Written Word

My Unusual Journal 13

My Unusual Journal

My Unusual Journal 13 - Sunday, July 31, 2011, 5:10 PM

Here are a few thoughts on the writing/preaching ministries:

First off, if God calls you or gives you the unmistakable urge to write for Him, don't mistake it for the call to the preaching or speaking ministry. I consider the preaching ministry to be in a class above that of the writing ministry, and for a candidate for the latter (writing) ministry to confuse his God-given talent with that of the preaching ministry can be a disastrous error. God who knows all things and certainly knows His own will, sees that the aspiring preacher does not have the skill sets for the office and this God who is all-wise will not impart to him the grace  required to be a preacher. If that person still insists on bulling his way into the coveted office, he will then be on his own.

Although both ministries are based on the verbal communication of ideas, each requires different skill sets. A "skill set" in this context would be such things as temperament and at least a modest ability to convey mental concepts or ideas by words. Simply put, a skill set is all the requirements for any particular office or calling. Looking at both offices carefully, it seems that more is required for the preacher to succeed than for the writer who is called just to that one of the two callings.

The preacher’s mantle does not automatically drape itself on the eager shoulders of one who is a preacher’s son, and the preaching father who does not realize the fact is doing his son a disservice, not to mention making himself vulnerable to keen disappointment. I am one of five brothers and we are (or were: two are now deceased) the sons of what I in my prejudice call a great man of the cloth. None of us, not our father and definitely not we sons, are “great” men except in the eyes of God and then only as we yield ourselves more and more to His perfect will. Neither holiness, “without which no man shall see the Lord,” nor any particular office in Kingdom work is inherited; both are given to those whom God calls. Obviously everyone is called to holiness, but the specific offices in God’s great economy are filled by the persons whom God arbitrarily selects. It is true that God often calls people to an office for which they seem to be temperamentally suited, but that is not a hard and fast rule.

The preacher can sometimes be a good (even prolific) writer, but the person who is called solely to the writing ministry (as I have been) can never be a preacher unless God in an exceptional moment needs to use the writer to deliver a mini-sermon – to another person or to a group of people. But the person whom God uses in that fashion should always wait on God's move, within himself or in his outer circumstances, before venturing on that hallowed ground.

In fact any writer that aspires to be a preacher should put the preaching office out of his mind. The chances that he will "graduate" to the preaching ministry are slim. He should do as we all should do: try diligently to fulfill all his present calling; and he will have his hands full. Use wisdom and don't try to attain to anything that is beyond God's will for you. Of course you ought to earnestly reach beyond your own limited abilities, but never attempt to go beyond the will of God for you. That will only merit you an “F” (Failure). You cannot be what God does not want you to be in His Kingdom.

Remembering Millie Finch

 

A Requiem for a Life Given to Christ

I must pause in my pursuit of living and give praise to God for a life that has just ended. Millie Finch, the grandmother of my children and great grandmother to my grandchildren has left this life, at 100 years of age, to go to meet her God; and a joyous occasion it must be in the heavenly realm to receive her. "Precious in the eyes of the Lord is the death of his saints." We who walk with Christ are always welcome when we go home.

It seems anymore that my posts are preoccupied with death or dying, but I am only responding to the death and dying going on all around me. Our friends and family members simply insist on leaving us here and we have to find time to give praise to God for these beautiful lives and pause to remember each one.

I want to state right now that Millie Finch, although she was not a well known name, was one of the finer persons who have come into my life. I hesitate to repeat what other people have said ad infinitum about their loved ones who have departed this life. If you give credence to the praises they heap on the departed souls, you have to conclude that everyone who dies is as perfect as one can be: never a frown, no complaints, no character flaws.

Millie was not without flaws as we all are, but she was a sincere down-to-earth person who loved her Lord, her family and the saints of God. I have known her all my life and I can say without exaggeration she was a jewel. She was a good wife to her husband (who preceded her in death a number of years), she was a good mother to her two children (one of whom also left this earth before her) and an excellent mother-in-law – just a wonderful all around child of God.

At her advanced age she didn’t get out much in her later years, but she left a remarkable imprint on those who knew her. And I want to take this opportunity to thank God for sending her into my life and the lives of her children and the many grandchildren and friends who knew her and admired her – and miss her. God give us others like her to make this earth a better place!

My Unusual Journal 12

It has been 8 days since my last entry in this unusual journal – which is one of the things that makes it unusual – there is little semblance of order in the entries and they consist mainly of feelings and observations. There are no logs on any of my physical activities.

Like journal like author… a weird mix of inconsistencies. I am like a lamp wick that is slowly dying. At times it will flare brightly for a second or so, and suddenly it will sputter and seem almost gone, then it will burn normally for a minute or so before finally giving in to the inevitable: It dies as all living things of this earth must do.

