Bewildered

It is difficult to watch the candidates for President of the United States exploit the situation at the border to try and win votes. The situation at the border is sad. 

It is sad that people have lost hope in their homeland and want to flee to another country. The overwhelming numbers has created a logistical nightmare that we must address.

I am confused by the many politicians who seem to be embracing the problem for personal gain and trying to appeal to our emotion rather than reason. 

It seems as if this crowd demands choice apart from responsibility when it comes to the most innocent lives in the womb. They redefined children in the womb to be fetuses, tissue, and inconveniences. They speak of the rights of women to destroy the life that grows inside of them as if it is a human right rather than a travesty. 

Men and women have choice. They can choose to be sexually active or abstain from sexual activity.  Should they decide to be sexually active, the natural consequence could be the creation of another human being.  Regardless of how you label this precious life, it is a result of two peoples choices. (I know we always want to jump to the exception of rape and incest…but for the sake of clear thought, let's stay with the choice thought here.)

 Our choices always have consequences and will affect those who depend upon us positively or negatively. The weaker will always be at the mercy of the stronger and the strong must choose to use their strength in a way that will empower them, or they have misused their strength/power. 

I understand the pictures of children in cages at the border were taken during the Obama administrations time in office. I am neither a promoter or detractor of President Trump. However, it is a political stunt to paint one administration as the problem, and this alone shows us we should discard the credibility of those doing so. 

More disturbing to me is the lack of logical thought by the Democratic candidates. They care about helpless children at the border but not about helpless children in the womb? Why do they get to choose which children are worthy of caring for or defending? Don't the children in the womb want to live a better life too? Don't they want to be united with their parents and live in a free society?

If I, as a parent, choose to disobey the laws of the land, I am punished. My punishment will separate me from my family, adversely affect their income potential and harm innocent people. The same would be true if I violate the immigration laws of a sovereign nation. 

If our nation's leaders are going to be consistent in thought, they need to reconsider all action taken against any parent that has adversely affected the innocent. You can take a picture of the children at the border, or of a child in a parentless home in a gang infested area and see the same devastation. You can also take a picture of a child in a womb and see the devastation that takes place during an abortion. 

When any nation turns from God, their people no longer have the ability to discern and all situations become platforms for personal gain. Our political leaders need to embrace the importance of all children, not just those who benefit them politically. 

There is a God with a plan, we should listen to Him.

The Light

Romans 1:22-25 (ESV Strong's)  Claiming to be wise, they became fools,  and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves,  because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

The godless are not wise; they are foolish. Just as sunlight shortens from June 21 to Dec. 21 hope fades little by little to those who desire darkness rather than light.

As the light of the sun has less time to penetrate the soil, the plants begin to cease growing and producing and hunker down to survive the winter. The ground becomes hard, the air cold, the nights long and at times, survival becomes more critical than the enjoyment of life.

As the days lengthen and the suns rays once again begin to penetrate the earth’s soil, we begin to have hope, we see life beginning, and the very process of fruit production begins. The beauty of the light begins to warm the hearts, and the soil and life switches from survival mode to satisfaction mode as hope, temperatures, and daylight soar.

Our nation’s leadership is no different from our nation’s soil. The less the light of God penetrates the souls of leadership, the harder the soil becomes. As the soul soil becomes hard, the goal switches from satisfaction in this life to survival. Hope, fruit, and life become scarce, and the masses switch to survival mode.

The only way for this darkness to prevail is to limit the light, so the goal of the godless is to limit the Word of God, the Authority of God and the voice of the prophets who speak God’s Word to the people.

Hitler limited the light, and the world plunged into darkness. Hitler counted on the popular vote rather than what was right and mistaking believed that the majority of opinion makes something right. He was mistaken and lived one of the darkest lives ever recorded.

The light softens the frozen soil of the soul, and the more exposure to the Light of God’s Word, the softer the soul. Light provides fuel for food production, thereby empowering a purposeful life. Light clearly shows us the conditions around us so that we can rejoice in the good and clean up our messes.

The United States seems to be heading into the winter of our existence as those in authority keep limiting the light. The darkness that engulfs their soul blinds them and obliterates hope, productive change, significance, and security.

