they hated jesus

Anyone who hates me also hates my Father. If I hadn’t done such miraculous signs among them that no one else could do, they would not be guilty. But as it is, they have seen everything I did, yet they still hate me and my Father. This fulfills what is written in their Scriptures: ‘They hated me without cause.’ (John 15:23-25 NLT)

Jesus did not die just because it was time. God didn’t tell him one day, well, Son, it’s time. So Jesus goes out toward the cross, everybody is upset, the soldiers all think he is a regular guy and nobody wants to kill him, but after all, God said to.

Kind of like in Green Mile when they were upset to have to kill the man they knew to be innocent. Not so with Jesus.

The men in charge killed Jesus because they hated him. And they hated him because at every turn he made fools of them. He did everything he could to go against what they had to say.

It didn’t matter what it was they thought was proper, Jesus went in the opposite direction. He ate and drank wine and stuff when they didn’t want him to, he associated with people that were not people the leaders thought he ought to be with, he flaunted his disregard of their traditions.

One thing for sure, Jesus was not a gentleman. He didn’t care at all what people thought.

And they hated him for it.

On the other hand, the people to whom he came loved him. They followed him around listening to everything he had to say. They also loved the fact that he put these pompous fools in their places.

But the pompous fools did not like it at all. And the one thing they wanted to do was kill him. in fact, they disliked him so much that they made a bi-partisan committee on how to put him to death without the people hating them. Both the Pharisees (the conservative party in the Jewish government) and the Sadducees (the liberal party) disliked him enough, they got together to rid themselves of him.

Okay, they hated him. What does that mean? It means that if you serve him, people are going to hate you. Luke 21:17 says: Everyone will hate you because of me.

If they hated him, they will also hate you.

Wait, you say, I didn’t do anything. All I want to do is help people. The same could be said of Jesus. All he did was come to bring people back to God.

His problem, and ours too, is that he didn’t do it the way people who viewed themselves as experts wanted him to do it.

Have you ever wondered why the news channels refuse to acknowledge the help Christians give in world disaster. Christians are the ones who do the most, yet they are absolutely unrecognized. In fact, there are those who would rather people starve than have to admit that Christians are helping them.

As Paul said in 2 Corinthians 2:15-17 (NLT), Our lives are a Christ-like fragrance rising up to God. But this fragrance is perceived differently by those who are being saved and by those who are perishing. To those who are perishing, we are a dreadful smell of death and doom. But to those who are being saved, we are a life-giving perfume.

Those who do not like Jesus or his message of grace feel that it is death. And it is. It is death to the ways of the world and life in him.

If you are a Christ-follower, you follow a guy who was hated for what he did. Hard to understand but it is the truth.

daily java

Daily Java: 

 On another Sabbath he went into the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was shriveled. The Pharisees and the teachers of the law were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal on the Sabbath. (Luke 6:6-7)

Jesus had done a lot of amazing things. And those around him knew it.

But he had also made some important people mad. He refused to follow their traditions and do what they thought he ought to do.

And they were mad. As far as they were concerned, he was a renegade.

Yes, he healed. He healed a lot of people. Yes, he preached well. The things he mentioned were always straight from the Bible. Yes, people liked him and he did a lot of good things and said a lot of good things.

But, he didn’t do things the way they wanted him to do them.

So in Luke 6, they are watching him to see if he would heal on the Sabbath day. The fact that he was healing at all should have told them something. But they were so engrossed in the way they felt things ought to be that they had lost all reason.

Now the Sabbath was important to the people of God. God had given them the Sabbath back in the Old Testament to make sure that the Israelites didn’t work too long and too hard. He wanted to make sure that employees got some time off.

He also made it the day of worship. They could rest and worship and it would be a good day for them. He told them basic ideas of what they were to do or not to do on this day.

But by the time Jesus came along, 1300 years later, the rules on the Sabbath day were massive. Each generation of religious guys felt compelled to add their own spin to the laws. Before long, the rules were almost too big to be known. Kind of like the IRS code.

There was almost no way to keep from breaking them, they were so big.

One of the things that was prohibited was work. In their minds, healing was work. So when Jesus healed on the Sabbath, he did work.

Jesus knew this and did not care what they thought. He asked the crippled guy to stand up in front of everyone. Then he looked over at the religious guys and said “I ask you, which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?”

Well, what are they going to say? They certainly aren’t going to advocate evil.

Jesus healed the man. And it says: But they were furious and began to discuss with one another what they might do to Jesus (Luke 6:11). 

There are people who want their way so badly that they will hurt someone else who doesn’t do things the way they want them to be done. Traditions are so strong, the old ways are so important that they trump all the good you may be doing otherwise.

The preacher is preaching the gospel and people are being edified, but he uses the wrong instrument. The worship leader is worshiping, but he is using the wrong kind of music. Young people are being reached, but the teacher is using the wrong material.

The desire to keep what you think is important is greater than the need to preach the gospel.

What happens? The church is hurt. These men wanted their interpretations of God’s word kept. And they felt that keeping their interpretations was more important than preaching the gospel.

And they were willing to kill Jesus rather than have their interpretations of the God’s word not kept.

As a people of God, they did not live. They were too caught up in their own ideas and God couldn’t break through. Any church that does this does not deserve to live. They are no longer there for God, they are only there to keep their own ideas alive.

Like the people of Israel, they cannot survive for long on this attitude.

After all, Jesus died to set us free, not put us under bondage to others’ opinions.

what is the church

God has put all things under the authority of Christ and has made him head over all things for the benefit of the church. And the church is his body; it is made full and complete by Christ, who fills all things everywhere with himself. (Ephesians 1:22-23)

What is the church? Talking to people, it is one of two things.

One group says that it is a bunch of whiny people who insist on having heir own way no matter what the damage to the greater body may be. In these people’s minds, they want to run things so badly that they will destroy the church if their “needs” are not met. They see the church as their church and you are not allowed to mess with it.

They get mad at the drop of a hat, are offended easily, especially by the preacher, insist that their ideas of what church or worship is supposed to be are consulted at all time.

In other words they are people who seem to care not a whit what God says, or what the Bible says, or anything else. They just want you to do what they say or they will tear that church up.

The second group see the church as a fortress, battened down and needing to be defended from those who would tear it down. They see Christian life as a constant fight, as Christianity as grimness, as a struggle, as a fight.

The third group looks at the church as the body of Christ, the sole sphere of his influence on this world. They see the church as a group of people who are taking the love and grace of God to the world, sharing his message and bringing people back to God. They show love and compassion and consideration for all.

The church is full of people. That means that it is also full of flaws, because all people are flawed.

That also means that those people mentioned in all three parts are all there in full force.

But the church is also full of people who love God. They are also there. But sometimes they cannot be in full force because the first group is killing the church.

What did Jesus see when he was thinking about his church? In Matthew 16:18, he said it was his church and it didn’t matter who came or went, who lived or died, it was not going to be stopped.

And he was right. Although no one needs to hear me say so. The church has endured. People have come and gone for almost 2000 years and the church is still here. It is the largest faith in the world, larger by far than the next ones, which would be Muslim and Hindu.

It has been here and will be here until he comes again. But you wonder if it is really healthy.

Look at the church today. Consider the people who proclaim the name of Jesus today.

There are those on the one side that think that all you have to do is call yourself a Christian and you will be fine. They believe in abortion, they are happy with homosexuality, they see the Christian’s job as fighting for energy conservation and animal rights, they are doing everything they can in the wrong direction. Yet they call themselves the church.

On the other side are a group of people who don’t like much. They hat drinking and dancing, they hate fun of just about any kind, they see their jobs as bringing a picture of the grim duties of “Christianity” to those who are lost, in other words, everybody else.

Which is it? The apostle Paul said that God was not the author of disorder but of peace (1 Corinthians 14:33).

If Christianity is that divided, how in the world can there be any real peace? How can people from so many different ideas of what God wants all call themselves Christian?

I don’t know. And it bothers me.

But I know that while Jesus was being killed, and it was by those who later became the church, he forgave them.

daily java

Daily Java:

Later, as Jesus left the town, he saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at his tax collector’s booth. “Follow me and be my disciple,” Jesus said to him. So Levi got up, left everything, and followed him. Later, Levi held a banquet in his home with Jesus as the guest of honor. Many of Levi’s fellow tax collectors and other guests also ate with them. But the Pharisees and their teachers of religious law complained bitterly to Jesus’ disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with such scum?” Jesus answered them, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor — sick people do.  I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners and need to repent.” (Luke 5:27-32 NLT)

Jesus always made people mad. If it wasn’t his doing stuff on their holy day of rest, the Sabbath, it was the fact that he hung around with people that were considered on the fringe of society.

You can imagine the perplexed and offended expressions on the faces of the other apostles when Jesus walks up to a guy who was a tax collector and asked him to come and be part of his group.

Nobody liked tax collectors. They worked for the Roman Empire and their job was to collect taxes. The problem was that they did it on a commission basis. The more they took in, the more they made.

