Where wast thou?

I just finished the Book of Job. What a powerful book of the Bible that was! Rugged, but amazing at the same time. I have been trying to remember to say a little prayer asking the Lord to speak to me while I read His word. I almost wished I hadn't when I got to Job 38:4. "Where was thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?"

Oof.

I mentioned in some of my earlier posts about how during my worst times I raised my fist up to God in anger and demanded that He help me make sense of how my life had gotten so messed up. Job 38:4 really hit me between the eyes. Where wast thou? Indeed.

Needless to say I had a little "Come to Jesus" meeting in my prayers that evening. If Job was rebuked as a righteous man for questioning God, how much worse was I as a man who had stopped walking a righteous path to question Him? Job is certainly rebuked as having no standing to question the Almighty God and I felt some of that myself when I realized I had done the same thing under far less terrible situations than Job had found himself bearing.

The message I learned here is that we are never promised a life without problems. We are never promised that things will be perfect for us until we are transformed by Jesus into eternal life. Life will happen. As Mark Lowry is fond of saying, our favorite verse should be, "And it came to pass." Is life going good right now? It will pass. Is life going badly? It will pass.

What we need to do is to trust God implicitly and not question His great plan for our lives and for this world. He is the Almighty. As His soliloquy in Job attests, He is the sovereign God who created heaven and earth. We are not to question. We are only to follow.

I always find it amazing when Jesus called Simon (Peter) and Andrew. He simply said, "Follow me." And they did. There were no questions. There was no hesitation. We are not to question. We are only to follow.

My one problem that I am still working out after all these years as a Christian is that I do not know how to hear God. I pray and then don't know how to understand how I am to know His answers. Even my desire to have things made clear to me like it was to the Disciples and others in the Bible is "pulling a Job." God does not communicate to all his children the same way. He is not going to appear to me in a burning bush and tell me what to do.

In that light, how do I know how to glean the answers? I have to study that further and ponder so I know to what purpose I have with this second chance God has given me to walk for Him.

Thank God for his grace to forgive me when I questioned Him just the way He forgave Job for questioning God and demanding answers. Thank God that His love for me sees only the blood of Jesus as I repent and ask forgiveness for my foolishness in questioning Him.

We serve a mighty God and he has no need to explain Himself to us. We just need to follow and understand that we will "see through a glass darkly" at times.

"Trust and obey, for there is no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey."

Be careful of the good times

One of the great gifts from my re-dedication to the Lord has been a renewed thirst to read my bible. I read a King James version on my tablet because it is easier to hold and the pages flip more easily. I mentioned in an earlier post that I read the New Testament in two weeks. I have since dived into the Old Testament and the pace hasn't been as fast. There is some hard stuff in there! Try reading Deuteronomy quickly. To be honest, it is the Moby Dick of bible books. But I did enjoy Judges very much. And there were lessons in there I thought important for my life.

Judges covers the time between when Joshua took the people into the promised land to the people clamoring for a king and getting King Saul, much to God's displeasure. The book is named after the various men and women over that time in history that judged Israel for God in similar fashion to the role Moses and Joshua judged the people.

And the book is a seesaw whirlwind of good times turning into bad times and back again. The pattern was that with God's help, His people conquered their enemies and then had periods of peace. During that peace, the people would forget about God and turn to other gods and sinful practices.

Because of their sin, enemies would rise up and conquer Israel and make subjects of God's people. Only then would the people cry out to the one true God for help and through the Holy Spirit leading the judges, God would help His people conquer their enemies again and bring about another few decades of peace.

This cycle repeats itself over and over. Each time the people of God would make promises to follow His laws and worship Him. Each time, when times were better, they would forget their promises and screw it all up again.

I can relate to this a lot, especially in my earlier times as a christian and even a deacon. I had the asking God to forgive my sins down pretty well, but not the repent part. I had a constant cycle of falling down, feeling terrible, running to God, getting fired up, making promises and then repeat.

I often thought of the rich young man who approached Jesus in Luke 18:18-23. The young man walked away disappointed and sad because Jesus told him to sell all he had and give it to the poor. The young man had things going his way. Things were good. It is difficult to hold onto the need for a Savior when things are good.

