daily java

Daily Java:

I will make boys their leaders, and toddlers their rulers.
    People will oppress each other – man against man,
    neighbor against neighbor.
Young people will insult their elders,
    And vulgar people will sneer at the honorable. (Isaiah 3:4-5 NLT)

Israel had come to the place in time that God was through with it. Their society had decayed to the point that even the Lord felt they were beyond redemption.

Children ruled, everybody took advantage of each other, there was no respect for age and fools thought themselves superior to wise people.

Sounds like America.

I read another article on the web yesterday in which a young female movie star was telling her interviewers that the problem with a lot of people was that they were ignorant. If they would just ask her, she could tell them a lot. Her main point? Conservatives are conservative because they just do not look at things right. They have not read the right books.

This girl has very few brains and yet she considers herself to be an expert.

Lawsuits abound, people trying to one up each other. Try to cut into a line of cars and see what happens. Someone will kill him- or herself getting of the checkout line so they can be in front of you. People take offense at the most trivial things and “demand” apologies. Demand is a big word now, as if we had that right. Older people are considered the least valuable members of our country and people, who in any other culture would be sweeping floors, are serving in high office.

What does all that mean? It means we are coming to the place where God is going to get rid of us unless we do something.

There comes a cancer into every country sooner or later. It comes from being settled and confident in its own ability and when that cancer comes, it begins to be eaten from the inside out. What is important becomes secondary, and what is trivial becomes of massive importance.

When we stop being concerned about morals and become overly concerned about ecology, we have lost out way. When we cease being concerned about honor and become concerned about rights, we have lost our way. When we cease to be concerned about truth and become concerned about what we want, we have lost our way.

And when we lose our way, we lose God.

The Lord will not take a thumb in the eye for long. His will shall be done and it will be done when he wants it done.

Israel died as a nation. The nation today posing as Israel is not the same nation that God blessed, no matter what anyone says. It is not a Godly nation, but rather a collection of culturally similar people.

God took that nation out of the world. and he has taken every other one out sooner or later.

He will do the same to America unless we repent and turn.

daily java

Daily Java:

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. (2 Corinthians 10:3-5 NLT)

It is the election season and there is a big fight over trying to elect Christian candidates. The reasoning is that if we can just get the right people in office, we can become a Christian nation again.

And I will vote for the person that I see as the one who is most suited for the job and has the best character.

The problem is: it won’t happen. We cannot elect a Christian nation. Yes, good leaders are important. But unless the nation turns to God, it doesn’t really matter what the leaders do.

There were several times in Israel’s history that they had gotten so corrupt that God was ready to destroy them. Then a good king would come along and he would institute reforms and changes, things would happen, worship would be restored. But when he died, things were right back like they were before he came in. The problem was that the nation of Israel was corrupt, not just the leadership.

Even if the nation were filled with Christian leaders, you cannot legislate morality. What is right has to be done by the heart or it is no good.

That is not to say that we do not need laws to protect things that are holy – laws against abortion, homosexual marriage, etc. Yes, we need laws to protect our basic rights as Christians and to protect our children from things that will destroy them. We need laws to protect the unborn from murder and to keep our nation from becoming a nation of adultery and evil.

But passing a law will not change the heart any more than passing a law saying I cannot pray in public places will make me quit praying.

The electoral process is a good one and I am glad we have it and I use it. But on the other hand, I know Christian candidates with whom I strongly disagree politically. I know they are good people but I do not want their brand of leadership.

And I know people who are not as good a Christians who would be great leaders for our countries, because their values are closer to mine.

The problem is how do we find someone who we agree with and will do a good job. There have been “committed, born-again” Christians who have gone into office who have made a shambles of our country. And there have been people who claimed to be Christians but have been obviously lacking and have done a great job.

The point is, as Christians we work in a different realm, the realm of the spiritual. You remember that the New Testament was written in the days of absolute and corrupt emperors, men who did whatever they wanted and many times murdered thousands of people in the process. Yet Paul said to honor the king and to pray for him (1 Timothy 2:2).