They had to give a certain amount to the Romans, but could keep all the rest. Since the amount of tax the Jews had to pay was always somewhat unknown, he could stick them for all he wanted.

And since the Jews hated the Romans – they were, after all, an opposition force in their country – they hated to give money in taxes to them. But above all, they hated people who helped the Romans.

The Jews felt about the tax collectors like the French felt about the women who associated with the Germans in World War II. After the war, these women had their heads shaved and were basically thrown into the streets.

The strict Jews wanted nothing more than to kill these tax collectors.

Then Jesus comes along and takes one into his inner circle and then goes and eats dinner with him and his friends. Why? Why would he embarrass them like this? You can almost see the other apostles sitting rigidly at the table, not having any fun, scowling at the other guests and at Jesus, who was probably having a good time.

And others didn’t like it either. The religious leaders asked him why it was that he ate and drank with such scum. Jesus’ answer? They need me.

He said, healthy people don’t need doctors, sick people do. He also told them that he didn’t come to call those who think they are righteous. He came to call those who know they are sinners.

Those who think they are righteous had and have trouble accepting Jesus. They think they are fine. Those who are without him recognize strongly their need for him.

Let a preacher go into the average bar and have a beer with a bunch of people and the church would be up in arms. Why? That isn’t where he belongs. He belongs here with us.

The problem with all this is that it is exactly where he belongs: with people who need the Lord desperately.

Those people in church many times are so full of their own self-righteousness that they cannot see the need. They come to worship different things that Jesus brought. They worship their own way of doing things, tradition, their own preferences and completely forget Jesus and his grace.

There is a world lost and dying out there without Jesus and his grace. But people argue over procedures so much that they forget that.

Jesus didn’t have ten cents for procedures, for the way we have always done it, for what people thought in general.

He really didn’t care what people thought. He came to bring people to God.

And if he brought the wrong people, too bad.

I want to be like him.

my 600th post

But, my child, let me give you some further advice: Be careful, for writing books is endless, and much study wears you out. (Ecclesiastes 12:12)

This is my 600th post on this blog. 600 articles over a period of fifteen months with a total of about 250,000 words. That is on this blog. Then there are around 30,000 on fasting21days.blogspot.com also. And then there are the 30,000 on the daily Facebook devos.

I read the other day that the average novel is around 60-70,000 words. The average sci-fi/fantasy novel is around 100-125,000 words. That means that I have written four to five novels.

When I began this blog, I wondered if I would have anything to say. Fifteen months later, I have written a lot.

I wonder if anyone reads it, or if it has made any difference.

600 posts. Wow!

recharging the spiritual battery

But Jesus often withdrew to the wilderness for prayer. (Luke 6:16)

There were always tons of people surrounding Jesus. I would imagine that everywhere he looked there were people wanting to talk to him, be healed by him, wanting him to endorse some product, wanting something from him.

He was constantly surrounded by people is who wanted something from him. and I would imagine it got tiresome.

He came to be surrounded by people, but, again, I would imagine 24/7 was too much.

So every once in a while, he had to leave. And he went off into the wilderness to pray.

I don’t know where the wilderness was, but it was probably close to all the towns, since this was not an urban society. It was probably not far to undeveloped country.

Jesus just had to get away from the crush of humanity.

I though the picture in Jesus Christ, Superstar was a good one. The lepers got so plentiful that they overwhelmed Jesus at one point. He was just inundated with people.

You cannot be around people all the time and still maintain your charge. You are like a rechargeable battery. Used all the time, it is gone before long. You have to go somewhere and recharge.

Even Jesus did. He was, after all, human. He had to get away and communicate with the Father. Otherwise he would soon be burned out.

That is what happens to people a lot of times. They forget that they are human and have to recharge. So after a while, they just get tired. And when they do, they lose the focus they had. They are just burned out.

Prayer is our recharging. We talk to God, we communicate with him, we remember our spiritual center and we recharge.

Do that right now. God talk to God and recharge. Make yourself strong again.

daily java

Daily Java:

For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ. (2 Corinthians 5:21 NLT).

God knew from the beginning that his people were going to act stupid and fall away from him.

It just made sense, when you think about it. It was the Persian flaw in the whole thing.

If God made us free agents, people with the ability to think for ourselves and decide for ourselves, he ran the risk of our deciding wrong. He knew that from the beginning. Being God, he also knew that it would happen.

Yet he made us anyway and gave us the opportunity to decide.

That is the problem anytime you give kids or anyone else the chance to decide what they want. They may very well decide against you. And if they do, what do you do then.

God could have made us so that we never decided wrong. We would be perfect forever. And with that eternal perfection, we would never have to worry about making the wrong choice, doing the wrong thing. There would be no sickness or pain, now sorrow of any kind.

And there would be no death, because we would just hang around the tree of life forever.

Of course, if he made us like that, he would have to remove our ability to choose. If he did, true, there would be no sickness, no pain, no hatred, no sadness.

But there would also be no health, no pleasure, no love, no joy.

Those are just the opposites of the others. Without one, you don’t have the other. What you have are robots, androids, automatons. And no one wants to be a robot.

We want the choice, but we do not want the consequences. God knew that from the beginning. And he sent Jesus to take care of that.

Jesus was perfect, so he could come before God. Jesus was also human, so he could touch us. And through him, we could touch God.

You want something done, you go to the guy who can do it right. There is no point in messing around half-way. Jesus did it right and became the way to get it done right in our lives. Through him, we can live. Without him, we are dead.

And he gives us, the church, the body of Christ, to God.

As his church, we are those who have accepted his sacrifice, his love and have come to him. We have chosen him, and have accepted his grace, responded to his love.

turn the stupid tv off

So be careful how you live. Don’t live like fools, but like those who are wise. Make the most of every opportunity in these evil days. Don’t act thoughtlessly, but understand what the Lord wants you to do. (Ephesians 5:15-17 NLT)

Trying to find a movie to watch is hard sometimes. Tonight I went through two and didn’t like either one.

One was promising, an older action thriller, but turned out to be hard to follow and boring. The other, a more modern edgy comic strip like movie turned out to be on the ugly side. There are enough ugly things without watching more on TV.

So. I am not watching anything tonight. Instead, I think I will go to bed early.

We have a tendency to just watch stuff because it is on. Since we got rid of our cable, we haven’t done that as much as before. Anything we watch is generally in movie form – in fact it is always in movie form – so we pick out what we want to watch. And if it is not good, too bad, doodad. We are through with it.

There are too many things I could be doing in life besides suffering through some stupid movie.

Make the most of every opportunity in these evil days, the scripture says. In other words, don’t be stupid and waste your time watching some sub-standard movie about people you do not care for doing things that are wrong. You have better things to do.

A lot of the people in movies are doing things you would never do and are the kind of people you would not want to hang around with anyway. So why watch them do these stupid things?

It is no wonder our kids have such problems. Hollywood and the TV industry has convinced them that everybody curses, everybody lies, everybody is immoral, because that is what they see over and over on the screen.

And as the old computer saying goes, “Garbage In, Garbage Out.” You are what you eat. You become what you look at if you look at it long enough.

All those sayings mean nothing more than the fact that you take on the characteristics of that with which you spend your time.

The Lord wants you to do things that are honorable. So be careful.

And turn the stupid TV off.

daily java

Daily Java:

Then Jesus went to Capernaum, a town in Galilee, and taught there in the synagogue every Sabbath day. There, too, the people were amazed at his teaching, for he spoke with authority. (Luke 4:31-32)

One of the things that the religious leaders hated about Jesus was his audacity. He had the audacity to speak about the word of God as if he knew what he was talking about.

They knew what they were talking about, of course. They had been to accredited seminaries, they had advanced degrees, they were ordained by all the right organizations. They were qualified to mount the sacred desk and to speak on things divine.

Jesus, on the other hand, was an upstart. He came out of nowhere, the son of peasants, a carpenter who lived with his parents until he was 30. What in the world could he possibly know?

But these silly people listened to him as if he had something good to say. And worse of all, he spoke with authority.

Of course, the people liked that. He was one of them and yet he had the ability to explain scripture in such a way that they the great unwashed, could understand it.

That made those who felt it was their job to explain the scripture mad.

And then, to cap it all off, the ugly icing on the unholy cake, he had the absolute and unmitigated gall to tell then they were wrong in their interpretations. How could they possibly be wrong? They had the weight of hundreds of years of theological interpretation behind what they said. Is he calling the forefathers wrong? How can he go against tradition?

But these people followed him by the hundreds, sometimes thousands, lapping up all this stuff he said. If they had any brains at all, they would be following them, the leaders. They were the ones who were oracles of God, the ones who had been entrusted by Israel with the task of teaching.

But instead, they follow this guy from nowhere.

And the most irritating part about it all is that the guy is almost always right when he preaches. He almost always quotes the scripture right and brings up some of the most obscure quotes to show his point is right.

Of course, they disagree with him on a few technical points. And there is that one glaring point where he calls himself the Son of Man. But in general, he is right.

