Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Messages From Heaven: Possessions and Affections!

Messages From Heaven: Possessions and Affections!: Since the beginning of time, people have made excuses. We can trace this behavior all the way to the Garden of Eden, where Adam made the...

Possessions and Affections!

Since the beginning of time, people have made excuses. We can trace this behavior all the way to the Garden of Eden, where Adam made the first known excuse. After Adam sinned, the Lord demanded an explanation. He simply said, "It is the woman You gave me." We're not really sure whether he was blaming the woman, God, or both. But essentially he was saying, "Lord, I was taking a nap, I woke up, I'm a rib short, and she is here. She got me into this trouble. I am not responsible."
Then God turned to Eve and also demanded an explanation. She said, "The serpent beguiled me." A modern translation would be, "The devil made me do it. I bear no responsibility in the matter. He just overcame me."
Luke 14 records a story Jesus told about three men who offered excuses for not attending a wedding feast. Here we find an example of the excuses people make as to why they will not follow God and obey His plan for their lives. But first, we need to understand something about the culture of that day. When a great feast was thrown, it was customary to extend two invitations. The first was given months beforehand. Later, a second invitation would remind guests of their commitment and the host's expectation that they would attend.
This was important, because the feast was given at a considerable expense, with a great deal of time and effort. It was a great honor to be invited. To decline would be considered offensive and could cause an international incident — a legitimate reason to wage war. We need to understand this as we look at the three men who turned down invitations to such a feast. It wasn't that they had other things to do. Rather, they had been invited, had agreed to come, and then made lame excuses at the last minute.
The first said, "I have bought a piece of ground, and I must go and see it. I ask you to have me excused" (Luke 14:18 NKJV). In that day, purchasing property was a long and complicated process. This was a ridiculous excuse, because this man would have had many opportunities to examine the land before he bought it. Basically, he allowed his possessions to hold him back.
The next person said, "I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to test them" (v. 19). Like the one before him, this man was either a complete idiot or a blatant liar. Buying animals without testing them first would be like purchasing a car without test-driving it.
While the first guy was held back by possessions, this man was held back by his career. He would plow a field with those oxen. That's how he would make his living. Pursuing a career isn't wrong, but in this man's case, it kept him back from the Lord.
Let's look at the third and final excuse. "Still another said, 'I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come' " (verse 20). He was saying, "I'm married. Life is over. That is it." I am sure he could have pulled a few strings and brought his wife along. Obviously, this too was an excuse.
The first two excuses related to material possessions, while the third had to do with affections. Possessions and affections cover virtually every reason given by men and women who will not put their faith in Christ.
Jesus is offering His kingdom — a perpetual feast of peace, help, guidance, friendship, forgiveness, joy, certainty in the midst of uncertainty, and the hope of heaven. Yet people turn their backs on this, preferring a visit with their possessions or affections instead.
This parable isn't a put-down of things and relationships. What it is simply saying is this: If good things keep you from enjoying the best things, then they become bad things. They are shallow excuses people hide behind.
To go back to the original context of this parable, Jesus is speaking to the Pharisees, essentially saying, "You had an engraved invitation to God's wedding feast, but because you have so missed the point, you are not going to get in."
Maybe excuses have kept you from coming to Jesus. In reality, it's an issue of what you will or will not do. My prayer is that you will come to Him today.

Monday, September 19, 2016

Messages From Heaven: The Nucleus of Civilization!

Messages From Heaven: The Nucleus of Civilization!: According to the Bible, God himself ordained the family as the basic building block of human society, because He deemed it "not good...

The Nucleus of Civilization!

