Morning Moments

All through the journeys of the Patriarchs, Poets, Prophets, and Potentates of the nation Israel, we can see that she can neither be destroyed nor denied the fulfillment of the promises God has made to her.  These promises were not always pleasant ones, for some involved her bondage and others her blessings.  The Bondage came to break her and the Blessings came to build her.  JEHOVAH GOD was in control of it all.

Sometimes, in the maze of our lives, we get so lost.  But God has made us some fancy promises!  We must learn to ignore the voices of doubt and skepticism, or false promises and pre-texts.  You and I must see the big picture also.

There has never been an age or stage when God's people did not suffer.  It is part of our calling according to Peter.  Sometimes we suffer for evil doing, when we rebel or resist the spirit of grace and take matters into our own hands.  At other times we suffer for doing right (for righteousness sake), when our good may be evil spoken of, or simply rejected, questioned, or seems suspect because the world doesn't understand.  "All who live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution".

As Israel's, our journey is a learning one.  I like to think of it this way:  When the Jews left Egypt, they had been slaves.  They were not a fighting people, but a working people.  So, rather than taking them directly through the short cut to Canaan where they would have face warfare and wearied, God took them through the wilderness, sustained them, provided for them in every way, protected them, and preserved them.  Despite the difficulties and doubt, God taught them to follow a commander and trained them by teaching them survival techniques.  

They didn't realize what they had been taught nor why they had been taught those things until they got to the place of entering the Land of Promise, which they refused to do, so they had to take another trip around Mt. Sinai for another generation to enter.

Let's face it, we have spent the last couple of generations in cushioned Christianity, with time that we should have been learning how to tear down Satanic Strongholds, live as more than conquerors, and rejoicing everyday.  But the truth is that we, as they, have murmured and complained, split churches, divided brothers and sisters over such STUPID and SELFISH stuff it is UNBELIEVABLE! 

We jump from one conference to another, one church to another, one leader to another looking for someone to do for us what we refuse to do for ourselves - SIMPLY FOLLOW JESUS!  So, we have to come up with new "worship" techniques, new skits, dramas, new ways to present truth.  All the while, Jesus stands in the wing looking amazed at the plates we are spinning.

His invitation remains the same today as it was when He first said it:  "If any man will come unto me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and FOLLOW ME"!

Morning Moments

Vision is always clearer looking back!  Memory isn't!  We tend to forget the severity of pain, the depth of despair, the closeness of danger, the height of the mountain top, etc.  Oh, we maintain certain emotions about those experiences, but somehow the terror of the moment or the tantalization of the time is tranquilized by time.


It was that way with the Children of Israel!  God kept reminding them of the good times and the bad, the times of deliverance and the times of devastation, but somehow, looking back did not prevent them from falling into the same lapses of memory and into the same loses of trust in the living God!


I wonder how much like them we all are!  We have the scars of childhood when we were careless with a knife or some object with which we cut ourselves.  We can see the scars of sin and selfishness everywhere and yet, for the most part, we remain fixed on learning the hard way the same lessons over and over again, whether in ministry, marriage, money, or merely mundane things of life.  I am reminded of the words of Jesus to those disciples when He said, "O fools, and slow of heart!"


Mama use to call me "buttheaded".  The nurse at the University of Alabama said I was "independent" when I was determined to get well quicker than they thought I should have.  The nurse called me "stubborn" when I had a complete knee replacement and was completely well in 27 days.  I was walking without support the second week.  I am GUILTY!  BUT, it is not because I believe in me, but because I believe in Him who can part the Sea when the enemy is behind me and the mountains beside me.  Somehow, someway, SOMEONE implanted in me that trust of Joshua and Caleb that says, "By the grace of God, we can do it!"  


Too often we are limited by our past!


BUT we can also, as was Israel, be lessened by our fear regarding the future.  It can keep us from the conviction that the God of Impossibility can do "exceeding abundantly ABOVE all that we ask or THINK."


When the Jews didn't see Jesus do what they thought Messiah should do, when the disciples couldn't believe beyond His death, when the Church can't believe beyond persecution, when the nation of Israel cannot believe beyond The Great Tribulation - TO THE KINGDOM THAT SHALL COME, vision has dimmed and memory has diminished!


With all the eschatological truth of Scripture we know THIS:  "In such a time as you think not...THE SON OF MAN COMETH!"


BE RIGHT!  BE READY!  BE RIGHTEOUS!


BLESSINGS!