If he would just come to them and ask or their permission, they would be glad to give it. They would give him some advice and work over some problems they saw with his teaching. He was smart, but he was so rough in his delivery. Give him some polish, maybe teach him for a couple of years, let him have a lay preacher license.

But he not only hasn’t come to them, he expresses absolutely no interest in having anything to do with them. And they are important men.

They are going to have to do something about this.

over and over again

After Joshua sent the people away, each of the tribes left to take possession of the land allotted to them. And the Israelites served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua and the leaders who outlived him — those who had seen all the great things the Lord had done for Israel. Joshua son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of 110. They buried him in the land he had been allocated, at Timnath-serah in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash. After that generation died, another generation grew up who did not acknowledge the Lord or remember the mighty things he had done for Israel. (Judges 2:6-10)

It is a fact that cultural memories are short. Somebody once said that those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it.

That means that our children go through the same problems we went through and it really doesn’t matter many times how much advice we can offer. They are still going to do it again.

Like it or not, that is human nature.

The Israelites had seen the mighty power of God through Joshua. They knew he had God in his life. He had led them across the Jordan River on dry land just like Moses had led the Israelites across the Red Sea on dry land. He had brought them through the whole conquest of Canaan. Time and again, he had performed miracles by divine power. They knew he was the arm of God.

But then they died and Joshua died. And their kids came of age. To them, all of the stories of the power of God through Joshua were just that: stories. They were academic to the kids. They had not seen it themselves.

So what did they do? Turned from God and did all the stuff their parents had done in the first place. And God turned from them, just as he had turned from their parents.Then they cried out to God, just as their parents did, and God answered them just as he did their parents and delivered them from their problems.

After a while, they died and their kids came up. And the cycle began again, over and over. Through the book of Judges, it happened again and again. Problem after problem, sin after sin, people crying out once again to the God they suddenly realized they needed and he heard them.

And it began again. It is no wonder God got tired of them after a while.

It is the same with our kids. Of course, each generation thinks they have invented the world and that they are the first people ever to experience whatever it is they are experiencing. And their parents are these stupid, Neanderthal creatures who have never felt as they have felt. And everything comes around again.

It is a shame, but it is also human nature. It is why wars are fought over and over again, why the same things happen again and again. Each generation rebels against their parents and the cycle starts again.

Our generation was going to be so cool. We were the definitive generation of all mankind. Then we got old and our kids rebelled against us. Wait a minute. We were cool. We invented rock and roll, for goodness sake. We started wearing jeans and grew our hair out and tried drugs and stuff. We had free sex. How can you rebel against such cool people?

But the cycle begins again.

Just as it was, so shall it ever be.

daily java

Daily Java:

After Ehud, Shamgar son of Anath rescued Israel. He once killed 600 Philistines with an ox goad. (Judges 3:31)

How will people remember you?

The people of Israel had a tumultuous relationship with God. He told them that as long as they followed him and obeyed him, he would keep them safe and give them everything they wanted.

Instead they went on their own way and refused to accept him.

But every few years, things would get so bad that they would call on him to save them from some persecution or oppression. And he would send a deliverer, one he called a judge, to lead them back to safety.

Each judge was different, just like regular people, and each had a different characteristic. One judge was Ehud, who was left handed. One was Deborah, who was a woman. One was Samson, who possessed superhuman strength.

And one was Shamgar, whose sole recorded exploit was the fact that he killed 600 Philistines with an ox goad, whatever that was. Probably one those pointed stick things that you stuck the ox with to make him move forward.

We know nothing else of him except that he was handy with a club and that he rescued Israel from the Philistines.

Maybe that ox goad was his weapon of choice. Maybe he was like Buford Pusser in the Walking Tall movies who carried a baseball bat around with him. Or Captain America, who fought with his shield, throwing it around like a discus. Maybe the Israelites could see him all the time, walking around with his ox goad in his hand, ready to help people who needed it.

It is funny what people are remembered for. There are people in your past that you remember for one particular thing. There was a guy in Junior High that I remember for no other reason than that he had a duck tail haircut. That would have been on the tail end (wink, wink) of the fad.

Or another guy I knew who had an orange 1969 Plymouth Road Runner with the 383 engine. I think that’s right. But man, that car could go.

Or one guy who rode a motorcycle, or another who had a fondness for ruffled shirts (this was back in the 1960’s when they were popular for a while). Or the guy who carried a little monkey around with him.

You remember people for what it was that stuck out at you at the time. That, of course, was not all they did or had, but it is what you remembered.

Preachers are that same way. One preacher I remember because he wore iridescent suits (this was back again in the mid 1960’s when they were popular – I wanted one when I grew up), another who wore a hat all the time, it seemed. There was another who wore nothing but black suits and white shirts with black ties. There was another who drove a Corvette. And another with a British accent.

They were all different with one thing or another that stood out, but they all had the work of preaching the gospel and as such, had the power of God on them.

I wonder what went on in Shamgar’s life. He was probably married, had kids, liked his lamb stew with extra rosemary, enjoyed zither music or something like that, was a real man with real likes and dislikes.

But we remember him for just two things: his deliverance of Israel and the fact that he was a mean motor-scooter with an ox goad. Oh, and he didn’t like Philistines much, either. But nobody much liked them. They were mean.

One thing I do remember about all of the judges, though. They were nobody to mess around with. They had the power of God, albeit temporarily, on them.

i have always been different

Last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.  (1 Corinthians 15:8 NLT)

I have always been different. And it has always made it hard on me.

To start off, I was a musician in an acappella church. That was hard in itself. I was in choir and in choir we sang songs that were Christian with instrumental accompaniment but I couldn’t at church or at home. I never really believed that, even though I tried my hardest as a minister for that church for 20 years.

I also played the guitar from the age of 18, yet never got that good at it because there was no real place to play it. I had a great foundation in music with good theory from an early age, yet never got much of a chance to put it into practice.

I was a good sight-reader as a singer, but that came from the church background I was part of.

But the problem was, I was a musician in a non-musician setting.

As a young man, I was a rebel. Not in the sense of being violent or things like that, but just in the sense that I knew I didn’t fit in and didn’t know what to do about it. I was a big guy in a world tailored to smaller people, constantly hitting my head, having trouble finding clothing long enough.

I have found out in the past few years that people many times were physically afraid of me. I was just so big. I didn’t realize that until the past few years. I would like to think that if I had known that, had realized it, I would have been able to put them more at ease.

As a minister, I always read too much and questioned too much. I was entirely too free-thinking. There were times when I would try my best to be a “company man” but it never worked out.

And those around me, especially those in leadership, saw that in me. It made them nervous and they would get suspicious. Although why they would be suspicious, I never knew. It wasn’t like I was trying to take over or anything like that.

I was just different and people saw it. My views of the Bible are different, my views of Christian living are different, my views of what is important are different. I was always a Kingdom guy, rather than a denominational guy.

The problem was, of course, that I was in denominations who believed themselves to be the sole repositories of God’s grace and the sole spheres of his influence.

But because I felt that way, that different way, I could always see others’ points of view.

It makes it hard to be a judgmental preacher when you can understand how people can believe as they believe.

When I came into that new relationship with the Spirit, I was never Pentecostal, and again, I was different. The Assemblies of God, quite frankly, had no use for me because I was no more willing to conform to their ideas of what was proper than I was in the Church of Christ.

Again, I was different.

I came to Lincoln and from the first, before I had even been installed, people were angry at me. Even though I had done nothing particularly good or bad, they saw that I was different and before long, two different people tried to move me into line.

However, I will not be moved into line by anybody but God. They failed and left, but not before they gutted the church.

I feel like I am sure Paul felt, as he walked around with all those people who were so different from him: one abnormally born.

The sad thing is, I have never liked being different. I would love to be like others. But I cannot and I suppose never will be.

I am one of the rare individuals who can say that his wife probably understands him. She knows I am different and loves me anyway. She has felt the brunt of that difference when people would throw me away when I would not conform to what they wanted.

I am 61 and there is little chance I will ever be like anyone wants me to be. I love God and I love his church, even when his church has not loved me back. And our relationship – me and the church, that is – has not always been good, even though I loved it.

The sad thing is, many of those times the church knew I loved them, yet threw me away anyway. They could not stand one who did not conform.

This article that I am writing does me no real good, I guess. I just needed to put it into a form that I could look at.

In a day or two, I am going to write on what I would do if I had it to do again. Useless speculation, I suppose, but interesting to me.

And since I am writing this column and drinking my coffee, I will write on it.

daily java

Daily Java:

Now Laban had two daughters. The older daughter was named Leah, and the younger one was Rachel. There was no sparkle in Leah’s eyes, but Rachel had a beautiful figure and a lovely face. Since Jacob was in love with Rachel, he told her father, “I’ll work for you for seven years if you’ll give me Rachel, your younger daughter, as my wife.” “Agreed!” Laban replied. “I’d rather give her to you than to anyone else. Stay and work with me.” So Jacob worked seven years to pay for Rachel. But his love for her was so strong that it seemed to him but a few days. (Genesis 29:16-20)

There has never been anyone love anyone more unconditionally as my wife has loved me.

