Thursday, March 31st

As a Police Officer I have done things that I wish I never had to do. I’ve been a nameless face to many persons worst day of their life. I’ve held the hand of a young lady as she passed from this life unto the next. I’ve stored a lot of memories that, left to my own purposes, I would rather erase. Chief among these memories was a “run” that I made when I was still a uniformed officer. It was early 2006 and I happened to be right by a home where a father had found his son dead of what appeared to be a suicide. The son was only 16 years old.

I wish I could go back to that day and call in sick. I saw the young man. Without giving unnecessary details he was in a state of near undress. His father had placed him on the floor and was knelt down over him experiencing a type of pain and suffering that I never ever want to witness again as long as I live; much less experience myself. It was in this moment of pain that the teenager’s father turned, looked me in the eye and asked if it was too late to get a priest to come and administer last rites. What was I to say?

There were a lot of theologically true statements that I could have made to the father at that moment. I could have pointed to the holiness of God and the wretchedness of sin. I could have explained that it is appointed a man to die once and then the judgment. Both statements would have been as true as anything that was ever said. However neither one was what I believed God wanted me to do. I just put my arm around the man and allowed myself to cry with him.

Job 25 and 26 are the two shortest chapters in the book. In the midst of Job’s pain, Bildad the Shuhite speaks a few scathing yet true words about God’s holiness and man’s sinful presence before Him. Then Job responds. I believe I can paraphrase Job. He in essence says, “I know God is Holy and while my “guilt” did not cause my situation; I know that I am not innocent. However right now; I just need a real friend.” Job doesn’t need a spiritual detective… he needs a loving brother.

Truth is always of the utmost importance. However we as believers must let the Holy Spirit lead our speech if we are going to be “truthful encouragers.” Let us each examine ourselves and ask if we counsel out of our own knowledge, or do we let God’s loving truth speak through us? “Lord, let my words be Your words… and my thoughts be Your thoughts.”

Tuesday 1 Samuel 11-15

I am so, so sorry that I am late in posting the tuesday blog! I have failed you, but I hope that you have noticed that I am tardy and that you are keeping up with the blog as well as the reading through the Bible in 2011.

In I Samuel 11, we see that King Saul is an encourager to the people of Israel as they are discouraged and disheartened against the Ammonites and the threats that they are communicating against Jabesh Gilead. His encouragement is a reminder that sometimes all we need to attack the enemies that we are facing is an encouragement from someone around us to not give up.

In I Samuel 12, Samuel reminds the people of Israel that they must followw the Lord are they are doomed to repeat their past. If they disobey they remove the hand of God's blessings and bring upon them pain, but if they obey their is blessing. they have a choice and he encouraged them to obey and follow the Lord under King Saul.

In I Samuel 13. we find the 1st battle mentioned under King Saul as he faced the phillistines. We kind that King Saul could not handle the process of waiting. This is a process that many people fail at. Ultimately, King Saul acted rashly as he could not wait on Samuel to come to him and took on Samuel's responsibility. For this reason Saul's kingdom would not last within his family, but because of his actions the kingdom would not stay within Saul's family.

In I Samuel 14, we see King Saul's son Jonathan and his armor bearer who had great loyalty towards Jonathan. Their courage and loyalty brought great destruction to the Phillistines and great glory to the Lord. We also find that King Saul is still making rash statemnets about what the Israelite army is to do and not do. His rule to not eat until the Phillistines were defeated or else there would be death had nor Godly or Biblical merit whatsoever.

In I Samuel 15, we see a very specific set of instructions given to King Saul from the Lord through the Prophet Samuel as Saul was to go to face the Amalekites and kill everyone taking nothing. King Saul goes to battle and wins, but his obedience is partial and he attempts to pass off his partial obedience as complete obedience to the Prophet Samuel. How many times have we wanted our partial obedience to be seen as complete obedience? The Prophet Samuel confronts the king and at the point that the king can't ignore the truth any longer he states,

But Samuel replied: "Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the LORD? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams.
For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, he has rejected you as king." I Samuel 15:22-23

What God is looking for from His followers is our obedience even when its is hard and even when it makes no sense. We are to obey. To not obey is to rebel. May we not forget the lesson from King Saul as he lost the kingdom for his family and for himself.