Morning Moments

Today I will digress a bit.  In fact, I will absolutely switch tracks just for the day because of my meloncholy mood, which I rarely do, but here goes.


I grew up in a different day and a different world, in a little South Georgia town in the United States.  My parents were hard workers and I had two older sisters.  Because both my parents worked after WWII, and because my sisters were in school, I had what we would call today a nanny, I suppose.  Her name was Frances and she took such good care of me.  The color of her skin was different from mine but her heart was the same as my mother's.  She loved me and cared for me, but I was a strong willed child.


In those days, our milk was delivered by a milkman on a truck, neighbors were always neighborly, and everybody looked out for everybody else.  The road was dirt and at night usually quite dark, but it didn't matter, for we kids whistled and ran our way up and down that road to the pavement about a half a mile away where there was an old country store to buy a soda for 5 cents, and a big tire hanging from a big oak tree in my friends yard.  We would swing for hours.


Most of the time we boys didn't wear shoes; not because we didn't have them, but because we didn't want them on our feet.  When the sun was really hot in the summer the sand would burn our feet but we didn't care; we liked the feel of the sand between our toes.  We dressed up on Sunday, but the rest of the time Blue Jeans were the order of the day.


In school, discipline was maintained and teachers had no problem either exercising it themselves or sending one to the "Coach" for quite a paddling.  I must confess to having my share because of two primary problems: 1) Not remaining still 2) Talking.  Of course, neither was ever my fault!  NOT!  Bible reading and prayer were a vital part of the learning experience, and I personally knew of very little, if any, sexual relationships between students (maybe a couple).


Life seemed so simple then!  We were taught to say, "Yes sir" and "yes m'am" to anyone older regardless of color and most of us did that respectfully.  We were taught to say please and thank you and all the mannerly things for which children should be commended.  We all learned that, if we behaved ourselves, we could become whatever we wished to become through hard work.


Our parents had gone through the Great Depression and had learned to live on little, appreciate everything, want for nothing, and take nothing for granted.  There was little then, but little was enough - THEN!


EVERYTHING changed for everybody in the United States in the '60s in almost every way with hatred, murder, moral decadence, sexual perversion, vile talking, and on and on.  Much of it was blamed on racial tensions, but that was merely a sham, just as it is today!  Many learned to exploit segments of society for their own gain, as they do today!  Justice became perverted and if you were white and wealthy you could walk, but if you were black or white and poor, you had little chance of justice. 


GREED began to consume this amazing society that had been a bastion of freedom for all the world for so long and drugs and the money drugs brought into this country brought with it all sorts of corruption and social disease, pornography, pedophilia, perversion, uncontrolled passion!


POWER and the hunger for it has ravaged our land and will do the same for any other nation that turns its back on God!  


I guess I am just saying to those of you who live around the world in a quiet place - PRAY that your nation does not seek what America has sought or you will get what America has gotten and is yet to get more of - THE CONSUMING JUDGMENT OF GOD!  For "Righteousness exalts a nation but SIN is a reproach to ANY people".


My grandchildren will never know that simple life I knew!

Morning Moments

OUR ABSOLUTE AUTHORITY

There are myriads of streams of study when it comes to the Bible and many types and styles of presenting the truth of the Bible.  We study texts, books, subjects, doctrines, words, literary forms, cultures of the Bible lands, customs of the people and so forth and I believe all of these are important studies for a full comprehension of the totality of Scriptural content.  For example, the Eastern mindset has always and is even today so different from the Western mind.  The Tribal culture is so different from the Northern or Southern, Western, or Eastern culture of the United States. 

Think about a few of those things in this manner:  We, in the West are appalled at the thought of a man selecting a 13 year old girl as his wife, because we have created a vacuum called adolescence, of which the Eastern world knows nothing.  We would not think of arming young boys with assault guns and bombs to kill, but it is common in the many other parts of the world where children are as active in combat as adults.  There is a world between us and a chasm of understanding exists because we do not wish to understand, for the most part.  We have thought our way of civilization would lead to Utopia and wanted the world to come along with us through our democratic form of Government, but the world doesn’t want it!  The East is steeped in TRADITION and we are steeped in TREND!  They do not wish to dress as we do nor think as we do nor live as we do, but we continue to insist that everyone must be like us as we open our WESTERN WICKEDNESS of pornography, adultery, pedophilia, homosexuality, lesbianism, dope, greed, and hungry for power upon people who just want to be left alone.  They hate us for pushing our ways upon them.  They want their women wrapped, but we want our women naked!  That is a major difference in the East and the West.  We expose everything, whereas they expose little or nothing.  We may use planes, but they can use undergarments.