In fact, when Paul wrote about serving and being in subjection to authorities who are “God’s servants” (Romans 13:4), he was talking about Nero, one of the most corrupt and cruel emperors to ever come along. Yet Paul said to be in subjection to him.

I believe that we need a good and strong president and congress. They are necessary to having a good, strong country. Bad leadership can destroy our nation.

But we will never have a Christian nation by electing Christian people. We will only have a Christian nation by becoming Christ-followers and our nation turning to him.

That is done by the power of God and changing of hearts, not elections.

what a way to live

“If you love me, obey my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, who will never leave you. He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth. The world cannot receive him, because it isn’t looking for him and doesn’t recognize him. But you know him, because he lives with you now and later will be in you. (John 14:15-17)

Jesus knew that the new church along with the apostles and disciples would need all the help it could get. And he knew he wasn’t going to be with them physically except for three years.

In fact, the Father knew this long before he sent the Word to be manifest as a person in the first place.

Jesus told them that if they loved him, to do what he said. That, of course and as simple as it seems, was to love each other. That was the commandment Jesus gave, what James called the Royal Law.

If they did, if they allowed themselves to be submerged, baptized as it were, in his love, they would have that Spirit of God, his Holy Breath, to be with them. He would be One who would never leave them.

The world can’t recognize him, of course. They are on the wrong wavelength. That is one reason Hollywood cannot make a good Christian movie. They just do not understand the principle behind Christianity. They think it is a formula.

Jesus says it is not a formula; it is a mindset. It is a presence of the Breath of God within the believer. It is a change of heart, a change of mind, a change of very character.

And it has to be for the believer to know and accept that Spirit.

You know him, Jesus said, because you know me. Just as I am with you now, he will be with you then. If Jesus is living in your heart, if he is your motivating factor and force, you already have the Spirit in you. They go together like hand and glove.

Accept him and his love, and he will accept you with his Spirit. What a way to live!

daily java

Daily Java:

But I want it to be a willing gift, not one given grudgingly. (2 Corinthians 9:5)

It is your birthday and one of your kids slaps a WalMart sack down in front of you with something in it. The item still has all the tags on it and the cash register receipt. He says, Here you old bag. Here’s your stupid present. And walks off.

Now theoretically, you can’t say that he didn’t give you a present. He did. And it may even be a nice something. But I know I wouldn’t like it and probably wouldn’t keep it. It is a gift of necessity.

Someone else comes up to you with a hand made item and gives it to you and tells you they love you and made this for you. It goes front and center on the bookshelves in the living room. It is a gift of love.

Both are gifts, both given for a particular reason. But one is unwelcome and one is welcome.

The first gift is given with no indication of love or caring. It was done out of pure duty, out of necessity. Well, it’s your birthday and I had to get you something, didn’t I?

The second gift is given with you in mind. The giver cared for you and did something special for you. It was done out of love because they loved you.

The offering plate is passed. Two people give. One throws some money in without even counting it out of duty. The other gives what he can with love for God.

Quite frankly, as a pastor, I take both, because I am not a judge of hearts. But you know God likes one better than the other.

Jesus was watching a group of people giving in a Jewish church service. It had turned into a contest, each giver trying to out do the other. One would give, the next would give more, the third would give even more and on. Then the second round would start.

Each person giving would try to show himself as the most righteous of all. See how much I give? Surely I am more righteous.

A widow came forward and gave two coins, all she had.

Jesus turned to his apostles and said She gave more than anybody else. The apostles were somewhat taken back by this statement. How can that be. They gave a lot, she only gave a little.

Jesus’ answer? They gave from their excess, she gave all she had. They gave out of pocket change, she gave out of her heart. They were only giving to show off. She gave because she loved God.

The apostle Paul says here that a gift should be from the heart or it is worthless. Over in 1 Corinthians 13, Paul goes out of his way to say that if your heart and if love is not in what you do, it doesn’t matter what you do. If love is not in it, it is worthless no matter who big the offering might be.

