daily java

Daily Java:

Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth. (Colossians 3:2)

I am not a fan of modern culture. I hate most of what is on TV and even have trouble finding things to watch on Netflix. Half the time we turn the movie or program off half way through because it is just dumb. And I hate dumb stuff of any kind.

It is a fact that I am a prude. I know that and don’t mind. I do not like trash. I hear about stuff that everybody else seems to watch and I realize that I would not have it in my house. A lot of the reality shows (a genre I despise) are just stupid. They demean the people that are in them and debase the people watching. Some of the animated shows are just trash and I could go on but won’t.

Where is the Christian any different who watches this trash? How can the world look at you and say there is any difference in you and those who are unsaved?

I mean, I like movies as much as the next person, especially those which take place on other planets and have Arnold Schwarzenegger cutting people with his sword or Clint Eastwood shooting people. I am a fan of sci-fi and westerns and things like that. There are some things I love, like Monty Python and Zombie movies. But on the other hand, there are those which I will not watch because they become so profane, so filled with sex and the like. I turn them off. That doesn’t mean that I am better than everybody else, but it does mean that I have been set apart for something better.

How does a Christian watch Family Man or South Park without cringing? And if you cringe, why watch it? The more you watch the more it begins to make no difference. Shows about pawn shops and porn stars, motorcycle mechanics cursing at each other and filled with anger. What is the point? How is it that this edifies the child of God?

I am not some Pentecostal wacko advocating a removal from TV and movies. I still have a TV and watch movies and what shows on Netflix and YouTube I want to watch. But what I am advocating is sense in choosing what you watch. There are things that once seen cannot be unseen. The internet and the TV are full of those images. Why see them when all it will do is hurt you in your relationship with God? After all, you, as a Christian, are holy. Having discretion is not the same as being removed. It just means you are careful.

I think of the woman who said that all of the porn movies she had watched in her past before she came to Christ replayed themselves in her mind during communion. She would have given anything to not have seen them.

So what’s the point? Don’t do it. Turn off the TV. Sister Ella and I did and I think we are the better for it. There is no reason to fill our minds with trash.

You are welcome to disagree with me. But I think that if you look at what we as Christians are called to do, you will know it is right.

And don’t get me started on Christian clothing. Maybe I need to go take a pill.

daily java

Daily Java:

But as for me, I am poor and needy;
    please hurry to my aid, O God.
You are my helper and my savior;
    O Lord, do not delay. (Psalm 70:5)

There is a point in Bible study that too many people miss. The point of Bible study is not to know more, or to memorize verses. It is not to look for doctrinal points so that you may convict the gainsayers. The point of Bible study is to gain contact with God on a personal level.

When we read the Bible, if things do not touch us on a personal level, the reading is worthless. Knowledge in general is worthless, too, if all we have is knowledge. The things we know about God, the things we learn about his history in our world – all these things are worthless if they do not touch us personally.

Our relationship with God is not an intellectual relationship. For one thing, it would be impossible to have an intellectual relationship with a Being that is eternal and omnipotent. It would be like my cat discussing theology with me. We are on totally different wavelengths and have totally different intellects.

That is not to say we are stupid, but it is to say that we do not understand God nor will we ever be able to do so.  Any understanding of God that we gain through our reading is that which touches us personally. We can only know God through our hearts and through our souls anyway.

And furthermore, we can only know God if he is in our hearts helping us understand. That is why, again as I have said before, Hollywood cannot understand Christians and cannot make a decent Christian movie: they do not have the mind of Christ.

You cannot know God by reading about him any more than you can know about anyone by just reading about them. The only to know that person is to become acquainted with him. All other knowledge is purely superficial, academic in nature.

So when you read, ask God to open your heart and ask him to help you understand. Reading is good. But reading with the goal of understanding is the only good goal. There is no way to understand God just by reading. He is entirely too great.

daily java

Daily Java:

Even fools are thought wise when they keep silent; with their mouths shut, they seem intelligent. (Proverbs 17:28)

I read an article by a woman who was in a demonstration in Portugal several years back when she was just sixteen. She wrote that permission to have a demonstration was denied by the government. The government was in constant fluctuation at the time and it was feared a strong left-wing takeover would come. A lot of people were afraid of this and wanted to demonstrate but were not allowed.

One person came up with the notion that a demonstration was yelling and noise and all, so if they remained silent, it wouldn’t be a real demonstration. So they walked across the city in silence, a whole huge crowd of people.

When they got to the facility in question, she found herself in front facing an armed contingent of guards. Still silent, she was afraid to run for fear that they would begin to fire. The young people stood with their signs and because they stood, the adults had to also and then the media noticed them and the need was gone.

All because a group of people remained silent. If they had begun to holler or run, they would have been killed. But they stayed silent.

When Jesus went before Herod, king of Galilee, at his trial, he was silent. He knew that anything he said or did would be made fun of so he just didn’t talk. The response was that he really irritated Herod. Nobody lies to be ignored and nobody wants to remain unanswered.

One of the hardest things I have ever learned is the ability to stay silent, to just sit quietly and listen. I like to talk. All preachers do. It is part of the personality dynamic. They are, after all, preachers. You don’t have a professional “sitter and listener” in a church, usually. You have a preacher. And people want to be told things. If for no other reason, they want to be told so they can find holes in what you say and attack you.

The last church I pastored had a secret Saturday night meeting. I had not yet been installed, but some were afraid that I was going to bring wholesale change to the church. This was in spite of the fact that I had never said so nor had I done anything in the couple of Sundays I had been there that would lead them to believe it. It was mainly the work of one man who wanted to run the church and have control. He had had control over the preacher before the last one and wanted it enough again that he had run off the last one and was trying to keep me from coming.

A woman on our board called me and told me of the meeting and I showed up, surprising them.

I sat on the edge of the platform and listened to them speak for almost thirty minutes. They talked about everything and you could tell most of it had come from one source. It dealt with everything from worship style to moving the pulpit to a table being placed along the back wall to me walking about while I spoke. None of it was major, all was minor and some things were just plain petty. But all I did was listen. I made no verbal responses or agreement nods or anything like that. I just sat, looked at them and listened in silence.

It all wore down and they were nervous about why I had not spoken the entire time. Finally, the lady on the council who called me mentioned that maybe I had some things to say and turned to me and asked, almost plaintively, “Do you?”

I sat for a few more moments just kind of neutrally looking at them and then talked for a moment about friction between new people and such. I never answered a single complaint. At the end, I led a prayer and everybody went home.

