Tag Archives: Sin

Employing Faith

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unemployment

unemployment (Photo credit: Sean MacEntee)

We tend to think that unless we ask the Lord for help He does nothing.  How can that be true?  He spins the world; did it ask to be spun?  He feeds the birds, did they ask for a worm to be created that day?  He sets your lungs billowing.  Did you ask to breathe last night?  He causes sleep and wake to come upon all.  Do they need to ask for either?

The problem with our understanding of God is that we tend to think of Him as a remote individual who is not immediately in charge of all things.  He saw what you needed before you were born.  He knew what was going to form your mind as you grew.  And, rest assured, He understands the dynamics of sin among men.

We cannot perceive where a certain set of sins will lead.  Sin is chaos.  Yet God knows.  Why else does He proclaim that all sin leads to death?  Jesus holds the keys to life and death.  He knows how to open one and shut the other.  He knows how to bring a man from death to life.  And He knows how to bring a man from life to death also!

So let us be wise and remember that God is not some kind of idle power house.  He is vividly active among men and angels.  Nothing escapes His attention.  And He sees farther down the road than we often give Him credit for.  Trust, do, and trust again.  If you have been blessed to know that Jesus is the Son of God, you are also blessed to be guided in all you do.   Employ your faith (that faith which God gave you to accept His Son as your Lord and Savior).

God does as He pleases.  Just sit and wait.  Do what is right.  Give Him all Glory for everything you encounter.  He will move for such people.  He will protect your faith.  He will move around you and in you to create a kind of person He can be pleased with.

Did Jonah ask for the shade God provided?  Did Nineveh ask for the message of salvation that was brought to them?  Did the Israelites love Jesus when He appeared to bring them the message of repentance and hope?  Yet God moved without having been asked.  Did any of His followers ask God the Father to have His Son crucified?  Yet God’s wisdom was moving among them to accomplish just that.

Did the Israelites ask for slavery?  Yet God brought it upon them so that they could be witnesses to His Majestic power to save.  What has come upon you?  Why do you balk as if you don’t deserve it?  Aren’t you surprised at the things God does for you all day long?  Endure!  Remain a person with a clean heart, mind, soul, and hands.  Just wait.

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I re-read this message and ponder what “is” in my life.  I am struck by how we expect something from the Lord when we are but His servants.  What an amazing sort of place God has set us to abide in.  Cast about with every form of evil, we are expected to understand and obey.

It is not hard to obey.  It is hard to strain at the restraints He has placed on us all.  It is so very easy to let Him be King.  So why do I constantly look to be useful?  He alone is useful.  And as we serve Him by remaining at the ready we become useful.  It’s as simple as that, isn’t it?

What God Promises Comes to Pass.

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English: Woodcut of the Augsburg Confession, A...

English: Woodcut of the Augsburg Confession, Article VII, “Of the Church”. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What God has promised to do will be done.  Though man counts time in days and years, God’s promise to transform His people cannot be broken.  We look at our lives and worry attends our thoughts.  We have come to believe that we have stepped over the line and now stand counted as an enemy of God.  How can that be so?

Look back.  How easy was it to believe when you first heard the Gospel?  What has changed over the years?  You heard the call to righteousness and holiness.  You allowed yourself to believe the message that those who live in sin can’t expect eternal life.  Your soul shook with fear and your responded with confession.  Remember how you felt that first touch of freedom from a guilty conscience when you embraced the promise of God to forgive?

We all know what has changed.  In our struggle against sin we have fallen to temptation.  At first it was a mistake to allow ourselves to be fooled into death.  But when we turned to God for help, didn’t help arrive?  He no more desires us to die now than He did when we first believed.  As long as you are in this bag of flesh hope remains.  What has changed is a gradual dulling of our hope, which is a direct result of a learned disobedience.

How do we reclaim that vibrant hope?  Refocus your efforts to believe.  It’s not something we can actually manipulate with our hands.  We simply give up our own struggle, confess our lack, and wait for His response.  The struggle will resume soon enough.  And you will be tested again.  But the renewal of our time of confession, and subsequent receiving of hope, will give us a strength we did not have at the start of our journey.  We will have proven to ourselves, once again, that God’s promise is stronger than our failings.

