Written Word

My Unusual Journal 44

My Unusual Journal

My Unusual Journal 44 - Saturday, October 29, 2011, 3:05 PM

A Mixture of Music and Waiting before God and Patience

Music has a definite place in the life of the Christian whether the music be of the “Humpty-Dumpty” genre or traditional Christian or modern religious – if it appeals to your sense of praise and worship, it can help you in your meditations and your worshipful abandonment of your own carnal self.

Maybe you are not like me, but there are times when a melody, whether original with me or even “pirated” (not really!) from a secular song, will come to my mind. It is usually when I am writing or meditating and, if the melody fits the moment, I will go with the flow of the moment and use it to further my worship. I don’t need to know the lyrics; if the music is smooth and sweet and compatible with worship, I will immerse myself in worship, praise and the river of peace that flows and bears me up heavenward. And if the music has appropriate lyrics, it is just that much more helpful in my devotions.

Inevitably however I run into those times when worshipful meditation is not an easy thing in which I can ease myself like one who soaks in a tub full of warm, soothing water after a difficult day. At that time I am more like Elishah when the kings of Judah, Northern Israel and Edom respectively were asking him to intercede with God for them and their armies.

The three kings were lost in an arid land and had no water to drink. Of the three kings only Jehoshaphat of Judah was a righteous man. The other two were idolaters. The shameless idolatry practiced by Jehoram King of Israel was especially irritating to Elisha because all the children of Israel were God’s chosen people and had been meticulously taught what God commanded them to do, and not to do.

Elisha looked at Jehoram and fumed exasperatedly, “What have I to do with thee? get thee to the prophets of thy father, and to the prophets of thy mother.” Then he relented somewhat,

“And Elisha said, As the LORD of hosts liveth, before whom I stand, surely, were it not that I regard the presence of Jehoshaphat the king of Judah, I would not look toward thee, nor see thee. But now bring me a minstrel. And it came to pass, when the minstrel played, that the hand of the LORD came upon him.” (2 Kings 3.14-14)

He then gave the three kings instructions on how to bring water to their encampment. The point in this anecdote is that Elisha had become so upset with the King of Israel that he could not discern what God wanted to tell him. When the minstrel played softly before Elisha, the Spirit of God came upon him and he could feel the Presence and hear the Voice telling him what to do.

Music has the same influence on those who worship God today. When you are “out of sorts” and not in a good worshipful mood, don’t always give into the feeling and put off your meditation and supplication to God. Wait. Force yourself to wait in His Presence that you do not feel but know it is there. We want things to happen always right now. We want instant gratification. Rome was not built in a day; even the mighty Creator of the universe did not bring the whole shebang into being in an instant, although He could have.

God is a God of gradualism; He is a God who in effect takes a century to bat an eye. He is in no hurry as He has all eternity ahead of Him; and if we are His followers, so have we. Cut back on the frantic haste to get things done. You can’t right every wrong; you can’t save every sinner in the world despite your best intentions; you will not bring every lost lamb back into the fold of the Good Shepherd although your heart yearns so avidly to do so – so take your time to worship and to praise and to present your petitions to God. The same old problems will be plaguing this world long after you are gone, and God Himself will still be there answering some of your prayers after you have left this life. Take your time.

The Need for Unity in the Body of Christ

The Structure and Flaws of Doctrine

         I want to speak to you about doctrine. Hold it! Don’t put this treatise down – yet. This will not hurt you in your walk with God, and it will not be boring. In fact, it may surprise you and start your mental juices flowing.

         First we shall define “doctrine” as the basic official beliefs of a religious group. We need to remember that in any group, religious or otherwise, there will be members who differ with the official line, usually in minor matters. This should not be a cause for alarm. There probably is no unity of thought within any religious or secular group. When the difference is on a major issue, if the differing party is sure of his stand, he ought to try for a reasonable length of time to smooth out the doctrinal wrinkles, if it is at all possible. And he should do it in a spirit of love and not contention.

An Appeal to My Fellow Pentecostals

         We the Oneness Pentecostals have a doctrine to which we cling. It is in many respects a good doctrine, but, as with any other group’s set of beliefs, it has its flaws. For the sake of clarity, let’s liken our doctrine to a building in the process of construction. Our spiritual fathers immediately preceding us erected their section of the building on the sections that the fathers before them had built. The entire superstructure, as we might call it, rests on the solid foundation laid by the doctrine of Jesus and the Apostles. We are now building on the latest section (inherited from our immediate fathers), based on what God has revealed and is revealing to us. At times we respectfully remove, from the section our fathers left to us, erroneous ideas as a builder might take out a flawed brick or other construction material that is ill-suited for the building. The fathers did not realize while they lived that a particular brick was not strong enough to be incorporated in the structure.

