We Have a Trustworthy God

JAMES 1: 2, 3

JESUS CHRIST suffered the pain of loneliness, the agony of ostracism, the anguish of isolation, the craving of hunger, the anxiety of betrayal, the dilemma of denial, the humiliation of public rejection, and the torture of a cross.

You gotta problem? He can relate to you. At issue is whether you will relate to Him in your time of suffering. 

Put this in your warehouse of memories: “Joy isn’t the absence of pain and problems, it’s the presence of Jesus Christ.”

When you come to the point of realizing all you need is Jesus, then Jesus provides all you need. That is a clever cliche, but I know personally it is a good Biblical worldview.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.”

There are times when we can’t see. That is, things happen that we can’t understand.  It is then we must exercise faith in what is unseen.

It is then we can relate to Isaiah 50:10, “Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the word of His servant? Let him who walks in the dark, who has no light, trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God.”

Play that over and over on the soundtrack of your mind until you can repeat it in your sleep — or in your hours of sleepless agony.

Our sovereign Creator, the Lord God, made a choice to give human beings a free will. With that came another choice. A paraphrase of a statement by Augustine says it well: “God thought it better to bring good out of bad than not let the bad exist.”

God is not out to bring about bad things for us, but to bring the good out of the bad things that happen to us.

Consider that in light of Isaiah’s comment regarding walking in the dark where there is no light, some things can only be seen in the dark. For example, the darker the night the brighter the stars. The more difficult our circumstances are, the more precious is our Lord.  It is when we can’t see we must “trust in the name of the Lord, and rely on … God.

What Type Christian Do You Want To Be?

What type Christian do you want to be? There is one type I want to be, and one I don’t want to be. I want to be an alligator not a wasp Christian.

An alligator grows every day of its life.

A wasp is as big as it will ever be the day it is born.

Wasp Christians abound in churches. They have been born again, saved, but have not grown. Resultantly they struggle in their faith and bring dishonor to the name Christian. 

To be an alligator Christian one has to grow daily in faith and knowledge. That requires some basic daily action.

* “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” II Timothy 2:15

Establish a time, place, and resources to aid your study. Get in the habit.

* Prayer is essential to spiritual growth.

“But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.” Matthew 6:6

When you pray, be more concerned about the One to whom you are praying than about what you are praying.

* Engage regularly in public worship where the Word of God is expounded faithfully. 

“…not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.”  Hebrews 10:25

As with breathing it is as essential to breathe out as to breathe in. So, it is essential to not only take in the Word, but to share it also.

Let’s grow, fellow gators.

Is Jesus Really God?

Persons looking for Bible text proving Jesus was actually God, Immanuel, God with us, should refer to these texts.

ACTS 20:28 “Shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood…” 

I TIMOTHY 3:16 “God was manifest in the flesh, justified by the Spirit, seen of angels, preached among the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.”

“manifest in the flesh” = Incarnation

“justified by the Spirit” = Resurrection

“Seen of angels” = Post resurrection appearances

“preached among the Gentiles” = evangelization

“Believed on in the world” = Salvation

“Received up into glory” = ascension.

Who was so described, but Jesus?

ROMANS 9:5 “Christ came, who is over all, the eternal blessed God.”

TITUS 2:13 “Looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our Great God and Savior Jesus Christ.”

COLOSSIANS 2:9 “In Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.”

To merely say “Jesus is God” is little better than saying there is no God. It is only when you can say and mean “Jesus is my God” that it makes a difference.

Is He your God?

Hypocrites

Christ used a word from the Greek theater to describe people who are fakes.

HUPOKRISIS is the Greek word. It means play-acting. In the Roman and Greek theaters a character might appear on stage wearing a mask which was affixed to a short stick like an old fashioned fan. The mask might represent a villain and the actor was costumed accordingly. The actor might go off stage, quickly change his robe, and come back wearing a different mask depicting a hero. The Greek word for such a person is translated hypocrite, meaning a play-actor, a pretended. It referred to one who pretended to be what he was not. In the theater it was never used in a negative sense. However, Jesus never used it in a complimentary manner. It appears only in the gospels. The fact it appears 15 times means it was of vital concern to Christ. He does not like fakes.

Christ presses His illustration further. He describes these play actors as being like whitewashed tombs. They are beautiful and white on the outside, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones.  Inside they are lifeless.

There is even a deeper meaning understood by His listeners. In the month of Adar just before Passover graves and grave sights were whitewashed to identify them in order that people might avoid them. In that era for a person to touch a grave it was thought to contaminate them and make them unclean for Passover. By calling them whitewashed tombs Jesus was saying such hypocrites should be avoided.

Escaping Despondency

An estimated 10 million Americans suffer from anxiety neurosis. There are so many phobias that there is even a phobephobia, a fear of fear.

John Bunyan, in his incomparable “Pilgrim’s Progress,” describes certain people graphically. I hope this description doesn’t fit you. Bunyan uses illustrative language to depict the conditions of people. He spoke of a “Slough of Despond.” A slough is a kind of swamp. “Despond” is a form of despondency. He says of certain people: “They need not fear the Slough of Despond for they carry a slough within their heart, they never get it out and they never get out of it.”

God says, “Don’t give up. Don’t quit. Don’t get bogged down in the Slough of Despond.” 

To help escape from the slough keep these words in mind:

“The light of God surrounds me
The love of God enfolds me
The power of God protects me
The presence of God watches over me
Wherever I am, God is!”