Hard thing to do, giving. Taking your money and giving it to the church. But on the other hand, it is what God wants and he will bless you for it.

However, he will only bless you if done out of your heart.

i have begun dropping things

In the past couple of years, for some reason, I have begun dropping things. Rare is the time in the kitchen when I do not drop two or three things while fixing dinner or just being in the kitchen.

I attributed it to my kitchen in Lincoln. I didn’t like the setup and thought it inefficient. Since it was a rent house, there was little I could do about it. So I would pick things up several times.

But I find I am doing it here too. My daughter’s kitchen is extremely inefficient as far as kitchens go, but still. I keep dropping things. It has to be me.

I will drop food, utensils, ice, glasses – enough of a range that it is not just the kitchen at fault. It is me.

I have even dropped plates of food. I dropped a fruit dessert on my guitar tuner which caused it to malfunction. I dropped coffee on my key board. I dropped a spoon while ago while making Ella something to drink.

They are all minor things (except for the fruit dessert) but all together they are annoying. And I do not know why I drop the things.

I have never been a paragon of grace and beauty of movement. I was always strong, but never graceful. I, quite frankly, move like a lummox and always have. That is one reason I never danced. I look like a crippled rhino when I do.

But for some reason, I am beginning to drop things. Some of it is my hands. I am developing carpal tunnel syndrome pretty badly and need some work done. My hands, as a result, are constantly asleep.

This makes it hard to type, and to play my guitar. After a while it is hard to tell where my pick is in my hand. Sometimes if not careful I will drop the pick and will cut my finger on the guitar strings.

I suppose part of it is getting older. Looking forward to a life of falling down and dropping stuff and drooling into my beard and maybe, if I am lucky, incontinence.

Oh, joy.

daily java

Daily Java:

Our God approaches and he is not silent.
Fire devours everything in his way, and a great storm rages around him. (Psalm 50:2)

It is not always a good idea to go to the Psalms for your theology. They are poetry and as such take a lot of poetical license.

However, there are some pictures of God in the psalms that are very interesting.

Someone was telling me that God was a God of love. He would never do anything to harm and that he was a nice God. He was considerate and always kind. The one ho told me this did not know the God of the Universe.

God is a God of love, yes. And he is kind and compassionate. But he is not always nice, at least not as we count niceness. God is a God of power. And he is not afraid or slow to use it. He never has been and he never will be.

Hebrews tells us that God is a devouring fire (Hebrews 12:29). He is not a God who visits, who lives in us, who is very important in our lives. He is a God who overwhelms us. He consumes us. He fills us. He devours us.

If he does not do these things in our lives, the word says that he is not really part of us.

What people want is a nice old man who is extremely generous but otherwise just kind of leaves us along. Santa Claus as it were. Maybe one of the Greek gods on Mt Olympus that watches us and kind of takes care of us. If we need help, they will come and do good things for us. We can direct what they do and thank them for it.

But God is not like that. He is the One who made the universe appear at his command. He is the One who can change a personality radically. He is the One that can make light out of darkness.

And he is not a God to play around with. He makes it plain that he is holy, he is good, he is powerful. You can accept it or not accept it, but you cannot play with him. He is too other.
 Even though he made us in his image, he is not like we are. Even though we share many of the same attributes, we are not alike. He is eternal, he is infinite, he is never changing, he is holy to a degree that we cannot imagine.

This is a picture of God that many do not care for. It is too extreme for them. They like the idea of a god that they can manage, that they can handle, that they can manipulate for their own ends.

And they have one. it may be called America, or earth worship or veganism or civil rights or any other thing. But the God of the Universe, the Lord Almighty is none of these things. He is a God who is above these. He calls you to a better country, heaven. He gave us the earth he had created but he told us to use it.

He told us to be fair to each other but he also never condemned slavery or riches. He said in 1 Corinthians that if you can move from slavery, to do so. But otherwise just accept it. He told us riches were hard on people and that he loved the poor, but he told us to move from where we are if we can. He never condoned life-long poverty or exalting poor people as better.

