Great is Your Faithfulness

Best Seats

James and John once came to Jesus and requested the best seats in the coming Kingdom.

Jesus didn't refuse or even rebuke them.

He said, “OK, I see where you're coming from, your intentions are a little flawed, but on the upside, at least you're desiring something good.”

Or something like that.

We hear so much about the disciples selfish intentions, that we miss the real purpose of this story.

Like we wouldn't want the best seats in the house for ourselves?

Like we'd volunteer for the nosebleed section.

I remember going to a hockey game in Denver with my father-in-law. We sat up in the nosebleed section at the Pepsi Center. It was OK, you could still see the game, but it was like watching it on a laptop.

Another time I saw a Game in Edmonton, Canada. We had seats at ice level. You could hear every grunt, and words you wouldn't want to repeat, you could feel the impact of every crunching slam off the boards, and best of all, a fight broke out right in front of us and you could smell the blood. Now that's hockey. Hockey in the best seats.

I don't know anyone who likes the back seat to anything, unless of course they're not interested in what they're showing up for, like a distant relatives funeral and they're only there out of obligation and they want to be able to slip out early, or take a nap without anyone noticing them, or they want a head start for the parking lot when it's over, or because they had nothing else to do on a rainy Saturday afternoon, or perhaps they were back seat drivers. Other than that, no one wants the back seat to anything.

I remember going to Bible conferences in a small town in Arizona. Not only was the town small, but the church was too small to host the conference. We were excited young bucks, and of course we wanted the front row seats to get in on all the action close up. So we would starting lining up at two in the afternoon for the seven pm evening service, snaking out across the parking lot. When the doors finally opened at six, it was every man for themselves. Jokes were made from the pulpits about how we'd temporarily lose our salvation during the mad rush for the “best seats”. At least we were close to the altar so we could repent.

The other disciples chastised James and John for their forwardness. How rude, how pushy they thought. What kind of servanthood, foot-washing humility, what kind of consider-others-better-than-yourselves Christian are you anyway? But I suspect they were just upset that they hadn't thought of it first.

No, Jesus wasn't upset by the fact they were opting for the best seats, no more than He'd be upset about them wanting to be a preacher, or desiring the “best gifts”. Does your Bible say we should desire the least gifts because we're so humble? That when it comes to our mansions in glory, we should say, “No, Lord, I appreciate the mansion, but just give me a humble little shack in the corner of heaven, I'm just a little unworthy crawling worm, praise the Lord.” Oh please, go drip with that someplace else.

Paul said we should “covet earnestly the best gifts”. Holy coveting. To covet all that God has for us.

Greedy for grace and mercy and peace and joy and everything.

I can hear you saying, “What about the story Jesus told when coming to a feast, and not taking the higher place, but go to the end of the table and wait to be called up higher? Yeah, what about it? When you write your own devotional, you can write all about that and say whatever you want. Besides, how do you know that “going to the end of the table” doesn't mean something else in Greek? Have you ever actually looked it up? Do you even bother taking out your Icelandic dictionary on this? Didn't think so. Well I did. Jesus is rebuking them for wanting to be first in importance and status, not simply wanting to have the best blessings. Happy?

OK, I still feel some resistance in my reader here, and I'm not the kind of writer who is willing to leave you behind; I feel responsible to bring you along to deliverance on this.

Here's what you do: The next time a group of your friends are going out to a nice restaurant together for fine food, fellowship, gourmet coffee and tantalizing desert, I want you to just sit in your car out in the parking lot, eat a cold cheeseburger by yourself and listen to some good Lawrence Welk music on the radio while reading a book about starving children in Bangladesh. You may be missing out on all the good times, but at least you'll feel humble about yourself for not enjoying the best.

One experience like this and I predict you'll join the fellowship inside next time.

No, Jesus didn't rebuke their wanting the best. He said, “Good choice.”

“Now here's the price you'll have to pay to obtain it.”

“Are you willing to drink the cup?”

Not knowing what “the cup” was they quickly said, “No problem”, and held out their goblets.

Of course we know “the cup” meant a great deal more, and they eventually would also.

They all got the death penalty, except John, and he got life in prison.

Here's the problem with obtaining the best and the greatest things in life. They're always hedged in by great difficulties, like mountains and oceans and chariots of iron. They didn't overcome the enemy by politely giving up their seats, there was Blood involved.

Perhaps you've heard the story about butterflies and cocoons Perhaps you've heard it from me, in which case my editor will cut it out and there will be a blank space here. Someone saw a butterfly larva attempting to emerge from it's cocoon and become a real butterfly. It was straining, and stretching and clawing, and to the observer didn't seem to be making sufficient progress.

So he got out a tweezers, and began to pull away at the cocoon, making it easier for the butterfly to escape. And sure enough it did, with less time and effort.

But there was a problem. The butterfly was undeveloped. It seems that God set it up, so that if the larva wanted to achieve great things, like flying around on multi-colored wings in the afternoon sun, it could only achieve this by great struggles. The great struggle involved in escaping the cocoon, built strength into its little wings, and enabled it to fly.

But our good-hearted but witless observer didn't plan for this. Though his intentions were good, his interference crippled the natural process. Now the poor, helpless butterfly, although free from it's cocoon and able to walk around, was not able to fly anywhere at all, its wings dragging uselessly as he struggled along.

And the worst part, where a normal butterfly's greatest danger was flying through the air and avoiding the nets of butterfly collectors, this impaired butterfly had become easy and certain prey for the first bird that happened by looking for a tasty, easy snack.

So the lessons here are several and obvious. First of all, never give your child a tweezers, they have no business picking and poking and plucking around with things where they don't belong.

Secondly: That difficulty in your life right now, a financial setback, a love lost, a name tarnished, a cat that won't shut up, whatever it is, you need to know something here. That very battle you are fighting to keep the victory over your present problem, has been placed there by God in order for you to fight it through by faith, and your crown and glory are encased in the very heart of this struggle.

And thirdly, and this is as obvious as the nose on your face. If you're invited by a good friend to hockey game, this is not the time to be humble.

Get there early and remember, the best seats always cost more, but it's worth it.

 

Leaving Egypt

God said of Abraham in Gen. 18; “I know him and he shall command his children.”

God wants us so stable in Him that He knows with perfect confidence how we will respond in all circumstances.

We get there by withstanding trials.

Let's get all this rough stuff out of the way first.

God knows you can stand your present trial, otherwise He wouldn't have allowed it, however bitter it might be.

He knows our strengths, as well as our weaknesses.

He can measure these things out to the minutest detail.

And He gives us no trial greater than what we can bear.

Heb.11 tells us Moses forsook Egypt. Every believer will have to forsake his Egypt now and then.

We forsook Egypt when we forsook our unsaved world and came to Christ.

We forsake Egypt every time we forsake trusting in something more than Christ.

Egypt for Moses was everything he was trained and gifted to do.

He had become a highly trained military leader. He was the commanding general when Egypt fought successfully against Ethiopia. And now he was being groomed to take over as the new Pharaoh. When Moses forsook Egypt, he was not just forsaking the “world”, but was tempted with the same thing Satan offered Jesus, all the kingdoms of this world.

I was once a highly trained pizza flipper at an Italien restaurant, and once worked right along side the pizza flipping champion of North America. They wrote that right on the window of the restaurant. People would come in just to watch him flip, fling and catch that dough.

I was also once a highly trained and gifted maker of croissant roles at a French bakery.

I wasn't being groomed to take over the bakery, but I was commonly referred to as the “Croissant King” of La Boulangerie. No small feat. Probably made over a million of them in my tenure and retired holding world records that will probably never be broken.

One day I was called upon to leave all that behind to go and preach the Gospel in other nations.  Those were glorious years building 2 churchs in Canada and 2 churches in South Africa.  I admit, leaving Egypt on that occasion wasn't forsaking much. Didn't miss the leaks or cinnamon rolls.

I was once also a highly trained radio talk show host, both in Canada and South Africa. I saw myself as a hybrid of a Christian Rush Limbaugh, Robin Williams, and Bob Larsen. Sorry, that would make me a tribrid which you will not find in your spell-checker for reasons that can only be disclosed at a much latter date. But certain hyper-charismatic church leaders in town saw me differently. They viewed my talk show as a direct threat to their bottom line, and I was once again forced into early retirement.

Years later I had to leave another Egypt. This time I was a highly trained and gifted evangelist.

I didn't forsake Egypt voluntarily, I was deported under very mysterious circumstances that can only be revealed when a time capsule is opened many years from now. Once again, I was seen as a direct threat to an entire church organization, for reasons that cannot be divulged until someone discovers what that actual threat was.

Moses chose to suffer affliction with the people of God rather than enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. He chose rejection, persecution, loss of dignity and respect, a secure income, probably a good health and dental plan, a 401K, braces for the kids and a church van paid off. He gave this up for what? To suffer? Perhaps he should have chosen door #3 instead, Monty.

This is heroic stuff indeed. He actually chose reproach for Christ over the treasures of Egypt.

He chose to do the right thing, to take the more difficult, God-ordained way, than to become the richest and most powerful man in the world.

He chose this, he wasn't forced into it. Oh please, tempt me Lord.

And he made this choice based on what? He was trained in all the history and glory of Egypt.

Egypt was the only culture he knew for his first forty years. The only thing he knew about the Hebrews, was filtered through the perspective and prejudices of the Egyptian educational system.

He couldn't Google it and get a more balanced perspective.

This was a leap of faith based on nothing more than a deep rooted conviction that could only have been placed there by God. He saw an Egyptian mistreating a Hebrew and he stepped in and killed the Egyptian. He chose for God before he could know much about the team he was choosing.

“By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured, as seeing him who is invisible.”

Egypt was the e-Bay of the world in that day. It was Amazon, Disneyland, it was NASCAR and the World Series. And he left it all for something invisible. He chose before he could have a clear idea what he was choosing, except an inner witness and calling from God to something greater than he could ever hope to imagine.

Speaking of Egypt. One of their gods was named “Pasht”, which was a cat-headed goddess. This is why cats still think they are gods today and still think they should be worshipped. If you've ever owned a cat, it will soon become obvious to you that they never got over their Egyptian roots, which is another good reason to leave your Egypt, and your cat if possible.

It's in between the time of forsaking one thing and obtaining the better that our faith is forged and tested. Moses spent forty years taking care of sheep, hiding from the law with a bounty on his head, hoping in something invisible and hoping he could remain invisible too.

There was a robber in Florida that was running from the police. As they were rapidly closing in on him, he was hoping he could become invisible, so he took cover in a pond. Thought no one could see him. He was doing OK until an alligator noticed him and ate him. I'll let you put an end on that, maybe even have a contest for best summation. Send it to www.bestsummation.com

Chrysanthemum forsook his father's idols and his favor by choosing to follow Christ. For punishment, his father locked him in a dark cellar for days, but he could still be heard singing worship to God. His father tried everything to turn his son from the faith, to turn him back to Egypt where he could enjoy normal life again, and one day inherit his father's wealth, but nothing worked.

He tried surrounding his son with every worldly delight he could offer, but Chyranthes held out for that invisible kingdom his father knew nothing of. Finally, his father brought in Daria, an idolatrous woman of uncommon beauty in hope of getting his son to forget Christ. Instead of giving into Egypt, and Daria's charms, he began witnessing to her about Christ until she was converted, baptized, and later married him. They became a powerful team, witnessing together to others held in Roman bondage.

Maybe you're facing a situation today where you have to leave a certain Egypt, or maybe, like me, you're being rudely deported, and you're left wondering in that invisible, uncertain no-man's land of in-between. Like the Children of Israel, half way across the dry riverbed of the Red Sea, too late to kiss and make up with Pharaoh, and seemingly to late to make it to the other side ahead of a charging army.

It's like the trapeze artist, flying through the air with the greatest of ease, that daring young man on the flying trapeze. And there comes the point after he's taken a full swing, and then high in the air he releases, spins around, and he's looking for the next bar he's supposed to catch, hoping the guy who's supposed to swing it out to him isn't on a coffee break, or called in sick that day.

And that's where we suspect God has gone sometimes. Not doing His job. And we're left hanging in the uncomfortable air of midway to somewhere.

They say, and of course they always know, that if you are drifting down the Niagara River and nearing the famous Falls, there is a point of no return, the current will pull you over the falls.

All you can do then is bring your camera and enjoy the ride.

Copyright 2007 by A.A. Kern

Making Lemonade

1Chron.4:23; “These were the potters, and those that dwell among plants and hedges: there they dwelt with the king for his work.”

Did you ever wonder at the strange place in life God has placed you? Maybe you used to be an important, foreign ambassador traveling around the world in private jets and staying in five star hotels, and now you're just working at a convenience store with a crabby boss and gossiping women who play country western music all day.

Or maybe you used to be a top advisor for an Arabian prince, and he wouldn't think of closing a multi-billion dollar deal without your expert advice and approval, and now you're working at a day care center in the slums for minimum wage, where low-life parents want to chat with you about UFO's and wheat field patterns.

I used to be a famous evangelist, traveling around the world and preaching and seeing people get saved and dramatic healings and deliverances, and now I sit around and make up funny stories that hopefully will minister to others that find themselves in strange places in the providence of God.

I've learned through life's hard lessons, that wherever you are, God knows where you're at, He hasn't forgotten about you, He has a bigger plan for you than where you are, and you're not there for no reason.

Someone sang a song, “If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with.”

Don't think about what the author meant, that's gross. Think of it as saying, “If you can't be where you want to be in life right now, try to love where God has placed you for now until He puts you someplace better.”

I was once in a bunker in Vietnam during a heavy enemy mortar attack, wishing I was in Minnesota eating a Thanksgiving meal with my family. Bombs were dropping and we were hunkered down for our lives. I wasn't even supposed to be there—I had less than a month left until ETD, that's military talk for “Estimated Time of Departure”. Or in our own lingo: I was a “short-timer”. By this time I should have been already out of the bush and working some rear support job, but there I was, lying in a hastily erected steal bunker hoping my name was not going to appear on that black granite Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington D.C. I saw that wall for the first time recently, and my name wasn't on it.

I suspect that the military was still angry with me for making them look bad, because I supposedly got caught buying pot in Da Dang City on my three day in-country R&R (that's rest & relaxation for you civilians) to China Beach, and that's why they just left me out there to find my own way home. I'll tell you the whole sordid story another time, I wouldn't want you to think you were reading the writings of a former pot head. Obviously, it was all a big misunderstanding, and my spending a night in a Marine prison all could have been ironed out if they just would have listened to my side of the story.

But there I was, still in the front lines of combat. The next morning, I began finding my own way home. I threw my helmet and M-16 rifle aside, got on a helicopter without permission that was going into the rear. When questioned by a Major on board why I was going in, I said, “Dental appointment”.

You see, I was some place I didn't want to be, wishing I was somewhere else, anywhere else. Even in a dental chair.

I imagine when George Armstrong Custer and his men rode into the Little Big Horn in South Dakota, and they were completely surrounded by Indians, their last thought might have been, “I sure wish I was somewhere else, anywhere else but here.” I remember sitting in grade school at Our Lady Victory School endlessly daydreaming out the window wishing I was anywhere else, playing baseball or swimming at Pebble Lake instead of listening to Sister Mary Peter drone on about the meaning of extreme unction in catechism class.

“Doesn't work up to capability” is what they always wrote on my report card. Who could, if you're someplace you don't want to be wishing you were somewhere else?

I hate to be the one to say we're not justified to think like this, and that we're wasting valuable time by always wishing we were somewhere else, but that's what the great saints of Heb.11:13 did.

“ These people all died controlled and sustained by their faith, but not having received the tangible fulfillment of [God’s] promises, only having seen it and greeted it from a great distance by faith, and all the while acknowledging and confessing that they were strangers and temporary residents and exiles upon the earth.”

They died in faith, not having received the promises, they saw them afar off, they were persuaded by them, they embraced what they couldn't see.

So they traded that which they could see for that which they couldn't.

They were living in one place, a place they could see. But they knew that place was only temporary, not where they wanted to be forever, but they kept their faith while in that place, hoping for the next and better place God was going to take them to. That's called “Keeping the faith, baby.”

Faith untried may be true faith, but it will remain a small faith.

Faith never prospers so well as when all things are against it, and it doesn't cave in.

No faith is so precious as that which lives and triumphs in adversity.

Florea calmly told the prison guards that she couldn't work on the Sabbath, it was God's day. His Romanian guards responded by repeatedly beating him until he lost the use of his arms and legs. He could only move his head. He was hoping he could be somewhere else.

Now that he couldn't work, he was forced to stay in his cell all day. He couldn't even feed himself, relying on other prisoners to help him. But he didn't lose the victory. When other prisoners complained, he would encourage them and say, “If the outlook is bad, try to look up. When Stephen was being stoned,” he told them, “Stephen looked up and saw Jesus standing at the right hand of God.”

I suspect Stephan wanted to be somewhere else when he was being stoned, and Jesus opened heaven to show him where his faith was taking him.

A Christian isn't automatically privileged with a comfortable set of circumstances. Nice home, nice family, good health. A real Christian is one who can maintain a good attitude by faith under all circumstances. He says, “I wish I was somewhere else, but until I get there, I'm going to maintain a good attitude where I'm at, believing God has me here for a purpose, and that things won't always be this way.

If we fixate on our circumstances, it keeps us from on having a heavenly outlook. Then we are prone to depression, despair and hopelessness,and we lose confidence that God is at work in our lives to bring about something so much better than we could ever imagine. With right perspective, instead of dreading our circumstances, we're excited to see what God is going to do in them.

So if you're some place you don't want to be this morning, maybe a sociopath is after you, or someone is shooting at you when you're doing your grocery shopping, or maybe you're laying in a bunker wishing you were eating turkey, or you wish you could play third base for the Yankees.

Remember, if you'll just hold on where you're at, give it your best where you are, God will bring you through to something much better than you had before all this mess began.

You know how the old saying goes: “If you fall down off that horse, just get right back up and make lemonade.”

Blackie

Hos.14:7; “Those who dwell under His shadow shall return..”
This is speaking about making a comeback.
Like flowers beaten down by a heavy rain, and as they bow their heads in seeming defeat, they make a surprising comeback by the next morning, and they're stronger yet.

Maybe you've endured some crushing, heavy defeat in your life.
Your head was bowed in defeat, you were wilting away into hopelessness.
You felt like Michael Vick at a dog show.
Your only hope is to get under God's shadow, draw close in intimacy, and He will soon revive you.

It's coming, as soon as the next rainstorm, and when it does you'll be able to open up your little petals again.

Ps. 107: 9; “For He satisfies the longing soul and fills the hungry soul with good.”

