Month: September 2024

When I was young, girls were taught that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach, so kitchens were more than warming stations back then. My wife was a great cook, but she had my heart long before she captured my stomach. If Satan had one moment of honesty, he would tell you the way to the heart of a man or woman is through their mind. That is his favorite route to introduce temptation, doubts and fears into our life.

When I became a Christian in 1954, there was a best selling book written by 0a pastor titled “Power of Positive Thinking”. I obtained a copy thinking it would help my new found faith grow. The Holy Spirit would not let me read beyond the second page. I put that book down and never picked it up again. That is just one of the countless times God has protected my mind and my heart with the sword of His Spirit and the helmet of salvation. (see Ephesians chapter 6)

Paul also wrote in Romans 2:2 that the way to avoid conforming to the world is through the renewing of our minds. I ask God regularly to keep my mind renewed by removing any fear, doubt or temptation that has squeezed through my subconscious. I praise God daily that as my body has weakened with age my mind has remained strong to continue sharing His messages with you.

 

My wife used to say that the internet is evil. It is true that you don’t have to search long to find any form of evil imaginable. My experience has been that God can, and does, use it for His glory and our good. So many times I have started a blog post with something from my FaceBook time line and today is no exception, although it is somewhat unique. I sat down yesterday to write my blog,but had no topic in mind. I prayed for a topic with no reply from God. This morning, I found this on my time line titled “Thought for the Day” with no source shown. I know the source and I’m sure you do too.

“I am thankful for the difficult people in my life. They have taught me exactly who I do not want to be.” There are positive and negative role models. The difference is how we perceive them. Twin boys were raised by an alcoholic father after their mother died. One grew up to be an alcoholic and when asked why he drank he replied that he watched his father. His brother grew up never drinking a sip of alcoholic drink and when asked why he also replied that he watched his father. Was the father a positive or negative role model? It depends on which brother you ask.

Satan always tries to get us to set the person we admire and try to emulate on a pedestal to worship them instead of God. We must always remember that Jesus Christ is the only perfect person in whom we can both admire and worship, because He is the only access to our heavenly Father.

I want to leave you with a question. Are you a positive role model to those around you? God knows. Ask Him.

Since January 1st of 2017, I have been posting about the Christian life as it is described in God’s word and as I have experienced it for the last 70 years. I want to state once more that there would be no Christian life without the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Satan and the world have tried to stereotype and demonize the title of Christian to the point that some of my friends actually began to refer to themselves as believers. I tried that for a few days, but I wanted the world to know who I believe in, so I quickly returned to proudly writing about my Christian life.

I’ve read that the greatest event in human history was when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon. My wife and I stayed up and watched it on TV and it was memorable, but the greatest event in human history was when Jesus Christ stepped out of that tomb in Jerusalem. No, I didn’t witness that. (I’m old, but not that old.)  However, I have written several times about my spiritual experience while praying at the entrance of the empty Garden Tomb in Jerusalem in 1964. There is a line of a song I watched on YouTube recently that sums it up for me. “The cross is now empty and so is the tomb.”

“All scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16-17 NLT)  I’m sure Paul was inspired by God to write those words, but I don’t think in his wildest dreams he ever thought those words, along with his other letters, would become a part of scripture.

Have you ever had a passage of scripture seem to jump off the page or screen to get your attention? I sure have! Have you ever read a familiar passage of scripture for the hundredth time and gotten something new out of it? Me too! Those things happen because scripture is not just a string of words, but it is a living message from God specifically for each of us.

My blog posts are inspired by God through His Holy Spirit. Are these words as powerful as scripture? Of course not! If they have any power, it is because of scripture. The feedback I receive always reminds me it is God’s message, not mine. My wonderful neighbor once told me that she always had trouble relating scripture to her daily life until she started reading my blog. I kept the encouragement and passed the praise on to the One who deserves it.

I thank God that His living Word, described in the first chapter of the Gospel of John, continues to live in scripture and in the hearts of those who love, believe in and follow Him.

There is a very good reason the rear view mirror in a vehicle is so much smaller than the wind shield. It is more important to keep our eyes on where we are going than on where we have been. In life, however, when you reach my age, you tend to spend more and more time looking back where you’ve been and less time on your relatively short future. I don’t think that in itself is good or bad, just a natural reaction to aging.

Emotion burns the good and bad experiences of our life into our memory. I’m glad I can’t put time in reverse and go back to the good times, because I would also have to relive the end of them. Reliving the joys of my early childhood, I would also see my mother die when I was 14. Reliving my fifty years of marriage with my beautiful, loving wife, I would also have to see her slip into heaven ahead of me. Reliving my independence, I would have to also experience losing my driving privilege and my ability to walk. No. I’ll just look in life’s rear view mirror of memories where I can be happy the good times happened without being sad they ended.

I want to leave you on a positive note. The bad news is that time flies. The good news is that when God is your pilot, your destination is a landing strip in heaven, where loved ones and friends await your arrival in the terminal.

I saw this statement on social media yesterday. “If you want to help people you tell them the truth. If you want to help yourself you tell people what they want to hear.” I don’t know the original source, but there is a lot of wisdom in it. However, I would add more to it as it applies to the Christian life.

As a son or daughter of God, we must never lie, no matter how much someone wants to hear it. We must stick to God’s word and our own personal experiences, because we know they are true. Paul warned Timothy (2nd Timothy 4:3) not to “scratch their itching ears” with what they want to hear instead of the truth of scripture they need to hear.

On the other hand, when we tell someone the truth because we want to help them, we must take care how and when we do it. We all know someone who likes to beat people over the head with the truth like a weapon, but we must share the truth with love and care.

I have more than 300 friends on Face Book and over the years only one unfriended me for telling him the truth I knew from personal experience that what he posted never happened. His favorite college professor told him it happened so he chose to unfriend me. I asked God in prayer if I could have worded my comment better and the Holy Spirit let me know he was just not ready to accept the truth.

God’s timing and truth are perfect. I rely on the Holy Spirit now to let me know when and what to post or comment. I could flood Face Book with God’s truth and my true experiences these past 81 years, but I would be unfriended by those who can’t handle the truth right now but may allow me to plant small seeds of truth in the future. I ignore the untrue posts without giving them any reaction, while reacting positively to posts about family, work and other things with which we agree. I also  pray for their  eyes to be opened to God’s truth and the true history I have lived through.

For the past two weeks I have heard a wonderful pastor preach from the fifth chapter of Mark. That chapter tells about Jesus encountering a very tormented man. Jesus cast a legion of unclean spirits out of the man into a herd of swine.  The sermon this past Sunday was about how everyone begged Jesus to leave except the man who was now in his right mind. He begged Jesus to take him. Jesus told him to go home to his family and friends and tell them the great work God had done in his life.

That message touched me personally. With all God has done in my life for seven decades of serving Him I long to go be with Him, but He tells me through His Holy Spirit to return to my blog and share with everyone He has put in my life all that God has done for me and will do for them.

God has sent us out as ambassadors for Christ (see 2nd Corinthians 5:20). Andrew brought his brother to meet Jesus. The Samaritan woman brought a whole town to meet the Messiah. Many others Jesus healed were sent home to share their great blessing with others. Let us continue to be ambassadors for Christ until we are called home.