         Despite the inevitable doctrinal mistakes made by each generation of builders, which were due to their not possessing the greater knowledge and revelation that God would give to future generations, our fathers built well before us. In doing so, they too had to take out defective material from the section that was left to them, material that was not suitable for the work. I have seen this happen more than once or twice. Ever since the foundation was laid – laid flawlessly, I should add – by Christ and the Apostles, no new generation of builders has structured their section perfectly. You cannot expect perfection from imperfect builders. Of course Jesus, the corner stone of the foundation, was perfect and He built perfectly. The twelve Apostles (including Paul and disregarding Matthias – I do not believe the Apostles were Spirit-led when they selected Matthias; they were definitely not Spirit-filled at the time) laid the rest of the foundation and were given special grace by God that would preclude any error in doctrine. Yet, despite human error that has inevitably crept in since then, if each generation of sincere builders after Jesus and the Apostles corrects the innocent errors of the preceding generation, we will one day, perhaps, have the perfect, complete doctrinal structure that God wants.

         We have knowledgeable people contributing to the work, people who do not always see exactly eye-to-eye. But the differences are small and they are good men and women who have the love of God in them, so they work together in harmony. For instance, if Joe Bloke should think that there are three persons in the Godhead while John Brown can conceive of only one person, it can remain of minimal importance as long as they agree firmly there is only ONE God. Yet at times the doctrinal disagreements grow beyond the embryonic stage and become major issues with which the group has to deal.

"Hedging” Our Bets

         I think we who are of the Apostolic-Pentecostal persuasion tend to be like the Israelites of old. In our sincere efforts to protect the truth, which never changes, we have erected a hedge of man-ordained practices and pseudo doctrines around it.  We have failed to understand that the theology of an individual or a group has to grow because it is never a perfect entity. Men and women are imperfect, consequently their theology is necessarily flawed in this respect or that. A sincerely held view of God does not need to remain static simply to prove its authenticity; it does not have to be fixed and unmovable. A sincerely held belief is vibrant and capable of growth –otherwise it will become stagnant and dead.

         As God gave fuller truth to us the “chosen people,” some of us have stiffened our necks and become determined to live in the past. We were becoming in a sense like the mainline denominations – other than some of their outstanding leaders – the same groups we criticized for not growing in the knowledge of God. These denominations were, in that day, like a group of children playing church. They were not taught to be in dead earnest about their salvation, and too many of them had a tendency to be morally permissive and vague in their doctrine.

In our shock and horror at such spiritual ineptness and in order to protect the truth of God, we erected a hedge around the truth similar to what the Israelites of old did in trying to safeguard the Law of Moses. And our hedge was like that of the Israelites: it was specious, having a show of plausibility but no solid base on which to stand.

         Now, in looking back on those days, we concede the so-called hedge might have been good for that time, but it was not Scripture-based and God certainly did not mean for His people to be forever bound by laws and precepts not of His making. I believe that God in any period of time gives His pastors and leaders wisdom and a certain amount of latitude in dealing with individual situations and persons. In order to keep the people under their charge from indulging in the sins and doctrinal fallacies of the day, the pastors of the various Oneness congregations erected a hedge consisting of what they sincerely believed to be necessary restraints. They forbade this, they forbade that; their parishioners could not dance, they could not go to movies nor could they use innocuous slang and their socializing was limited mainly to their fellow believers. And many other restrictions were employed to be sure we were “separate.”

         In most instances – but not all – the leaders and pastors were not being control freaks; they were earnestly trying to keep their followers from the ills of the denominational churches and they were doing what they thought was required for the purity of the doctrine. For instance, the average Trinitarian (not the learned theologian) thought there were actually three separate Gods! We knew better, so we had to protect the truth by erecting a protective hedge around it.

         But – as the truth was revealed to the average Trinitarian about the oneness of God, we Oneness adherents could not accept that their theology was growing and we continued to flail at the man of straw we thought was real. They had moved on, but we still saw the Trinitarians as poor benighted fumblers after the truth, a truth they had now accepted and from which starting point they were moving ahead. Meanwhile we Oneness believers kept the hedge erected about the truth as we saw it. We who had previously had a truth the average Trinitarian did not have, were now mired in the past, tilting at windmills of our own imagination.

It Is Time to Dismantle the Hedge

         But there was some progress here and there. A few brave pastors realized that going to the movies was not a sin if the movie was wholesome. Dancing was not a sin if the dancing was not lewd and sensual. Socializing was all right if one remembered to keep oneself separate from the sins inherent in some forms of socializing. Many pastors, however, were reluctant to accept this evolution in theology; their thinking and their theology remained firmly fixed in the past.

         In the meantime the Trinitarian was moving ahead. 1) He learned and accepted the truth about the oneness of God; 2) He also learned from the Scriptures that when a person gives himself wholeheartedly to God, he receives the Holy Spirit at that moment; and 3) He learned more about the will of God and how to involve it in his personal life. For further detail, please purchase or download [free] God’s Grand Plan of Salvation by Aaron J. Smith:

<http://www.lulu.com/content/380497> You may also purchase A Polemic to an Apostolic from an Apostolic by Elder Virgil Cox, here: < http://bit.ly/uxzQob> The latter book gives more specifics than this modest post does on the subject of unity among Pentecostals and other believers in Christ.