That silence had the effect of making someone very wary of me. I had control and he didn’t. And it showed that nobody pushes me around. He went underground, ended up leaving the church and poisoning things at a distance. I ended up leaving and the next Sunday after I had left he came back in with a triumphant roar.

But he never faced me down. He was too afraid of my silence. He came by the house and told me how sorry I was and how much damage I had done to him and his family, but again I just listened and he finally put the keys to the church on the table and left after I prayed for him.

Silence takes all the wind out of sails. It silences people. I have learned to stay silent in listening to people. I had had people tell me their whole life stories, because I just sat and listened. In that regard, people are dying for someone to listen to them. However, sometimes that can backfire because they tell you more than they want because their mouths keep running.

But, as the Proverb says, it is better to shut up than to talk. It was supposedly George Washington who said “Stay silent and the world might think you a fool. Speak and remove all doubt.”

It is really hard to remain silent but if more people were to do it, the world would be better.

daily java

Daily Java:

I want you to show mercy, not offer sacrifices. (Matthew 9:12)

It is easy to see a God who is mad at us. We do act stupidly an awful lot. You don’t have to be in jail to know that. All you have to do is look around and see what all is happening. We figure that we do so many dumb things that God is angry most of the time and mildly annoyed the rest.

But the only problem with that is God is not made like that.

When God made us, he made us to be with him. In Genesis 1, he made people to be like him so that he could have someone to talk to. In fact the Bible says that in the Garden God walked with his people, enjoying conversation and just being together.

But then, of course, people sinned and couldn’t be with God. God is holy and in our sin we are not. There had to be a way to get back together.

There was where Jesus came in. He made us perfect by his sacrifice so that we could talk to God again.

But people confuse how the talking should be. Do we just stand around and do whatever we want? Or do we have certain things that we have to do, certain sacrifices and rituals?

Those who believe in the rituals and sacrifices will do anything to give them. Those rituals and sacrifices become the most important thing in the world. If they are not done, in their minds at least, God will be angry.

Jesus said – and this was his message his whole life – that God was more interested in what was inside of you than what was outside of you. He cares more for what is in your heart than what is outside. In other words, the sacrifices mean nothing if your heart is not in it.

It would be like giving a present to someone for their birthday still in the sack with the tag attached. That shows them that you had to buy a present so here it is and shut up now about it.

When we offer sacrifices – singing, giving, doing good things – and we do it simply because we have to and God might be mad otherwise (we would really rather do something else), the sacrifice is useless. Just because you do something doesn’t mean anything. It has to be from the heart or it is nothing.

That also means that sometimes you make mistakes by doing things wrong. If you belong to Jesus, he will forgive you as long as you are trying.

And God wants us to use that same attitude to others. They mess up when they are doing things to us. But God wants us to forgive them like he forgives us.

He wants the mercy because that is how he is made. The stuff without the heart behind it is as worthless to him as it would be to us.

God loves you and wants you to love others, hard as it may be. That is the real sacrifice.

Visiting the Cooper County jail

Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world. For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home. I was naked, and you gave me clothing. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me.’ “Then these righteous ones will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry and feed you? Or thirsty and give you something to drink? Or a stranger and show you hospitality? Or naked and give you clothing? When did we ever see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ “And the King will say, ‘I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters,  you were doing it to me!’ (Matthew 25:34-40)

I am the Cooper County jail chaplain and visit the jail one night a week. I have even found that I am the only one out of the entire world (excluding guards) that they ever see one on one. everybody else they visit with through  glass on a phone. Me they can touch and shake hands with and talk to one on one. I listen to them and respond with comments and sympathy. I am a friendly face.

I really do not like jail work that much, but it is needed. Even though I have never been in trouble with the law, it always seems to fall to me. Someone has to be there to tell them that God loves them, that there is a way out of this misery beyond just a dismissal of charges. And I try to be that avenue to the grace of God.

When I go in, I try to tell them and show them that I care about them. one way is going to trial when they have their cases heard. They see me and know that I am there and the next time I see them, they will comment on it.

Today was court. I sat through several hours and only saw one guy. But several things came to me as I looked at the proceedings and the people that were there.

First was the amount of misery present. The cases are tawdry and it is a parade of foolish people. Drunk drivers, drug abusers and seller, bad checks, domestic assault, assault and battery – the list goes on. And none of the people on trial look like they are proud to be there.

Which comes to the second thing: the way people are dressed. The lawyers and the judge and personnel are all dressed in coats and ties. The accused are wearing all manner of foolish looking clothing. Women who are extremely overweight wear tight clothing, making them look elephantine  the guys wear torn clothing, t shirts with foolish messages, other stuff. Even though they are going before someone that will have to be swayed by their actions, they still will not dress in a way that is appropriate. It is kind of pathetic.

I recognize that the world in general is bent that way now – no rules as to dress – but still. They look awful and do not seem to care.

Third is the boredom of the judge and the lawyers. They have case after case of exactly the same thing with many of the same people day after day. In the TV show, Night Court, they covered this over with humor and making fun of stuff. But the boredom is real and it has to affect these people. They cannot see and participate in this misery day after day, year after year and just accept a paycheck. It has to impact them.

Another observation is the number of interracial couples. There seem to be a disproportionate amount there in court in trouble with the law. I do not see many interracial couples that are doing well. I am not against interracial marriages, but it seems that it tends to involved people who are lower on the economic scale.

Fifth is the size of the lawyers. Most of them are fat. I am not sure why, but it surprises me to see that many fat lawyers.

Last is the joy that those I am there for express when they see me sitting in the audience looking at them. They know there is someone who cares enough to put themselves out for them. there is no one else (or so they begin to think) that cares a fig for them and they are all alone. My presence, at least I am hoping, changes that.

I know in the long run it will not do much. I am not a fool. But it is something I can do. And when I do, I follow my Lord in his mandate.

daily java

Daily Java:

This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one. (Genesis 2:24)

Our first apartment was a small one. It was in Germany in 1971 when I was in the army and it was really little. As I recall, it was big enough for a table and chairs with a small kitchen in a cupboard and a chest in the main room and a bed with a chifferobe in the bedroom. There was also a bathroom, which we were fortunate to have. Many had to go down the hall to one.

The bed was longer than American beds and really too narrow for my comfort. I was 6’3” tall and 190 pounds but I was a little too big for our bed. The pink and orange checked sheets we had brought were both too short and too wide for our bed. But it had one redeeming feature. It was ours.

The apartment was no more than 10 or 12 by 20 in all but it was ours. We were newlyweds and it really didn’t matter how small it was. It only had three windows, one in each of the rooms (bathroom included) and they had shutters that came down and locked out the light completely.

