Month: May 2020

We are a rebellious people. We rebel against both good things and bad things. It seems like when things are going well, we’re happy. However, the moment that things go awry, we are up at arms.

Some times, it is a good thing and at other times, it is not.

The country I live in righteously rebelled against tyranny and was born out of that rebellion. There are other countries where this type of rebellion is still playing out. Those countries don’t seem to be having the same result that we did more than two hundred years ago.

I’m not really sure why. Perhaps evil has grown ever more powerful. Maybe it is because the tyrants have an easier time in quashing rebellion in this day and age. They don’t have to spend months transporting troops to a hostile climate with no supply chain right behind them.

There are rebellions that go the other way. Ones in which people are fighting to be allowed to become enslaved by their government. They are willing to trade their freedom for a sense of security. They don’t want the blessing that they have because of the sacrifices of their ancestors. They would rather have what they consider an easy life.

The problem, of course, is that life is never ever easy. We are all born. We all live through a life of strife. We all die.

What’s more, after our physical bodies die, we will all face the judgement of God.

He is the one that mankind first rebelled against. Every generation since that first one has continued to rebel again God.

No matter how present he is in people’s lives, when hardship comes, he is almost always the first to be blamed. He is also the one that people cry out to for him to save them.

I am reminded of the Israelites, who rebelled against God almost immediately after he saved them from slavery in Egypt. Every single time something came up, whether it be Moses going off to commune with God for a time or a desire for meat to eat, people cried out and wished they had never left Egypt. They wished they were back in the bonds of an increasingly cruel tyranny.

God forgave them many times over. However, when he finally led them to the land that he had promised their ancestors, their lack of faith pushed them over the edge.

He had promised that they would easily take the land. However, they allowed their fears to increase and, even though two of their number who had spied on the land and said it would be easy to move into, they cried out against God.

They wished that they had died in Egypt, they wished they had died in the wilderness rather than enter the promised land and die there.

They got their wish. Because of their rebellion and disbelief, God condemned them to wander in the wilderness for forty years until all those adults who had spoke against the promise of God had died.

Their sin had a price even though he forgave them. He came close to wiping them out and starting over with Moses but Moses asked him to forgive them and to work through them. He did so, but the price of their sin lasted their entire life.

We have to be careful what causes we embrace and who our rebellion is really against. If we are embracing God and following his guidance, then our rebellion is just and good. If we are looking for an easy life or are trying to force a cause on others, it is something to look at over and over again before acting.

All sin was forgiven at the cross, the pardon for your sin is there for you to ask for. God can and will forgive you if you believe in the sacrifice made by his beloved son, Jesus.

However, with forgiveness, you may still continue to suffer from the choices you made and that is good and right and just. The suffering will last no longer than this lifetime and perhaps less time; however, forgiveness is for eternity.

2 Timothy 3:1-5

But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.

People have become so isolated. They are alone and by themselves and wondering how life can have changed so much and so quickly. This was true even before this global pandemic sped the process into hyperdrive.

We’ve learned to live by and for ourselves. We’ve stopped thinking about others first and ourselves second. There are exceptions, of course, mainly for family members.

Even so, I’ve seen this bond of family starting to deteriorate.

I’ve experienced it myself in my own family. Only one hundred years ago, families lived together in multi-generational homes. Aunts, uncles, cousins and so forth mostly lived close to one another.

The advantages were that, during times of stress, you could reach out to and rely on family to help you. Further back in time, people could rely on their neighbors and their villages.

Today, self-reliance is stressed. It is something to be prized. If you can make it on your own, then you have accomplished a great goal. At least in the eyes of society.

But is it a good way to live? Is it something that will truly bring satisfaction? When you are constantly putting yourself first, do you learn to look down on others and to demean them?

I don’t think it is good or healthy. Statistics show mental illness on the rise. Suicides, murder, physical abuse and all growing in number.

It has gotten even worse during our global lockdown. It seems that people are willing to do more evil when no one else is looking.

Surprising? Not really. The Bible tells us that mankind loves the darkness because their ways are evil. Jesus is the light of the world and, in his presence, evil flees. We are told that light casts out darkness.

Of course it does. When you are walking on a dark street, don’t you feel safer if there are lights or if you have a flashlight at hand? Those who are intent on doing evil prefer when the lights are out so they can do what they want without being caught.

