Month: September 2019

Have you noticed that children seem to run wilder and wilder with each generation that passes by? One wonders how it has gotten to the place that it is today.

A friend remarked that children were running around a grocery store and their parents didn’t stop them or reprove them in any fashion. These are the same kids who spend all day on their smart phones on social media or playing games. I can’t say that I am all that surprised at how they are turning out.

Remember, their parents were probably part of the generation who were given awards for merely showing up rather than for excellence and spent their time on the Internet. Those of that generation had parents who were the first to be obsessed by video games, cable television and VHS/DVD videos.

The generation before that spent much of their free time watching television and demanding everything that was on the commercials of their favorite TV shows.

All of this started around the time this country began rejecting God in their daily lives. First, through the schools and then from all forms of public expression more and more each year. The current move is to censor or even punish those who express their belief in God.

It is ironic to see that Christians are being punished for having faith in God and in his moral code. The people who are doing the punishing say that we all have our own moral codes but somehow the one that is God given is horrible and awful. Does that make sense to anyone?

The rules that God has given us are ones that, if we could only follow them faithfully, would bring about an atmosphere of love, kindness and caring. Is there something about that scenario that screams for censorship or punishment?

God gave us those rules to show us how we would have to live to be up to the standard that would allow us into his presence. He also gave us those rules to show us that, on our own, not one of us would be capable of keeping them. We are simply sinful and will go against his authority throughout our entire life.

However, God saw that from the beginning. Once man used his free-will to sin, God knew that he would have to send his Son to the earth to save us.

Jesus told us that he did not come to break the law of God but rather, to fulfill it. He was the personification of all that was holy of God and, at the same time, all that was human of man.

He told us that we were to follow the commandments of God. We were supposed to follow his code of morals (known today as the Ten Commandments.) He even emphasized the two that were of the utmost importance to God. To love God and to love others as ourselves.

For generations, this moral code was taught to children and the, to their children. This started to fall apart in the twentieth century. First, in Europe and then later, in the United States. At the point we are at today, only a very few families teach their children about the God-given moral code.

Instead, most individuals will say that they have their own code of morals just as they say that they have their own spirituality or that they are simply atheists and that, as we are animals, there doesn’t have to be a moral code.

One can only imagine what this generation of children will grow up believing given that they have, for the most part, never been taught about God. How much further can mankind fall before God allows judgement to fall?

This happened to the Israelites when generation after generation did wrong in the eyes of God. Through his prophets, God warned of impending doom. He gave his people time to repent and turn back to him.

Instead, they chose to disregard or even to kill those prophets. They turned further away from God and turned to false prophets and false gods who promised peace, prosperity and security.

It finally got to the point where God knew that the people would only get worse and worse. He allowed the Babylonians to conquer Israel and turn it into a ruinous heap.

In his lovingkindness, after many years in exile, God allowed the remnant of his people to return to their promised land.

Today, God has also been warning of impending doom. Through the followers of Christ, he has given mankind warnings for millennia of the devastation that will fall on this planet. It will be unlike anything that has ever been seen before. Given how evil mankind has been up to this point, it is almost impossible to believe that we could be worse. But if God says it is so, then it is.

This time, it will not result in exile but in a war that would destroy every inhabitant of the world.

God wants us to repent and turn away from our evil ways and turn to Jesus. He wants us to strive to keep his commandments and, when we fail, he wants us to truly repent, be sorry for what we did and to turn back to him again.

If we don’t, there is no excuse. We will deserve every drop of judgement because we have willfully chosen to remain evil in God’s sight.

Exodus 20:1-17

And God spoke all these words:

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

“You shall have no other gods before me.

“You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.

You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.

“You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.

“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.

Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns.

For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

“Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.

“You shall not murder.

“You shall not commit adultery.

“You shall not steal.

“You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.

You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”

We are a world that lives for the sake of our feelings. We don’t look at truth or righteousness, merely whether or not something “feels” good or right.

