Practice what we preach

It was a time when I thought I was at the foot of the Cross. I slipped up and didn't practice what I preach. I apologized to the person and asked God for His forgiveness.

I was helping an elderly friend with his broken down car. The folks fixing his car were working on it for two weeks. My friend is hearing impaired, so I took him over to the car repair place several times to communicate with the fixers as to what was being fixed and when it would be ready. Finally they said the car was ready and my friend asked me to drive him to pick it up.

When we got there, I got into a discussion with the manager about the work done and their warranties.  Thinking I was helping my friend, I allowed myself to turn things into an argument. To make a long story short, I blew my top and talked very loud and condemning to the manager.

Before leaving, I did however; shake the manager's hand and apologized for getting so upset. I used my anger to handle the problem instead of God's peace and love. I repented and returned to the Lord.

In Matthew 23:1-5 we are reminded: Then Jesus spoke to the multitudes and to His disciples,  saying: “The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat.  Therefore whatever they tell you to observe, that observe and do, but do not do according to their works; for they say, and do not do. For they bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. But all their works they do to be seen by men.”

Even when we seek to include the Lord in all things, we can be diverted by what the natural world would suggest we do.  That includes straightening people out when we think they are working against us or someone we love. We forget the old idiom, “You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.”  It is easier to persuade people using polite arguments than it is being confrontational.

In Romans 2:21-22 St. Paul tells us, “You, therefore, who teach another, do you not teach yourself? You who preach that a man should not steal, do you steal? ²² You who say, “Do not commit adultery,” do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples?”  We must be careful in our ministry to others, and not suggest something in life for others to practice if we don’t practice it ourselves. 

The only perfect man that has ever lived, Jesus, has become the Christ, and has gone to His Father.  He taught us so much while He dwelt among us, but he knows that we are not capable of perfection.  We will sin no matter how hard we try to avoid sin. His command to us is to repent and return to the Lord.

When we seek the Lord our God in all things we will be the first to know when we sin.  We will be our biggest critic while God is so forgiving of us. In my angry moment I described above, I knew immediately I had stepped over God’s line in my behavior.  I became depressed and concerned. When I turned from worry and depression to repentance, I felt God’s forgiveness and I was reconciled to Him.

I knew that in order to continue to serve the Lord, I had to take His forgiveness, forgive myself and the fellow I had become angry with. It is so easy for us to jump to conclusions quickly in our world. One of the ways this can occur is to become too wrapped up with all the local, national and world news that we contact each day. So many opinions about so many things make it difficult for us to truly understand what is going on around us. It can overflow and put us in a critical bent about all of life.

In Matthew 6:33 we are reminded, “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.”     Pray for me a sinner.

Good and Evil: Where is the line?

Good and Evil are sometimes so close that we have a hard time knowing what to do in life. We can only seek and trust God to show us the way to go. A close friend's daughter is a missionary to the African country of Senegal. She is presently  home for two months on vacation before returning to Senegal. She is sharing her experiences with several church groups while she is home.

Obviously, she is exposed to many things she does not see in America. On her blog she tells about seeing little children with bowls or containers all around the markets and other public places begging. The containers are used to hold the money they beg for on behalf of Islamic leaders and teachers to whom their parents have given them away to.

The leaders exist on the money collected by the children. If a child comes back to them with no money, they are severely beaten and not fed. My friend's daughter chooses to give money to each child that asks. Her goodness overcomes the evil, as the children will be saved from beatings and starvation.

So it is in our lives in this World. We are constantly challenged on how to react to things around us. We are in conflict to judge or not to judge, complain or not complain, help or not help, forgive or not forgive, sin or not sin, give or not give. This human predicament is only resolved through a close relationship with God in our daily living. He will guide us if we allow him to do so. This is our ultimate choice: to trust Him or not trust Him. 

Albert Einstein was one of the smartest people on Earth in his time. I never thought that he would’ve been a believer in a creator God. I read some of his quotes recently that changed my opinion of him. In regard to good and evil Einstein said, “God did not create evil. Just as darkness is the absence of light, evil is the absence of God.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. put it this way, “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”  Reverend King’s thoughts give us hope in this world. Good will prevail. Evil may do damage, but good will triumph.

God did not want a bunch of robots as His children. He gave us ‘free will’ so that we might choose to love Him as He loves us. You might say He put the ball in our court.  If we were created robots, it couldn’t be said that we have a choice in things and we would basically be perfect without knowing it. It is in our Godly dealing with temptation that we become true children of God in this world.

There is a danger for us in this world when we don’t always recognize evil for what it is. Joyce Carol Oates describes it in this way, “And this is the forbidden truth, the unspeakable taboo - that evil is not always repellent but frequently attractive; that it has the power to make of us not simply victims, as nature and accident do, but active accomplices.”

Another take on good and evil by Kahlil Gibran in The Prophet states, “And one of the elders of the city, said, speak to us of good and evil.
And he answered : You are good in countless ways , and you are not evil when you are not good .”

Putting Shakespeare’s words in contemporary language he tells us, “Inside the little rind of this weak flower, there is both poison and powerful medicine. If you smell it, you feel good all over your body. But if you taste it, you die. There are two opposite elements in everything, in men as well as in herbs—good and evil. When evil is dominant, death soon kills the body like cancer.”

