Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Pick and Choose

Romans 14:1
Accept other believers who are weak in faith, and don't argue with them about what they think is right or wrong. (NLT)


I remember a story about cooking the Christmas ham. As the little girl watched her mother cut the end off of the ham and throw it away, she asked her mother why she did that. The mother said that the cut off end was not good to eat. The daughter again asked why. The mother thought about it and said she really did not know why, she learned this truth about the ham from her mother.

When grandmother came over for dinner that day, the little girl asked about the end of the ham that was thrown away. The grandmother laughed and told her grand-daughter she did not know why, that her mother always cut the end off, so she did too.

The little girl was still curious, so she approached the great-grand-mother who exclaimed "I had to cut it off because my oven was too small for the whole ham!"

Sometimes the truth as we know it is not truth at all. We tend to see things only from our own standpoint and not as other may see them. So when a situation comes up where we differ in opinion with someone, we can become argumentative since we know the truth. The truth we know is based on the experience we have had or what we have learned about someone else's experience in this matter. What we know may not be truth.

Even though someone is recently saved, they have the same truth inside them as we do. How much of that truth has been revealed to them has to do with their relationship with God, not in the number of years they have been saved or which classes they have attended. Faith grows in relationship to our experience with God.

This is so unlike our worldly view of knowledge. In that view, the more grades we have gone through in school and the more degrees we have obtained in college gives us an edge over those with less. Knowledge is somehow erroneously linked to experience. However, knowledge without experience is like a closed book. In this worldly existence, knowledge with experience leads to the discovery of new truth.

So we should not argue with another Christian about God. The Bible is the way to discover truth no matter how long someone has been saved. The truth revealed to someone else by the Holy Spirit as they read God's Word may be just what God wants us to hear. Do not argue about or dismiss what others hear. What we perceive as being week in faith may just be a perception based on the box we have allowed ourselves to be in all these years. A new Christian may in fact be stronger in faith then us.

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Do No Harm

Romans 13:10
Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. (NLT)


Love. This is a word used everywhere you look. There are books about it. There are movies that make it look wonderful and one that make it dirty. Its meaning is twisted and it is used instead of the word like.

It reminds me of the Golden Rule. "Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you. This is the essence of all that is taught in the law and the prophets." This is from Matthew 7:12 and quoted in other places in the New Testament.

Reminds me of when I first signed up for an Internet service by installing one of those AOL diskettes we used to get ever week or so back in the 90's. I was on the Web and had an email address, but was not getting many emails. Then I heard a voice inside telling me that if I wanted to get emails I had to send some.

An old adage says "What goes around comes around." And it is true. We receive what we dish out. If we are full of anger it is not surprising that we would have others angry at us.

Would it not be better to show God's love to others, and then we will receive love back? And if we are looking to Love others (our neighbors) all of the law will be fulfilled for law is about punishment for doing something that wrongs another. If we act in Love we will do not harm to others.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Getting Caught Up

Romans 13:7
Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor. (NLT)


It is not easy paying taxes. For some it is just a matter of accepting what comes out of the paycheck as fact and submitting an agreement to it in the form of an online 1040EZ after the W2 form comes in the mail. For many others, we can also do that if we want to pay the maximum.

If we own property, have a mortgage, have medical expenses, or a number of other valid deductions, we file a long form. To do that correctly, we have to keep good records of all our income and expenses.

In the move from RI to FL over the last year, I have been lax in keeping up with my bookkeeping on the computer for our personal expenses. I have a bookkeeping program I have used for years, but that is only as good as the data you type into it. I am busy getting caught up which means entering all the details from my checkbooks into the database and then balancing them with the bank records which are online.

Like our relationship with God, it works a lot better if we do a little each day. Had I entered the checks each day as I wrote them or the deposits as I received checks, the task would have been done. At any time I could have gotten needed answers at the click of key or point of a mouse.

This is kind of like our relationship with God. If we spend time with Him each day, even if just a for few minutes when we awake and/or when we go to bed at night, we get caught up. Sunday comes around and we head off to a church to praise and worship the one we have known all week long. Our details have been entered and now we can just be ushered into His presence.

