Sunday, July 31, 2011

A LOT OF TALK...

I'm not usually one to speak out about politics in any formal fashion, especially on this blog.  But today I feel like I have to.  It seems to me that everyone has an opinion about this debt ceiling 'crisis' going on in Congress right now.  Perhaps, by the time you read this, it will have all been worked out, but I just wanted to express one simple principle.  Many have spoken with me about this controversial topic.  In almost every one of those conversations I ended up asking, "Did you write your Congressman?"  and everyone's answer was, "No".  I do not understand why no one tells their Congressman what they are thinking.  Your Congressman is your voice in Washington.  If there is something to be voted on, and you feel one way about it, you should write your Congressman to let him/her know how you are feeling.  If enough people do this, and view it your way, your Congressman may be swayed to vote that way, thus making your voice heard in Washington.  Many people my age have never said anything via email to their Congressman. They have Facebook directories, Twitter directories and formal directories whereby you can contact them.

To find your representative in the House of Representatives visit this site:  http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/

To find your Senator in the Senate visit this site: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm?State=ALL

Please, if you have an opinion on any given topic, voice it to someone who can do something about it.  Why even worry about it, if your not planning on telling anyone who can?

Thursday, July 21, 2011

SPURGEON ON IDLENESS

"Everyman ought to have patience and pity for poverty, but for laziness a long whip."
"A man who wastes his time in sloth offers himself to be a target for the devil, who is an awefully good rifleman. In other words, idle men tempt the devil to tempt them."
"A sluggard is fine raw material for the devil, he can make anything he likes out of him, from a thief up to a murderer."
"If the devil catch a man idle he will send him to work [for him], and find him tools."
"Idle folks often never know what leisure means, they are always in a hurry and a mess, by neglecting to work at the proper time they always have a lot to do."
"Trying to insruct an idle man is like trying to hold water in a siv or fatten a greyhound"
John Ploughman : "For once I was going to give our minister [Spurgeon] a pretty long list of the sins of one of our people he was asking after, I began with, "He's dreadfully lazy", "That's enough!" said the old gentleman, "all sorts of sins are in that one, that's enough to know a full pledged sinner."
"Our Lord Jesus told us, the enemy sowed while men slept. It is by the door of sluggishness that evil enters the heart more often it seems to me than any other."
"My advise to my boys has been to get out of the sluggards way, or you may catch his disease and never get rid of it. I am always afraid of their learning the ways of the idle and I am very watchful to nip anything of the sort in the bud, for you know it is best to kill a lion when it's a cub"
"Some professors [of Christianity] are amazingly lazy and make sad work for the tongues of the wicked. I think a godly plowmen ought to be the best man in the field and let no team beat him. When we are at work, we ought to be at it, and not stop the plow to talk, even though the talk may be about religion. For then we not only rob our employers of our own time, but of the time of the horses, too. I used to hear people say, "Never stop the plow to catch a mouse," and it's quite as silly to stop for idle chat; besides, the man who loiters when the master is away is an eye-server, which, I take it, is the very opposite of a Christian."
"Religion never was designed to make us idle. Jesus was a great worker, and his disciples must not be afraid of hard work"
-Charles Spurgeon

GOD KNOWS BETTER THAN WE DO....ALWAYS

Monday, July 18, 2011

ABOUT SCHOOL

I have been tossing around the idea of going to school again.  History would be the major, in the hopes of making myself more useful to society than I currently am.  In a perfect world, I would be able to get a Masters degree or maybe even a (don't say it) Doctorate and become an actual Historian, but I live in the real world and realize that if I were to attain to those levels in education, it would need God's massive hand working and not just my own endeavoring.  In the meantime, I am seeking out that which will be most pleasing to me, namely a basic college education.  Enough about me though.  I have been praying and thinking much for quite sometime about all of this.  I have emailed some friends (older and wiser) to see what they have had to say to me about it.  There are a great many obstacles and I cannot decipher as to whether they were placed there to keep me from doing this, or if they were put there to show me how much I truly desire this, seeing how I am still leaning in that direction despite all of the opposition.  At any rate, the Lord is ever guiding me along through life and I can be certain that whether I succeed or fail He is leading me to something a million times greater than any education in this life could get me.

Sunday, July 17, 2011

HOW TO DEFEAT CALVINISM

I thought this video was pretty funny. It has been posted in good humor, please do not take offense.