According to the Bible, God himself ordained the family as the basic building block of human society, because He deemed it "not good that man should be alone" (Genesis 2:18). That verse stands out starkly in the biblical creation narrative, because as Scripture describes the successive days of the creation week, the text punctuates each stage of creation with the words, "God saw that it was good" (Genesis 1:4,10,12,18,21,25, italics added). The goodness of creation emerges as the main theme of Genesis 1, and the statement "God saw that it was good" is repeated again and again, like the refrain after each stanza of a lengthy song. Then finally, after the sixth day of creation, we're told with emphasis, "God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good" (italics added).
But then Genesis 2:18 takes us back to the end of day six and reveals that just before God ended His creative work, just one thing was left that was "not good." Every aspect of the entire universe was finished. Each galaxy, star, planet, rock, grain of sand, and tiny molecule was in place. All the species of living things had been created. Adam had already given "names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field" (v. 20). But there was still one glaring unfinished aspect of creation: "For Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him" (v. 20). Adam was alone, and in need of a suitable mate. Therefore God's final act of creation on day six — the crowning step that made everything in the universe perfect - was accomplished by the forming of Eve from Adam's rib. Then "He brought her to the man" (Genesis 2:22).
By that act, God established the family for all time. The Genesis narrative says, "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh" (v. 24). Jesus quoted that verse in Matthew 19:5 to underscore the sanctity and permanence of marriage as an institution. The same verse is quoted practically every time two believers are united in a Christian marriage ceremony. It is a reminder that marriage and the family are ordained by God and therefore sacred in His sight.
So it is no mere accident of history that family relationships have always been the very nucleus of all human civilization. According to Scripture, that is precisely the way God designed it to be. And therefore, if the family crumbles as an institution, all of civilization will ultimately crumble along with it.
Over the past few generations, we have seen that destructive process taking place before our eyes. It seems contemporary secular society has declared war on the family. Casual sex is expected. Divorce is epidemic. Marriage itself is in decline, as multitudes of men and women have decided it's preferable to live together without making a covenant or formally constituting a family. Abortion is a worldwide plague. Juvenile delinquency is rampant, and many parents have deliberately abandoned their roles of authority in the family. On the other hand, child abuse in many forms is escalating. Modern and postmodern philosophies have attacked the traditional roles of men and women within the family. Special interest groups and even government agencies seem bent on the dissolution of the traditional family, advocating the normalization of homosexuality, same-sex "marriage," and (in some cultures nowadays) sterilization programs. Divorce has been made easy, tax laws penalize marriage, and government welfare rewards childbirth outside of wedlock. All those trends (and many more like them) are direct attacks on the sanctity of the family.
These days whenever families are portrayed in films, television dramas, or sitcoms, they are almost always caricatured as grossly dysfunctional. Someone recently pointed out that the only television "family" who regularly attend church together are "The Simpsons" — and they are cartoon exaggerations deliberately saddled with the worst imaginable traits, designed mainly to mock and malign both church and family. It's no joke, though. A relentless parade of similarly dysfunctional assortments of people assaults us on television and in the movies. Hollywood has defined a broad new meaning for the word family.
Meanwhile, traditional nuclear families with a strong, reliable father and a mother whose priorities are in the home have been banished from popular culture, made to feel as if they were the caricature.
Although many Christian leaders have been passionately voicing concerns about the dissolution of the family for decades, things have grown steadily worse, not better, in society at large. Secular social commentators have lately begun to claim that the traditional nuclear family is no longer even "realistic." An article published not long ago by the on-line magazine Salon said this: "The 'ideal' American family — a father and a mother, bound to each other by legal marriage, raising children bound to them by biology — is a stubborn relic, a national symbol that has yet to be retired as threadbare and somewhat unrealistic."¹ The nuclear family simply won't work in 21st-century society, according to many of these self-styled "experts."
I know those voices are wrong, however, because I have witnessed literally thousands of parents in our church who have put into practice what the Bible teaches about the family, and they and their families have been greatly blessed for it.
As society continues its mad quest to eliminate the family, and as our whole culture therefore unravels more and more, it becomes more important than ever for Christians to understand what the Bible teaches about the family, and to put it into practice in our homes. It may well be that the example we set before the world through strong homes and healthy families will in the long run be one of the most powerful, attractive, and living proofs that when the Bible speaks, it speaks with the authority of the God who created us — and whose design for the family is perfect.

Sunday, September 11, 2016

Messages From Heaven: The Most Important Choice!

Messages From Heaven: The Most Important Choice!: You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the L ord ” (Jeremiah 29:13–14a, ESV...