God’s warning to Adam and Eve in Genesis 2:17 was ignored by them, “The Dead Fall Of ManSin, Effects OfDecaySuffering, Nature OfGarden Of Eden, TheLife, HumanRestored In Jesus Christ.Sin, God's Judgment OnWicked. Punishment Of Perfection, Humanbut of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” And that’s what we’ve been dealing with from that time. Good luck.

His Spirit is Everywhere

St. Paul reminds us in Romans 6:14, "For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace."   It's so easy to let the world distract us from what we should be focusing on. When this happens we lose the opportunities for God's Grace.

We should have a sense of urgency about getting right with God and not think there is always time to fix things and make us right.  We should not feel that we can ultimately control things on our own. Sometimes we think that God is such a great Father that He'll put up with us for awhile and give us some time to get it right.

We should not underestimate our worth to God in this life for we are important to Him. We should act like this is our last day in this life and not put off seeking God. And how do we get God more into our daily lives? We must surrender to Him in all things; then wait and watch for His leadership in our lives through His Grace.

In Acts 19:1-7, we follow Paul on a journey to Ephesus. There he found some disciples and he said to them, "Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?" They said, "No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit".

As the conversation went on, the disciples said that they had been baptized by John. Paul explained that John had baptized them into repentance and to believe in the one who was to come after him. When Paul later baptized them in the name of Jesus, the Holy Spirit came upon them.

We have much in common with these disciples, even though most of us have heard of the Holy Spirit. Living our lives in Christ is difficult for us as we try to connect with how he wants us to live. Our calling seems so obvious, but we have a hard time living into it. When we are baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus, we get a special gift in the Holy Spirit. Unlike most gifts, however, we're not sure what to do with it.

That's when we need to remember that in order to benefit from the gifts of the Holy Spirit, we must surrender our control in all things and trust in the wonderful communication gift we have with the Lord, through the Spirit. The Lord will guide us through His Spirit, but we must learn to listen for this communication with all of our senses. The more we can do this, the better our life in Christ.              

In many old primitive cultures, ascents to the tops of major mountain peaks were not made by people, even though it was possible. Those high peaks were thought to be where God(s) lived and were forbidden to humans. If only we could look up today with our binoculars and see our God on the mountaintop. Or maybe, since we imagine God as creator of the universe and beyond, we will one day be able to see God somewhere out in the Universe with one of our fast-improving telescopes fixed to a rocket.

God saved me a mountain climb and lots of rocket fuel when he visited me in the hospital during my brain surgery some years ago. His presence through His Spirit was so powerful that He convinced me that He did exist and that I would spend my time in His Kingdom for eternity.

As we live out our lives here on His Planet Earth gift to us, we don't need telescopes or binoculars to connect with Him. He is at our side in every moment that we live. We must be sure that we turn our attention to Him in every moment, so we don't miss an opportunity for a blessing in all aspects of our lives.

The Dying and the Dead

We can learn so much from the dying and the dead. When my mother was stricken with what proved to be terminal cancer in her retirement years, I asked her to teach me how to die. Actually, what she really did was to teach me how to live. Understanding that we will die someday in this short natural life of ours and what lies ahead for us in God’s Eternal Kingdom is important. But, living this natural life, in Christ, is important as well. 

My mother had been teaching me how to live all of my life by her actions and by her stories. The irony is, that by life lived, we better understand our relationship with our Creator and what He expects from us in preparation for joining Him in Eternal Life. That’s where the dying and the dead can inform us in the joy of life lived as the threshold to God’s Kingdom.

We have all lost family members and close family friends to death in their old age.  When we lose someone in their youth it seems to hurt even more. Our time for mourning their death soon disappears as we focus on their life lived.  In their dying and death we celebrate their life lived which begins to refresh our memory of how we should follow their example of the joy of living.

We learn from mourning the loss and celebrating the life of someone in their youth in a different kind of way. Their innocence teaches us about how we used to be and about the ‘what ifs’ of life. The authors of a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology write, “its how we reflect on the past that provides insight into who we are and why we are here."

Some dying or deceased family and friends can specifically encourage us with their lives when they’ve lived as St. Paul tells us in Romans 12:2, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”  Those who have gone before can teach us in their absence.

We can look at the lives of those who have passed and see that each is a bit different. Each has something unique to share from their life.  While we seek the way in our lives, we want to give meaning to our life, but we don’t have to be a carbon copy of everyone else. Like those who have died, each of us, with God’s help put together our story as we borrow from those before.  When all is said and done, we have our own life storybook, just like ones we borrowed from.   

The thing we should always remember is that lives lived before ours and our present lives are very dependent upon the gift of God’s Grace, which gives us faith. Old and new natural lives live under the same conditions of seeking God’s guidance.  Some lives turn out better or worse depending on this understanding. Proverbs 3:5-6 enlighten us in saying, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.”

We learn from each other’s successes and mistakes. One of the most rampant forms of mistakes in the world involves the flesh. St. Paul speaks of this kind of sin in a very revealing way in 1 Corinthians 6:18 in saying, “Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his [or her] own body.”

In all human lives, dependence on self is not the way to go. St. Paul goes on to say in Ephesians 2:8-9,  “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

Seeking God in our lives is the best plan as Jeremiah 29:11 states, “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”