Christians don’t we? What kind of testimony is it for the Lord when we don’t have a dab of honey on us?
I’m not talking about giddiness. If we act too happy people will think we don’t understand the problem. The honey of which I speak is that deep settled peace & joy that can’t help but be contagious.
I’m not advocating that we go around acting like we’ve just had a Valium smoothie or just landed in “The Sea of Tranquility.” However, a Christian who’s a chronic complainer, a dispenser of disillusionment, & a purveyor of pessimism needs to examine the boat in which he is crossing the sea of life & see if perhaps he’s sprung a leak.
I acknowledge that there’s enough in this world to make a person sour, somber, cynical, bitter & sad especially if we dwell on the ingratitude, misunderstanding, misrepresentation, failure & hypocrisy of others. But often the greatest problem is our own attitude, not the objective situation. Carrying a little honey can make all the difference.
Jesus was a “Man of sorrows & acquainted with grief & He felt more pain & loneliness than you & I will ever feel, yet He said, --My peace I leave with you…..” James said,--Count it all joy when ye fall into divers testing…..James 1:2. This is actually a command to carry a little honey.
THE HONEY OF COMPASSION AND CONSIDERATION
Author Somerset Maugham had a mother who was celebrated internationally for her exquisite beauty. His father however looked like he fell out of the ugly tree & hit every limb on the way down. People would often ask Maugham’s mother why she chose such a physically unattractive man. This sounds rather crass but its non-the-less true. She would always answer this way;-“He has never hurt my feelings.”
That would be a rather hard standard for most of us to live up to [sad to say I’ve failed the test more than I’d like to admit,] but the greater question is; how many married people even try to keep from tongue- lashing their spouse at the drop of a hat, & they’ll drop the hat themselves?
Could it be the divorce rate is so high because of something as seemingly simple as consideration?
Recently I heard a news report that said young people actually have physical fights while they’re out on dates. I was shocked. The report didn’t say that the girls were fighting the boys off to keep from being raped; that would be understandable. It was couples who’d been dating only a short time or were on their first date who got into shouting matches that ended in physical violence. The report said that more boys reported being physically attacked by girls than visa versa.
What does this kind of behavior portend for the institution of marriage? Unmarried people should begin now to learn to treat the opposite sex with honor & respect. It’s a habit they’ll need when they’re married. As an example, if little boys are taught at home to put the toilet seat down it won’t be a problem for them to be considerate of their wives & put the toilet seat down when they’re married.
MORE MARRIAGES DIE FROM INFLEXIBILITY THAN EVER DIE FROM ADULTRY, ALCOHOLISM OR ABUSE.
Marriage is constant negotiation & compromise from where we set the thermostat to where we go to eat. 1 Corinthians 13:5 says,--Love does not demand its own way. [LB.]
I can remember when I was a young preacher, I used to preach stem-winding sermons in an effort to lift the lid on Hell & allow the folk to smell the smoke. I was overly zealous & sometimes went too far in tanning the hides of the faithful. When I heard other preachers & they really burned-hides I’d say, “Now that’s what I call preaching.”
Please don’t misunderstand, I believe the Word should be preached without compromise, & the whole council should be declared without fear or favor, but I’ve learned that a little honey goes a long way. Through the years I’ve discovered that a little humor also helps.
Only unwise preachers say things like, “If you can’t see that you don’t have the brains of a Billy-goat.” Or, “You don’t have enough sense to pound sand in a rat-hole.” Or this one, --“Anybody with one eye & half sense can see my point.” A "one word" put down that seems to have surficed lately is simply calling people "stupid." Not good!!
I heard about a preacher who saw a man he knew was unsaved at a filling station pumping gas while smoking a cigarette. This of course is a very unwise thing to do, to say the least. The preacher yelled out, “If you don’t think there’s a hell, just blow yourself up with that cigarette & gasoline & you’ll change your mind in less than five seconds.”
This minister didn’t care what anybody thought, he felt everyone else was wrong & he was always right. This kind of behavior sounds a lot like the Pharisee’s of Jesus’ day to me. We don’t have to be vipers to tell people the truth. When we’re dealing with men’s immortal souls, often a little honey will help the medicine go down. Don’t you agree?
TAKE THE HONEY OF JOY WITH YOU
The Bible has many references to joy; the NASB uses joy in 170 verses & the KJV uses it 155 times. There are 15 different Hebrew words & 8 Greek words to describe joy & some are used as a noun & a verb. We recently celebrated Christmas & how many times did we sing “Joy to the world, the Lord has come?”
But Christmas to some people isn’t joyful at all. What if joy doesn’t come, what do we do then? The problem is- joy isn’t a commodity that can be produced or bought, sold or stolen. We can’t download joy. We can’t get it on discount at Penny’s. We can’t win it in a lawsuit or turn it on with a remote control. We can’t earn it or inherit it.
Joy is a gift we can only receive, an expression of God’s free grace. We can’t tell joy what to do. We can’t control it. We can’t manufacture it. Joy can’t be bought at any price.
We spent the day at Disney World a couple of months ago & I didn’t see a single face with joy on it. Most of the kids were frowning if not crying & most adults had looks of consternation on their faces, rushing from one place to the next as if trying to beat the clock & cram everything possible into one day.
We can get a certain sense of happiness in life from things we do; a good job, a successful relationship, a nice vacation or good health. But joy is different. Joy is as unpredictable as the one who bestows it. Happiness we can try to achieve but joy we can only receive.
It’s like the difference in contentment & peace….achievement & fulfillment…. Affection & love…optimism & hope…getting a cure & getting a healing….making a commitment & being born again. We are all on a journey to find joy but in truth it’s joy that must come to us.
Weeping may endure for a night but JOY COMES in the morning. Psalm 30:5
We can’t have joy unless we live close to the Lord, seek His face not His hands & feast upon His words, precepts & principles. Then we can be “honey carriers” letting the sweetness of Christ be manifest to the joyless ones we encounter each day.
THE HONEY OF KINDNESS
For God’s sake - be kind. The honey of kindness is essential if people are going to get along. Have you noticed the rudeness & ill-manners in our world? The “honey of human kindness” is desperately needed.
Let me tell you one of the most beautiful stories in the Bible.
There was once a boy who lived in ancient Israel about 1,000 years before Christ named Mephibosheth, son of Jonathan, grandson of King Saul, the first king of Israel.
Up until the age of five, Mephibosheth lived at home with his parents. Outside this small family circle national events were moving quickly toward a day of trouble. His grandpa Saul was losing his grip both on his sanity & on his kingdom. He was enraged by David’s popularity & chased him for years trying to kill him.
One day the Philistines killed Saul & Jonathon on the battlefield & when this news reached Jonathon’s home, Mephibosheth’s nurse grabbed him up & took off running. This was a brutal time & when one leader won a victory over another, they would systematically kill all the man’s family to prevent later uprisings.
Mephibosheth’s nurse knew David would now be king, & she knew of the hostility between Saul & David, so in her haste to protect Mephibosheth, she began to run, but accidentally dropped him & he was permanently injured. We’re not sure of the nature of the injury but the upshot was he was lame in both feet.
Now 15 or 20 years have passed & David is consolidated in his power as king. There is peace all around & David finally has time to do some thinking. If you want to see why David was –a man after God’s own heart—you’ll find it in this story.
You’ll remember how much David loved Jonathan, Saul’s son. One day out of the blue, David asks—Is there anyone still left of the house of Saul to whom I can show kindness for Jonathan’s sake?”
Isn’t that beautiful? David wants to bless some relative, any relative of Saul—FOR JONATHAN’S SAKE!
Here is David holding all the cards with absolute power & he wants to show kindness to a relative of Saul, a man who tried to destroy him, because of his love for the man’s son Jonathan.
Well, Mephibosheth is Saul’s grandson so his name is given to David. Mephibosheth is located living in a little backwater town of Lo Debar. He was brought to live in David’s palace & eat at his table with the rest of David’s family, --for the rest of his life.
I know you see the parallel between you & me & Mephibosheth. Just as he, we were poor, needy & crippled by sin, but God, out of his great heart of love has invited us to come to his table where all manner of good things are spread; to come & dine, the only requirement being that we accept by faith the full & free pardon of our sins.
I remember an old song we used to sing when I was a boy;
Jesus has a table spread where the saints of God are fed, He invites His chosen people come & dine.
We like Mephibosheth will always eat at His table.
This superlative act of kindness on David’s part was done, not because of his love for Mephibosheth. Jonathan was dead & David couldn’t show kindness to him, so he did the next best thing & showed kindness to his cripple son,--For Jonathan’s sake.
Listen to Matthew 25:40….Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of mine, even the least of them, you did it to me.