         Two of the three things mentioned above had been the prime separators between the Trinitarians and the Oneness people. They were: 1) the belief in the oneness of God and 3) becoming personally engaged in the fulfillment of the will of God, Now, however, the two camps believed alike. And so there was no longer any dispute between the religious parties? Unfortunately, yes, there was.

An Obstacle to Unity Remains

         Now the bone of contention was, and still is, on how and when a believer receives the Holy Spirit. The Oneness group maintains that when the Spirit comes into a person’s heart, he or she will speak in other tongues. They allow no exception to this rule. The Trinitarians contend that the Spirit comes into the person without any necessary outward sign; it is an inner phenomenon. Again I refer you to the pamphlet, God’s Grand Plan of Salvation,

<http://www.lulu.com/content/380497> It gives more detail on the differences between the groups.

         But there are a few of us Oneness people who are fully aware that the Holy Ghost does not have to announce His coming into our hearts by speaking through us in other tongues and we also are convinced that when the Spirit comes He will demonstrate His presence by producing the fruit of the Spirit in the life of the believer.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.” (Gal 5:22-23)

         We are also familiar with the scriptures below that inform us,

“But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. (Joh 1:12-13 RSV)

         and…

“For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.” (Rom 8:14)

         But the majority of us are quick to say (as though it settled all things), “The fathers believed” such and so. Now this presents an interesting situation. The “fathers” were not perfect in knowledge or in their theology. Their theology was shaped by what they had been taught and they too said, before we later latched onto it as one of our favorite mantras, “The fathers said… the fathers said.” We need to forget “what the fathers said,” and ask ourselves, “What does the Word of God say?” Truth does not change with the customs of men. The knowledge that is inherent in God is alone unchanging and vibrant and alive.

Our Theology Has to Grow

         Our knowledge is light years short of being perfect and it has to grow. If we resist growing in knowledge we are apt to become cesspools and the living waters that once sprang up within us may become stagnant and toxic. As a case in point, the Israelites were blessed with manna that came down from above, but when they attempted to horde the heavenly food, it bred worms and stank. We cannot afford to clutch to our bosoms the old knowledge, which was once so wonderful, and refuse further enlightenment – we will wither on the vine and be cast out as worthless trash.

The Next Move Is Up to Us

         The ball is now in the court of the Oneness believers. We are the ones who withdrew ourselves from our brothers and sisters. We wanted to have no part with them; and of course in those days back in the early years of the twentieth century, reaching perhaps up into the 1970’s, there was a disparity between what many denominational members did and what they professed to believe.  But that was yesterday. Today I am seeing so much of love and outreach and worship and praise among the Trinitarians that I am truly impressed. “By their fruits ye shall know them,” and they are producing the all-important fruit of the Spirit. They are working out their salvation: they are taking the truth and living it in their daily lives.

         What we Oneness believers have to do now is hark back to the hallmark of the Christian: we have to show our Trinitarian brothers the love that we profess to have. We all believe in the same God; we all believe in the oneness of God; we all believe in living a godly life and we all trust in the Bible, in its original form, as the inerrant Word of God. So what are we Oneness people going to do? What can we do as Christians except to love our brothers and sisters and fellowship with them?

         I am a realist. I know there will never be one huge global congregation in which everybody believes exactly the same thing. There will always be various congregations with varying minor shades of belief, even within the respective Trinitarian and Oneness camps. But we have to accentuate the positives: We all have one God, one Savior and one Gospel of salvation. We all expect the soon coming of our ONE God and Savior Jesus Christ. This should be enough to eradicate the contentions between brethren and sisters so that we can together work to save lost souls all around us and make their formerly sin-ridden lives a resounding praise to God.

My Unusual Journal 43

My Unusual Journal

My Unusual Journal 43 - Saturday, October 22, 2011, 10/22/2011 12:35 PM

A Reminder of Why I Write ‘My Unusual Journal’

Now and then I feel the urge to explain again to you my readers what this My Unusual Journal is all about. This journal seldom logs what I am doing day by day as most journals do. It brings to you my feelings and aspirations, hoping that they will inspire you as I have been inspired and shake you awake as the Lord has often done to me, directly or by a brother or sister believer. In addition I will now and then give you a glimpse of how God deals with me as a person who is not your usual lump of clay – and that is not necessarily good! – in the hope that some of you who are really plagued by their idiosyncrasies or minor personal abnormalities will find in me a comfortable partner in  your departure from the norm.