The main room had a tiny kitchen in a cupboard. It was a little sink with two hot plates and some shelves above. Below was a dorm sized refrigerator. We went down the street and bought our groceries every day like the Germans did. We laid meat against the freezer so it would last longer. We also discovered that if we took the dividers out of the one ice tray that fit in the tiny freezer we had more ice for our iced tea, something that Germans didn’t drink.

We were broke almost the entire time we were in Germany. We had enough to buy gasoline to drive our Volkswagen places and to buy minimal groceries, but we had no extra money.

But it didn’t bother us. We were, after all, newlyweds and were happy just being together. We walked and explored and drove around a lot. Even though German gas was expensive (over $1.00 a gallon at a time when it was less than 25 cents a gallon back in America), we got a gas ration from the army and it was enough to do what we wanted.

We drove to castles and to other cities during times when I was off from work and we had a great time. We visited museums and sat in restaurants in palace courtyards and had Coca-Cola with lemon like cultured Europeans. I learned rudimentary German and could make myself understood and we dressed German so that we wouldn’t stand out in crowds like American GI’s often did.

I bought German shoes so I didn’t have to wear GI brogans like other GI’s. I cut my hair at German barbers and Ella let hers grow. We fit in. She was beautiful and I loved her. We had a great time together.

This time together did several things. For one, it set us as a couple without the interference of parents. When you take your new bride 5500 miles from home where a phone call is over $40, it makes a difference. We learned to like each other as well as love each other. We were our friends. We also had friends in the Church of Christ there in Germany and that also made a difference. But in general, we were our friends. We were alone in a foreign country and we liked it.

We set ourselves as a couple and it has remained in our lives ever since. We are our family. As the kids have gotten older and left, we have gone back to being a couple, our own friends. We love each other and are bound in a way that a lot of couples are not. She is my home, no matter where we go. She feels the same way.

I love her and have loved her since we moved into that apartment in Germany on the third floor of that doctor’s house. We paid $100 a month and it was worth every penny. Even on the month when someone came in and stole what little money we had and we had to count pennies and eat cheese sandwiches for a month, it was still worth it. We had a furnished apartment with a $4 transistor radio for our entertainment, and it was great. I loved her then and I love her still.

I can imagine no life without her and still remember her in that tiny apartment in Germany. She knew no German and waited each day for me to come home to her, hanging out the window like all the other hausfraus. She was so beautiful and so lovely.

I will love her forever.

daily java

Daily Java:

Get the truth and never sell it; also get wisdom, discipline, and good judgment. (Proverbs 23:23)

Some things are so important that we will do anything to get them. We will work a long time and very hard to get a new car or a house or some fancy clothes. We will go far out of our way to gain knowledge or expertise. We will humiliate ourselves to gain the attention of a young woman or an acting scout.

There are things that are so important to us  that are not that important in the long run. The car, the house, the clothing, even the knowledge and expertise will be useless soon. What doesn’t wear out is rendered obsolete. We go to school to be informed about something that is soon replaced by something else we know nothing of. We buy things that are basically disposable.

But, there are things that are more important to us that are important in the long run, that will last and will gain us something great, things that are invaluable and beyond value.

The writer of the Proverbs said to get truth and never sell it. Gain truth, gain that which is always important and always valuable and never let it go. Truth is always the most valuable commodity. And no matter what else happens in life, truth is always there, always unchanging. Values may change, fashions sure enough, even knowledge and expertise. But truth is always constant.

And with that truth, that knowledge of what is real and unchanging, there are corollaries that come with it. The more you look at that truth, the more you meditate on it, dwell on it, move it around in your mind and make it part of you, the more you are able to gain the wisdom to use it.

Raw truth is good and necessary, but wisdom is the ability to use that truth. Discipline is the ability to keep on using it even when everybody around you tries their best to tell you that it is not real or relevant, and good judgement is how you show it to others.

Truth is not a bludgeon with which to beat people over the head with. It is a way through which we live our lives, a way that we know what is real. Good judgment is how we use it, how we deliver it, how we tell others about it.

Truth is never relative. But the way we present it is. And that way is with wisdom and discipline and good judgment.

But above all, without that truth, there is no wisdom, there is no discipline, there is no good judgment. All there is is relativism, change for no good reason, fear and distrust.

daily java

Daily Java:

Now go and write down these words. (Isaiah 30:8)

I have been writing these articles for about three years now, both for this bulletin and for my blog online. I also usually put this article into the blog. I know that the blog readers, both of them, are dying to read it and it also saves me from having to write another article.

Here lately, I have also been putting some articles on Facebook on my page, so when it comes down to it, many of my bulletin articles do triple duty. More bang for the buck.

This article makes 1300 posts in my blog. That means that I have put 1300 articles online. The total wordage (is that a word?) as of the last blog post comes to 597,737 words.

In the past three or so years I have written almost 600,000 words. At about 500 words per bulletin article and an average of 500 to 900 words per article in general, that comes to a lot of writing. That is six books.

Someone asked me why I felt compelled to write so much and I had no answer. I have always written, both for newspapers and magazines, multitudes of bulletin articles in my nearly forty years of ministry, other stuff. In high school, the one thing I always got good grades on was music and English. I could always sing and I could always write.

My voice has decayed a considerable amount now, but I still can write. And the advent of the blog made it easier to write and saves the writing for others to read. In case you don’t know, blog is a word that is short for web log, or online journal. It was shortened from web log to just blog. People have blogs for everything from fish to nuts, religion to pornography, travel to collections of thimbles.

Every blog post I have made has begun with a scripture. That limits my audience but I don’t care. I have always found one that fits even if I have to take it a little out of context, like I did today. The rest of Isaiah 3:8-9 reads:

Write them in a book. They will stand until the end of time as a witness that these people are stubborn rebels who refuse to pay attention to the Lord’s instructions.

I don’t think most of you are stubborn rebels so that didn’t really fit. But one verse which does is Ecclesiastes 12:12:

Be careful, for writing books is endless, and much study wears you out. 

I have written at all conceivable hours from just getting up to late at night, 3:00 in the morning, when ill or angry, during fasts, just a whole bunch of stuff.

And I have always appreciated your comments about the bulletin article and am grateful you read it. It gives my offering of verbiage meaning when you know someone reads it and likes it.

This makes 1300 posts and 500 words right now. (God bless you – this is eleven more, but I don’t care.)

the Highway of Holiness

Isaiah 35

Even the wilderness and desert will be glad in those days.
    The wasteland will rejoice and blossom with spring crocuses.
Yes, there will be an abundance of flowers
    and singing and joy!
The deserts will become as green as the mountains of Lebanon,
    as lovely as Mount Carmel or the plain of Sharon.
There the Lord will display his glory,
    the splendor of our God.
With this news, strengthen those who have tired hands,
    and encourage those who have weak knees.
Say to those with fearful hearts,
    “Be strong, and do not fear,
for your God is coming to destroy your enemies.
    He is coming to save you.”