If you & I can’t think of any other reason to carry the honey of kindness, we should be kind—FOR GOD”S SAKE!
When we’re kind to someone for God’s sake we won’t go unrewarded. Listen to Mark 9:41,--For whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because of your name as followers of Christ, he shall not lose his reward.
I think the strongest statement in the Bible about love is 1 John 4:8;
He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for GOD IS LOVE.
Does that verse strike a chord deep within your heart & humble you as it does me? I hope so.
As we enter this New Year, will you join me in taking the honey of kindness, joy, love & forgiveness each & every day by God’s grace?
King David was prepared to show the kindness of God to a cripple who didn’t deserve it. Certainly David was under no obligation to do what he did; he did it for Jonathan’s sake.
Yes, you & I will meet the unlovely& the unlovable on our journey in 2012 We will again be hurt by the insensitivity & downright hostility of others. That’s more or less a given. The question is will we take enough honey with us to be able to show kindness toward others, FOR GOD”S SAKE?
Blessings & happy New Year,
And don’t forget to “take a little honey.”
Blessings,
John
He was an ambitious & clever liar. He was a cheat, a crook, a gyp, a con artist, a flim-flam man, a fraud, a fake, a phony, a trickster & a swindler.
He was selfish & egotistical, cold, calculating, scheming, conniving tricky & sly.
We often speak of “bottom feeders,” describing people who are low-down. Well, before God changed him he would be said to have reached the lowest possible place, sunk a little lower & was looking up through the bottom.
He was the younger of twin brothers who came out of his mother’s womb holding his older brother’s heal. His name really meant “grabber” before God changed it & he spent a good part of his life grabbing everything that wasn’t nailed down. If there ever was an unlikely candidate for sainthood it was this man yet he was the third of Israel’s “holy three.”
He had twelve sons & at least one daughter but unfortunately there were no women’s groups in those days to help keep up, so the fairest sex didn’t count. Most of the world is still this way. Who is this man? Right-it’s Jacob.
Among Jacob’s twelve sons was a gifted boy, a boy who was a dreamer, a boy called Joseph. Not only was Joseph a dreamer, he was a naive, unsuspecting, trusting dreamer. In fact Joseph was so young, inexperienced & naive, he wasn’t aware of a thing called jealousy. This almost proved deadly for him.
DREAMERS HAVE TO BE CAREFUL
Dreamers must be careful who they share their dreams with. There are “non-dreamers” who specialize in seeing that other people’s dreams don’t come true. In fact, these dream killers actually think they’re doing God a favor when they kill the dreams of the dreamer. If you share your heart with them there’s a good chance you’ll end up with blasted hopes & shattered dreams.
Don’t waste your dreams on the dreamless.
Joseph’s jealous brothers plotted to kill him but changed their minds & ended up putting him in a pit. Don’t miss this next point;
-- After they put their brother in a pit, they took a lunch break. Isn’t it interesting that some people are so heartless that they can attack you to the point that you are so emotionally & physically damaged that your heart is hanging on the outside of your body, & sit down to eat as though nothing has happened? As a matter of fact they’re so mean spirited they actually get a morbid sense of satisfaction out of the harm they bring to you.
But let’s move the story on. This group of slimy brothers saw a group of Ishmaelites on their way to Egypt & sold Joseph into slavery. In their minds they’d gotten rid of the dreamer but they failed to realize that Joseph was a special son of destiny. God had a plan for Joseph & that plan involved bringing him from the pit to the palace. It would be an understatement to say; -- these boys will see Joseph again.
You’ll remember that Joseph went to work at Potiphar’s house in Egypt & in the course of time Potiphar’s wife falsely accused him of rape & he landed in jail.
Years went by & it looked like Joseph would rot in prison. Meanwhile back in Canaan, Jacob & his sons are experiencing a drought. The lakes & rivers are drying up & the people are perishing & the rain won’t visit the land.
Jacob hears there’s corn & grain in Egypt & decides to send his sons down to buy all the food they can get. Unbeknownst to them, Joseph is not only alive; he’s interpreted Pharaoh’s dream & gives warning of a coming famine. He tells the king how to prepare for it by storing up food during seven years of plenty in preparation for the coming seven year famine. At last Joseph gets a break. He not only gets out of jail, he’s now second in command in all of Egypt.
Before Jacob’s sons leave for Egypt, he tells them to take gifts including myrrh, spices, balm, along with money to buy grain. But then in Genesis 43:11, he added;
---Take a little honey with you. Egypt wasn’t famous for honey but Canaan was known as a land that “flowed with milk & honey.” Honey was also used as a medium of exchange.
LOOK WITH ME AT FOUR WORDS-- “TAKE A LITTLE HONEY,”-- AS A METAPHOR FOR CHEERFULNESS, - JOY, - KINDNESS, -COMPASSION & CONSIDERATION.
Things aren’t looking good right now in our country & good-cheer is going to be necessary to survive. We’ve fought a war that’s lasted longer than the 2nd World War. We’ve seen real estate devalued & it looks like the dollar is suffering the same fate. I can’t be far off the mark to say America has the “flu” & it’s far from certain that the big doses of “antibiotics” being pumped into her [borrowed money] is going to save the patient.
2012 by all predictions is going to be rough for millions of people, especially if the economy doesn’t pick up before unemployment insurance gives out. As we face this coming year, I can’t think of anything more important than, by God's Grace maintaining a sunny, happy attitude. Here’s where the honey helps.
A lady was late for work & she was driving behind a man who was intent on not exceeding the speed limit. She honked a few times but it did no good & he just kept the same speed.
As they approached a light it turned yellow & it was one of those times when you could get through if you pushed the envelope a little. The man slowed down & stopped & the light turned red.
This was the last straw for the woman. She went ballistic & started yelling, blowing her horn, cursing & worse. A cop pulled up & ordered her out of the car with her hands in the air. He arrested her & took her downtown where he put her in a holding cell.
About two hours later he came back & let the now calm woman out. He apologized to her & said he verified that the car was hers. She asked why he’d arrested her in the first place. He explained that when he pulled up behind her she was cursing & yelling & coming completely unhinged. He said he looked at the Christian license plate holder, the silver fish emblem & the “honk if you love Jesus” bumper sticker & he thought it was obvious that she’d stolen the car.
Sometimes we Christians react to things around us is such a way as to appear anything but Christians don’t we? What kind of testimony is it for the Lord when we don’t have a dab of honey on us?
I’m not talking about giddiness. If we act too happy people will think we don’t understand the problem. The honey of which I speak is that deep settled peace & joy that can’t help but be contagious.
I’m not advocating that we go around acting like we’ve just had a Valium smoothie or just landed in “The Sea of Tranquility.” However, a Christian who’s a chronic complainer, a dispenser of disillusionment, & a purveyor of pessimism needs to examine the boat in which he is crossing the sea of life & see if perhaps he’s sprung a leak.
I acknowledge that there’s enough in this world to make a person sour, somber, cynical, bitter & sad especially if we dwell on the ingratitude, misunderstanding, misrepresentation, failure & hypocrisy of others. But often the greatest problem is our own attitude, not the objective situation. Carrying a little honey can make all the difference.
Jesus was a “Man of sorrows & acquainted with grief & He felt more pain & loneliness than you & I will ever feel, yet He said, --My peace I leave with you…..” James said,--Count it all joy when ye fall into divers testing…..James 1:2. This is actually a command to carry a little honey.
THE HONEY OF COMPASSION AND CONSIDERATION
Author Somerset Maugham had a mother who was celebrated internationally for her exquisite beauty. His father however looked like he fell out of the ugly tree & hit every limb on the way down. People would often ask Maugham’s mother why she chose such a physically unattractive man. This sounds rather crass but its non-the-less true. She would always answer this way;-“He has never hurt my feelings.”
That would be a rather hard standard for most of us to live up to [sad to say I’ve failed the test more than I’d like to admit,] but the greater question is; how many married people even try to keep from tongue- lashing their spouse at the drop of a hat, & they’ll drop the hat themselves?
Could it be the divorce rate is so high because of something as seemingly simple as consideration?
Recently I heard a news report that said young people actually have physical fights while they’re out on dates. I was shocked. The report didn’t say that the girls were fighting the boys off to keep from being raped; that would be understandable. It was couples who’d been dating only a short time or were on their first date who got into shouting matches that ended in physical violence. The report said that more boys reported being physically attacked by girls than visa versa.
What does this kind of behavior portend for the institution of marriage? Unmarried people should begin now to learn to treat the opposite sex with honor & respect. It’s a habit they’ll need when they’re married. As an example, if little boys are taught at home to put the toilet seat down it won’t be a problem for them to be considerate of their wives & put the toilet seat down when they’re married.