And so it was for the Hebrews in Judges. When things were good, they fell. As Christians, our human inclination is to cry out to God when things are going poorly and then rest sort of easy when things are going well. And thus, like the Hebrews in Judges, we fall away and get far too comfortable.

When Jesus considered the young man walking away, He stated that it was difficult for the rich to enter into the Kingdom of God. The apostles were aghast at this saying and questioned their Lord on what he said. Jesus answered that nothing was impossible to God.

Grace is the most key element for the Christian. We do fall and need to ask forgiveness and thanks to the blood of Jesus, we will be forgiven. But another part of the equation is that after Jesus healed someone, he would often say, "Go and sin no more." The Lord would not say as much if it were not possible.

It is hardest during the good times, the peaceful times. We get comfortable and we forget our need for God. I have learned that is more important than ever to be constantly in prayer and in praise during the good times to ensure that the Holy Spirit is working within us to keep us from losing our way. It's not easy and it takes an act of will. But as the Lord said, all things are possible with God. Pray and praise without ceasing and look out for those good times.

Atheists have great faith

People look at me strange when I say that Atheists have great faith. But it is true. In order to be an athiest, then all of this we see, feel, smell and touch all occurred by random interactions of molecules. Life is one great big accident. I have less trouble understanding Agnostics. At least Agnostics believe that there is some sort of deity somewhere but are too jaded by organized religions or two blase to think much more about it. But to be an atheist, you have to believe in all these remarkable coincidences.

Atheists believe that the universe, the galaxies, stars and planets all happened by chance. These molecules exploded and flew apart and some in the process collected other groups of molecules and took shape. Life was another series of accidents or coincidences when molecules of one chemical collided with others to form different elements and those elements eventually led to life as one-cell organisms until we all evolved from there. 

Somewhere along the way, evolution caused man to adapt and develop cognitive ability that no other animal has. Man can do things, but again, humans are just an accident of development and evolution.

Now that we have mysteriously evolved into this race of humans, we discovered things like fire and wheels and ways to till the ground and tame animals. From there we learned how to gather into societies and make rules and laws and to govern. After periods of light and dark ages, here we are as the end result of our happy accident.

That takes a lot of faith, does it not?

The core foundation of this faith is that everything is random and for no real reason. What I could never understand is this: If everything is random and without an overall purpose, why did we bother to create laws and government and what we innately seem to agree is good behavior and bad behavior? If nothing matters, why does that matter?

Why is there a need to gain a good education, desire to obtain a good career, be a good person, raise children to be good people, save for retirement, give to the poor, take care of the environment if none of it matters? We are all just a temporary blip in a gigantic accident. Why should we care if the earth survives or not or if anyone goes hungry? Why would we strive to be successful people and "make a mark" with our lives if this is all an accident that will someday give way to something else and ends for us personally when we die?

I don't understand how the two dissect. To be an atheist, everything we do and accomplish means nothing and ends in nothing and only happened by accident anyway. If I had such a faith in so many grand accidents, I would care nothing of my life or what I did or how it affected anyone.

And yet, most do. I don't understand.

I do not have enough faith to believe in that many accidents happening to create such a complex organism that humans have become and a world. My faith is simple. There has to be a creator. I see a monarch butterfly and observe the hand of an artist, not a product of chance. When I see people having an innate knowledge of what is good and what is evil, I know it comes from the fact that there is a good and there is an evil and a creator has built into us a knowledge of which is which.

There are laws and codes of conduct because we are built in the image of that creator and we know right from wrong. 

Look, I'm not going to argue evolution versus creationism. I am not wholly convinced the two systems cannot coexist side by side. But a creator put either process or both processes in motion with his creative hand.

To me there is no other choice of belief. Even when I fell away from God, there was a part of me that could not take my life in any other belief system. I echoed Peter when asked if he would leave Jesus also. Peter answered, "Where else would I go?"

Atheists have a lot of faith, much more than I could ever muster. I, as a follower of Jesus Christ and a child of God have a simpler faith. In the beginning, God created. A simpler construct, perhaps, but from that faith comes the jump of faith to the need for a relationship with that creator because life is not a cosmic accident that ends in nothingness. We are born in spirit and there is life after this fragile human period. I intend to spend that eternal life with God, the creator and the reason behind our very existence.

