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Lack of exposure to Truth leads to blindness…

Sep30

Aren’t two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father’s consent.But even the hairs of your head have all been counted. So don’t be afraid therefore; you are worth more than many sparrows. Matthew 10:29-31 HCSB

The context of these verses reminds us that Jesus is about to send off his 12 disciples to go out on a mission to preach and heal. Knowing they will face hardship and suffering, Jesus highlights the tender care of God towards a sparrow. As His eye was on the Sparrow, even more was His eye on them. Too, He reminds them that since He is so aware of the number of hairs on their heads, then they need not be afraid. Jesus assures them that they are worth more than many sparrows. 

So off they went to face opposition, disappointment, persecution, and who knows what else, with confidence. They had experienced numerous events where Jesus revealed his power. They knew from experience that His words were powerful.

Then where does that leave us? We still have God’s word. We still have the verses from Matthew illustrating the depth and intensity of God’s care for us. And like the disciples, we have experienced evidence of God’s care over our lives. And where do we find such assurance, if not in the Bible? 

Individuals prone to sin as we are need a daily dose, a reminder, if you will, of God’s care. But if we don’t get that by reading the Bible regularly and spending time with God in prayer, what will be the end result? Well, I will tell you. We will futilely chase after worldly solutions attempting to resolve those trials, hardships, or suffering. And all the while, our solutions are but just a Biblical turning of the page away!

Without the solutions contained within the Bible, we won’t have the ammunition to fire back at the enemy. And he is so cleverly deceptive. We won’t even realize we are being manipulated, deceived, or distracted by his lies. We won’t realize we are being conformed to take on the world’s perspective. And as the lies are fired at us, we become desensitized to them. And doubts about God’s care for us will begin to take root. We will become fearful, doubtful. Goodness, I could go on and on with a list of Satan’s fiery darts he could choose with which to attack us!

Additionally, you see not only do we need to have consistent exposure to the Truths of God’s word, we must believe them! Obviously, the more exposure we have, then the stronger our faith will be. And not only that, our eyes will be opened to the details all around us that prove God is, in fact, taking care of us. It was just our lack of exposure to God’s truths that had resulted in our blindness.

Pulling back the curtain…

Sep9
Hand pulling back red curtain to reveal papers labeled LIES, FAKE NEWS, and MANIPULATION

As I watch a bit of news, I am aware of the push for Socialism and Communism to be accepted by the American people. Consider the clause, ‘endowed by their Creator’, from the Declaration of Independence. The two ideologies I mentioned previously, stand in stark contrast to such a pronouncement.

Nevertheless, the push is still on. It is believed by some that behind this push are wealthy individuals bent on advancing their agenda. Now, whether they are or are not, is not the purpose of this blog. My intention is to pull back the curtain and expose who is the unseen force behind these two ideologies (and for those pushing it). For in their framework, inherent rights are dished out by the government, not God.

Our inherent rights as human beings created in the image of God are endowed by our Creator/God! Guess who that makes angry? Yep, Satan! As Christians who understand the unholy war Satan has declared against God, we know that he would do anything to undermine God’s plan to redeem mankind. He will take every avenue available. One of those is to convince American individuals that our rights DO NOT come from God. Did you know that there are some political leaders who believe our rights come from the government? (Wonder when was the last time they read the Declaration of Independence!) Satan is making some headway, isn’t he.

His method, in this case, is to saturate the news reports with lies (that would be fiery darts that sound like truth to anyone ignorant of what God’s word or our founding documents say). By creating a void of Truth, he can manipulate us using human reasoning and false assumptions. For without God’s Scriptural truths, we have no basis on which to expose Satan’s cleverly designed lies.

Yet, when we do use the power of God’s word to pull back the curtain, Satan’s lies are exposed. Then we will be empowered to counter those lies with God’s truth. And remember, the more we know of God’s truth, our skill to recognize Satan’s lies increase.

Lamentations 3:22-24, 26 …my take

Aug26

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
    for his compassions never fail.
23 They are new every morning;
    great is your faithfulness.
24 I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion;
    therefore I will wait for him.”

25 The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him,
    to the one who seeks him;
26 it is good to wait quietly
    for the salvation of the Lord.

The book of Lamentations, attributed to the prophet Jeremiah, was written following the destruction of of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. They were feeling the consequences of their disobedience. The city is in ruins, the people are in mourning, and the atmosphere is heavy with despair. (BTW, the word portion means inheritance)

The above verses remind us that our God is faithful. Even when our circumstances threaten to overwhelm us. However, God’s word reveals to us that with the dawn of every morning, we can begin anew. We just need to be reminded of these verses in Lamentations. Hope can be restored and with faith we can wait quietly for our God’s deliverance. Just seek Him and be at peace. The fiery darts of doubt, worry, fear, etc., can be thwarted.