MORE MARRIAGES DIE FROM INFLEXIBILITY THAN EVER DIE FROM ADULTRY, ALCOHOLISM OR ABUSE.
Marriage is constant negotiation & compromise from where we set the thermostat to where we go to eat. 1 Corinthians 13:5 says,--Love does not demand its own way. [LB.]
I can remember when I was a young preacher, I used to preach stem-winding sermons in an effort to lift the lid on Hell & allow the folk to smell the smoke. I was overly zealous & sometimes went too far in tanning the hides of the faithful. When I heard other preachers & they really burned-hides I’d say, “Now that’s what I call preaching.”
Please don’t misunderstand, I believe the Word should be preached without compromise, & the whole council should be declared without fear or favor, but I’ve learned that a little honey goes a long way. Through the years I’ve discovered that a little humor also helps.
Only unwise preachers say things like, “If you can’t see that you don’t have the brains of a Billy-goat.” Or, “You don’t have enough sense to pound sand in a rat-hole.” Or this one, --“Anybody with one eye & half sense can see my point.” A "one word" put down that seems to have surficed lately is simply calling people "stupid." Not good!!
I heard about a preacher who saw a man he knew was unsaved at a filling station pumping gas while smoking a cigarette. This of course is a very unwise thing to do, to say the least. The preacher yelled out, “If you don’t think there’s a hell, just blow yourself up with that cigarette & gasoline & you’ll change your mind in less than five seconds.”
This minister didn’t care what anybody thought, he felt everyone else was wrong & he was always right. This kind of behavior sounds a lot like the Pharisee’s of Jesus’ day to me. We don’t have to be vipers to tell people the truth. When we’re dealing with men’s immortal souls, often a little honey will help the medicine go down. Don’t you agree?
TAKE THE HONEY OF JOY WITH YOU
The Bible has many references to joy; the NASB uses joy in 170 verses & the KJV uses it 155 times. There are 15 different Hebrew words & 8 Greek words to describe joy & some are used as a noun & a verb. We recently celebrated Christmas & how many times did we sing “Joy to the world, the Lord has come?”
But Christmas to some people isn’t joyful at all. What if joy doesn’t come, what do we do then? The problem is- joy isn’t a commodity that can be produced or bought, sold or stolen. We can’t download joy. We can’t get it on discount at Penny’s. We can’t win it in a lawsuit or turn it on with a remote control. We can’t earn it or inherit it.
Joy is a gift we can only receive, an expression of God’s free grace. We can’t tell joy what to do. We can’t control it. We can’t manufacture it. Joy can’t be bought at any price.
We spent the day at Disney World a couple of months ago & I didn’t see a single face with joy on it. Most of the kids were frowning if not crying & most adults had looks of consternation on their faces, rushing from one place to the next as if trying to beat the clock & cram everything possible into one day.
We can get a certain sense of happiness in life from things we do; a good job, a successful relationship, a nice vacation or good health. But joy is different. Joy is as unpredictable as the one who bestows it. Happiness we can try to achieve but joy we can only receive.
It’s like the difference in contentment & peace….achievement & fulfillment…. Affection & love…optimism & hope…getting a cure & getting a healing….making a commitment & being born again. We are all on a journey to find joy but in truth it’s joy that must come to us.
Weeping may endure for a night but JOY COMES in the morning. Psalm 30:5
We can’t have joy unless we live close to the Lord, seek His face not His hands & feast upon His words, precepts & principles. Then we can be “honey carriers” letting the sweetness of Christ be manifest to the joyless ones we encounter each day.
THE HONEY OF KINDNESS
For God’s sake - be kind. The honey of kindness is essential if people are going to get along. Have you noticed the rudeness & ill-manners in our world? The “honey of human kindness” is desperately needed.
Let me tell you one of the most beautiful stories in the Bible.
There was once a boy who lived in ancient Israel about 1,000 years before Christ named Mephibosheth, son of Jonathan, grandson of King Saul, the first king of Israel.
Up until the age of five, Mephibosheth lived at home with his parents. Outside this small family circle national events were moving quickly toward a day of trouble. His grandpa Saul was losing his grip both on his sanity & on his kingdom. He was enraged by David’s popularity & chased him for years trying to kill him.
One day the Philistines killed Saul & Jonathon on the battlefield & when this news reached Jonathon’s home, Mephibosheth’s nurse grabbed him up & took off running. This was a brutal time & when one leader won a victory over another, they would systematically kill all the man’s family to prevent later uprisings.
Mephibosheth’s nurse knew David would now be king, & she knew of the hostility between Saul & David, so in her haste to protect Mephibosheth, she began to run, but accidentally dropped him & he was permanently injured. We’re not sure of the nature of the injury but the upshot was he was lame in both feet.
Now 15 or 20 years have passed & David is consolidated in his power as king. There is peace all around & David finally has time to do some thinking. If you want to see why David was –a man after God’s own heart—you’ll find it in this story.
You’ll remember how much David loved Jonathan, Saul’s son. One day out of the blue, David asks—Is there anyone still left of the house of Saul to whom I can show kindness for Jonathan’s sake?”
Isn’t that beautiful? David wants to bless some relative, any relative of Saul—FOR JONATHAN’S SAKE!
Here is David holding all the cards with absolute power & he wants to show kindness to a relative of Saul, a man who tried to destroy him, because of his love for the man’s son Jonathan.
Well, Mephibosheth is Saul’s grandson so his name is given to David. Mephibosheth is located living in a little backwater town of Lo Debar. He was brought to live in David’s palace & eat at his table with the rest of David’s family, --for the rest of his life.
I know you see the parallel between you & me & Mephibosheth. Just as he, we were poor, needy & crippled by sin, but God, out of his great heart of love has invited us to come to his table where all manner of good things are spread; to come & dine, the only requirement being that we accept by faith the full & free pardon of our sins.
I remember an old song we used to sing when I was a boy;
Jesus has a table spread where the saints of God are fed, He invites His chosen people come & dine.
We like Mephibosheth will always eat at His table.
This superlative act of kindness on David’s part was done, not because of his love for Mephibosheth. Jonathan was dead & David couldn’t show kindness to him, so he did the next best thing & showed kindness to his cripple son,--For Jonathan’s sake.
Listen to Matthew 25:40….Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of mine, even the least of them, you did it to me.
If you & I can’t think of any other reason to carry the honey of kindness, we should be kind—FOR GOD”S SAKE!
When we’re kind to someone for God’s sake we won’t go unrewarded. Listen to Mark 9:41,--For whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because of your name as followers of Christ, he shall not lose his reward.
I think the strongest statement in the Bible about love is 1 John 4:8;
He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for GOD IS LOVE.
Does that verse strike a chord deep within your heart & humble you as it does me? I hope so.
As we enter this New Year, will you join me in taking the honey of kindness, joy, love & forgiveness each & every day by God’s grace?
King David was prepared to show the kindness of God to a cripple who didn’t deserve it. Certainly David was under no obligation to do what he did; he did it for Jonathan’s sake.
Yes, you & I will meet the unlovely& the unlovable on our journey in 2012 We will again be hurt by the insensitivity & downright hostility of others. That’s more or less a given. The question is will we take enough honey with us to be able to show kindness toward others, FOR GOD”S SAKE?
Blessings & happy New Year,
And don’t forget to “take a little honey.”
Blessings,
John
Friday, December 12, 2008
I'm Dreaming Of a RIGHT Christmas
By John Stallings
A pastor worked in his study all through Christmas Eve preparing for the Christmas morning service.
Being very tired he dozed off & dreamt of a world to which the Savior had never come. In his dream he was looking around his home but there were no Christmas decorations, no candles or Christmas wreaths.
He walked into his study & thumbed through his library but found no books about Jesus, & the Bible he found ended at Malachi. He noticed that the last words of the Bible were, LEST I COME & SMITE THE EARTH WITH A CURSE. He walked out unto the streets & found no church spires pointing heavenward.
He went back inside & a knock on the door brought a request to visit a dying mother. He went to her bedside but could find no comforting scriptures, for the gospels were not there. Paul’s comforting letters that included passages about life beyond the grave were missing. There was no promise beyond the grave. Even John’s book of Revelation was not there.
He could only bow his head & weep in hopeless desperation. Two days later he stood by the mother’s grave & conducted her burial but he could give no word of changed hearts & glorious resurrections, only, “ashes to ashes & dust to dust.” It was just one long, last, final farewell.
Suddenly nearby music awoke him from his sleep & he was sobbing uncontrollably. He realized he was hearing his own church choir in the sanctuary next door practicing for their Christmas service & singing “Oh come let us adore Him.” The fact was, Jesus had come & His coming had split history in two, giving hope for eternal life to all who trust in Him.