The Chambonnais were French Huguenots. Many of the French allowed themselves to be deceived by the “night and fog” propaganda by which the Germans concealed their death camps. That was the easiest thing to do, it is always the easiest path, to allow yourself to be deceived by circumstances around you, so that when you do nothing to stop the evil, at least you don't feel too bad about it, you simply weren't aware.

What's that saying: “All it takes for evil to triumph is for a few good men to do nothing”

The Chambonnais didn't consider themselves heroes, although they were. They put their lives at great risk by sheltering and hiding their Jewish neighbors who were themselves in great danger of being hunted down and gassed. There are some time today who deny the holocaust existed. There are also some today who believe the Twin Towers were brought down by UFO's.

I remember when my family and I first went to South Africa as missionaries to start a new church. One of the leaders of our church organization was set up in Cape Town. The big rage in the church world back in the 90's was the “Toronto Blessing”, or as it was also called, “Brownsville.” I had done some research on this phenomenon before leaving Canada, and determined it was not a genuine move of God. Even though we were charismatic, I thought, and my church organization thought, walking like a chicken and howling like a werewolf was probably not something God was interested in having us do.

I remember praying for a man in one of those churches. He had asthma, and after I prayed he said he felt an immediate relief—he could breathe deeply with no hindrances or pain. Then he began to laugh, and someone in the audience began laughing as well. And then I began laughing—something overtook me and I couldn't stop for ten or fifteen minutes. I know this happened, because the next morning I awoke with a terrible pain in my side.

It wasn't the kind of laughing you might engage in if someone was telling you a good mother-in-law joke, or a good joke about the best ways to torment a cat, or something fun like that, but this was a mocking kind of laugh, like someone was laughing AT you. It felt like the devil himself was laughing at us, and I was forced to laugh with him.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for laughing. And definitely for people getting healed. When I was growing up as a kid, I had a neighbor friend named Bruce. Bruce had something I'd never encountered before—a sense of humor. He had the ability to find a lighter side to everything, it was like having a real live Johnny Carson living right next door. I envied Bruce and his sense of humor.

I had no sense of humor at all. You explain the punch line a few times and you give up. Raised in a strictly Roman Catholic home, taught in school by no-nonsense, uptight Franciscan nuns, who's idea of fun was saying an extra rosary at lunchtime. So I grew up a very serious, fearful and humorless little boy. It was always my dream that God would give me a sense of humor. I don't know how and when God did this, or how much had to do with my hair being red, but somehow God answered that simple little child-like prayer of mine many years ago. At least some people think He did.

When we arrived in South Africa, one of our leaders was into this Brownsville movement. This was disturbing to us, as he was operating stealthily about his involvement, and was cunningly bringing other churches in our Fellowship into it as well. The easiest thing to do would have been to just go along with it, do a little “fog and night” routine, yuck it up with those who were deceiving their leaders, and pretending we were all on the same page. That would have been much easier, and more fun.

But when I started pretending I could think like that, my wife realed me in. We decided to make a stand, and were sternly warned by our own pastor that if we did, “This whole thing will blow up in our faces.” Well, we did, and it did, and my old pastor was right because he was one who made sure it blew up in our faces. But it was still the right thing to do.

Varia was in prison. She was thin and pale, but her eyes still shone with the love of God. She was only nineteen and hadn't been saved that long. But even as a young convert, she chose to make the more difficult road her own, because to her, truth was the only course she could follow.

They took everything away from her except her clothes she was wearing. Her sister asked Varia if she regretted what she'd done. She answered without hesitation, “No, and if they free me today I would do it again. Don't think that I suffer. I am just glad that God loves me so much and gives me the joy to endure for His name.” The last her family had heard from her, she was to be sent off to a Siberian work camp for dissidents.

I was going to share with you the time I suffered over the loss of a small dog that followed me home, but in lieu of Varia's story, I would feel silly even bringing it up. It was a little black dog of a cross cultural breed. When I tied it up behind our house, it only pulled on its chain and cried, so I just led it tag along with me wherever I went.

This is nothing like Varia's story, and shouldn't even be permitted to be told here. She experienced real suffering that I can only imagine. Mine is just a typical little kid story about one of the first times his little heart was broken. I'm sorry for even bringing it up on the same page as Varia's.

Anyway, I called the little guy, “Blackie”, not very original, but you have to remember this was back in the days before I had any sense of humor, or much creativity at all. My first crushing blow with Blackie came when my father told me I wouldn't be allowed to keep him. I'd always been allowed to keep turtles and frogs and things like that, but a dog was not going to be permitted.

Imagine being Varia, only nineteen, a young convert to Christianity, kept away from her family even at Christmas time, growing thinner and paler by the day, and she's talking about the joy of being chosen to suffer for Christ? How she could smile in the face of such evil surroundings and loneliness was a real testimony for anyone who has ever had to suffer for Christ.

I had tears in my eyes at the thought of having to give up “Blackie”. So I decided to take him for one last walk together, up to the playground at Adams Elementary School. Blackie had never seen the school I went to kindergarten at, and played baseball at, or the nearby corner grocery where I sucked on black cherry Popsicles. I didn't know if he could appreciate all that, probably just having someone to run around the neighborhood with was enough for him.

I didn't have a leash for Blackie, we hadn't gotten that far in our relationship, and as were headed for the school playground, Blackie rushed out into the street. I don't have to tell you what happened next, because your imagination has already raced ahead of me and given you a good idea. Or a bad idea. Besides that, I've been warned by the Animal Cruelty League not to include any more sad or abusive stories about pets here. Anyway, I grieved for many days. It was so bad I couldn't wait for school to start so I could put my thoughts elsewhere.

Christianity is not a hundred yard dash. It's an endurance marathon. I was a long distance, cross country runner in high school. Once in a very important race, I was in the lead and feeling like I was invincible. As I ran past the coach, I leapt for joy and over-confidence, as if to say, “Look at me coach, no one can catch me.” But most of the race was still in front of us, and as it progressed, the more serious runners, who weren't wasting their energy showing off, leaping for their coach, eventually were able to pass me, and I finished tenth.

I had a happy, leaping sprint, but I hadn't planned for the long haul.

There are times we soar like eagles without growing weary. There are other times we dive-bomb like a bad kite day. These times, as I guess where you're at this morning, or you wouldn't be reading stuff like this, we do well to walk without fainting, to take the next step without giving up and to keep going until we gather our strength again.

And your last walk won't end up like Blackies'. 
 
 

Selling Tickets
 

It's Veterans Day. Don't know if that's going to play into my writings today or not. I'm a veteran, of course, Vietnam infantry, Custer's Last Stand unit. That's what we were told when we first got into country: “This is the 2^nd battalion, 7^th Cavalry, George Armstrong Custer's old unit”, we were told. Shouldn't be a problem unless we see Indians.

I didn't join the army for any patriotic reasons, love of country, or because I thought Vietnam was a worthwhile cause to give my life for. I was just a naïve nineteen year from Minnesota, who got lovestruck over some girl who dumped me for another guy and I joined the Army as sort of a revenge thing.

Which brings me to the subject of revenge, vengeance. The Bible has much to say on the subject, starting with the most well known in Heb.10:30. “For we know Him Who said, Vengeance is Mine [retribution and the meeting out of full justice rest with Me]; I will repay [I will exact the compensation], says the Lord. And again, The Lord will judge and determine and solve and settle the cause and the cases of His people.”

I've had the misfortune of being involved with a sociopath assistant pastor in my day, who made it his sworn duty to destroy my life and have me disfellowshipped. If you ever find yourself in a situation where you have a sociopath assistant pastor, you need to learn to sit very low in your pew, try not to attract attention to yourself by having an opinion on anything, in fact, you might want to work on becoming completely invisible.

He is very good at what he does, as most sociopaths are. After they get you in their targets, they squeeze the trigger and splatter your life across the church parking lot. If this subject intrigues you, I would suggest a very excellent book entitled, “The Sociopath Next Door”. If not, you might want to locate a copy of “Ten Ways to Improve Your Attitude When Life Lays You a Rotten Egg”.

A friend of mine, after having a similar experience, wanted to take this sociopath pastor out back and beat the “you know what” out of him. I immediately thought this would be a grand idea, and I even offered to sell tickets, as I know there would be many others whose lives and ministries have been destroyed by him, who would love to witness this kind act of sweet vengeance.

But this is the sort of thing, that if you don't carry it out quickly, is not likely to happen, especially if you're a Christian, and if you have to deal with that nagging thing called conscience and conviction, and scriptures like I just quoted in Heb.10. Especially if you quote from the Amplified Bible, which leaves no loopholes to sneak out and smack the guy anyway, because maybe you could claim you were a little hazy on the exact interpretation. You don't need to read it twice.

I confess I've had fantasies about how that vengeance would have played out. Not to mention the money I could have made on the ticket sales.

I got in a fight once, when I was young. My nose is still slightly bent from the only punch thrown. The kid was stealing apples off our tree in the backyard. I chased him for three blocks, throwing apples at him. When I finally caught him, well, it was like a dog chasing a car—what's he going to do if he catches it? What did I do? It wasn't even worth selling tickets for. I tried to hide my bloody shirt under the bed, but my Mom found it. Vengeance certainly wasn't mine that day.

Heb.10:32-34.  But be ever mindful of the days gone by in which, after you were first spiritually enlightened, you endured a great and painful struggle, Sometimes being yourselves a gazingstock, publicly exposed to insults and abuse and distress, and sometimes claiming fellowship and making common cause with others who were so treated.  For you did sympathize and suffer along with those who were imprisoned, and you bore cheerfully the plundering of your belongings and the confiscation of your property, in the knowledge and consciousness that you yourselves had a better and lasting possession.”

I don't know how cheerfully I endured insults and abuse, or the “plundering of my belongings.” When my family was taken hostage in our home by three gunmen in Johannesburg, we watched from our bed where we were all tied up to together, as our computers, video cameras, cell phones, cash, and anything else that looked good to them was piled into our 2006 Toyota Condor and drove off into the night.

We prayed and sang in Zulu, and prayed for those who were plundering us, and invited them to our church opening in a black township where they probably lived themselves. They were probably thinking: “Dumb Americans, sure we'll come to your church, and steal all your expensive PA equipment and keyboards.” Mostly we invited them to our church opening because it was our way of confessing by faith that we'd be alive to have one.

How does it feel to be plundered? Not just of physical property, but that someone can come into your home, humiliate and threaten your family with rape and murder, and you have to helplessly stand by and watch them, do whatever they want to do, or of you resist, hear a gun go off in your ear, and your family's last sight of you is something the sociopath did to you, splatter your life across the parking lot, only this would be a more realistic splattering on the bedroom floor. You feel plundered in every sense of the word. Cheerfully? No, not there yet.

“Do not, therefore, fling away your fearless confidence, for it carries a great and glorious compensation of reward. For you have need of steadfast patience and endurance, so that you may perform and fully accomplish the will of God, and thus receive and carry away [and enjoy to the full] what is promised.

I love that about confidence, God says it's “fearless”. Because when you don't have it, you feel fearful. What a difference. All of life is lived between confidence and fear. During the robbery we chose to speak faith, sing, build up our faith, and God gave us confidence. The only other option was to come under the sheer fear, murder and violence that was in those young men.

“...and if he draws back and shrinks in fear, My soul has no delight or pleasure in him. But our way is not that of those who draw back to eternal misery (perdition) and are utterly destroyed, but we are of those who believe [who cleave to and trust in and rely on God..”

The term “to draw back” is the picture of a sailor pulling back the sail. The believer is like a sailor that should be letting out the sail on his catamaran as he's sailing off the coast of Antigua. When a believer pulls back his sails, he gets stranded by things like discouragement, persecution, hardship, depression. The word picture is for the believer to fully let out his sails of faith and not draw back.

The French Huguenots were persecuted and betrayed. When the French finally plundered and destroyed them, acting totally like sociopaths' themselves, they destroyed the best of their manhood and womanhood. The Huguenots went into battle, facing certain death from overwhelming odds. Their motto was, “If God be for us, who can be against us?” France lost their very best in the Huguenots, and they've never recovered to this day. The sociopath motto was the same then: “What we can't control, we'll destroy.”

We have far better odds than the Huguenots of surviving our current trying situation. We're not likely to die, or even shed blood for what we're presently going through. If God is on our side, regardless of what is going on, no matter how perplexing, how confusing, how vexing and unexplainable, it's not any of these things to God.

It's like going up in an airplane, and you're going through a cloud bank. You look out the window and can't see anything. You have to hope the pilot, who's not flying by sight but by instruments and computers, knows where he's going. And then you rise above the clouds, and you can see clearly, and things make a lot more sense because you're no longer blinded by the clouds. You get the picture.

In Psalms 109; David wasn't exactly in a forgiving mood toward those who wronged him.

9 “Let his children be fatherless and his wife a widow. 10 Let his children be continual vagabonds [as was Cain] and beg; let them seek their bread and be driven far from their ruined homes. 11 Let the creditor and extortioner seize all that he has; and let strangers (barbarians and foreigners) plunder the fruits of his labor. 12 Let there be none to extend or continue mercy and kindness to him, neither let there be any to have pity on his fatherless children.”

I've always thought I would have been much better suited for the Old Testament type of vengance. I seem to have “too much in the basment” for these New Testement times. If you don't know what that phrase means, “too much in the basment”, and it's not high crimes and misdemeanors in your church to watch a movie, then watch “Rocky Balboa” and you'll understand it.

And the girl who dumped me and I revenged her by joining the army? She called me thirty-eight years later to apologize for what she'd done. Imagine that?

  She won't try that again.

Speed Bumps

“In hope he believed against hope”. Rom.4:18.

Abraham had to hope when he had not one single circumstance that was promising.

Another translation has it, “Under hopeless circumstances he hopefully believed.”

You might have figured today we're going to look at “hope”.

Abraham had a promise of God which gave him hope.

We have thousands of promises from God, and He is not able to go back on any of them.

“He commonly brings His help in our greatest extremity, that His finger may plainly appear in our deliverance. And this method He chooses that we may not trust upon anything that we see or feel.”

C. H. Von Bogatzky

I quoted that mostly because I love this guys' name. Pronounce his last name out loud and you'll know what I mean.

Job lost everything, first of all his possessions, his cattle, his source of income, then his house when it was blown down by a freak hurricane, and he may have been uninsured, which also took the life of all ten of his children. Then his health completely failed, probably brought on by all the stress in his life and he may not have had health insurance, and finally even his wife turned against him. Personally, I could hold on through anything except my wife turning against me.

It could safely be said that he didn't have one thing in the natural that would indicate to him that God was anywhere in sight, or if He was, that He wasn't against Him. He had lost everything that a human being needs to give him a sense of purpose, well-being, sanity and hope. Outside of God he would have just become another bearded, backpacking homeless wandering bum showing up at a Salvation Army rescue mission.

To his credit, in this condition, he boldly proclaimed, “The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord.” Heck, that's hard enough to do when we bounce a check and the bank charges us $15. Think of the poor guy in a re-education camp in Siberia, pounding bricks all day, growing pale and sickly from the cold and malnutrition, and thankful for an old, worn out shoe to chew on, and you get a snapshot of where Job was at.

He also said, “Though He slay me, yet will I worship Him.” Staggering faith. This is so “Jesus-on-the cross-Christ-like” that it makes the rest of us look like a whining, hysterical woman who came in second at a Goodwill bin on “super save Tuesday. You don't think that could get nasty? Just today I heard on the radio about three women who died in China when they were crushed to death in a supermarket during a cooking oil sale.

But let's face it, this thing began to weigh on Job. It's one thing to have an initial burst of energy when a crushing blow comes into your life. But what about next week, or next month and the “blow” hasn't turned into a blessing yet, but still hangs over our heads like an unwanted house guest who just announced that he's decided to extend his stay another month.

Then, into his completely wretched life, that not even a brilliant fiction writer could make worse for him, come three old friends. A friend? At a time like this? My son-in-law gave me this thought.

Imagine how valuable a real friend, or even a half a friend, or even someone who pretends to be a friend and smiles at you a little, or even someone who thinks you're just OK, or even someone who will bother talking to you at all in your pathetic condition, or even someone who isn't slandering your name and throwing old shoes at you? You get the picture. You've heard the phrase, “Beggars can't be choosers”. This could apply here.

Job would have to think, “Friends? This is a Godsend”. Imagine his loneliness—no more business connections, no church connections, no family connections, not even a wife, or even an irritating cat. Nothing! And now three friends?

And they were even sensitive to his situation. They came and didn't say a word, they just sat there with him for seven days, absorbing some of his pain. Had they just kept their mouth shut, it would have stayed perfect. But soon they were accusing Job of all kinds of things, and Job begins a long debate with them about his innocence.

But here's the part that most impresses me. The temptation for Job to compromise here would be enormous. Who would blame him in these conditions if he just lowered his standards a little for the sake of a little companionship? “Yah, you're right guys, I messed up. God's judging me here because I wasn't quite as holy as you are. Nobody's perfect, you know, except you guys of course.” Can you hear the lips puckering up?

That would have been enough to please his friends, and from there they could have had a group hug and been good buddies and all. How he must have craved the comfort of their companionship and friendship—just someone to share his burdens with and have some understanding.

But he wouldn't go there, he wouldn't compromise his integrity for a little acceptance. He held his own and waited for God to vindicate him.

Jesus said in Matt.10:25, “It is enough for a disciple to be like his Master.”

What was Jesus like? “Despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.”

“Foxes have holes...but the Son of man has nowhere to lay His head.”

“If they called the master Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of His household?”

This is pretty gruesome stuff. So what do we need to rise above all this and keep the victory?

Hope and encouragement. If you're one God has gifted in these areas, you will always be

employed.

When the Communists took over Vietnam after I left there in 1970, Pastor Nguyen Lap Ma refused to give up the Christian Missionary Alliance Church in Can Tho. He was arrested, with his whole family, and put under house arrest in an isolated village, with no mail, for twelve years.

Eventually, he was able to receive mail again, and he was thrilled to learn that Voice of the Martyrs had published his story in their magazine along with his address. He began receiving over three thousand letters of encouragement from believers all over the world.

“I have read every letter with prayers and tears, looking up every Scripture that was shared. God has strengthened and helped us,” Pastor Lap Ma said. “So we keep hoping in Him and fixing our eyes on Jesus. While we are living, God uses us to comfort the other suffering Christians.”

Encouragement and hope is a necessary fuel for believers. A little of it goes a long way, especially in difficult times when you think everyone is too busy to care about you and what you may be going through.