And when he comes, he will open the eyes of the blind
    and unplug the ears of the deaf.
The lame will leap like a deer,
    and those who cannot speak will sing for joy!
Springs will gush forth in the wilderness,
    and streams will water the wasteland.
The parched ground will become a pool,
    and springs of water will satisfy the thirsty land.
Marsh grass and reeds and rushes will flourish
    where desert jackals once lived.

And a great road will go through that once deserted land.
    It will be named the Highway of Holiness.
Evil-minded people will never travel on it.
    It will be only for those who walk in God’s ways;
    fools will never walk there.
Lions will not lurk along its course,
    nor any other ferocious beasts.
There will be no other dangers.
    Only the redeemed will walk on it.
Those who have been ransomed by the Lord will return.
    They will enter Jerusalem singing,
    crowned with everlasting joy.
Sorrow and mourning will disappear,
    and they will be filled with joy and gladness.

dialy java

Daily Java:

Hot-tempered people must pay the penalty. If you rescue them once, you will have to do it again. ( Proverbs 19:19)

Do it again. If I could do it again, what would I do differently?

First of all I would probably not become a preacher. It has brought me nothing but problems. I have given my life to the Lord and he has thrown it back into my teeth.

Second, if I were the kind of fool that would become a preacher (2 Corinthians 11:23), I would go to school and get all of my schooling in advance, rather than as I went along.

Third, I would save more. I really thought that the Lord would take care of me like he said when I got older. But he hasn’t and we are just about destitute. It would be nice to have some money at the end of my life so that we didn’t have to live in government housing. Some dignity would be nice.

Fourth, I would not make the mistakes I made in thinking that the Lord needed me in certain places. I would be a lot more judicious in where I went to pastor and wouldn’t think that the Lord needed me there when he obviously didn’t.

There are a lot of things I would do differently. But there are things I would do the same. I would try my best to convince Ella to be my wife. It would be hard because I would not be the little Church of Christ guy she married. That would be hard on her.

I would also make far more use of my music instead of being in some stupid church that didn’t believe that instrumental music was according to God’s plan, that only sinners used instrumental music. That was foolish for me, and I would not do it again.

On the other hand, if I had to be in the Church of Christ, as I probably would, since my parents were that, I would do what I could and leave when I could leave.

I don’t know that the scripture above really works, but I used it anyway.

I do know that my life in the Lord has somewhat been wasted and now that I am old, I am almost destitute. The Lord has hung me out to dry.

Yet I continue. Why? I am not sure. I teach class, am involved in the worship services, write for the church, do hospitality ministry, am totally involved in this little local church. Yet God has not rewarded me or shown me any of the blessings he promised. We live on less than $1000 a month combined retirement and disability. I really am kind of pathetic as one person said.

On the other hand, who else will I serve? Where else will I go. It is he who has the words of eternal life. So I am stuck, kind of like the apostles in John 6.

daily java

Daily Java:

When the Temple guards returned without having arrested Jesus, the leading priests and Pharisees demanded, “Why didn’t you bring him in?” “We have never heard anyone speak like this!” the guards responded. “Have you been led astray, too?” the Pharisees mocked. “Is there a single one of us rulers or Pharisees who believes in him? This foolish crowd follows him, but they are ignorant of the law. God’s curse is on them!” (John 7:46-49)

The Pharisees were the big-time religious leaders of Jesus’ day. They had degrees from important seminaries and thought they knew everything. They figured that since they were so smart, they had the right to tell everybody else how they were supposed to live and that those they told just needed to shut up and listen.

They thought that since they fasted, they knew the Scriptures, they had the degrees, they had the position of teacher – all that – they also had the authority to decide for everybody what was right and what was wrong. When people disagreed with them, which they really didn’t do much out of fear, they were usually pretty sarcastic with them, trying to convict them by their own words.

What they hated about Jesus (one of the things, anyway) was that he didn’t care what they said or what they thought. He never asked their opinion on anything, nor did he seem to care about their feelings.

If he had gone to them in the beginning, discussed what he was going to say, got their opinion, they probably would have liked him a lot and maybe even supported him. But instead, he just came in, with no real education, no real experience, just a nobody carpenter from nowhere and started teaching. He had no permission, no “authority” given him by the leaders, and he didn’t care what they thought or wanted.

When the devil was tempting Jesus in Matthew 4, one of the temptations was that if Jesus were to just kneel down – one little kneel – in front of the devil, the devil would leave him alone the rest of his life. With the devil’s permission, he would preach, people would believe him, things would go great, with no problems.

Of course, if Jesus had done that, he and the devil would know it, even if no one else ever did. And his ministry would be worthless. The same with the Pharisees. If Jesus had gone to them and gotten their permission, they would know he was under their thumb.

We do not need permission from anyone to tell people about Jesus and his grace. In fact, it doesn’t matter what people think about our message. If it is from God, it is fine. If it isn’t, all the certificates and diplomas, permission slips and memberships in official organizations will not matter. We will not be from God anyway.

People will try to stop us, but they will never stop the gospel. They couldn’t then and they will not now.

ask me anything

Ask me any question you want. I will give you an answer to the best of my ability.

daily java

Daily Java:

Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age. (Mathew 28:18-20).
It’s true that some are preaching out of jealousy and rivalry. But others preach about Christ with pure motives. They preach because they love me, for they know I have been appointed to defend the Good News. (Philippians 1:15-16)

Someone was talking the other day about the atrocities the early missionaries were supposed to have inflicted on the American Indians, making them into slaves and abusing them.

While there may have been isolated cases of this, I do not believe the major part was like that. I think that the reality was much different than what the historians would have us believe. There are several reasons for this.

First is the fact that, as a Christian, I have know personally many missionaries. I have not known one who was mean natured and would do something like this. There is a certain heart, a certain love that makes someone give up his or her life with family to become a missionary. When you become a missionary, you have to give up so much, especially if you are a missionary to primitive cultures like the early missionaries to the Indians were. That can only be done out of love, because desire to control people can only be maintained so long. And people will not be willingly dominated like that for only so long before they rebel.

Second is that historians are writing histories from their own perspectives and their own biases. Many historians, especially modern ones, are haters of our culture and are trying to figure out how to make us the bad guy. Read many history books today and all of our wars become imperialist aggressions, all of our foreign aid become blood money, all of our reaching out becomes guilt motivated of our “past sins.”

