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| Health And Wealth Be Damned! |
| Thursday, October 29, 2009 |
There is a branch of Christianity that is convinced that lack of health and wealth is a discipline against your stubborn sin, or worse yet, an evidence of your lack of faith. Good luck convincing Job of that, but let's leave him aside for the moment.
Christ was deeply loved by the Father, yet He had no place to lay His head, and had to fish for money because one of His disciples was a thief with even what little He had been given. Jesus hungered and thirsted. Jesus suffered poverty, disgrace, and persecution. Life was often "unfair" for Him. He was hassled, misunderstood, spit upon, and beaten. Yet this didn't mean that He suffered because He lacked faith and/or obedience. For Christ was faithful to the end.
Somewhere in God's infinite and immutable love for us is an allowance for poverty, shame, and pain as He hammers out His will and glory upon the anvil of our life. So let none of us accuse God, or each other, of lack of faithfulness or love when we suffer poverty or poor health. Both Job and Jesus demonstrate that one can be perfectly righteous and still suffer greatly.
The lesson we must learn from this is that the principle gifts of Divine love are spiritual blessings not temporal ones.
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posted by Alan @ 11:30 AM   |
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| Temptations & Faith |
| Monday, October 12, 2009 |
Jesus makes some interesting statements in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 17. Let's take a look at a few:
There will always be temptations to sin, but what sorrow awaits the person who does the tempting! It would be better to be thrown into the sea with a millstone hung around your neck than to cause one of these little ones to fall into sin. So watch yourselves! (vs. 1-3)
I run into temptations every single day because here in North America I live in a culture full of temptation -- it's at the heart of all marketing and advertising. And I have three options at my disposal for handling it:
1. Jesus taught us to pray that the Father would not lead us into temptation (Matt. 6:13). This doesn't mean that God does the tempting (James 1:13), but that He has the power to lead us away from temptation. If something is constantly tempting us we must pray for the Spirit's assistance. To His disciples Jesus said: "Pray that you may not enter into temptation." (Luke 22:40-41)
2. We can take every thought captive to Christ (2 Cor. 10:5). That means bringing those tempting thoughts before God's Word so that His truth can take them prisoner. Jesus' prayer in John 17 included this promise: "that we are sanctified by God's Word." By taking our thoughts captive, and hauling them before the glaring truth of God's Word, we can bind them in the name of Jesus, and sanctify our minds as His truth penetrates our heart. But -- "taking every thought captive" also means, again, bringing our thought life to God in prayer: "Lord, remove these thoughts from me, I pray." And God's promise to those who "walk by the Spirit" is that "they will not carry out the desires of the flesh" Galatians 5:16).
3. We can also "flee temptation" (2 Tim. 2:22). If there are hotspots in your life, you need to pro-actively avoid them, and if they blindside you in any way, run from them as if a grizzly bear is chasing you.
"But, what sorrow awaits the person who does the tempting."
Are you a person who tempts other people? Are you tempting your children to hate you? Are you tempting your spouse to despise you? Are you tempting a fellow employee to lust after you? "What sorrow awaits the person who does the tempting" God says. When you are the one doing the tempting you are playing with fire, and some of your current misery may be a direct result of your actions. " It would be better to be thrown into the sea with a millstone hung around your neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble."
The apostles said to the Lord, “Show us how to increase our faith.” The Lord answered, “If you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘May you be uprooted and thrown into the sea,’ and it would obey you! (vs. 5,6)
Does this mean that if we have even a tiny little bit of faith we can throw our spiritual authority around all over the place? Of course not! What Jesus is teaching us here is that if we know that it's the Father's will to uproot a mulberry bush and throw it into the sea, then we can pray in confidence, through our faith, that when we command the mulberry bush to be uprooted, He will do it. We can only pray the Father's will; we don't receive if we're simply praying for our own desires to come true (James 4:4).
“When a servant comes in from plowing or taking care of sheep, does his master say, ‘Come in and eat with me’? No, he says, ‘Prepare my meal, put on your apron, and serve me while I eat. Then you can eat later.’ And does the master thank the servant for doing what he was told to do? Of course not. In the same way, when you obey Me you should say, ‘We are unworthy servants who have simply done our duty.’
This one is very interesting! Many Christians believe that they are serving God because He needs them; or that they should get something in return because they have served Him; or that they are special to God because they have sacrificed for Him. But Jesus is teaching us here that it is OUR DUTY to serve God, and that God owes us nothing. God doesn't need us. Quite to the contrary, we are the ones who need Him. And by being obedient to Him and following Him, we are participating in His good and perfect will. But that does not mean that we should expect Him to turn around and bless us, simply because we are doing what He expects us to do anyway. God may say "Well done thou good and faithful servant", but the obedience He expects from us in no way obliges Him to pour out His treasure chest of blessings for us.
Labels: faith, faithfulness |
| posted by Alan @ 3:21 PM |
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| Extreme Makeover |
| Wednesday, August 12, 2009 |
Tired of how you look? Hate that crooked nose? The beady eyes? Hate that you can't afford plastic surgery? Frustrated that, for the most part, you'll look like this until you die?