Let's talk speed bumps for a minute, then I'll join my wife for some lunch—tuna on toast, one of my favorites. One of my daughter's first cars was a Mini—not one of those newer ones, but the old ones that was spray-painted green and looked like a clown car. It was was so small, you could probably buzz through Walmart with it and use it as a shopping cart. This car was so small, my daughter actually got it hung up on a speed bump. There it was like a teeter-totter. Can't remember how she finally got it down.

Ever felt like your life was hung up on a speed bump? When I'm made president of the world, one of my first executives decisions will be to eliminate all speed bumps, worldwide. Until then, we'll have to put up with them, and realize that sometimes our lives will get hung up on one.

I once read about a policeman in South Africa that was chasing after a criminal in his police vehicle, hit a speed bump and flipped over. So you should always remember when you hit a speed bump in life, slow down a little and don't flip out. Life won't always be the way it is now.

But at least one day we'll look back and realize that was just a nasty bump in the road.

Someone With a Face

The prophet Daniel looked down through the centuries and spoke concerning a vision God had given him. It is recorded in Dan.12:4, “But you, Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book until the time of the end; many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase.”

Speaking of these last days, he is saying that knowledge and travel shall explode with unprecedented speed. Anyone who even has an Atari knowledge of the capabilities of Google and the Internet, and its seemingly endless potential yet untapped, can get a feeling for this. From the Garden of Eden until 1900, about 6000 years, men progressed from walking to riding horses and harnessing them to buggies. Not a big jump. In the span of just 100 more years, man has leaped to the automobile, supersonic jets, and the space shuttle to other planets. We've gone from the radio, to the phonograph, to eight track tapes, to cassette tapes, to CD's to i pods, all in just one generation.

Things are speeding up.

Who would have thought China would be a major world superpower even twenty-five years ago? China has a government-mandated, one child policy, and of course most parents prefer a boy to carry on the family name. Girls are expendable, and usually aborted at a rate that would make even Planned Parenthood envious. So now they've got all these young men, with not enough young, marriageable age women to go around, so instead of putting their energy into a wife and starting a family, they opt for the military instead.

I know what this option is like. Once I had a girlfriend in college who took my car to visit another boyfriend in another state, and destroyed my car to boot. So I took the energy I would have spent on her and joined the army instead and went to Vietnam and fought a war I didn't know a thing about. My mother sent me a Christmas package with a newspaper clipping of this girl getting married as I sat on a fire support base near Saigon. Yup, I sure showed that girl, she never tried that again.

So I know what these young Chinese men felt. With no girlfriend available, because their potential wives have been aborted, they joined the military instead. Now, unless China is planning on becoming the world's first gay superpower, their present day military is identified in the Bible as the “Kings of the East” that will field an army of 200,000,000 strong that will march across the dry riverbed of the Euphrates River and put the squeeze on Israel.

Things are speeding up, and so are people's lives.

My wife and I, from living in South Africa eight years, have instituted in our lives what we call the “Ibis hour”. An Ibis is a weird looking and sounding bird that looks like it survived the dinosaur age.

If you saw an ibis next to a Edmontosaurus, a type of dinosaur discovered near Edmonton, Alberta, Canada where we once spent five years starting a new church, or next to a Lesothosaurus, another type of dinosaur in South Africa where we started two churches, or next to a Tyrannosaurus, you'd say, “Yup, looks like one of those dinosaur birds.”

We once had a black evangelist friend down from the UK to preach in my South African church, and when he first saw an ibis in our front yard, his eyes got so big he could have starred in his own version of “The Little Rascals”. “That thing should be locked up in a zoo someplace”, he shouted, refusing to get out of the car.

Anyway, the ibis had a predictable schedule, that around about five o'clock every afternoon, it would start making it's very distinguishable cawing noises, which I guess was a rallying cry to all the other ibis's in the area that it was time to call it a day from pecking around with their long beaks in the dirt all day looking for little bugs, and return to the high branches of tall trees where they slept for the night. It was also our signal to heat up some water for the French press and sit and have a relaxing coffee and quiet time together. It was our way of slowing down in a rapid, stressful world.

My life has slowed down a lot lately. I used to fly around the world preaching in revival services. Now I'm experiencing a “forced retirement”, and finally have the time to answer all those junk mail surveys about how well you think the city's sewer system is working. But I also have more time to seek God and pursue another life-long passion I've had: writing.

Peter found time alone with God on a rooftop, Paul spent seventeen years in Arabia, Luther found an upper room at Wittenburg. Jesus once took Peter, James and John to a mountaintop and gave them a further revelation of Himself. Whether the prayer closet, the upper room, the mountaintop, or drinking Kenyan Blue Mountain roast watching ibis's with your spouse, we need to take time to get quiet and alone with God and drink in the special dew from heaven.

This is one thing we'll learn about God—He actually cares a lot for us. In Ezekiel 19, we see God weeping over His people, just like Jesus did over Jerusalem when He walked here in the flesh. Who really cares about you? Hopefully a spouse if you're married. My wife and I care a great deal about each other. Family usually cares a lot. I have a special friend who I'm not able to even mention his first name for fear of getting him in trouble from his church organization, but he cares about me.

Do people at your school or job really care about you? I have daughter in high school, and she tells me, that outside of having at least one good friend, nobody else cares about you unless you can do something for them. High school has always been about getting young people ready for the real world. Does your church, your pastor care about you? Don't take anyone caring about you for granted. You might discover one day there are less than you imagined.

Or maybe you'll discover one day there were more than you imagined. When you die, people will gather together and say many wonderful things about you that may not even be true, but who's going to correct them at a funeral? Of course, if you're attending your own funeral, and you're the one in the box who they all came to show their respect for, it won't matter much what they say because you won't be able to enjoy them or thank them or even smell the pretty flowers they will bring. And then they'll go eat potato salad and say some more nice things about you.

I heard the story about a man that obviously cared about his girlfriend, at least he was kissing her like he cared. But she bit his lower lip clean off. Either she was zealously caring about him back, or she had some intimacy issues. They arrested her and set bail at $25,000, so her caring has been put into serious question.

I heard another story that comes out of Iraq that you'll never read about in the regular media, because it makes the American military look good. Apparently some Islamic terrorists killed an Iraqi family, including shooting in the head a small girl. But the girl miraculously survived. An American soldier rescued her and personally carried her into the intensive care unit at their military hospital.

The little Iraqi girl is recovering just fine, thanks especially to this one particular American soldier. I don't even know his name, but I'll bet that little girl does. She refuses to see or talk to anyone, and totally clams up and is frightened by the presence of anyone, except for that one American soldier that carried her and held her and showed her that he really cared for one little girl in the midst of a bloody and costly war.

We all need at least that one special one in our lives that we know really knows us and really cares about us.

A young mother was tucking her little girl into bed for the night, and as she left the room, she heard the little girl begin to whimper.

Thinking something was wrong, the mother asked, “What's wrong honey, why are you crying?”

“I'm lonely”, said the little girl.

“You don't have to be lonely, dear, Jesus is right there with you”, she assured her.

The mother went to leave again, and again the little girl began to quietly weep.

The mother asked, “No what's the matter honey?”

“I'm still lonely”, the little girl said.

“But dear, I already told you, Jesus is right there with you”, the mother assured her again.

“Yes, I know Jesus is here with me”, said the little girl. “But I want someone with a face.”

Hearts' Blood

There was this popular local artist who was renowned for his vivid colors in his painting, especially his extraordinary red. No other artist could quite match him for his rich hues. After the artists death, they discovered a wound near his heart, and thus they uncovered the mystery of the unique red color in his paintings.

No great achievement in life can ever be attained, nothing of any lasting worth can be accomplished in life without the cost of heart blood. The Bible says, “Whatever your hand finds to do, do with all of your heart.”

I read the story of two dogs that demonstrated an amazing devotion to their master. Gary Lorenz had disappeared in September from his home in Cotopaxi. He had Alzheimer's disease. His body was eventually found after three weeks, still carefully guarded by his two golden retrievers, Pippin and Merry. They'd lost nearly ten pounds during their vigil, but they never lost sight of their loyalty to their master. Need I elaborate here about loyalty to our Master, or can I assume you've already connected the dots?

Then there was the dog from Des Moines, Iowa who shot his master on the opening day of pheasant season by accidentally stepping on his shotgun and tripping the trigger, putting over one hundred pellets into the calf of his master's leg. James Harris is said to be recovering just fine from the surgery. The dog has since apologized, has submitted himself for therapy, and is working out restitution.

 

  I had a loyal dog one time, a cocker spaniel runt named “Buff”. He was named for his color, not his floor cleaning abilities. I mention that because I've sometimes referred to those little toy poodle, Pomeranian type dogs as being good for putting on the end of a broom handle and using them for mopping under beds. I apologize to all true dog lovers that might find this insensitive and verbally abusive, and I would strongly advise you to keep your pet away from reading my writings, ban them if necessary, to avoid any possible psychological damage they might incur. Further, let it be noted that no animals have been actually harmed in the creation of or production of these writings, and it should also be recorded that I reside with a cat in my home that I really don't fully appreciate, but nevertheless I have fed on a number of occasions.

To further build my resume on this sensitive subject, I once helped my female Boxer, Clementine, deliver her first litter of puppies. She was in a total panic, had no birthing classes, Lamaze, no breathing techniques, only instinct that told her this was not going to be easy and it wasn't. Out they came, with me acting as mid-wife and birthing coach. As each one came out, she dutifully gobbled up the protective sacks, but after four or five, she seemed exhausted or confused what to do when more kept coming. So I dug in and began removing the sacks for her, and she licked off my hands in appreciation. Not all of them survived, I had to bury three of eight. After laying two of them in their cold graves, the third began to slightly move, he was alive. I called him “Winston II”.

Dogs may be loyal, called man's best friend, but that's mostly for people who are loner types and don't really have many friends. They have sayings like this, maybe you've heard it: “The more people I meet, the more I love my dog”, which is not very flattering if you happen to be one of those people who he had once met.

The Bible says in Prov.18:24; “The man of many friends [a friend of all the world] will prove himself a bad friend, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.”

Real friendship and loyalty are precious commodities that are on the endangered species list. If you have many friends, you probably don't understand what a real friend is. Jonathon was a friend to David. David had nothing to offer Jonathon, Jonathon had much to lose by befriending David, yet Jonathon proved loyal and steadfast to his friend, even to his own disadvantage. Jonathon, being Saul's son, would have been the next king. But being David's friend was more important to him. This is the painting of a friendship with that rich hue of red that is so rare to find.

I know of real friendship in my own life. When I was dis-fellowshipped and kicked to the curb by a church organization after over thirty years of loyal and faithful service, for reasons that I choose not to elaborate on here so that you don't feel sorry for me and get us all depressed, I was deeply wounded and broken. This organization, like certain cults, employed the practice of “shunning”, so that my friendship list was very quickly depleted. But there was one pastor friend that refused to cut me off, even though by associating with me, and encouraging me, he was putting his own ministry and position in constant danger of “fraternizing with a rebellious dissident.”

I wouldn't even dare use his first name here, for fear of getting him in trouble—I would never forgive myself if any harm came to him. Thank you, friend, for demonstrating what real friendship is.

Prov.27; “Oil and perfume rejoice the heart, so does the sweetness of a friend's counsel that comes from the heart.”

 

  This good pastor friend of mine, who I can't even give his first name, once said, “The older I get, the fewer real friends I have.” I am privileged to be one of them.

Well, you just never know what you'll get reading this stuff. With all this talk about friends and dogs and loyalty, you're probably thinking I'm about ready to break out in some sappy country western song, and if I liked country western music and I could sing, this would be an appropriate place for it.

Then there's God's loyalty to us, which is far above any earthly loyalties. He is a friend that sticks closer than a brother, even though at times He doesn't seem very close at all, but seems more like our distant Uncle Olaf from the Ukraine who we met many years ago when we were kids, but hasn't been to a family reunion since, but we sure hear a lot of good things about him way up there.

Is.49:16; “Behold I have graven you on the palms of My hands.” How dare we doubt Him. How dare we doubt his “heart's blood” toward us, He certainly shed enough for us. In those hands that were cruelly riveted to a wooden beam, in those very palms He said He has engraved us right into that flesh.

And not just our names are engraved there, like kids etching their names in wet cement, but our very person, with all our anxieties, our fears, our failures, our broken lives and hopes and dreams, all of who we are can be found engraved in His palm.

John 10; “No one is able to snatch them out of my Father's hand.” That same hand that was smitten at Calvary, that same hand where our very person is engraved upon, that hand holds us so securely that no one can evict us out of it. This is not “eternal security”, because we are always free to walk out of that hand anytime we choose to, and many have. But if we want to be kept, no power in heaven or hell can snatch us from His hand.

God may keep His promises to us a thousand times, but at the very next trial we face, we doubt Him all over again. That leaves us a couple fries short of a Happy Meal.

I'll tell you about loyalty. When we were missionaries in South Africa, we had two Boxer's, Winston and Clementine (as in, Churchills). We were occasionally visited by highly venomous tree snakes called “boomslangs, whose bite caused internal bleeding and death within three days.

These snakes provided great enjoyment for our mostly bored Boxers, who felt it their God-given calling and destiny to eliminate these snakes from harming us and encroaching on their marked territory. One Sunday morning, as we were preparing to leave and go to church, I opened the front door, and there was Clementine, sprawled out on the doorstep with a dried trickle of blood coming from her mouth. I had to bury her in a grave beside her lost puppies.

But she gave her all. In the back yard lay two dead boomslangs that could have bitten us.

Her last act on earth was to give her heart's blood for the cause.

Just Ask Rocky

Rev.3:19; “As many as I love I rebuke and chasten.”

Personally, I always thought that scripture was for sinners. But then I realized He's talking to the church. Do you feel the love?

“Judgment begins at the house of God.” That alone will keep Him busy for quite a while.

The rest of us get air-lifted out of here.

Then comes the Jews' time for chastening, in the seven year Tribulation, and millions of them will get saved and lose their heads. Better their heads than their souls. Then whatever is left after all that, those who steadfastly refused to be chastened, will go up in a massive fireball of global warming that not even Al Gore could imagine.

We tried to warn them.

In the 1970's, we were told that within thirty years, Manhattan would be frozen over in a new ice age, which means we should have by this time been able to go ice skating year round on Yankee Stadium. That didn't scare enough people, and the Yankees refused to play baseball on ice skates, so now we're told Manhattan will be underwater instead, because cows are flagellating too much in Nebraska, which is melting the polar icecaps in the Arctic which will flood Yankee Stadium. And if we would just paste a happy face, peace bumper sticker on the back of our Volvo or Subaru (triple points for an old VW van), then all this could be avoided. But in the end, just one lightening bolt from heaven is good for 15,000 degrees. And it only gets worse from there.

I read somewhere that Gods' chastening is to perfect us. It's the same idea my Dad had in chastening us when my brother and I goofed around in Sunday Mass. Everything was so intolerably boring for us kids just sitting there listening to a monotone dirge in Latin. The incense smelled good, almost as good as the smell of gasoline when my father tanked up the '56 Dodge at Midland Co-op. I suspect that the only thing that kept the adults awake at Mass was all the changing positions from standing, kneeling on those hard wooden kneelers, and sitting. It was during the sitting we especially got squirrelly. Then we were chastened when we got home, but it didn't seem to change our behavior when it came time for next Sunday.

But God's chastening is far more effective. It teaches us patience, perseverance, stretches our faith, and all those other things we get that we didn't ask for, and would bypass in a minute in favor of a good coffee and pie fellowship with close, like-minded friends and family.

Here's a good line from a watching a “Rocky” movie. I once belonged to a legalistic church, where you were banned from watching a good movie without fear of being spied on and exposed for “serious violations” and branded right up there with heretics, adulterers and abusers of themselves with mankind. The city of Ft. Collins, Colorado is banning red and green lights at Christmas time because, well, it's too Christmasy. I wonder if that goes for traffic lights as well? Gotta love those rules to keep us safe. Anyway, I've found watching a good movie sometimes has more spiritual insights and mood enhancers than some sermons I've had to endure.

Anyway, the line from the movie was this: “Life can be cruel, it can bring you to your knees. It's not how hard you can hit, it's how hard you can GET hit and get back up and keep fighting.”

I read this morning that when God has an unique calling on your life, He fashions unique afflictions with just you in mind. How thoughtful. Affliction does not hit by chance, but by God's direction. God does not draw his bow at a venture. Rocky's calling was to beat the red meat out of anyone who dared get in the ring with him. Our calling is to wrestle with the powers of wickedness in high places not only to secure our own soul, but to be better equipped to encourage and reach others as well.

Is.44:3 says that God pours water upon him who is thirsty. When a believer has been knocked down and has a sad spirit, he will usually try and pull himself up by bringing up a litany of fears he is nursing, which of course only assures himself that he remains down on the canvas.

When I was a kid there was a breakfast cereal that was known for it's snap, crackle and pop. All you had to do was pour on the milk. Do you feel like that breakfast cereal today, before the milk is poured on? You're thirsty for the milk that will bring back the pop. Your life feels unfruitful and pointless, no crackle, no snap? It's a fact that beaten up sheep don't reproduce. Heck, they don't even feel the least bit romantic.

Sometimes it's just plain no fun to have Christian character. There doesn't seem to be much reward or appreciation for it in this world. Many are tempted to be more like the spiritual harlot described in Ezekiel 16. God illustrates this by comparing Israel (or us) to the birth of an unloved baby girl, unwashed, unswaddled, rolling around in her own blood. Then God passed by her one day, took pity on her, began to clean her up, feed her, care for her until she grew up to be a healthy, beautiful young lady. But then she began to play the harlot in sin, selling herself to the highest bidder.

Many believers sell themselves for acceptance, popularity, fame, position, they sell out their souls for

a cheap pat on the head. “Good boy, you brought back the stick.” For the most part, it seems like they're having more fun than we are. And we're supposed to be the good guys, literally. But then it must be difficult for them keep going the way of compromise when you keep losing significant parts of yourself.

Amsterdam, Holland was one of my favorite cities back in my hippie days—you could smoke hashish legally in the bars. But even as a committed sinner, I was disgusted when I innocently wandered into the “red light” district and discovered seductively clad prostitutes displayed in picture windows, selling themselves behind the plate glass as if they were pretending to be the newest frost free refrigerator. They were literally selling off pieces of their souls.

Are you thirsty this morning, for the water of life, or the milk that makes you go “pop”? Or maybe some warm milk for comfort?

Here's a story about some believers that had every reason to be down and sad—they were living oppressed in a Communist country. The Communist propaganda machine was cranking out anti-Christian comic books, printing them by the millions, for the purpose of mocking Jesus and the Bible. The criticism was so over the top, that even staunch Communist lock-steppers didn't take them seriously.

