02.29.08
Posted in
General
| 21:57
Thought: To me, our Christian lives would be much more "successful" spiritually if we broke away from all evil associations.
Question: Am I spending time with the wrong people?
Scripture: Ephesians: 5:7 (NIV): "Therefore do not be partakers with them."
Do not be partakers with whom? The disobedient ones. The immoral, impure, greedy and idolatrous people who are characterized by dirty talk and ungrateful attitudes. And what does it mean to be a "partaker" with them? The clearly obvious answer is do not "take part" in what they do. First, do not enter into any contractual agreements, such as a marriage or business partnership. Secondly, I believe, Christians should be careful whom they consider their closest friends; with whom are you sharing your time and your activities?
Separation is a by-word of Christian living. Yes, Christ has done all the work of cleansing and saving and we cannot exert any effort toward that work, but we do have a job, a difficult work. It is to forcibly avoid evil; it is to not listen to deceiving talk, it is to not "partake with" people who are clearly disobedient to God and it is to walk "circumspectly", that is, looking all around to see the best way, (His way), to go. We are to leave off the former ways, the worldly ways, the "old man." We cannot companion with unbelievers, and deceiving ones at that, partaking in their efforts. We cannot be involved with disobedient "Christians" either.
Prayer: Holy God, show me from whom I need to separate in this evil world. For Your glory, I pray! Amen.
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02.28.08
Posted in
General
| 19:31
Thought: To me, we need our preachers to speak out the truth of God's coming wrath.
Question: Have I been deceived regarding God's wrath?
Scripture: Ephesians: 5:6 (NIV): "Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God's wrath comes on those who are disobedient."
Paul addresses believers here. He's been pointing out how lust opposes love. We have been commanded to imitate God and live a life of love; we have also been commanded to cease from imitating unbelievers and pagans and no longer participate in immoratlity. The two worlds, or ways, cannot co-mingle. Paul taught that immoral, impure, idolatrous people will not receive the inheritance of dwelling in the kingdom. Now he says that wrath will come from God on any who also are "disobedient." Not only are they excluded from Heaven, but they are also made to receive God's furious anger (wrath)! Who are the "disobedient" ones? They are the immoral, impure, greedy idolaters mentioned in verse 5.
If we are into God's way now, we must heed only truth. If we listen to lies we will be drawn away also into wrong doings. So the command here is to nip the problem in the bud by refusing to listen to the deception in the first place. "Let no one deceive you..." What is the deception? To me, it is the commonly heard teaching that because God is a God of love there will be no wrath--there will be no judgment. But Paul calls these "empty words". There is a Day of Wrath coming! There is powerful judgment against sin and evil!
Scripture needs to be balanced with all other scripture. It should be taken as a whole entity. Many scriptures clearly define the coming wrath of God. A few include Jeremiah 10:10, Nahum 1:6, Hebrews 10:27 and Revelation 14:10 and 11. Therefore do not allow anyone's deceitful words to sway you. Get back and stay in truth only: the truth of scripture! It is much more reliable than the ideas of men.
Prayer: Heavenly Father, use a healthy fear in me of Your wrath to keep me from sin and idolatry. And may I, and others, not be deceived away from the truth of Your anger against sin. Amen.
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02.27.08
Posted in
General
| 17:57
Thought: To me, our world is not aware enough of its "idolatries."
Question: Is my inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ assured?
Scripture: Ephesians 5:5 (NIV): "For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person--such a man is an idolater--has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God."
Now Paul clarifies that these people who are characterized by these sins are idolaters, and as such, will not enter Heaven. And "of this you can be sure" adds strong affirmation! Idolatry is loving something or someone above God. Idolatry is worshipping something or someone in the place of God, bending and serving that thing or person, making it central to your life, giving your life to it. Because they would be out of place in the Kingdom of God where all creatures revere God above everything and everyone, they are therefore excluded.
