Written Word

With Freedom of Choice Comes Tremendous Responsibility

The first thing or person of which Adam was aware after God had formed him of the dust of the ground was the Spirit of God brooding over him as a parent hovers protectively over its firstborn. After that auspicious moment, all that Adam knew was the close bond he had with his Father – that is, until Adam sinned.

"Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions [evil ways around God's will]." (Ecc 7:29)

    It was only when he sinned that Adam experienced the displeasure and reprimand that a just, and even a loving, God had to give him. What Adam did not perceive at the same time was the grief his Father God had undergone when His only begotten son (in a physical sense at that time) broke faith with Him. What Adam did not realize, nor have many of His progeny up until this very day, is that every act of disobedience wounds the heart of our Father, who is compelled by His own justice and faithfulness to administer the chastisement that is commensurate with our misdeed.

If however, despite our temporary lapse, we have been walking close to our heavenly Father, we will find His censure is a part of the corrective rod laid upon our backs. When God disciplines us in love He is not rejecting us nor is He exacting revenge from us; He is reining us in from our waywardness.

God never throws us away for one sin or for many. It is He who gave us freedom of choice and He knew we would falter and stumble often in that setting. That is why He counts our failures and His corrective actions as a part of the process of molding and purging us. And again, if we have been walking close to the Father despite our temporary lapse, we can sense at the same time the grief we have caused Him.

God could have made all men robots who would love and delight in their Master's approval and never offend Him in any way – but that is not the way God operates. He wants willing service and sincere worship that are motivated by a heart that fervently cries out, "Lord, use me!" God wants full commitment from His creatures and in return He will give them His love, protection, peace and everlasting life

But be advised: those perquisites (His love, protection, peace and everlasting life) are only one side of the coin. The flip side is that all who choose not to love and serve God will eventually be consigned to the torments of hell forever, which is an unending, irreversible fate.

Do you realize that with these words God has just given you a choice? Consider this proposal carefully as it is the most important and far ranging decision you will ever make:

God offers you

1.    love, protection, peace and everlasting life OR

2.    He offers you the unending torments of hell – which do you choose?

Please, please: It's an easy fly out… don't drop the ball! Your whole existence depends on it.

Use Your God-Given Gift - Humbly

We have all said, at one time or another, "I can't live without Jesus!" or "I can't do anything without His help!"

Well, that is actually true, for saint or for sinner. As a matter of fact, there could be no living creatures, no inanimate objects, no world, no universe without a God who created it all and who sustains it by His powerful Self.

What we meant by uttering the statements above is that, beyond the natural life and design by which God made and keeps all creation in existence and functioning as it should, we cannot live spiritually on our own. We cannot know God's purpose for us as individuals nor can we discern His will for us as distinct persons and free moral agents.

If God tells you to be a healer of those who are physically ill, you cannot know whom nor how nor when to heal (God has never willed to heal all who are afflicted) without the all-wise, all-knowing Spirit of God to anoint you and direct your efforts. The gifts or "enablings" of God – even the smallest -- are such vital tools in God's Kingdom that none of Christ's followers has a clue as to what they should do with their tool or when to use it.

Let's face it: We are clumsy, inept fools without the Spirit to help us, anoint us for service and guide us. We are like a raw rookie baseball player drafted straight out of high school and thrown willy-nilly into the outfield at cavernous Yankee Stadium. It is the ninth inning of the seventh game of the World Series and the opposing team, the hated Boston Red Sox, has no outs and two men on base, one on first and the other on second. The Bosox hitter strides to the plate and blasts a screaming line drive directly at the rookie, who is in left field. Although totally rattled, our rookie manages to hold on to the ball – but now what?

Both runners are barreling toward second and third base respectively. Our inexperienced young player has just caught a red-hot brick in his hands and he has to get rid of it quickly before he is seriously burned. In his confusion all he has ever learned to do in such a situation has deserted him like rats leaving a sinking ship. So he throws the hot brick with all his might to home plate! Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

That is the end of the story. Sorry; I did not promise to give you a fairy story ending or any type of ending. This is an allegory and the moral is already laid out before you, plain to see. If we don't have the Spirit of God to enable us and anoint us and guide us, we are all like the rookie. We don't have a clue.

If you are called to be a healer of physical ailments, that is merely the beginning of your task. As we noted before, it is not God's will to heal everyone that has an affliction of some sort. Every gift of God comes with "strings" attached. You can't just walk up to Sally Mae, who has a hangnail and say, "Have faith, my daughter, and I will heal you. I am a healer!" Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

First of all, forget all boasting, no matter the "size" and "importance" of your gift. What do you have that God did not give you? What do you know that you have not learned – from God, human teachers or experience or all three? Walk softly in the grace God has given you. Nor should you advertise your gift. "A man's gift maketh room for him, and bringeth him before great men. (Pro 18:16) Boasting and self-aggrandizement are a shortcut to destruction. Walk softly.