I am more and more motivated by item #1 below although I am very much aware of item #3 as I write. Item #2 is in a special class that need not concern you unless you are the person to whom I am referring. God bless this young man and shake him awake to his responsibilities in Christ. Now here are my reasons for writing this so-called journal:

1. I wish to leave this series of My Unusual Journal posts for my children to look at occasionally after my demise. They are not now regular readers – and I am not offended. I realize I don’t use the popular social media vernacular. I do not know how to do that and, frankly, I have no desire to alter now the style I have tried diligently to achieve, and on which I am still working.
2. I must admit there are some social media writers who have a certain flair for putting their grammatically challenged words together and causing me to enjoy reading them – until the writer unfortunately lapses into the foul-mouthed language of the genre. Such lapses are to me entirely unnecessary for his or her breed of writer. They are good in their field without the crude language, so why lower their standards? I hope I am hitting a home run here with one certain young writer, but the chances are he will never read this.
3. I am presently posting these mini-messages for the benefit of any who will read them and perhaps be encouraged, edified or comforted by what they say. My postings at this point are turning out to be a spiritual smorgasbord containing various free-wheeling thoughts on God and some mini-treatises that I present in a slightly more formal manner. Overall it is an informal study of God and His relationships with His people. We are looking at 1) who and what God is; 2) how should we come before Him in worship; 3) do we even dare to come before Him, intruding into that august Presence; and 4) the mysterious, complex matter of our salvation, which is at once very convoluted in its labyrinthine details, but simple in its application to the human life.

I have to hastily add that My Unusual Journal cannot make any claims to being an in-depth theological study. That would be absurd. It is a simple work written by a simple author dedicated to passing on to his biological descendants, bit by bit, what he has been taught by others, especially his own father, and what God has seen fit to give to him (the author). And of course I affectionately include in my readership those few persons who for some reason like to read what I have to say as God inspires me.

There are no great revelations here, no claims to having obtained from God what other more spiritually enlightened and better skilled writers have already obtained. These Unusual Journal entries are not even a ripple on the face of the sea of the knowledge of God. Nevertheless I believe I should pass on to my descendants the little I know of the Savior, hoping they will become true men and women of God in their own right.

My Unusual Journal 42

Is God Coming Soon – or Is He Coming at All?

This is what they are saying about Jesus’ soon return to catch His children away to be with Him:

“The what? Oh, yeh… That day… the so-called Day of Redemption… yeh, yeh, yeh… it seems they’ve been talking about it and actually looking for it since the first century A.D., just a few years after Christ died! Now that’s a hoot! Really, if Jesus has not come back by now, two centuries later, what makes these starry-eyed dreamers think He will ever come back to earth? After the way they treated Jesus in His first trip here, the chances are very good that He will decline any invitation to return to this hostile planet.”

Yep, that is essentially what the world thinks – and what I have quoted above is actually the lesser of the evil things they say about us and the Jesus who we know is coming again… soon. What the world forgets or never knew is that God’s reckoning of time is much different than ours. “A day with the Lord [is] as a thousand years.” Peter informs us of this fact (2Pe 3:8-9):

“But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.  (9) The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.”

Paul has this to say about that Day:

“Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him,  (2)  That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand.  (3)  Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition…” (2Th 2:1-3)

Paul was cautioning the saints of that time not to necessarily look for the Lord’s appearance at any moment. He wanted them to live as though Christ were coming in the next minute, but not to be beguiled by wishful thinking into supposing that minute was upon them. Paul was apparently of the same mind as Peter: neither one of these men of God knew the precise time Christ would come to catch away His Church, although they had no idea the time would have to be in their generation.

But what about today? What of this present generation whose exceeding wickedness and exalted plans for a one-world government are accelerating the fulfilling of prophecy concerning the Last Days? The signs of Jesus’ soon coming (and this is in our own hurried reckoning of time) are flying like foul calls all over the place. We are told by Bible authorities there is not one sign that has yet to be fulfilled before Christ can come again – and there are over a hundred signs that are given in the Old Testament: all have been faithfully fulfilled.

Ever since the ascension of Jesus into heaven, the saints in the intervening centuries have been consoling themselves with the “soon” coming of Jesus. It is possible God did not correct their faulty assumption that “soon” meant in a day or a year or so because the Hope has always buoyed us up, it has been a bright expectation that helped us through many stormy seas.

God Is the God of Time and Eternity

We have to realize however that “soon” does not mean the same to the God who lives forever and to whom time is less than a fraction of a second, as it does to us finite and very limited humans whose whole lifespan is expended in the snap of a finger. God, on the other hand, has forever existed. Before the “beginning” He was alone with His multi-faceted Self and constituted all of existence. Indeed, God Himself was existence; He was eternity and there was no one and nothing else beside Him. We read in Gen. 1.1 that God created the heaven and the earth and we correctly assume it was all created from “nothing”; there was not even a bunch of dry, lifeless molecules with which to start a dynamic and diverse universe that God envisioned from forever. Dr. Byron V. Johnson in his insightful article on “Creation” writes,

"Creation refers to that activity by which God brings into existence that which has not existed before. The Hebrew term, bara, in Genesis 1:1, translated “created,” is used exclu­sive­ly in reference to God in Scrip­ture. Although man is creat­ed in the image of God, and is consequently “creative,” he cannot bring into existence in the manner that God can and does." (Byron V. Johnson, “Creation,” A Consensus of Pentecostal Thought, edited by Aaron J. Smith)

There is one thing I want you to consider at this juncture: God is everywhere and there is no place that is devoid of the divine Presence, no place where God is not. That being true, there can be no “nothing” anywhere there is Almighty God; there can be no vacuum in which nothing, not even God, exists. According to my “educated guess,” when Moses wrote, by divine inspiration, detailing how God created (Heb. bara – “out of nothing”) the worlds, bara was the only word he could use to describe something that of course was completely unprecedented then, and it remains unprecedented to this day.