Now don’t get confused. I merely said I was like the dying lamp wick, not that I am the wick.  Frankly I have no idea when God will be through with me, although my physical body is very much like the lamp wick: my body is dying, but that carries no prophecy of my near death (on the other hand neither does it imply another day or year of this far-from-perfect existence).

Perfect existence or not, I am ready, willing and able (by the grace of God) to stay here however long God wants me to remain at my post. I still carry in my mind and heart the words of the song I quoted in My Unusual Journal 11:

Walk Thou with Me

Walk Thou with me, nor let my footsteps stray
Apart from Thee, throughout life's threatening way;
Be Thou my Guide, the Path I cannot see;
Close to Thy side, Lord, let me walk with Thee.

I wish everybody, no matter their present age, could have the perspective I have now near the end of life, that whatever God wants is perfectly all right with me. Another stanza of the poem pleads with the Lord to “let me trust my hand in Thine”… This makes my heartstrings thrum with emotion… My God is my Life…

Please, you who read this, don’t fritter your life away. There is so much good you can do, so many dreary lives you can touch with a kind deed or a sincere prayer… and you never know how much of this life you have left in which to fulfill all of God’s will. God will not only bless others through your prayers and efforts; He will richly bless you also.

Hasten the day, Lord, when we shall all be caught away to be with you… and meanwhile bless our efforts to bring the whole world with us!

'Come, Lord Jesus!' but What of the Lost Souls?

I have spoken much lately, either vocally or via the printed word, about the troublous times the entire world is experiencing presently. These times of severe agitation that we see in the climate, the inner workings of governments and in individual lives are not limited to the unsaved. We who know Christ intimately are tossed about by the upheavals all around us like the rest of the world’s inhabitants, some of us more, some less.

I have posited that we are entering the “beginning of sorrows” of which Jesus predicted (Mat. 24.8). If we are trusting in God, we are not driven to despair by the gloomy tidings that come gushing forth daily from the TV newscasts. The doomsday world news is no doubt touching our own lives and we have to remind ourselves God has promised to keep us in the world, not take us out of the world. The constant barrage of bad news affects us economically, physically or emotionally – sometimes in all three areas – but we are not like the world. “…for [we] know whom [we] have believed, and [are] persuaded that he is able to keep that which [we] have committed unto him against that day.” (2Tim. 1.12b)

It is probable that to some of us these signs of the times present a small problem. Jesus tells us in Mat 24:6-8, 

“And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.

Mat 24:7  For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.

Mat 24:8  All these are the beginning of sorrows.”

Jesus also said (Luk 6:22-23),

(22)  Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man's sake.

(23)  Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for, behold, your reward is great in heaven: for in the like manner did their fathers unto the prophets.

(Note: I have not yet learned to “leap for joy” at my tests and trials, but I do greatly appreciate their place in my life.)

 It is to be expected that we would want deliverance from this world’s troubles, especially since we have the biblical promise of a better day coming. Everything points to such a day just beyond the next sunset, BUT there is a fly in the ointment: we have many relatives and friends we dearly love and it tears our heart to think of them facing the unending torment of hell.

While we are sending up our prayers for the dawning of a New Day, some of us are going on a serious guilt trip about it. How can we pray so fervently for the New Day when its arrival will mean the death of any hope for our unsaved friends and relatives – a fate from which they will never be delivered? And “never” is a long, long time with never a hope or a prayer for them.

But you can and should pray for speedy deliverance, and you can do it without feeling you are not showing the love that is the hallmark of the Christian. God is a God of symmetry, evenness and balance. We can see it in the universe, which, except for some anomalies brought into the perfectly balanced cosmos – by man, not by Lucifer – is a model of symmetry and balance.

You [Lucifer in a secondary sense] said in your heart, "I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High. But you are brought down to the grave [cast onto Planet Earth], to the depths of the pit.

When Lucifer sinned it did not unsettle all Creation. It affected only Earth into which he was summarily cast. There is no biblical record that any other part of the universe suffered for Lucifer’s sin. It was only sin by the human in the Garden of Eden that caused the lasting inequities in the world and the occasional hiccup by Creation resulting from the same unsettling effect of sin. Sin was a toxic item that the Spirit of God temporarily soothed at the time (Gen. 1.2), but the permanent cure will not be realized until the work of redemption is perfected in mankind.

(Rom 8:19-2)

(19)  For the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God.

(20)  For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but by reason of him who subjected it, in hope

(21)  that the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God.

(22)  For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.

Man is God’s jewel in Creation. He is a tarnished jewel at this time, but he will soon to be a refurbished gem unmatched in all Creation.