WHAT WOULD A WORLD WITHOUT CHRIST LOOK LIKE?
Had Christ not come we’d have no New Testament, no gospel, no church, no Lord’s Day, no repentance, no forgiveness of sins, no changed & transformed hearts & lives & no hope of His eternal presence.
The angel wouldn’t have told Mary, -With God nothing is impossible.
The angels wouldn’t have sung to the shepherds, Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, good will to men.
One of my favorite secular Christmas songs has always been ErvIn Berlin’s White Christmas. Though it’s always been a dream of mine, I can’t say that I ever experienced a white Christmas. In the last few years that dream has faded & been replaced with the desire to celebrate each year, a Right Christmas.
What does a right Christmas look like?
A RIGHT CHRISTMAS IS BEAUTIFULLY SIMPLE & SIMPLY BEAUTIFUL.
Have you ever tried to explain the real meaning of Christmas to a child? It isn’t easy. There is so much tradition mixed up with spiritual truth that it’s sometimes hard to tell Jesus from Santa Claus & the Wise men from the snowmen.
The very young have puzzled looks on their faces as they try to sort it all out. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight….Christmas is baby Jesus’ birthday, but I get the presents?” They end up thinking;-“Is this a great religion or what?”
THE MOST NEGLECTED CHRISTMAS VERSE OF ALL
There is one verse that for me sums up the real meaning of Christmas better than any verse in the Bible. Within this short verse we find the answer to the question, what is the right attitude about Christmas & --What is a right Christmas?
And here is the verse---11 Corinthians 8:9: For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich.
Let’s examine this verse for in it I believe we find the essence of a right attitude toward Christmas.
A. HE WAS RICH
I read last week that Wal-Mart is the richest & most successful business that’s ever existed on planet earth. My computer even knows who Wal-mart is because it just corrected my spelling of the name.
This brings up a question in my mind: “Why don’t we let Wal-mart bail out General Motors?” But I digress. Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-mart was a “rich-en.” He was among the group of old boys who would light their cigars with a hundred dollar bill. The average rich ride first class. The medium rich charter a jet. The super rich own the jet. The incredibly rich own the airline.
But Jesus Christ owns the skies. The Bible says---HE WAS RICH! This is speaking of what He had in heaven before He came to earth. You can take the richest men who ever lived, the most powerful rulers who ever lived, the wisest men who ever lived, the mightiest generals who ever lived, the strongest athletes in every sport, the most spell-binding orators, the greatest political leaders & any other great men on earth, calculate their wealth…power…skill…genius…wisdom…insight…& ability. Whatever that vast sum comes to, Jesus had more in heaven. No man or collection of men could touch Him. The pre-existent Jesus Christ wasn’t a pauper but a man who lived in glorious untold splendor.
He Was Rich!!
B. HE BECAME POOR
When you & I celebrate a right Christmas we keep in mind the lowly baby Jesus who became poor. Exactly what does that mean? He was rich in eternity but He became poor when He moved into time. He left heaven for a remote village in a forgotten province, to join a despised race, to be born of an obscure teenage peasant girl in a stable, wrapped in rags & placed in a feeding-trough instead of a crib.
But Jesus didn’t act “high & mighty.” He knew it all but wasn’t a “know it all.” He owned all the stuff but never did “strut His stuff.” He wasn’t a “name-dropper.” He wasn’t a showoff. He never asked people, “Want me to beam you into the 21st century?” Jesus could have constantly been saying things like, “I’ve got some property on Jupiter.” But Jesus’ purpose wasn’t to show-off but to show-up. Jesus was holding the entire Universe together but you couldn’t tell it by watching or listening to Him. He wasn’t like that.
Here is the creator of the universe who looked no different than the guy down the street. Jesus became poor & pitched His tent among us for a while. He didn’t Lord it over us but loved us so much He was willing to die for us. He wasn’t on an ego trip he was on a rescue mission. A right Christmas is one that remembers that we are something special to God.
Notice that Jesus became poor. You & I are made poor by circumstances but Jesus of His own free will became poor. The man who was richer than any man has ever been gave it up freely & became poorer than any man has ever been.
If we have a right Christmas we’ll be remembering that the heart of it all, the heart of the gospel is that the richest person in the universe of His own free will became poorer than the poor.
I love the story of the atheist who would never go to church with his Christian family. One Christmas season, his wife & children were readying themselves to go to Sunday morning service & pleaded with him to go just this once. It was a special Christmas service & there’d be beautiful music.
The unbelieving man refused to go, as usual, telling his family it would just be a waste of time for him, that Christmas was just a silly old tradition about a man who never really existed.
The family left for church leaving the father sitting in his recliner near a large picture window that overlooked a big back yard. It was snowing & the sight of the flakes building up on the barn behind the house was breathtaking. He thought how much it looked like a Norman Rockwell painting.
Then something happened that almost startled him out of his chair. A flock of about twenty birds, not seeing the glass window, flew right into it, leaving several of them wounded & flapping around on the ground. The man, pitying the poor birds slowly got up & walked toward the window to get a better look. He stood & watched the birds slowly regain their composure & then begin to wander around the backyard in a state of confusion. He went & dressed & got some bread from the kitchen thinking he’d try to feed the birds if they’d allow him to get close enough.
His worst fears were realized when he approached the dazed & confused birds when they fluttered away, seeing every move he made as a threat to them. This went on for quite some time & the man finally had an idea. If he could open the big barn doors, & get the nearly frozen birds to go in they could have shelter from the blistering winds & maybe live to fly again.
The man slowly moved across the barnyard & opened the doors, placing the bread crumbs on the ground hoping the birds natural survival instinct would kick in. The man tried every trick he could think of to get those disoriented birds to see that life was within their reach just a few feet away, but the birds stubbornly refused to co-operate.
Finally the man, not able to stand the bitter cold had to give up & go back inside to warm himself. As he stood at the window & watched the birds, still wandering aimlessly around the yard, the thought came to him; there was only one way he could ever hope to get those birds to go into the barn, but it wasn’t within his power to do it.
The only way the birds could be saved was if he himself could become a bird & join the little flock & lead them into the safety of the barn.
When his family returned from church, the man shared the experience with them. Through that visual experience with the birds God had shown him the meaning of Christmas. Bethlehem was about God wrapping himself in human flesh & becoming a man. He entered the human race & became poor like us so that we would hear Him saying, “I love you.” Immanuel—God with us.
C. THAT WE MIGHT BECOME RICH
Here is “The right Christmas” message,—Jesus became poor so that we who were poor might become rich. Think abut that. All the riches & grace of God is available to me by virtue of my relationship with Jesus Christ. All the power & all the right standing with God are mine through Him.
You may say, “You don’t deserve that.” Indeed I don’t but that’s the grace of our Lord Jesus. If I deserved it I wouldn’t need Jesus, but through my relationship with Him suddenly I’m a rich man.
The theologians have a word for it. They call it the doctrine of imputation. He takes my sin & I take His righteousness. That’s grace by association.
Do you remember the wedding of Lady Diana & Prince Charles? We saw a T.V movie about it recently. Diana didn’t exactly come from poverty but compared to the royal family, her family was poor. But now, by virtue of her marriage to Prince Charles, all the wealth, all the prestige, all the power, all the pomp & glory of the royal family belong to her. Once she was an outsider; now she has access to the Queen. Did she earn such a lofty standing? No. It was imputed to her by virtue of her relationship to Prince Charles. Imputed honor- imputed wealth -& imputed standing.
What do you call a poor girl who marries a prince? You call her “Your Highness.”
So it is that when we came to Jesus we were spiritual paupers. Our hands were empty & our pockets were bare. We had nothing to offer & no claim to make. All our lives it had been, one step forward & two steps back but when we came to Him, we were fed, clothed, filled, forgiven, & crowned with every good thing.
Jesus took away our rags & placed around us His own righteousness. Everything that was against us was gone & everything we lacked we now have. All this happened because of Christmas. He who was rich became poor for my sake, that through His poverty I might be rich.
The Son of God became a son of man in order that the sons of men might become the sons of God.
Again, what is a right Christmas?
A—He was rich
B---He became poor
C---That we might become rich
And that’s the true meaning of Christmas.
Only one thing remains. Have you found the Christ of Christmas & asked Him to be your Savior? Have you placed your trust in Him? Have you given up your spiritual poverty for the riches He offers to you?
One of my favorite Christmas songs is “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” I love this verse;
How silently, how silently
This wondrous gift was giv’n
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessing of His heav’n.
No ear may hear His coming,
But in the world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive Him still,
The dear Christ enters in.
