Sunday, October 25, 2015

driven to gratefulness

I want to take you on a short journey.  Saturday night i was attempting to go to sleep and I'll tell you all day Sunday i was still thinking about a few scriptures.  If you are a follower of God who has believed savingly and invited Jesus into your heart confessing him with both heart and mouth that Jesus Christ died and was buried and resurrected from the dead and he cleansed you of your sins i want you to consider some verses.  Romans 5:8 has been rumbling thru my brain since yesterday because i think we missed two things.  1.  We need to capture the wonder once again 2.  I believe we need to take a moment to pray and say thank you.  Romans 5:8  "But God showed us his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners."  We could do nothing not now not ever.  look at what kind of love we were given.  God loved you and me so much He sent his son to die for us.  let that sink in.  "But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so much that even though we were dead because of our sins, He gave us life when He raised Christ from the dead.  (it is only by God's grace that you have been saved."  Ephesians 2:45.  Now there's something i want you the reader to do and it's not because i said so or asked you to.  i want this to be from your heart because you desire to.  in your own words pray and thank God for his love and for Salvation and let his love fill you.  

If you need help with thanking God this song is directly thanking him.


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Thursday, October 22, 2015

Right Battle Wrong Weapon

Years ago I as in a bad situation at work and no matter how I answered the accusations or tried to stand up for what was right, it was just not turning out good.  Tuesday i was driving to work and I was thinking about how King Saul pursued David and nearly had him and at least twice in 1 Samuel 24 and 26 David had the chance to kill Saul and didn't.  Like David i was in a bad situation and worried a lot.  I remember one day very clearly before going to work just praying and turning the situation over to God.  There was a peace that came with that.  The situation resolved but I was no longer fighting the battle I was trusting God.  Sometimes when we're worrying and struggling we're so much relying on our own self and God is waiting for us to let him have control and fight for us.  In 2 Chronicles 20:15 we see God say this.  "Do not fear or be dismayed because of this great multitude, for the battle is not your but God's."  See in our strength we're like the girl on Scary Movie 1 being chased by the killer looking at a table full of weapons and grabbing a banana.  Sure the banana will taste great but you won't be fighting the battle right.  Over and over in the Old Testament God tells the people of Israel not to be afraid and he would fight the battle for them.  I don't know what battle you're facing but maybe its time to put down the banana read 1 Peter 5:6-11 and let the One who told the winds and sea to be still, try letting him fight for you.  










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Friday, October 16, 2015

Dealing with Disillusionment

Earlier this year my dad gave my some of his books he had acquired over the years as a pastor and yesterday as i was sitting in my diabetes doctor's office i read this chapter.  I have said this before the Batcave blog or Real Life Online has been for me about providing encouragement to others.  I had 2 blogs ready and as i said i came across this short chapter in  Growing Strong in the Seasons of Life by Chuck Swindoll pastor of the radio ministry Insight for Living.  I believe we can all use this at some point in life.  On a side note i tagged Jennifer Amaral my doctor in a post about using this chapter on face book and when she came to talk to me she wanted to ask about the book.    So without further ado(i like that word) I give you the chapter Dealing with Disillusionment.

The prophet was in the pits.  Literally.  Like Poe's fanciful character, he was "sick, sick unto death."  Swamped with Disillusionment and drowning in despair, he cursed the day he was born and wondered why an abortion wasn't performed, killing him prior to his birth.
He screamed.  

Why did I ever come forth from the womb to look on trouble and sorrow, so that my days have been spent in shame?  Jeremiah 20:18  

An exaggeration?  Not hardly.  Read the record for yourself.  Jeremiah's journal holds nothing back.  In chapter 20 the chief officer in the temple had him beaten(forty lashes), then placed in the stocks.  That means his feet, hands and neck were secured in a torturous device that caused his body to be bent almost double.  That happened after he was beaten!  Why?  Had he committed some crime?  No.  He had simply declared the truth.  He had done what was right--and this is what he got in return.  It hurt him deeply.
On top of all that, sarcastic whisperings swirled about.  His once-trusted friends tagged him with a nickname--MAGOR MISSABIB--meaning "terror on every side."  That also hurt.  He must have felt like a limp rag doll in the mouth of a snarling Doberman.  

  O Lord, Thou hast deceived me and I was deceived; Thou hast overcome me and prevailed.  I have become a laughingstock all day long; everyone mocks me.......for me the word of the Lord has resulted in reproach and derision all day long.  Jeremiah 20:7-8  

This man is in anguish.  Prophet or not, he is struggling with God's justice.  His strange treatment.  Deep down he is questioning His presence.  "Where is He?  Why has Jehovah vanished at a time when I need him the most?"  
The ancient man of God is not alone with feelings like that.  Who hasn't wrestled with similar questions and doubts?  Few express it more vividly than Elie Wiesel in the terse, tightly packed sentences of his book Night.  Wiesel, a Jew, spent his teen aged years in a Nazi death camp in Birkenbau.  His young eyes witnesses tragedies too horrible to repeat.  The toll it took on him is best described in the foreward by French Nobel-prize-winning author Francois Mauriac:  
  For him (Wiesel). Nietzche's cry expressed an almost physical reality: God is dead, the God of love, of gentleness, of comfort..... has vanished forevermore.... And how many pious Jews have experienced this death.  On that day, horrible even among those days of horror, when the child watched the hanging of another child, who he tells us, had the face of a sad angel, he heard someone behind him groan:  "Where is God?  Where is He?  Where can he be now?"  