Now back to God being a balanced evenhanded God. When it comes to being in the will of God, the ideal place is to be in the center of His will. Imagine a circle representing the divine will; it is far better to be in the center of the will than to lollygag on the edges. That makes for imbalance and a lack of symmetry. Some misguided saints seem to think this is a game we are playing, seeing who can go to the furthest extreme of God's good pleasure without crossing the line and stepping outside of God's will. The playful saint who flirts with danger will, soon or later, break across the boundary and end up sinning.

Were the apostles, who were God’s direct descendants in the Church, a bunch of jokesters? Did they lightly esteem their mission? Did Christ suffer and die so that we might play games in our service and worship?

The world is watching us and they can discern who are the serious disciples of Christ and who are the buffoons, that is, those who want to play on the edge of what God is pleased with and are engaging in a dangerous game of Russian roulette. If we sincerely desire to bring souls to Christ, we will have to discard this dangerous gamesmanship with God (He does not play games) and get down to the serious business of serving and living for Christ. If we want above all to do His will and to win souls to Christ, we have to get down to the nitty-gritty of slavishly (yes, slavishly) following our Master.

There you have the answer to the question of how we can pray for our deliverance from this sinful world with its mounting dangers all around us and still love our fellow creatures: We should emulate the Apostle John who cried “Even so, come Lord Jesus!” and we can simultaneously redouble our efforts to pluck as many of these brands from the burning as we can. We still have some time left. For the love of Christ let’s get zealous about our task of witnessing and also plead earnestly for the Lord’s soon return. It is all we can do and that is what our evenhanded, balanced God wants from us. He will answer both requests in His own way and His own time.

My Unusual Journal 11

My Unusual Journal

My Unusual Journal 11 - Monday, July 18, 2011, 2:48 PM

As I look at the foreboding world situation – nation rising against nation, earthquakes in various places and the feared tsunamis that can attend them, fires and floods that wipe out a family's lifelong possessions in a moment – it is so very clear that life is not fair to the individual that is supposedly enjoying that life. Then I behold the unbridled hatred of one person against another and of one ethnic group against another ethnic group! Our venom directed toward one another in some cases must be of diabolic origin. Some among us, as individuals, wonder how we can hate one another so intensely and with such hellish fury. The Bible gives us a description of the Last Days and it sounds so frightfully familiar:

Rom 1:29-32

(29)  [Mankind is] filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,

(30)  Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,

(31)  Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:

(32)  Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.

The powers of evil are marshaling their forces at this very moment against all that is righteous and holy and some of us they are attacking in wave after wave, trying, if possible, to shake the foundation in which we put our trust.

The people of God are caught in the middle of this increasingly catastrophic upheaval of governments and the elements of nature and the powers of spiritual wickedness. If anyone claiming to be God's child is not affected by these things, he or she should by all means check their spiritual birth certificate. Maybe they have not yet been born and are still in the womb… or possibly they were stillborn. In any event, if they have not yet been born and cried, “Abba, Father!” they are not a child of God.

Someone cries out, “Oh my God, the world is on a rocket sled hurtling straight toward hell!” True. Another alarmed soul laments, “Each generation that comes along is worse than the one before it!” Again, true. Nor are the authorities and leaders making any aggressive moves to correct the situation.

So I should be worried sick about it, but I’m not. I feel so full – so full of this God that sends me strong words of encouragement like those in the song Walk Thou with Me. Read it and take heart. God has not left His children comfortless.

WALK THOU WITH ME

E.B. Barnes

Walk Thou with me, nor let my footsteps stray
Apart from Thee, throughout life's threatening way;
Be Thou my Guide, the Path I cannot see;
Close to Thy side, Lord, let me walk with Thee.

Dear Savior, let me trust my hand in Thine,
And let me know Thy steps are guiding mine;
Life's changing way is oft times dark to me,
I fear no ill if I may walk with Thee.

Through weary years my way hath miry been;
My bitter tears Thy pitying eye hath seen;
My fainting heart hath heard Thy voice divine;
My trembling hand asks but to rest in Thine.

No earthly foe can give my spirit fear;
No threatening woe can quail when Thou art near;
No tempter's snare can turn my steps aside,
For in Thy care, I'm safe whate'er betide.

He took me by the hand last night (no, I am not made of special clay; this is a figure of speech). Figure of speech or not, God broke through my natural inhibitions and whispered words of hope and comfort and strong assurance in my ear.

All the while I know that the occasion will come when I will have to back up the strong declaration of confidence in my God. The present time is one of euphoria, the time of reveling in the God of my salvation, but there is more to serving God than a good feeling. In the not too distant future all good feelings will have evaporated and I will be left once again with having to rely on the Grace of God. This marvelous Grace begotten  by the love of God will have to sustain me when the feeling that soared so high crash lands and burns, leaving me with only a handful of ashes – and the indomitable grace of God.