Saturday, July 16, 2011

JAMES STEWART ON SALVATION

There are many who want to be saved from the consequences of their sin, who do not want to be saved from the love of it.  Many want to be delivered from sin’s curse and sin’s wages, who do not want to bow their neck to the yoke of Christ.  There are many who are attracted by the Gospel message and see the way of salvation, which are still possessing a craving for this present evil age.  How great the need for care, lest by an inadequate presentation of the truth of the Gospel we deceive these souls into a false profession.  There is a grave danger that many people will make a mistake of substituting an emotional religious crisis for a born again experience.  To preach Christ as Savior without preaching Christ as Lord makes a mockery of the Gospel and the entire Christian life.  There must be true repentance (Acts 8:21-23).  THE SON OF GOD DOES NOT SAVE REBELS.  There must be true submission (repentance) before there can be salvation.  What a parody of the Gospel when many are told to ‘trust Jesus to take them to Heaven when they die,’ who nevertheless are living in the practice of sin and rebellion against His laws.  The grace of God does not give deliverance to the sinner from the penalty of his sins and then give him liberty to live a life of sin.  Paul tells us that the pardoning grace of God TEACHES us to live a life of HOLINESS.  Read Titus 2:11-15. — Scottish Evangelist James A. Stewart (1910-1975).

Friday, July 15, 2011

ADVICE FROM JOHN BUNYAN

1. Believe that if you seek to walk in a way pleasing to God, then you will meet with many temptations from the evil one.

2. The first day that you enter into Christ’s congregation, watch out for the temptations.

3. When the temptations come, beg God to carry you through them.

4. Be suspicious of your own heart, that it does not deceive you into thinking that
you are more holy than you are.

5. Beware of the flatteries of false brethren.

6. Walk continually in the Word—the life and power of truth.

7. Fix your eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.

8. Watch out for the "little" sins.

9. Keep the promise of eternal life warm in your heart.

10. Renew your faith in the blood of Christ.

11. Honor those who are doing the blessed work of God in your generation.

12. Follow after and emulate the godly Christians of your generation.
Grace be with you. Amen."

-John Bunyan

Thursday, July 14, 2011

YOUR CONSCIENCE

J.I. Packer wrote in A Quest for Godliness:

"It is a universal experience that conscience is largely autonomous in its operation; though sometimes we can suppress or stifle it, it normally speaks independently of our will, and sometimes, indeed, contrary to our will. And when it speaks, it is in a strange way distinct from us; it stands over us, addressing us with an absoluteness of authority which we did not give it and which we cannot take from it. To personify conscience and treat it as God's watchman and spokesman in the soul is not, therefore, a mere flight of fancy, it is a necessity of human experience."

Monday, July 11, 2011

PROVERBS 19:16

Proverbs 19:16 reads:
He who keeps the commandment keeps his soul, But he who is careless of conduct will die.
This proverb gives us a different perspective of the same truth that Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount found in Matthew 7.  Jesus told the crowd that many will say to Him in that day (Judgment Day) "Lord, Lord" but will not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.  That many will profess Jesus as Lord on the day of Judgment and yet will be told to depart due the Jesus' not knowing them.  Jesus also clarifies who will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.  He says in verse 21, "...but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter."  Now, we know that Jesus was the only man who ever truly did the will of the Father, perfectly and so it is fair to say that Jesus is not implying that no one but Him will be in Heaven.  Rather, Jesus is teaching that those who have an attitude and lifestyle that is devoted to doing the things that please God, rather than self are the ones who will enter. 

This proverb teaches the same thing only with a twist.  It tells us that the one who keeps the commandment is the one who will keep his soul, sounding similar to the teaching that whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, but he who lose his life will save it.  The man that puts what God wants over and above anything that self wants which is contrary to God will in fact keep his soul.  This is saying exactly what Jesus is saying, when Jesus says, "He who does the will of My Father".  Both verses are pointing to the same sort of man.  The man who truly prays, "Thy Will be done".

The latter half of the proverb is where we see the twist though.  I expected it to say something along the lines of, "but the man who forsakes the commandment will die" or "but he who rejects God will die".  I thought it would say something particularly highlighting disobedience, but what do we see?  The proverb writer heads to a deeper root to the problem.  While disobedience to God will always be the result of the people Jesus spoke of when he labels them 'workers of iniquity' in verse 23 of Matthew 7, the proverb tells us 'why' they do so.