DON’T MISS MY POINT HERE PLEASE!!!

I am a patriotic American, but I have travelled all over this world and have come to love and respect other’s customs and cultures, even when they are foreign to mine.  I can learn from them and love them and appreciate them.  And I don’t think many of them want to be like we are!

NOW HERE IS MY POINT in terms of God’s Government, His absolute authority, and our responsibility:

God alone can change hearts!  He alone can change cultures that need changing, but I still say that God primary concern is not for the world to be a Democracy, but for the nation ISRAEL to be the THEOCRACY that He designed and for the Church of Jesus Christ to be the BODY that He has given birth to, the BUILDING that Christ is building and the BRIDE for which our Lord Jesus Christ is soon coming!  THAT IS OUR CONCERN - NOT TO CHANGE THE WORLD but to allow God to change hearts, one by one in preparation for that Kingdom that shall come to Earth where He shall rule as King of Kings and Lord of Lords, after He Christ has come with His Bride and ISRAEL has returned to her GOD.

IT IS HAPPENING!  IT WILL HAPPEN!  KEEP YOUR EYE ON ONE NATION AND EDIFY THE ONE BODY!

BLESSINGS!

Morning Moments

THE GOVERNMENT OF GOD

The government of God has never been democratic!  From the very beginning God initiated a Theocracy with men and women He raised up that met certain conditions, under certain circumstances, to fulfill certain purposes.  Anytime God’s leader’s mislead, they were dealt with and replaced by God Himself in one way or another.  He used individual leaders, then added assistants, the Judges of the people, and Prophets also during those historical times to advise and consent, correct and challenge leaders when necessary.  That was the Old Testament economy, but God has always done things decently and orderly by and with established AUTHORITY.

When the people of God rebelled against the established authority they suffered and when the established authority was corrupt they suffered, but the hand of God was in it all - guarding, guiding, and growing His people.

In the New Testament Church we also find God established authority, but sadly the whole idea of who is in charge has become a major problem for today’s “church”.  Our whole approach has presented some troubling problems.

In the first place, we prefer men to be educated than anointed by God and so we “teach” them to preach and “train” them to be “pastors” of these modern day messes which have become big business centers with the CEO (Pastor) at the top, a few deacons who may or may not be qualified Biblically, teachers who do not have the spiritual gift of teaching who lead classes as “facilitators” for people who have no clue about the Bible, its origin, preservation, inspiration, or revelation, and then expect them to speak openly about what the text says to them.

We are locked into a system of non-education in the most important discipline of life - the discipline of the study of God’s Holy Word.  To top that off, we expect the Pastor in 20 minutes to give us the whole ball of wax (Background, culture, history, grammar, word studies, and interpretation} without explain the genre, influence of the author, impact upon the readers, intent of the message, or any of the customs that conflict with our own or the mindset of the people being written.

I’m just saying that we have created a vacuum which we have tried to fill with everything but GOD!  Jesus simply said, “Come!”  “Follow Me!”  A little later Paul came along and said, “Follow me as I follow Christ!”  He took a boy who had been taught the Scriptures from childhood by his mother and grandmother, filled him full of the Word of God and sent him out to stir up the people of God by the gift that was given him.

God gifts his leaders and regardless of what anyone might tell you, a gifted man of God is far better than a graduated seminary student.  Of course, one can be both, but we have taught preachers to be politicians rather than prophets, administrators rather than ambassadors, and given them the idea that the “Church” is their means of support when GOD MUST BE!  Look to HIM, not to material substance, and avoid filthy lucre.  Forget early retirement!  Forget retirement altogether...We’ll work till Jesus comes.

One more thing for today!  You young men and women who have a zeal that is not according to knowledge, need the wisdom of elderly godly men and women!!!  I am so tired of a new generation throwing out the old because of traditional ways and vice versa.  I am sick of seeing Preachers allow the Body of Christ divided into “contemporary” and “traditional”!  Let’s just make it BIBLICAL and honor God and not get stuck in a rut with music or ministries or ministers (some of which were never ordained of God). 

The world is so in the “Church” that one can hardly tell the “Church” from a Western Corporation.  If you can’t reach your pastor and he is too busy to chat with you, visit you in need, or be available to you, he is not a pastor, but a CEO of another American Corporation.  The Good Shepherd knows his sheep by name!  