Genesis 48-50

To recap our last few blogs:

1. God tells Joseph that he will reign over his family.
2. Brothers decide to kill him but instead sell him into slavery.
3. Joseph is sold a second time as a slave to a high ranking family in Egypt.
4. Joesph is falsely accused and put in prison.
5. Joseph interprets a dream for a fellow inmate.
6. Joseph gets out of prison to interpret Pharaoh's dream
7. Joseph gets put in charge of all of Egypt.
8. Joseph's family comes to Egypt to escape the famine.
9. Joseph helps and forgives his brothers and family.
10. Joseph is restored to his father.

Dreamer to death threat to sold to sold again to slavery to leader to prisoner to dream interpretor to Prime Minister to brother and son again.

yowsa! that's a lot of moves in a lot of time in very little Scripture.

That brings us up to the closing chapters of Genesis.

I want to focus on one part of one verse. We look at Joseph's life and see evil after evil thrown upon him by his family and other people. He's abused and discarded like livestock. He isn't treated like a loved one, he's treated like an enemy. He's plotted against by people who, when it comes right down to it, just plain hate him. They mean him harm and desire his downfall. They actually have meetings in order to plot how they can destroy his life and end his existence.

So how on earth, after all of that, can Joseph say,

"As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good...?"

How can this man look at his brothers, who actually tried to kill him and sold him into bondage as a slave, and say to them that he means them no hard and that he forgives them?

Simply, Joseph believed God. He actually took God's Word seriously to heart. When God showed made a promise to him, Joseph took it to heart and counted on it as a fact of life. Joseph, like Job, could look at everything that was done to him and faithful and assuredly say with Job,

"For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and at the last he will stand upon the earth.
And after my skin has been thus destroyed,
yet in my flesh I shall see God," (Job 19:25-26)

People whose faith is surely in the Lord, who have the Rock of Salvation to stand upon, who are firmly rooted in Christ Jesus are simply, and ultimately, unmovable.

They are unmovable.

The devil and his minions and the whole world can throw whatever they wish at them and even though pain and sorrow and suffering come, they will stand until the end.

This is why in Revelation 2:10, our Lord Jesus says,

"Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life."

Christ isn't promising the crown of life to people who might get it if they stand firm. He's saying in effect, those who get the crown are the ones who stood firm, who were faithful until the end, until death.

There's something different about those who stand firm even unto death:

"...you were sealed for the day of redemption." (Ephesians 4:30)

If, you have been born again, (you've turned from your sin by placing your faith alone in the Lord Jesus Christ) you have been sealed for the day of redemption and you are untouchable when it comes to eternity. The Apostle Paul goes further saying that even though,

"For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:36-39)

If you're born into God's family, if you're an adopted child of the Father, nothing can separate you from God and His goodness.

do you believe that? Do you really believe that? I'm convinced if we really believe those words, then, come hell or high water, we will remain unshakable in our faith and in our lives.

And now, may we be a people who stand secure and firm in our faith and know fully and can say, with Joseph, "when the world means us harm and evil, the Lord means us good."

Sunday March 27, 2011

1 Corinthians 9 & 10
In today’s reading we encounter Paul giving an example of the difference between spiritual maturity and immaturity. In chapter 9 Paul illustrated this contrast by using the concern of some believers regarding his authority and whether if he had the same rights as other apostles. Paul first responded by giving his credentials as he stated his encounter with Jesus Christ and God’s command for him to spread the Good News. Paul next established that he chose to forego his rights of being supported, not in order to boast but to exemplify his understanding that God gave him a responsibility to communicate the Gospel. Paul calls on believers, even in today’s time, to understand the sacrifices they must make in order to serve God effectively. The apostle goes on to illustrate that with spiritual maturity one should seek ways to reach others with the God News. Five points to effective evangelism are taken from this scripture: 1) find common ground 2) don’t be indifferent or judgmental 3) be sensitive to others needs or perspective 4) look to share the word and 5) talk at their level.
In chap 10, Paul addressed spiritual immaturity by illustrating the poor attitudes and disobedience of the early Israelites. Their poor choices were done even though they were united under Moses and had God’s presence right before them. He pointed out that idolatry and sexual immorality destroyed many in the desert. In making it relevant to the people, Paul warned them about abusing their new freedom, found in believing in Jesus Christ. He went back to the question about eating meat used in idol ceremonies. Paul urged that believers were not able to do whatever they wanted. The actions of followers of Christ should be focused on building others up not causing confusion or animosity. One of the greatest statements is found in this chapter, as Paul summed up, “whatever you do, do it for the glory of God”.
It is sometimes said there is a fine line between freedom and anarchy. As Christians we need to be mindful that in accepting Christ as our Savior, it does not give us a free pass to act a certain way, to talk down to people, watch or read certain material or participate in certain activities. On the contrary, we are to be born anew and be a light onto others. We are to mature in our relationship with Christ.