I have lived with myself long enough and I have learned enough about the God I serve to come to a couple of conclusions:

1.         Just as everyone has his or her own unique experiences with God, each one has a distinctive personality that has no replica in the numberless humans that have inhabited or shall inhabit this world. I have a good idea what my personality traits are although I am not learned enough to put a label on them. It may be that what I experience will help someone else who is similarly endowed (or cursed?) with the same character traits.

2.         I am a man of extreme mood swings. When I am feeling good, I am more than feeling good; I am ecstatic. When I am depressed, it is more than a mildly "down" feeling. I feel that a Mack truck has run over me with cab and trailer and all eighteen wheels. So wisdom tells me to ask God to help me steer a moderate course, somewhere between maniacal and depressed. When things are going well for me, I try not to be overly elated as though the Kingdom of God had literally come to earth. Contrariwise when I am depressed, I don't panic as though the forces of sin and darkness had flooded the cosmos and gained the final victory. I know that can never be true as long as I trust in God (or even if I choose not to trust Him). This makes for a better overall state of my spiritual, mental and physical health.

Meanwhile I am buoyed up to heaven and I feel that I can stand whatever God lets come upon me. And tomorrow? - I know it will be gloom and despair, but that does not take away today’s euphoria. God does not change. What He is today He will be tomorrow. The sunlight of His face that I revel in today will still be there tomorrow despite His allowing the clouds to obscure it temporarily. The sunlight is always shining and it shall no doubt break through the clouds again and again; as long I have a need for the sunlight of His face. Then one day we all shall bask in the sunlight forever. Every day will be “Sun” day. He will take you and me by the hand and show us wonders and joys we could never experience in this life. My experience last night was a mere foretaste of the inexpressible glories of God that will flow over our beings like a soothing stream.

My Unusual Journal 10

My Unusual Journal

My Unusual Journal 10 - Saturday, July 16, 2011, 12:35 PM

I hope you aren't becoming bored with these personal thoughts and perhaps (to your well-ordered mind) slightly daring conjectures that I entertain in My Unusual Journal. None of what I post here goes contrary to scripture. It may not be substantiated by scripture, but it does not go toe to toe with what God's written word declares. Now that I have gotten that off my mind, please read more of these somewhat-off-the-beaten-track surmisings. They are not doctrine, but neither do they fall into the area of false doctrine. They are merely thoughts on the will and the ways of God...

In a literal sense (meaning: what anything actually is at present) I am a sinful wretch, but in a REAL sense (meaning: what a thing is now by faith and what God has decreed it shall forever be) I have the nature of Christ because I have been born again. My new birth has superseded my old natural birth. Being "born again" and having the "nature of Christ" are not literal, they are not my actual state presently, but they are as real as the resurrection of Christ. They are so real that they will last forever; they are a part of what we call the "eternal verities" – they are TRUTH that cannot be abrogated or disannulled.

This can be so only because God has imputed the righteousness of Jesus, which is to say the righteousness of God Himself, to me. Such thinking would be blasphemous if God had not of His own will established it. It is Truth higher than the heavens and just as sure as the life and death of Jesus Christ. It is Truth, it is forever established by God… simply by my faith in Him, the only Source of all truth and the only One who is righteous. I no longer have to be uncertain of my eternal destiny: God through faith in Jesus has established my fate for as long as there is a God, and that makes my destiny irreversible, irrevocable and nonnegotiable.

We can look on the whole of Truth as being many assorted items of eternal, indisputable fact or as being one grand concept that includes the assorted items above and is inherent in the essence of God. We either have the Truth (God Himself) or we do not. It is dependent on whether we have faith in Jesus the Son of God or not. The preceding statement is an unbelievably simple declaration of truth while at the same time it is incomprehensible to us and beyond the efforts of the greatest thinkers of men to mentally grasp it. They have only the faintest idea of what this comprehensive Salvation entails and therefore cannot get a mental handle on it.

We crave for great soaring ideas because we know the concept of God is totally beyond our greatest efforts to understand it. Here we can see the Great Soaring Idea in God’s Plan of Salvation for mankind. All of God’s concepts – Creation (including man and the various worlds other than our own), love and the eternal verities, are way too abstruse for our simple minds to assimilate.

In this instance God is not asking us to reach beyond what we can grasp; He only requires that we BELIEVE in Him and in His expression of love and righteousness, which is Jesus Christ. Just believe and be saved. See... It is simple!

My Unusual Journal 9

 

My Unusual Journal

My Unusual Journal 9 - No Date

Just thinking and praying in the early morning hours after the dawning of a new day...

If God is infinite (having no limits or boundaries) there can be nothing outside His all-encompassing being. Space, itself an apparently all-pervasive item, is, however, not infinite; it is finite, prescribed by the will and laws of God. Space was created by God to house the universe He created at some "time" in the hazy past. Now... if the universe is rapidly expanding as the majority of experts assert it is, there has to be some place ("place," not "space") into which it can expand, but of course Space can expand in that place in which it was originally placed – it was placed within the infinite God of all Creation.