Finally, I visited a lady who is 97 and is bed ridden on Saturday.  I am not her pastor, but I have been her friend for many many years.  Her husband was helped with our seniors citizens ministry many years ago.  

He has been down for several years and is one of the most godly women I have ever known.  I looked into her big blue eyes as she squeezed by hands not wanting me to go and saw the holiness of God as I have rarely seen in anyone’s eyes before.  They were penetrating the very depths of my soul.

At 2:30 Sunday morning I found myself crying out to God for that kind of purity of heart and soul and for every speck or shadow of darkness in me to be dispelled and that my heart and life and lips would be should a reflection of the presence of God in my life that should young man or woman might, when that moment comes for me to cross over, that someone might see such a clearness of God in me.

BLESSINGS!

Morning Moments

Jesus called for discipleship, not merely decisions, which is a real problem for the “Church” today.  We often boast about how may “decisions” we have had, but when it comes to “disciples” it is another matter entirely.

The term “disciple” itself indicates one who is teachable, trainable, and transformable.  One who has taken on the characteristics of his/her Teacher.  

Perhaps we should understand the term as conveying far more that a lecturer, a professor of students, an academic.  It is the investment of one’s life into others in a very strict sense, through disciple, direction, and determination, to gain the end result of conformity to more than a cause, when it comes to Christianity, but to CHRIST HIMSELF!

Jesus did not spend His ministry arguing about the things that the “Church” has, does, and will continue to argue about, such as predestination/election, eternal security, tongues/healings, gifts, and a myriad of other such things.  ALL of those are the teachings of men ABOUT the teachings of Scripture whether right or wrong.  Jesus kept the main thing the main thing - “Come!  Follow Me!”  And He is still calling us to that.

I happen to be blessed with four wonderful children, who have done well in their lives, but my greatest delight is that they, through all the years, continue to love, respect, and honor their father and mother.  That’s what God wants of us - HONOR THY FATHER!

I am convinced it is one of the primary reasons for the attack on the family for the past 50 years.  Breaking up of marriages, single parent families, gay/lesbian relationships, same sex marriage, etc, etc.  It is all a ploy to destroy the entire concept of God’s plan of relationships and confuse the entire issue so that our thinking of spiritual relationships change and we no longer see the need for FATHER in the home or in the heart.  Get rid of the “father” and you have gotten rid of the “foundation” of all relationships.

The HEAVENLY FATHER still is calling us into a family relationship with Himself through a personal relationship with His Son, Jesus Christ, who calls us to “forsake all and follow HIM!”  Will we do it?  That is the real issue, not these things with which we have ripped the Body of Christ apart.

BLESSINGS!

Morning Moments

Many Know About Jesus, but do not KNOW HIM!

We must also remember that many of the world’s religions believe something about Jesus.  For example, Islam teaches that he was a prophet and Jesus is sometimes quoted in the Koran (His ideas are often expressed there).  THAT does not make for Christian Muslims!  We must understand that even the devil quoted Scripture when he tempted Jesus in the Wilderness, but he sought to use the Word of God against Jesus to offer him an alternative to what God, the Father wanted of him.

Just because a world leader or a minister for that matter quotes Scripture, it doesn’t mean that he is quoting it in context and with proper understand and interpretation.  We live in a world of deception - even in “Christendom”.  It is why so many are confused about with the “End of the World” teachings, Health and Wealth teachings, Kingdom teachings, all sorts of “rapture” teachings, not to mention the lack of clarification and Biblical understanding of divorce and remarriage, adultery, sodomy, etc.  

When men and women of God cannot remain committed to each other in as Christians, what can we expect of the world in which we live, and yet, we throw out all teachings of Biblical morality and holiness and purity to satisfy our flesh and keep on “living for Jesus”.  Is it any wonder the world is so confused about this JESUS we claim says us from all sin, when He can’t seem to save us from our own slavish selves?  James asks, “From whence come wars and fightings among you?  Come they not from your own lusts that war in your members?”

I’m just saying we can prophesy all we wish, speak in tongues all we wish, amass fortunes and be healthy all we wish, a believe all our petty divisive doctrines all we wish but until we begin “perfecting holiness in the fear of God” we are not making much progress.

Christianity today seems to be STUCK in the self edification mode where we want everything for ourselves and nothing for Jesus!  We want to feel good about us!  We want to be loved more that we want to love!  We want to give so that we can GET!  We want!  We want!  But what we need is to die to flesh and live the faith life which enables us to “rejoice evermore”  and to “rejoice in the Lord always!”  It’s all about HIM, not me!

BLESSINGS!