Following Christ. Really.

OK, I gotta speak up. Christ-followers cannot be the people who take pride in themselves on not being around gay, transgender, Muslim, Hindu and whoever, when their own churches are convulsing with sin, including pornography.
We betray the Gospel by if we stumble all over ourselves to denounce secular leftists but stay silent about half-truths from the pulpit and prosperity gospel heretics among us. Those who chase the rich, famous, and powerful are chasing after false idols and their snappy self-help sayings. How's that big book deal, Pr. Super Apostle? Comfy in your mansion? How's your jet flying these days? That stuff is temporary and you've become too "at home" in the world. Our citizenship is in Heaven (Philippians 3:20) and we should be living a transformed life (Romans 12:2). Our security doesn't rest in stuff (or a constitution), but in Christ Jesus.
Seeing Christ in the faces of the poor means we're seeing Christ himself (check Matthew 25:31-46). Are we willing to disown ourselves and our stuff and identify with our Christian brothers and sisters that are homeless, poor, hungry, thirsty? Those with addictions? Those who are same-sex attracted and who are wondering what it means to live among others that do not condemn, but love and want to help ALL who sin (1 Corinthians 6:9-11)?
Carry on.

Divided Against Itself

Just a thought: Division commonly ends in desolation. If we divide from one another, we become easy prey to a common enemy; much more if we bite and devour one another - we will consume each other. 

In Matthew 12, the Pharisees declared that Jesus was casting out demons (and healing others) by the work of "Beelzebub." Jesus stated (and proved) that he was the Son of God with his work.  At this point in the text, Jesus was so far from being in league with the devil that other were openly hostile and at enmity with him.  

The world sits in darkness in the devil's possession. Yet the design of Jesus' coming, the Gospel, was and is to spoil the devil's house, which as a strong man, he kept the world.  The devil will not set his sights on destroying himself, but on taking God's children with him to his own coming destruction by Christ's return. He knows he cannot defeat God. Instead, Satan will rule where and what he can. If Satan were to fall in line with Christ, then how could he stand? What would he have to rule? He would lose his control and cease to be in rebellion to the one true God.  

Christ, by his grace, has broken Satan's rule, and Christ spoiled the devil's house and will spoil it more and more.  

Carry on.

Back to Blogging!

It feels good to be back blogging again.

If you've never been here before, feel free to poke around - some good stuff from the past is archived, and I'm looking forward to developing some well-placed thought here in the future!

So, to kick off:

Just a thought:

If following God is a blessing, then for Jeremiah it was a curse. Nothing, nothing, went right for him. Wouldn't it be interesting if our current prosperity preachers had a talk with Jeremiah today? Would Jeremiah believe their were talking about the same God? Would Jeremiah have a crisis of faith and think he missed his calling? Would Jeremiah have become so embittered toward Yahweh that he would have denied his faith and become a follower of the God of the prosperity gospel?

Carry on.

The Ultimate Executive Action

God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.  (Romans 8:3-4)

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23)

The wages of sin is death (eternal separation from)  (Romans 6:23)

God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.  (Romans 5:8-9)

If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.  (Romans 10:9)

Bonhoffer and the Christian-Biblical Worldview

Maybe I'm the only one (but I doubt it) that feels slightly overwhelmed by recent current events:  Ferguson, Missouri rioting; ISIS/ISIL/Hamas, Iran; the focus on persecution of Christ-followers in Iraq; a sluggish, if not poor, economy; world leader's inaction to address threats against peaceable and free people by those who would destroy them.

To one who sees only with their eyes could fall into distress quite easily, but to those with a Christian worldview, current events can be put into perspective because a) similar events have happened before, and b) these events can be predicted to happen again based on what we read in the Bible.

Most concerning to me is the apparent lack of action (maybe I'm just not able to see any action with my physical eyes).  These are times when men and women of faith must act, and Dietrich Bonhoffer gives us a glimpse of the necessity of action in his essays and letters.

"The great masquerade of evil has played havoc with all our ethical concepts.  For evil to appear disguised as light, charity, historical necessity, or social justice is quite bewildering to anyone brought up on our traditional ethical concepts, while for the Christian who bases his life on the Bible it merely confirms the fundamental wickedness of evil."

Elsewhere, Bonhoffer asks and states,

"Who stands fast?  Only the man whose final standard is not his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom, or his virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all this when he is called to obedient and responsible action in faith and in exclusive allegiance to God - the responsible man, who tries to make his whole life an answer to the question and call of God."