And so He does! May that be our experience as we all enjoy,
A RIGHT CHRISTMAS!
Merry Christmas everyone!
Blessings,
John
A pastor worked in his study all through Christmas Eve preparing for the Christmas morning service.
Being very tired he dozed off & dreamt of a world to which the Savior had never come. In his dream he was looking around his home but there were no Christmas decorations, no candles or Christmas wreaths.
He walked into his study & thumbed through his library but found no books about Jesus, & the Bible he found ended at Malachi. He noticed that the last words of the Bible were, LEST I COME & SMITE THE EARTH WITH A CURSE. He walked out unto the streets & found no church spires pointing heavenward.
He went back inside & a knock on the door brought a request to visit a dying mother. He went to her bedside but could find no comforting scriptures, for the gospels were not there. Paul’s comforting letters that included passages about life beyond the grave were missing. There was no promise beyond the grave. Even John’s book of Revelation was not there.
He could only bow his head & weep in hopeless desperation. Two days later he stood by the mother’s grave & conducted her burial but he could give no word of changed hearts & glorious resurrections, only, “ashes to ashes & dust to dust.” It was just one long, last, final farewell.
Suddenly nearby music awoke him from his sleep & he was sobbing uncontrollably. He realized he was hearing his own church choir in the sanctuary next door practicing for their Christmas service & singing “Oh come let us adore Him.” The fact was, Jesus had come & His coming had split history in two, giving hope for eternal life to all who trust in Him.
WHAT WOULD A WORLD WITHOUT CHRIST LOOK LIKE?
Had Christ not come we’d have no New Testament, no gospel, no church, no Lord’s Day, no repentance, no forgiveness of sins, no changed & transformed hearts & lives & no hope of His eternal presence.
The angel wouldn’t have told Mary, -With God nothing is impossible.
The angels wouldn’t have sung to the shepherds, Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, good will to men.
One of my favorite secular Christmas songs has always been ErvIn Berlin’s White Christmas. Though it’s always been a dream of mine, I can’t say that I ever experienced a white Christmas. In the last few years that dream has faded & been replaced with the desire to celebrate each year, a Right Christmas.
What does a right Christmas look like?
A RIGHT CHRISTMAS IS BEAUTIFULLY SIMPLE & SIMPLY BEAUTIFUL.
Have you ever tried to explain the real meaning of Christmas to a child? It isn’t easy. There is so much tradition mixed up with spiritual truth that it’s sometimes hard to tell Jesus from Santa Claus & the Wise men from the snowmen.
The very young have puzzled looks on their faces as they try to sort it all out. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight….Christmas is baby Jesus’ birthday, but I get the presents?” They end up thinking;-“Is this a great religion or what?”
THE MOST NEGLECTED CHRISTMAS VERSE OF ALL
There is one verse that for me sums up the real meaning of Christmas better than any verse in the Bible. Within this short verse we find the answer to the question, what is the right attitude about Christmas & --What is a right Christmas?
And here is the verse---11 Corinthians 8:9: For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich.
Let’s examine this verse for in it I believe we find the essence of a right attitude toward Christmas.
A. HE WAS RICH
I read last week that Wal-Mart is the richest & most successful business that’s ever existed on planet earth. My computer even knows who Wal-mart is because it just corrected my spelling of the name.
This brings up a question in my mind: “Why don’t we let Wal-mart bail out General Motors?” But I digress. Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-mart was a “rich-en.” He was among the group of old boys who would light their cigars with a hundred dollar bill. The average rich ride first class. The medium rich charter a jet. The super rich own the jet. The incredibly rich own the airline.
But Jesus Christ owns the skies. The Bible says---HE WAS RICH! This is speaking of what He had in heaven before He came to earth. You can take the richest men who ever lived, the most powerful rulers who ever lived, the wisest men who ever lived, the mightiest generals who ever lived, the strongest athletes in every sport, the most spell-binding orators, the greatest political leaders & any other great men on earth, calculate their wealth…power…skill…genius…wisdom…insight…& ability. Whatever that vast sum comes to, Jesus had more in heaven. No man or collection of men could touch Him. The pre-existent Jesus Christ wasn’t a pauper but a man who lived in glorious untold splendor.
He Was Rich!!
B. HE BECAME POOR
When you & I celebrate a right Christmas we keep in mind the lowly baby Jesus who became poor. Exactly what does that mean? He was rich in eternity but He became poor when He moved into time. He left heaven for a remote village in a forgotten province, to join a despised race, to be born of an obscure teenage peasant girl in a stable, wrapped in rags & placed in a feeding-trough instead of a crib.
But Jesus didn’t act “high & mighty.” He knew it all but wasn’t a “know it all.” He owned all the stuff but never did “strut His stuff.” He wasn’t a “name-dropper.” He wasn’t a showoff. He never asked people, “Want me to beam you into the 21st century?” Jesus could have constantly been saying things like, “I’ve got some property on Jupiter.” But Jesus’ purpose wasn’t to show-off but to show-up. Jesus was holding the entire Universe together but you couldn’t tell it by watching or listening to Him. He wasn’t like that.
Here is the creator of the universe who looked no different than the guy down the street. Jesus became poor & pitched His tent among us for a while. He didn’t Lord it over us but loved us so much He was willing to die for us. He wasn’t on an ego trip he was on a rescue mission. A right Christmas is one that remembers that we are something special to God.
Notice that Jesus became poor. You & I are made poor by circumstances but Jesus of His own free will became poor. The man who was richer than any man has ever been gave it up freely & became poorer than any man has ever been.
If we have a right Christmas we’ll be remembering that the heart of it all, the heart of the gospel is that the richest person in the universe of His own free will became poorer than the poor.
I love the story of the atheist who would never go to church with his Christian family. One Christmas season, his wife & children were readying themselves to go to Sunday morning service & pleaded with him to go just this once. It was a special Christmas service & there’d be beautiful music.
The unbelieving man refused to go, as usual, telling his family it would just be a waste of time for him, that Christmas was just a silly old tradition about a man who never really existed.
The family left for church leaving the father sitting in his recliner near a large picture window that overlooked a big back yard. It was snowing & the sight of the flakes building up on the barn behind the house was breathtaking. He thought how much it looked like a Norman Rockwell painting.
Then something happened that almost startled him out of his chair. A flock of about twenty birds, not seeing the glass window, flew right into it, leaving several of them wounded & flapping around on the ground. The man, pitying the poor birds slowly got up & walked toward the window to get a better look. He stood & watched the birds slowly regain their composure & then begin to wander around the backyard in a state of confusion. He went & dressed & got some bread from the kitchen thinking he’d try to feed the birds if they’d allow him to get close enough.
His worst fears were realized when he approached the dazed & confused birds when they fluttered away, seeing every move he made as a threat to them. This went on for quite some time & the man finally had an idea. If he could open the big barn doors, & get the nearly frozen birds to go in they could have shelter from the blistering winds & maybe live to fly again.
The man slowly moved across the barnyard & opened the doors, placing the bread crumbs on the ground hoping the birds natural survival instinct would kick in. The man tried every trick he could think of to get those disoriented birds to see that life was within their reach just a few feet away, but the birds stubbornly refused to co-operate.
Finally the man, not able to stand the bitter cold had to give up & go back inside to warm himself. As he stood at the window & watched the birds, still wandering aimlessly around the yard, the thought came to him; there was only one way he could ever hope to get those birds to go into the barn, but it wasn’t within his power to do it.
The only way the birds could be saved was if he himself could become a bird & join the little flock & lead them into the safety of the barn.
When his family returned from church, the man shared the experience with them. Through that visual experience with the birds God had shown him the meaning of Christmas. Bethlehem was about God wrapping himself in human flesh & becoming a man. He entered the human race & became poor like us so that we would hear Him saying, “I love you.” Immanuel—God with us.
C. THAT WE MIGHT BECOME RICH
Here is “The right Christmas” message,—Jesus became poor so that we who were poor might become rich. Think abut that. All the riches & grace of God is available to me by virtue of my relationship with Jesus Christ. All the power & all the right standing with God are mine through Him.
You may say, “You don’t deserve that.” Indeed I don’t but that’s the grace of our Lord Jesus. If I deserved it I wouldn’t need Jesus, but through my relationship with Him suddenly I’m a rich man.
The theologians have a word for it. They call it the doctrine of imputation. He takes my sin & I take His righteousness. That’s grace by association.
Do you remember the wedding of Lady Diana & Prince Charles? We saw a T.V movie about it recently. Diana didn’t exactly come from poverty but compared to the royal family, her family was poor. But now, by virtue of her marriage to Prince Charles, all the wealth, all the prestige, all the power, all the pomp & glory of the royal family belong to her. Once she was an outsider; now she has access to the Queen. Did she earn such a lofty standing? No. It was imputed to her by virtue of her relationship to Prince Charles. Imputed honor- imputed wealth -& imputed standing.
