Categories
God

Life Is Messy. Our Families Are Too. God Still Has A Plan For Us.

Though we can make things quite messy – including our lives and our family’s lives – I am thankful that God loves us through the messes we  make. 
photo of messy paint splatter everywhereFor example, I know that Abraham and Sarah were godly people. However, as we read their story in the Bible, we see that they still struggled to do what was right. Some of the errors they made: Abraham was fearful that the attractiveness of Sarah could get him killed as they travelled (he had more fear of man than he had trust in God). His fear led them to tell half-truths to several people (another word for that would be lying!). There was also impatience with God’s timing, which led Abraham to sleep with Hagar to help God out instead of waiting on Him. Then there was Sarah’s jealousy and mistreatment of Hagar. And yet, through it all, God was good to Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Ishmael, and Isaac.

That’s the amazing God we serve – still loving us in the midst of our messy mistakes and sins.

And we see this repeated in Abraham’s grandson Jacob, though it seems to get even worse. We find out that Jacob was a liar who deceived his brother and father, but his uncle Laban turned the tables on him, which landed him with two wives (which was not God’s plan for marriage). And his wife Leah finds herself married to a man who didn’t choose her. Leah was in this mess of a situation due to the lies of her father and herself. She was part of the lie which wed her to Jacob. Not only that, can you imagine the anger that this act would have provoked in Rachel, knowing that her older sister tricked the man she loved into this marriage. So add in family divisiveness. What a mess.
photo of an extremely cluttered and messy storage roomAnd yet, even though Jacob didn’t love Leah in the way that he loved Rachel, God still loved Leah and blessed her. And even though Jacob had also been a deceiver, God still loved Jacob.

The whole story is strange, and it is a bit difficult to understand God’s working through what seems such a dysfunctional family full of deceit and jealousy. However, even with all of the sinfulness in the family, God still loved them and had a plan for them. I’m thankful for this story!

Here’s why: I’m glad to know that God is so gracious and forgiving toward us. I’m so glad that He still has a plan to work through the messes that I make in my own life and within my own family.
Aren’t you glad He loves you and works through your messes too?

You don’t have to clean up your life to come to Jesus. But once you come to Jesus, He will begin cleaning you up. Come as you are, with all of your messiness. Turn your messy life over to Him. He’ll love you in the midst of it all, and He’ll begin to clean you up.photo of a clean and orderly grocery store reminding us that our messy lives can be cleaned up

Take a moment to thank God that even though you have been a mess and you have made some messes, that He is a God who loves, a God who forgives, and a God who redeems!

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Categories
Ethics

The Holiness of Every Human Life – Including the Life of the Unborn

From the title, you can tell that this is going to be a pro-life post. I know that some may not care for a post on such a controversial topic. But God’s Word on this is clear, and with this being an issue that is currently before the United States Supreme Court, I feel that now is a good time to share about the Sanctity and Holiness of Every Human Life.text image saying - sanctity of life

Life has value. God is the one who creates life. And regarding the uniqueness of human life, God made us in His image.

God is holy. His image is holy. Therefore every God-ordained life of every image-bearing human has inherent holiness. Inherent sanctity.

When one adult murders another adult, the life of an image-bearer of God is prematurely ended. The murderer demonstrates his contempt for God by de-valuing the God-ordained life of his fellow human. God created us to be His image-bearers. And to destroy that image shows contempt for God and His image.

In America, we have freedom and prosperity and live in an advanced society, and yet there are still so many people who are unhappy. Why is that? Part of the reason is our rejection of God’s morality. God created us to be like Him, so when we refuse and resist the morality that He has built into us, we become troubled. And so a key reason we find ourselves living in a troubled nation is because of our loss of the moral and spiritual center that God has established.

Yet here in our advanced nation, many of the leaders in science and education continue moving us further away from God – further away from His morality – by moving us away from His Life Ethic. God’s life ethic is the idea that Human Life is sacred from conception to death. And even as a nation, we don’t always disagree about this life ethic.

For example, WW II was a terrible war that pointed out the immorality of several other nations who did not value human life and who had a twisted life ethic.

At Pearl Harbor, we lost 2402 human lives.

Throughout the war, we lost 418,500 American Soldiers in battle.

And in the Holocaust of the war, the Nazis killed 6 million Jews and another 4 million people and prisoners of war. Ten million human lives – ten million image-bearers of God – murdered by the Nazi State.

All because of a flawed or missing life ethic.

We rightly call this blatant disregard for human life an atrocity against humanity. That is definitely what it was. It was the opposite of the sanctity of human life. But here in America, we have also committed an atrocity against humanity – as a nation we have disregarded human life in the womb.

In the United States, we have committed 59.5 million abortions. Where is our nation’s life ethic?