Remember now that these are people who live immorality as a way of life, impurity as a way of thinking all the time, and greediness as an unshakeable trait coloring their entire life. Christians can fall into immoral acts, can indulge in impure thoughts and deeds, and can slip into greediness as well, but we are talking about what actually occurs long-term and by-and-large. What kind of person am I at my core? If I trust Christ to save me, though I may be struggling, I am redeemed and will enter Heaven. If I prefer to trust something or some person other than Christ to help me in my struggle, then I am not redeemed and will not enter Heaven.
But a "struggling Christian" needs to be careful and watchful: the Spirit of God should be winning in his life, and there should be less and less of self and sin all the time. Evidence that continually opposes God's Spirit would indicate phoniness or disobedience that cannot be ignored by God. And God will not ignore these contradictions in deciding who will enter His Kingdom.
Prayer: Oh, Father, I do want to be included in Your Kingdom! Lead me away from idolatry! Teach me to rush away from immorality, impurity and greed. Amen.
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02.26.08
Posted in
General
| 18:04
Thought: To me, the Scriptures clearly offer solutions to all our various problems, including how to counteract a "foul mouth."
Question: Is my speech characterized by thankfulness?
Scripture: Ephesians 5:4 (NIV): "Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving."
Here is more contrast between the old man and the new man: obscenity, foolish talk and coarse joking oppose speech laden with thankfulness. And, of course, the tongue is a revealer of a person's attitude. Am I seeing much to be thankful for, or am I always dissatisfied and complaining? How is it that obscenity, foolish talk and dirty jokes oppose thankfulness? People whose speech is bad are people who either complain against the very Creator of the world for, in their opinion, making it as broken as it is, or who try to create a false "world" of their own talking, or who choose to appeal to baser instincts of the flesh, making jokes that twist God's goodness. To me, all these reactions are based in ungratefulness. Ungrateful people blame God for all the trouble around them. Ungrateful people try to foolishly talk up unreality or fantasy because they don't see the goodness of God. Ungrateful people stay rooted in lust and make light of God's good inventions of sexuality and the human body. They do not see the beauty or benevolance of God. They are not thankful for what they have, but take all for granted and insult the very Divine hand that gave them life and tongues for speaking.
God's holy people have left the old man of ungratefulness behind. They have put on the new man of Christ Who is always thanking and praising God. Thankfulness will effectively neutralize an obscene mouth, a foolish mouth and a jesting, dirty mouth. And thankfulness ought to characterize a good Christian, not only in speech, but also in attitude. Thus the united brothers of faith will not have among them the symptoms of an ungrateful spirit--it is "out of place."
Prayer: Dear Father, help me to displace potential obscenities, foolish talk and dirty jokes with praise and thanks to You, always! Amen.
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02.25.08
Posted in
General
| 18:16
Thought: To me, Christ is the cure for all the ills of society.
Question: Is there even a hint of wrong-doing, immorality or greediness in me?
Scripture: Ephesians 5:3 (NIV): "But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God's holy people."
Paul gives some specific sins here that oppose the life of imitation of God. They are immorality, impurity and greed. The gentiles, in their futile thinking (verse 17 of chapter 4), have these sins. But "God's holy people" are not to perform these sins or have any behavior in their life that even hints at this activity. Christians must be above reproach. Why? Paul says that these sins are "improper for God's holy people," that's why. They do not fit with the clothing of the new man. 1) Immorality is defined by Webster as "violating the moral law", and "moral" is defined as "conforming to right conduct." It could easily be said that our word "moral" is fairly equivalent to the biblical term "righteous." Many sins of vice and illegality could be considered "immoral" behavior, such as crimes of all kinds that create victims in our society. 2) Impurity is defined by Webster as "moral pollution" or "indecency" or "adulteration" and, to me, carries the idea of having mixed or added something in that destroys the original purity of a thing. Adultery, the adding of another sexual relationship to a marriage, is an example. 3) Greed is defined by Webster as "eager and selfish desire" to obtain by grasping and is due to having an "excessive appetite for" a thing, such as food or drink. Immorality, impurity and greed have a few things in common. They are all sins of self-indulgence where wrong desires are fulfilled in lust which grows and is never satisfied. They are all sins that seek to quench human wants and/or needs apart from God, by self-effort and independent behaviors. They are humans looking to other humans for what only God can supply anyway. They are all sins of taking--exploiting another's body or goods to serve self.