The Most Important Choice!

You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord (Jeremiah 29:13–14a, ESV).
The most important choice you will ever make in your life is to choose God. To choose to connect with the God who made you and me and everything in this twisted universe. Not that He made it twisted—He did not. He made it perfect, and we snarled it up with bad choices. But we can still have most of what we have lost just by choosing God again, on His terms.
“You can put your whole weight down on God’s love as your identity.”
To some people, God is just some vague, foggy notion. Have you bought into the idea that either you believe in God or you don’t and that nothing can alter your current condition? Maybe you’ve thought, I have never had faith, not genuine faith, not like my sister/friend/dad/other. Sometimes I'm drawn to a bit of the vertical in a crisis: “Oh God, save me from that truck that just swerved into my lane!” Then He does, and the feeling passes, and the spark of faith fades into numbness. Is that your experience—crisis faith for a moment and then nothing?
Perhaps you suspect that the faith-in-God thing is a trait you’re born with (or without), like blue eyes, brown hair, or a family membership at the country club. Have you concluded that belief is a characteristic you may or may not have, and that’s out of your control? God is most assuredly someone you choose, and choosing Him makes all the difference. Choosing God is less like the options on a new car and more like selecting a person to marry. Faith is for people who want it and are willing to go for it with passion. In fact, God only shows up for people who are looking, and He chooses to reveal Himself exclusively to people who really want to know Him. “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord.”
God advertises! “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge” (Psalm 19:1–2). God’s Word and God’s world are full of advertisements about Him, but as with even the best-marketed product, you still have to choose what God is offering.
Yes, you can choose God. Don’t let some stale seminarian talk you out of it. We’ve all heard the well-worn argument that we don’t choose God but that He chooses us. So which is true—do we choose God, or does He choose us? Both! Just as I chose my wife, and she chose me. There’s little point in arguing over who chooses first. Let’s go at this from the only angle we actually experience: our own. We choose God. That’s the way it feels, and that’s the way it functions, and until you climb out of your armchair or descend from your ivory tower and choose God for your own life, you will always be missing the main ingredient for human happiness.
Of course God is completely in charge. But let’s not use His original choice as an excuse for human apathy. We must not lose our sense of responsibility in the ocean of God’s sovereignty. When God planted our ancestors in the Garden of Eden, He gave them the capacity to make significant choices. Adam and Eve got to choose names for the animals and pick which of a wild assortment of fruit to eat, save one. The rest, as they say, is history. Constant choices.
So what will you choose? Will you choose to believe with your whole heart that there is a God who knows you perfectly yet loves you unconditionally? You can put your whole weight down on God’s love as your identity.
Journal
  • Where do you find yourself at this moment—clueless about God, wondering, interested, hesitant, or ready to choose His love (for the first time or yet again)?
  • Why is choosing the God who loves you the foundation of your identity?
Pray
Father, thank You for Your love. Thank You that You love me with an everlasting love. Thank You that the God of the universe—who doesn’t need me, who is not diminished by my absence or increased by my presence, who is complete in Himself—has chosen to set His love upon me. I respond to Your choice with a choice of my own. I choose to believe there’s a God who loves me, and that settles my eternity and my identity. I pray in the name of Jesus, who loved me and gave Himself for me, amen.

Monday, September 5, 2016

Messages From Heaven: The Character Crisis!

Messages From Heaven: The Character Crisis!: Character. It has an old-fashioned sound to it, like a faded relic of the Victorian era. We live in a materialistic culture where pres...

The Character Crisis!

