Optimism

Many people look at religion, Christianity, in a negative way.  We can't do this; we can't do that. But in fact, the New Testament is an extremely positive book with a positive message.

We should begin with Jesus.  One might say that the crucifixion of Jesus was the worst; was the worst event that could be imagined.   Jesus was to be the king, the savior, the ruler of the world.  But He endured the worst of punishment from the Jews, His own people, and from the Romans.  After suffering greatly, He was put to death on a cross in the worst way.  But even in this awful circumstance, we see redemption.  We see Jesus being raised from the dead, triumphing over death.  And as a result, we too have confidence that we triumph...or will triumph.  Jesus didn't lose; he won; and we too will be winners if only we follow Him.  He told His disciples right before His death, "But take heart!  I have overcome the world."

Paul wrote in Romans 8:18, "I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us."  And further down in the chapter, he tells us, "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.......What, then, shall we say in response to this?  If God is for us, who can be against us?"

And Philippians 4:7 says, "And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

And one of my favorite passages is in Hebrews 11.  He begins with a definition of faith; but notice that it is positive.  "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for....."  As Christians, we have confident hope in the future.  That is OPTIMISM.  We are optimistic people.  We are confident, trusting in our God, assured that our efforts are not in vain.  We tell others about the Good News because we believe that it is the answer.  And we know that there is a better life awaiting.  Life!  Real life....life forever.  Let's be sure that we follow our Lord.....right into heaven.

Thanks for reading.  Have a great week!

True Wisdom

True wisdom only comes from God.  Wisdom of man, even from the best minds we can find, is weak, untrustworthy.  We read about this in 1 Corinthians 1: "Where is the wise?  Where is the scribe?  Where is the disputer of this age?  Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? ....For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.  Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men...."

We all know that God is wiser than man; and we know that there really is no comparison since He is the creator and we are the creature.  Let's look at a few passages in the Bible that demonstrate the wisdom of our Creator.

Proverbs 1:7  "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction."

Proverbs 2:6  "For the Lord gives wisdom; from His mouth come knowledge and understanding; He stores up sound wisdom for the upright; He is a shield to those who walk uprightly..."

Prov. 23:15  "My son, if your heart is wise, my heart will rejoice--indeed, I myself; yes, my inmost being will rejoice when your lips speak right things.  Do not let your heart envy sinners, but be zealous for the fear of the Lord all the day; for surely there is a hereafter, and your hope will not be cut off.  Hear, my son, and be wise..."

Proverbs, as well as many of the teachings of the Bible, are full of wisdom...and it is wisdom from God, Himself.  Let us heed the great teaching of our God!

Thanks for reading and keep the faith!

Controversy

There are a lot of situations in the New Testament that give insight into how Christians deal with controversy.  In this article, we will look at some of the ways that controversy is handled in the Bible.  

Initially we will look at how Jesus dealt with difficulties that were presented to Him.  We recall that Jesus became angry with the money changers, driving them out of the temple.  He also became angry with the Pharisees in the temple as recorded in Mark 3:5, "And when He had looked around at them with anger, being grieved by the hardness of their hearts...."  So we see that Jesus had His angry moments, what we might call 'righteous indignation.'  But we also must note that under great challenge, Jesus kept His cool. 

Matthew 22 is an interesting chapter that we could describe as a day of controversy.  We see the Pharisees challenging Jesus, asking if it is lawful to pay taxes or not.  Later the Sadducees tested Him by asking who a man would be married to in heaven if he had married multiple wives on earth.  Then a lawyer asked Him what the great commandment was in the law.  In all of this, Jesus stayed calm and gave brilliant answers, destroying any possibility of controversy before it could become a problem.  

In Acts 15 we find a controversy arising over the teaching by some who insisted on the practice of circumcision by Christians, wanting some to keep some aspects of the Jewish Law.  "Therefore, when Paul and Barnabus had no small dissension and  dispute with them, they determined that Paul and Barnabus and certain others of them should go up to Jerusalem, to the apostles and elders, about this question."  Later, Paul and Barnabus had quite a disagreement about whether to take John Mark with them on the 2nd missionary journey.  It is noteworthy that strong Christians had controversies, serious ones, that had to be resolved.  We see that solutions were found without further trouble.

Then there is a lot said about the importance of Christians being of the same mind, cooperating, unifying and doing all things in love.  We can learn a lot about how to handle controversies when they arise.  They will arise....and we should act appropriately to avoid a further problem.

Thanks for reading.  Have a great week!  

Sayings of Jesus on the Cross

Some people would recognize some of the sayings of Jesus on the cross.  Few people could tell you how many different sayings He made there.  So today, in the interest of learning something you never knew, I will briefly review these sayings.

Firstly, I should say that there were 7 different sayings that Jesus made while on the cross.  I never knew this before; I simply went through and counted them.  They are recorded in the 4 gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  They are scattered throughout the 4 books; no one book contains all of the seven sayings.  It seems that more are recorded in Luke and John than elsewhere.

Here are the 7 sayings, recorded not necessarily in order.  Because they are distributed throughout the 4 gospel books, it seems impossible to determine the exact order of His speaking.

"Father, forgive them for they know not what they do."

To the thief: "Today you shall be with me in Paradise."

To His mom, regarding John: "Mother, behold your son."  Then to John, "Behold your mother."

"My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?"

"I thirst."

"It is finished."

"Father, into your hands I commit my soul."

So you may be saying, "I knew all of these sayings."  But I'll bet you didn't know there were 7.  And if you did know that there were seven, you are smarter than me, and you should be writing this blog.  OK, enough smart talk.  Thank you for staying with me, for taking the time to read.  May God bless you!