Victories and a victory to come

Repenting is a difficult subject for me. Life has always seemed a cycle of doing things I knew I shouldn't followed by guilt and then a crawling back to Jesus. There were several times during the Gospels that Jesus said to those he had just healed to go their way and sin no more. The truth behind that statement is that it is possible to do...with God's help that is. So why were there areas of my life that I simply felt like I could not overcome?

Upon meditating upon the answer to that question, I think it boils down to three things. First, there is a lack of faith that God can help change those situations into those that can glorify Him. The prayer Jesus taught us said in part, "Deliver us from evil." Jesus would not have taught us that prayer if God was incapable of helping us do that or if we were incapable of allowing God to have that victory. We...I...just did not have the faith enough to trust him.

The second thing is a lack of prayer and praise. If we were continually in prayer combined with continual praise, then the Holy Spirit keeps us closer to our walk with God and can lead us not into temptation and deliver us from evil. The less I pray and praise, the less I allow his Holy Spirit to work with me and through me to keep me from deviating from the path that I should be walking.

The last thing is that the devil really is dogging us and waiting and trying to trip us up at every opportunity. That snake does not want us to walk with God and feel good about ourselves. His aim is to keep us from staying close to God so that He can become our focus and keep us from falling.

Since my road trip redemption a month ago. I have had some victories. One is pornography. Oh! That dirty little secret! I am convinced that more Christian men are tripped up by pornography and the masturbation it leads to than anything else. The world has made it so easy now. Instead of skulking into a video store when we think no one is looking and risk being caught, it is now at our fingertips and free all over the Internet. I know, because I have been addicted to it for years.

Is this hard to admit? Not really. After all, part of the world's seducing is that everyone snickers at pornography and says everyone does it. How can it be bad when everyone does it? Well, it is. It takes our energy and attention from our loved ones and it puts thoughts in our head of what our intimate life should be like.

And men are seduced via the eyes. No wonder that Jesus said that if your eye offends you to pluck it out. It is a scientific fact that we men see a pretty girl and our heart rate quickens, our pupils dilate and our physiology changes. And the world and Satan knows that. So on every sports page on the Internet, there are pseudo stories about photo shoots of pretty girls to entice us to go and look. Then we are not satisfied with that and on and on it goes.

I am grateful to God that since our road trip together, I have not had one urge to go to a porn site and I have not fallen that way once in the last month. That is not a boast on my part because if I boasted, I would get my ego involved and allow Satan to come in and trip me up. It is to God's glory that he has given me true repentance in this area. I can only do this through Him. And if you knew my secret life, you would know that a month is an incredible amount of time to be away from what was a daily occurrence.

God has also given me a victory on how I view people. I was getting very cynical about people and was always looking for the bad. Now, through God, I view people with more love than I have ever experienced before. This whole redemption act began because I wanted to know that I would spend eternity with God. From that experience, I have come to again know that God desires none would be lost. He sent Jesus to die for ALL of us.

One victory I still need is my addiction to cigarettes. I was introduced to cigarettes when I met my first wife in college. She smoked and when we went to party, I would try it and after a while, I was as smoker too. She grew up in the church and soon after our marriage, she went back to God and quit smoking. I was saved soon after and I remember coming home from work and telling her that I couldn't do it, though I tried. She then asked me a very important question. She asked, "Did you ask God to help you?" I did not.

The next day I quit cold turkey and did not smoke again for twenty years. It was only after things fell apart and I started walking away from God that I started smoking again. And I have been at it for sixteen years since. I hate it really. I hate the way it makes me feel and I hate the way my mouth tastes and feels. But I am addicted.

I have tried twice since my road trip conversion and have failed twice. I still need that victory. It will come. God will help me. I just haven't let Him yet. I report here first when the victory comes.

Like most Christians, I am a work in progress.

Oh victory in Jesus, my savior forever. 
He sought me and bought me with His redeeming blood.
He loved me ere I knew Him and all my love is due him.
He plunged me to victory
beneath His cleansing blood. 

Amen.

Tomorrow is Easter Sunday

One of the things about rediscovering Christ as an older man is that a lifetime of wisdom has been accumulated. Again, before my fall, I was a deacon, so I was no babe in Christ at the time. As such, I expected that old Accuser to attack once I gave my life back to Jesus. And that old snake has been at it pretty hot and heavy.