We of this day know much more about God than the Hebrews of that day. They had no scriptures from which to gain a better knowledge of God, and in the beginning, at Mt. Sinai, all they had was this terrifying voice booming like thunder throughout the atmosphere from the top of Sinai, telling them what God wanted. They were frightened out of their minds and fled from The Voice like ants scurrying to escape a voracious anteater that was destroying their nest. They pled with Moses to ask God to speak with him (Moses) and then he could later tell them what God had said. When I first read that this pleased God, I was surprised, but I should not have been; using an intermediary was always a big factor in His dealings with, and bringing salvation to, mankind. But more on that at another time and another post.

It is obvious that the Israelites, and we also, concluded that God created all things in the beginning out of – absolutely nothing. But we and they were in error. It was not a serious mistake, only a minor one, which however is of great significance to the student of the Scriptures. It is evident that God drew out of His omnipresent Self all that was needed to start the universe, which was then decreed to be more or less self-sustaining with the unwritten and unspoken proviso that God would intervene in the affairs of His universe whenever he deemed it suitable.

I had this idea (and I am sure some others did too) – that God contained within Himself everything that could “jump-start” a cosmos – for a number of years before confessing it publicly in my writings. I was thrilled to see a confirmation of my conclusions in the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (ISBE):

"The axiom, that out of nothing nothing comes, is not contradicted in the case of creation. The universe comes from God; it does not come from nothing."

I have inserted this short section on the creation of the universe in an attempt to open up your minds to the total power God has over space and time and eternity and when He spoke of His coming, it was in fact a “soon” coming with Him. It is evident that the saints of the apostolic era derived great comfort from the “soon” coming of Jesus who would deliver them once and for all time from the persecutors and other enemies of the Church.

We should take great comfort in this event that is certifiably coming soon. Thank God for the Day!

1Th 4:16-18: 

"For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:  (17) Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.  (18)  Wherefore comfort one another with these words."

Jesus’ coming is so close to fulfillment that we can almost reach out and touch His loving, extended hand!

My Unusual Journal 41



My Unusual Journal

My Unusual Journal 41 - Thursday, October 13, 2011, sometime in the wee hours of the morning

This is what the Lord has given to me at this time:

Consistency in Spiritual Growth

“When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.” (Acts 4.13 NIV)

Change by osmosis. Osmosis is “2 the diffusion of fluids through a membrane or porous partition; 3 an apparently effortless absorption of ideas, feelings, attitudes, etc., as if by biological osmosis.” (Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia © 1999 The Learning Company, Inc.) Osmosis, used in a spiritual context, can occur when a vessel (you or I) is drawn by the strong magnetic attraction of a Master Vessel (Jesus Christ) and opts to place itself in close contact with the Master Vessel. There occurs then a dynamic exchange of “ideas, feelings, attitudes, etc.,” between the two. Needless to say, the subsidiary vessel benefits tremendously by this act of aligning itself with the Master Vessel.

Now, about this little elementary lesson on biology (osmosis): Paul wrote on one occasion to the Corinthians,

“I do not want to seem to be trying to frighten you with my letters. For some say, ‘his letters are weighty and forceful, but in person he is unimpressive and his speaking amounts to nothing.’” (2 Cor. 10.9-10)

Believe me; I am not attempting to impress anyone with a show of knowledge. I lack the academic credentials. All I want to do in this particular “My Unusual Journal” is to show you how we can grow in Christ. It is by osmosis or by getting close enough to God to absorb some of His glorious Self into our spiritual beings. God made us deliberately incomplete without Him as part of our person. No person is the person he or she should be without their God to supplement them. We have to be in close contact with the Master on an ongoing basis, not by occasional spurts such as revivals. Don't misread me: revivals are the periodic renewal of the Church's faith by special efforts like fasting and praying and study of the Word of God; but often these efforts are followed by relapses on the part of the congregation into the same old habits.

Our habits as a congregation are not sinful nor are they necessarily bad habits, but there is always higher ground for which we have to strive. When we are content with the “good old ways” or have to look backward for the blessings of God in the days of old – it is not a sign of good spiritual health. Instead of falling back on the blessings of yesteryear, let’s look ahead and reach forward to making new memories that are just as good as and better than the past.