I have known a lot of men and women in my life, have counseled them, visited with them, sat and ate with them and above all, listened to them talk. It amazes me at the things that men and women who have publicly proclaimed their love for each other will say about and to each other.

I do not know why, but marriage seems to bring out the worst in some people. They feel that since they are intimate with each other, they can say whatever they want. And sometimes, the things that they say are so full of ugliness and pain.

I have never said a single negative thing to anyone about my wife, and I know full well she has never said anything bad about me to anyone either.

We love each other. And quite frankly, I love her in many ways because she loves me so much. I mean, how could I not?

She is invariably kind and sweet to me. And it seems that the more her disease progresses (she has MS which brings a lot of pain to her legs), the sweeter she gets. This is both to me and to others in general.

That doesn’t mean that we never have an argument. Only weird people never argue. Somebody says, “I have never had an argument with my wife” and I suspect they are not all there mentally or lying, one or the other.

When you live together with some one, you are going to have disagreements. It is human nature. But our disagreements do not rule our marriage. Our love does.

I always use that passage above when I marry people. Jacob wanted to marry Rachel. In that culture, had to pay for his wife by working or giving a large present. Kind of like the Indians getting horses for their daughters. But he loved her enough that he was willing to work the seven years for her.

I would have paid a lot of horses or whatever for Ella. That is provided her dad had asked for them, although what he would have done with them in suburban Houston I don’t know. But anyway, I would have.

I could never find anyone else like her. To have done so in the stupidity of youth is amazing.

But I did and I love her. Just thought I would tell you.

daily java

Daily Java:

Jesus’ parents were amazed at what was being said about him. Then Simeon blessed them, and he said to Mary, the baby’s mother, “This child is destined to cause many in Israel to fall, but he will be a joy to many others. He has been sent as a sign from God, but many will oppose him. As a result, the deepest thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your very soul.” (Luke 2:33-35)

Sometimes you find out more than you want to know.

Mary was excited over the birth of her child. He had been prophesied by the angel and by the shepherds and wise men as the salvation of Israel. His very name – Joshua in Hebrew, Jesus in Greek – meant God Saves. Things were going to be great.

Or at least she thought so at the time. She found out differently later.

Here was a man of God, named Simeon. About him the word says, He was righteous and devout and was eagerly waiting for the Messiah to come and rescue Israel. The Holy Spirit was upon him and had revealed to him that he would not die until he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. That day the Spirit led him to the Temple. So when Mary and Joseph came to present the baby Jesus to the Lord as the law required, Simeon was there. (Luke 2:25-28).

He told Mary and Joseph great and wonderful things. And then he said, the deepest thoughts of many hearts will be revealed and a sword will pierce your very soul.

You can imagine a shudder going up Mary’s back. Wait. This is the Messiah, the One sent from God. What do you mean about a sword. What do you mean about deep thoughts being revealed.

Of course, Mary found out. Even though his life growing up was good and undoubtedly even, when Jesus began to preach, some did not like him. Some, in fact, didn’t like him so much that they killed him.

Wait! She cried. This is the Son of God, sent to bring humanity back to the Father. This was supposed to be a blessing. Remember the angels singing Glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace and goodwill to men? Remember that? What do you mean a sword?

But she found out. She found out that people did not always appreciate that which they needed so desperately. They needed Jesus more than they needed anything else. But deep down, they thought they were fine without him. And they tried to get rid of him so they wouldn’t have to deal with him.

People, on the surface, are glad to know Jesus and his message. But deep down, they resist. Why? Because the devil tries everything he can to keep us where we are: lost and dying.

That is why Jeremiah 17:9 said, The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? That is why Hebrews 4:12 says For the word of God is alive and powerful. It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow. It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires.

God sees us and when he does, many times it hurts. Mary found this out, much to her sorrow. But then, she found out that it turned out good. Her little child died, yes, and horribly. But he also lived and magnificently.

And the scar the sword left in Mary’s soul, although still felt strongly, healed a little when she saw the risen Lord, her child, rise up to heaven to be at the right hand of God.

And she was amazed.

daily java

Daily Java:

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.  (Romans 6:23)

America is the land of the self-made millionaire, the land of doing things yourself. Or, at least, it used to be.

People always admired those who made their own way, the rags to riches story, coming from nowhere and working their way to the top.

And that is admirable. Nobody really likes to be given anything in life. Not really. We appreciate most the things we earn.

I remember layaway. You rarely see it anymore, but it was good. You paid on something for a while and when you got it out of layaway, it was paid for, all yours. With credit, you pay for it plus interest. A lot of our problem as a culture is that we get so much on credit that we never own anything.

But then comes grace. Grace is totally different from life. In life, we want to work for things and not be given them.

In grace we are given these things. We cannot work for them.

In fact, if we work our way towards anything in grace, we work our way towards death. God gives us grace.

And that is hard to realize. In John 6:28, those who were trying to understand asked Jesus, What must we do to do the works God requires? What they wanted want is a list of things to do, a checklist of requirements. If you finished them, God would be happy and give you life. But Jesus replied in verse 29, The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.

The work is belief. Now at one time in the past, I thought that meant that faith was a work, so therefore even your believing was engaging in a work. I wanted works that I could do to justify myself.

But you cannot do anything to justify yourself. All you can do is surrender to God. Even your faith is given to you. John 6:44 says No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them.

The work is belief like the law is love. They are things that are somewhat mutually exclusive. You cannot work by believing any more than you can have love mandated. But yet, that is what God said.

So what does that mean? Does it mean that there is nothing we can do in God’s service? All we can do is sit around and wait for God to bring us to him?

No. but what it means is that the works we do are because we love him, not in order to make him love us. He already loves us and has already chosen us. All we do is accept his choice.

Then, as Ephesians 2:8-10 says, we do what we do because he loves us.  

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

This is the illogic of the gospel spoken of in 1 Corinthians 1. God just made it different than we would if we were him. In him, we are made to do good things. We do not do good things to be made. If we could do stuff to earn his grace, it would no longer be grace. It would be wages.

And as the word says, the wages of sin is death. Earn yourself anywhere, it is to hell. Accept the gift of heaven and you are in him.

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Daily Java:

Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.  (James 1:12)

As any bodybuilder. He will say, “No pain, no gain.”

You cannot build muscles with out resistance and suffering. It is impossible to build muscles from a distance with no problems.

The same goes for anything worth having. To get it, you have to work at it. A good marriage is only gained by people who are willing to have the arguments and disagreements, work through them and love each other anyway.

Knowledge is only gained through arduous study, learning, sometimes to the point of headaches and lack of sleep. Without it, you only gain a surface knowledge that is soon lost.

There was a scene on the old Waltons’ television series that I always remember. I didn’t watch the show that much, but I happened to tune in to this episode. The old man and old woman are sitting on the porch. She is griping about something, as she usually did. He mentions another woman, which irritates her more. She says something to the order of, I guess I am just not pretty.

His response: no, old woman, you are like that walnut tree in the yard. You have gone through the storms of life and have taken everything life has had to throw at you and you still stand tall and majestic. You are beautiful like that tree. That shuts her up.

Suffering produces perseverance, Romans 5 says. We know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. (5:3-5)

Without the suffering, our faith is shallow, untried, untested. And that makes us shallow also. The one whose faith has been tested is the one who is truly strong.

It is through that testing that strength comes, that depth comes. Just as love is stronger when it is tested, so is faith.

Faith is a muscle. Unless it is exercised, it is small. It is like the plant Jesus spoke of in Matthew 13:5-6: It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. When there is no root, there can be no nourishment.

There is no room for water or anything else where there is no depth.

You see people like that occasionally. They look so strong and spiritual, but one day, they quit it all, leave their families and totally turn their backs on God and goodness. They just had no real depth. And when a real problem came along, they folded.

That is why the plant in Psalm 1 is no strong and vital: planted by streams of water,  which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. With a good water supply and roots going deep into the ground, that plant is going to strong and healthy even in times of difficulty.

When trials and problems come, and they will, know that it is giving you strength. You are becoming a spiritual bodybuilder, able to leap tall buildings at a single bound, more powerful than a locomotive – or something like that.

Anyway, you are going to be a lot better off when a bad thing happens to you than the one who never has had any real problems.

Suffering is never fun, and that is one reason why I have never been that good a bodybuilder. I never enjoyed the suffering needed to get there. But it does make us strong in Jesus and in his grace, that is for sure.

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Daily Java:

A few days later Mary hurried to the hill country of Judea, to the town where Zechariah lived. She entered the house and greeted Elizabeth. At the sound of Mary’s greeting, Elizabeth’s child leaped within her, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. Elizabeth gave a glad cry and exclaimed to Mary, “God has blessed you above all women, and your child is blessed. Why am I so honored, that the mother of my Lord should visit me? When I heard your greeting, the baby in my womb jumped for joy. You are blessed because you believed that the Lord would do what he said.” (Luke 1:39-45)

Sometimes things happen that are mixed blessings. You are not sure how to take them. On the one hand, they are a blessing. On the other hand, they will affect your life in ways that will not always be good.