Without the light of God, the weakest of this world have no voice, and the darkness that prevails in Washington DC authorizes atrocities that were, at one time, unthinkable.

Without light, our leadership appeals to survival skills rather than life skills, and the future of all people and businesses is mortgaged on the altar of the moment.

In the darkness, people cried out to crucify Christ, and as He hung on the cross, God brought real darkness over the earth so the world could get a glimpse of what they had done.

We can no longer allow our leadership to ignore the Light of God’s Word. Those who love God need to live as if they love God and enable the light of His Word and presence to penetrate our world. For now, the choice is ours.

Helpless But Not Hopeless

There are times we feel helpless, and rightfully so, in that the circumstances in life are beyond our control. As I write these words, it is -25 degrees outside. I can do nothing about the cold, and must respond to it appropriately, or face dire consequences. 

As I write these words, the family of a dear friend of mine is preparing for his memorial service. He was a loving family man who was serving our Lord in a foreign country. He was a man who valued relationships, exercised regularly, and focused on bringing the Word of God to a people who never had the Word of God. One day, after a run, he, unexpectedly, had a heart attack and died. 

The extreme cold and the unexpected heart attack indeed demonstrate our helplessness. This helplessness is not without hope. For those who live in a northern climate, the reality of cold temperatures is something for which we prepare. I spent much time during mild weather cutting wood, maintaining natural gas lines and equipment, making sure our chimneys were clean, and keeping up our cars charging systems. I made sure our portable generators were gassed up and ready, and stockpiled gasoline for the generator, snowblowers, and vehicles. 

My preparation did not make me feel less helpless. It made me feel prepared and hopeful. As I sit here today, sipping a hot cup of coffee and looking at a blazing fire in the fireplace, my home is warm and cozy.

Likewise, my friends’ family, in many ways, may, for a good reason, feel helpless today. There is nothing they can do to change a difficult situation. They did not control the day my friend was born, or the day he died. As helpless as they are, they are not hopeless, for they have clearly understood and prepared for such a day as this.  They know that their loved one is in the presence of God as he had accepted His offer of salvation. 

Every human is helpless, but no human being needs to be hopeless. 

It is a real disaster when one is both helpless and hopeless, and those who have no relationship with God continually live in such a state. Those who are without God live unprepared lives. They are unprepared for the eventual certainties of life.

To compensate, they do their best to control what they think they can control. Mostly they control their image, their public persona. In reality, though, they are frightened, alone, and afraid of being found out. They surround themselves with people who will reinforce what they think about themselves, while at the same time discrediting them, in their minds, because they know they have believed a lie. 

Their power gives them satisfaction, and they use their money, status, and position to satisfy their need to feel they're in control, not realizing that in the end, their money, status, and position will disappear, and they will be hopeless as well as helpless. 

Those who are in God’s family have hope in their Father, for He is the one who controls all the situations in life that render us helpless. The fact that we admit our helplessness and turn to Him, our Helper, allows us to be empowered, and delivers the hope of which the Godless world can only dream. 

We know that winter comes and we know that it is appointed for every person to die, and after death to face judgment. Those who prepare for such things may never “enjoy” the extreme cold or the separation of loved ones, but they will enjoy a peace that passes understanding in that they had made the necessary preparations and entrusted the only One worthy of trust. 

For now, the choice is ours.  

Conviction Contradiction

 I watched an ad for saving helpless animals, I hear a human voice talk of being the voice for those who have no voice.We are a nation that humanizes animals and  dehumanizes babies/children. Since they cannot speak up for themselves, they are being killed. 

New York passed legislation that legalizes murdering children. The voice I heard was that of the legislative body cheering because they legalized the murdering of voiceless children.

All humanity suffers from sin.  Those who claim that all are good must redefine the word good. Those who have redefined good have redefined what it is to be human, so they can eliminate, without ill conscience, the inconveniences of life and call what was once deplorable, good.

It is one thing for individuals to have no conscience, while it is quite another for institutions, that are entrusted to be our conscience, to care more about what is popular than what is right. 

Politicians speak of holding personal convictions that would not affect their political decisions, and somehow, we have found this insane idea acceptable. 