Character. It has an old-fashioned sound to it, like a faded relic of the Victorian era. We live in a materialistic culture where prestige, prosperity, and popularity are valued more than genuine integrity. In fact personal character hardly seems to matter very much at all nowadays — at least in the realms of mass media, entertainment, politics, and pop culture.
Only a few select moral qualities are still prized by society at large. They are chiefly liberal community values such as diversity, tolerance, and broad-mindedness. Sometimes they are even called virtues. But when traits like those are blended with hypocrisy or employed to justify some other iniquity, they become mere caricatures of authentic virtue.
Meanwhile, genuine individual virtue — the stuff of which true, timeless, praiseworthy character is made — has been formally relegated to the sphere of "personal" things best not talked about openly. These days, even an elected national leader's personal character is supposed to be treated as a wholly private matter.
As a result, our society's most prominent celebrities include countless people who actually are known best for gigantic character flaws. Notice, for example, the people who usually grace the covers of celebrity magazines. Very few are decent role models. Often they are actually people who exemplify the worst kinds of character traits. No morally sane, thinking parents would ever hope for their own children to emulate the lifestyles or embrace the values of most of our society's best-known figures. Big personalities are highly revered anyway, because celebrity itself counts more than character in a society without any moral anchor.
In fact, over the past few decades so many famous people in our society have been charged with serious crimes that a cable television series is devoted exclusively to covering stories about the legal problems of some of our culture's favorite figures. Still, both the public and the media continue to confer celebrity status on more and more bizarre characters.
How have we come to this? The greatest cultures throughout human history have always reserved the highest positions of eminence and respect for true heroes — people who distinguish themselves by great self-sacrifice, moral excellence, or some truly great accomplishment. They only societies that confer celebrity status on immoral and villainous people have been cultures in serious decline and on the precipice of utter ruin.
One of the universally understood rules of thumb that governed western society until a few short decades ago was that people who achieved fame had a duty to be wholesome role models. Even men and women who weren't really of sterling virtue in private sought to keep their character flaws hidden from the public — because if their moral defects became known, they lost their star status. Political figures could not remain in office if they were found culpable for any scandalous moral indiscretion.
That is no longer the case. Today's celebrities proudly flaunt their decadence. With the rise of a massive entertainment industry in the second half of the twentieth century, celebrity became a cheap and shallow commodity. Honest character is now seen as totally optional — or worse, hopelessly unfashionable. As a matter of fact, in certain segments of today's entertainment and music industries, authentic virtue would be practically incompatible with fame and success. Some of the best-known figures in the recording industry, for example, are avowed gangsters who openly glorify evil in their lyrics. It is frightening to contemplate the future of a society where so many people so badly lacking in character can attain celebrity status so easily-and often hang onto their fame and influence no matter what crimes they commit.
The Bible says that is exactly what happens when a society rejects God and thereby incurs His righteous judgment. Romans 1:21-32 describes the downward path of a culture abandoned to sin. Take note of the roster of evils that finally overwhelm every fallen society. The list closely resembles everything currently fashionable in the world of entertainment and celebrity:
Even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting; being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful; who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them. (Romans 1:28-32)
That describes our culture to the letter, doesn't it? People today literally entertain themselves with iniquity, heedlessly applauding those who sin most flagrantly. Society today makes celebrities of people who in our grandparents' generation would have been deemed the most contemptible rogues. Almost everything that used to be considered shameful is now celebrated. We therefore live in a culture where personal character and individual virtue are rapidly evaporating at almost every level. Virtue and infamy have traded places.
According to the Bible, God designed us to be men and women of exemplary character. He repeatedly commands us to pursue what is virtuous and shun what is evil. From cover to cover in Scripture, iniquity is condemned and virtue is exalted.
Clearly, we are supposed to be men and women of excellent character. We're commanded to "hold fast what is good [and] abstain from every form of evil" (1 Thessalonians 5:21-22).
But where do we go to learn how to do that? Popular culture will not point the way for us. Scripture alone is a reliable lamp for our feet and light for our path (Psalm 119:105). God's Word points the way in the quest for character.
The Bible contains numerous lists of positive character qualities. 2 Peter 1:5-8, for example, gives a catalog of virtues and urges us to add to our faith. The fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5, the qualities of authentic love in 1 Corinthians 13, and the Beatitudes in Matthew 5 all list similar traits that describe true excellence of character.
Truly excellent character is actually a reflection of the moral nature of God Himself. For that reason, all virtues are interdependent and closely related. And all of them are the fruit of God's grace. As you study biblical virtue, may you perceive the true beauty of Christ's character and desire to see it reproduced in your own life.