I do not say these things as a novice.  Over 25 years God has proven His ability to save me.  Though you have no need to trust the word of a man, the testimony I give here comes from a myriad of testings regarding this hope we share.  I testify, as do all who remain hopeful, that God is able and WILLING to cause us to live.  If you give up it is because you choose to stop believing.  Simply make the choice to believe again.  It’s really that easy, my friends.  You need not wallow in pig slop any longer.

Tough Stuff Requires Tough Response

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Sayer fight

Sayer fight (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We live in a very controlled space.  Vacuum above, rocks below, winds, storms, great cold and heat, all assault our experience here.  Then there’s bugs of various sorts, some can cause harm, others are simply a bother.  Animals abound; some to eat, some to treat, some to abhor, and some would love to eat us.

Then we have the humans themselves.  To make a friend is a milestone in our experience.  To keep a friend is a milestone in itself.  But we can be sure we will be assailed by humanity, along with all the other plagues we encounter here.

Added to this boxing match, arrives political, social, economic troubles, personal thoughts and attitudes that need adjusting every day all day long.  We all know about these things.  But what has arrived among us is something a bit out of the ordinary.

It was that sins were a bit isolated among men.  One city would embrace a certain sin.  But you could always walk or ride to another place to escape their folly.  But with the advent of communications and faster, more reliable, transportation, the isolation of the sins of man have encountered a boundless habitat.  Now I challenge anyone to point to a place on earth where we can set up a roof and live a life absent of the refinement of wickedness we have come to teach each other.

How I desire to be removed from the complicated garbage that man advertises as prime today.  The body has replaced the concentration on holiness of spirit.  Medical commercials, ways to play, and financial “get well quick” schemes abound.  It is getting to where we are more aware of the things of this world than of eternity where God lives; forever past and forever future.  The temporary has become man’s god en masse.

This is not the end to escalation for sins.  There is a place where man is allowed to abandon all trace of conscience.  If it is hard to live in purity today, what will happen in that day?  Gone will be any hint of a peaceful little town where you can leave your doors unlocked.  Gone will be the day when owning some kind of lethal tool to protect what you call yours is an option.

Most people I know simply don’t want to talk about what they see happening anymore.  And if you bring them the Gospel, you find them backing up.  They no longer see the Gospel as a message of hope.  They only perceive another demand.  And they are absolutely inundated with demands.

What a curious ruse has been set upon man.  He is in a position of defence, from waking to waking again.  Peace is no longer an option.  And this isn’t even the height of horror that is bound to come.  Slowly, man is being squeezed into a stark choice; Fight or die cowering.  The evil one has man just about where he wants them to be.  And the end of things can’t be far behind that point.

All this said, it is important to encourage one another to fight the good fight with even more strength.  Even the best of us today is plagued with a monstrous onslaught of sin.  Hold each other up.  Look for signs of tiring.  Strengthen trust between your brothers and sisters.  The silver lining surrounding all this is the grace of God in Christ Jesus for all who are struggling to obey.

I posted this to say that I see it clearly enough (the struggle you face every day).  Oddly, this is a post of encouragement.  May God bless this message to all His people.

By His Grace.

Jesus Loves the Homosexual Lifestyle, Right?

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A bible from 1859.

A bible from 1859. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A curious hole in the testimony of some homosexuals I’ve talked to has appeared.  It seems they think their lifestyle is “OK” with God.  Can someone tell me then why it’s not “OK” to hand out Bibles at one of their rallies?

“Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.”  (John 3: 20)

P. S.

You people who are promoting your own agenda in the world, tell us that God loves you and your agenda, yet run from the Bible anytime it is poked in your face:

Here.  Why don’t you do this:  Begin to read the Bible for what it contains.  Then turn and promote the agenda of God in Christ Jesus (even when it runs right up your proud backbone). 

You see, we Christians do just that.  We don’t claim to be holy or righteous.  We promote the agenda of Jesus regardless how it offends our sense of pride.  And when it stands against our sins, it is we who cave.  The Lord won’t stand for anyone who uses his own agenda to promote sin.