I don’t know about you, but I would prefer someone to tell me they care about me and not that they feel like they care about me.

Feelings can change and change rapidly. I remember having a crush on someone in school. After watching him from afar for more than a year, my feelings changed in a morning when he made an unkind but true comment about me. Actually, what he said was true but he did it in a way that was not kind.

It didn’t matter to me, at the time, that what he said was true. It mattered that he hurt my feelings and so my feelings for him in the time it took to take in what he had said. Looking back, I wish I had paid attention to the truth of his statement and acted on it as I would have saved myself a huge amount of grief in the future.

Instead, I was guided by my feelings. From that point on, my feelings for him turned bitter and hateful. I didn’t miss an opportunity to spread mean words about him and to make fun of him when the occasion arose.

That’s what happens when feelings are in control. We can blow hot and then ice cold in moments.

You might say that is simply being a teenager. To a degree, that is true. However, it seems like more and more adults, these days, are acting like immature children.

They don’t get their way and they turn against those who denied it to them. You don’t agree with them and therefore, you are an enemy.

They may say, I don’t feel like you are a good person. Or, I feel like I am a boy now and not a girl. I feel like the sun won’t rise tomorrow and the world will fall apart within a matter of twelve years.

Their feelings won’t make any of those things true. In fact, truth and what people feel are generally at polar opposites.

Feelings can come and go but truth is forever. Truth is from God and feelings are something that mankind has developed. Anything that man has made is corrupt because mankind is corrupt.

We are a sinful lot. We like to think that we are not. We will think that we are the pinnacle of everything that has ever been. It’s a bit funny, as God actually made us lower than angels. We are far from the pinnacle, in fact, we are at the bottom.

God created mankind to show that individuals with free-will could and would turn to him and repent of their sins and live in accordance with his truth. That doesn’t mean those who follow him won’t stray often but that we will repent again and reach out to him for help.

Angels were made higher than mankind but they were not given the opportunity to repent and return to God. The angels, known as demons, lead by Lucifer rebelled against God and were doomed forever. Honestly, though, it doesn’t appear that those fallen angels wanted to repent. They are still trying to beat God and ascend his throne.

They know that mankind is swayed by their feelings. That is why they offer temptations to us. They want us to do what we feel is right (for us) and not to follow the truth of God’s word.

This is not only something that happens to those who have not accepted Christ as their savior. Most Christians that I have known, like to live by their feelings as well.

They love how certain Christian songs make them feel, whether those songs really speak truth or not. They really like certain Christian books, though often those books are simply things the authors feel and not something from God. The Christians feel like certain pastors are speaking to them, whether or not those pastors are truly Christians or merely charlatans cashing in on those who follow them by telling them things that they want to hear and not truth.

Living by these types of feelings can result in a very difficult time for Christians. If they aren’t hearing the truth of God’s word, whether by song, book, or sermon, then they cannot ever grow.

Their growth as Christians will be stunted. They are like a tree that isn’t given the right type of care (which means allowing harsh weather to test and strengthen it.) That tree will grow for a season but at its heart, it is weak. When the harsh winds of life come blowing, those stunted Christians will be broken and uprooted rather than merely bending to the wind and righting themselves once the storm is past.

It is time for the church (meaning the body of all true Christians) to stop living by their feelings. They need to look beyond the human experience of self-satisfaction and, instead, look at life through God’s eyes. It’s easy to do, God has given us the way. Reading an accurate translation of the Bible, based on a multitude of trusted Biblical scholars (and certainly not a single translator), will point the way to righteous living in the eyes of God.

Stop looking at how you feel about things and start living for truth. God is truth. Start living for God.

Psalms 25:4-5

Show me your ways, Lord, teach me your paths.

Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long.

Have you noticed that more and more people seem to lack the ability to own up to their mistakes? It is easier to blame other people, other circumstances or even the weather than it is to stand up and say, I made a mistake.