When Mary found herself pregnant, she was happy to be the handmaiden of the Lord. She was glad to be his vessel through whom would come the Messiah, the Chosen One of the Lord.

But the problem was, she was unmarried and pregnant. This was not a good thing.

Yes, the favor of the Lord was a good thing. No, her being pregnant out of wedlock was not.

She was worried about it and decided that the best thing to do was to go out of town and see her cousin, Elizabeth. To all of her family’s surprise, Elizabeth was also pregnant, even though she was quite old.

Mary convinced her mother that the best thing for her to do was to go and help Elizabeth through the pregnancy. She could be a valuable aid in helping her. And besides, she wasn’t doing anything right now anyway.

So she went. More than likely, she thought about her condition all the time. She was probably a couple of months along, not yet showing, but she was hiding the fact that she had not had a period for two months. What was she going to do? When everybody found out, it could get ugly.

Again, on the one hand, she was blessed by God with his Son. On the other hand, she could very easily become a pariah, an outcast, maybe even be stoned for sexual immorality. Joseph would hate her. She wasn’t guilty of anything, but what would she do?

Somehow, coming up to the town and saying, Guess what? The Lord made me pregnant, didn’t sound all that convincing. In fact, it sounded like she was mentally unbalanced.

It weighed and weighed on her mind. She could think of nothing else. She just needed to get away and Elizabeth was her favorite cousin. In fact, she was almost like a second mother. Since Elizabeth had no kids, she had always had a soft spot for Mary.

She got off the wagon and stepped into Elizabeth and Zechariah’s house. Elizabeth turned and said, “God has blessed you above all women, and your child is blessed. Why am I so honored, that the mother of my Lord should visit me? When I heard your greeting, the baby in my womb jumped for joy. You are blessed because you believed that the Lord would do what he said.”

That was just the confirmation Mary needed. Her doubts were swept away. There is nothing that could have been said to her that was better for her to hear. The Lord remembered her and was not going to let her be alone in all this.

Some people have just the right thing to say to cut through your problems and your despair over a situation. It may be that the situation is a good one, but it is, like Mary’s, a mixed blessing. And you need to hear something good to show that God remembers you.

But the Lord will not leave  you hanging. He will encourage and help you. If it is his will, he will be there.

Just like Elizabeth confirmed Mary, so he will confirm you. And as Elizabeth said, You are blessed because you believed that the Lord would do what he said.

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Daily Java:

But Israel violated the instructions about the things set apart for the Lord. A man named Achan had stolen some of these dedicated things, so the Lord was very angry with the Israelites. Achan was the son of Carmi, a descendant of Zimri son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah. (Joshua 7:1-2)

When I was in the army, in basic training, it was drilled into us that we were responsible for each other. If one of us fell and was wounded, the others didn’t go off and leave us. It hurt the group, but we were shown that the group was important, not just the individuals.

That was well known by snipers. If there were three men on patrol, the sniper would wound one, and the other two were hampered by the fact that they were responsible for each other.

It would have been a lot easier to shoot our wounded. But that would have required a measure of ruthlessness and disregard for human life that we, as Americans, do not have.

Joshua told the Israelites that Jericho was all God’s. It was the first city in the land of Canaan that they encountered, so it was considered the first fruits of the Canaanite campaign. It was all God’s. And it was all to be burned up in a great big sacrifice to him.

But Achan, one man among six hundred thousand men, found some good stuff in there and wanted to keep it on the sly. So he hid it and everybody went on about their business.

The next city was a little town named Ai. It was small enough that Joshua just sent 3,000 men to fight it. They were roundly defeated. The Ai fighters chased them away easily.

Joshua knew something was wrong. He and the elders asked the Lord what was wrong. The Lord told them that someone had taken things that were holy to him and for that reason the entire nation would suffer.

They bought everyone before the Lord, first by tribes, then by clans, then families. You can imagine the dread Achan felt as it got closer and closer to him, then when the divine spotlight was turned on him specifically.

What had he taken? Not really all that much when you think about it. A beautiful robe from Babylon, 200 silver coins, and a bar of gold weighing more than a pound.

That was a fair amount of money, but when you consider the amount of wealth the Israelites were carrying anyway (they had more than enough to make the gold calf and to trim out the tabernacle beautifully with woven gold), his little bit was not all that much.

Besides, where would he have worn the garment? The minute he went outside in it, everyone around him would recognize it as an illicit item.

But the desire to get something blinded him. and it got him and his family killed.

The same thing happened to Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5. They wanted prestige more than anything else and lied to get it. And they died.

In both of these instances, the people of God were at a crossroads. In Achan’s case, it was whether or not the Lord would put up with disobedience in his new Kingdom. In Ananias and Sapphira’s case, it was also whether the Lord was serious about what he said. And in both these instances, the people involved died.

In Acts 5:11, it says Great fear gripped the entire church and everyone else who heard what had happened. And you know that the Israelites realized the severity of disobeying the Lord.

But the point is, if one sinned, all were affected. In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul told the Christians there that they were sinning as a group. They had allowed things to go on in the church there that were wrong and not only were they not sad about it, they held it up to show their “diversity and tolerance.”

The issue here was a man who was living with his father’s wife. But because of their allowing him to continue his association with them, they also had other problems creeping in. Before long, as is always the case, they began to have people who were greedy, or worshiping idols, or abusive, or drunkards, or cheating people (1 Corinthians 5:10).

The church suffered because of the sin within. Paul said to not only remove themselves from these people but, Don’t even eat with such people (1 Corinthians 5:11).

Sin kills a church if allowed to continue. Sin would have killed the Israelites faster than they died anyway if allowed to go from the very start. Sin would have killed the church if allowed from the very start. Sin was killing the Corinthian church in 1 Corinthians 5.

So what do we do? I am not sure how far we can go, but one thing for sure, the churches in America that are growing are the ones who have a strong sense of morality and responsibility in their assemblies. The ones that are dying are the ones that have compromised and allowed people to just do what they want.

There is a backbone situation here. Do we have the courage of our convictions needed to show the world the reality of God and his grace?

We can do that without being judgmental.

I thought the answer that Rick Warren, the well-known pastor of Saddleback Community Church in California, gave one day when being interviewed on one of the cable news programs was great. They complained that his interpretation of the Bible was too harsh, and he said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t make the rules.”

All we can do is the best we know to do and to show the world that God is real, and that his standards are real. Otherwise, all the world sees is a bunch of people that are no different from them.

The people of Israel knew this, the early church knew it and the Bible says it.

the bread of life

Then the people began to murmur in disagreement because he had said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They said, “Isn’t this Jesus, the son of Joseph? We know his father and mother. How can he say, ‘I came down from heaven’?” (John 6:41-42)

Jesus was audacious, if nothing else. He could really move a crowd. The only problem was that sometimes he moved them away.

But it seemed that he did this on purpose. He didn’t want people following him who didn’t really care. He didn’t want casual hangers-on. He wanted committed followers who believed in what he did.

With his charisma and ability, Jesus could have pastored a mega-church. He could have had a huge bunch of people with a huge building and classes and support groups and a Starbuck’s in the lobby. All this could have been his.

But that wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted to do the will of the Father who sent him. he wanted to obey God.

Now that doesn’t mean that mega-church pastors are not serving God. They are. But Jesus didn’t come to do that.

He knew that he only had a short time to do what he needed to do. And, not only that, this was the first time it was done. No one had laid any real groundwork for it. He was, essentially, starting from scratch.

Sure, the prophets had talked of him and God had mentioned all the way back to Genesis 3. But he had to do what he had to do and didn’t have the time to be political. He was starting his church.

People gravitated to him easily, especially when he fed them and showed them miracles. They loved that. And they came by the droves to see it. It was almost like dinner theatre, a few miracles, then dinner, then maybe a few miracles again. They could feel so spiritual and get fed at the same time.

But then Jesus had to go and ruin it all for them. They wanted bread. After all, their forefathers had been given bread by God, so what was so different? In some ways, since they were the chosen people, God owed them the bread.

When Jesus fed them, they figured that it was just their rightful due. It was what the Messiah was going to do: take care of his people. A bunch of miracles, a lot of food, then drive the Romans out and paradise would be established.

But then Jesus had to go and ruin it all for them. He said, you want the bread? Here it is. I am the Bread of Life. I am the bread which comes down from heaven. I am that manna.

That didn’t sit well with them. So they did what every crowd does: they went to character assassination. Who does he think he is? He is from near here. He has no right to tell us stuff like that.

Now just a short time ago, they were eating his food. At that time he was fine, he was okay, he was from God.

But now, now that he starts getting different from what they want, they get angry. Now that he doesn’t agree with them, they are beginning to think he is not so smart after all. As long as he agreed with them and went with their agenda, he was fine. But when he moves off into uncharted and unwanted territory, they are through with him.

He could have said, Oops, sorry. I was mistaken. Y’all sit down and I’ll have some more food. Please forgive me. They would have milled around for a bit, you know, to show that they were their own people and they had their standards. But sooner or later, they would have sat down and the party would have been on again.