Saturday, March 26

I don't know about anyone else but I sometimes have a hard time reading through the gospel books, one after the other, because of the repetition of so many of the stories. I have found myself scanning instead of reading because I feel I already know the story. With that said, I want to encourage everyone to keep reading! No keep scanning, but truly reading as we work our way through Mark. Pray that God show you something new in these same stories. Mark wrote in a very different way than Matthew and so make it your focus to find new truths in these passages.

With that said, let's look at a small portion of Mark 3. WeIn verse 5 we see Jesus get angry at the hardened hearts of the people. I think we often picture Jesus as this always happy, nice guy but we need to also take note of the example he displays for us here. He got angry at the people's unwillingness to reach out to others and show love. I think in our society we have become content with the way the world has gone and yet we should be angry that people are standing against our God and should be doing something about it! I think that while this is just one verse in the two chapters we read for today, it is a verse that speaks volumes of our need to stand up for Jesus in a society that isn't!

Friday, March 25, 2011

Today we conclude our reading of the book of Isaiah. In these last 5 chapters, the prophet Isaiah gives hope to His people. Chapter 62 provides the reader with hope for the future. God will bring salvation to Zion. Then Isaiah focuses on the Lord's Vengeance on the enemies of Jerusalem. It is vital that God's people remain prayerful and supportive of Israel even now. Isaiah 63:15 begins a prayer for mercy. This is followed by a prophetic statement of how Israel will reject God's work and the Gentiles will welcome it. But God will continue to call His people Israel back to Him (verse 8). Isaish continues in verses 17 -25 to uses images to paint a magnificent poetic picture to describe the joys of the world to come. He describes a new heaven and a new earth. Lastly chapter 66 calls for all to humble themselves and present themselves with a constrite spirit. so that God will look with pleasure upon His people. How would you describe your heart today? Next week we begin the book of Jeremiah.

Thursday, March 24th

There is a promise for the lost that if they will seek the Lord; they will find him. That is so very true. But for some people who are in relationship with the Lord there can be a period of silence. I’ve heard it called “the dark night of the soul.” No answer from God.

Look closely at Job 23 and 24 for the true source of Job’s pain and complaint. It’s not, “My wealth is gone.” It’s not, “My kids are gone.” It’s not even a complaint about the sores that cover his body. The ultimate source of Job’s pain: “God I cannot hear your voice, I cannot see your hand.”

Job goes through a laundry list of woes taking place all over the land. There’s stealing, robbery, the poor are being oppressed and people are losing their children. Job wants God to whisper. Job wants God to shout. Job just wants to know the presence of the Lord. Through this whole ordeal I believe that God’s perceived silence has been Job’s deepest hurt.

But Job is in such a relationship with God that even through silence he has confidence that when the Lord speaks; it will be for Job’s benefit. “But he knows the way that I take; when he has tried me, I shall come out as gold.” (Job 23:10) Job is holding fast to a day of redemption and restoration even if he knows that the world around him is not making sense.

My Father is always at work. Sometimes I see His work plainly. Sometimes I hear His voice clearly. Sometimes I struggle to see or hear anything. But I know He is at work. How He gets you and I from where we are to where He wants us to be; is often times far above our heads. (Isaiah 55:8-9)