Look at what President Obama did when he came in office. The first thing he did was to go throughout the world and apologize for America. That same idea is common in most histories. And it is also portrayed in movies. Dances with Wolves (a good movie in many ways) and Avatar (not as good) are two recent movies that portrayed the Indian as wonderful, kind, decent human beings who were being oppressed by American soldiers, all of which were either stupid, brutish or greedy. Having been a soldier trying my best to be a good one, I resent the portrayal and consider it false.

The third is that it doesn’t take too much inspection of the Indian culture to see that these were people who were filthy, cruel and whose honor consisted of how many horses they could steal or how well they could endure torture. They had almost no sense of modesty or morality.

One could say, “Well, they just didn’t have what you consider modesty and morality.” And that is true. But what I consider modesty and morality is what I get from the Bible, so I will admit that I am somewhat biased.

It is also curious that this emphasis on the “bad American” has not come up until lately in our history. Much of it stems from the oikaphobia (hatred of oneself or people like you) that is so prevalent in the American liberal philosophy. Having heard so many talk about how good it would be if we had lost the Gulf War that we engaged in in the early 2000’s, it became apparent that many in this country do not like this country and wish it to fail. And one way they can do that is to rewrite the history books and make movies about how bad our soldiers and our missionaries are.

Yes there are times when our soldiers have not been their best. But those were the exception, not the rule. And to make one’s portrayal of soldiers based on the exception is wrong. That would be the same as saying all liberals are dirty, freeloading hippies because that was a picture given back in the 1960’s.

Missionaries had to have a certain heart, one of service, sacrifice and love, to do what they did in the first place. And those who write the histories do not like Christianity in the first place. But we have the mandate, whether others like it or not, of bringing the gospel to others. We do not do anyone a disservice by telling them about Jesus and his grace. If we do, the Bible is false and Christianity is worthless.

I suppose that is the main sticking point. These people do not want the gospel brought so they will do anything they can to impugn those who bring it. To them, it is as 2 Corinthians 2:16 says: 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. And who is adequate for such a task as this?

And we do the Lord and the memory of that huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith (Hebrews 12:1) a great disservice when we buy into this inaccurate portrayal of missionaries.

daily java

Daily Java:

The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure. (1 Corinthians 10:13)

Things do not always happen for a reason. Something happened and someone says, Well, it all happens for a reason. Sounds good, except that it is not true.

The engine on my van goes out. Why? It is because it is old, not to test me in the grace of God. Somebody dies and we tell the kids, God wanted him. Except that it is not true. We die because of sin. Someone who is a godly person gets a severe illness that is long and protracted and painful. A baby is born with a birth defect that will affect him and his parents the rest of their lives. You lose a fifty dollar bill.

Don’t blame God. If you blame anybody, you blame satan. You blame the devil. He is the one who brings sadness, not God.

James 1:17 says: Whatever is good and perfect comes down to us from God our Father. Death, illness, pain – none of these are good and perfect and cannot come from God.

So what is it when these things happen? Do we realize we are adrift in the sea of life, cast about, and will die any moment. No, not necessarily.  God is there with us if we are there with him, even though bad things are happening.

And even though those bad things are not necessarily for a good reason, at the same time, we can use them to make something good. The old lemonade from lemons thing. Romans 8:28 says that we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.

In other words, bad things happen, but God can use them to make good things happen.

There are always three ways you can approach a problem. One is that you can curse the problem, be angry, stomp around, kick the cat. Another is that you can ignore it and pretend it didn’t happen, in which case you are going to look rather foolish. The third is that you can allow God to work through your life and use that problem for something good.

When we were first married, we met a couple who had a daughter who was a Down’s Syndrome
 child. The father was talking about it to me one day and told me that before she was born, he was very impatient and somewhat intolerant of other people’s difficulties. Since they had raised her for several years, he had learned patience and compassion.

Did God send her to them? No, because bad things do not come from God. But could God use it to make that couple stronger? Yes. And he did.

Somebody up there doesn’t love me, why did God send this problem, I guess it was just his time to die – all these are messages of the devil, not the Father. So let God use what happens to you but don’t blame him.

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Daily Java:

Commit yourself to instruction; listen carefully to words of knowledge. (Proverbs 23:12)

I was listening to someone talk about the Bible the other day and they didn’t know what they were talking about. The worst part of it was that with a little study, they would have.

I guess that was the worst part. Maybe the worst part was that they were willing to go out in public and say things that were not true and didn’t know the difference.

A man I worked with thirty years ago had this problem. He would hear something and it sounded relatively logical to him so he would use it in his sermons. The problem was that it was blatantly wrong.

For instance, he said that the word Gentile means literally dog. It doesn’t take more than thirty seconds to read in a book that Gentile means nation and it is the word we get our word ethnic from. He was wrong and if you knew anything you knew he was. So he looked foolish.

The writer of Proverbs says to commit yourself to instruction. In other words, be a learning person. Keep on learning, keep on studying, keep on being fresh. Don’t say foolish things under the guise of scholarship. If you are going to pretend to knowledge, then be knowledgeable.

Listen to people. You can learn from anyone no matter how old you are. The real student does this. He always questions, always checks. He will ask anyone no matter who they are or their age if he doesn’t know what they are talking about. He has a thirst for knowledge.

To this kind of person, knowledge is not something they accumulated back in school and now just automatically have. It is something that is life-long, continual. And it is something that is a joy, to learn new things.

Do it. Make yourself a learning person and listen.

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Daily Java:
My close friends detest me. Those I loved have turned against me. (Job 19:19)
It was 1997, a rough year for me. of course, it seems several of them have been rough. But I suppose this was more strange than rough, an odd year.

I had gone through a thirty day fast in the month of April toward National Day of Prayer on May 1. Then I had been normal (or as normal as you can be after coming off a thirty day fast). Then my gall bladder blew up. I had surgery and it went badly. I don’t know if the gall bladder attack was worse than they thought or if the doctor was a butcher. Probably a combination of both.

The doctor gave me a laproscopy and I wasn’t a candidate for it and it hurt me badly. It took almost a month before I was back to normal.

Between the fast and the recovery from the gall bladder attack and surgery, I lost 80 pounds. I was smaller than I have been in decades.

We were friends with some people who lived outside of town in a commune. They and the circle of people around them were some of our closest friends. This circle included an old cop and his wife and a musician for the Catholic Church and a minister for the Disciples of Christ, along with some other ministers and such. We got together with all or some of them a lot.

We met a lot for prayer during this time and talked about a lot of things. I shared words of the Lord with them and they with me. We were friends.