First, I went through a three-week bout of one of the worst cases of bronchitis I have had in my lifetime. At one point, my wife had to drive me to the hospital because I could not get any air at all. Three IVs and two lung treatments later, they sent me home.

Like many places, we've had a really long winter. And since I live in northern Maine, we also got blasted with snow. While it has not gotten real warm here yet, we have had quite a bit of melting and then a pretty good rain. Flooding has been an issue around here. I have had some water in my basement despite my sump pump going nearly full time. So there was that.

And now, my wife has gone away for a week to visit her son and her granddaughter and I am feeling lonely and a bit blue. My daughter went downstate for the week, so it will just be me for the holiday.

One of the things to figure out with my new walk is where to go to church. I cannot really go to my old one, though that is home to me, because that is the home church of my former wife and her husband. And that is their home and I don't want to be a problem. Besides, I will not ever be in a position where I can do anything meaningful of ministry there. Maybe that is untrue, but that's how I feel.

So where else? I want a church where the Holy Spirit is working. But I am not comfortable in the Pentecostal or Assemblies churches. That takes things further than my comfort level. I don't want a church that is just going through the motions and I certainly don't want a church where the message seems more focused on what not to do and rules rather on preaching the Gospel.

I probably won't go anywhere tomorrow. I need to be disciplined though and spend a good chunk of my time worshiping. It would just be more joyous if that worship was in a group.

I also have problems with Easter as a holiday. The holiday was basically a pagan holiday the church took over in the earliest centuries of its existence. If the day were to be really celebrated correctly, it should begin around the time of the Passover because that is when the Bible tells us the events actually occurred.

And besides, Christians and the church should be celebrating the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ every day and every Lord's Day since that is the core belief in who and what we are and what we have to tell to the world.

As a new creation in Christ, the Accuser is trying to take away my new joy. And while that joy has been tested and my prayer life has suffered some, I will not go back on this second chance God has given me. The Lord is good and greatly to be praised.

And I thank Him that he has called to mind a hymn I have been singing all week that says it all for what is our hope and our salvation:

Up from the grave He arose
With a mighty triumph o'er his foes.
He arose a victor from the dark domain 
and He lives forever with his saints to reign.
He arose! He arose!
Hallelujah Christ Arose!

I cut my hair today

I started growing my hair nineteen or twenty years ago. The joke at the time was that my wife (at the time) once said that my two good features were my eyes and my hair. So I wondered why I was putting one of my best features on the barber shop floor every month. But I think it went deeper than that. It was a declaration of independence.

The timing of the hair was just as life started to fall apart. In my mindset back then, I was expending a hundred hours a week for everyone else and was getting nothing in return. It was the thoughts of a man who had listened to the whispers of the devil that I needed to start doing some things for myself, for my own pleasure since no one else seemed concerned whether my needs were met or not.

Of course, you can see the self-pity and ego crying out. I remember actually shaking my fist at Heaven and shouting at the top of my lungs, "WHAT ABOUT MEEEEE!!!?"

But just as God said to Paul that His grace was sufficient for Paul, it would have been for me if I had humbly gone to God and asked for His comfort. Even if it was my lot in life not to be fulfilled at home or recognized at work, or respected as a peer by the elderly couple whose property I took care of, God would have given me what I needed for comfort if I had turned to Him.

Instead, I let the whispers begin to have a place in my head. People online told me I deserved better. It was just what I wanted to hear.

So I started growing my hair. I might have fooled myself with that line about my two good features. But it was an ego-grab. It was me declaring that I was going to start living for myself.

The hair worked with my career. After all, long hair kind of goes in the software world. It gave me a look that I enjoyed with my black car and my black wool overcoat. I was a man to be respected. I was the boss. And yeah, it did work for that. But God was missing from this entire equation.

Since I had my road trip with God and rededicated my life to Jesus, the main thing I understand is the need for humility. "Humble thyself in the sight of the Lord, and He will raise you up." My life is not about me. It is not about the respect people have for me or what I get from people or the world. My life is about living a pleasing life for God, which is impossible unless I die to myself and live for Him.

My re-dedication also gave me a thirst for the Word. I have finished the New Testament in two weeks. Somewhere along the way, in 1 Corinthians, Chapter 11, I read, "Does not the very nature of things teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him?"