But that wasn't their biggest problem. Inserted in the outrageous little comics, were countless Scriptures as proof of the “fallacy” of the Bible. Members of the underground were quick to snatch up copies of these comic books, because the Scriptures were otherwise almost impossible to come by.

In fact, they besieged the publishers, asking for more reprints, so they could distribute the little books to other Word-starved underground believers. The publishers were only too happy to oblige them, thinking they were helping to stamp out the illegal Christian religion.

Now the persecuted believers possessed more copies of the Scriptures than they ever had before, and they were legal, printed on the government's own printing presses. Just as the ravens fed Elijah, the Communist propaganda machine was feeding those thirsty believers with the Word of God.

Recently there was an expectant mother about to give birth to twins. The doctor determined that one of the babies would have to be aborted to save the life of the other baby, and perhaps even the mother. So they performed an abortion procedure on the one, but it didn't work, he survived. So they tried another sure-fire procedure, but he survived that assasination attempt as well. They nicknamed him “Rocky”. Rocky survived, and all the others are in perfect health as well.

Remember, all that matters is how hard you can GET hit, and get back up and keep fighting. Or how fast you can crawl off the delivery table to escape from a sociopath doctor.

Just ask Rocky.

Vanilla Bean


 

“Is there anything too hard for God?”

That's what God was saying to Abraham when He was assuring him and his wife Sarah that they were going to have a son. This was not just a case of Sarah being infertile, and perhaps she should take some hormone injections or have some fertility treatments. Or perhaps Abe should see a doctor and have some Viagra prescribed. No, the problem was more serious than that. Sarah was ninety years old, and Abe was a hundred. Abe thought he was doing pretty good to be breathing at that age, you know, the ashes in the stove had gone cold by that time in life.

Sarah laughed at the thought of them becoming parents at this late stage in life. When confronted about her laughing at the promises of God, she quickly denied it, but she laughed nevertheless. It's kind of hard to lie to God, the Author of His Word, when your actions (and laughs) are recorded right there in the Word. I know, because I'm an author too, and if any of my characters tried to lie to me, I'd be right on it.

Personally, I'm not sure she was laughing at God's promises at all. I think after she heard about the promise, she took one look at Abraham, you know, maybe they were at a supermarket and Abe was standing in front of one of those refrigerator doors staring with his mouth gaping open a little, and he'd forgotten what he was looking for, and nobody had pulled him back into reality yet. And Sarah came around the corner with the shopping cart, looked at him, remembered the promise and laughed. It might have happened just the way, except I'm not sure they had shopping carts in those days.

Think of some deep, longing desire you've had for some time, an unfulfilled desire. Something seemingly lost forever. Something that might have been, but now could never be and you've given up hope of seeing this ever fulfilled in your life.

For me, as a kid, I always wanted to travel to Texas and meet up with Gene Autry's private eye friend I'd heard about. You see, I'd gotten in bad trouble with some neighbor kids, we got caught climbing up onto the roof of a neighbors garage. We had been warned that if we were ever caught up there again, bad things would happen. We could only imagine. This was back in the days when corporal punishment to the rear end was still legal and frequently practiced.

So when we got caught up on the garage again, our imaginations went into overtime. We needed a plan, quick. So we devised a plan to make a stagecoach by putting two cardboard boxes with a sheet over them into our wagon, and going to Texas to see this private eye that was said to be able to help anyone get out of any tough and potentially painful situation.

Without much knowledge about direction or maps, we headed north from Minnesota for Texas. My younger brother road inside the “stage”, our two friends were the horses, and I was the scout that rode ahead and looked out for danger, which mostly consisted of looking out for Mrs. Johnson who didn't want us playing near her garage. If I remember right, we'd packed a box of saltine crackers to sustain us for the trip, which my younger brother finished off before our horses even broke sweat. Our trip was aborted after we'd gone the length of the alleyway to the far end of the block, and we realized none of us were allowed to cross the street. So we had to turn back and face the music, or in this case, something less pleasant.

But if God has put something in your heart to do, and now it seems very unlikely to ever be, I wouldn't throw in the towel just yet, God is still God. If God has put it in your heart, then He still intends to do it, even though it may appear as an utter impossibility. People might be laughing at the absurdity of it all, you can't blame them. It might look more hopeless than Abe deciding between vanilla and vanilla bean.

“Is anything too hard for God?” No, nothing. This is not a trick question, like “can God create a rock so large that He is unable to lift it?” You can look up the answer at the end of this posting. The only thing too hard for God is our deliberate, continued unbelief in His love and power and our final rejection of His plan for us. God will try to rescue us just in time before we close the final door.

In Heb.7 we have the Genesis account of Melchizedek coming to Abraham at just the right moment. Abraham was about to be tested and needed some encouragement to strengthen him. The king of Sodom was making a proposal to Abraham, thanking him for rescuing Lot and the rest of the people. So the King proposed that Abraham take the loot and the King would take back the people.

Abraham said, “I wouldn't even take a shoestring from you”, which is saying quite a lot since they didn't even have the type of shoes that had shoestrings in those days. Heck, they didn't even have shopping carts yet. God appeared to Abraham in a vision and said, “I am your shield and your exceeding great reward.” In other words, as long as you're obeying Me, I'll take care of all your needs, you won't have to depend on the likes of a pagan king.

One time Jesus was tempted by the devil to turn stones into bread. Our temptation is to pick up the stones and eat them, and not wait for the miracle bread. That's pretty deep, you'd better stop, have cup of coffee and think about that one for awhile.

God is concerned about our faith in trying times, not just for ourselves, but as an inspiring example for others to follow. A widow with her now four fatherless children stood near the body of her martyred husband. The marks on his body told the story of a slow, painful death. He had only been saved three months, and now his death inspired thousands.

The other believers who had gathered for the funeral knew, just the fact that they showed up, an illegal gathering, could cost them their lives as well. At the funeral service, eighty others came to Christ, including some from the Communist Youth League. All told, over one thousand came out to honor their fallen fellow friend and believer.

Our faith ought to be on display for others to see. There are many watching our lives, weaker believers, some at the point of giving up. Our sacrificial example may sometimes be the only thing that pulls them through. You never know how many others are watching your life, usually far more than what you would think. They are looking at how you will face your impossible situation.

The answer to the trick question is “No”, God can't create a rock that is too heavy for Him to lift. He also can't lie, which are about the only two things God can't do. But nothing else is too hard for God.

Gods Megaphone
 

“My strength is made perfect in weakness.” 2Cor.12:9

The foremost qualification in doing anything significant for God is having a sense of your own weakness, inadequacy. I said doing anything “significant” for God. There are many running around in their own strength, their own ego-fulfilling ways, their own brilliance or eloquence, doing “things for God”, but eternity will reveal whether these things will be burned up or stand the fire.

If you feel weak in your own self this morning, rejoice, you're miles ahead of the game. At least you are conscience that you are weak. Your present emptiness is preparing you for being filled.

The Book of Ezekiel started off with the prophet in the midst of captivity with God's people by the river Chebar. This sounds like a tragic situation for God's people, but there are times in life where you will be camped next to your Chebar for a season. The phrase, “And it came to pass”, appears 3591 times in the Bible. It doesn't say, “And it came to stay” God wants us to know that if you're you're huddled a pup tent in the rain when you were hoping to go flyfishing for German Brown Trout at Chebar, it will eventually pass.

But as long as you're there, why not benefit as much as you can from your situation, instead of chafing like a horse that refuses its bridle? Fretting over what you've lost, or what's been taken from you, will not change your situation. Harping about the “total unfairness” of your situation, is not going to cause the “gods of Fairness” to rise up and apologize to you and rectify your situation.

No captivity can be totally evil if we bring it to God. If you were caught in a rain storm, and took shelter under a tree, which can sometimes be a bad idea because in case of lightening you have just made yourself a more likely target. So let's assume it's just a lot of rain and no lightening. Now you're under a big bushy tree with no lightening going on, and you're keeping dry, and as you look up there's some fruit you discover on the tree that you never would have seen if it wasn't for the storm. When you come under God's wing for protection, you will discover things in God you never saw before and have a fresh revelation of who He is. I know, you still want the rain to stop anyway.

Heb.12:6 speaks of a real danger that exists in difficult times: “That you may not grow disinterested and become spiritual sluggards...but that you would lean your entire personality on God in Christ in absolute trust and confidence in His power, wisdom and goodness, and by practice of patient endurance, wait for the promise.”

C.S. Lewis said, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, but shouts in our pain. It's His megaphone for a deaf world.” Don't suppose a simple email would do?

Joseph's experience, being sold as a slave by his own jealous brothers, framed and falsely imprisoned for many years for sexual assault, serves to remind us our problems could be a lot worse. The Bible says “iron entered his soul”. Joseph needed some iron. Up to this time in his life, all he'd seen was glitter and gold; what with being daddy's' favorite and the special order coat and all, he needed some iron in his soul to snap him out of his visions of grandeur.

Is.28:28; “Does one crush bread grain? No, he does not thresh it continuously. But when he has driven his cartwheel and his horses over it, he scatters it [tossing it up to the wind] without having crushed it.”

I'll bet you can't wait for my encouraging commentary about threshing and driven, scattering, tossing and crushing here. Here goes: The afflictions that God allows are custom-made just for you, (so don't get jealous of someone else's), not to crush you, or injure you, but as the bread corn is not bruised, so God is careful with us, no matter how severe the crushing may be for the time.

There that wasn't so bad, was it? OK, so go read a couple pages of Schuller or watch a re-run of Mr. Rogers and hurry back.

Think of it, you could be living under a Communist or Islamic dictatorship, where you had no freedoms to openly live for God. I know it's getting worse in America. I read where the People's Republic of California is thinking of enacting a law that says you can't say the name “Jesus” in any speech on public land. I would especially love to be the first one arrested on that charge.

In 1966, seven young Russian teenagers were arrested for singing a Christian hymn on a train. In court, they all fell to their knees and said, “We surrender ourselves into the hands of God. After their bold demonstration of faith, other Christians in the courtroom begin to sing the same hymn their friends were arrested for. These believers risked all and suffered the condemnation and reproach of their country to keep alive their testimony for Christ.

I like to exercise by playing basketball about a half hour almost everyday. The Phoenix Suns have been after me for years to play power forward behind Shawn Marion, offering me a seven figure salary, but I've steadfastly turned them down to preach the Gospel. OK, that's not true, but I do keep in reasonably good shape by pounding and shooting a basketball on a regular basis. I even once made the local newspaper in town.

In order for physical muscles to get stronger, they must be stretched through some kind of exercise. Faith is a spiritual muscle, it also must be exercised if it is to grow stronger. Suffering flexes the muscle of faith, stretching it.

The history of the people of God, is not a record of God searching for courageous souls to work with, but of God finding Gideons' and turning them into Davids'. The Hebrew word for “spirit” is “ruach”. Besides “wind” or “breath”, it can also be translated “courage”. To be filled with the Spirit is to be filled with courage.

The biggest temptation in times of difficulties is to try and run from the battle. Saul's army was crouching in fear and intimidation before Goliath. David came on the scene, and the Bible says “he ran to meet the giant.” We need to run and meet the enemy, not run and hide in fear.

In Vietnam, my first day in the bush, I will admit I didn't have much courage. The helicopter ride was a flight from hell, as the pilot, realizing he had some new guys on board, decided to have some fun, making turns and banking the chopper so sharply that to look down meant looking straight out the open door to the tree tops far below. Helmets and other gear slid right out and down. Only centrifugal force kept us in your canvas seat.

Shortly after we arrived on the ground, we heard an explosion that caused us all, even the veterans to hit the dirt. We learned that one of the new guys had taken a hand grenade, wrapped his hand around a tree, pulled the pin and blew off his hand from the wrist so he could get out of there. It worked. They put his shattered hand into a bag, and got him right out of there.

Months later we charged an enemy bunker in Cambodia and unearthed a large cache of weapons. My friend and I got bronze stars.

No pain no gain.

The Mark of Ezekiel

Trifles and trivialities are easily won, but the most weighty, significant things in life come at a great price. The kings of old came to power through blood. Real heroism is the story of sacrificial blood. God's call is a growth in heroism. People need such men to model after, and aspire to be their best. What is the Word of God without human examples?

Unshakable convictions and character are not nonchalantly snatched by chance from a passing breeze. Great souls know great struggles of the soul. Even Jesus learned some things from suffering. I've never fully understood that one.

Perhaps you have struggled in the lone hours with things beyond your understanding and capabilities. Your faith has been stretched until it snaps back on your over-extended, quivering emotions. But there will be a harvest, a rich one, you have not suffered in vain.

Lean hard upon Him, and He will show you the way out when the time is right. Enjoy the closeness with Him, and maintain it after He's brought you through to the other side. That's mostly what He's after, because He has much larger things for you.

You didn't get where you are because you're bad, or not worthy, or not holy enough. God is not in heaven keeping a score card on you, gaging your every thought and move to see if you're qualified for His love. Hopefully we gave up on Santa Claus a long time ago, and the idea of him spying on you: “He's making a list, he's checking it twice.” Oops, sorry no presents for you, better luck next year.

In Ezek.9, God told Ezekiel to go into the city and set a mark on the forehead of those who sighed and groaned for all the abominations that were happening in their midst. A reversal on the “mark of the beast”, which will be a sign of selling out to the Antichrist, this mark in Ezekiel is a badge of honor for people who are living in the midst of wickedness, and rather than just going along with it, always the easiest thing to do, and unfortunately the course of most, they decide to stand against it, and all the ramifications involved in taking an unpopular position that convicts others who have lesser moral fiber. Did you get all that?

The “mark” in the Book of Revelations marked your certain doom and judgement. The “mark” in Ezekiel marked your worthy character and backbone.

In Nazi Germany, most of the populace understood something wicked was going on with the Jews. They saw the authorities ransack and smash the Jewish shops, saw them rounded up, branded with yellow stars, herded like cattle into trucks and boxcars, and of course all the rumors about the “Final Solution.” “Why, these Jews must have done something wrong”, they reasoned. But they did nothing, and neither did those who might have made a difference to stop it. I'm not after the WWII era Germans here, I'm of German ancestry myself, purebred. I remember a German slogan hanging in my childhood home that read, “Vie git too soont oldt, und too late schmart.” I even took one semester of German in high school, so let me off the hook.

But the German masses were seduced by Hitler, seduced by comfort, by the granting of certain privileges, seduced by a restored sense of national pride after their humiliating defeat in WWI. He made them feel good about themselves, and that's worth something. Apparently it was enough to ignore the burning ovens, and the stench that sometimes wafted over their villages. But at least the price of meat and beer was kept cheap, as they divvied up the gold in their jewelry and teeth.

When you go along with things you know aren't right, and you ignore your conscience in favor of comfort, you have to condone the stench. Maybe it's not as obvious as yellow stars and boxcars, but something is rotten in Denmark and Ezekiel marked them. And God smote them.

God's remnant in Jerusalem sighed and moaned at the wickedness they saw. Maybe they couldn't actually do much, but at least they didn't like it and wouldn't flow with it. And that certainly counts for something.

I hear you, “Hey dude, you want to get a sense of humor here?” The problem is I'm writing this in the evening instead of the morning, and I'm more cheerful first thing in the day. So you might want to skip to tomorrow's offering, or just take a walk with a close friend. I'll be here when you get back.

The Communists were tightening the noose on anyone not flowing with their forced regime change in Romania. Christians in particular were a problem. Many were fleeing the country, buying their way out while they could still get out. Richard Wurmbrand and his wife struggled about whether they should flee and avoid certain imprisonment, or stay with their fledging church. They didn't want to leave their church, and felt guilty about even being tempted.

They just wanted to do what God wanted them to do. The Wurmbrand's debated the issue between themselves in an all night prayer vigil. At about a midnight a woman who was kneeling with the rest, cried out, “And you, the one who is thinking of leaving—remember that the Good Shepherd did not desert His flock, He stayed to the end.”

This woman knew nothing about the Wurmbrand's personal struggle. They took it as a clear message from God and stayed with their flock, and later suffered with them in prison.

We need to pray about the decisions we make in life, especially the larger, more crucial ones. Search the Bible, fellowship with other believers of similar convictions. I admit their numbers are shrinking, but hopefully you have one you can trust. God will use them to speak into your lives if we are listening. If you have a pastor you can trust, go to him and pray with him about what's irking you. If you truly want to do the right thing, and you're seeking God, He will be delighted to hear you out. He lives for just such things. “He forgets not the cry of the humble.”

But you need to let God bust you out of the box. If you're so trapped into always thinking about things the same, cautious way, new direction from God will be difficult for you to hear. Because God's way is the way of courage and faith, and it means breaking out of the conventional and convenient into something refreshingly beyond all your previous experiences.

If you can't do nothing else but sigh and groan, God will mark you out as such. Someone said, “Sighs are a part of the music of Jehovah's court.” Leviathan laughs at the javelin, but trembles at prayer. Prayer is an open door to heaven. As long as the door is open you will not fall into the enemies hands.

What “mark” are you aiming at? The one that says just “Go along with things, even if you know it's the way of the coward, and doesn't lead to anything glorious?” Or the mark of Ezekiel, that will lead to something more glorious than you ever imagined? On your mark, get set, go.

  EATING WORMS

 

In Acts 12, Peter is in prison for the preaching of the Gospel. If you're going to suffer, far better to suffer for righteousness than for your own sin. If you're suffering for your sin, repent, make it right with God and man, accept God's judgement, and then go on trusting God for total restoration.

He has taken your sin and cast it as far as the east is from the west. He didn't say, “as far as the north is from the south”, because if you go north long enough, you'll go over the top of the world and begin going south down the other side. It's still a long way, but when it comes to sin, not far enough. But if you go east, you can go around the world until the cows come home and you'll never be going west.

If you're suffering for righteousness, God's Word says you're supposed to be rejoicing. So if that's you, get with it and start rejoicing. I'll wait a minute until you've finished.

In fact, I need to rejoice with you. Now doesn't that feel much better? Sometimes we suffer because the devil is attacking and oppressing us, sometimes we suffer because God is allowing things to happen to perfect us, and sometimes we suffer because we've done something stupid and we just have to tough it through. Regardless of the reason, God will wonderfully help us, if we pray and believe.

If Herod has his way, Peter would be spending his last night on this earth. The thirsty blade was scheduled for sunrise. Have you ever felt like that? I have, especially one time in South Africa, when I had a gun to my head and was tied up together with my wife and teenage daughter for two hours on a bed, while robbers stole everything we had of value, except our lives and my wife and daughters' modesty. We prayed and sang worship songs in Zulu and God miraculously spared us from a far worse fate. Every time I speak of that night in Johannesburg, I speak of the miracle power of prayer.