I repeat what I stated before: There is absolutely no limit to the being of God. Therefore Space, which houses all of God's created worlds and assorted cosmological bric-a-brac, is "limited" only by any limits inherent in the being of God. Consequently Space can expand for as long as God wills for it to expand. In theory it can expand forever.

It is inevitable: When I view the whole history of cosmology, I can view the above disparate items only through the prism of the overarching, stupendous Ultimate Sacrifice of Jesus Christ at Calvary. When I in my thoughts fly above this world and visit arcane places of which I have received just minimal information (and which I can “see” only indistinctly because of that fact), or when I go in fancy to a Mars or when I read of the many marvels of the cosmos, my mind inevitably goes back to the surpassing love of God and I think, “He created all of these things for us; He created them for the creatures He loved from eternity!” How all the pieces of the puzzle fit together I don’t know… but somehow one day it will all come together into one magnificent masterpiece. All of Creation and its unimaginable details pale before the glory and power and love – such great love! – that God manifested in His Son Jesus Christ for a world of sinners.

My Unusual Journal 8

My Unusual Journal

My Unusual Journal 8 - Sunday, July 10, 2011, 3:34 PM

I am writing this while sitting on the edge of my bed. It is ten after nine o'clock in the evening. That is an early bedtime for me. Now you may ask me, "Why are you in bed at this early hour?" Good; that's a good conversation starter.

I am in bed for several reasons. One is that I feel like a ninety-year old man with diabetes and several other assorted illnesses. But I am being facetious. My only reason for mentioning these negatives is that I might proclaim the goodness of God. Let me reason a bit:

To paraphrase a scripture that I cannot now look for, it is better to be a live dog than a dead lion; not that I am so anxious to be here with the rest of you, my yapping fellow canines – this life is not all that adorable – but this is where God wants me at this time. I can think of two times in my life when I could have died if God hadn't said "LIVE... and straighten up your life for the work I yet have for you to do!"

In addition to the two times mentioned above, I should have died in my infancy when I contracted a severe case of pneumonia. The medical profession in that day couldn't successfully treat pneumonia in a child only several months old. But God said, "Not so fast, Death... this baby MUST live!" And of course I did live… nine long decades.

As stated, I possibly should have died at least two other times except that God decreed life for me. So here I am at ninety and I admit at times I have the feeling that I am looking death square in the face, eyeball to eyeball and I must not flinch. Hasn't God proved by now that He is in reality Master of all things? There is nothing more He needs to conquer, nothing more He has to prove. And I… What do I personally have to prove? There is nothing of power or good or of a positive nature for me to prove – I myself am nothing and my God is everything.

He has shown Himself to be all that He said He is over and over… and no one is listening. For heaven’s sake, NO one it seems is giving attention to the God who has all power in heaven and in earth and in hell! I could pray, “God turn this world full of sinners around in their tracks!” But I know this can never be because they will not let Him do so. Only a relative few will listen and be saved.

Do I want to live? Only if that is God's will for me. Do I want to leave this life? Again, only if it is God's will. I live and die (spiritually or physically) only, ONLY at the Savior's good pleasure.

As we all do, I too need prayer, so pray for me, if you feel to do so, but only and always that God's will shall be done - in me and through me. Nothing else matters... Now that is truly peace!

End Time Prophecies Are a Mighty Rock of Defense

The many woes predicted by God’s prophets of old to fall on all mankind are no longer in our future: they are so obviously upon us. We are awash with, and drowning under these prophetic fulfillments. Scripture – and a silent alarm deep within the saints of God – tell us there will be an increase of pressure against the inhabitants of the earth from the elements of nature – wind, water and fire – that were originally created to be a blessing to man.  

The saints will not be entirely spared from these calamities. The Bible implies we will undergo the “beginning of sorrows.”  My fervent hope is that the “beginning” will not last long because I do not like to see people hurting, even tormented, by Nature’s excesses and society’s economic downturns. I have noticed also that many of God’s present day prophets (preachers of the Word) are alert to a growing resentment of those who don’t particularly give a hoot about God and His people. They are growing restive with all our talk about salvation and trusting in God. Perhaps soon we will become the target of all that is evil (men and devils) as well as being forced to suffer the violent mood swings of Nature in the final throes of its dementia.

The signs of the times are all around us and before long all these birth pangs that are grievous now will come to a climax of even more pain and grief and woe. But of course God will see to it that He snatches His people out of this crucible of suffering. It will be a great time of deliverance and joy for the people of God, but a time of continued and increasing suffering for those who have rejected God.