In case you didn’t get my point:  Go ahead, keep your life of sin going.  But add to it the Word of God.  In time, I promise you, your agenda will diminish and the Holiness of God will begin to enter.  Keep up your charade, however, (of being God loving sinners) and you will be horribly ashamed and surprised when you stand before Him face to face.

You love the Bible when it says “God loves you.”  But you hate to read about how no immoral or sexually perverse person will ever enter eternal life.  You rave that you deserve recognition because you’re a minority.  Did you ever stop to think that murders are a minority also?  Did you give thought to why that is?  It’s because most people understand that immoral behavior does not receive the love of God.  They are the majority.  You are the minority.  hmmmmmm

So bring the Bible before your face.  Go ahead and read the things that please you.  Then, just for kicks, read a little more.  It will scar your conscience.  Isn’t that what you’re running from when you don’t want the Bible in your wicked rallies?

Gangrene in the Church

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Dry Gangrene with dead toes and visible bone o...

Dry Gangrene with dead toes and visible bone of 85 year old female (left leg). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Gospel of God in Jesus tells us plainly, “Repent or die.”  We stand condemned already, that is to say before we believe the condemnation of God is upon us.  John points this out clearly in chapter three of his Gospel.  But the “repent” part has been shaken off the tree of the Church today by men who have said that God loves us all.  They have used a truth to dispel the urgency of repentance.  The reasons why they have done this are many and quite obvious.  But they have done so in error.  They think they clean the conscience of men by removing the stumbling block of sin from men.  “Let’s get them past the condemning God stuff”, they say.

I am filled with rage that such things have been done.  And the damage it has wrought is apparent in the lack of holiness among God’s people.  I too fell for this lie.  And even now I struggle, from time to time, to maintain a strong standing before the Lord for the lies hidden within my heart because of this foolish gospel.  All day long men speak lies in the name of the Lord.  And as long as we listen to them we too become corrupt with their sweet sins of corruption.

I fear the rot of lies has come to the point where the foot needs to be cut off lest it infect the entire body.  The stench of sin wreeks from the injured foot.  And the signs of sickness are unavoidable to the eye. The “Church” is hobbled by a hideous sickness.  What is called the Church today is often simply a polished up secular teaching of psychology.  And the “good” they perceive done by this set of lies has murdered thousands.  They have turned the holy gathering of saints into a happy little club of man.  And I, for one, will have nothing to do with them!

Responsible

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Father Ford in the fire truck

Father Ford in the fire truck (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A dead body cannot be responsible.  Neither can a fool be responsible.  It is even hard for a righteous man to be responsible.  Why?  In answer, let me take responsible apart:  Response Able.

God has given gifts to men for the sake of His Holy name.  He has given forgiveness for sins.   What is our response?   Do we dress ourselves with ability to respond?  Or do we take His Glorious gift for granted.  He has spoken in the gathering of wickedness.  He has danced a Holy dance in a body for all to see.  He endured this place of testing without sin.  And God has granted Him, (Jesus) Glory, Joy, Eternal Life as the Ruler of all.

I look at the ability of Jesus to respond to His Father as He walked in this utter black world of decayed souls.  And I am amazed that He performed perfectly!  He did not cave to the words and actions of man.  He desired only to be available to the will of His Father.  And He shunned all proposals to capitulate with the enemies of His Father.  He made Himself able to respond to the will of God.  He is perfectly Responsible to God, the Father of all Life and Righteousness.

With that in mind, I ask again, are we individually able to respond to the Grace given us?  Are we responsible Christians?  I write this with a severe anger at the sinful nature within me.  I remember what was spoken, and will not be taken out of the way, “Hate what is evil and cling to what is good.”  This is what is asked of us.  And it is not an unjust request.  For He gives us the power to over come.  What will be our response?  Are we able to be willing to work?

We retain men who have learned to put out fires.  If they are not responsible, what is the possibility that they can carry out the charge that has been laid upon them?  God has retained us through the sacrifice of His Holy Son.  Are we responsible?