We had a church plant in a storefront in Odessa, MO, that also had a coffeehouse on Saturday nights. A lot of these people were coffeehouse friends and we even had the Coffeehouse Band for a while. It was great fun.

Then it turned.

I introduced many of my coffeehouse friends to the commune friends and they began to get together. For some reason this caused the coffeehouse friends to drift away from us.

One day I was at the commune’s restaurant. This was quite a large undertaking as they viewed much of their ministry with feeding people. We had the commune pastor’s father with us along with a missionary from Africa. The father and I had talked and seemed to get along well.

The pastor’s father was talking about ministry and suddenly he told me that everybody in town was laughing at me, and that my ministry was worthless. I sat stunned by this sudden and unexpected turn. Then the missionary began to address me about something, I forget exactly what, but it went along the same line. I stood there listening and realized that I had to leave. I took my jacket and started to leave. It surprised everyone that I was leaving and the missionary said, “Wait.” I said no, that I had to go and I left.

I was stunned by this turn by my friends. The commune was used to this. Somebody would do something they didn’t like or thought was wrong and they would castigate them publicly and they would take it, it was part of their community. But why me?

Over the next week, several of my friends came to me in tears over this, wondering themselves both why it had happened and why they allowed it to happen.

But over the course of several weeks they had moved away from me into the circle of this commune and it hurt. It was almost as if this commune had told them that they could their friend or mine and they decided to go with them. I never knew and I never found out.

But these former friends were in tears over their own participation. But it seemed too late.

We went from a circle of friends to virtually no friends in a month. And I never figured out why.

It has been 15 years and tonight I remembered it like it was yesterday. The betrayal and public humiliation was too much to bear and it still hurts.

It was not long before I found out that another friend had been lying to me and the church died.

Fifteen years ago. Tonight it seemed like last month.

What is the Bible?

In class tonight, the questions was asked: How would you describe the Bible to someone who had never heard of it before? What would you say?

I wrote (and this was on the spur of the moment):
"The Creator of the Universe wants you to know who he is. He sent his mind, his Spirit into the minds of several men to write so that you could know him, know how he feels, what he thinks, and so that you will recognize him when he calls. The Bible is his Manufacturer's Operational Manual."

What do you think?

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Daily Java: 

But Jesus replied, “Stop complaining about what I said. (John 6:43)

Everybody wants Jesus to be like they want  him to be. When he is shown to be different, a lot of times they get mad. They want him to be a vegetarian or drive an electric car, or agree with them on their politics, to like the candidates they like, to be like them.

One reason is that the real Jesus makes them nervous. The real Jesus wanted them to change from what they are to what they should be. He wanted them to quit acting stupid and start being godly.

Jesus didn’t care a fig about politics. In Matthew 22, some people come up and ask him what about paying taxes. Israel was an occupied country with an army nobody like telling them what to do and taking all their money.

When they asked him, he asked them to show him a coin. They did.  

His reply: he asked, “Whose picture and title are stamped on it?” “Caesar’s,” they replied. “Well, then,” he said, “give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and give to God  that belongs to God.” His reply amazed them, and they went away.

He gave them an answer that they did not expect and that surprised them. They were ready for a debate and to argue with him. They were also sure that he would give them ammunition to try him for sedition and heresy so they could get rid of him.

But instead, Jesus said that he didn’t care. God and Caesar (or the government) were different and didn’t need to necessarily mixed.

That is not to say we don’t vote or make our voices heard about morality and other issues, but it is to say that Jesus didn’t care about politics. He was busy with more important things: mainly the Kingdom of God.

But it did say that Jesus had his own agenda. He had his own plans and he didn’t really care what yours were. That doesn’t mean that he didn’t care about you, but it did mean that he was busy doing what God wanted him to do and had no time for other things.

It also meant that he said what he needed to say even when people got mad at him and tried to get him to change his mind.

He also didn’t mind saying things that sent people away. He didn’t want a bunch of people that hung around because they thought he was a great guy who did good things for them. He wanted people who cared about what God wanted.

When he told them to eat and drink him, he was just telling them that they had to make him part of them like food is part of a person. He was not part-time in their lives. But the way he said it was also to show them that it was God in charge, not them. What they wanted may have been important to them, but not to God.

And what we need to do is quit complaining about what he has to say and quit trying to mash him into our image. We are his followers, he is not ours.

A long way down

I remember the days of old. I ponder all your great works and think about what you have done. (Psalm 143:5)
Remember your leaders who taught you the word of God. Think of all the good that has come from their lives, and follow the example of their faith. (Hebrews 13:7)

Since I left the Church of Christ, my life seems to have stopped. There was a time when I pastored large churches. I was somebody. Now, in the past few years, I have not. And I am not somebody, just a failed unemployed, destitute ex-preacher.

And I am beginning to wonder if I did what God wanted me to do.

It seemed like the right thing to do, to leave the Church of Christ. I no longer believed their core doctrines: baptismal regeneration, mandatory weekly communion and of course, the ultimate one, acappella music as the sole method of praise.

I also believed in my role as a pastor being stronger than it was allowed to be. In the Church of Christ, I was a hired hand at the beck and call of the elders, who were the real “leaders of the church.” I was staff.

But I begin to wonder how much of that was pride and how much was real conviction. Since I have come into those denominations that view their pastors as called of God and, at least on paper, lift them up, I have been at the beck and call of boards and councils to the point that I could not do what I needed to do.

So what was the difference?

I have even began to revisit some of my changes. I think I am no longer pre-millennial in my eschatology. I think I have come back to my original thought on the whole end-times thing and become, once again, Inaugurated Millennialist. I even wonder if I ever was a pre-mil or just went along with it to be with friends.

I also am moving to a different view of the Holy Spirit indwelling than I have held for the past few years. While I still believe in the baptism, I no longer believe that it has to have tongues. I think that tongues is one of the most overrated and underused and misused things in the church.

Most Pentecostal churches preach tongues as their doctrine, many times leaving Jesus and all of the other stuff behind.

Tongues to these people (pre-millennialism , too) have become what is preached. The grace of God and a life lived worthy of him are sidelined so that people can be taught to speak in tongues and be afraid that the world will end soon.

My teachers taught me differently, but I have noticed that, in many things, my teachers were wrong. They were certainly wrong on the role of grace in our lives. They were also wrong on the role of works. They overemphasized the wrong things and almost refused to consider the right ones. They de-emphasized the Spirit in our lives and overemphasized the Bible.

On the other hand, those in my home denomination had strength of commitment. Nothing could keep them from church. Nothing could keep them from singing. Nothing could keep them from giving. They loved to be together and do things together.