Oh, trust me, it won’t be easy. It may take awhile to regain our footing after difficult circumstances. The fiery darts of the enemy can come in like a flood. Especially, in our weakened moment. That’s why God has given us the ammunition of the above truth thought to resist the enemy’s weapons. Every morning we rise and turn our focus towards Jeremiah’s words to the suffering. Then we put one foot in front of the other. We remind ourselves of who God is. That He is bigger than our disappointments, our fears, our sufferings, our trials, etc. No matter what the enemy throws at us to bring us down, he cannot defeat God. (In 1 John 4:4 the word them refers to false prophets and those spreading deceptive spiritual ideas against Christ)

Remember, even if we have to refresh our faith every morning with these verses, we must keep at it. The enemy doesn’t give up easily. But be reminded that he is a defeated foe and eventually, we can claim the victory for our God fights the enemy and wins.

The Bible and the Truths therein, are our most powerful weapon against the enemy. But if we don’t go to God’s Word, we won’t know that! Will we?

America’s Founding: The Cost of Ignoring God

Jul29
Large Holy Bible on table in front of officials with Capitol building visible
Turning back on God cast dark clouds over our future. Damaged flag indicates a country in danger.

As Christians we have the freewill to choose whether we will love and obey God. Satan takes advantage of our freedom by enticing us to disobey God. And by manipulation, lies, and deceit he gains victim after victim. And do you know what his most powerful weapon is? Ignorance of God’s word, the Bible, and lack of communication with God in prayer.

To continue with this month’s theme of the Founding of America, we must understand that just as ignorance of God’s word and lack of communication in prayer can make us vulnerable to Satan’s enticements to sin, so it applies to our country.

Consider the ignorance of far too many Americans about the details of our country’s beginnings. About the hand of God as was evident by miracle after miracle (I mean how does a small group of people defeat a world power like England). With our ignorance of our country’s beginnings, we played right into the enemy’s hands. His tactics are obvious to anyone who is firmly established in God’s wisdom. Our founding fathers were spiritually alert to how we could fail as a country. In George Washington’s farewell address he reminds us of this:

…reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

We are made in the image of God as most would concede. But do they grasp what that means? It means that we have the potential to reflect God’s character and authority. That makes us different from every other living creature. We can recognize right from wrong because we are God’s image bearers. But by rejecting God and His plan to redeem us, self rules and our image reflects the enemy.

Anyone or any country who denies God is left without protection from the enemy. Without the moral compass a belief in God offers, we are left to whatever influence we are impressed with. And that’s where Satan takes his advantage.

Our country should have learned her lesson when in June 15, 1962 school prayer was ruled as unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. Then a year later in 1962 the Supreme Court ruled against Bible reading in school. What followed should have been expected. God was not only removed from our public school system, but the public arena as well. And here we are struggling in our desire to be religiously neutral. Declining in moral strength all along.

If our founding fathers, had decided to keep the government neutral when it came to religion, there would be no 250 years of freedom for American citizens to celebrate in 2026!

Turn my eyes…Psalm 119:37

Jun17
Family of five sitting on a couch using various digital devices including smartphones, a tablet, and a handheld console

Turn my eyes
from looking at what is worthless;
give me life in Your ways. Psalm 119:37 HCSB

When my grans were younger I had the extreme pleasure of interacting with them often. Goodness that was fun. But I digress! I would remind them that I prayed for them whenever they came to my mind. Often, God would give me a verse that zeroed in on their needs. Praying for my own 4 (their parents, of course) gave me the foundation for how to pray. And as time refined my prayer effort, I learned that praying Scripture that applied to a need strengthened my prayers.

Psalm 119:37 addresses the need we have as parents and adults to deal with the digital crises of today. Why, most children today learned to tap a screen before they learned to read! Parents, unaware that they were loosing their own creative power to model desirable behavior, handed their toddlers a device to keep them occupied. Not only did the power to train their children toward good behavior suffer loss, their children became addicted to the pull of the digital screen. And guess what, those children are now adults and they are suffering from the same addiction.

I’m not blogging about something you are not aware of. But while we are beginning to sit up and take notice, what are we doing about it? Well, one thing we have got to grasp is the fact that too much screen time is a gateway to temptation. It’s kinda like opening Pandora’s box. For not just for children, but for adults as well.