Why are we so afraid of acknowledging publicly that we are not perfect? We seem to find it easy to find faults in others but not in ourselves.

Maybe we have always been that way but these days, we have the ability and inclination to blame others in a world-wide fashion before we take a moment to think it through.

We’ve become a world-wide society of individuals who take to social media, through Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and whatever else is out there and speak our minds before we have had time to really formulate our thoughts and think through possible repercussions and consequences.

Taking responsibility for mistakes or worse, is never easy. Being responsible is becoming less and less of a thing that people strive for. Why be a responsible person when it is so much easier just to live in the moment and forget about the consequences?

We see this in every part of life. From the highest to the lowest. From the worst to the best individuals.

When you stop taking responsibility for your actions, then, of course, your actions will get worse and worse. We don’t live in a world where people blaming other people for what they themselves have done wrong, results in the one who blames becoming a better person.

People will blame governments and companies and even the weather, for the problems that they see in their lives. In some cases, those governments, companies and, yes, weather, are the main culprits behind a problem. But, in most situations, the individuals are looking for a scapegoat to put all of the blame on for things they have brought upon themselves.

But, let’s look at what is really at the root of it all.

When Adam and Eve first sinned is when shifting responsibility for actions first began. Eve blamed the serpent (that is, Satan) for deceiving her into her sin. Adam blamed Eve for simply handing him the fruit that was forbidden. This set a pattern of ever-decreasing responsibility for sin.

While Eve was deceived, Adam was not. He simply took what he was given even though he knew it was against God’s one rule. Our blaming others for our sins and even our simple mistakes, has grown out of this first encounter with sin.

On our own, we would rather blame others and try to escape our deserved consequences. Worse yet, we now convince ourselves that we are right in what we are doing and want to destroy those who say otherwise.

There are those of us who point fingers of blame at innocents and then demand that they be punished for what we did. There will come a day, in the not so distant future, when we will demand that the innocents die.

To some degree, that is already happening when mothers abort their babies because they are not convenient. Apparently, for many, having sex without adequate protection, was too great a burden. So, instead, the baby in the womb is blamed for coming into being. And their life is forfeited because of it.

It will go beyond that death of unborn babies and will spread across societies. In some societies, women can be murdered for the crime of having been raped. They can be killed for just simply dishonoring some male in their family. The dishonor is in the eyes of the male and doesn’t have to have any basis in truth.

There are those among us who call for the death of someone who doesn’t have the same political party. They have threatened they are out to get the others. When will they learn that having taken the final step and destroying one group that disagrees with or is different from you will only fracture society into more and more disparate groups. And those groups will begin to war with one another.

People are broken, they are fallen, they are sinners. They see everything through the dark glasses of their own sins. Anything that will point out their sin, is their enemy. They would rather have the truth destroyed rather than owning up to their sins.

At some point, God will have done all that he can do to bring the people of this world to repentance. He gave us a way to be saved, through the sacrifice of his son, Jesus. There will be a great many people who will turn their backs on him.

In the end, God will signal the time for the Great Tribulation to begin. He does this out of love because those who are left at that time who have not accepted Jesus and will never do so absent the horrific times of the seven years of the greatest tribulation that has ever been on this planet.

Even then, many will harden their hearts and their necks and will continue to reject him and to blame others. For the sake of the few who will turn to him, God will allow this period of history to unveil.

This is the time when all people will turn on each other. They will blame one another and seek the life of everyone else. If God doesn’t step in and intervene, those who are left would destroy mankind completely.

It all began with one sin and it continues today. That we are seeing more and more people sinning and blaming others seems to point to the end of time coming soon. It may be today, tomorrow, a hundred years from now or more. But, during whatever time is left, people will grow worse and worse and will blame others for more and more.

It is hard, as a Christian, to live through this. It seems so plain to see. You want to point it out to others and have them see and understand it. You should do so, but be aware that in doing so, you may become to individual who is blamed.

Jesus told us that we would be treated as poorly as he was. We are to understand that and glory in the fact that we may become martyrs for his sake.