But he didn’t. He continued his own way. A few verses down, after everybody has left him, he asks the apostles, Will you go too? Their response: where will we go? You have the answers. They had backed a weird horse and they knew it, but they also had the sense to realize that he was the only one.

He ended up moving the crowd all right. He moved them to kill him and then he moved them to accept him.

After all, he was the Bread of Life. There was no one else to go to. And a lot of those people finally realized it.

daily java

Daily Java:

When Joshua was near the town of Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with sword in hand. Joshua went up to him and demanded, “Are you friend or foe?” “Neither one,” he replied. “I am the commander of the Lord’s army.” At this, Joshua fell with his face to the ground in reverence. “I am at your command,” Joshua said. “What do you want your servant to do?” The commander of the Lord’s army replied, “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did as he was told. (Joshua 5:13-15)

I was reading the other day about WWJB: Who Would Jesus Bomb? Both sides of the war issue were using the Bible to try to support their viewpoint.

In the Civil War, both sides felt God was on their side, and both sides used scripture to bolster their ideas. Both were wrong.

The vegetarians, the green people, the lovers of alternative fuel – all feel God is on their side. The opinion of these is that if Jesus were here today, he would agree with them and do like they think.

The problem is that basically, God doesn’t care what our viewpoint is. He is not subject to our whims and our wishes. He does not go along with our ideas and he really doesn’t care how much we are wrapped up in our hobbies.

He is God, and as such is above all that is earthly.

In this passage, Joshua asked the man he saw standing in front of him with a sword in his hand, are you friend or foe? The man replied, neither one.

He was neither friend nor foe. He was the commander of the Lord’s army, and as such, he was for the Lord.

When we try to manipulate God into our life, we fail. We are moved into God’s life, or we are not in God.

In fact, the angel of the Lord ignored Joshua’s request completely. All he told him was the ground was holy because the presence of the Lord and his army was here. He could like it or leave it.

Any god we can move into what we want is not a god worth worshiping. Any god we can manipulate into taking our side of a dispute, no matter how noble the dispute, is not a god worth worshiping.

God is greater than our desires, no matter how fervently we may feel them. He does not care about the natural resources, or the fact that we may consider meat abhorrent, or any of the things that we are so passionate about. He is God, the Lord of Hosts, and as such has his own agenda and his own work to do.

There is nothing wrong with having ideas or projects. But when we try to make God take sides, we lessen him, we denigrate him, and reduce him to a supporting shill.

When Jesus was asked about taxes, he said, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.

In other words, God doesn’t care about taxes or stuff like them.

That doesn’t mean God doesn’t care about us, but he will not be our sponsor for clean energy or veganism. He doesn’t care.

He is God.

And we worship him.

just say no

Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. Now I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life, so that you and your descendants might live! You can make this choice by loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and committing yourself firmly to him. This is the key to your life. And if you love and obey the Lord, you will live long in the land the Lord swore to give your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. (Deuteronomy 30:19-20)

Back in the 1980’s, Nancy Reagan introduced a program called “Just Say No.” The idea was that we had the power to choose between what was good and what was bad.

The liberals went ballistic. Their idea was that you had to have someone help you say no, a government committee or office that was in charge of saying no for you. The idea of you saying no yourself was ludicrous. You had to have government help.

Of course, the whole biblical model is based on your ability to say yes or no. just lie Moses says here, choose which is the good and which is the bad. Then do what you choose. If you choose bad, bad things will happen to you and you will not enjoy the presence of God.

If, on the other hand, you choose good, then you will have found the key to life. And you will be pleasing to God, who made you to choose.

You figure that God made us able to choose. He put everything in the garden that was good, and he put one thing that humanity could not bother. Adam and Eve pondered the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the one God said not to bother, and they ate the fruit of it.

They chose badly and they suffered for it.

Titus 2:11-13 says For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope—the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.

With the power of God, we can say no. we can refuse to do what is wrong. We don’t need a government committee or department to show us what to do when faced with problems. Just say no.

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Daily Java:

But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things! (Galatians 5:22-23)

I have seen a couple of actors in movies over the past few decades that really made me sad. They were not the same ones, because they are usually old. They are the old person with a stupid mouth.

They may say something profane, or brash, or just dumb. But I wonder when I hear them, where is the beauty or presence that is supposed to come with age? They sure don’t have it.

And why would a person want to advertise to the world that they have lived a long time and never gained any wisdom or good-nature?

When a person gets older, you expect them to have wisdom, to have grace. When an older person doesn’t, it is always a little surprising.

My son made the point the other day of telling me that we were older people now. I thanked him, then wrote him out of my will.

But I was thinking about it. That is true. I am of the age that I used to consider older. So how do I look to others? Do I look like I have some kind of godliness or grace, can you see the fruits of living for God for the 51 years I have been a Christian? The 37 years I have been a minister of the gospel? Are they there?

Or do I just look like an old idiot?

Now my wife has that grace. She has lived her life in a attitude of love and it shows.

Everyone has fruit that they have gotten from their lives. Just as a tree produces fruit, so does a person. If you are in Christ, your fruit is good and long lasting. If not, it is not.

In Jesus, with the filling of his Spirit and through his power we produce good things. Those good things are the fruits of our lives.

When we live in the Spirit, those fruits are good: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. A person who has lived his or her life is going to show something for it. It may be bitterness over lost opportunities, or anger over past offenses.

It will be whatever you think about through your life. If you are in Jesus, it will be good spiritual things.

How do people see you? That stupid old person who makes a fool out of themselves in movies? Or a beautiful older person full of the grace of God. It is your choice.

reflections on my 21 day fast

Reflections On My 21 Day Fast

I have been off my fast now for almost a month. Yet it, as fasts will do, impacts me greatly.

Fourteen years ago, I went on a thirty day fast. It was just one month out of the past fourteen years. Yet, to this day, I see the impact it had on my life.

For one thing, I no longer taste my food while I am cooking. I cooked for a number of people the whole time I was fasting, but, of course, I couldn’t taste anything without breaking the fast. So I quit tasting stuff, and to this day, still have trouble remembering to do so.

The same with this one. I was on the fast this time for twenty-one days. I drank what I wanted, but didn’t drink much with sugar in it.

I lost over fifty pounds on the twenty-one day fast. Twenty of that has come back in just general living. But I had been on the Atkins diet for a couple of months before, so this probably sped up the weight loss.

But it came at a price. I was cold the entire time (it was February, which didn’t help me much warmth-wise), I had a runny nose, my back hurt, I had tremendous bowel distress along with  a weird kind of diarrhea and I had a lot of severe muscle cramps. It was not enjoyable.

But with the help of God I did it. I know he had to be there for it to have been done in the first place.

Yesterday I went to the doctor for a check-up. The nurse and then the doctor noticed right away that I was thirty pounds down from a couple of months ago. Both asked why. I told them about the fast. You could tell that the nurse was having trouble processing it. She finally asked, what do you eat on a fast? I replied, nothing. That is why it is called a fast.

The doctor was fascinated by it, that someone would voluntarily go without eating for three weeks.

They didn’t really understand why I had done it and I had trouble telling them in a way that they could understand.

But I learned some things. For the next several days, I am going to talk about what I learned on my fast. If I had learned nothing, it would have been worthless. I believe that it was not.

So here goes.

What I learned in a physical sense from my fast.

1. I learned again what hunger is. There were several times near the end when I was truly hungry. You can always tell the difference between real hunger and mouth hunger. Mouth hunger wants a pizza or grilled cheese sandwich. Real hunger will look at almost anything as desirable. Real hunger will eat anything. Several times at night, I felt a almost desperate need for food. It is not normal, after all, for a person to go without eating. Americans are so well fed that a person can go two weeks before the first real hunger pangs can set in. I feel for the children in bad circumstances that have to go to sleep with hunger pangs. Mine was different, of course, I chose mine. They did not.

2. I learned what it means to do without. In a fast you do without something that is so basic that you many times do not even think about it. You go into a well stocked pantry, which I have, and take nothing for yourself. You invite people over for supper and eat nothing. You are sitting and watching a movie and eat nothing. You do without. This tends to make you realize that most of the stuff you have is not really all that important. I always admired the guys who could live in a room with little or nothing. I think I could. I would not put Ella through that, but I could do it. The stuff I own is not that important.

3. I lost a lot of muscle tissue. I was afraid I would, but I couldn’t exercise for the muscle cramping. So that meant I lost a lot of muscle. I did this back in 1997 too and took a while to get it back. The same seems to be so this time too. Since I always liked being a big strong man, this kind of hits me below the belt.

4. I learned loneliness. There is a camaraderie that comes from eating with others. That is totally missing in a fast. On the last fast, as well as this one, I stood in a grocery store buying food for my wife and for some guests that were coming for a prayer night. As I stood there in the midst of American plenty, something that almost looks like a warehouse for gluttony, I knew I was the only person in that place who had not eaten for several weeks.  You are alone in what you are doing.