God's holiness acts for mankind, not against it. God's holiness satisfies with good desires involved. God's holiness comes back to praise God and does not function independently of Him. God's holiness gives--fulfilling our needs, both in spirit and body, in and through Jesus Christ.
Prayer: Father in Heaven, may Your holiness take over in my life, driving out immorality, impurity and greed forever. Amen.
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02.24.08
Posted in
General
| 16:28
Thought: To me, society needs to return to the concept of living to please God.
Question: Are the behaviors of my life a sweet fragrance to God?
Scripture: Ephesians 5:2 (NIV): "and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God."
So the whole life boils down to being motivated by one power: love. "Live a life of love." Wow! And how is love shown? By sacrifice, by "giving self up" to focus instead on the needs of others. When Christ loved us during His life on earth He showed love by looking to the needs of everyone around Him, those close in proximity to Him, His "neighbors." He never spoke of His needs nor demanded that things go His way, nor did He force His will on anyone. He also shared truths, teaching and guiding those near Him; He challenged others, He made them think about spiritual things. All of Christ's behaviors joined and became a "fragrant offering" to God. A fragrance is a pleasing atmosphere to the one surrounded by it. God received a "pleasing atmosphere" from His Son. As Jesus served others He was offering Himself as a gift to His Father. Christ's deeds and words pleased God, His Father. This was, I'm sure, Christ's primary motivation in everything He did: to please God, His Father. In the same way, as we emulate or copy Christ, as we "imitate" Him, we too should only do those things that please Our Father, God. We should give ourselves up for the sake of others. Our life should be characterized by sacrifice. Christ's certainly was.
Prayer: Great God of Love, fill me with Your love so that it may overflow to others! Enable me to sacrifice my entire life and seek to please only You. Amen.
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02.23.08
Posted in
General
| 17:17
Thought: To me, there is a simplicity in Christianity: it is learning to be like God, and God is love.
Question: Do I desire to imitate God?
Scripture: Ephesians 5:1 (NIV): "Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children"
Here is a good summation of chapter 4 in its entirety: both the portion emphasizing unity, and the portions giving practical ways to overcome the fallen nature. We are to imitate God. When we copy God in purpose and direction, we will be united with all other Christians who also want to emulate Him. We will be drawn together in this effort, this quest. When we copy God we will be fully concentrated on His nature and thus desirous of His desires which is equivalent to "putting on the new self, created to be like God..." (verse 24). I like the way Paul's advice boils down to this phrase. It is a simple conclusion; it is a lifetime's ambition. It is a strong challenge for every new dawning day: "imitate God."
Now, how capable are we of imitating God? Can we act at all like God? Didn't Lucifer want to be "like God" and didn't it lead him utterly astray? To me, as I've already pointed out, there is provision made for us to imitate God by allowing Christ to indwell us. Lucifer did not take this pathway. He struck out independently. The core of ability to imitate God has to spring from the seed of Jesus Christ planted within at regeneration. And for the seed of Jesus to grow, our old self has to die. (Unless a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die it will not bring forth fruit.) Satan never died to self! Thus our imitation of God is not our effort, independent of Christ, at all; but rather, the idea given us by the Holy Spirit to begin to want to change self, to give up self, to die to self, so that Christ's gloriously perfect self can live vicariously through us and in us. So our effort is a different effort than self-righteousness. Our effort is the labor of relinquishment and waiting, trusting and obeying, learning and growing, accepting and following. We are children. Paul calls us "dearly loved children." We know well the role of a child. We know it from a two-fold basis: 1) having been one and 2) raising them (or perhaps teaching them if we are not natural parents). Thus it is very appropriate for us to be told to be like children. We have a lot of experience and knowledge to draw on. God graciously gives us a physical environment full of real children and real parenting to show us the many ways He is dealing with us spiritually.