In Peter's case, “Prayer was made unto God without ceasing.” And God gloriously responded, the prison doors were flung open by an angel, the saints grew powerfully in their faith, the Gospel went forth with renewed vigor and fearlessness, and just for fun, Herod was eaten up by worms. You got to like God's justice system here. Our prayers are God's opportunities to do something great on our behalf.

Our prayer life needs to be more aggressive. We need to go from asking God, to commanding the devil to take a hike, back off, and relinguish his hold on our victory, our finances, our marriage, our minds, our fears or wherever he has latched his ugly little claws onto. Are you in a dangerous place this morning in some area of your life? Has your faith been shaken, your innocence taken, your fears awakened by the enemy of your soul? A.B. Simpson said, “He is not wanting great men, but He is wanting men who will dare to prove the greatness of their God.”

Mal.3:6 says, “I am the Lord, I change not. That is why you are not consumed.”

Why is the devil not able to destroy us? Because God's goodness and protection over us never changes. I was taught when I was a child, I had a “guardian angel” that was given to me at birth, and would follow and protect me all of my life. I do not know if that is true, it's not in the Bible, but I do believe God's Holy Spirit goes with us all day long, and even hangs around when we sleep at night, watching over us. 

The sun is growing ever so slightly dimmer over time, heaven and earth must pass away, it waxes old like a garment. But I'm talking about the One whose years have no end, He changes not. It's like the seaman who's been tossed around by the raging sea for days and weeks, and finally he rests his foot on the solid earth again. We can rest our foot, our lives on the solid Rock that never changes.

Throughout history, man has engaged in 15,000 wars, signed some 8,000 peace treaties, but not enjoyed more than 200-300 years of actual peace. But we can have peace in our lives no matter what else is going on, because our peace is not tied to this earth and all it's uncertainties, but to the One who never changes.

Many Christians had already been arrested for their faith in the Ukrainian city, and had been whisked away without trial to a Siberian labor camp. When they arrested Vera Yakovlena's, she knew she would never survive, the reputation of the camps offered no reason for hope.

In the camp, she risked witnessing to another prisoner. She was spotted by a guard, and her punishment was to stand barefoot on the ice for hours. Because she was standing and not working, she failed to meet her work quota and was denied the watery broth that passed off as the evening meal.

Vera was depressed, and one evening she walked out into the prison yard to be alone. She neglected to notice that she had wandered into a forbidden zone, where prisoners would be shot on sight.

Suddenly a loud voice rang out in the prison yard, “Hey, is your mother a Christian?”

Vera was startled and frightened. She had been thinking of her mother at that very moment. She answered, “Why do you ask?”

The guard said, “Because I have been watching you for ten minutes, but I haven't been able to shoot you. I can't move my arm. So I figured you must have a mother who is praying for you. Run back—I'll look the other way.”

Vera saw the guard the next day and he smiled at her and raised his arm saying, “Now I can move it again.”

It's our nature to want to play it safe, preferring safety to risk. We prefer comfort to a challenge. We try to shelter our lives from as much uncertainty and fear as possible. But God offers His protection most when we are on the front lines, venturing for Him. God's protection is like a shield in battle more than a security blanket to keep us comfortable.

Peter and Vera both risked it all. They both ended up in prison. But through believing, aggressive prayer, God was mightily with them at the time of their greatest need.

When was the last time you stepped out from behind your comfort zone and had to totally rely on God's protection? The cautious never see God do anything. They're too busy strapping on their life-protection helmets. The adventurous risk-takers will see God open prison doors, stop speeding bullets, and maybe even get to see their enemies eaten up by worms.

  Copyrighted material. Cannot be used without author's permission.

Walking in Destiny

 

Someone said, “God is a God of intelligent purpose.” The Universe God created is not moving through space and time aimlessly, flinging us into a meaningless future. Every atom that exists in the world is moving toward a divine purpose, nothing is random. Just as no person is random, all were created by the loving hand of God for a specific role to play on this planet, and in eternity. If we believe the very unscientific theory of evolution, we would have to believe we are just evolved tadpoles with no higher immediate purpose than becoming a frog.

Whatever purpose God has for you, whatever His calling is for you, He will enable you by His power to do it. Since it is He that has called us, it is before Him primarily that we perform. It is said that everyone does things for the approval of some audience. I know writers write things for an audience, large or small, because they want a response, some feedback, even if its just from one special person. This is true in all of life. Nobody lives their life entirely for themselves, unless they live in a cave, and even now it's come out that the Geico caveman is offended by his non-acceptance.

The other extreme is someone who chooses to live alone, and they become weird, or to say it more politely, eccentric. These are people who dress, eat, and groom only for themselves, and since there is no one around to reflect their weirdness, they just become more gunky, slovenly, and they usually smell bad. If you can stand to be embarrassed, you need to help these people get out in public on a regular basis.

Jesus told us to do our good deeds in secret, not just so the world could see us. “Then Your Father who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” The Pharisee's liked to be seen by others in everything they did. At the set time for Jewish prayer, they would walk out into the middle of the street, stop everything else they were doing and pray. It was calculated to be seen by as many people as possible. The only One that wasn't watching was God.

Winston Churchill was asked why he wasn't wounded by the vicious attacks from his fellow Member of Parliament. He replied, “If I respected him, I would care about his opinion. But I don't, so I don't.”

Many in life are not guided by any kind of inner compass, but take their direction from the audience of life around them. Today, we have even formalized this by what is called “political correctness”. When we bow to what's “PC”, we have said, “What matters most to me is what others have dictated is correct for my life and I will simply follow that and not protest in any way by thought, word or deed my independence.” Of course, at this point they will stop having any personal convictions, they will stop having any self-respect, they will stop making any sense, and they will start on a slow, gradual descent into mediocrity and irrelevancy. But at least no one was embarrassed.

The cautious man of no inner compass, puts his radar up and gets his direction for life from every cue around him. It's like the politician who has no convictions of his own, so he wets his finger, holds his finger up to see which way the wind is blowing, then blows with it. Or he continually pours over the results of every opinion poll to see which way he should be going and what he should believe. Churchill was told a good politician should have his “ear to the ground”. He responded that it would be difficult to look up to such a leader who was in that position. Harry Truman once said, “I wonder how far Moses would have gone if he had taken a poll in Egypt?”

The last century boasted some of the worlds' great leaders of our time--Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan. Where are the likes of these leaders now? Would the world even tolerate them if they came on the scene today? I think not. Most leaders are that in name only, having been emasculated, even our newscasts have been “chickified”, to use a Rush Limbaugh term, and the public seems to increasingly want it that way. Whoops, sorry, am I getting too negative here?

There have been many in history that have been totally dependent on the approval of others. Barabara Streissand once sang, “People who need people, are the luckiest people in the world.” Not if they need their constant approval like a dog needing a pat on the head. Proverbs says “The fear of man brings a snare.” It speaks of being fearful of what man thinks as opposed to what God thinks. It's easy to confuse the two if you're always checking the polls.

Speaking of which: Wolfgang Mozart once wrote in a letter to his father, “I am never in good humor when I am in a town where I am quite unknown.” Or the story of a French revolutionary who was sitting in a cafe, when he heard a crowd outside. He jumped to his feet and yelled, 'There goes the mob. I am their leader. I must follow them.'” Or the fact that Marlene Dietrich put out recordings of people applauding at her shows, and insisted that friends listen to both sides with her. This is getting scary.

But one of my favorites was David Lloyd George, a former British prime minister, who was extremely sensitive to public opinion about himself. Lord Keynes once asked what happened to Lloyd George when he was alone in a room. Keynes replied, “When Lloyd George is alone in a room there is nobody there.” In other words, he didn't have enough conviction in him to even register that he was there.

If we were created by the hand of God, and we're not mere tadpoles waiting for our big day when we take the evolutionary leap into frogland, than we need to be guided by the hand of God for our destiny, not by the petty, fickle opinions of men. Jesus once rode into Jerusalem on a donkey and the people threw Him the red carpet service. But a couple days later, the same crowd was shouting, “Crucify Him.” That's why He said earlier, “He did not commit Himself to them, for He knew what was in man.”

Walking with destiny, that would be a fine title for this mornings offering, and a rallying point for life. Churchill again, one of my all time heroes, I feel I should have been alive in his generation, was invited by King George VI to organize a government and lead England into war against Hitler. Later he said said of this, “I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial.”

Joana Mindrutz boldly walked up to a Romanian police officer and said, “Six disciples of Christ from God's chosen people suffer here. I want to suffer with them.” They gave her her wish and soon she was worshipping God with the others behind prison doors.

There was Jewish Christian couple, Richard and Sabina Wurmbrand, among others in that prison. They all stood trial for their faith, which was really just a preliminary for executing them. But when their trial took place, the judge miraculously called for a dismissal of the case. It was the only time in the entire WWII that an accused Jew had been acquitted.

When we are walking in the will of God, God will provide, guide, and will prosper us.

We need to live our lives in such a way, that when our moment comes, when we step into the purpose God put us here for, that we're ready. Then we'll be ready to step into Eternity. We won't get a pat on the head, but a “Well done thou good and faithful servant.”

Don't give up, Groan
 

Paul is speaking my language this morning in Romans 8:26

“So too the [Holy] Spirit comes to our aid and bears us up in our weakness; for we do not know what prayer to offer nor how to offer it worthily as we ought, but the Spirit Himself goes to meet our supplication and pleads in our behalf with unspeakable yearnings and groanings too deep for utterance.”

I'm talking about the groaning part. “Groaning” is not a deep, theological term. Webster's says of this word, “to utter a deep moan indicative of pain, grief or annoyance.” This groaning in prayer is when we've run out of desperate words to address God with concerning our burdens, we groan, and it's actually God praying through us to accomplish something only He can do.

I'm just happy God can do so much with a groan. When we pour out our hearts from a sorrow that is crushing us, a weight to heavy to bear, we can be assured that He hears us. He is able to sift through the rubble, the groans, the tongues of our prayers, eliminate the chaff and offer the rest to His Father on our behalf as a sweet smelling incense.

Rev.8:4, “And the smoke of the incense (the perfume) arose in the presence of God, with the prayers of the people of God (the saints).”

All this from a groan. You might want to go and heat up your coffee, and when you get back, I'll try to lighten up a little.

I don't usually hear much from God when I meet with Him daily in the pre-dawn hours in the holy corner of my office. But I know He's there. I remember as a small child playing in the den of my house with my tinker toys or dinosaurs, and my mother nearby in the kitchen ironing clothes. It wasn't necessary for us to say a word to each other, it was enough to know that she was there, and I was safe.

When we're overcome with burdens too complex to put into words, we don't have to carry them, we can give them to Him in full assurance that He cares and will gladly take them from us. He will relieve the fears we don't even dare speak of.

Got that coffee re-heated yet? I heard of a psychologist who once recommended to his patients who were suffering from low self-image that when they got up in the morning, they should go straight to the mirror and say, “I love you”. I haven't tried it yet, because, I suspect like most people, I wouldn't be able convince of mirror of anything?

What is man that God cares about us at all? I read that if man were sold for his chemical value, figuring in for inflation, we'd fetch about $2.25. We spend billions of dollars sending a man to the moon so we can discover the origins of man, because we don't believe Genesis. Some people look to the stars and see UFO's—fifteen percent of Americans claim they've seen one. We want to know who we are, that we matter to someone out there. So as believers we cry out to God, sometimes we even groan, like dogs do with their masters' in dog hope that they care. They're also crying out, “Is anyone out there that really cares enough to help me in my life right now?

God says we are vessels, fashioned by the Master's hand. God is the Potter. Many of us are broken vessels, but that's OK, because God specializes in using broken pots. At the wedding in Cana, they found some old, discarded pots no one had use for anymore, dumped out a bunch of bolts and discarded rages, filled them with ordinary water, a picture of the Word, and they were useful again. When we are full of the Word, we are useful to ourselves and then others.

In Lamentations, God likened the men of Judah to broken pots, because in their captivity to Babylon, they weren't being used of God anymore. What a tragedy. God judged Sodom and Gomorrah for homosexuality, but there was a worse sin in Judah at this time—sitting in a pew Sunday after Sunday and not doing anything for God. To hear the Gospel and do nothing with it is tragic, which is the state of most of modern Christianity. If you are being used of God, pour yourself a second cup of coffee, you've earned it.

When I was first saved, I was a part of a church that was almost cultic in it's zeal and fanaticism. In addition to three regular services a week, there was a Christian concert and drama scene on Friday and Saturday nights, Bible study on Tuesdays, prayer meetings every morning, and street preaching outreaches whenever the spirit moved us, which was quite often. This wasn't just a lot of activity to keep us busy, there was a fire in our bellies and a commitment to stir up the city and turn it right side up for the cause of Christ. Nothing was too radical.

Todays church has become a program wrapped up in a program that's been over-programed, where you can't change a roll of toilet paper in the church bathroom without someone organizing a program around it. There's a follow-up program designed to convince young converts that someone cares about them, as long as they follow all of the rules. There's an outreach program that sends out faithful zealots on Saturday mornings like Mormons and JW's, getting people out of bed with hangovers, with victory reports the next morning in church about conversions that somehow are rarely added to the church.

We have the finest buildings in church history, with cutting edge high tech sound and video capabilities. We have choirs to raise the dead, and children's programs that bring tears to our sucky parent eyes, and teachings how to better handle our finances, but we've become the cup that is clean and impressive on the outside, but full of dead man's bones on the inside. Sorry if it seems like I want to bite something this morning, but broken vessels that aren't being used is one of my pet peeves.

Hebrews 2 says we should pay attention to the truth we have heard, lest we drift past them and slip away.” I heard a story about a man who fell asleep in his boat while it was drifting down the Niagara River. The current began pulling him closer to the Falls, and soon it was too late to rescue himself. He plunged over the Falls to his death.

The obvious lesson here is that we should always get enough sleep at night, so in case we ever find ourselves in a boat floating down a river, we won't fall asleep and get in trouble. But also, if we forget the truths we've been taught, the convictions we hold dear, the passions we once had, and drift away from them, we will wake up one day and discover the currents of life will lead us to a place where these things have died.

OK, I'm going to finish this on a positive upswing now. When we're tested by life, it's OK to groan out our complaint to God. Even Jesus was tested, about turning stones into loaves of bread. If I could do that I'd open a bakery.

Or we could end up like the young man in Germany who fell asleep, not in a boat, but on a train. He was dressed up for Halloween as a zombie. Apparently his costume was convincing enough that as he laid there asleep, his fellow passengers thought he was a corpse and called the police to report a homicide.

We need to be careful about falling to sleep about certain things, or someone will report us as dead. At least as long as we're groaning, we know we're still very much alive.

Patient Revenge
 

I am hoping the subject for this morning is not “patience”. I was hoping for something more snappy. But I've come across a text in Heb.12:1 that reads, “Let us run with patience.”

If I were lying in a hospital bed for weeks at a time, I don't think patience would be a big deal to me. I simply would have no other choice, but to lie there and drink vanilla lattes and have a stack of books to the ceiling. This would not be a test of patience for me.

But to have patience under a load of responsibility and conflict, under misfortunes or loss is a great deal more difficult. To have pain in your heart and continue to function for a higher cause is the true test. We're called to “forget those things that are behind and press on to the upward call..” We're called to look beyond our own inner collapsing to see how we can boost up another. Try finding this concept in your “Glad Tidings Promise Box”.

George Matheson became completely blind at the age of eighteen. He said that many hurting people ask for a rainbow in their cloud, but many times we are called to be that rainbow ourselves. We heal ourselves by healing others.

Lam.3:23, “They [the Lord's mercy and loving-kindness] are new every morning..” This is good because we need a fresh supply everyday. I personally need to regain the victory every morning that evaporated during the night, it doesn't carry over well. It's a fresh battle every morning. Don't ever judge your salvation or how you're doing in life by the first ten minutes of the day. You'll want to backslide and go back to bed. At least wait until you've had some coffee and the Word.

God gave three million Hebrews the same deal in the wilderness experience, fresh manna every morning. So I'm not alone in this. When they tried to collect more, they got in trouble. Does that mean we aren't supposed to get too happy? No, just that we need to depend on God.

Hope involves patiently waiting in expectancy, waiting in a peaceful calm. Not trying to get Buddhist here, but this is also true of Christianity. If you want to measure the strength of a man's hope, measure it by his quietness in waiting. Excitement weakens hope, the calm are fearless. We can afford to be gentle and generous about life because we have a patient, steady hope in Him.

Lam.3:26,28; “It is good that one should hope and wait quietly for the safety and the ease of the Lord. Let him sit alone and uncomplaining, keeping silent in hope, because God has laid this yoke upon him for his benefit.”

Many times our trials in life come from the sins of others against us, sometimes even from other believers. This was Jeremiah's experience in vs.63; “Look at their secret counsels, I am subject to their decisions.” I have stood in this place often enough I've memorized the devil's faces. And he looks just like the faces of people who I thought were leaders and friends.

Bartolome Marquez's friends were shocked to hear he was calling for revenge upon his Communist executioners. But then they heard what type of revenge:”I beg you to take Christian revenge by trying to do good to those who do me evil.”

“As long as my heart still beats”, Marquez wrote to his bride, “it will beat with love for you. When I was sentenced for defending the high ideals of religion, fatherland, and family, the doors of heaven were opened for me. In remembrance of our love, even more intense now, please consider the salvation of your soul as your supreme duty. Thus we will be united for eternity in heaven. There, nobody will separate us.” This maybe didn't have much to do with the theme today, but it's a good story anyway.

Satan is behind oppression and suffering, therefore we need not to take revenge upon our oppressors. People are merely pawns in Satan's plan, pawns in a greater Universal battle between good and evil. “So do good to those who despitefully use you.”

I know you're waiting for the uplifting, victorious and gleeful part here. You might want to pick up something by Schuller or Osteen, I may not have it here today. Spurgeon said, “God had one Son without sin, but He never had a son without trials”.

Warren Wiersbe had these words, “Pray and commit every trial to God, then get back to work. Anything that keeps you from what God has called you to do will only help the enemy.”

God spoke and the worlds came into existence. If you think you came from an ape, why should I spoil your fun? God holds everything together by His Word. If He decided to let go, and withdraw His Word, everything in the universe would fly apart, including the apes. He's not like Atlas, who passively holds up the world, but He is actively involved. And if He is holding everything together, even when we can't get it together, what have we got to worry about?

So what can you do while you're patiently waiting in a trial? You could become a steroid induced, black belt cage fighter and yell things like, “FEAR HAS A NEW ENEMY”. That might scare somebody and make you feel more powerful. Or you could quietly, confidently, patiently go about the work that God has given you to do, and leave the difficult circumstances to God. The Gladiator said, “Death smiles on us all. All we can do is smile back.”