No doubt there will be some lulls in the present pressure from time to time because the grace and goodness of God will not stand idly by and see us crushed by our foe, but overall the pressure will increase until God says, "Come, my people, you've suffered enough!" and He catches us away to be with Him while the rest of the world can only expect the current troubles to increase.

As we the children of God are being surrounded on all sides by the amazing fulfillment of the prophecies concerning the coming again of Jesus, these very prophecies fulfilled become a mighty tower of shelter from all the woes yet to come upon the earth.

My Unusual Journal 7

My Unusual Journal

My Unusual Journal 7 - Thursday, July 07, 2011, 8:58 PM

I am puzzled…  Just when I think I have this younger generation all figured out – and I am feeling pretty good about them – they throw a curve ball at me. No sooner do I tell myself Hey, the upcoming ranks of leaders and teachers and just plain old “good” people have actually absorbed some of the training we tried to give them, they go off on some ridiculous tangent and burst my bubble.

Of course I am NOT talking about the breed of scofflaws and virtual atheists popping up like weeds without needing good soil in which to flourish. My reference is to the so-called Christian generation on whom so much depends. The Bible tells us to avoid the very appearance of evil, but it seems they could not care less about appearances. They are hair-splitters. They (the better ones at least) do pay homage to the “God of their fathers” in how they live and in being considerate of the aged and the infirm and the like. But where is the love that goes a step further? What about being careful not to give an occasion to the world to speak evil about you when you actually are not committing any sin?

You may be going into a strip club to witness to the sinners in there, but come on, who do you think you are fooling? And even I, your brother who should think no evil of you – I find it hard to swallow that flimsy reason for going into a “den of sin.” (That is a quote from the old line preachers many years back.)

And then there is this matter of drinking alcohol. To be honest about it, there is nothing in the Scripture that forbids drinking alcohol; it does forbid being drunken. So if I could drink a whole bathtub of gin or whatever and not get drunk, I have not broken any commandment that forbids drinking because there is none. But there is one little item we conveniently overlook: avoiding the APPEARANCE of evil… as in 1 Th. 5.22, “Abstain from all appearance of evil.” Although there are different ways of interpreting this verse, there is a surer word on the matter in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. They thought their superior knowledge about idol worship gave them license to eat things that had been offered to an idol. Why not? After all, an idol is nothing to worry about; it’s only a dumb inanimate object that can do neither good nor evil. But Paul straightened them out:

1Co 8:11-13  “And through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died?  (12)  But when ye sin so against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, ye sin against Christ.  (13)  Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend.

Those are strong words. We Pentecostals especially are held to a higher standard than our brethren in the denominations. Our fathers in the Gospel demanded strict abstinence from alcoholic beverages, and the notion that Pentecostals were teetotalers has been brought down to us their children. I am sure that if I should go to a restaurant and order a little wine with my meal, those who know my Pentecostal roots would stumble at it: “Well! There’s ol’ Bro. AJ – drinking wine… he’s no better than anyone else!” and they would b encouraged to satisfy their own appetite for the “sinful” beverage.

I haven’t finished this “short” (which I meant it to be) entry into my really unusual journal. It should have been in another post, not a journal – not even this “unusual” journal. But you get the gist. This matter of serving God and being witnesses for Him is a very serious thing, and if we love God and our brothers and sisters we need to tighten the reins on ourselves and walk carefully and in love.

Eph 5:15-16  “Look therefore carefully how ye walk, not as unwise, but as wise;  (16)  redeeming the time, because the days are evil.”

My Unusual Journal 6

 

My Unusual Journal

My Unusual Journal 6 - Thursday, July 07, 2011, 12:36 PM

I have been reading the Gospel of Mark in which there is an account of Jesus casting out a demon. What struck me here is how the demon “tore” (convulsed) the man before leaving his body. Why did Jesus not forbid the demon(s) to show their final impudence of convulsing the unfortunate man before exiting his body?

It is abundantly evident that Jesus had full authority over all demons and over their master Satan, but there is still this niggling question: Why did Jesus allow the demons such latitude? I have wondered about that often. It’s not really critical to any major doctrine or dictum as the demon had no choice except to come out of the man, but it is worthy of an explanation.

It seems likely that Jesus was just following a predetermined course of allowing the powers of darkness a certain amount of “wiggle room” in order to accomplish His own will. What the divine will was at this particular time I can’t presume to know. But it is clear that Satan and his horde of demons exist for at least one purpose: to try the faith of God’s people. But of course for them to do that, God has to give them some space, if you will. He must give them some latitude. It’s akin to giving them “just enough rope to hang themselves.” And they will surely do that...

 

Come Back to Your Father

My heart is troubled today because I note a disturbing lowering of moral conduct among the people of God. No, I am not talking about secret sin in high places nor do I refer to flagrant sin among the laity. Frankly I know there are both in both places – but I am unaware of any great outbreak. Sin will always be present to some extent among any sizable group of people religious or secular, so we just have to continue to fight it with a zeal and a purpose that cannot be denied.