What desperate feelings!
  And one not need be in a concentration camp to have those thoughts.  Or doubled over in stocks and beaten with rods.  No, sometimes they come in the long, dark tunnel of suffering when the pain won't go away.  Or when a marriage partner who promised to stay "for better or for worse" breaks that vow.  Or when a long-sought-after dream goes up in smoke.  Or when we kiss a loved one goodbye for the last time.  
  Not always......but sometimes(usually unuttered and hidden away in the secret vaults of our minds) we question Jehovah's justice.  We ask, "Is He absent today?"  Personally, I cannot bring myself to chide Jeremiah.  The heavens above him appeared as brass.  His Lord's passivity disillusioned him.  The silence of God was more than he could take.  There are such times. I openly confess, when I too, wonder about why He permits certain things to occur that seemingly defy his character.  
  At those times I'm tempted to say what the prophet said"

  I will not remember Him or speak anymore in His name.... 20:9 a
  "That's it! I'm tossing in my collar.  No more sermons and devotionals for this preacher.  Secular job here I come!"  But right about the time I start to jump, I experience what Jeremiah admitted:

  .....Then in my heart it becomes like a bursting fire shut up in my bones; and I am weary of holding it in, and I cannot endure it.  20:9 b

 Directly sent from God is a strong surge of hope, this cleansing confidence, this renewed sense of determination swelling up within me.  And the disillusionment is quickly replaced with his reassurance as He reminds me of the glorious climax of the hymn I often sing back to Him in full volume:

  "All is well,  all is well!"  

  Thank God, it is.  Recently I doubted that--like Jeremiah.  But not today.  Reassurance has returned.  Divine perspective has provided a fresh breeze of hope in the pits.  I have determined that disillusionment must go.  Now...... not later.  
  Like Magor-Missabib.  I ain't about to quit!  God has broken through the brass above.  With an antiphonal voice his angels answer, "All is well, all is well."

  
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Changes in David

This is not a bible study like i would normally do but just observations I've noticed lately reading through 1 Samuel.  I just wanted to share them with you all.  In chapter 13: 19 we see this "There were no blacksmiths in the land of Israel in those days.  The Philistines wouldn't allow them for fear they would make swords and spears for the Hebrews."  It says later in verse 22 that Saul and Jonathan were the only 2 in the land to even own swords.  Follow me on a journey here of the army and changing of David into a warrior.  In chapter 14 still the only two swords belong to Saul and Jonathan and it never mentions the return of blacksmiths.  That's part of what made the David vs Goliath story for me this time around.  In chapter 16 Samuel anoints this scrawny shepherd boy David as king after God rejects Saul.  Then Goliath challenges the Israelites to a fight.  For forty days he does this.  The people of Israel run and hide.  Now watch this David gets his first chance to hold a sword and armor and it belongs to Saul.  David can't even move in the armor.  Then you step into David's armory.  17:39 "The Lord who rescued me from the claws of the lion and the bear will rescue me from this Philistine."  So after the armor and sword he goes and picks up his weapons a shepherds staff, five smooth stones and a slingshot.  In pro-wrestling this is like Rey Mysterio vs Brock Lesnar.  David's got five rocks and how many did he need? 1. Uno.  Single digit.  Rich Mullins explored this story in his song What Trouble are Giants.  "Well now the king of his country he didn't trust in him much and so to David's alarm he tried to fit him in his armor but the thing was so heavy David couldn't stand up.  So he left it by the river where he gathered five smooth stones.  I guess its safe to say he figured he wasn't going out alone."  Then check out 1 Samuel 17:45-47 where David throws down the gauntlet.  Then David said to the Philistine, “You come to me with a sword, a spear, and a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have taunted. 46“This day the LORD will deliver you up into my hands, and I will strike you down and remove your head from you. And I will give the dead bodies of the army of the Philistines this day to the birds of the sky and the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, 47and that all this assembly may know that the LORD does not deliver by sword or by spear; for the battle is the LORD’S and He will give you into our hands.”
First sword David gets he takes it from Goliath.  Then here's the odd thing.  Still a lowly shepherd in chapter 18 David gets made into a commander of 1,000 men.  Talk about your strange military promotions.  Shepherd, giant killer, harp player, song writer, poet, warrior, king, man after God's own heart.  Greg Blankenship once told me and i may get this wrong so forgive me if i do Greg.  "You get David's heart and passion in a most unique way."  King David led an awesome life.
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