He also said, “What you do in life echoes in eternity”. What do you want echoing in eternity about your life? Strange thing about an echo, when it comes back it can't lie.

Many are worried about their legacy, what people and history will say about them when they've left this world for the next. This is especially true as you get older and you can start seeing the other side of the hill. What will I leave behind?

Just smile at death, kick fear in the teeth, and your legacy will take care of itself.

 Don't Blink! 

Anyone want to talk about trials and difficulties and “going through the fire”? Me neither, so let's not. But it's all that God is giving me this morning.

Mal.3:3, “He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver..”

It is with the most precious metals that the refiner of metals takes the most pains, and subjects them to the blazing furnace, because such fires melt the metal and allows it to fit its new form in the mould. I don't know about you, but I've heard this illustration so many times I could put it on my gravestone.

But I learned something new about this old illustration. The refiner never leaves his melting pot, but sits down right next to it, to insure that there isn't one minute or degree of heat in excess of what is necessary that would damage the precious metal. And so God, the Chief Refiner of precious souls, sits by closely in times of purifying and painful fires, so that we need not endure one extra minute of grief or sorrow, or one extra blast of heat that tries our souls. Knowing this comforting truth in our painful places of life ought to bring great encouragement—that we're not going through what we're going through because God is angry with us, or that He's given up on us, or that it's “just our cross to bear.”

The key words in this illustration are “precious metals”. Because there is something precious in us that God can work with, He can't resist wanting to perfect it. It's a part of His glorious nature.

There are certain precious souls in life that are being refined in the fires, and they are being changed from glory to glory. They are not “settled on the lees”, but are being poured from vessel to vessel. There are too many believers that are quite settled on their lees, and they seem perfectly satisfied to remain there. They are enjoying all the benefits of Christianity, riding the crest of the blessings of God, but it's as if they are receiving their crowns of reward now, and there won't be much left for them when they get to the other side. I can't begrudge them, but I'm certainly tempted often to envy them. It sure is an easier path for now, but I can't help but feel that they are missing out on more important things.

Saratu Turundu was thirty-five, unmarried, and was very active in her church in Nigeria.

She loved children and taught them in Sunday school. She longed to be married , but that wasn't happening, so she settled for loving them in her little classroom. The fanatical Muslims, who domintaed her town of Kaduna were persecuting the Christians. She had heard stories of churches being burned, and Christians beaten and killed for their faith.

One day a mob of Muslims came to attack the Christians of Kaduna. Many believers fled into the nearby bush, but Saratu had determined she would stay and take a stand. She watched as they burnt their little church building to the ground, yet she refused to budge. As Muslims poured gasoline on the building where she was living, and set it on fire, she fell to her knees and prayed. She died there, asking God to forgive the very people who hated her and her Savior.

People like Saratu are gold, refined many times, and are of most usefulness to God, and will be rewarded the most on the other side. It is amazing what we can do when forced into difficult places.

Have you ever stopped to think why God permits certain people to cross your path? Are there people you know who you'd wish you'd never met? Are there people in your life you would call your enemy? Unless you're committed to a life of Prozac, you would have to admit that this is true.

Some people may have caused you grief and pain, but it will all work out for God's purposes. Don't be bitter at anyone no matter what they've done, and God will work it all for good. God has permitted it all for a definite purpose that we may not understand until later, or maybe not even on this side of Eternity. Learn to recognize the hand of God in your life. When you can't, you just have to trust Him anyway. God is able to make the worst of enemies into a friend. Prov.16:7 says, “ When a man’s ways please the Lord, He makes even his enemies to be at peace with him.” My Father-in-law (G.P.Jones) gave me that scripture to me 4 years ago, now he's in heaven.

The Bible says in Luke 24:16; “But their eyes were holden that they should know Him.”

For those who were educated in the American school system, that means the disciples could see Jesus with their eyes, but they still couldn't recognize Him. Why, after practically living with Him for more than three years couldn't they recognize Him now? Because of their sorrow and grief and unbelief.

How many times in our lives, when things happen, setbacks, unexplained tragedies and losses, senseless reversals in life, do we fail to see the hand of God in our circumstances? In times of serious testings, He seems so remote, disinterested, so far away.

When the disciples were out at sea in the storm, fearing for there very lives, they cried out to Jesus, “Lord, don't you care that we perish?” Of course He does, it just doesn't always seem like He does. Eventually Jesus comes into the broken scene of our life, just when we think we can't take anymore, and He says, “It is I, do not be afraid.”

The Shulamite was running through the city, the open fields of life, frantically searching for the one she loved. She cried out in haste to anyone who would listen to her, “Oh that I knew where I could find Him.”

Sometimes we can't find Him because we don't believe we can. We're too discouraged, too dark and unbelieving, like the Children of Israel when Moses told them God was going to deliver them out of Egypt. They just blinked at him, made a few cynical remarks, and went back to work. Ain't going to happen on our watch.

God does actually want us to see His hand in our circumstances, and that He surely wants to bless and help us. As with Adam in the Garden, He wants to commune with us in the cool of the day. But if we just blink like deer caught in the oncoming headlights, make a few cynical remarks about cars on the road, and go back to breaking rocks in the hot sun, we're not likely to hear much.

 Don't Blink! 

Anyone want to talk about trials and difficulties and “going through the fire”? Me neither, so let's not. But it's all that God is giving me this morning.

Mal.3:3, “He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver..”

It is with the most precious metals that the refiner of metals takes the most pains, and subjects them to the blazing furnace, because such fires melt the metal and allows it to fit its new form in the mould. I don't know about you, but I've heard this illustration so many times I could put it on my gravestone.

But I learned something new about this old illustration. The refiner never leaves his melting pot, but sits down right next to it, to insure that there isn't one minute or degree of heat in excess of what is necessary that would damage the precious metal. And so God, the Chief Refiner of precious souls, sits by closely in times of purifying and painful fires, so that we need not endure one extra minute of grief or sorrow, or one extra blast of heat that tries our souls. Knowing this comforting truth in our painful places of life ought to bring great encouragement—that we're not going through what we're going through because God is angry with us, or that He's given up on us, or that it's “just our cross to bear.”

The key words in this illustration are “precious metals”. Because there is something precious in us that God can work with, He can't resist wanting to perfect it. It's a part of His glorious nature.

There are certain precious souls in life that are being refined in the fires, and they are being changed from glory to glory. They are not “settled on the lees”, but are being poured from vessel to vessel. There are too many believers that are quite settled on their lees, and they seem perfectly satisfied to remain there. They are enjoying all the benefits of Christianity, riding the crest of the blessings of God, but it's as if they are receiving their crowns of reward now, and there won't be much left for them when they get to the other side. I can't begrudge them, but I'm certainly tempted often to envy them. It sure is an easier path for now, but I can't help but feel that they are missing out on more important things.

Saratu Turundu was thirty-five, unmarried, and was very active in her church in Nigeria.

She loved children and taught them in Sunday school. She longed to be married , but that wasn't happening, so she settled for loving them in her little classroom. The fanatical Muslims, who domintaed her town of Kaduna were persecuting the Christians. She had heard stories of churches being burned, and Christians beaten and killed for their faith.

One day a mob of Muslims came to attack the Christians of Kaduna. Many believers fled into the nearby bush, but Saratu had determined she would stay and take a stand. She watched as they burnt their little church building to the ground, yet she refused to budge. As Muslims poured gasoline on the building where she was living, and set it on fire, she fell to her knees and prayed. She died there, asking God to forgive the very people who hated her and her Savior.

People like Saratu are gold, refined many times, and are of most usefulness to God, and will be rewarded the most on the other side. It is amazing what we can do when forced into difficult places.

Have you ever stopped to think why God permits certain people to cross your path? Are there people you know who you'd wish you'd never met? Are there people in your life you would call your enemy? Unless you're committed to a life of Prozac, you would have to admit that this is true.

Some people may have caused you grief and pain, but it will all work out for God's purposes. Don't be bitter at anyone no matter what they've done, and God will work it all for good. God has permitted it all for a definite purpose that we may not understand until later, or maybe not even on this side of Eternity. Learn to recognize the hand of God in your life. When you can't, you just have to trust Him anyway. God is able to make the worst of enemies into a friend. Prov.16:7 says, “ When a man’s ways please the Lord, He makes even his enemies to be at peace with him.” My Father-in-law (G.P.Jones) gave me that scripture to me 4 years ago, now he's in heaven.

The Bible says in Luke 24:16; “But their eyes were holden that they should know Him.”

For those who were educated in the American school system, that means the disciples could see Jesus with their eyes, but they still couldn't recognize Him. Why, after practically living with Him for more than three years couldn't they recognize Him now? Because of their sorrow and grief and unbelief.

How many times in our lives, when things happen, setbacks, unexplained tragedies and losses, senseless reversals in life, do we fail to see the hand of God in our circumstances? In times of serious testings, He seems so remote, disinterested, so far away.

When the disciples were out at sea in the storm, fearing for there very lives, they cried out to Jesus, “Lord, don't you care that we perish?” Of course He does, it just doesn't always seem like He does. Eventually Jesus comes into the broken scene of our life, just when we think we can't take anymore, and He says, “It is I, do not be afraid.”

The Shulamite was running through the city, the open fields of life, frantically searching for the one she loved. She cried out in haste to anyone who would listen to her, “Oh that I knew where I could find Him.”

Sometimes we can't find Him because we don't believe we can. We're too discouraged, too dark and unbelieving, like the Children of Israel when Moses told them God was going to deliver them out of Egypt. They just blinked at him, made a few cynical remarks, and went back to work. Ain't going to happen on our watch.

God does actually want us to see His hand in our circumstances, and that He surely wants to bless and help us. As with Adam in the Garden, He wants to commune with us in the cool of the day. But if we just blink like deer caught in the oncoming headlights, make a few cynical remarks about cars on the road, and go back to breaking rocks in the hot sun, we're not likely to hear much.

Chosen by God    (or Before the Fat Lady Sings)

Jesus said in John 15:19; “I have chosen you out of the world.”

This means we are special objects of the Father's love.

Peter has the same thought in 2Peter 2:9,10; “But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; 10 who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy.”

When we know we are especially elected by God for high and holy purposes, this gives us a quiet resting place for our uncertain spirits.

These thoughts are especially wonderful to dwell on when we are most heavy and discouraged by life, not thinking much of ourselves. To fully understand that we are the reward of the Son of God for the travail of His soul on Calvary, this will be as an intoxicant for the mind, or like the honey Jonathon found in the woods that immediately enlightened his eyes. We need to see ourselves with God's perspective.

Someone wrote. “His oath, His covenant, His blood, Support me in the raging flood.

When every earthly prop gives way, This still is all my strength and stay.”

We need to remember where we're sitting. Many of us are sitting in places we don't belong. Were sitting in places of despair, unbelief, condemnation and discouragement. In Ephesians 2, Paul said we are sitting in “heavenly places.” Not just visiting heavenly places now and then, on Sundays and special occasions. Not just visiting heavenly places when things are going very well for us, but sitting there. Every day, and all day long.

If we are special objects of the Father's love and choosing, and sitting in heavenly places with Christ, then we can fully trust what some great saint once said, “All things come to him who knows how to trust and be silent.”

There is the story of a little North Korean boy who's father had been imprisoned for years. The boy's family had suffered greatly under the brutality of the Communist government. They had to beg food just to survive.

The boy met secretly with a missionary and pleaded for help. The missionary assumed the boy would ask for food and money for his family. He was surprised when the boy asked instead for the missionary to take his tithe that he had saved up, to baptize him, and to give him a better Bible.

The missionary was moved to tears when he realized the sincerity of the boys desire to live for God under the most cruel of conditions.

Wanting something and needing something are two entirely different things for most people. What we want is not always what we actually need, which is why so many are frustrated. This little boy understood he needed Jesus more than anything else, because when he had that, all the other needs would be taken care of as well.

We can be safe in an unsafe world. Until God Himself is found to be a liar, or until Jesus ceases to be love and truth, we are safe. If God retires from Who He is, then we're in trouble. But as long as He remains on the throne, we remain the apple of His eye. So it is our business to learn to be peaceful and safe in God in every situation.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a one-man opposition movement in Communist Russia. Years spent in a Soviet Gulag convinced him of his calling to write. He had been converted by a Jewish Christian, and experienced a miraculous healing from cancer. He felt responsible to write in behalf the “dying millions” who endured the horrors of the Gulag.

He once wrote in “The Oak and the Calf”, “I have done many things in my life that conflicted with the great aims I had set for myself—and something has always set me on the true path again.” He knew as long as he was occupied doing what God wanted him to do, he was safe in this world. He was elected, chosen to do certain things.

When he was fifty-five, he still felt he had much to accomplish. He said, “I felt as though I was about to fill a space in the world that was meant for me and long awaited me, a mold, as it were, made for me alone, but discerned by me only this very moment. I was a molten substance, impatient, unendurably impatient, to pour into my mold, to fill it full, without air bubbles or cracks, before I cooled and stiffened.”

We have a gifting from God, chosen and appointed by God for own own unique purpose here on earth. If we spend and use these gifts only on ourselves, they will decay and putrefy. But if we use these gifts for others , they will blossom to their fullest potential, and will meet a need God intended for you to meet, and God will be glorified.

One the major keys in life is simply to be doing what God has called us to. Jesus said to His disciples, “Occupy until I come.” Be involved, be busy about the Master's business, whatever that business is.

We only have a certain time here on earth, when the fat lady sings, it's over. And I think I hear her clearing her throat.

Doing Your Best

Someone said, “Stand in the place that God has put you, and there do your best.”

Paul said that in the “last days”, perilous times would come--spiritually dangerous times, wicked times, deceptive and confusing times would come.

So he gave instruction to Titus, “Teach what is fitting, give out sound doctrine, practice right living, these are the things that will help keep you safe, especially in the perilous last days.

He goes on to say you should show yourself to be a model, a pattern of good works. Have strict regard for truth and purity of motive.

Let your instruction be sound, wise, so our opponents may be put to shame, that they have nothing discrediting or evil to say about us.”

Our enemies will say evil things to discredit us anyway. Paul is saying, “Don't give them any fresh ammunition.” Why help them out?

Paul said, “Having done all to stand.”

Someone said if we don't stand for something, we will fall for anything.

A prominent leader named Hua in a growing house church in Communist China, was constantly harassed by police. They were trying to force him to turn in other believers, but he steadfastly refused to do so. They beat him until he had to be hospitalized, they imprisoned his 77 year old mother to further presure him, and finally they put him under house arrest with police officers living in his home in hope of intimidating him to cooperate with them.

Hua refused to give in, feeling it his solemn responsibility to shield other believers from exposure and certain persecution. He was standing in the place God had put him and was doing his best.

The College of William & Mary distributed tens of thousands of green and gold feathers to students and alumni in an act of defiance to an NCAA ruling that said the school's logo, including two green and gold feathers amounts to “hostile and abusive” imagery.

The editor of the newspaper, “The Virginia Informer”, said “I am glad that we have the opportunity to help show our love for the college and our team and also send a message to the NCAA that despite their official actions, there is nothing they can do to stop us from using the symbols we want to use.”

They were standing in a place God had put them and simply doing their best.

Brother Da was a faithful Communist Party member in North Vietnam. He began listening to a Christian program. At first he would mock the Christian message as superstition and stupid, but after a couple of months, he gave in and accepted Christ. He soon began winning his neighbors to Christ as well.

It wasn't long until he was arrested by the Vietnamese police at his home in front of his wife and four children. He was taken to a labor camp and forced to work in a brick factory for almost two years. When he was released he was warned not to share his faith. He was told, “You have just returned from labor camp. Do you want to go back? Think carefully.”

But Da continued sharing his faith. No labor camp or backbreaking labor with bricks could deter him. He was standing in a place that God had put him, and he was doing his best.

Most people in life are fearful of many things. They're fearful of losing their jobs, even if they hate their jobs—it's a paycheck. They're fearful of upsetting people, their boss, their spouse, their children, their dog, their friends, their co-workers, their family. Most people are afraid of upsetting anyone, unless of course they are complete oafs who don't have enough sense to care about anything. I know people who are afraid of being put out of their church because they're afraid their pastor is upset with them.

So they live their lives much differently than they would if they didn't have so many fears. It's not the actual upsetting of these people they fear, or the consequences of such actions—No, it's pre-emptive fear, projected fear as the psychologist would call it. It's a fear of something fearful that might happen if certain actions are taken or certain words are spoken. It's a fearful world for the fearful.

The newest of these fears is the fear of not being “politically correct”. Most people know what this is—it's a system of thought control that aims at coercing people into a certain course of action and thoughts ranging from global warming to homosexuality, from sports team logos to evolution, and from tolerance for violent, extremist religious practices to rejecting of the foundational religious beliefs that made us great.

This world's system aims at making cowards of us all. To be man-pleaser's rather than God-pleaser's, self-seekers and self-preservers rather than self-sacrificers and self respecters and God-respecters.

This fearfulness is especially dangerous among believers. God's Word tells us to stand for certain things, things that are increasingly unpopular in this world. Many believers today can mark up their Bibles, but only a few are actually marked by the Word.

Rev.21:8 has some sobering words to say to us. It gives us a list of people who will not make heaven their home, but will be cast into the lake that burns with fire and brimstone. (Yes, I'm one of those fire and brimstone believers). This list includes the abominable and sinners, murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers (those into the occult), idolaters (putting anything in your life before God) and liars.

But right in there with what we may call the “major sins”, is another sin that leads off the whole list: “The cowardly”. And in case we're not clear as to the exact meaning of “coward, “Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary says of this word, “implies a weak or ignoble or contemptible lack of courage, a dishonoring abject yielding to fear.”

I think Webster gives us a clear picture of this. It takes some courage to successfully live for God. Having courage doesn't mean you don't have fear, but that you're willing to push beyond your fears and do the right thing anyway.

It simply means standing in that place where God has put you and just keep doing your best.

  Direction From God

Jer.50 deals with a familiar subject in Jeremiah's writing, that of false shepherds misleading the flock of God. The charge is that the shepherds have led the people to their favorite places of idolatry. These places are not just wooden images and obelisks as we often think, but an idol is anything that takes the place of God.

Often times, modern church leaders set themselves up as in place of God, rather than leading their people into a closer relationship with God. Legalistic churches lead their people into a closer relationship with rules and standards and programs, and the people begin to assume that obeying the rules and serving the programs is the same as living for God. But many of these people have a very shallow understanding and relationship with God.