I can remember with pleasure how God “used to bless us way back when,” but I am looking ahead to more and better blessings, blessings to which I can look backward as the good ol’ days – while still striving to make more blessed memories by getting closer to my God. For instance, I still miss my father after these forty years since his passing, but I have no desire to go back to that time. It is past and God is much sweeter to me now than He was then. He never changes, but my perspective of Him does as He draws me closer and closer to Him.

A true revival of a church or an individual worshiper can only occur when God sends a spirit of revival. We don't animate or motivate ourselves; God does that and we then should follow up on the increased zeal and spiritual drive that come only from God. When God begins a rustling and shaking among us, He expects us to follow His leading and engage in the special efforts such as fasting and praying and the like. But here is where we drop the ball. After the special period of consecration has passed – as it must in time – we relax our special efforts and ease up on our zeal for the house of God. We go back to the old manner of living; we take up again the former less than ideal ways of following God.

Now God does not expect you to continue your fever-pitch efforts; that would not be realistic as we are only human and we have a natural life to sustain. We must work and pay bills and maintain a marriage and a family (God expects this of a godly person). These things take time. But when we have made our spiritual gains by a special effort blessed by God and when the time for that effort has passed, we have to be careful not to relax overmuch. Do what you can by the grace of God to hold onto the ground you have gained by His grace and your diligent efforts. Why should we slide back onto the old ground when God has said He would give us all the land we have thus far conquered? (Jos. 14.9)

We are only slightly pleasing God by our jerky efforts of pushing ahead three paces and sliding back one. The secret to making sustained progress in God is by applying a steady pressure on the forces of darkness and on our own carnal selves. Serving God is not a natural trait; it goes against our nature, which is to do as we please without regard for God and the creatures He made in His image and after His likeness.

When we cease our special efforts, which as humans we cannot continue indefinitely, let's relax – but not too much and let's settle down – but not into complacency. Keep that fervent mindset even when it is not there at the moment and continue in your zeal for the house of God.

 

My Unusual Journal 40

My Unusual Journal

My Unusual Journal 40 - Monday, October 10, 2011, 1:11 PM

We Have Every Right to Be Lowly

We find it difficult at times to be humble, but if we would be honest about our origins, what we have not accomplished unaided and how we failed to lift ourselves out of the cesspool of sin – again unaided – being truly lowly should be a piece of cake. What is it we have that we were not given? From the richest to the poorest, from the most intelligent to the most mentally challenged among us, we brought nothing to the table of life that was not dealt to us. We would not even have life if God had not touched us and breathed into us the breath or spirit of life, changing us from inanimate lumps of clay into living souls fit to do the will of God. And of course, if we want to poke into the matter further and be further humiliated, it is evident the inanimate lumps of clay that we originally were, had to be created by God. We are absolutely nothing of ourselves.

We have to remind ourselves again and again that there is nothing, nothing we have that was not given to us. Notwithstanding that cogent argument for being lowly, it is in our genes to be proud and to boast – but of what? All things, including life itself were given to us from God. Even Moses the great leader of God’s people forgot himself on one occasion and shouted in exasperation to the complaining Israelites, “Hear now, ye rebels; must we [and who did he mean by ‘we’?] fetch you water out of this rock?” and he angrily smote the rock that God had told him only to speak to. This was rebellion on Moses’ part and for that “small” lapse of integrity he was denied the honor of leading God’s people into the Land of Canaan.

Paul the fearless apostle to the Gentiles often spoke of himself in humble terms as being the “chief of sinners” (1 Tim. 1.15) and “the least of all saints” (Eph. 3.8), but if you read his epistles closely, you can detect a proud man who deliberately kept himself in subjection to the Word he preached and taught. He taught others to be lowly and so he kept himself lowly.

We no doubt have this treasure, this life, in fragile earthen vessels that the glory might be of God and not of ourselves. (2 Cor. 4.7) There would be no Einstein, no Galileo, no Newton among us if it were not for the Great Creator. There would be no towering biblical figures such as Abraham, no Moses, no Paul arising above the mediocrity around them without the great Primal Cause to bring them into existence and give them their special talents.

Where does this leave all our "self-made" boasting? What I am saying here is Truth and Truth thoroughly trashes any claims we make of greatness. There is only one Great Person in all existence and He is God, Yahweh, Jehovah, Jesus Christ. We are less than nothing.

No one has the right to think highly of himself; there is nothing we have accomplished and no traits we have that we willed into being. If we belong to God, whatever we have of good and whatever we have done that is meritorious are the direct result of the Spirit of God living and motivating us within.

Get down off your pedestal! Without God you are less than nothing.