Such big numbers are hard to visualize, so let me show you a map for some perspective.a u.s. map showing the southeast u.s. in red to represent the number of abortions - the evidence of the lack of sanctity for human life

The number of abortions we have committed in 49 years equals the current populations of LA, AR, MS, TN, AL, GA, FL, and SC.

All the people living in those states right now equals 59.5 million people. Wipe out all of us living in the Southeast United States today… and that equals the same number of babies that have been murdered in our nation in the last 49 years.

Right now, our life ethic has us rightly angry over the devastation that is taking place in Ukraine. And if a bomb were dropped which destroyed the lives of everyone in the southeast United States, there would be outrage throughout our nation. And yet, because we have deemed abortion “okay” as a nation, we have allowed the same number of babies lives to be ended over these past 49 years.

God values human life. He created it. He ordained us as His image bearers. We do not have the right to end the life that He creates just because it has not yet exited the womb.picture of an infant holding the finger of an adult - reminding us of the sanctity of human life at all ages

Embracing God’s life ethic is important, though it is obvious that much of our nation does not. As a nation, we have embraced this sin as normative – and it has gone so far that we have now killed millions of our own children. The Holocaust sickens us. Rightly so. And yet, here in America, we have murdered 6 times the number of humans killed by Nazi Germany.

We need to become advocates for the Sanctity of Human Life.A bill from Mississippi is presently before the United States Supreme Court. I hope you will join me in praying that our Justices will help us to become a nation that believes in the Holiness, the Sanctity, of every Human Life, from conception to natural death.

Heavenly Father, we ask You to help us become a nation that holds life sacred. You made us in Your image. Transform us into a nation that honors You, the Giver of life who has defeated death, by holding every human life as sacred. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

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Categories
Ramblings

The Value of Writing Down What God Is Teaching You (No. Not Journaling.)

Not Journaling. Certainly Not Keeping a Diary.

Simply Writing Down What God is Teaching You on Occasion.

I don’t remember when I started doing it or even who it was that encouraged me to start. It seems that maybe it was around the time I started seminary that I started writing down a few of the things God was teaching me. Maybe it was a professor who encouraged us to start doing so? Maybe it was in one of the books I had to read for class? I had heard of the value of journaling, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m just talking about occasionally writing down valuable things God is pointing out.

man taking notes in front of his computer - a form of journaling

I’ve been doing this now for more than 25 years. I don’t write something down every day, but as I read God’s Word each morning, if something strikes me in a way that I think is important or challenging or points out something I hadn’t noticed before, I write it down. And if I hear something really helpful in a sermon, I write it down. And if I read something of great value in a book, I write it down. (Again… this is not the same as journaling.)

You can do that in the margins of your Bible, or in the front or back pages of your Bible. You can do this on scrap pieces of paper. You could even use a notebook. I have done all of that at various times. But I then keep all of that info in one place. And occasionally I go back through my scribblings and scratchings to see what God might point out to me from what I had previously thought was valuable. It is always interesting to see what God was pointing out to me at different times of my life.

And as I have been doing so, I have come across a few ideas that I thought might also interest you. And so when that happens, I’ll share those ideas for us to consider together. Here’s one I ran across from a few years ago when I was reading through Genesis:

In Genesis 15, God establishes his covenant with Abram by having Abram take sacrificial animals, cut them in half and lay the halves apart from each other, creating a path down the middle between the split animal halves. (Seems a bit odd, right?)

The Study Bible I was using that year provided a helpful explanation:

This type of ceremony was not uncommon in that day and age. An agreement is being made between the superior party and the inferior party. The superior typically promised protection and the inferior promised service. And typically the inferior was the one who walked through the halves as an indicator that he realized this would happen to him if he did not keep his end of the bargain.

But here are the two big differences between the typical covenant and this one that God made with Abram.

1) Typically, the inferior’s list of duties were longer than the superior’s. But that isn’t the case here. God had much more listed: protection, blessing, descendants, land, care for future generations, wealth, & peaceful death. Abram’s list of duties were minimal – they are not even mentioned, but we assume it is simply to believe in the Lord’s promises (15:6). The focus is on what the Lord promised Abram, not what Abram promised the Lord.

2) The inferior party is also the one who typically would have walked through the pieces to indicate his death if he broke covenant, yet here we have a symbol of God passing through the pieces, indicating that He would die before He would allow His covenant with Abram to fail.

And that is exactly what happened! Jesus did die to fulfill His covenant with Abraham. And through Jesus’s death, Abraham became a father of many, and Abraham’s descendant (Jesus) became a blessing to all nations. What an amazing story of God’s faithfulness to His promises!

So this is just one of the types of things I would jot down as something helpful to me when reading the Bible during my quiet time. And now, with new technology, it’s even easier. I can simply open up a note-taking app on my phone and type in the thought, whether at home or when listening to a sermon. coffee cup and notebook to point toward the value of journalingI want to encourage you to begin occasionally writing down what God is telling you. Whether you do it in the margin of your Bible, in a notebook, or in a note-taking app on your phone – keep up with the ideas that God points out to you as you engage with His Word. And go back on occasion to see how God has worked in your life over time!