Well, for starters, God made you how you look, so it shouldn't matter how you fit in. "But God gives [you] a body as He pleases, and to each seed its own body." (1 Cor 15:38-39) But even if God didn't make you handsome or beautiful, He doesn't care about that anyway -- and neither should you, the Bible says. Your outer man is corrupted and decaying, and God's far more concerned about giving the inner you a complete makeover. For now you're just living in a temporary shell, warts and all. Your body is just the luggage that gets you from birth to death.
I used to think that when God raises you from the dead you'll look exactly the same, and so we should show great respect to it, even at death. But that doesn't seem to be the case. The Bible clearly teaches that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of heaven" (1 Corinthians 15:50), and that the body is "sown a natural body and raised a spiritual body; there is a natural body and there is a spiritual body" (15:44) What God raises from the dead will look very little like what you're walking around in now.
So why worry so much about what you can't take with you? God's makeover will be extreme. When He raises you from the dead -- or transforms you if you're alive when He returns -- you will look quite different. Proof of this is when Jesus rose from the dead. Mary Magdalene stared right at Him and didn't recognize Him. She thought He might be the gardener. When He walked with some disciples along the road to Emmaus they had no clue who He was. Why? Because His raised body was not the same as what He had been born with. It was quite different.
This will happen to you too. At death you'll get the surgery you always wanted. Your whole body will decay back into dust, and God will raise it up as a new creation....a spiritual body of some sort. "And as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly Man." (1 Cor 15:49)
I'm guessing that if you're not happy with your body now, you'll be very happy with it then! Meanwhile, put a little more effort into making-over the inner you instead of the the outer you that's going to rot and disappear.
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| posted by Alan @ 10:50 AM |
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| BETRAYAL: Learning To Love Our Enemies |
| Tuesday, August 11, 2009 |
 You may be reading this post today with the sharp edge of betrayal fresh in your mind. Perhaps your spouse has been cheating on you, or one of your kids has just been arrested for drug possession, or that person you confided in went and blabbed everything all over town. And the anger in you is starting to swell; there are days when you simply lose control.
Jesus can sympathize with you. But when we face these situations we must look at how Jesus handled Judas Iscariot, and take our cues and strength from Him.
Before He selected Judas to be His disciple Jesus had spent a whole night in prayer speaking with His Father in heaven. We can assume that God spoke very clearly to Him about whom He should choose, and I believe that the Father made it clear to Jesus that Judas would be His betrayer. But He was still to teach him, love him, and treat him as a brother.
I can't imagine how hard it would be to be told that you must select and love the person who would eventually turn you over to terrorists to be tortured and killed. But this exactly what Jesus did. Never, at any time, did He let on to the other disciples what He knew about Judas. They were stunned to meet him at the edge of the Garden that dreadful night.
This reminds us of what God not only expects, but enables us to do with our enemies. Jesus said, "Love your enemies and do good to them", not as a wonderful ideal but straight out of His personal experience with Judas. For three years He practiced love, compassion, forgiveness, and patience with Judas....all the while knowing that in end Judas would not repent, and would still carry out his betrayal.
This is our calling too! Whether it's with a difficult spouse, a wayward child, an ornery boss, or an unfaithful friend God calls us to love them, forgive them, and do good to them in spite of what they have done, or may still yet do, to us.
May God give you the grace, strength, and peace to accomplish His purposes in your life....especially with those who continue to hurt you.
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| posted by Alan @ 10:25 PM |
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| Praying For Our Kids! |
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 With so many temptations and pressures that our kids face today it is imperative that we as parents and grandparents pray every day for our kids. But what should we pray? Jesus answers that question in John 17.
"I have revealed You to the ones You gave me; for I have passed on to them the message You gave me. All who are mine belong to You, and You have given them to me; protect them by the power of Your name so that they will be united just as we are."
Of course, He was speaking of His disciples, but can't we speak the exact same way about our kids? The principle is identical: we are responsible for passing His love and truth on to all the little ones He has entrusted to us.
And then Jesus gets into the heart of what we must pray:
"I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should KEEP THEM FROM THE EVIL ONE. SANCTIFY THEM BY YOUR TRUTH." (17:15,17)
This must be our prayer too: "Father, as much as I would like to protect my kids from the evil one, there is only so much I can do. You are their Father.....protect them from the evil one. Watch over them constantly. Lead them not into temptation. And Father, sanctify them by Your truth, for Your Word is true."
Praying this way for our kids is a humble recognition that we can't be there for them all the time -- but God can. And it's also a recognition that in order to keep their minds and spirits clean we must bathe them every day in the Word of God.
I have to confess that when my children were growing up I washed my hair more often than I washed my kids' minds with the Word of God. It was so easy to get distracted from that important time of family devotions, and it's a mistake that I wish I could go back and undo.
If I want my kids to make healthy choices and remain innocent and untouched by the evil one, I need to diligently pray for the Father's protection and consistently model and teach God's Holy Word for their sanctification. They simply cannot be sanctified when I get lazy about teaching them His Word....especially when they become teenagers.
Moms, Dads....be diligent in your prayer for your kids! And be just as diligent in protecting and cherishing those quiet family times when you gather your kids together each day to sanctify their hearts and minds with God's Word.
Labels: faith, family |
| posted by Alan @ 11:10 AM |
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| About Me |
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Name: Alan
Home: Canada
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