My Unusual Journal 39

My Unusual Journal

My Unusual Journal 39 – Friday, October 07, 2011, 6:51 PM

Jesus, Cruelly Misunderstood by Men and Rejected by the Father (a sequel to My Unusual Journal 35)

I can’t get the following words out of my mind. They are from the song “He Understands, He’ll Say, ‘Well Done.’” I had tried to convey to you who looked at My Unusual Journal #35 the depths of my feelings about the Son of God being thoroughly stripped of dignity and divinity by His enemies. But, in my own analysis of it, I unfortunately failed in my trying. Here are the words again and once again I am totally aghast – appalled and astounded – at this wholly inappropriate scene. It was Homo sapiens, a species created by the love of God before ever the species existed, run amok; it was mankind gone mad:

“Misunderstood, the Savior of sinners,

Hung on the cross;

He was God’s only Son;

Oh! Hear Him calling His Father in heav’n,

‘Not my will, but thine be done.’”

Wait! Wait! There is surely a serious miscarriage of justice in this scenario. The sword of Justice itself has slain the only holy One in the history of humankind! Sinful men, who were meant to be forbidden access to eternal life, have been granted the same forbidden eternal life while the terrible, avenging sword has slain the sole perfect human ever to be found. The avenging sword has put to death the Ultimate Sacrifice, the sinless Lamb of God! It is certainly an utterly upside-down, egregious travesty of justice!

Jesus was indeed, in a frightening reality for all mankind, misunderstood by His tormentors, who were either unaware or simply did not care that the object of their hatred and contempt was actually the true, only begotten Son of God. Jesus was pure divinity and, ipso facto, He was strict Justice, a justice that would tolerate no deviation from what is right. Jesus the epitome of love is also what would seem to be its antithesis. Justice of itself is not concerned with such things as love and mercy. Justice and righteousness were uncompromising and the soul that deviated from God’s righteous standard in the slightest way must die.

It is rock-solid theological fact: We have all sinned in Adam and we have all sinned many times since entering this life. The uttermost of divine wrath was about to overtake the entire human race. God is in truth a consuming fire. He is God in His righteousness and wrath and strict justice and He can be nothing short of that.

All of humankind, just by being human, was in peril of eternal death, at once unsparing and irreversible. The scythe of Justice does not operate in minute detail, overlooking the “minor” sins and concentrating on the “major” ones. It sees a sin, any sin not covered by the blood of Jesus, and comes in fury on the sinner and its vengeance is horrible. In Scripture, especially the Old Testament, it is clear that Justice has a tendency to come upon men in broad sweeps, justly wrapping all mankind in sin, the one thing God hates with a perfect hatred. God is divine and the creature God had made had dared to go against His will. The race of humankind was facing sure death lasting for unending ages.

And then came what would seem to be the final unsustainable outrage: Jesus’ hour of Passion culminating in His unthinkable death. How many further indignities would He suffer, how many more blasphemous insults endure? Looking back at the scene, we may not grasp the extreme danger the race of men was in, but when we adjust our focus on the righteousness of God – supreme, unsullied Good to which no human other than Jesus has attained – it throws us into a panic because we too are human and we too have more than once slighted Him and broken His righteous law. We too have crucified the immaculate Lamb of God; we too have pushed a crown of thorns down on His sinless brow and impaled Him on a cross of our own devising. In a lifetime of twenty or more years what have we not done to offend Him; what have we not done to break His heart?

God is not inherently subject to such passions as a broken heart or a grievous hurt; He has subjected Himself to these emotions in order to save us. If God could not feel what we feel, how could He have compassion on us? If He could not have His heart crushed, how could He reach out in love and deliver us from a fate worse than death? Being God supreme and almighty, He would by nature be above the human conflict, yet all the while Justice and Righteousness would be about their work of killing off all that transgressed or broke God’s law.

At a certain moment in time God chose not to remain cloaked in His invincible divinity. As Jesus Christ, human and vulnerable, He elected to suffer, He voluntarily subjected Himself to the human condition and endured untold agony for the sake of the creature He had loved before the creature existed.

You may have noticed that throughout the Bible the most poignant and significant scenes of humanity’s experiences with God often are not given the space or words that we think they should have. These highly significant episodes are described in such a brief, almost casual way that we will miss the important lessons and truths they convey if we do not immerse ourselves in the words and use our imagination, not to make them more important than they are, but to see the high importance they carry, unembellished by the superlatives and soaring rhetoric of the human tongue. 

Yet we need the superlatives and the soaring rhetoric in some instances. Without these aids we cannot transmit these very critical facts or stories from the teacher to the learner. Even with all the verbal skills we have it is yet impossible to convey the critical minutiae of some biblical episodes from one human to another because of our limited language and our limited, carnal minds.

I realize I that I personally am restricted to paddling about in the shallows of this great mystery. I cannot at this time launch out into the deep; it would overwhelm me. At my advanced age I am still a novice swimmer who cannot relay effectively to you even the wonders of the little knowledge with which God has blessed me. But I am determined to give it my all – by the wondrous grace of God. I am absolutely nothing without Him.

“If when you give the best of your service,

Telling the world that the Savior is come;

Be not dismayed when men don’t believe you;

He understands; He’ll say, ‘Well done.’

But if you try and fail in your trying,

Hands sore and scarred from the work you’ve begun;

Take up your cross, run quickly to meet Him;

He’ll understand, He’ll say, ‘Well done.’”