For the most part, the church was silent in Hitler’s Germany. Hitler redefined what it was to be human, and those designated less than human were expendable. 

Definitions may change how I feel about evil, but how I feel does not change the reality of sin. 

Populism is the opiate of the people.  Authority is the enemy of populism. We have normalized populism, made those who challenge popular opinions evil, and will now pay the price for our errant thought process. 

Churches, schools, elders, and politicians who remain silent to please a self-serving population fuel the fires of individualism that will eventually divide our nation in a way that is irreconcilable. 

The United State of America is a republic, and a republic demands leaders who know and love God and the people they have been entrusted to lead.  If populism becomes their driving force, the nation will splinter, as decency, morals, and life itself take on new definitions. 

Populist leaders, like Hitler, begin to care more about how they obtain and keep power than about what is right and wrong. In a strange turn, they think that whatever they need to do to gain the popular vote, or to garner popular opinion, is right for them to do.

Populist leaders use people and situations for their personal agendas. The same politicians who decry the treatment of innocent children at the border are willing to kill innocent children who are unwanted by their parents. It does not make sense, because it cannot make sense. 

In the process, we lose our soul, our stability, and our hope. 

There is a God. I am not Him.  One day I will die and remain “dead” far longer than I ever lived, and I will give an account of my life to God. 

Right and wrong, as defined by God, will be the criterion by which I am judged. 

The majority opinion is just that--the majority. It has nothing to do with right and wrong. Instead, the majority has to do with what most people think. 

Until we have evidence that a majority opinion is a criterion for absolute truth, we need to be cautious.

The cheering of the New York legislative body after the vote to legalize the killing of children is barbaric. Those who believe this is right are wrong, and no amount of cheering will ever change that fact. 

I am saddened and disappointed and am publicly stating that the decision made by the legislative body in New York is barbaric and unacceptable. No matter what the law reads, the murdering of children is unacceptable.

The Process of Pain

What causes a person to abandon God’s Word as a guide for their lives?

Perhaps the fear of man has replaced the fear of God. We are a culture that is obsessive about what others think about what we believe. Social media has bred a generation of pundits who seem obsessed with folly rather than truth. 

The Scriptures clearly state that those who follow God will go through a narrow gate and travel a narrow road. God’s followers will be pursued and persecuted while being pressured to move the broader way that is easier and more comfortable. 

This fear of man is misplaced fear, and those who embrace such thinking will one day wish they lived their lives as part of the minority who loved and followed God.

We might also abandon God due to our proximity to the thoughts, ways, and desires of the Godless.  If we develop a lifestyle in which our wealth and comfort are dependent upon the Godless, we live compromised lives to maintain our wealth and comfort. These compromises rob us of the very joy in life we have counted on them to provide. 

The fear of man rather than God starts the process that eventually becomes too complicated because of our intertwining with the Godless. Ultimately, we lose our discernment within the pile of presumptions we have created about God, His people, and the people of this world. False assumptions lead to a meaningless and hopeless existence. 

The misplaced fear, proximity to the world, and false presumptions have groomed us to live lives replete with “secret” sins. Because of our ignorance, we believe that our sin is justified as long as we are not caught or exposed to the very people we fear and have adjusted our lives to emulate. 

In the end, we are no longer a people of prayer unless the prayers are to order the god of our own making around and prove, to the people we fear, that we are significant because our prayers get results. 

Our actions are byproducts of our thinking and ideas, so if we want to see different actions, we need to adjust our thinking/ideas.

We need to start with evaluating who or what we fear, and if it is anything other than God, we must repent and adjust. Then, we must ask if we have developed a closeness to Godlessness that is more comfortable than being with the Godly. If we have a proximity problem, the solution is a change in proximity. 

Once we have thought through what we fear and with what realm we are closest, and we have adjusted ourselves, we need to ask some questions as to what we expect from God and then discover what the Scriptures say about our presumptions. As we search the Scriptures, we must be willing to allow them to expose our “secret sins,” realizing there are no secrets with God, and we should then repent.

Then our prayers lives will be genuine, vibrant, and vital to our lives. 

Processes affect results, so those who ignore the process will always feel victimized by the events in life. 