Yet how often do we arrive at church and have to get caught up and balanced before we can get into the praise and worship that day?

Friday, October 16, 2009

The "F" Words

Here are the words I am thinking about:

Faith
Family
Food
Friends
Facebook

Talking about the F word is like mentioning four letter words. Both have been given a bad rap for years. My favorite four letter word is LOVE and second to that I guess would have to be FREE (another F word).

And there may be a bunch more, but this is a good start.

What order are they in your life?

Is Food on the top, or Family, or what?

Where is your Faith? I hope it is in Jesus Christ. And that you remember what it says in Hebrews 11:1 (NLT). "[Faith] is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen. It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see."

If we already have proof of its existence, then it is no longer faith. John did not need faith to know that Jesus was crucified. He was there and he saw it happen. He did not need faith to know that Jesus came back from the dead and walked among them. He was there.

"These signs will accompany those who believe: ... They will be able to place their hands on the sick and heal them." (Mark16:17-18 NLT)

However, John needed faith to know that Jesus is the way to life everlasting. He needed faith to lay hands on the sick and see them recover. And so do we.

I break family into different groupings. There is immediate family which starts with our spouse. In my case this is my wife, Dianne. After that comes those who are living under our roof. Then comes our offspring who are on their own and their families.

Food comes in two ways. There is the food we nourish our bodies with--those three meals a day we partake of. Some of us sneak in some snacks as well. What do we eat? Is it good for us, or just filler that tastes good? Many of us are more interested in the flavor (another F word) than the nourishment. As long as we feel full (another F word), we are satisfied even if we continuously gain weight because of it.

Then there is spiritual food. We even fast (another F word), the physical food and sustitute additional time with our Father God (another F word). Fellowship (another F word), with Jesus Christ is necessary for us to grow in our Faith. We grow in proportion to the amount of fellowship (relationship) we have with Jesus coupled with the action we take as a result of what the Holy Spirit directs us to. And not to forget the growth that comes from the relationship we have with others He leads us to.

When I speak of Friends, I include those we have a relationship with and not those we call friends because we work with them or see each other on Sunday mornings. Those are acquaintances, not what I think of as friends. If I have a need of any kind, I can call on my friends to help and know they will, even in the middle of the night. The list is short.

My wife is my best friend. There is nothing we cannot share and she is always there for me with loving words and a loving touch. After over a quarter of a century together, we still are not at a loss for words. Amazing as that seems!

Why Facebook? Well this is a Social Network popular with many Internet users today. It allow us to express our faith to a closed circuit of family and friends. We can stay in touch without having to pick up the telephone and hope to catch them home. We can see what is happening in each others lives, pray with them, see their pictures, and be included in their interactions with those they know.

Is Faith on the top of your list?

Monday, October 12, 2009

NEED CHANGE?

Romans 12:2
Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will know what God wants you to do, and you will know how good and pleasing and perfect his will really is. (NLT)


Every group of people tends to become alike over time. Take a bunch of children and send them to a private school and most of them will turn out being similar in many ways. The same can be said about people attending the same church over a number of years. Even people who work together for a long time pick up each other's traits and habits.

When you spend time with a very negative person, you can easily end up thinking in a similar way. Instead of looking on the bright side, you see the dark places instead. We are influenced by what we associate with and that could be people, books, movies, and television programming.

Last night we watched a movie and my dreams were influenced by what I let in. It was a fair flick even though very dumb and kept us in stitches throughout. Did it influence my way of thinking or change the way I will react to situations in life. No, it will not, but it did have an effect on some level as evidenced by my dreams.

No matter how good the teaching is at church or how great the last Christian author 's book was it does not transform us into a new person. It does add to our bank of intellectual knowledge and affect us on different levels. We may make different conscience decisions as a result of what we have learned.

True change, change that alters the way we think occurs when we let the Holy Spirit change us from the inside out. When that occurs, we no longer have to think about our reactions. They occur differently because our character has changed to be more Christ like.

Have you given the Holy Spirit permission to change you?