5. I learned that people’s perceptions of you are changed. Others see you as weird. The guy isn’t eating. How can you not eat at all? Something isn’t normal with this. We are worried about you and don’t want you to get sick. What is the first thing you are going to eat? After a couple of weeks, people get a little scared of you. You are accomplishing something that they could never even think about doing. And they are afraid of what you are doing and by extension, you. It sets you apart.

I will have more later as I process this. I came off the diet to my father’s death and the funeral. We drove nine hours there and nine back. I came off my fast to a counter full of cake and stuff that people had brought to us out of love. It was a hard way to come off a fast. You really need to do so easily, but I was not able to.

But all in all, it was a good fast. And I intend to do a similar fast sometime soon.

And again, more later.

daily java

Daily Java:

This command I am giving you today is not too difficult for you to understand, and it is not beyond your reach. It is not kept in heaven, so distant that you must ask, ‘Who will go up to heaven and bring it down so we can hear it and obey?’ It is not kept beyond the sea, so far away that you must ask, ‘Who will cross the sea to bring it to us so we can hear it and obey?’ No, the message is very close at hand; it is on your lips and in your heart so that you can obey it. (Deuteronomy 30:11-14)

People struggle to do the will of God, when it is so simple.

Churches make it hard on their people. They bring up extra rules and regulations, how you are to dress, what you cane at or drink, what you can or can’t do in your spare time. And after al while, it becomes more onerous to be a Christian than it did to be in the world.

It is no wonder so many go back to where they were before Jesus.

The will of God is simple, it is no, as Moses said, beyond your reach.

Even in the Old Testament, Moses could see that. And he was the one who had brought down all of the myriad laws God had given to the Israelites. But he could look past all those laws and see the point of them. He could see the foundation behind all of those detailed laws.

It was not the laws that saved, it was the God behind the laws.

What was the point? Love God and let him love you. Choose God and let him choose you.

That was it. That was the whole point. When Jesus was asked what the great commandment was in Mark 12, he replied:  

The most important commandment is this: ‘Listen, O Israel! The Lord our God is the one and only Lord. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.

That was the Shema, the foundational verses in Deuteronomy 6. The second was from Leviticus 19:18.

The whole point was love. Loving God and loving each other. In other words, it was recognizing that you are not  the most important thing around in this world. God is first, others are second, and you are third.

In Mark 9:32, a teacher of the law who was listening said:

Well said, Teacher. You have spoken the truth by saying that there is only one God and no other. And I know it is important to love him with all my heart and all my understanding and all my strength, and to love my neighbor as myself. This is more important than to offer all of the burnt offerings and sacrifices required in the law.

Jesus knew that this man, this teacher of the law, had the point. In v34, it ways,  Realizing how much the man understood, Jesus said to him, You are not far from the Kingdom of God.

This guy was able to go beyond all of the stuff and see the point.

The point is not what we eat or drink, it is not what we wear, it is not even how we worship. The point is loving God and accepting him as our Savior. When we do, all else falls into place.

As the Beatles said, “All you need is love.” As simplistic and silly as that sounds, it is absolutely true. Of course, it isn’t true in the sense the Beatles thought. But it makes it no less true that it came from an odd source.

James called it the Royal Law. Jesus called it his great commandment. God calls it the point of everything else we do. if we do not love, as Paul said, in 1 Corinthians 13, we are not serving God.

It is so simple that it is hard sometimes to understand.

daily java

Daily Java:

Lord, have mercy on me. Make me well again, so I can pay them back! (Psalm 41:10)

I went to the doctor early this morning. Got up at 6:30 to be across Lincoln by 7:30. Had a lab first, with 10 hour fasting.

The phlebotomist took me in and drew blood and all, then I went back downstairs to wait for two hours until my appointment.

The VA is an odd place. You get all kinds, from fresh veterans to old guys who were in WWII and Korea and the beginning of Viet Nam. People of all kinds and types come through there.

I suppose the main unifying characteristic is that they look old. Some are not much if any older than I am, but they are grizzled with scraggly beards and pony tails and maybe biker vests and all. Just in general a strange looking group of people.

But Ella and I sat and read while we waited. Then the doctor called.

I went in and the nurse weighed me and took my blood pressure, pulse, that sort of thing.

She also gave me the results of my blood tests from 7:30 that morning. They were great!

She also commented on the fact that I had lost 30 pounds since December when I was there last. I told her the reason, my 21 day fast, and she had trouble processing that.

She asked, what do you eat on a fast. I replied, nothing, that is why it is called a fast. You ate nothing for three weeks? That’s right.

The doctor also commented on it. He also commented on the fact that as far as everything else is concerned, I am in great health. My cholesterol, my blood pressure, my blood sugar, everything is well within norms. I am fine. And I weigh 30 pounds less than three months ago.

It was strange. I walked in there with a bit of dread. It is like that when you go to get the results of tests of any kind, especially physical.

I had some stuff wrong, of course. My back hurts and I have a bad cough I have had for a year or more. But in general, I walked out of there a lot healthier than I was when I walked in.

It is funny how something like figures on a sheet of paper can make you feel so much better.

the secret things

The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law. (Deuteronomy 29:29)

In Deuteronomy 29, Moses has just finished telling the Israelites about how bad it will be if they refuse to follow  YHVH God. Things will be bad for them and all the nations will see it. Then in Deuteronomy 30, he tells them that they must choose between life or death.

In between the chapters is this odd little verse. It says in essence that some things God does are impossible to understand. Only he can understand them because they are secret things.

However, he does say also that the things revealed are available not only to the people of God then, but to their children forever.

But there that little verse is. The secret things belong to the Lord our God.

There are some things that are not to be understood by us. The nature of God is one. We do not know how God is. We know the ideas he gives us about the Father, Son and Spirit. But we also know that those are nothing more than analogies. He is not literally a Father in most senses.

Of course, he is in one sense in that he implanted that child in Mary. And his Son is that in the sense that he was born to Mary. And the Greek word for Spirit, pneuma, means nothing more than breath.

But God himself is not a Father. The Word existed long before he became a Son and will exist long after the need for his Sonship is passed. God does not breathe, so really, the Spirit is not necessarily real.

But yet they are too. How?

We can explain it to our kids all day long, but it will make no real difference. And that is mainly because we cannot explain God.

Insofar as we have him inside us, we can understand his nature, but we can never understand him. He is too great and too other.

That is why he sent Jesus to us. He wanted to have a touching place with the human race, so he sent Jesus. Jesus was human lie we are so he can touch us. Yet he was also sinless like God so he can touch God. Through him we can touch God.

They are secret, yes. But that doesn’t mean that it renders God so far away that we cannot be in contact with him. He is still God and he loves us and lives within us.

How. I don’t know. And I don’t really care. It is so and I accept it as such.

daily java

Daily Java:

Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. (Colossians 3:12)

I love to buy my wife stuff. In fact I am the one that buys the stuff in the first place. If left to her, she would still dress like she did in 1974.

I do it because I love her and want her to look good. I am also a judicious shopper with an eye for bargains. Because of that, she has a closet full of good looking, stylish clothes.

Everything she owns fits her. I will not, I absolutely refuse to buy things that do not fit. In fact, we have a promise between us. I will tell her if what she is wearing looks bad. It is foolish to buy something that looks bad and that will make you look foolish.

I never could figure out how a guy can tell a woman that the shirt she has on looks good on her simply because she wants it to look good. He tells her that, she buys it, goes out in public wearing it and looks like an idiot, wearing some shirt that is too tight and makes her look fat.

If he had told her in the first place it was too tight or too short or whatever, she would have been a lot better off.

I guess it is because she wants it to look good and he is afraid of hurting her feelings. Unless, of course, he doesn’t really like her and just goes along, not caring what she looks like. So he goes with it and she looks foolish. And on top of it all, they wasted a pretty good amount of money. Decent clothing is expensive.

I, on the other hand, do not want my wife to look bad, nor do I want to waste money. So I am careful to tell her what looks good and what doesn’t.

That is essentially what God is doing with us when he chooses us to be his holy people. He clothes us with stuff that makes us look great.

When we accept the things he gives us, we look wonderful. We are well-dressed, everything fits just right, is the right color, everything is good.

When we don’t and try to force our own will on him, we look foolish. Nothing fits because it is not the tailor made clothing he has designed for us. It is cheap junk that looks dumb and feels worse.

If you take God into your heart and your life, you recognize that there is someone greater than you that is guiding your life and your choices.

I found out early that my wife doesn’t have a lot of fashion sense. It isn’t that she is dumb or anything like that, far from it. And I am not smarter than her. But she just doesn’t have a strong sense of what looks good on her and what doesn’t.

That is what I am there for. I am the objective observer. She has someone in her life that has a sharper eye, I guess you could say, to help her look good in what she does.

And on top of it all, I love her.

On top of everything else, God loves us. And he wants us to be the best we can be.

Since that is true, we wear the clothing he has made for us. And we look good.

the strangest sense of my life flashing before my eyes

At my father’s funeral, there was the strangest sense of my life flashing before my eyes.