This is what my worry consists of:

I am a Pentecostal, of which persuasion I am definitely not ashamed, but neither am I overly proud. “Pentecostal” is a label and it does not save anyone bearing the label. There are other followers of Jesus who have other labels appended to them such as Baptist, Methodist, Episcopalian, etc. ad infinitum; even Catholic. They are all my brothers and sisters if they trust fully in Jesus for their salvation. But since I have been reared in a Pentecostal home, that is what I am, a through and through Pentecostal. God loves me and He loves all of His own people no matter what they are called.

I am not too familiar with the present-day spiritual state of other religious groups beyond the occasional headlong fall of a well-know leader among these groups. We have to be careful here: Even if the leader is such a Colossus that his defection rocks the religious world to its subterranean core, we can’t point a finger of shame at him or her; Pentecostals have had more than their share of fallen Titans.

However when a religious leader has regrettably tumbled from his pedestal, I am interested in his or her story, but not for the tabloid type news it generates. I sincerely want to see if there is any sign of true repentance such as God would require me to exhibit if I left the Lord for any reason. I regret to say that happened to me several decades ago, but God was very gracious to me: He pled with me to return to Him and, even though I was unconscionably hardheaded (I have never figured out why I would be so foolish), eventually I did return – and God has disciplined me severely for my sins and my refusal to repent right away. But thank God for a heavenly Father who in love will discipline while not rejecting His sometime disobedient children! I was not well known then or now and there were no salacious stories from which the tabloids could make millions of dollars.

It’s always unfortunate whenever anyone falls from the pristine pureness that he or she had when they first turned to Christ. But let’s face it: IT HAPPENS and there is no point in crying over past sins. Great men fall and the lowly suffer the same fate, a fate that does not have to be – but somehow it happens because we are morally imperfect humans. So what do we do when we sin? We have two options: we can either wallow in our sins and bewail our fate or we can denounce our sins, turn our back on them and turn full face to God. He’s right there waiting for you to call on Him. You couldn’t readily see Him because the blackness of your sin had closed around you.

Call through the darkness! The love of God can hear your feeble cry and pluck you as a brand from the burning.

My Unusual Journal 5

My Unusual Journal

My Unusual Journal 5 - Sunday, July 03, 2011, 10:10 AM

I have just finished the daily reading of my Bible… I am ready to eat breakfast, but before that I want to start working on some notes I made during the night on my IPad. They need correlating and editing. Here are some of the thoughts (edited and correlated) that came to mind during the wee hours of the morning…

There is a concept we have of God. The concept varies in definition from person to person. God is not the same God to everyone. How you see God depends on a number of variables: for example, 1) the religious instruction you have received, 2) your spiritual depth and 3) the amount of human "baggage" you are still carrying around with you (assuming you have been able through teaching and communion with God to discard a few unwanted items).

We all have baggage; I daresay some of it we were born with, some we were taught and some we generated by faulty reasoning on our own part. It remains that every individual's concept of God is not necessarily correct, it is not all truth. We are human and not all that we conceive in our limited minds can be all truth. 

The fact that something is spiritual (as opposed to natural or material, which will not endure the ordeal of shaking/sifting that God will cause all natural matter to undergo) does not guarantee the truth or everlasting quality of the "something." Our individual varying concepts of God of course cannot all be true; in fact I have to presume that no one has a fully correct concept of God.

Is it possible that after they received the Holy Spirit the concepts of God the twelve Apostles had in their minds were fully truth? (Note I am not suggesting anyone of them had ALL the truth there is about God, merely that what data they had was, in itself, fully truth and no lie.) I firmly believe the latter: they had no erroneous notions about God. They (including Paul) were taught by Jesus Himself and they received the promised Holy Spirit who swept aside the mists from what Jesus had taught them and led them unerringly into all truth, meaning nothing they taught the Church was in error.

My Unusual Journal - Sunday, July 03, 2011, 11:18 AM

Here is an interesting thought… When the eleven Apostles were taught by Jesus, they had no Holy Spirit to help them as they meditated on Jesus’ words in private. Paul, on the other hand, was already filled with the Spirit and as Jesus taught him, the Spirit would give him instant help. He needed that extra boost as he would be blazing a trail among the Gentiles, who were woefully ignorant of the ways and the will of God.