I suppose they could be excused a few problems in that they lived their Christianity. Too many of those I associate with now do not. They holler a good holiness, but do not practice what they preach.

So what do I do? I don’t know.

I cannot see myself going back into the Church of Christ again. I have visited there lately and would not be able to.

But on the other hand, I am sick of Pentecostals and their phoniness. The church I attend is a good one, but it is hard to get anybody to do anything.

A weird place to be in your life when you are  62. I ought to be at a place where I can look back over my life with a sense of fulfillment and satisfaction.

Instead I see a pattern of failure and loss. I used to be something. Now I am not.

daily java

Daily Java:
Someone wrote me the other day and asked me a question.

John you always see both sides...tell me what you see in this post.
I have heard so many pastors criticize the modern Christian family's desire to attend churches that have all the 'trimmings'... but I tend to look at it like this, not very many Americans if given the choice, would live without air conditioning in the summer, or hand pull their water from a well four times a day, take the public bus system, sleep on a straw mat on the floor, send their kids to work instead of school, do their laundry in the river or buy the leftovers at the meat market for the weekly meal. We live in a land where luxury has become a thing taken for granted, why do we expect any different from the Sunday morning worshipper? Besides, given the choice, who wouldn't want a coffee bar at church... or more songs than sermons!? Is the modern American Christian out of touch with reality? Chances are, if you own more than one car in your household, you are. But what's the answer for the struggling, small church? Complain about the empty seats, or fill them? What's the choice? Offer Sunday morning childcare and fill a seat, or don't and leave it empty? Hard choices in modern American Christianity. The scriptures say, faith comes by hearing, that is, hearing the Good News of Christ (Rom. 10:17). If the sales rep at AT&T has to do anything possible to get a potential customer in the door, unfortunately, in this commercialized society the modern pastor has to do the same. And comparing your American worshipper to the Chinese worshipper, just doesn't work. Guilt lasts only as long as it takes us to walk out the door and get into our new SUV and go home to our 2000 sq. ft. house and switch on our 72" TV. The only thing that can change the heart, is God. Concentrate on Him, and the Good News He has delivered.

My answer:
The apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 1 that he wasn’t going to do anything but preach Christ and him crucified. Yet Jesus, when he preached, fed people, performed miracles and everything else to get their attention before he told them anything about God. Or at least while he was telling them.

People’s expectations are different today than before and there is nothing we can do about that. Whether we like it or not, daycare and coffee bars are becoming a norm rather than an extra. I attend a fairly conservative church, yet we have coffee and junk to eat before church (Breakfast for a Buck he calls it) and a fairly contemporary service, along with child-care. In my church I had some of the same things. Good music in a church is not an extra anymore, it is a given, as is multi-media.

Whether it is good or not is beside the point. It is true. Like my wife, it is where we are. How does a small church tap into this? I do not know and spent the past several years before finally kind of giving up trying to figure it out. Maybe going back to the simple church model would be the thing and training people from the bottom up.  I don’t know. But I do know that laboring along year after year with none of these resources is hard and is self-defeating. Or at least feels that way. Like trying to push start a dump truck by yourself.

Both sides have a point. To the one it is trying to buy Christians with gimmicks. To the other it is coming into an old fashioned church and worshipping with the Amish (at least to their way of thinking). I have been to both and I have pastored both. The more contemporary are more fun, but you have to keep ahead of the curve all the time or people get dissatisfied. The other makes for a bunch of defeated Christians laboring years in a small church.

All this to say I do not know. It is a sad question and one we ought not to even be having to ask ourselves. I do believe though that pursuing some of these things that you can without compromising your integrity is part of living in this culture – narcissistic and self-indulged as it is. You are preaching the truth to this generation, even if they are spoiled.

Whatever we think about it, it is the way it is done today. And we have to acknowledge that.

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Daily Java:

Listen! The Lord’s arm is not too weak to save you,
    nor is his ear too deaf to hear you call.
It’s your sins that have cut you off from God.
    Because of your sins, he has turned away
    and will not listen anymore. (Isaiah 59:1-2)

Calvin Coolidge was known for his economy of words. He didn’t say much. When he went to church one Sunday, someone asked him what the preacher spoke about. He replied “Sin.” When they asked him what he said, President Coolidge said, “He was agin’ it.”

God is against sin, no matter the form or the reason behind it. And because we are sinful people, he has to be against us. He doesn’t want to be, but he has to be. Sin is directly contrary to his nature, that nature of holiness.

That is why Jesus came, to take away our sin by his sacrifice and to bring us back into the presence of God as we were before the fall in the Garden of Eden. Jesus takes away sin. When we are in Jesus, we are free from sin.

That doesn’t mean that we can do what we want, but it does mean that when we mess up, and we will, God looks at us through the prism of his Son, Jesus, and sees us as sinless.

Our response is to remain as good as we can be. To be, as Jesus said, perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect. (Matthew 5:48). We know that we cannot be sinless, but we try to be. We do it because we love him.

The world has been taken over by sin. You see it everywhere in everything. Music is full of it, movies are chock full of it, our children reflect it in their language and the way they talk to each other, it is apparent in our music and even in our business dealings with each other. Sin has weighed us down and there is nothing we can do about it except to accept Jesus and his grace.

And above all, we have to recognize that sin for what it is. The apostle John said in 1 John 3:4-5: Everyone who sins is breaking God’s law, for all sin is contrary to the law of God. And you know that Jesus came to take away our sins, and there is no sin in him.

Sin is real and it tears up your life and your heart. Sex outside of marriage, drunkenness, greed, embezzlement, lying – all are tearing your life up. The only thing that can put your life and your heart back together is Jesus. He came to take that sin away.

The world sits in sin and wallows in sin because it will not recognize that power of Jesus. But God is able to take it away when you accept him into your heart, when you allow him in.

Everybody sins (Romans 3:23), even really good Christians that come to church each week (1 John 1:8). The only ones who are without sin are those who have given their hearts to Jesus and trust him.

God is agin’ sin but he is not agin’ you. He loves you and never intended you to be in sin in the first place. His arm will pull you back in, his grace will remove that sin, his love will accept you.

Let him do it.

daily java

Daily Java:

I long for the years gone by when God took care of me,
when he lit up the way before me and I walked safely through the darkness.
When I was in my prime, God’s friendship was felt in my home.
The Almighty was still with me, and my children were around me.
(Job 29:2-5)

And now my life seeps away. Depression haunts my days.
At night my bones are filled with pain, which gnaws at me relentlessly.
With a strong hand, God grabs my shirt. He grips me by the collar of my coat.
He has thrown me into the mud. I’m nothing more than dust and ashes.
(Job 29:26-29)

The past couple of days have been rough ones for me. every once in a while, my mind goes into a guilt and a blaming spiral that, when once began, cannot stop. I begin to revisit failures and shortcomings. I come back to places in which I hurt someone or in which I, or we, have been hurt.