He proclaimed sharing, but never socialism. He proclaimed love but never tolerance of sin. He proclaimed peace but was never anti-war.

He has never been who we have made him. Instead he is the dominant controlling force in our lives or he is not. He rules or he doesn’t. He never took middle grounds.

He consumes and devours. He is God.

if i had it to do again

If I had it to do again

I would do things differently. If I found myself at the age of 18, I would work my hardest to change the direction of my life.

1. I would do better in school. I would seek out my teachers and turn around my classes so that I would graduate on time instead of late. I am smart enough that it would not be hard to turn things around in the second month of my senior year.

2. I would buy a pickup as my first car. I love pickups and would enjoy having one.

3. I would work to earn the respect of my parents. They never really liked me and I have always regretted that. Some of that is not my doing, but I would try my best to change it.

4. I would love my brother more. I would show him my love and do my best to show him that he was a good person rather than him becoming what he was.

5. I would probably try to get a job at KTLW, the radio station in Texas City where I had a part time job in 1968. It really wouldn’t be hard and it would be fun.

6. I would be in a band and play rhythm guitar. It amazes me how easy it is to play the old songs. It would be a blast.

7. I would still marry Ella. I would work my hardest to make sure I was at that bowling alley in time to meet her. She has been the best wife and companion a man could ever have. She was the best decision of my life made at the silliest time. I love her and cannot imagine a life without her.

8. I would leave the Church of Christ sooner. I would probably leave not long after I got married. I would find the closest group of the Jesus people and join them.

9. I would still go into the army. I am glad I served in the army and cannot imagine a life without it. If nothing else, it gave me entrance to a select cadre of people: those who served. Those who never served always had a hundred reasons why they couldn’t, but always wished they had. It also gave me access to college. I would take the two year enlistment that was available at the time, but I would do it before the end of the Vietnam war.

10. I would get my degree early and I would major in performance music and guitar. There are always jobs to be had in that, and if nothing else, I could always take a few Ed courses if I wanted to go in that direction.

11. I would become a pastor early. It would be in an independent church.

12. I would go ahead and get my M Div early, probably on the VA dime. I don’t know that I would need it, but it would stand me in good stead in my life.

13. Above all, I would make my life different. I am not happy with how things worked out.

when I was young, occasionally my mother would add an extra sandwich to my lunch

When I was young, occasionally my mother would add an extra sandwich to my lunch.

I think my dad must have had a lot of financial problems when we were little and there were times when she didn’t have anything else to put in my lunch besides the customary bologna and cheese sandwich.

But on the occasional day, she would put in a peanut butter and butter sandwich with sugar sprinkled between the two. That sandwich was so special.

I didn’t get it every day, but when I did, it was so good tasting.

Being a hungry little boy, I never got enough to eat anyway, so the extra sandwich was great. But the peanut butter, butter and sugar sandwich was delicious.

I occasionally make them now. And when I do, I think of the young woman, in her mid to late 20’s, stretching her husband’s food budget and giving her son his favorite sandwich in the bargain.

At one point, we needed a washer and dryer and finally were able to get one. My son, who was a mid teen at the time, was watching me put them in. He remarked to my wife, Isn’t it funny how I can be so excited about appliances?

My wife says that she was always excited when she accidentally got her father’s lunch. She took tuna fish salad to school, he took ham and cheese with mustard to work. Once in a while, they would get mixed up. Which meant, of course, that he had to eat tuna which he didn’t care for.

But Ella would get the other. It would be warm and the cheese, she said, would be all “melty.” It was a small thing, but special.

Once a few years ago, she made a ham and cheese sandwich to take to work and had no chips, so she popped a bag of popcorn. She found out that she loved popcorn with her sandwich.