I JUST WANT TO VOICE MY HEARTFELT THANKS

The party’s over…  Well, maybe it was not so much a party as a small gathering of friends and relatives to celebrate my 91^st birthday, which is October 4. We also celebrated the birthday of my daughter Janis, which is October 3. For the sake of convenience we celebrated on the Saturday before the two epochal- ? events.

I was pleasantly surprised that my pastor and his wife, Bishop Mark and Sis. Shirley Moore took the time to attend the event on Saturday. That took me took to a higher position than that for which I had settled; it gave me a sense of worth, while at the same time it made me perceive more of my utter unworthiness.

They not only attended, but so did a number of my fellow church members. And here is where the real display of love enters the picture: these church members did not know me nor did I know them. We had only heard of each other and touched by a phone prayer line and, on rare occasion, by the Internet. Yet they came out to show their love for me, a guy they didn’t know existed a few months ago; and I have to say that it awakes a responsive love in my heart.

It proves what I firmly believe: All who believe in Jesus Christ as their Savior are brothers and sisters and we all fight the same warfare, a never ending struggle against evil. We are in the warfare for the long haul no matter where we live on this earth. We are the true Church of Jesus Christ and what affects one affects us all. That is why it is so vital that we pray in the Spirit. Praying in the Spirit is when God takes over our faculties and prays through us for people we don’t know and for pressure-packed situations of which we are unaware. As Paul says, we do not know how to pray as we ought. We don’t know what John or Sally or Susie is going through, we can’t see or foresee the dangers that confront or will confront any one of them, but the Holy Spirit sees and He knows how to direct our prayers for them just when they need those prayers, and God hears and He will invariably answer our prayers made in the Spirit because they are spoken according to His will. He is obliged to answer what He has prompted us in the Spirit to request. That is what a real God does constantly.

I send a special THANK YOU to:

my fellow church members,

my son and daughters and their spouses,

my granddaughter and her friend,

my grandson and his wife and children (my great grandchildren),

my niece and her friend,

all my well-wishers,

just for loving me and sending up a prayer now and then for me, as I do for you. I repeat: you don’t have to know people personally and you don’t need to know the dire situations in which they find themselves on occasion. If you love as you should and are submitted to the will of God, He can cause you to pray for persons unseen and situations unknown by you. But you must have a heart of compassion. That means you must have the love of God motivating you. God does not work through a vessel that is not filled with love. God Himself is love.

YOU HAVE ALL MADE THIS MY DAY AND MY YEAR!

My Unusual Journal 38

My Unusual Journal

My Unusual Journal 38 - Friday, September 30, 2011, 2:40 AM

A Few Intriguing Thoughts on the First Chapter of Genesis

I am lying in bed, not sleeping, not praying in the classical sense of the term, just lying here and thinking about God and His goodness and His ways of operating in the affairs of humanity and the global society called The World.

The thought arises: When God formed Adam from the dust of the ground, Adam had no previous human history from which to learn anything. Whatever knowledge he had came by one of three means: 1) he was made with an inherent knowledge, the knowledge that God had programmed into him; 2) God taught Adam as they would meet in the Garden of Eden in the cool of the evening; or 3) he learned by experience, a sort of trial and error method. It was more than likely a combination of the three methods.

God implanted the precise items of knowledge that Adam would need right away in Adam’s subliminal mind. Beyond that initial knowledge I believe that much of what Adam knew about his Creator was taught to him by the direct confrontational method whether he actually saw God – remember Adam had absolutely no sin to restrict his communion with his Creator – or just a representation of God that spoke to Adam as He would much later talk to Moses.

The angels were created some time prior to the making of Adam, which indicates they saw all the mighty works of God in creating the worlds and all the other objects that make up the universe. The angels were there and they were awestruck at the tremendous show of might and glory when God said “Let there be light!” and “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters!” and “Let the earth bring forth grass!” and God caused all these unique acts TO BE by His mighty power alone. The angels, who are powerful creatures in themselves, did not assist God in the creation of all things from a "nothing" starting point when there were no angels yet created.

God created the universe through the agency of Jesus who was as yet unborn until later ages. The "Word" (Grk Logos) mentioned in John 1.1, would be the motivating force of Jesus, and they (the Logos and the human Jesus whom the Logos inhabited) would be called the only begotten Son of God. All Creation was brought into being by God through the agency of Jesus.

 “And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ…” (Eph 3:9)

“For by him [Christ] were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him…” (Col 1:16)

Jesus is God (John 10.1). Jesus is God in a human body (John 1.1, 14). Jesus is the Holy Spirit (Acts 16.7 RV & NIV). Jesus Christ is all we will ever need in this life or in the unending ages to come. Paul is so bold as to declare, “For in him [Christ] dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” (Col. 2.9) It is clear to all who want to know more of the truth of the Godhead that Jesus, who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, comprises the totality of the Godhead and its many ancillary attributes.

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