Saturday, May 26, 2007

CHOOSE LIFE

Once you were dead, doomed forever because of your many sins. (NLT Ephesians 2:1)

I never felt as though I were dead. I thought I had things pretty good. I had friends and family and fun times. Life was filled with work and hobbies. Every day was busy from start to end. What is this dead stuff? I believed in God and knew He was always present in my life, but as an observer. When I realized I had done something wrong or was thinking about doing it, I hoped God was looking into someone else's life instead of mine.

Like most, I thought our lives were judged on our goodness and if we passed the test we would go to heaven instead of the alternative, hell. As humans we were basing good and bad on what we as a culture had decided was good and bad. As the years went on we moved things from one category to another and assumed God was doing the same.

As the years moved on, more and more bad became good and sometimes it was a blurry line between the two sides. Sin was what was defined in some list somewhere. Everyone seemed to have different lists. Catholics had a different list than most Protestants I knew, and Jews had another. We all tried to live within our own list and envied some of the things on another list or gloated about what we could do and they could not.

I had heard about Jesus and new it was written that He was crucified for our sins. We celebrated Easter and Christmas and went to church every Sunday. What I did not know is what Jesus was to me. I did not have a relationship with Him. The emptiness in me was being filled with new things. Often having them was more important than using them. As each was obtained, it was fun for a while, then another would top the most desired list. It was like a never ending need to have. I believed the adage "He who dies with the most toys wins."

When our housekeeper invited us to attend that healing school in 1991, I knew Dianne would be healed of Crohn's Disease. What I did not know is how that day would affect the rest of our lives. Both of us accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior that day. We began a personal relationship with Jesus.

Dead was no longer just a physical state. Now that I was alive in Him, I understood what dead really was. Not having a relationship with Him was being dead; dead to Him. As our relationship with Him grows, we grow. We become more Christ like in our thoughts, actions, and deeds. This is all possible because we were given the chance to choose life over death and we took it.

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

PURSUE RIGHT PATHS

Run from anything that stimulates youthful lust. Follow anything that makes you want to do right. Pursue faith and love and peace, and enjoy the companionship of those who call on the Lord with pure hearts. (NLT 2 Timothy 2:22)

We hear others refer to "the good old days". They look back and remember good times and think all would be better if we could only go back. They forget the growth in them because they came out of those "good old days" and moved into the future.

In our youth we were driven by youthful desires. We may have been looking to please ourselves; looking for the good times. Our ambitions were driving us into schools and down career paths. Our youthful lust may have been driving us down other paths as well.

As we get older, we realize how important it is to stay away from anything sending us in a direction we know to be wrong. But the world still pulls us. It still offers opportunity every day to take the wrong path.

The emails flood my machine daily with gambling opportunities, get rich quick schemes, and invitations to peek into the private rooms of young girls with their online video cams. These are not the avenues to follow. These are not ways to pursue faith and love and peace.

We must choose our companionship carefully, always mindful of the leading of the Holy Spirit. We must work daily to keep our hearts and our bodies pure as we continue to call on the Lord.