God does "love us dearly." God is a God of love. Love is in everything God does for us and with us. We can trust ourselves totally to God in this risky call of self-relinquishment because we know we are loved. A child will fall happily into his parents' control when he is confident of that parent's love. I would venture to say that the degree of death to self we muster is directly parallel to the degree of trust we have in His love. And if we love God deeply, responding fully to His deep love for us, we will want to imitate Him totally. Any child who thoroughly loves his parent wants to be just like him. How much more should we want to be like God Who is much more lovely and worthy in His perfection?
Prayer: Because of Your dying and undying love for me, Father, may I seek to imitate You all my life. Amen.
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02.21.08
Posted in
General
| 20:18
Thought: To me, there is a crying, growing need in our culture for compassion and forgiveness.
Question: Has God forgiven me anything? Do I pass that forgiveness on to others?
Scripture: Ephesians 4:32 (NIV): "Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you."
In keeping with verse 24, we must not only put off the negative, we must also put on the positive. So here we have the "antidotes" to bitterness, rage, anger, brawling, slander and malice, or shall we say, the way to shunt off their effects. (Why must we learn forgiveness to deal with the effects of sin in others if all of us are commanded to "get rid of all" of them? I suppose because we haven't gotten rid of all of them, and while yet in process, their effects spill out over us all.) The antidote is the same one God uses to save us! It is His kindness and compassion that moved Christ to condescend into death for us; it must be our kindness and compassion that allows for others to do better, to persevere, to go on in the faith. We must exercise forgiveness against these evils in others while we ourselves work at "getting rid of" them within our own souls. A doubly challenging course, isn't it? Be hard on self while nice to others; kill sin in self while forgiving it in others. This is the work of the Christian life and heart. Love others and self while hating everyone's, including my own, sin. This is how God treats us: loving us ferociously while abhorring thoroughly the sin in us. We must follow in God's example.
There is only half success, or in other words, failure, if we only put off the old nature and never put on the new nature of Christ. In fact, I feel that we cannot fully, or for very long, put off any sin without putting on Christ. The enemy will come into such a void and refill it with much more evil. (See Matthew 12:43-45.) We have to fill the space with Christ. We are, each one of us, either filled with allegiance to Christ, allegiance to Satan, or in process with a mixture of the two. But we are never supposedly free of allegiance to Satan while supposedly remaining neutral.
Unity of believers is improved with kindness, compassion and forgiveness. Just as Christ gathers many sons to Himself and carries them on into Glory with His forgiveness, so we can edify the body and see it grow beautifully while we forgive.
Prayer: Father, for the sake of the church, help me to exercise kindness and compassionate forgiveness, even as I have received these things from You. Amen.
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02.20.08
Posted in
General
| 20:59
Thought: To me, our world would do well to avail themselves of the power of peace that God offers through His Son.
Question: Has any bitterness gotten a hold in me?
Scripture: Ephesians 4:31 (NIV): "Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice."
Paul restates this idea of putting off the old man, the sinful nature. He plainly commands the Ephesians to "get rid of" negative traits. This is within our power. This is our task to undertake. It is not up to God to get rid of these sins here, is it? No, the subject is the understood "you." "You" get rid of this and that. We align our wills with God's will. We bring our choice-maker, our mind, alongside the mind of Christ in agreement with Him, in unity with His Spirit. We do this.