But you know what? It’s not only digital screens that provide a gateway to temptation. What about the shows we watch on tv or movies or music videos? What about our reading material? And then again, while the danger may not be in what we are looking at necessarily, what about the time we spend looking at it? What about that inner voice that questions us about the time we are spending on screens?When we gain the momentum to turn away from the worthless distractions (just go ahead and label these fiery darts) of the enemy, we need the protective power of God’s wisdom to know what to turn to.

Christian parents and/or adults take heed. The Bible speaks to this directly. How are we going to be able to identify what is worthless? We start with anything that contradicts Scripture. Obviously, it’s up to us to become familiar enough with God’s word in order to recognize the contradictions. Then in identifying the contradictions we must be able to turn from them. Again, the wisdom and strength we need to pull this off is found in Scripture.

So if we desire a life shaped by the word of God for ourselves and our children, then we must be willing to turn from the worthless distractions fashioned by the enemy. The Bible will show us how!

Remember – Ecclesiastes 12:1

Apr8

In the first verse of Chapter 12, the author admonishes us to “remember our Creator in the days of our youth.” Here’s how the NLT words it, “Don’t let the excitement of youth cause you to forget your Creator. Honor Him in your youth before you grow old and say, “Life is not pleasant anymore.”

In our younger days, particularly as we begin emerging as an adult, we can be heady about our new found freedom. We may find ourselves constantly pulling away from the restraints of our parents. When we are successful in liberating ourselves from such restraints, too often our actions are thereafter overly influenced by the desires of our hearts. A young heart that has not had time yet to be damaged by life’s unpleasantness. Yet, a heart which is naive and immature and can be easily led astray.

During this period of our lives we are just getting our balance as we take our first steps spiritually. What we once saw as not permissible for us as Christians, our immature hearts now rethink such actions. And without a steady intake of godly wisdom our hearts will become desensitized towards what is sinful (fiery darts). Our hearts will take over as our judge, not the Word of God. But what we forget is that the decisions, the choices we make in the days of our youth will follow us for the rest of our lives. (Good or bad)

When we get to the latter season of our lives we won’t find life as exhilarating as in earlier seasons. For troubles have been encountered. Some of those as consequences of choices made with a young and perhaps foolish heart. And some of those that just show up as a result of living life.

Honoring God while we are young and before life begins to knock us around builds up our spiritual reserves. So when we arrive at those not so pleasant times of life, our hearts have grown in maturity. We are less naive. As a result there is a lot less baggage with which to complicate our lives. Drawing upon our spiritual reserves, made while we were young, supplies us with protective power. Power we need in order to deal with life as we grow older. Therefore life is not as unpleasant as it would have been otherwise. All because we didn’t forget God in the days of our youth.

The Protective Power of Biblical Wisdom…

Mar31

I heard a comment by Dr Frank Turek the other day as I was listening to a podcast of his. A question was put forth, “If you found Christianity to be true would you become a Christian?” Some of the responses were ‘No.”

Basically, I think what he is saying is people don’t want to believe in God because God might want them to do something they don’t want to do. They want to call the shots. Be their own boss. They don’t want to have to answer to God.

Society makes it quite convenient for these type of thinkers to join a growing group of people who are caught up in this “New Thought” ideology. An ideology that promotes personal authority over faith in God and the authority of Christ. It can get confusing for those who are new in their Christian faith. Those without a solid biblical foundation can get tripped up as well. They hear terms that have the flavor of Christianity but without the substance.

Being the boss of your life carries with it huge responsibilities. A person who depends on themselves for all the answers in life will somewhere on the road come up empty handed. And from what I can discern, life has huge disappointments for these type of thinkers.

There is a book in the Bible titled, Ecclesiastes (in the Old Testament). It was written by King Solomon during the 10th century BC. He wrote it later in life after he had experienced life and had finally come up with some solid answers. A revealing narrative as to what is truly important. It warns us that living life dependent upon whatever your mind comes up with has a predictable end. Human endeavor leads to meaningless results.

Those who get tripped up by New Thought ideology do so because they are not growing in the wisdom and understanding of God’s word. They use their minds, without the influence of Scripture, to filter their experiences. They are influenced by human reasoning and are led astray. Slowly they become blinded as to what is Truth. Without the protection of biblical wisdom our understanding will be seriously jeopardized.

Proverbs 2:6-12 NLT

6 For the Lord grants wisdom!
    From his mouth come knowledge and understanding.
7 He grants a treasure of common sense to the honest.
    He is a shield to those who walk with integrity.
8 He guards the paths of the just
    and protects those who are faithful to him.

9 Then you will understand what is right, just, and fair,
    and you will find the right way to go.
10 For wisdom will enter your heart,
    and knowledge will fill you with joy.
11 Wise choices will watch over you.
    Understanding will keep you safe.

12 Wisdom will save you from evil people,
    from those whose words are twisted.