But you do not have to be "demonstrably humble." God does not expect you to go around saying to all and sundry, "Oh no, I don't have the gift of healing!" If you have it, you have it. Stand tall and acknowledge the fact – without boasting. If, as you so "humbly" say, you don't have the gift of healing or whatever gift you may have, then God can't use you; you have nothing to use. You said it yourself.

There is so much more for me to say here. (I am really trying to take a book-size subject and squeeze it into a short article of less than 1000 words.) But do these three things:

1. Know what your talent (gift) is and acknowledge that you have it – humbly.
2. Do NOT immediately run out and use the gift, whatever it is, indiscriminately.
3. Get serious for once in your life, dead serious, and call on God to inspire you, anoint you and guide you wherever He wants you to go. Without the Spirit to help us we are all novices, raw rookies in the service of God.

May God richly bless your ministry!

The Anatomy of Sin

Some of us have trouble seeing Adam's sin of disobedience as anything more than a petty offense that brought on an entirely disproportionate, worldwide, everlasting damnation. Let me use a little imagination and present the event to you in a manner that will remove the cataracts from your eyes. I want you to see, in a symbolic yet very real way, what happened at that fateful moment:

    Adam sought to flirt with the danger of disobeying God, snatch the forbidden fruit and escape with a minor reprimand. But as he took the fruit, suddenly the ground under him turned into a filthy stinking morass and he fell, clutching the cursed fruit to his bosom. As he tried to right himself, it was not just his resisting hand that was besmirched as it touched the ground; he fell like a leaden weight into the whole clinging slime pit, covering him from head to toe. This was no little sin – it was the full complement of the odoriferous mess, and he has not been able to rid himself of it in the many ages since.

    Adam thought to have it his way. He ended up having it his way and keeping the fruit, but he also had to have it God's way in being forever damned just for one so-called little sin. We can see now that sin is sin, whatever classification we may give it. God's word is binding and sure; if we essay to break it without turning back, all hell will, without doubt, overwhelm us.

"For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all." (Jam 2:10)

    The law of God is like a wooden rod. You cannot break the rod near the tip and say that you have not made a serious error: you have broken the law as surely as if you had broken it in the middle. A breaking of the law is a breaking of the law. Sin is sin, and it brings its inevitable horrible consequences upon us. The Psalmist wrote,

"Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me." (Psa 51:5)

This did not mean that the woman who bore him was an adulteress or a fornicator. It did not imply that she was a sinner any worse than all men and women –

"For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." (Rom 3:23)

The point the Psalmist is making is that all men and women fell along with Adam in the Garden because they were, in a figure, contained within him. (And this is more than a figure of speech): All mankind literally issued from Adam; from where else could they have come? He would, again in a figure, beget them all.

Furthermore, there is no reason for us to try to atone for our sins by merely doing good deeds. Good deeds are not a whitener that can wash the indelible sins from our clothing. There is only one whitening agent that is powerful enough to do that: the blood of Jesus Christ. Your good deeds are needed in a society that is desperately in need of them, but in the sight of God, without Christ, you are still a sinner. You can be sure that He will in no wise accept you on your own merit.

What is it about this Jesus that makes Him so totally indispensable to us? Here are two answers: 1) He has the righteousness that we can never in a million years acquire by our efforts alone, and 2) His blood is the only agent that will wash away our sins. That is what makes Christianity unique among the religions of the world. It alone acknowledges man's utter sinfulness while at the same time making it clear that works can never make amends for sin.

Christianity is the one true religion that has a sound, unique theology that brings peace in the midst of turmoil and chaos all around. No man could have, nor would he have dared, to formulate a belief or a salvation like that which Jesus propounded in His days on earth. And we who believe in Jesus have this treasure within us according to 2Co 4:7 RSV:

"But we have this treasure in [fragile] earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us."

I am saying that, if we who believe in Christ can have this great salvation with its attendant peace and joy, you too can have the same. All you have to do is believe in Him as we do, surrender yourself fully to Him and go out and live accordingly. He will give you the ability to live upright by the Spirit He gives you at the moment you wholeheartedly believe.

Salvation has been said to be a complex subject that is very simple to acquire. When you first turn to Christ, you cannot know all that salvation comprises, but you do not need to know. Just come to Him, affiliate with a group of sincere persons who believe fully in the inerrant Word of God, submit yourself to their teaching and you will begin a journey of learning that will not end until you leave this earth.