Paul's ministry was quite different from that. In Titus, he opens his letter by saying his ministry's aim was to stimulate and promote the faith of God's chosen ones and to lead them to an accurate discernment and recognition and acquaintance with Truth which belongs to harmonizes with godliness.

The state of the modern church is unfortunately in bad shape. How many honest souls have I heard said, “We just can't find a good church in this city.” I know some are looking for the “perfect church”, and won't be satisfied until they find one, which they won't, because the Church is made up of imperfect people. But many are simply looking for a Biblical based church with some spiritual life, giving out revelation, worship, evangelism to the lost and a sense of fulfilling God's plan for His Church in the earth.

The more you know the Word, the more difficult this becomes in our age. I can only surmise that God is going to raise up something new concerning His church, so that honest, sincere believers will have a place where they can be built up, encouraged, edified, instructed, inspired and loved, without the “greasy grace” churches on the one hand, and the legalistic, authoritarian churches on the other hand.

Sheep need a shepherd, but when they don't have a capable one at the time, more than ever, they need to dig in the Word and pray the more for God to give them direction and hope. People need a church and fellowship, but they also need to spend closet time alone with God. Too much intercourse with the wrong kind of people exhausts us, and draws us away from ourselves. The Bible says of the disciples, “When they were alone with Him He expounded all things to them.” If you want Him to expound His pearls to you, you need to balance your lives in such a way there is ample time and place for Him to do so.

God's ideal for man I believe is to be saved and a part of a Biblical church, with a pastor that truly is a God-centered shepherd and fellowship with other like-minded saints who love God, truth and the Word. For many believers today, for one reason or another, this is not a possibility, at least for the moment. In some nations, the Gospel may be illegal and persecution is the norm for simply being a Christian. This may soon come to America as well, as our Christian heritage is being rapidly eroded away.

Richard Wurmbrand was imprisoned alone in a Communist cell. How could he live for God in such circumstances, no church, no fellowship, not even a Bible to read? But God showed him how to witness to his fellow cell mates in the next cells by tapping on the prison walls and teaching them Morse code. Then he gave them the Gospel by Morse code. Years later, Wurmbrand heard the testimony how a prisoner in an adjacent Romanian cell was won to Christ by someone tapping on the wall. Which leads to the truth that a person's attitude is far more important than one's outward circumstances. With a right attitude, God can us direction in any kind of circumstances.

Amy Carmichael rescued many young girls in India from a life of prostitution to pagan temples. Amy prayed one day, “Lord, help me to serve you better.” Later that day she fell, dislocating an ankle and breaking her leg, and she became mostly crippled for life, spending her last twenty years confined to her room. But she didn't waste time complaining about her situation, she began writing and authored thirteen books which encouraged countless saints around the world.

Ps.97:11 says, “Light is sown for the uncompromisingly righteous and strewn along their pathway.”

God desires to speak to us and give us His direction, but we have to be serious about pursuing Him. His direction in our lives will be tied to His giftedness in our lives, not just spiritual gifts, but natural gifts as well.

Graham Greene wrote in “The Power and the Glory”, “There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.” In my own life, I remember as a small child, even before I learned to read, taking square alphabet letters out of a tin box, opening a Davy Crockett book with pictures, or some other such book, and using the den floor as my writing page, copying out the letters on the floor, and then having my mother come and read the words. This was my “open door”. Einstein as a teenager put it this way in a homework assignment, “One always likes to do the things for which one has ability.”

Perhaps God has gifted you to play the saxophone. That is not my gifting, though I would love it if it was. Saxophone players never seem worried about anything, they're just here to make us feel good. Perhaps your gifting is working with children, or with flowers, or with sick people, or designing buildings. The early churches were built with high, pointed steeples, with the idea of pointing to heaven, and the grand structures were seen as giving praise to the glory of God. Find your gifting and do it, and try to make a living out of it if possible. “Your gift will make way for you.”

Forty-eight percent of Americans say they are stressed now more than five years ago. The same percent say they have trouble sleeping at night. So what are people most worrying about? Primarily two things: money and work, so say 75% of Americans. Two years ago it was only 59%. Sign of the times.

We can't all be saxophone players.

Fulfilling Our Calling

Jer.48:10, “Cursed is he who does the work of God negligently [with slackness, deceitfully].”

This is a stern warning, a code red terror alert for believers then and now. This is more than, “He who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is not worthy”, or “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your heart”.

God is saying in Jeremiah, “Cursed”. “Let there be a curse upon him who does the work of God negligently, with slackness, or in a casual manner, or deceitfully (for wrong motives). Whatever called has called you to do, jump in, work hard, stay close to God, keep moving forward and see it through.

If this isn't scary enough, he goes on to say, “and cursed is he who keeps back his sword from blood [in executing judgment pronounced by God].”

This warning puts “man-pleasing” out to lunch. This is a clarion call to fearlessness and aggressiveness in fulfilling what God has called for us to do.

The Colorado Rockies baseball team have just made a record breaking winning streak that has put them into the World Series. Many of the players are outspoken Christians and credit God for helping them as individuals and as a team. They have a paid, on staff chaplain, they don't allow Playboy type magazines in the their locker room, they're strongly encouraged to attend Sunday chapel services and Tuesday night Bible studies. There is no obscene-laced rap music in the clubhouse like most teams have. And the players routinely share their testimonies with the fans at such events like Family Day.

But a team spokesman has said when asked about the Christian influence on his team: “Our clubhouse is no different than any other in Major League clubhouse.” Rather than pushing the envelope on their Christian witness and standards, this spokesman chose the more politically correct approach, for fear of sounding too religious. He wants people to know that “we're like just like everyone else.”

In Vs.11, Jeremiah goes on to say, “Moab has been at ease from his youth, settled on his lees (like wine), and has not drawn off one vessel to another....therefore his taste remains in him, his scent has not changed.”

This is where most people are in life. They're not evil, and they're not saints. They're stuck in the middle and their lives are not really fulfilling any particular destiny.  I was an evangelist and a missionary for many years, and I was able to accomplish many glorious things for the Kingdom of God. It was the perfect convergence of work and calling. Your calling may be less dramatic, but just as important, such as staying home and raising children, or serving God by what yo do in some other way.   

Most people make a living but don't have a life. Many are making a comfortable salary, providing for their family, they are financially secure for the future, but a nagging emptiness continues to invade their spirits. Workaholics seek out more work to fill this void. Others seek out more meaningful work, but this is only possible if what you do to make a living is actually your life as well. Only then can we burn with a passion and not be guilty of doing what God has called us to negligently. Life needs to be about fulfilling a calling, not merely cashing a paycheck.

He says of Moab that he has “settled on his lees”. This is a picture of wine that has become stale because it hasn't been kept alive by pouring it from vessel to vessel. It speaks of our lives becoming stale when we don't allow God to change us from glory to glory.

Oswald Chambers said, “Our greatest competition of devotion to Jesus is service for Him.” We become “settled on our lees” when we're caught up “serving God”, like Mary rattling the pans in the kitchen, rather than allowing Him to bring us into a closer personal relationship with Him, like Mary sitting at His feet. Or we get “settled on our lees” when we do our good deeds for a church organization, hoping to be rewarded and recognized by them rather than by God. This is what it means to do the work of God “deceitfully”, or for wrong motives.

Paul carries this thought of becoming too comfortable where we're at in 2Tim.4. He commands, “Preach the Word, witness, get out the Gospel.” There is a sense of urgency to reach the lost, when the opportunity seems favorable or unfavorable. He says to show the people what is wrong with their lives. In other words, “keep not your sword from blood”.

He goes on, “Convince, rebuke, warn, encourage, reach them before someone else comes along and tickles their ears with things that satisfy their liking and causes them continue on in their same, convenient errors.

Do the work of an evangelist, fully perform your duties. This is Paul's call to arms. In the Spanish-American War the call was “Remember the Maine”. In WWII it was “Remember Pearl Harbor”, and Winston Churchill's, “Never, never, never, never give up”. Today it would be, “Remember 9-11”. For Paul it was, “Preach the Word”.

Why is the man “cursed” who does the work of God negligently, or merely casually? Yes, the lost won't be reach, and this is important; the Great Commission isn't over until it's over. But “preaching the Word” is also what enables believers not to get “settled on their lees”, caught up in their own problems, focused in fear on their retirement plans, worried about whether their lawn is as good as their neighbors, and a whole host of other things that aren't going to amount to a can of beans when all is said and done.

“Therefore his taste remains in him, his scent has not changed.”

This can be likened to the taste in our mouths when we first wake up in the morning. Who wants to keep that taste? Drink some juice, swish some mouthwash, do something, just don't breathe on me yet.

This same idea is also in the last phrase, “his scent has not changed” There's something about a believer fulfilling their calling for all the right reasons that just smells good. Our own taste, or own smell is just that, ours. It's like the stale smell of death.

Paul said it this way in 2Cor.2:15, 17, “For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved....for we are not, as so many, peddling the word of God; but as of sincerity, but as from God, we speak in the sight of God in Christ.”

So Paul was able to say at the close of his ministry, and his life, before going under Nero's blade, “For I am already being poured out as a drink offering..” The drink offering was a regular superficial offering under the old convenant, where wine was poured on the offering, perhaps to make the offering smell that much sweeter.

We are a “sweet smelling aroma unto God” when we are fulfilling His calling on our lives.

The Price of Association

Jer.45 was written as an encouragement to Baruch. Baruch was the man who transcribed the words of Jeremiah that were read to the king, who cut them out piece by piece and tossed them into the fire. When Jeremiah purchased land in Jerusalem at God's direction, it was Baruch that took care of the transaction details.

Now Jeremiah was going to Egypt with God's people. Baruch, as friend and assistant, would go with him. Egypt was a place nearly always forbidden by God for His people, a picture of depending on the arm of flesh, and Baruch was in need of some encouragement for having to go there.

Being associated with Jeremiah was costing Baruch something. Being associated with the people of God always comes at a price, especially in this generation in America where atheism, New Age and dead religion are more acceptable than genuine Christianity. In fact, the reason many don't want to become Christians is that they don't want to pay the price of association with Christ.

To be associated with a certain church or group brings a certain stigma, reproach. The apostles found out that association with Jesus at His trial was intimidating, and they all fled.

Baruch associated with the most unpopular man in the land of that day, especially to the dead, apostate religious world. In fact, the secular world was more favorable to him and respected him more than the religious. The religious world was so corrupt, they refused to listen to God's prophet, and even desired his life.

God wanted Baruch to know, that as bad as things were, that He was behind the events of life. That he and Jeremiah were going to make it through if they kept trusting Him. And indeed, we see them now as older men in Egypt, having survived the worst the enemy could do to them.

This little remnant of Hebrews in Egypt that were not destroyed, now needed a place to go. They looked at one nation after another where they might be safe and accepted. Would it be possible for them to find shelter with an enemy nation? No, they couldn't, because these nations would also soon be overtaken by the enemy.

Paul said in 2Tim.3:12; “All who are determined to live a devoted life in Christ will meet with persecution [made to suffer for their righteous stands].” This is not for the faint-hearted, the “need a blessing a minute” Christians. This is not for the “promise-box” Christians who want to live on the surface of things and never go deeper into the Christian life. They sadly miss out on the treasures that God has prepared for them.

Many church people today are faithful to follow the outward requirements of a church organization, but unaware or unwilling for God to change them on the inside. If we are only following the outer form of religion, we lose sight of our real lives. We end up becoming a people God never intended for us to be. We end up losing our true selves.

Ps.94 is such a total blessing. It needs to be read carefully and absorbed for all its

insights, comforts and encouragement. It deals with a common theme in the Bible, that of the righteous suffering, often at the hands of the church that ought to be blessing them. No one is capable of more cruelty in life than the merely religious.

Vs.1-3; “O Lord, whom vengeance belongs, shine forth. Rise up and judge the earth, render to the proud a fit compensation. How long will the wicked triumph? They pour out arrogant words, speaking hard things, boasting loftily.

They crush your people, they afflict Your heritage.”

If you've never been there in life, it is not possible for you to understand this desperate cry. If you love God and truth and want to be a genuine Christian, you will be promoted to this level eventually. Don't you want to thank me for that encouraging word?

Vs.12,13; “Blessed is the man in whom You instruct. You will give him power to remain calm in days of adversity.....For justice shall return to the uncompromisingly righteous.”

What a gift from God to remain calm under extreme adversity. I read about some elephants in the Far East who somehow got into some rice alcohol, got drunk, went on a rampage and collided with some electrical poles and electrocuted themselves.

They just couldn't remain calm under times of duress.

Vs.16; “Who will rise up for me against the evildoers? Who will stand up for me against the works of iniquity?”

The psalmist wants to know who his real friends are. When you're a going through things, being persecuted, slandered, unrighteously, attacked by wicked people, you really learn who your real friends are, and aren't. This can be disheartening, as many don't want to associate with you in these times, afraid it might rub off on them. I try not to blame people for staying away in these times, would I do much better? Hopefully I would. Those who have suffered for righteousness are better equipped at helping others when they're going through difficult times.

When Jesus was on the earth, the Pharisee's once mocked Him by saying, “Physician, heal yourself.” How does someone heal themselves? How does someone act as a physician to himself. We heal ourselves when we rise up above our own difficulties and reach out to help someone else. Then our problems don't seem as large.

Ps.94:17-19; “Unless the Lord had been my help, I would have gone to the land of silence [grave].”

“When my foot slipped, Your mercy and loving kindness helped me up.”

In the multitude of my anxious thoughts within me, Your comforts cheer and delight my soul.”

Even if friends are scarce in your difficult times, God's loving kindness is not always dependent on them to encourage us. He can do this all by Himself when necessary, His methods of bringing comfort and reassurance are unlimited.

Vs.20,21; “Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with You—they who frame and hide their unrighteous doings under the sacred name of the law?”

These are people who hide evil behind their profession of religion.

“They band themselves together against the life of the consistently righteous and condemn the innocent to death.”

The devil is called a lion that seeks to devour the righteous. Lions hunt in packs, they cooperate and coordinate with one another to bring about their kill. Sometimes it seems the enemy has us surrounded, but how often have God's people been surrounded by a hopeless situation, by innumerable enemies, and come out victorious? “Even if a enemy host were encamped against me, still in You would I trust.”

What a picture. He's saying even if a whole SWAT team of sharpshooters surrounded us to assassinate us, physically or a character assasination, God will still take us through and protect us.

He ends by claiming and clinging to God as his High Tower. What choice do we have? We don't want to end up like those drunk elephants.

No Going Back

Johanan, the hero from Jer.41, who rose up and risked his life to fight against the wicked Ishmael and rescue the people of God, comes to Jeremiah and asks him for a Word from God so he can know what God's people were to do now. Jeremiah inquires of God for him, and ten days later gives him God's answer. They are to stay in the land, and God said He “will build them up and not tear them down.” Also, they weren't to be afraid of the king of Babylon who was now ruling Jerusalem, because God said He would protect and deliver them from his hand.

But Johanan and them with him refused the Word given through Jeremiah and said they would surely go to Egypt instead, in direct disobedience to God. God told them if they went to Egypt, they would be overcome by famine and the sword. But they went instead.

Egypt to the people of God symbolized the world, and the place the Hebrews continually wanted to return to when they wanted to trust something other than God. They had been taken out of bondage after four hundred years there, and even a short time later, many wanted to return again when trusting God got too difficult. Forgetting their cruel bondage in Egypt, all they could think about were the leaks and garlics and onions.

It's amazing when we nostalgically look to the past, thinking it would be a safer, more comfortable place to be, that we only remember the leaks and garlics, and forget the bondage we were probably in at the same time. Life never moves in reverse, only forward.

There are many times in life when moving forward seems very difficult. Or, like Johanan, we can start out well and courageous, but grow weary when the way seems laden with overwhelming challenges and discouraging setbacks, and want to return back to a seemingly safer path. But this path always leads to compromise and disaster. The king of Babylon eventually invaded Egypt, and “delivered to death those appointed for death, and to captivity those appointed for captivity.” You can never escape the challenges of life by escaping into the past. The challenge will purse after you and haunt you and thwart your future.

Someone said, “You can become someone else—you can leave behind the person you've grown to despise and become a person who you can even admire.” No one admires someone who goes back, especially ourselves. Jesus said, “Anyone who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is not worthy of the Kingdom of God.” If you go back, you will be back where you started from at another place in life that you were desperate to escape from. And it will be more difficult to escape from again.

Os Guinness said, “We all have the freedom, the terrible freedom, to be whatever we want to be. All it takes is courage and willpower. We can actually invent ourselves.” Of course when it comes to willpower, will is common but power is rare. John Keats once said, “That which is creative must create itself.”

This kind of determination to create ourselves, to keep moving forward into the future with God, comes out of the raw experiences of life. It motivates us to be willing to jump out of the box and become something much more than we ever dreamed possible. Beecher said, “It is by being cast down and not destroyed, and the pieces torn to shreds that men become men of might. Whereas men that yield to the appearance of things, and go with the world, have their quick blossoming, their momentary prosperity, and then their end, which is an end forever.”

Paul said, “If we suffer, we shall also reign with Him.” I don't believe everyone that enters heaven is going to automatically reign with Christ. Only those who suffer with Him here will qualify.

Ps.92 says the wicked spring up like grass, that evildoers flourish, but they are doomed to be destroyed forever.” Look around at who is flourishing in the world, it gives you a fair idea who the wicked of this world are in God's eyes. One of the most common themes in Psalms is the idea of the wicked setting up traps, pursuing the righteous to destroy them.

That's why the Bible gives innumerable examples of people who have suffered. When someone has gone through similar trials, it somehow makes ours that much easier to understand. Trials sometimes make us feel like we're in solitary confinement because we feel so alone. In times like these it's comforting and inspiring to hear the stories of other courageous believers who have gone before us and have triumphed in trying times.

God's promise to the uncompromisingly righteous is that they will eventually flourish like a palm tree, they shall be long-lived, stately, useful and fruitful. They shall be like a cedar in Lebanon, durable and incorruptible. They shall be full of vitality and bring forth fruit even in old age. I am fifty-eight, and I personally believe my most fruitful years are before me.

The righteous will be living memorials that God is faithful to His promises. This is the legacy of the faithfulness of God we must leave to the next generation. But we can only leave a living legacy if we continue living ourselves, and keep moving forward in God.

Standing For Righteousness

Jer. 39. Babylon has conquered and destroyed Jerusalem. It would seem like the powers of evil are totally in control and God's people have no hope.

But this is never truly the case. God demonstrates in this chapter that He is still very much in control.

Jerusalem is destroyed because of their apostasy, but that's not the complete story.