When you don’t have a lot, small things can be joys. Appliances, a new used car, new plates, a misplaced lunch, a peanut butter, butter and sugar sandwich.

daily java

Daily Java:

As dead flies cause even a  bottle of perfume to stink,
So a little foolishness spoils great wisdom and honor. (Ecclesiastes 10:1)

I had a girlfriend in high school named Susan. She and I were hitting it off. We were at a choir thing one day when an older woman told me that she thought the girls were all over me, or something to that effect. I don’t know why she said that. I was never a Casanova or anything like that.

I turned to Susan and said, in a loud and clear voice, Ha! What do you think about that?

What she thought was that she thought she would leave.

I ruined that budding relationship with stupid words. And I have always had the ability to do that. And I hate it.

For some reason, foolish things will leap from my lips at the most inopportune times. It has always been that way. As I have said before, it is probably only the fact that I am as big as I am that kept someone from beating me up.

I can go through life and see times when my mouth closed would have a been a great thing.

The old saying, keep quiet and people may think you are a fool; open your mouth and remove all doubt.

It was said of George Washington that he was a big man who sat with mouth firmly closed. You sit with your mouth firmly closed and one thing for sure: you don’t way stupid things.

There are stupid things I have said that almost haunt me. it was almost as if I had a self-destruct mechanism built in, ready to kill any wisdom I might show.

The best perfume in the world is made bad by having dead flies in it. Lay a roach in the middle of a gourmet meal and no one wants it. In my estimation, a pretty girl who lights up a cigarette looks remarkably less appealing to me. one who curses too. Your favorite shirt with a small unremovable spot on it. An expensive Waechtersbach bowl with a tiny chip in the rim. Anything nice is hurt by being messed up by even a small thing.

How people view you is delicate. They can view you as a fool or as a smart person. The fool says stupid things at inappropriate times. The smart person keeps quiet a lot.

The fool goes on at length to tell everyone how smart he is, or how experienced or anything like that. The smart person will let people find out what he knows.

And if you know a lot, sooner or later, people will know.

Because you can take the roach out of the dinner, but no one wants it now. You can take the flies out of the perfume, but it smells bad. things are easy to ruin and very hard to repair.

That deal with Susan was the first indication that I talked too much. Doing radio Daily Java: work, that ability was helpful. A Daily Java: has a lot of air-time to fill and people want to hear funny stuff.

She wanted a boyfriend who was funny – girls love guys who make them laugh – without being stupid. Nobody likes a stupid guy.

The key is to shut up.

your life as a letter

The only letter of recommendation we need is you yourselves. Your lives are a letter written in our[a] hearts; everyone can read it and recognize our good work among you. (1 Corinthians 3:2)

I just finished a book and it made me sad.

It was a Larry McMurtry book about Billy the Kid and it was extremely well-written. McMurtry’s books almost always are.

But about 30 – 40 pages from the end, I knew I was coming to a close. And I was reluctant.

A good book makes me that way. It makes me want to put it down and go do something else for a while, if nothing else just to put the ending of the book off.

When I finish, it is (if a good book) a sad thing. And I will have to admit that almost any book will affect me that way.

I read the Bible through every year. And when I come to the end of Revelation, it has that same impact.

He who is the faithful witness to all these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon!” Amen, come Lord Jesus! May the grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s holy people.

John ends with the invitation to come on, be through, come get us now. Of course, it has been over 1900 years since then, but I feel that way myself.

Ending a book does not mean ending life. It just means you go on to the next. In the case of the Bible, it means I start over again.

I re-read some books. The McMurtry book I just finished I have read before. But I love his writing style and his endings are so good. They just stop. No real ending, just stopping.

The same with the Bible. It is on-going in the lives of the believer. It continues in what we do and say. Yes, the writing part stopped, but the voice of God is still active and alive.

When we live in him, that written word continues, just as surely as if there are extra chapters and extra books. When it comes down to it, we are books of his, we are, as the apostle Paul said, his epistles. People see in us, or should see in us, that which God says and believes and gives to the world.

When we die, our book stops, but those we have touched are able to read it further in their remembering what we have said and done and in the writing of their own books.