What do you call a poor girl who marries a prince? You call her “Your Highness.”
So it is that when we came to Jesus we were spiritual paupers. Our hands were empty & our pockets were bare. We had nothing to offer & no claim to make. All our lives it had been, one step forward & two steps back but when we came to Him, we were fed, clothed, filled, forgiven, & crowned with every good thing.
Jesus took away our rags & placed around us His own righteousness. Everything that was against us was gone & everything we lacked we now have. All this happened because of Christmas. He who was rich became poor for my sake, that through His poverty I might be rich.
The Son of God became a son of man in order that the sons of men might become the sons of God.
Again, what is a right Christmas?
A—He was rich
B---He became poor
C---That we might become rich
And that’s the true meaning of Christmas.
Only one thing remains. Have you found the Christ of Christmas & asked Him to be your Savior? Have you placed your trust in Him? Have you given up your spiritual poverty for the riches He offers to you?
One of my favorite Christmas songs is “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” I love this verse;
How silently, how silently
This wondrous gift was giv’n
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessing of His heav’n.
No ear may hear His coming,
But in the world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive Him still,
The dear Christ enters in.
And so He does! May that be our experience as we all enjoy,
A RIGHT CHRISTMAS!
Merry Christmas everyone!
Blessings,
John
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Desperation Is Better Than Despair
By John Stallings
In Will Smith’s movie The Pursuit of happiness, Chris Gardner is a family man struggling to make ends meet. Left with only memories of his poor departed wife, he has the responsibility of raising his five-year-old son Christopher. His wife didn’t die; she just got tired of being poor-- & departed.
Chris, now a single father continues to doggedly pursue a better-paying job using every sales skill he knows. He lands an internship at a prestigious stock brokerage firm & seems to have a promising future.
Without a financial cushion Chris & his son are soon evicted from their apartment & forced to sleep in shelters, bus stations, bathrooms or wherever they can find refuge for the night.
Despite his troubles Chris continues to honor his commitment as a loving, caring father using the affection & trust his son has placed in him as an impetus to overcome the obstacles he faces.
I recently saw Gardner interviewed on The Fox Network. He was promoting his latest book & in the course of the interview he was asked his advice to people who had lost their employment due to the financial meltdown. Among other things he said; “It’s probably normal to get a little panicky-- but just don’t freeze.”
What stellar advice that is. Don’t freeze.
Now for another quote;-“If I weren’t a Christian I think I’d go mad. But my faith in God holds me. It holds me to the belief He is in some way working out His own plans through human perversities & mistakes.”
Do you know who spoke these words? They’re President Woodrow Wilson’s words. He wrote them in 1919 after the major defeat of his life, the defeat by his own U.S Congress of his great dream for an international forum- the League of Nations
No matter where you stand on the financial crisis we’re experiencing in the country today, the collapse is real, the impact on our lives is real & the economic peril for our beloved country is profound.
With the title for this message in mind, let me give you a few quick illustrations before I offer a little road map to follow in this or any crisis we may encounter in our lives.
Have you ever been really desperate? If not, have you ever observed a truly desperate person in action?
A minister friend of mine tells the story of arriving at a hospital to make a pastoral visit & seeing a woman knocking on the door of the hospital’s little prayer chapel saying “let me in, let me in.”
The pastor walked over to help her but found the door to the chapel was locked. He stopped a passing worker; “the chapel is locked.” The worker says, “We have to keep it locked. There are some kids that trashed it & we had to get all new furniture. We can’t afford to keep doing that so we have to keep it locked.”
My friend said, “Well find someone with a key” He came back with a woman who opened the door & the minister & the woman who’d been knocking on the door went in.
My friend noticed that the woman had come to the hospital suddenly; she had no make up, her hair had not been combed, it was obvious that she just threw something on. She had a look of desperation in her face & she said, “I know he’s going to die, I just know it.”
“Who?”Asked the minister.
“My husband.”
“What’s the matter?”
“He’s had a heart attack.”
“Can I get you some water?”
“No” she says.”
My friend tells her who he is & asks if he could pray. She says, “Please.”
As he starts to pray she takes over with her own prayer. The pastor saw she was getting through so he let her continue on her own.
“Lord, it’s not time to take my husband. You know that better than I do. He’s not ready, not a good time to take him. Don’t take him now. I have these kids to raise & I have no job skills, can’t find work. I quit school to marry him. If I’d known you were going to take him I’d have stayed in school! And God, what about the kids? They don’t mind now with him around & if he’s gone they’ll be as wild as bucks. This isn’t the time to take my husband!”
This woman was talking to God just as straight-forwardly as the pastor had ever heard it done before. He stayed for as long as he felt useful, then he left the chapel.
He went back the next morning. He saw the woman in the hallway outside intensive care. She had on a dress & make up & looked real nice. Before the pastor had time to ask she said, “He’s better.” She smiles, “I’m sorry about that crazy woman yesterday.”
My friend said, “You weren’t crazy.”
She says, “I guess the Lord heard one of us.”
My friend said, “He heard you.” She was desperate. She prayed out of desperation.
The pastor said,” She reached into heaven with her prayer & had God by the lapels with both hands & was screaming in God’s face: “I don’t think you’re listening!” That’s desperation.”
Sometimes faith is born in a time of desperation. Sometimes that faith doesn’t last & sometimes it does. It develops into a more complete & mature faith. Often in our desperation we realize that the faith we thought we had doesn’t work in the light of the difficulties of life & we’re opened up to a more radical, effective faith.
When we come to a situation like this woman was faced with, when we struggle with feelings we can’t control, when there is a rage inside us that we can’t contain, when the darkness is so thick we feel as though we’re suffocating in it, when we’re rendered powerless & stripped of all pretences & defenses, when our deepest questions about God are shrouded in mystery, or we’re brought low in humiliation-as strange as it may seem, we’re in a place that God will use to strengthen our faith in Him. When you & I get to the place God is all we have, that’s desperation time, & in those times we learn that He’s more than sufficient.
I heard about a man who was about to go crazy with fear because when he turned out the lights he thought he heard monsters crawling out from under his bed. He went to a psychologist for therapy. After many months of therapy the doctor was ready to give up.
Then one afternoon the guy came walking into the doctor’s office with a new spring in his step. The doctor asked what happened & he informed him he’d been cured. “I’m cured & I’ve been sleeping like a baby. My brother came to my house to visit me & cured me.” Amazed the doctor asked, “Is your brother a psychologist?”
“No, he’s a carpenter. He sawed the legs off my bed.”
This is what some people look for—quick fixes & easy answers. But this kind of faith is fragile & can be easily shattered. God wants us to have mature faith that has substance to it.
We don’t have to have all our questions answered or understand everything about God to get a healing. The little woman in Mark with the issue of blood had some wrong ideas about Jesus but she also had a desperate faith. She had it in her mind that Jesus’ clothes had some kind of magical qualities & if she touched the clothes she’d be healed. As far as I know that wasn’t in Jesus resume’, “if you’ll touch my clothes you’ll be healed.” But that faith, small as it was, caused her to have the audacious desperation to fight the crowds & get close enough to Jesus to touch his garment & God honored her effort.
Now let’s look at despair. One dictionary defines despair;-“The loss of hope. To lose hope; to give up.
I’ve told the story of the woman who rode the same bus to work every morning. One day an old man got on the bus. He was shabbily dressed & obviously down & out. She thought about what she should do to express Christian love to this poor man. She got up & took a dollar bill out of her purse, went over to the man, pressed the dollar into the palm of his hand & whispered, “Never despair, just remember, never despair.”
The next day the woman was on the bus again & the man got on at the same stop, & came back to where to woman was sitting. He took eight dollars out of his pocket & pressed the money into her hand. The woman was non-plussed & asked, “What’s this for?” He said, “Never Despair won the eight race at Monmouth Park yesterday.”
Millions in our nation & around the world are feeling the pangs of despair about the financial problems we’re experiencing. I used to find watching T.V relaxing but these days it's getting to be too much of a downer. You find yourself flipping channels & everywhere you turn you’re hearing things that bring you down. We see people dying in wars, crying over their dire financial situation, we see homes being re-possessed, washed away, blown away or burned up. We see & hear things we know are lies & have the feeling the programmers are trying to shape our political thoughts & feelings.
People are in despair all over the planet.
A man went to the doctor for an annual physical exam. The doctor came in & said to him, “You’re in terrible shape. If you don’t change your lifestyle you’re going to die & soon.” That got the man’s attention. He sat there for a minute & said, “Well, Doc, what should I do? Tell me the absolute best way I can get this turned around.”