First, the coward Zedekiah, who refused the counsel of Jeremiah again and again to surrender to the Babylonians is dealt with by God. He refused to obey the prophet of God because he was afraid of what the people would think and do to him. He was a people-pleaser, which rendered him incapable of having any convictions beyond self-preservation. He tries to escape, he is captured, brought before Nebuchadnezzar, his sons are killed in front of his eyes, then his eyes are put out so the last thing he remembers seeing are his sons brutally murdered, then he's put in shackles and kept in bondage the rest of his life.

Zedekiah thought he could be a compromiser, a fence-sitter, an appeaser, a people-pleaser and that he would be able to keep his comfortable position. But in the end he lost it all because he was simply a coward.

There were some very poor people in the land, and because God always has mercy on the genuinely poor, they were given lands by the wicked king [inspired by God].

The wicked king sends for Jeremiah who is being held by palace guards. He is set free and delivered to Gedaliah (his father had once saved Jeremiah's life). Jeremiah is delivered over to this friend and released to dwell freely among the people. This is all done by a pagan king who would have no motivation to be kind to Jeremiah, but again, it is God that rules over all, not any mere king or potentate. Jeremiah, given a choice by the king to dwell any place he wants to, chooses to remain with the poor of the land who need his leadership and encouragement.

Then there's the beautiful story of an Ethiopian eunuch named Ebed-molech. This man risked his life to confront the king about imprisoning Jeremiah, and lived to tell about it. Some leaders, even in the church world, if challenged about anything would have your head. In the days of the ruthless dictator Saddam Hussein of Iraq, anyone who dared to speak out against the ruling Baath party, would have their tongue cut out. Perhaps not as drastic as this, abusive organizations have their own methods of trying to silence people of another opinion, or sometimes merely honest questioners.   

 

  King Nebuchadnezzar was a ruthless, violent tyrant.  Ebed-molech put his life seriously at risk. He was courageous for righteousness. The king allows Ebed-molech to rescue Jeremiah from the miry pit. Later, this brave eunuch is given a prophetic word by Jeremiah, that God was going to destroy the land, but that He was going to spare Ebed-molech because he risked all for God and rescued God's prophet. Standing for righteousness always pays, if not now, surely later.

Man in his arrogance and price, thinks he rules, whether this is in the secular or church world, but God overrules whenever He decides to step in and take over. When God steps into human affairs, He brings justice to the righteous and judgment to the wicked. Ultimately He will do this in the Final Judgment at the end of the age.

It may not always seem like standing for conviction and righteousness pays off, but God will eventually balance the books. People are continually being weighed in the balance to see which side they will choose, whether they will be man-pleaser's, cowards, appeasers, or whether they will take the far more difficult path of standing for righteousness, truth and godly convictions.

A wicked man by the name of Ishmael plots and kills Gedaliah, and takes God's people captive. In Jer.41:11, a man comes out of nowhere named Johanan. He hears about the evil that has happened, gathers up all his men and goes out to fight Ishmael. The people taken captive are rejoicing to see him and he successfully rescues them and returns them to Jerusalem.

Where did this man Johanan come from? I believe he's one of those hidden saints who saw a lot of wickedness in his lifetime. Through these experiences of life, God was training him behind the scenes to hate evil, to have personal convictions, and when the time came to go into action, he was ready for the call.

God often prepares His special ones in secret. Like Paul, who had a powerful experience with God. Paul saw a vision of the glory of God, not just for his own enjoyment, but so that this esperience would sustain him through the many battles that lie ahead.

Psalam 91 is one of the most beautiful of all pslams. Regardless of what is happening in your life today, we can choose to remain under His protective wing. Sometimes God sends a rescuer, sometimes He doesn't. He Himself is our strength and our fortress. We can be kept safe under the Almighty [whose power no foe can withstand].

He promises that if we make the Lord God our refuge, no evil shall befall us, nor any plague. Angels will defend and protect us in all our ways of obedience and service to Him. And because we have a personal knowledge of His mercy and loving kindness, He will never forsake us.

He promises us that when we will call upon Him, He will answer. That He will be with us in trouble, and that He will deliver and honor us, and give us long life. At my age, that's especially good news.

Standing for righteousness is never the easier choice in the natural. But it is the only choice for people who love God and truth, and the only course that promises such peace now and forevermore.

Standing For Righteousness

Jer. 39. Babylon has conquered and destroyed Jerusalem. It would seem like the powers of evil are totally in control and God's people have no hope.

But this is never truly the case. God demonstrates in this chapter that He is still very much in control.

Jerusalem is destroyed because of their apostasy, but that's not the complete story.

First, the coward Zedekiah, who refused the counsel of Jeremiah again and again to surrender to the Babylonians is dealt with by God. He refused to obey the prophet of God because he was afraid of what the people would think and do to him. He was a people-pleaser, which rendered him incapable of having any convictions beyond self-preservation. He tries to escape, he is captured, brought before Nebuchadnezzar, his sons are killed in front of his eyes, then his eyes are put out so the last thing he remembers seeing are his sons brutally murdered, then he's put in shackles and kept in bondage the rest of his life.

Zedekiah thought he could be a compromiser, a fence-sitter, an appeaser, a people-pleaser and that he would be able to keep his comfortable position. But in the end he lost it all because he was simply a coward.

There were some very poor people in the land, and because God always has mercy on the genuinely poor, they were given lands by the wicked king [inspired by God].

The wicked king sends for Jeremiah who is being held by palace guards. He is set free and delivered to Gedaliah (his father had once saved Jeremiah's life). Jeremiah is delivered over to this friend and released to dwell freely among the people. This is all done by a pagan king who would have no motivation to be kind to Jeremiah, but again, it is God that rules over all, not any mere king or potentate. Jeremiah, given a choice by the king to dwell any place he wants to, chooses to remain with the poor of the land who need his leadership and encouragement.

Then there's the beautiful story of an Ethiopian eunuch named Ebed-molech. This man risked his life to confront the king about imprisoning Jeremiah, and lived to tell about it. Some leaders, even in the church world, if challenged about anything would have your head. In the days of the ruthless dictator Saddam Hussein of Iraq, anyone who dared to speak out against the ruling Baath party, would have their tongue cut out. Perhaps not as drastic as this, abusive organizations have their own methods of trying to silence people of another opinion, or sometimes merely honest questioners.   

 

  King Nebuchadnezzar was a ruthless, violent tyrant.  Ebed-molech put his life seriously at risk. He was courageous for righteousness. The king allows Ebed-molech to rescue Jeremiah from the miry pit. Later, this brave eunuch is given a prophetic word by Jeremiah, that God was going to destroy the land, but that He was going to spare Ebed-molech because he risked all for God and rescued God's prophet. Standing for righteousness always pays, if not now, surely later.

Man in his arrogance and price, thinks he rules, whether this is in the secular or church world, but God overrules whenever He decides to step in and take over. When God steps into human affairs, He brings justice to the righteous and judgment to the wicked. Ultimately He will do this in the Final Judgment at the end of the age.

It may not always seem like standing for conviction and righteousness pays off, but God will eventually balance the books. People are continually being weighed in the balance to see which side they will choose, whether they will be man-pleaser's, cowards, appeasers, or whether they will take the far more difficult path of standing for righteousness, truth and godly convictions.

A wicked man by the name of Ishmael plots and kills Gedaliah, and takes God's people captive. In Jer.41:11, a man comes out of nowhere named Johanan. He hears about the evil that has happened, gathers up all his men and goes out to fight Ishmael. The people taken captive are rejoicing to see him and he successfully rescues them and returns them to Jerusalem.

Where did this man Johanan come from? I believe he's one of those hidden saints who saw a lot of wickedness in his lifetime. Through these experiences of life, God was training him behind the scenes to hate evil, to have personal convictions, and when the time came to go into action, he was ready for the call.

God often prepares His special ones in secret. Like Paul, who had a powerful experience with God. Paul saw a vision of the glory of God, not just for his own enjoyment, but so that this esperience would sustain him through the many battles that lie ahead.

Psalam 91 is one of the most beautiful of all pslams. Regardless of what is happening in your life today, we can choose to remain under His protective wing. Sometimes God sends a rescuer, sometimes He doesn't. He Himself is our strength and our fortress. We can be kept safe under the Almighty [whose power no foe can withstand].

He promises that if we make the Lord God our refuge, no evil shall befall us, nor any plague. Angels will defend and protect us in all our ways of obedience and service to Him. And because we have a personal knowledge of His mercy and loving kindness, He will never forsake us.

He promises us that when we will call upon Him, He will answer. That He will be with us in trouble, and that He will deliver and honor us, and give us long life. At my age, that's especially good news.

Standing for righteousness is never the easier choice in the natural. But it is the only choice for people who love God and truth, and the only course that promises such peace now and forevermore.

Suffering for Righteousness 
 

Jeremiah is going through it in Jer.37. He's had over thirty years of ministry, now he's in prison simply for faithfully discharging his duties God gave him to do. The walls of Jerusalem are surrounded by the Babylonians, things are looking as bad as they can get.

There are times in our Christian lives, we can be doing exactly what God has called us to do, and yet circumstances turn against us, making us feel we must be doing something wrong. This is especially true if you come from any type of legalistic background, where you've been mis-taught that God's love and acceptance of us is dependent on our performance or strict adherence to church ordinances.

Jeremiah has been bucking the religious and secular system for a long time, even though he's simply doing what God wants him to do. He seems unfit for this role, as he seems to be a “get along” sort of guy, and we see him cringing his way through his various assignments having to confront people with unpleasant news and warnings. For his efforts he is seen as a traitor, someone who is discouraging the people with his words, but he faithfully continues to do so.

Because of this, he can't be controlled and intimidated by the powers that be, and those powers now begin to conspire against him. Just as in Daniels' day, “these men spied and found Daniel praying.” These wicked men couldn't control Daniel, so they had to conspire and spy and find something wrong about him in hope of pulling him down. They couldn't find anything on Daniel, or on Jeremiah, but that didn't stop them from pulling these righteous men down anyway.

Have you ever been persecuted for righteousness? The Bible says if you're truly righteous, and making righteous stands for God, you will be. Nobody seeks out persecution, unless they're religiously unbalanced, but as surely as the “righteous shall through tribulation enter the Kingdom of God”, we shall also be persecuted for righteousness. This is made especially difficult when this persecution comes from those who should be rightfully blessing us.

“Let him be put to death, he stirs up the people”, they said about Jeremiah. The prophet has often been compared to Jesus, and these words are very similar to words spoken about Jesus when He was on this earth.

They crucified Jesus, they only put Jeremiah is a cistern pit, where he sank up to his waste in the mire. His credibility at this point probably wasn't too high, nor was Jesus', or John Bunyan when he was in prsion, or multitudes of others who suffered for righteousness.

Enter an Ethiopian eunuch named Ebed-melech. He confronts the king concerning the unjust treatment of Jeremiah, telling the king, “You have done wickedly.” He literally takes his life into his own hands, with no hope of reward. He could have been easily put to death for confronting the king, as he was a threat to the king's power. Here is a man of true character and courage, not afraid to stand up for righteousness regardless of the personal cost. How rare to find people like this today or in any generation.

God often weighs people in the balance over just such situations in life. What better way to find out where someone is at then to test their heart and convictions and loyalties by placing them in just such situations as this? Do you stand up for the righteous cause regardless of personal cost, or do you just go along with wickedness and injustice, bury your head in the sand and avoid the risk of personal loss? I'm afraid these circumstances make cowards out of all but the very few. A frightening thought when you consider that the Book of Revelations names people who will fail to get into the Kingdom of God, and lists right in there with fornicators, liars and thieves; cowards.

We see Zedekiah in direct opposition to Jeremiah and Ebed-melech. He's warned repeatedly by Jeremiah to surrender to the Babylonians, but he's afraid to do so because of fear what the people will do to him. Zedekiah is a total coward, not one conviction beyond self-preservation. He's a people-pleaser, a politician, who can't make a righteous stand for anything. He wants only to listen to the optimistic but misleading prophecies of

the false prophets.

We live in an age where the modern church seems to have gone to one of two extremes. On the one hand, much of the Church has simply died. As someone said, the preaching is done by “mild-mannered men urging the church to be even more mild-mannered. This kind of preaching doesn't offend anyone, but also doesn't feed anyone either.

The other extreme is controlling type, legalistic churches, the “heavy shepherding” churches that usually end up abusing people in their efforts to control them. 1Tim.6:4 from the Amplified Bible says, “These puffed up in pride and stupefied with conceit”, or as I see it, “Drunk with power”, which results in, among other things, insults, abuse of authority, jealousies, slander and base suspicions. Innocent people who can't be controlled by these abusive systems are often slandered about and suspected of all matter of evil.

People who stand for righteousness and conviction in this generation will often be vilified by those who don't. Psalms 89 talks about the general blessing on God's people. But then beginning in vs.38, the psalmist talks about a seeming contraction. He says God has thrown us off, rejected us. That God has exalted our enemies and covered us with shame. This isn't any fun.

Then he pleads, “How long, O Lord, will your hide your face forever?” Lord, where is your former loving kindness? Remember Lord the reproach of Your people, we are scorned and insulted.” He goes on to say how we sometimes bear the reproach of mighty people, people of influence, perhaps even church people. He says his enemies have taunted him, mocked his every footstep.

Then he ends with no real satisfactory conclusion. This is the way things are for the righteous sometimes. It doesn't mean God hates us even when certain people do. It doesn't mean God has rejected us, scorned and insulted us, just because certain people have.

The pslamist concludes where we need to conclude on such matters. He simply says, “Blessed be the Lord forevermore. Amen.”

Granted, this is not for the faint-hearted or the “feel-good” Christian. But it's hearty and encouraging meat for those who are truly suffering for righteousness today.

Suffering for Righteousness 
 

Jeremiah is going through it in Jer.37. He's had over thirty years of ministry, now he's in prison simply for faithfully discharging his duties God gave him to do. The walls of Jerusalem are surrounded by the Babylonians, things are looking as bad as they can get.

There are times in our Christian lives, we can be doing exactly what God has called us to do, and yet circumstances turn against us, making us feel we must be doing something wrong. This is especially true if you come from any type of legalistic background, where you've been mis-taught that God's love and acceptance of us is dependent on our performance or strict adherence to church ordinances.

Jeremiah has been bucking the religious and secular system for a long time, even though he's simply doing what God wants him to do. He seems unfit for this role, as he seems to be a “get along” sort of guy, and we see him cringing his way through his various assignments having to confront people with unpleasant news and warnings. For his efforts he is seen as a traitor, someone who is discouraging the people with his words, but he faithfully continues to do so.

Because of this, he can't be controlled and intimidated by the powers that be, and those powers now begin to conspire against him. Just as in Daniels' day, “these men spied and found Daniel praying.” These wicked men couldn't control Daniel, so they had to conspire and spy and find something wrong about him in hope of pulling him down. They couldn't find anything on Daniel, or on Jeremiah, but that didn't stop them from pulling these righteous men down anyway.

Have you ever been persecuted for righteousness? The Bible says if you're truly righteous, and making righteous stands for God, you will be. Nobody seeks out persecution, unless they're religiously unbalanced, but as surely as the “righteous shall through tribulation enter the Kingdom of God”, we shall also be persecuted for righteousness. This is made especially difficult when this persecution comes from those who should be rightfully blessing us.

“Let him be put to death, he stirs up the people”, they said about Jeremiah. The prophet has often been compared to Jesus, and these words are very similar to words spoken about Jesus when He was on this earth.

They crucified Jesus, they only put Jeremiah is a cistern pit, where he sank up to his waste in the mire. His credibility at this point probably wasn't too high, nor was Jesus', or John Bunyan when he was in prsion, or multitudes of others who suffered for righteousness.

Enter an Ethiopian eunuch named Ebed-melech. He confronts the king concerning the unjust treatment of Jeremiah, telling the king, “You have done wickedly.” He literally takes his life into his own hands, with no hope of reward. He could have been easily put to death for confronting the king, as he was a threat to the king's power. Here is a man of true character and courage, not afraid to stand up for righteousness regardless of the personal cost. How rare to find people like this today or in any generation.

God often weighs people in the balance over just such situations in life. What better way to find out where someone is at then to test their heart and convictions and loyalties by placing them in just such situations as this? Do you stand up for the righteous cause regardless of personal cost, or do you just go along with wickedness and injustice, bury your head in the sand and avoid the risk of personal loss? I'm afraid these circumstances make cowards out of all but the very few. A frightening thought when you consider that the Book of Revelations names people who will fail to get into the Kingdom of God, and lists right in there with fornicators, liars and thieves; cowards.

We see Zedekiah in direct opposition to Jeremiah and Ebed-melech. He's warned repeatedly by Jeremiah to surrender to the Babylonians, but he's afraid to do so because of fear what the people will do to him. Zedekiah is a total coward, not one conviction beyond self-preservation. He's a people-pleaser, a politician, who can't make a righteous stand for anything. He wants only to listen to the optimistic but misleading prophecies of

the false prophets.

We live in an age where the modern church seems to have gone to one of two extremes. On the one hand, much of the Church has simply died. As someone said, the preaching is done by “mild-mannered men urging the church to be even more mild-mannered. This kind of preaching doesn't offend anyone, but also doesn't feed anyone either.

The other extreme is controlling type, legalistic churches, the “heavy shepherding” churches that usually end up abusing people in their efforts to control them. 1Tim.6:4 from the Amplified Bible says, “These puffed up in pride and stupefied with conceit”, or as I see it, “Drunk with power”, which results in, among other things, insults, abuse of authority, jealousies, slander and base suspicions. Innocent people who can't be controlled by these abusive systems are often slandered about and suspected of all matter of evil.

People who stand for righteousness and conviction in this generation will often be vilified by those who don't. Psalms 89 talks about the general blessing on God's people. But then beginning in vs.38, the psalmist talks about a seeming contraction. He says God has thrown us off, rejected us. That God has exalted our enemies and covered us with shame. This isn't any fun.

Then he pleads, “How long, O Lord, will your hide your face forever?” Lord, where is your former loving kindness? Remember Lord the reproach of Your people, we are scorned and insulted.” He goes on to say how we sometimes bear the reproach of mighty people, people of influence, perhaps even church people. He says his enemies have taunted him, mocked his every footstep.

Then he ends with no real satisfactory conclusion. This is the way things are for the righteous sometimes. It doesn't mean God hates us even when certain people do. It doesn't mean God has rejected us, scorned and insulted us, just because certain people have.

The pslamist concludes where we need to conclude on such matters. He simply says, “Blessed be the Lord forevermore. Amen.”

Granted, this is not for the faint-hearted or the “feel-good” Christian. But it's hearty and encouraging meat for those who are truly suffering for righteousness today.