(And as I’ve pointed out several times now. This is not journaling.)

Wait… is this journaling? Well, if it is, just don’t tell anyone. Because I’ve found that word turns some of us off.

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Categories
Ramblings

You Are A Unique Miracle.

Our world has an amazing creation story. God created it out of nothing. But the truth is that every single one of us also has a miraculous creation story.photo of earth from space reminding us that creation is a miracle

Because from the beginning of creation up to present day – only God can make another person. We know how a human egg gets fertilized and becomes an embryo and continues to grow in the womb and is born into this world as a new baby, but…

…We can’t create life without God.

We can clone cells, we can fertilize an egg, but we can’t take the raw building blocks of life and create new life. Only God can. Even with all our technology and science and medical know-how, we can’t do the one thing God has been doing since the creation of our world – creating new life.

Only God knows how to create life. He created all that we see and know. And…

He created you!

You are an amazing and unique story created by our remarkable, eternal, all-powerful God.

This is exactly what God is telling us through David in Psalm 139 –

It was you, Eternal Creator God, who created me and my inward parts. You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I will praise you because I have been fearfully and wonderfully made!

Your works are wondrous, and I know this very well, because…

Your eyes saw me when I was still formless.

And all my days were written in Your book and planned before a single one of them began.

Sometimes we have self-esteem crises. We wonder if we are valuable. We have negative thoughts about our worth. But if you ever find yourself in that place… wondering if you are valuable… remember this:

God – the eternal Creator of the universe, the One who speaks all things into being from nothing, this infinite, eternal, almighty, all-knowing God – He has created you uniquely, which means you are truly a one-of-a-kind miracle.

fingerprint - reminding us that each of us are a unique miracle
Eight billion people on the planet – and your fingerprint is unique. What a miracle!

You are made in the image of God, which is amazing in itself. But you also have been made by the very hand of God. You are special, because of who you are in the eyes of the Great, Eternal, Creator God. He loved you so much that He made you unlike any other person on this planet. In fact, He has made you unlike anyone who has ever existed, or ever will exist. Therefore…

You Are Priceless!

Not only did He love you so much that He created you as a unique miracle; He also loved you so much that He sent Jesus to be your Savior, so He could have you – a priceless treasure – with Him forever.

He loves you, He created you, He arranged you just as you are – He knit you together. And now He is drawing you to Himself with loving-kindness. He is drawing you into a deeper relationship with Him. So turn your life over to the eternal, almighty God who made you the unique miracle that you are.

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Categories
Serving Others

Serving God Can Be Uncomfortable. But That May Be On Purpose.

Sometimes God puts us in uncomfortable places to serve Him.

Paul went to Jerusalem knowing that he would be arrested. And yet he went anyway. From all indications, prison is uncomfortable.photo of prison bars remind us prison is uncomfortable

While in prison, Paul got the chance to speak to Felix, the Governor. The Bible tells us that Felix was hoping to get money from Paul, so he spoke to him often. So why didn’t Paul just go ahead and bribe Felix to get out of prison?

Alistair Begg mentions:

Certainly Paul would have known that the hints dropped by Felix would allow him to get out of prison. Certainly he could have asked for his supporters to give finances to help him get out of prison. What reason would Paul remain in prison when he could have bribed his way out?

Well, before I share with you Begg’s answer, I would venture to say that one reason could be that Paul knew that providing a bribe was not following the law and was not God-honoring. I hope that as we think about our own lives, that we strive to honor God by obedience to the law. According to the Bible, we are to obey the law until the law puts us in conflict with God’s commands. There are plenty of ways people try to “get around” the law even though it is not in conflict with God’s Word. Let’s make sure we don’t fall into that trap of damaging our witness by taking shortcuts or using deception to “get around” the law.

But I also really like Begg’s answer:

Since Paul had an opportunity to share the gospel with people who he would not otherwise be able to interact with, he remained in prison and remained able to attempt to influence Felix and those in the court.

Paul trusts that God has him exactly where he is supposed to be. He could have thought, “I can be more effective outside of this prison.” But he doesn’t seek for that release knowing that God has him in exactly the right spot. So instead of worrying about where he is, he sees his current location and situation as an opportunity.chalkboard with crisis crossed out since uncomfortable situations can be opportunities

I don’t know where God will place you today, but I do believe that He has you there for a reason. It may be (like Paul with Felix) that there is someone that will be there with you that is not open to hearing about God from anyone else but you. So don’t work so hard to get out of an uncomfortable place, if that’s where you find yourself. Instead, try to see it as a special opportunity to share with those God has placed around you. He placed you right where you are “for such a time as this!”

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