Now, in my opinion, we are not always able to accomplish this fully alone. But we are not asked to do it alone. We are asked, in reality, to WANT to expel these behaviors from our lives, to WILL them away, and to EXPECT God's strength to help us finish the task. (Ahead in chapter 5 verse 1 we see the teaching to become "imitators of God." Is any human capable of imitating Almighty God? Of becoming "like God"? No, not on their own. But as we learned in chapter 4 verse 24 we can not only become "like God" (in Christ), but we also were created, intended to become "like God" (in Christ) from the beginning.)
Now what does God ask us to "get rid of"? First of all each negative behavior is preceded by the word "all." God doesn't want a half-way housecleaning. Why not? Why wouldn't He be pleased if any of our sin, or some of our sin, was eliminated? Because God knows the nature of sin: it spreads from one small amount. To be free of it one must eliminate ALL of it or it will "grow back", as it were.
So "all bitterness" has to go, as well as "all rage and anger", "all brawling and slander" and Paul's exact words here, "along with every form of malice." All bad things have to be completely purged out. To me, this could definitely take a lifetime! Or it could happen miraculously and instantly. But are we not all "in process"?
Perhaps we should realize that improvement only in these areas could be the result of fleshly effort at reform, rather than the purging power of God. To eliminate "all" vestiges of a sin is only within God's power to accomplish. In other words, we need to do a willful putting off, yes, but we also need God's Spirit to guide, cleanse and redirect our lives--finishing that part of the work we cannot do.
Notice the nature of this small list of behaviors. They are all crimes against others. Bitterness is a heart set against another; rage and anger is emotion turned against another; brawling is physical brutality against another; slander is verbal abuse against another; and any form of malice is evil, wicked hatred of another. (Note: there is an accelerating order here: a bit of bitterness can start an avalance of hatred if unchecked. Malice often leads to the act of murder.)
Unity of the brethren will not be maintained when these activities are flourishing. These are devisive activities--hurtful and wounding to those whom God has died for.
Prayer: Lord, help me become part of the solution to malice and war and not part of its chaos. Strengthen me to release bitterness, anger, slander, brawling and every kind of evil hatred. Amen.
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02.19.08
Posted in
General
| 21:17
Thought: To me, God has done so much for us. We owe Him our obedience.
Question: What does it mean to grieve the Holy Spirit?
Scripture: Ephesians 4:30 (NIV): "And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption."
Thus far Paul has taught several ways to strengthen unity among believers: 1) do not lie 2) do not carry unresolved anger 3) do not give Satan any hold 4) do not steal, and, 5) do not talk inappropriately. Now he plainly adds "do not grieve the Holy Spirit." How do we grieve the Holy Spirit? I believe a true, spiritual (not carnal) Christian will instantly realize when he has hurt God. Because the Holy Spirit is inside us, we will feel His pain. Hurting God now hurts us. We will immediately feel remorse and a sense of guilt. If we don't, something is wrong. But again, what grieves the Holy Spirit? Sin, purely and simply, grieves God because sin is a behavior against God. It is a slap in His face that cries out that we know better than He does what is best for us. Like a wayward child, we bring grief to our parent-Father because He truly knows best. The Holy Spirit, Who is God, dwells in us faithfully.
Here Paul uses the descriptive language of the "sealing" of the Holy Spirit. To seal something is to promise to remain faithful always. God does not enter us flippantly or temporarily; He abides firm always, like an unbreakable seal. We see this also affirmed in the phrase "for the day of redemption." Is the day of redemption the day we were saved? No. The day of redemption is the future day when our redeeming is complete, when our salvation is finished and sinfulness within completely removed, when we become like the resurrected, victorious Christ, our bodies forever changed. Thus, the Holy Spirit is affirmed to remain with us until that time, taking care to keep us until we are safely transformed. For such a wonderful, generous work we ought not return rebelliousness! To the Father Who saves our lives we ought not give back grief.
Prayer: Precious, loving Father, fill me with Your Holy Spirit and Your goodness, that I may not ever want to cause You grief. Amen.
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