Knowing him fairly well, the doctor said, --“Stop smoking, stop eating fried foods every time no one is looking, & stop staying out half the night drinking when you’re on the road.”
He was silent for a minute & then he said, “What’s the next best thing I can do?”
Sound familiar? But people in despair get trapped in self-destructive cycles & the cycles bring on more despair.
Now I’d like to offer a three point action plan, the best responses I know of for times when you’re frightened, anxious & can’t see a way through your circumstances.
1. Act. Don’t freeze.
If the woman with the issue of blood had allowed her condition to freeze her in place, she’d never have gotten her healing. She didn’t wait to feel better, she went as she was. Don’t wait to feel better about things, act & then you’ll feel better. Let’s put it this way; “we don’t feel our way into a different way of acting, we act our way into a different way of feeling.” Experts tell us, - “The most drastic & usually the most effective remedy for fear is direct action.”
I’ve been to New Orleans since Katrina & though there are still boulevards of broken dreams everywhere you look, you still can’t help but be impressed with the way people have rebuilt. There may be a government trailer pulled up beside the old ram- shackled house but the people, in so many cases are doing something to better their situation. How wise that is. Some people, strange as it might sound are even finding joy in their new beginnings.
The memory of that hellish storm will never be erased but many have found solace in the fact that their lives were spared & they can still work to rebuild their broken hopes & shattered dreams. Action! That’s how God wants us to react when bad things happen & hope seems to be shot. Get up & get busy rebuilding & helping the people around us.
I may have shared this before but it’s worth repeating. Years ago a young man came to me for advice. He had been fired from his job & was really down & out. He said, “John, what am I going to do? I prayed with him & shared all the scripture I could think of that seemed relevant but I could see he was still down, just sitting there looking sad & depressed.
Finally I decided to use a little shock therapy. I said “do you really want me to tell you what to do to get yourself jump-started?” He answered in the affirmative so I said, “this is going to sound elementary but on your way home buy a newspaper. Take the paper home, lay it on the kitchen table & open it to the want-ads. Get a pencil & put on your reading glasses. Then go down the list of help-wanted ads until you see a job opening you think you might like. Circle it, & then keep reading until you find two or three more that look good to you.”
I continued, “Tomorrow, get in your car & go check out the job possibilities, & when you find the job you feel best about, if they’ll hire you, take it. Now you’ll be employed again”
That man reacted as if he’d been shot through the head. He jumped up & said, O.K Brother John, I’ll do it.” He left my office grinning from ear to ear, acting like he’d been shot from a cannon & exposed to the wisdom of the ages. A few days later he called me & told me he’d found a better paying job than the one he had lost & just wanted to thank me for the advice. I had actually just pointed out the obvious.
Do you want me to tell you how I conjured up all that “wisdom?” Well, I’d been in exactly the same shape that young man was in & I realized that when life kicks the wind out of us, it can immobilize us to the point that we temporarily overlook the obvious & that’s to get up & get moving. Take action--Don’t freeze up. Get yourself to do the basics that you know have to be done. The secret to our success or failure in life is embedded somewhere in our everyday—that’s everyday-- actions.
This same formula of action works in the realm of the spirit. Pastor James told us—Draw nigh to God & He’ll draw nigh to you. James 4:8. James also informs us that faith without works is dead.
Point two. Pray.
When trouble strikes I strongly suggest you pray & pray hard. Paul asked the churches he built to pray for him. When Jesus’ disciples went to bed- He went to pray. If we had no other persuasion to pray, the fact that Jesus needed to pray should be enough.
When Hezekiah was told to get his house in order for he was going to die, he turned his face to the wall & prayed for more time. Immediately that prayer registered in the courts of heaven & God answered & gave him fifteen more years.
When Paul & Silas were in jail they prayed & sang songs & the jail broke open & they were released. Daniel prayed & lion’s mouths were locked. The three Hebrews boys prayed & Jesus ran down the starry stairway & jumped in the fiery furnace with them & they came out of the fire without the scent of smoke clinging to their garments.
When Saul/Paul was stricken blind on the Damascus turnpike, he prayed & his eyes were opened & he received the Holy Ghost. Jonah prayed in the belly of the great fish & was delivered. Prayer lifts us out of the mundane troubles of life & sets our feet on solid ground.
Point three. Trust
If a married couple can’t trust each other their marriage is worth nothing. If we can’t trust our friends they aren’t really friends. Lack of trust writ large is what we see lived out all too often in the world & to what end-? chaos & confusion. But when genuine trust exists we can relax. We can work together to achieve great things. As Christians our trust should always be in the Lord who told us;
Fear not for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters I will be with you, & through the rivers, they shall not overflow you: when you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned neither shall the flame kindle upon you. [Isaiah 43:1-2]
If you are in despair, or in desperation, I pray these simple truths will help you press through whatever stands in your way & seek the living Christ & touch Him & be made whole.
When disaster hits, do three things. Act, pray & trust, & like Woodrow Wilson, let faith in God hold you up.
Blessings,
Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!
John
In Will Smith’s movie The Pursuit of happiness, Chris Gardner is a family man struggling to make ends meet. Left with only memories of his poor departed wife, he has the responsibility of raising his five-year-old son Christopher. His wife didn’t die; she just got tired of being poor-- & departed.
Chris, now a single father continues to doggedly pursue a better-paying job using every sales skill he knows. He lands an internship at a prestigious stock brokerage firm & seems to have a promising future.
Without a financial cushion Chris & his son are soon evicted from their apartment & forced to sleep in shelters, bus stations, bathrooms or wherever they can find refuge for the night.
Despite his troubles Chris continues to honor his commitment as a loving, caring father using the affection & trust his son has placed in him as an impetus to overcome the obstacles he faces.
I recently saw Gardner interviewed on The Fox Network. He was promoting his latest book & in the course of the interview he was asked his advice to people who had lost their employment due to the financial meltdown. Among other things he said; “It’s probably normal to get a little panicky-- but just don’t freeze.”
What stellar advice that is. Don’t freeze.
Now for another quote;-“If I weren’t a Christian I think I’d go mad. But my faith in God holds me. It holds me to the belief He is in some way working out His own plans through human perversities & mistakes.”
Do you know who spoke these words? They’re President Woodrow Wilson’s words. He wrote them in 1919 after the major defeat of his life, the defeat by his own U.S Congress of his great dream for an international forum- the League of Nations
No matter where you stand on the financial crisis we’re experiencing in the country today, the collapse is real, the impact on our lives is real & the economic peril for our beloved country is profound.
With the title for this message in mind, let me give you a few quick illustrations before I offer a little road map to follow in this or any crisis we may encounter in our lives.
Have you ever been really desperate? If not, have you ever observed a truly desperate person in action?
A minister friend of mine tells the story of arriving at a hospital to make a pastoral visit & seeing a woman knocking on the door of the hospital’s little prayer chapel saying “let me in, let me in.”
The pastor walked over to help her but found the door to the chapel was locked. He stopped a passing worker; “the chapel is locked.” The worker says, “We have to keep it locked. There are some kids that trashed it & we had to get all new furniture. We can’t afford to keep doing that so we have to keep it locked.”
My friend said, “Well find someone with a key” He came back with a woman who opened the door & the minister & the woman who’d been knocking on the door went in.
My friend noticed that the woman had come to the hospital suddenly; she had no make up, her hair had not been combed, it was obvious that she just threw something on. She had a look of desperation in her face & she said, “I know he’s going to die, I just know it.”
“Who?”Asked the minister.
“My husband.”
“What’s the matter?”
“He’s had a heart attack.”
“Can I get you some water?”
“No” she says.”
My friend tells her who he is & asks if he could pray. She says, “Please.”
As he starts to pray she takes over with her own prayer. The pastor saw she was getting through so he let her continue on her own.
“Lord, it’s not time to take my husband. You know that better than I do. He’s not ready, not a good time to take him. Don’t take him now. I have these kids to raise & I have no job skills, can’t find work. I quit school to marry him. If I’d known you were going to take him I’d have stayed in school! And God, what about the kids? They don’t mind now with him around & if he’s gone they’ll be as wild as bucks. This isn’t the time to take my husband!”
This woman was talking to God just as straight-forwardly as the pastor had ever heard it done before. He stayed for as long as he felt useful, then he left the chapel.
He went back the next morning. He saw the woman in the hallway outside intensive care. She had on a dress & make up & looked real nice. Before the pastor had time to ask she said, “He’s better.” She smiles, “I’m sorry about that crazy woman yesterday.”
My friend said, “You weren’t crazy.”