Now I do not fully believe that the length of a man's hair has much to do with his eternal state, but the heart for Jesus and confession of Jesus as Lord and Savior. But it did get me thinking about my hair. By the way, the hair was eighteen inches down my back.

And what I concluded while I was reflecting in prayer was that I no longer need a declaration of independence. I need a declaration of dependence on the Living Word and on the Blood of Jesus Christ. I am not independent. I am dependent to my wife with love and thanksgiving. I am dependent upon God for His grace and His Spirit.

That conclusion led me to cut my hair. I know it sounds kind of out there, but I took the bundled up ponytail home and will offer it in prayer to God as a sacrifice and a sign of my humility to Him. Then I will send it off to charity for those with cancer that need hair.

Thank you, Jesus, for this new life in you and for leading me with your Spirit.

Love your neighbor as yourself...Uh oh

In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus was asked about commandments. In Chapter 12, Verses 30 and 31 he answers:

AND YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH.' "The second is this, 'YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.' There is no other commandment greater than these."

Uh oh. After I read this, I had a problem. For several years now, I have lived next to a family that drives me crazy.

I moved to this neighborhood for the peace and quiet. I was here first. Then this family moved in after and their priorities were different. They love noise. They have every kind of mechanized vehicle one can imagine. The father, mother and four teen children have cars, snowmobiles, ATVs, off road motorcycles. They also love fireworks, which are now legal to buy here. They never simply shut their doors, they slam them. They shout at each other. They constantly work on their machines with much noise. Ugh!

I resented them. One day, one of the boys was driving his motorbike back and forth in his yard while I was trying to gain some joy working on my flowerbeds. The bike stalled and the kid could not get it running again. The other kids were on the deck looking down. One of the other kids asked, "Is it dead?" And I yelled over, "I hope so!" They told me I was mean. They were right, but I felt justified.

Then Mark 12:30-31 hit me between the eyes. I wasn't loving them very much was I? No, I wasn't loving them at all. Now I know that I have to write them a letter and apologize for how I have acted over the years and repent before God. Well, I did repent, but I do have to write that letter.

Thinking about this also made me think of the church in the world. My view before my crash and burn was the same after and the same today. I am no better than anyone else and I take very seriously God's word that I should not look at someone's cinder in their eyes when I have a tree stuck in my own!

And yet, when the world thinks of Christians, what do they think about? What is the worlds' generalization? It's that we live to judge them and think we are better than them. Not exactly the love your neighbor thing in there.

Jesus did not say to love your Christian neighbor. He said to love your neighbor, no matter what their beliefs, lifestyles or anything else. And yet most of what you hear from the church is condemnation of peoples that are not what we feel is Godworthy. Jesus also said that by our love will they know us. We are not known for our love.

Many will argue that the press and media only focuses on the bad about Christians and not the good. That may be true in many cases. But that still means there is bad to talk about. I have often used the analogy of the cave man. If that cave man wanted to woo a wife, wouldn't he do better to make his cave as attractive as possible and make her want to come in? Isn't that a better way than hitting her on the head and dragging her in there and hoping she wouldn't be miserable once she regained consciousness?

And yet, we are often people of head banging. Our way or the highway. Our way or you are bad. Our way or we are better than you.

All humans are in the same boat. Paul writes in Romans that we have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God. He goes on to say that there is nothing in us to make us able to enter into God's Kingdom. It is only in this Good News that Jesus died on the cross for us and rose up victorious that gives us the remission of sins and his rising from the dead becomes our hope by confessing Him and following Him as Lord and Savior, the Christ.

So if all of us humans are in the same boat, how can we be better than anyone? We need to be humble and thankful and our number one priority is to show people Jesus so that they too can be saved. We cannot be saving people by telling people how awful they are, by taking delight in calling people out for their sins. What we need to do is to present the fallen state of all humans and the Good News of the Gospel of Christ so that they can discover through the Holy Spirit that they too need to repent and accept Jesus as the Savior by confession of Him.

So yeah, this loving your neighbor thing. It's not as easy as it sounds. I have failed with my own neighbors and the church is failing in many ways. But all I can do is to walk my own walk and make it right with those noisemakers across the lawn. That is what God wants me to do and I will do it.

Humble thyself in the sight of the Lord. And He shall lift you up..