I’ve been hearing that, due to the economic conditions and the degradation of mental health because of being kept isolated, we can expect more mental health issues. It is even suggested that the number of suicides and murders may surpass the number of people who have died from the virus itself.

It is so easy to become enmeshed in dark thoughts. It is easy to think that there is no way out but to end life.

That is never true. I know because I learned the hard way myself. When I was a teenager, I became very depressed and wanted to end my own life. I may tell the story of it one day but, for the moment, all I can say is that I am so thankful that I didn’t kill myself.

I look at my life and think how wonderful it has been. Even though I went through hardships and saw people that I loved pass away too early. I saw a marriage fall apart and family members drift away.

At the same time, I found love. I found a love that will never ever leave me. It will never deny me. It will always be there waiting for me. When I do finally pass away, that love will still be mine and will last for eternity.

The love that Jesus had for me existed before I was created. He loved me so, so much that he died for me. If I had taken my own life as a teenager, I would never have learned about his truth. I would never have begun learning from his example. I would have been eternally separated from the love and presence of God.

Here’s the great news for anyone who is depressed and feeling like life isn’t worth living: Jesus’ love is there for you, too. He is waiting for you to seek him and to accept his gift of love.

Please don’t follow through on those thoughts of self harm or that of harming others. Please reach out to the one who loves you just as you are. There is no virus that will stop him and there is no lockdown that will keep Jesus out of your heart if you ask him in.

Jeremiah 29:11-13

“For I know the plans that I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.

Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.”

How did we ever get so far from what God wanted for us? Why did we ever think that we were good enough to manage our own fate?

There is a sin that is so prevalent that it has become a matter of pride rather than something to be acknowledged as evil. That sin is pride.

We take pride in our work, our appearance, our intellect, our home, our car, our accomplishments and so much more. Somehow we think that it all exists because of us and that we are entitled to it and more.

Pride isn’t something good, it is evil. It is setting yourself higher than others. It is saying that I am better than you and you can tell by looking at all that I am. I am good and you, not so much.

It is because of our pride that we turn our back on God. We think we have got all that it takes to win at life.

I wonder if the ones who are so proud of themselves ever think that other people are thinking that they are even better?

All of the things that I mentioned above are things that can be lost. Fortunes can be made and fortunes can be lost. Homes, looks, cars, work, intellect and accomplishments can, in the end, come to nothing. At best, others will have better homes, cars, etc. and there is not a thing that anyone can do about it.

Trusting in yourself to the exclusion of God is not going to save you in the end. At the end of your life, you (and everyone else) will face God’s judgement.

Would the God who made the universe and everything in it be amazed at what type of car you drive? Would that same God think much of your house when his home is heaven? How does your intelligence match up to his?

If we are at all wise, we will honor God and work for his purposes and not for own. That kind of wisdom comes only from acknowledging the sacrifice of Jesus, accepting his gift of salvation from sin, knowing God as holy and asking him to do his work through you. It means understanding that nothing we do on our own is worthy of praise, it is the gift that Jesus gave the world that is so worthy.

If you do so seek him with sincerity, he will answer. You will be saved from the wrath of his judgement. Pride will surface again, it always does, but you will know it for a sin. You will know that it is something to avoid and that, if you fall into its trap, you should repent and walk away from it.

God loves those who are humble and has no use for those who are full of pride. Jesus, himself, came as a humble man to show us how to live as God wants us to do. We are to stop following the world and instead follow Jesus and live by his example.

Galatians 6:14

But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.

A few weeks ago, people were so afraid of the future. Today, I see something new as well. There is still fear for some but, for others, there seems to be a re-awakening hope. They hope that we are getting back to a more sustainable lifestyle. I believe that most know that we can never go back to what we were before.

A panic of this nature fundamentally changes us. It causes us to confront our mortality. It causes us to be fearful of others. Being left to ourselves without contact with others can cause anxiety and depression as well.

I know because I have gone through this for an extended period of time. It changes you. It turns you inside out and brings out both the best and the worst in you.

The same person who can go out and help their neighbors can look askance and worse at someone who goes to the grocery store without a face mask on. They don’t delve into the why but, instead, make judgements.

There are people who cannot afford a mask and have no idea how to make one. There are those who simply cannot wear masks for extended periods because of physical or emotional issues. Still, people will judge them based on what they think those people should be doing.