Promise Kept

God always keeps His promises.  We read in 2 Peter 3:9, "The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness...."  He doesn't make promises lightly, but what He makes, He keeps.

The most important promise in the Bible, the most important promise ever made, is given in Genesis 12.  God was speaking to Abram (Abraham) and made several promises.  But the significant promise was a statement that would change people for all time: "And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."  In the New Testament the point is clarified so that we do not need to be questioning the meaning, Galatians 3 being one place.  God was promising Abraham that he would have a descendant who would be a blessing to the whole world, namely Jesus Christ.  When we read Galatians 3 and Romans 7 we see the whole plan of God tied together.  It shows that God's plan was made many hundreds of years before to bring Jesus to the earth to die for the sins of man.  A beautiful story.

The Jews had been told all through the OT that a great king was coming, a kingdom that would last forever.  They knew to expect a messiah.  But when one came, they couldn't believe.  It is interesting to read about one man (Luke 2) who was waiting for the king to be born; Simeon.  Jesus was brought by His parents to the temple in Jerusalem in accordance with Jewish custom of the Law.  Simeon had been directed by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ.  He took the baby Jesus up in his arms and blessed God and said:  "Lord, now You are letting Your servant depart in peace, according to Your word; for my eyes have seen Your salvation which You have prepared before the face of all peoples, a light to bring revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of Your people Israel."  Simeon understood the promise from Genesis 12 and was waiting anxiously for the king.

The NT testament makes clear in many places that Jesus came to save souls, souls of all people.  Galatians 3:28 says "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.  And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.:

God always keeps His promises.  He promised a savior and He delivered.  He promised to makes us heirs if only we follow Him.  He always delivers.

Thanks for reading.  Have a great week!

Life

I gave this short talk at a church service this past Weds. and thought you might enjoy hearing it.  Life is a heavy subject.  We all think about the significance of life, the purpose, the result, all about life.  We all see people who suffer, who mourn, who worry; perhaps we are often those people.  I think about people who are born in pain, who live all of their lives in pain and suffering, about people who are in a wheel chair all of their lives.  It reminds me of an occurrence years ago when I visited a small church in Sopchoppy, Fl.  You would have to know that this was one small church.  There was a woman there who had been in a wheel chair from the earliest of childhood due to childhood arthritis.  I was asked to move her after services from her wheelchair to the front seat of the car.  I said "sure" and was honored.  At the appropriate time, I placed the wheelchair close to the car seat, realized that this was one heavy woman with no use of arms or legs...dead weight, so to speak.  I grabbed her, a bit embarrassed, and gave it my all, virtually lunging from the chair to the seat.  We barely made it onto the edge of the car seat.  She said, "Come again."  I grabbed her again and gave it a mighty heave to shift her further onto the seat.  She barely moved.  She said, "Come again."  I grabbed her and heaved!  She said, "Come again."  I grabbed her and heaved!!  She said......."No.  I mean Come Again to Church!!!"  Needless to say, I was most embarrassed.........

Realizing that life has its ups and downs, but a whole lot of downs, we look to the Bible for answers.  When we read the writing of King Solomon in the book of Ecclesiastes, we see the final opinion of a great king who had everything, every amount of wealth, comfort, women, play, you name it.  He said that all was vanity, worthless, in this life.  None of these things make life great.  He said, "He who loves silver, will not be satisfied with silver."

So what is the answer?  The answer is Jesus Christ.  Jesus said in John 11, when talking with his good friend Martha at the time that Lazarus had died, "I am the resurrection and the life.  He who believes in  Me, though he dies, he shall live.  Whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die." Wow; who could resist an offer like that?  Then He said, "Do you believe this?"

And that is the question to each one of us.  "Do you believe this?"  The offer of life eternal is too good to pass up; we only have to follow Jesus to never die.  Whatever pain and suffering and sorrow must be endured here, we have the great offer of life forever with Him.  Let's do it!

Thanks for reading.  Feel the love.

The Business of the Church

I am sure that my first responsibility is to take care of my soul, to deal with my own frailties, my own faults, my own......And it is not my job to judge others...in the sense of determining who is saved and who isn't.  I happily leave that to the Lord.  But beyond all that, the NT does talk of the church, how the church is structured, who gets church support, how money is raised; much is said about the church and the church's business.

In today's world, we see churches getting into all manner of business that has nothing to do with spiritual matters.  I received word today that the Mormon church is buying 350,000 acres of forest land in North Florida.  I didn't seek out this information and didn't really want to know.  But what business is that of the church?  This is just one example of many that could be cited about other denominations and their work.  It isn't biblical.

The only example of churches raising money is given in the NT regarding the collection weekly of money to meet the specific needs of the church and the individual Christians in need.  I Corinthians 16 says, "Now about the collection for God's people; Do what I told the Galatian churches to do.  On the first day of every week, let each one of you set aside a sum of money in keeping with his income, saving it up, so that when I come no collections will have to be made."

If we just do things the way the NT churches did them, we do much better.  The church is to be funded by individual collections, not by running big business.  It was always that way in the Old Testament with all funds being raised through individual giving; and it is that way in the NT as well.

Perhaps we don't like hearing that there is a pattern to follow, but it still is the truth.  If we don't follow the pattern of the Bible, we drift, we divide, we denominate, and we start to not look like the original church at all.

Now I will go back to worrying about me, my soul, my weaknesses.........

Thanks for reading.  I hope your week is great!