It says that 'he who is careless of conduct' will die.  What does that mean?  If someone is careless of conduct, there problem isn't usually that they outwardly, consciously disobey God.  The real problem is that they do not even care about their conduct when it concerns God.  They are careless, unconcerned and so self-centered that they do not care if there is even a God to be obedient to.  This explains their puzzlement in that terrible Last Day of Judgment.  They are standing there in front of Jesus Christ, the Great Judge crying out, "Lord! Lord! didnt' we serve you?"  This is because they spent their lives professing to be attached to Christ and yet never truly concerned themselves with reading God's word to see what is required of them.  They sat around telling one another, "Nobody's perfect", everytime someone tried to rebuke them for failing to meet God's standards instead of putting on the proverbial sackloth and ashes and heading to the cross of Christ for mercy.  They were careless and in the end, it will cost them everything.

Thursday, July 7, 2011

BLESSINGS OF REDEMPTION

Ephesians 1:3-4 says, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him in love."

This passage tells us some soul-rocking truths that, if grasped, are life changing.  Intellectual perception of them is one thing, but to have these truths sink into your heart is when they will become truly beneficial in a practical way.

We were chosen to be holy and blameless before God long before this world were ever created.  Holy and blameless.  We were not chosen to be justified despite all of our sins, only to be left to live with the filthiness of sin.  We were chosen to be holy.  Chosen to be blameless before God.  The phrase 'before Him' is one which describes our lives currently.  We are living before Him now.  We are to be holy and blameless before Him.  In our striving against sin, we can think on this passage and know that the very striving is what we were chosen for.  To be holy and blameless before Him.  We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.  (Ephesians 2:10)

Monday, July 4, 2011

1 CHRONICLES 12

I read this chapter today and had some thoughts concerning our battles with sin and how this chapter related.  The chapter is listing out all of the men from all of the different tribes that came to David at Ziklag to help him in fighting against his enemies.  It is a very descriptive chapter, telling us what the men specialized in and who and how they were acquainted with both David and his enemies.  If thought of from a military standpoint, one can see that David would have received much intelligence as to Saul's military weaknesses and strengths.  In verse 2 it speaks of bowmen, who, coming from the tribe of Benjamin were Saul's kinsmen, which means they probably had information concerning Saul that could be relayed to David.  Information that may have gone unknown had these so close in relation to Saul not come to David's side in the conflict.  Verse 8-15 speaks of an elite group of warriors from the Gadites who apparently were extremely lethal on the battlefield, given the description in verse 14.  We see the truth in this description because of the special mission they were given in verse 15.  They were the first to cross the Jordan and enter into the fight, putting to flight all those who were camped there.  This has the sound of Special Ops, which, always enters the enemy territory prior to the larger invading force.  These men must be many times harder than the average soldier.  In verse 18 we see the Spirit of God coming upon men and leading them to assist David in whatever he plans.  And in verse 22 it sums up what has been happening by saying:

For day by day men came to David to help him, until there was a great army like the army of God.
 And I thought about the phrase, 'day by day'.  David must have experienced some anxiety in these days.  He was waiting for the Lord to provide for him and daily he was seeing God's provision, growing his army until it was large enough to win the battle.  The hearts of many men were changed at different times, causing them to trickle into the camp of David over a period of time and not all at once.  And is this not a picture of the Christian walk?  Were we at once, upon conversion, fully armed and ready for battle?  I do not think so.  Are we not daily being added to, in knowledge and wisdom, with the weapons of our spiritual warfare that we have decided to engage in?  And yet, we must wait for God in this battle.  We must wait for the resources to trickle in, day by day, so we can wage war successfully.  The Lord provided for David enough men with the right tactics and training to successfully fight a war and he will do no less for us.  But, we must do what David did and wait for our army to be built by God.

Verse 38 tells us:
All these, being men of war who could draw up in battle formation, came to Hebron with a perfect heart to make David king over all Israel; and all the rest also of Israel were of one mind to make David king.
The provisions from God will be of a perfect heart able to help you abstain from the fleshly lusts that are waging war against your soul.  They will, so to speak, make you King and ruler over this body of death.  Sin will no longer reign, but you will reign as King.  Let us seek the Lord for help in this battle of the ages.