She says, “I guess the Lord heard one of us.”
My friend said, “He heard you.” She was desperate. She prayed out of desperation.
The pastor said,” She reached into heaven with her prayer & had God by the lapels with both hands & was screaming in God’s face: “I don’t think you’re listening!” That’s desperation.”
Sometimes faith is born in a time of desperation. Sometimes that faith doesn’t last & sometimes it does. It develops into a more complete & mature faith. Often in our desperation we realize that the faith we thought we had doesn’t work in the light of the difficulties of life & we’re opened up to a more radical, effective faith.
When we come to a situation like this woman was faced with, when we struggle with feelings we can’t control, when there is a rage inside us that we can’t contain, when the darkness is so thick we feel as though we’re suffocating in it, when we’re rendered powerless & stripped of all pretences & defenses, when our deepest questions about God are shrouded in mystery, or we’re brought low in humiliation-as strange as it may seem, we’re in a place that God will use to strengthen our faith in Him. When you & I get to the place God is all we have, that’s desperation time, & in those times we learn that He’s more than sufficient.
I heard about a man who was about to go crazy with fear because when he turned out the lights he thought he heard monsters crawling out from under his bed. He went to a psychologist for therapy. After many months of therapy the doctor was ready to give up.
Then one afternoon the guy came walking into the doctor’s office with a new spring in his step. The doctor asked what happened & he informed him he’d been cured. “I’m cured & I’ve been sleeping like a baby. My brother came to my house to visit me & cured me.” Amazed the doctor asked, “Is your brother a psychologist?”
“No, he’s a carpenter. He sawed the legs off my bed.”
This is what some people look for—quick fixes & easy answers. But this kind of faith is fragile & can be easily shattered. God wants us to have mature faith that has substance to it.
We don’t have to have all our questions answered or understand everything about God to get a healing. The little woman in Mark with the issue of blood had some wrong ideas about Jesus but she also had a desperate faith. She had it in her mind that Jesus’ clothes had some kind of magical qualities & if she touched the clothes she’d be healed. As far as I know that wasn’t in Jesus resume’, “if you’ll touch my clothes you’ll be healed.” But that faith, small as it was, caused her to have the audacious desperation to fight the crowds & get close enough to Jesus to touch his garment & God honored her effort.
Now let’s look at despair. One dictionary defines despair;-“The loss of hope. To lose hope; to give up.
I’ve told the story of the woman who rode the same bus to work every morning. One day an old man got on the bus. He was shabbily dressed & obviously down & out. She thought about what she should do to express Christian love to this poor man. She got up & took a dollar bill out of her purse, went over to the man, pressed the dollar into the palm of his hand & whispered, “Never despair, just remember, never despair.”
The next day the woman was on the bus again & the man got on at the same stop, & came back to where to woman was sitting. He took eight dollars out of his pocket & pressed the money into her hand. The woman was non-plussed & asked, “What’s this for?” He said, “Never Despair won the eight race at Monmouth Park yesterday.”
Millions in our nation & around the world are feeling the pangs of despair about the financial problems we’re experiencing. I used to find watching T.V relaxing but these days it's getting to be too much of a downer. You find yourself flipping channels & everywhere you turn you’re hearing things that bring you down. We see people dying in wars, crying over their dire financial situation, we see homes being re-possessed, washed away, blown away or burned up. We see & hear things we know are lies & have the feeling the programmers are trying to shape our political thoughts & feelings.
People are in despair all over the planet.
A man went to the doctor for an annual physical exam. The doctor came in & said to him, “You’re in terrible shape. If you don’t change your lifestyle you’re going to die & soon.” That got the man’s attention. He sat there for a minute & said, “Well, Doc, what should I do? Tell me the absolute best way I can get this turned around.”
Knowing him fairly well, the doctor said, --“Stop smoking, stop eating fried foods every time no one is looking, & stop staying out half the night drinking when you’re on the road.”
He was silent for a minute & then he said, “What’s the next best thing I can do?”
Sound familiar? But people in despair get trapped in self-destructive cycles & the cycles bring on more despair.
Now I’d like to offer a three point action plan, the best responses I know of for times when you’re frightened, anxious & can’t see a way through your circumstances.
1. Act. Don’t freeze.
If the woman with the issue of blood had allowed her condition to freeze her in place, she’d never have gotten her healing. She didn’t wait to feel better, she went as she was. Don’t wait to feel better about things, act & then you’ll feel better. Let’s put it this way; “we don’t feel our way into a different way of acting, we act our way into a different way of feeling.” Experts tell us, - “The most drastic & usually the most effective remedy for fear is direct action.”
I’ve been to New Orleans since Katrina & though there are still boulevards of broken dreams everywhere you look, you still can’t help but be impressed with the way people have rebuilt. There may be a government trailer pulled up beside the old ram- shackled house but the people, in so many cases are doing something to better their situation. How wise that is. Some people, strange as it might sound are even finding joy in their new beginnings.
The memory of that hellish storm will never be erased but many have found solace in the fact that their lives were spared & they can still work to rebuild their broken hopes & shattered dreams. Action! That’s how God wants us to react when bad things happen & hope seems to be shot. Get up & get busy rebuilding & helping the people around us.
I may have shared this before but it’s worth repeating. Years ago a young man came to me for advice. He had been fired from his job & was really down & out. He said, “John, what am I going to do? I prayed with him & shared all the scripture I could think of that seemed relevant but I could see he was still down, just sitting there looking sad & depressed.
Finally I decided to use a little shock therapy. I said “do you really want me to tell you what to do to get yourself jump-started?” He answered in the affirmative so I said, “this is going to sound elementary but on your way home buy a newspaper. Take the paper home, lay it on the kitchen table & open it to the want-ads. Get a pencil & put on your reading glasses. Then go down the list of help-wanted ads until you see a job opening you think you might like. Circle it, & then keep reading until you find two or three more that look good to you.”
I continued, “Tomorrow, get in your car & go check out the job possibilities, & when you find the job you feel best about, if they’ll hire you, take it. Now you’ll be employed again”
That man reacted as if he’d been shot through the head. He jumped up & said, O.K Brother John, I’ll do it.” He left my office grinning from ear to ear, acting like he’d been shot from a cannon & exposed to the wisdom of the ages. A few days later he called me & told me he’d found a better paying job than the one he had lost & just wanted to thank me for the advice. I had actually just pointed out the obvious.
Do you want me to tell you how I conjured up all that “wisdom?” Well, I’d been in exactly the same shape that young man was in & I realized that when life kicks the wind out of us, it can immobilize us to the point that we temporarily overlook the obvious & that’s to get up & get moving. Take action--Don’t freeze up. Get yourself to do the basics that you know have to be done. The secret to our success or failure in life is embedded somewhere in our everyday—that’s everyday-- actions.
This same formula of action works in the realm of the spirit. Pastor James told us—Draw nigh to God & He’ll draw nigh to you. James 4:8. James also informs us that faith without works is dead.
Point two. Pray.
When trouble strikes I strongly suggest you pray & pray hard. Paul asked the churches he built to pray for him. When Jesus’ disciples went to bed- He went to pray. If we had no other persuasion to pray, the fact that Jesus needed to pray should be enough.
When Hezekiah was told to get his house in order for he was going to die, he turned his face to the wall & prayed for more time. Immediately that prayer registered in the courts of heaven & God answered & gave him fifteen more years.
When Paul & Silas were in jail they prayed & sang songs & the jail broke open & they were released. Daniel prayed & lion’s mouths were locked. The three Hebrews boys prayed & Jesus ran down the starry stairway & jumped in the fiery furnace with them & they came out of the fire without the scent of smoke clinging to their garments.
When Saul/Paul was stricken blind on the Damascus turnpike, he prayed & his eyes were opened & he received the Holy Ghost. Jonah prayed in the belly of the great fish & was delivered. Prayer lifts us out of the mundane troubles of life & sets our feet on solid ground.
Point three. Trust
If a married couple can’t trust each other their marriage is worth nothing. If we can’t trust our friends they aren’t really friends. Lack of trust writ large is what we see lived out all too often in the world & to what end-? chaos & confusion. But when genuine trust exists we can relax. We can work together to achieve great things. As Christians our trust should always be in the Lord who told us;
Fear not for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters I will be with you, & through the rivers, they shall not overflow you: when you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned neither shall the flame kindle upon you. [Isaiah 43:1-2]
If you are in despair, or in desperation, I pray these simple truths will help you press through whatever stands in your way & seek the living Christ & touch Him & be made whole.
When disaster hits, do three things. Act, pray & trust, & like Woodrow Wilson, let faith in God hold you up.
Blessings,
Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!
John
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