Fools in Paradise

The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, doing abominable iniquity; there is none who does good. Psalm 53:1 (ESV)

There is a problem with a society that abandons the Bible in that they also abandon God. Without God and His Word, there are no absolutes, and instead of dealing with right and wrong we are dealing with good and bad, and we must determine good and bad by compare and contrast.

In a "relative" world, nobody can be held accountable. Actions are justified by the masses, and leaders concentrate more on convincing the people of their agenda than being right and wrong.

In a relative world, the appearance of good is better than being right, and one is only wrong if he or she gets caught, and cannot "wiggle" out of the accusations.

In a relative world, belief replaces truth, feelings trump thought, and comfort is valued more than work. Since there is no possibility of being judged by anyone who matters, lifestyles become something we justify rather than live, and all who disagree with me are thought to be not only wrong but evil.

Hitler did not try to obey God, and he tried to persuade people. He did whatever he needed to do to gain power, and once in control, he used his authority to punish those who opposed him. 

There were those he persuaded and those he could not influence or intimidate into submission he eliminated. 

The government of the United States of America was founded on principles from God's Word. Our forefathers knew the value of absolutes and thereby could declare that all men are created equal.  Laws could be formed that had the backing of the "absolutes" found in the Scriptures, and government officials were servants entrusted with a sacred trust, not royalty who looked after their interests. 

A nation that has abandoned God's Word and God will eventually debate about issues that are explicitly taught in God's Word as if God was not clear in His communication, and thereby dismiss God from its decision-making process.

In the end, we do what Satan did, and what Hitler did, and have made all things about us. We make it so that others must answer to us for their actions, and because the belief is that there is no God, we become god or judge in all cases. 

In 2 Timothy 4, Paul tells Timothy how to teach. He says to reprove, rebuke, and exhort his pupils. To be able to reprove, rebuke, and exhort, one needs to have and know absolutes and how to apply them to life.  

Without absolutes, teaching is impossible, and teachers’ value is diminished. Schools become holding tanks rather than institutions of learning, and the educated become those who have put in the time, rather than those who have learned. 

The apostle Paul told Timothy to be patient, and he warned him to be patient and that the time would come when people would abandon truth and find leaders who told them what they wanted to hear and the people would follow them. 

Well, that time has come, and apart from going back to the Scriptures and knowing and acknowledging God and the way things were meant to be, we have no hope. 

Owners or Managers

God said to Moses, “I Am who I Am,” not “I have” or “I do.”  (Ex. 3:14). In John 8:58, Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” Once again, He did not say “I have” or “I will be” or “I do.”

God cannot be defined by something that can be gained and/or lost. 

Richard Wurmbrand reminded us that “Jesus spoke Aramaic, a dialect of the Hebrew language. Neither in Aramaic nor in Hebrew does the word “to have” exist. So Jesus never pronounced this word. Jesus never said about anything that He “had” it. Therefore He could retain perfect joy when He was undressed to be scourged, since He had never said about His clothes, “I have them.” He had never said, “I have a body.” The body that was tortured was not His. He owned nothing.” 

In essence, you cannot be separated from something you do not have. Those who own much think they control much, and they have the possibility that some day they will lose much. Those who own nothing can lose nothing, and the only way they hold onto anything is with an open hand. 

The real blessing in life is not having something, but being someone. Therefore, the real blessings in life are available to all. 

In the early church, this idea of being over-doing or having was clear.  In Acts 4:32  it says this:“Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common.”

If we own nothing, all we have belongs to our Master, and we are bond slaves of the same Master, and then we act as servants, and not as owners.  

Those who have much will one day lose much, and those who have nothing will lose nothing. Those who have nothing can be content and thankful in life, for they realize that everything “they have” they manage, rather than own, and their accountability will be in how they manage.

The idea of us giving anything to God seems rather hollow in that He is in need of nothing. The idea of managing what He has given us makes sense in that He makes what we have clearly demonstrate who He is and what He is about. 

Those who own nothing but manage everything have no reason to be prideful, arrogant, or upset when circumstances change, and if we are, it demonstrates that we have yet to understand that we are not defined by our possessions, but by our Master.