A lot of times these days come in the first day of a fast. It is as if my mind is trying desperately to derail the fast, to ruin the good that comes from it. It usually goes away. But yesterday it came full force and I am not fasting. I don’t know why.

But it hurts, nonetheless.

When I look back over my life like that, it seems worthless. There seems to be little of any good coming out of it. I am a failed preacher living in HUD housing, living off a paltry retirement check. I cannot get a job and we are so poor that I can barely at times breathe.

Oddly enough, though, I am doing a lot of ministry right now. We are what amounts to the entire hospitality ministry of Firm Foundation Church, I am jail minister, teach a Sunday night class, do most if not all of the writing and editing for the church, prayer ministry on Sunday mornings, occasional preaching. I probably do more than any other member other than the pastor.

But of course, I get paid nothing and have in a couple of months, come to the point of being desperate for enough money to have gas to drive to church.

I believe that because of the hospitality ministry, we have plenty of food. the freezer is full of good things. We have trouble with mile and such but we have plenty to eat.

But that is where it stops. Our furniture is all, with the exception of the bookcases and two lamps, castoffs I have gotten hold of. It is not that they are bad or anything, but none of our furniture was new when we got it.

I had to borrow $20 Thursday for a week. We get paid next Wednesday and we will be better then, but it will not be long before we run out again.

It is so tiresome and I don’t know why. I would feel like God has deserted me – and I have given it thought at times – but Ella comments that I am still able to teach people and to write things that come from God’s heart, so I don’t know.

I do ask why he has decided to hang this old preacher out to dry. After forty years of service, why am I so destitute. And I have seen other preachers like this too. I trusted him to take care of me and he hasn’t. I finally took early retirement since I could find no job whatever, so at least I would have a little, but the $336 a month will not go very far.

We have gotten so tired of this and the Lord has not shown us any relief. Instead Ella continues to fall and hurt herself. And life gets harder. And I have maybe 20-25 years of this left.

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Daily Java:

A huge crowd kept following him wherever he went, because they saw his miraculous signs as he healed the sick. (John 6:2)

Nothing makes for a popular guy like having stuff people want. You have enough money and everybody is your friend. If you are known as the guy who buys drinks for everybody whenever you go in the bar, it is not surprising that everybody likes you.

But when they start expecting it is when it gets kind of dangerous. If people begin to depend on you for what they want and you quit giving it to them, chances are they will get mad at you.

People were this same way around Jesus. He healed, he did really interesting things, and to some he was a never-ending source of entertainment.

In John 6, they are sitting around him after he had done a bunch of great things, miraculous signs, just waiting for something else to happen. In fact, they were so sure that he was going to do something good that they didn’t even bother to bring lunch.

Jesus saw that they were this way but he stayed with them anyway. He had come to tell them about the love and grace of God and meant to do so even though he knew they were going to get mad at him sooner or later.

But they were hungry so he fed them, making a lot of food appear from just a little. And the crowd loved him for it. Kind of like going to hear a politician and he gives everybody bar-be-cue. They eat it and think, this is great. All we have to do is follow this guy around and we have free food and free entertainment.

When he gets through, he has twelve baskets left over, just enough for his apostles. He is trying to show them that he can feed everybody and still have enough left over for them for a few days. He is saying that if they will give their lives to him, he will take care of them.

But he left his apostles and went out to pray. The apostles took a boat to the other side of the lake where they were supposed to go and a storm came up. They thought they were going to drown but Jesus came walking up on the water.

He asked them why they were afraid. Hadn't he just made a lot of food and fed 5000 men and their families? They were embarrassed and were scared of him.

Jesus can do great things both for others and in your life. He has promised that he will never leave you and that he loves you.

As long as we give ourselves to Jesus, he will be with us. he never promised a life of comfort or ease. Most of the apostles including himself died violent deaths.

But their lives meant something because they had given them to him. Without him, our lives are meaningless, just lived for nothing.

With him, we have the presence of the God and his Son who conquered the world and lives in our hearts.

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Daily Java:

Give in proportion to what you have. Whatever you give is acceptable if you give it eagerly. And give according to what you have, not what you don’t have. (2 Corinthians 8:11-12)

I was in the jail the other day and a man who was attending a church in Kansas City, Kansas, told me his preacher told him that giving was never acceptable nor real unless you gave money. He didn’t have much money and felt guilty.

The preacher was wrong and foolishly so. The Bible never says that giving is money alone. His preacher had told him (or at least he had that feeling) that to give and tithe were synonymous, that both had to be money to be true giving.

What the Bible does say is that we are to be giving. But the New Testament never tells God’s people to tithe. In fact, the New Testament only talked about tithing in relation to Old Testament people or in telling Jesus’ listeners how hypocritical the religious leaders of the day were. They even tithed the weeds in their garden just in case God wanted that too (Matthew 23:23) but completely forgot the whole point.

There is nothing wrong with tithing. It is a good idea. You should tithe, yes, Jesus said, but do not neglect the more important things (Matthew 23:23). Jesus said that it is a place to start, that we need to be better than those who only tithed because God said to and that we should give even more. He didn’t mean to bust ourselves financially (2 Corinthians 8:12 above), but rather that our whole life should be giving. Giving is not a one time thing but a lifestyle, just like the rest of Christianity.

Now the apostle Paul did give instructions for how to give your money in 1 Corinthians 16:1, but that was only in dealing with filling a need when it arose. The church needs to have the money around to deal with bills and problems and not have to go scrabbling for it every time you need something.

But giving is greater than money. Giving is your life. Giving your life to God; giving your time, your food, your clothing, your effort, your prayer (real prayer, not just the little quickies you write on Facebook), your dedication to his word, your attendance in church, your involvement in that church. Your life, not just your money.

It is easy to throw a little change or a check into the contribution plate. Almost anybody, no matter what economic strata can do that. But it is not easy to put yourself in that same plate. To put your time and your heart there, your energy, your life in addition to your money.

That attitude in life is harder. It requires dedication and time spent in his service. And this is a hard culture to get time from people. People are so busy. But until you can put your life ahead of what you want, your money will not really count. Putting it before school and work, before TV and hobbies is what counts. Your school and your work will do everything they can to pull you away from service and real giving.

But just refuse. Give. And like he said, it will be given to you (Luke 6:38).