As the service wound down, and the minister giving the eulogy came to a close, there was the viewing of the body.

I moved up towards the front, but without realizing it, put myself right in the path of people coming up to the coffin.

I found myself in the position of shaking hands with a couple of hundred people.

Now I have been a minister for almost 40 years and have shaken the hands of countless tens of thousands of people. But this time was different.

There were people from all parts of my father’s life that came by. And by extension, they were from all parts of my life.

People I had not seen in decades or more walked by and told me hi. In each instance, they would tell me who they were, and it would astonish me.

A woman who I had last seen as a baby, cousins, old friends from my Jr High years, other various and assorted relatives and friends – all came by me and said hi.

It was, as I said, the strangest feeling. It was like my life was flashing before my eyes, as if everyone I had known chose those few moments to say hi one last time in my life.

Ella told me that when her dad died at the age of 85, he spent the better part of a day saying hi to a group of people who came into his hospital room. They started with recent acquaintances and pretty soon, over the course of the day, moved to people he had known as a little child.

All of these people were long dead and the reunion was all in his mind. But he saw and said hello to each and every one.

I was not dead nor was I even sick, but the ethereal and surrealistic quality of the meetings was strong and struck me strangely.

I was tired from the long trip down to Tyler, TX, I had just come off a 21 day fast that had left me somewhat weakened, there was the strain of my father’s death and funeral and my mother’s grief. These were all things that worked together to make for a strange experience.

It was not unpleasant, but it was odd. In many cases, I wanted to say, stop. Come back and let’s talk, but there were 150 more people in line. Or they had come a long ways to attend the funeral and had to get back.

Few if any of these people were at the dinner. So except for the brief glance and introduction and my own surprise, there was nothing else.

It began to dawn on me that there are some people that I wold love to hear from, to see, to talk to in real time and not just on Facebook. Now I might have nothing in common with these people, but the desire is great.

The desire is great also to go back to Texas City and Freeport and see where I came from, to reconnect with my roots. I suppose there would be no good in it, but I want to. If nothing else, for some kind of closure.

I am getting older and I do not want to die far from home. I know it makes no real difference, but it has been weighing on me lately.

daily java

Daily Java:

On the way, Jesus told them, “All of you will desert me. For the Scriptures say, ‘God will strike[a] the Shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.’ But after I am raised from the dead, I will go ahead of you to Galilee and meet you there.” Peter said to him, “Even if everyone else deserts you, I never will.” Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, Peter—this very night, before the rooster crows twice, you will deny three times that you even know me.” “No!” Peter declared emphatically. “Even if I have to die with you, I will never deny you!” And all the others vowed the same. (Mark 14:27-31)

All of us have in our minds how we would act if we were tested for our faith. We would like to see ourselves as strong and powerful for God, standing resolute in the face of persecution, refusing to bend in our faith towards our God.

We see ourselves like Shadrack, Meshach and Abednego in the book of Daniel. When told they would die if they did not recant their faith in God, they said: “our God will deliver us, and even if he doesn’t, we will still not deny him.”

Strong words from a strong faith. And we would like to be like that. Standing strong, refusing to recant.

But the problem is, we do not know what we will do until after we have done it. We just don’t know what our response will be until after we have made it.

I would like to think that I would be strong for God, but I don’t know what I will do if or when the situation would arise.

I was in seventh grade, in Mr. Tisdale’s science class. He started to talk about evolution, but before he did he asked the class, “Does anyone in here not believe in evolution?” Little Johnny Cliver, the good Church of Christ boy, raised his hand automatically.

As I looked around at the children who had their hands raised, too, it dawned on me that there were no children but me with their hands raised. I was the only one.

Mr Tisdale said, “Okay, Johnny, tell us why you do not believe in evolution.” I lowered my hand and said “Never mind.” He pressed me and I continued to say never mind. Finally, he left me alone and continued his lecture.

The man was a fool. Anyone who would badger a seventh grader from a position of authority in a classroom full of neutral children is a bully and a fool and should have been disciplined. But nonetheless, I recanted.

I have never forgotten that day nor how it felt to find myself the sole apologist for the Christian faith. And I have never forgotten how it felt to lower my hand and refuse to say anything.

Peter, in this passage, knew what he would do if Jesus was attacked. He would defend him with his life. And he did. When they came against Jesus, just a short time later, he pulled a sword and made the first blow, cutting off the ear of the High Priest’s servant.

This servant, more than likely an officious and pompous little bureaucrat full of his own importance, had probably grabbed Jesus and shoved Peter aside. Peter was ready to fight.

Instead, though, Jesus picked up the ear, put it back on the guy and turned to Peter and said, Stop it! Those who live by the sword shall die by the sword!

It took the wind totally out of Peter’s sails. He dropped his sword and ran.

He was ready to die for Jesus. But he didn’t know how to let Jesus be captured without a fight. He didn’t know how to live for Jesus.

There is the problem. In many ways, it would be a lot easier to die for Jesus than to live for him. I read a blog by a woman for a while who made the comment in her bio section, “she could probably be a martyr as long as it didn’t take too long.” That was Peter.

Jesus told Pilate, the Roman governor, at his trial, that his kingdom was not of this world. if it were, he said, then his servants would fight. But the apostle Paul said in 2 Corinthians 10:3-5:  

We are human, but we don’t wage war as humans do. We use God’s mighty weapons, not worldly weapons, to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy false arguments. We destroy every proud obstacle that keeps people from knowing God. We capture their rebellious thoughts and teach them to obey Christ.

Capturing rebellious thoughts and teaching them to obey Christ is what he wants. Once Peter figured this out, he became great in the Kingdom.

But for a while, his learning time was horrible. And not only was it bad for him, everybody else knew he had denied Jesus three times. After all, it got written up in the Bible for people to read for 2000 years.

However, he became a great man of God. In the book of Acts we see a man who is now resolute in living for Jesus, even to the point of being beaten for him. As far as we know, he never denied him again.

I have never forgotten that moment in Junior High. I hope that I have become a better man in Jesus because of it. And I hope that I will stand for him strongly if the time comes.

daily java

Daily Java:

Meanwhile, Jesus was in Bethany at the home of Simon, a man who had previously had leprosy. While he was eating, a woman came in with a beautiful alabaster jar of expensive perfume made from essence of nard. She broke open the jar and poured the perfume over his head. Some of those at the table were indignant. “Why waste such expensive perfume?” they asked. “It could have been sold for a year’s wages and the money given to the poor!” So they scolded her harshly. But Jesus replied, “Leave her alone. Why criticize her for doing such a good thing to me? You will always have the poor among you, and you can help them whenever you want to. But you will not always have me. She has done what she could and has anointed my body for burial ahead of time. I tell you the truth, wherever the Good News is preached throughout the world, this woman’s deed will be remembered and discussed.” (Mark 14:3-9)

Every once in a while you want to do something nice for someone. It doesn’t have to be big, or expensive, but sometimes it may be.

But when you give them the gift, they say, “You didn’t have to do that.” Then chances are they will say, “Well, thanks anyway.”

Your gift and the spirit with which you gave it has been completely nullified in their minds. You didn’t have to do it, so therefore they feel no real obligation to thank you for it. And above all, they do not “owe you one.”

This happened to me recently with something as small as a cup of coffee I got for someone. And I have to admit, I am not sure I will get them another. Pettiness on my part, maybe. But why do things for people who do not appreciate it.

I have been thinking about it and today, when I read  this scripture, I remembered it.

A woman wanted to do something nice for Jesus, so she brought in a jar of expensive nard. Nard, according to the internet, is “the perfume of the lost Garden of Eden, and in literature, nard came to refer to any perfume, as long as it was exquisite.” In other words, really expensive perfume.

However, as is usually the case, people (self-righteous nitwits) started complaining (especially since it wasn’t done for them). They scolded her harshly. She could have sold the perfume for a lot of money and given it to the poor. And she could have, too. It would have gone a long ways toward helping a lot of poor people.

Jesus’ comment: just shut up and leave her alone. You always have poor people, but I am enjoying this right now.

Any gift we give to God could be used for something else. It could be used to support a missionary, or to help people in Africa buy a goat, or any number of other things. But sometimes, we just want to give him a gift.

It is kind of like buying flowers. You could do a lot of other things that are financially more responsible. But sometimes you just want to give your wife flowers. Sure they will die in a few days. But for a while, she just likes flowers.

It is a better thing in many ways to give a gift in memorial of someone’s death to a charitable organization. But sometimes you want to put some flowers on the casket. He loved roses, you say, so you give him one last gift of roses.

The woman in this passage could have sold the stuff and gotten a lot better return for it, but she wanted to do something nice for Jesus, and she did. And of course, she came under fire for wasting. But not from Jesus. He recognized the need for a gift. After all, he gave that kind of gift himself: the gift of his own life.

He said, one of these days, when people talk about the Good News, people will remember this woman and what she did.

And you know what? They are right. Here I am writing about it right now.

As Jesus said, she has done what she could and it made him happy.