Here is another interesting thought… Granting that Paul was blessed with many revelations from God, does that indicate the other apostles did not have the same knowledge theologically as he did? Perhaps they did, but were not led by the Spirit to share them with their Jewish brethren – for whatever reason prompted the mind of divinity…

It is rather difficult to accept that one apostle (Paul) was closer to God than the others, but we do not have to always know the reasons for God’s moves… He does what He pleases and has to answer to NO ONE. As a case in point, Moses was a prophet along with other mighty men of God, but Moses surpassed them all in how often and how powerfully God used him. No one will say it was respect of men’s persons or that God was unfair. How can the Judge of all the earth be unfair? He is the epitome of fairness and justice and He works according to His divine schedule for His entire universe. If God chooses you to perform many miracles and chooses me to unstop toilets – what say should I have in the matter? Nor should I ever doubt His love for me… He gave the Ultimate Sacrifice for me, a sacrifice no one else could or would give… He gave as much for me as He did for you; now who am I or anyone else to doubt this total love for me – the lowly unstopper of toilets?

If I want to be as close to God as, say, Joe Jones my neighbor who willy-nilly works miracles here and there, then I should give every last possession I have and all my ability in any area, all my love and all my heart, strength and soul to Christ who gave His all for me – then I will receive a bountiful reward without worrying about how God uses anyone else. I just need to get my own house in order. God will be the final arbiter; He will be the Judge beyond whom there can be no appeal. And He will indeed be fair and just.

 

My Unusual Journal 4

This is the first time I’ve gone “blogging” since my last post on Thursday June 23… not that I have deliberately let that much time pass without a few blogs to vent the urge to write that builds up within me. Without being dramatic about it, I have to say I simply couldn’t write in that period. The oddity about this “down” time is that I actually could write but I could not go through the mechanics of posting it.

The desire was there to write, but there was no … inspiration? Anointing? I can’t tell you exactly what was lacking except that, whatever it was, it was tantamount to someone’s placing a lock on my ability to receive what I deemed was a thought or a message from God.

Here is the drill I would go through more than once or twice:

1. I would force myself to write because no writer - good, bad or somewhere in between (that’s me) - has the luxury of always waiting for the “right” time to indulge his favorite pastime. Writing is somewhat like praying: sometimes it’s easy and sometimes it’s not. If you continually wait for the so-called right time, you will die unfulfilled in either area.
2. After a few paragraphs or so I would edit what I had begun – and it sounded to me so very hollow and uninspired! And I must remind you that the things I was writing were true, they were sincere. Nevertheless I could not in good conscience post the words despite their being my words, words that came from a baffled and troubled heart.

I had been through times like these before and so I waited, hoping that it would not be as it has been a couple of times in years past. I don’t even want to think much about those barren, dry times – and apparently neither did God: He sent me sweet relief (He is oh, such a good, loving God!)

 In His tender mercy God sent the rain on the parched land of my mind/soul or whatever psychiatrists and theologians want to call it. He gave me sweet anointing and I hope it will also refresh you who read the post following.

 My Unusual Journal – 7/1/11

Friday, July 01, 2011, 1:23 PM

Mat 22:31-32  “But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying,  (32)  I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”

As Jesus so clearly stated in the scripture above, God – whom Jesus called "My Father" (and that is a powerful mystery of itself), is not the God of the dead but of the living. What glory accrues to God by His being only a God whom a dead person that He could not keep living at one time worshiped? To be factual we would have to say He WAS at one time that person's God, but that the statement is now no longer true. When the person ceases to exist he forever no longer can worship, venerate or adore anything animate or inanimate. He is dead and death renders all who succumb to it – dead.

Let’s make it totally clear: In a universe where there is no resurrection, dead beings do not have the ability to think or pray or worship. They are dead and once death has claimed them even death itself is rendered powerless to do anything more to them or with them. The person is dead, death is also dead: the whole situation has resolved itself into an ineffective lifeless mound of ashes. There can be no glory, praise or worship resulting from a death without a resurrection.

The point Jesus was making is that God, in asserting that He was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, was with complete confidence going on the assumption there is (not was) at that moment and also at this moment such a thing as the Resurrection. The Resurrection makes null and void all the hopelessness and despair of death. The Resurrection completely strips away the horror of death. God has absolute control over all things within His dominion, and those times when He seems to have lost control are merely evidences of the mercy and grace of God that grants leniency to the heady, arrogant sinner named Man.

But of course, if God is really GOD, nothing that is imperfect or sinful can finally exist. Through a series of siftings God will eventually get rid of all imperfections of things and men; He will then have left only the things and the beings that will be a source of praise and glory to His name:

(Heb 12:26-27)  “[God’s] voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven.  (27)  And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.”

God’s word will never fail and His will shall not be thwarted. We who are under the curse of death need only to remember, when we are painfully dying because we are indeed imperfect, sinful creatures, that there is a great Resurrection that even now is at work in us. Soon the “first resurrection” of Rev. 20.5 will have been accomplished and we will be forever free to enter – free, unshackled and with never a tear to cloud our vision – into the joys of the Kingdom of God.