There is a move to judgement that is endemic to humankind. This type of panic sends that into hyperdrive. It is so much easier to judge others than it is to judge yourself. Not only that, you will easily accept your own excuses and, just as easily, discount those of other people. Where it is somewhat amusing and sad, at the same time, is when it is the exact same excuse. Still, yours is valid and others expressing the same are automatically invalid.

While humans accept our day to day judgements of others as normal, God does not. He takes an entirely different view. He tells us to check on our own failings before we start looking for faults in others.

Now, the Old Testament, especially Leviticus, is all about judgement. In this particular book of the Bible, God tells the children of Israel just how judgement should be meted out. There are some pretty stiff standards to be met and stiffer still punishments.

Those rules, laws and punishments were put in place to keep the national of Israel holy as God’s chosen race. They were chosen not because they were better but because they were the same as others.

However, God wanted this group of people set apart to be those who would carry his Word to the future and to be the people from whom his Salvation would be extended to the world.

Jesus, who was the Salvation of the world, changed our mission and what we were supposed to do. He is the one who told us to take the log from our eye before telling our neighbor about the speck in theirs.

Our virus panic hasn’t caused our judgements to happen, it has just made expressing them aloud somehow acceptable.

We have to stop doing this and find an even keel once again. We have to learn, once again, to live with our neighbors, friends and family and to do so without making judgements.

That isn’t to say that those who break the law should not have to pay society for their crimes. It means that others who have different ways of coping than our ways are not guilty of anything other than being different.

Be glad that God didn’t look at us and judge us as too broken to save. If he loved us in all our differences, how can we do other than to try to follow in his footsteps?

Romans 2:1-3

You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.

Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. So when you, a mere human being, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment?

How out of control are you feeling right now? So many people are complaining about not feeling in control of their lives. They are used to going out and doing what they wish to do when they wish to do so.

I had to confront this scenario a few years ago and, unlike most people, I don’t have a light at the end of the tunnel as far as when I will walk freely and openly again.

I’m not complaining but am letting you know that I feel this, too. However, for most of you, there is a light at that end. You will be able to leave your houses and head out back into the world again. That is a true blessing.

I am blessed as well because I also have a light waiting for me. The tunnel doesn’t really end with the end of our lives, it is what waits for us afterwards that truly matters.

If you look at it the way that God does, our “tunnel” really is our entire lifetime. The end is where we are when the tunnel ends. There are only two choices, eternal life or eternal death.

What we do while we are in our tunnel is what determines our outcome. Do we accept the salvation of Jesus Christ or do we deny him? It is a yes or no answer. There are no moral equivocations. There are no but maybes. There is no other way to get to eternal life; no works, no good thoughts, nothing but the sacrifice Jesus made and whether we accept it or not.

For those who do chose to accept Jesus, the rest of our time in the “tunnel” of life is when and where we learn more about living like him.

The things that we do, at that point, are done to either glorify God or to glorify the world. Again, there are only two choices. God or the world of sin. Your decision.

If you are like most Christians, you will do both. I’ve said it before and I will again. I sin every day in one form or another. Thankfully, God continues to forgive those sins because he knows that we are ever sinners during this lifetime.

I’m at home and waiting for the day when I see my Savior face to face. I’m not in any hurry to get out of the tunnel but, when the time is here, I will be happy to go.

The tunnel we are in from this virus will lift and people will be happy to leave and get back to life. I hope that everyone is, at a deep spiritual level, fundamentally changed by this experience. I hope that people will look back and see the good that came from this experience and that they made a shift to the better in their lives because of it.

I know that has happened to me because of what I have gone through. If I were given a choice to go back to the “me” that I was three years ago, I would not do so. Even if that meant that there was no pain, no problems breathing and that I could be out and about and visit my family any time I felt like doing so.

The trade-off would not be worth it.

I hope that we will all feel the same once the fear of this virus has passed. It’s possible that the threat will always remain to some extent, so I single out fear because it is what is causing us to freeze in place. Fear is powerful and creates havoc in our minds. It is what causes that terrible feeling of loss of control.

God promises us that he will give us hope instead of fear. All we have to do is believe him and call on him to give us comfort instead of fear and a sense of well-being in spirit when the rest of the world seems to be in a never-ending downward spiral. He will answer and your spirits will soar with the knowledge of his everlasting love for you.

Isaiah 40:28-31

Do you not know? Have you not heard?

The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.

He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom.

He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.

Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.

They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.