We must, regardless of the consequences, be willing to let others know that Jesus loves them and died for their sins. He did so to save them for eternity.

Genesis 3:8-13

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”

He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”

And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”

The man said, “The woman you put here with me — she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”

Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”

The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

Recently, in the midst of a group of Christians, after I had spoke about some of the things I have to do each day, a fellow Christian turned to me and told me I was needy.

Now, I knew then as well as now, that she was trying to be humorous in her fashion, which she tells everyone is simply snarky. To me, though, snarky means a way of covering for saying things that are purposefully mean-spirited and hurtful.

The thing is, when she said it to me, I responded back seriously and sadly and said, “Yes, I am. I am so needy and I don’t like it. I’ve never been the needy one before. I’ve always been the one to give help and not the one to need help.”

I was sad and unhappy about it and all those in the group could see that. Not that she had mentioned it but that it was actually true.

However, for a few days afterward, I let her words sting me. I try hard not to show my dependence but in that type of group, I let my guard down and let my friends see the side of me that I don’t show too often.

Then, as it always does when she has said her snarky things to me, I let it go and reminded myself that she is the way she is because she is hurting so much herself. She hides behind her style of humor without realizing that in her effort to mask what she is feeling, she is hurting others needlessly.

So, as I said, I had stopped thinking about it until about a week ago. I was in the midst of reading the Bible about an unrelated subject and, suddenly, I was thinking about what it means to be needy.

Before I became a Christian, I never considered myself as needing anyone at all. It was when I came to the end of my own efforts and my life was crumbling, that I turned to Jesus and admitted I could not save myself. I needed him to do it.

Which he did.

But then, I started forgetting about how much I needed him every day. I started relying again on my own efforts. I took way too much pride in how much I could accomplish and how much I could help others. It wasn’t very often, if ever, that I recognized that God was doing these things through me.

I didn’t think about it at the time but a few days ago, I did start thinking about it. Those thoughts of self-reliance, were really thoughts of pride. Pride of that nature is sinful.

It is, once again, man trying to reach to the heavens and become their own God. Who needs God when you can do so much on your own? After all, doesn’t the Bible tell us that God helps those who help themselves?

Actually, it doesn’t. That isn’t at all from the Bible. It is based on ancient Greek mythology. It wasn’t speaking for or about the God who created the heavens but instead, of gods that man made for himself.

God knows that we need him. He tells us so throughout the Scriptures. Without Jesus, we would be doomed for eternity. It is only through his sacrifice that we are saved from eternal hell.

We need him. We need him every single day. I know that I do. From sun up to sun down and even while I am sleeping, I need God to help me.

Not the least of where I need his help is in overcoming the stronghold sin of pride. It manifests itself frequently but I am learning more and more that anything I have truly accomplished was done with and for God.

This is a sin that many of us are guilty of having. We are taught to have pride in what we do. We are also taught to excel. It isn’t very often that we are taught that it is something that God has done with us.

In what I have been going through these past few years, I have come to depend on others continually. I have been learning to do a few things but for most things, as my fellow Christian noted, I am needy. Very, very needy.

And that’s okay. It is a lesson that God is teaching me. Perhaps, I have been too hard-headed to learn about it in any other way.

God also loves and helps the needy. It is when we acknowledge that he is in control and that we are not, that he can begin to do his work in our lives.

He hears us and knows what we need more than we do ourselves. He is a very good Father and will give us what we need in order to grow in faith.

Psalm 86:1-7

Hear me, Lord, and answer me, for I am poor and needy.

Guard my life, for I am faithful to you; save your servant who trusts in you.

You are my God; have mercy on me, Lord, for I call to you all day long.
Bring joy to your servant, Lord, for I put my trust in you.

You, Lord, are forgiving and good, abounding in love to all who call to you.

Hear my prayer, Lord; listen to my cry for mercy.

When I am in distress, I call to you, because you answer me.