Category Archives: Basic Christianity

The horse latitudes

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In the time of sailing ships, they’d often get stuck in “the horse latitudes”, a place in the Atlantic where the winds were often calm and the ships would stay for weeks, without wind in their sails. They’d end up having to get towed by row boats of their crew to zones where the winds would be there again.

Sometimes we ourselves are in “the horse latitudes” in our lives. It reminds me of what the ancient Jews said, “We see not our signs”. (Psalm 74:9) God seems to be silent. Our ability to “discern the times”, as Jesus called it, evidently has diminished. (Matthew 16:3)

Before, we were swept along by the mighty winds of God’s will and were able to see the hand of God closely guiding our lives. We felt at the apex of history, a part of it and willing to do what we could to further the cause of Christ and to see truth and justice triumph over darkness and deceit.

But then we find ourselves in the horse latitudes. The clarity, so strong in other times, appears to abandon us. Everything feels to be relative. You are stilled, like a ship in a calm on an open ocean.

Perhaps earlier, a calm is all you prayed for, as a respite from the storms that were assailing you. But now you pray for clarification, for the hand of God to even send lighting on a dark night to illuminate, for wind, for direction in your surroundings, to help you know where you stand, what’s around you and where you are going.

I’ve certainly been in the horse latitudes for periods in my life. It’s like the verse about how “the Lord will restore the years that the locusts have eaten”. (Joel 2:25) But I suppose there must be these pauses, these stops, even as there are in a piece of music, to complete the symphony of our lives.

Maybe the Lord does it to see if we’re satisfied, if we’ve gone as far as we want to go. Are we ready to quit? Had enough? Ready to throw in the towel and to sink into somnolent surrender?

Or are you looking for a breath of wind? Are you looking for the next leading from God? Are you looking for the wind to blow, the lights to come on, for the vision in the night, like Paul experienced when he saw a man of Macedonia in a dream saying “Come over and help us”. (Acts 16:9)

Paul and his companions could have just thrown in the towel. “Well, the Lord has stopped leading us. We tried to do this and that but He’s not leading any more so I guess it’s all over. Time to go back to Jerusalem and get my job back with the Pharisees.” No, Paul didn’t say that, even though he might have felt at that time that he was in the horse latitudes, unsure which way the wind blew and feeling in a bit of darkness at the moment.

But then it came; the wind began to blow. A direction and the presence of God began to be made manifest, as He’s done so many times to His servants. Elijah, alone in his cave, thought that he was the only one that was left of the faithful in Isreal. But the Lord told Elijah that “7000 have not bowed the knee to Baal”. (I Kings 19:18) “And besides that, Elijah, I’ve got a new direction for you. You need to get up and get moving”, just like Paul needed to do some 800 years later.

The Lord sends the wind after the stultifying calm in the horse latitudes. It’s not the end; just a bend in the road, a lull before the magnificence of the next stanza in the sympathy of our lives.

Are you becalmed in “the horse latitudes”? It almost reminds me of the verse in John 5 about the man by the pool of Bethesda, “waiting for the moving of the waters” (John 5:3). You have to admit, the things of the Lord do sometimes work that way. I think about Cornelius in Acts 10, a man evidently faithful all his life.

And then one day the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said, “Your prayers are come up as a memorial before God. Now send men to Joppa.” (Acts 10: 4 & 5) You can read Acts 10 to find out how that turned out and how the history of Christianity and human history itself was changed by the Lord honoring the faithfulness of that man.

But if you’re in a calm and stillness, when you’re hoping for the leading and intervention of God in your life, do keep holding on. Keep praying, keep believing. God’s delays are not denials. Wait till the lights come on. Wait for the winds to pick up and for the Lord to set your sails again with the wind of His will.

If you’re in the horse latitudes, just hold on. It can be scary, it can be almost suffocating. But the Light of the Lord and the wind of the Lord never fail to show up in our lives, even if there are pauses from time to time. “Wait on the Lord, be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thy heart.”  (Psalm 27: 14)

Floors and ceilings

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Most of us want to hit the ceiling, but we aren’t always as thankful for the floor. We mostly want to ascend the heights of the Lord, to have the thrills of heaven and the visions He gives, from time to time. But perhaps we should be more thankful for the floors He provides. That’s how I am now. I’m seeing how I need to be thankful for how the Lord provides the floors and often even strengthens them and raises them.

Tonight I had friends to pray with. I wasn’t just alone in my room, going through my battles of the day alone. I know, lots of people do that and I’ve certainly had times like that. But presently He has given me a good and solid discipleship couple here, who I can pray with, talk with, fellowship with and just be in the Lord with.

All the lonely people, where do they all belong? There certainly is a time to get alone with the Lord and it’s a known fact that many of God’s saints had years where they were often alone with only the Lord as their companion and friend. But then, “The Lord sets the solitary in families”.  (Psalm 68:6)

One of the first things God ever said was, “It is not good for man to be alone.”  (Genesis 2:18) And when Jesus described the final days before His return, one of the characteristics of those times, Jesus said, was “Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall grow cold.”  (Matthew 24:12) What an apt and brief synopsis of our present modern world.

But for those of us in the Lord, He often engineers ways for His sheep to find other sheep, for them to find the fellowship, warmth and camaraderie of fellow believers. There’s just something about it. We’re just made for this, being together, bouncing things off of each other, being in community, hanging out with friends and our family, if nothing else our spiritual family.

Believe me, I know so many really don’t have this. So, so many are alone, and just that experience can contribute to mental anxiety, depression, negative thoughts and premature old age, not to mention succumbing to drug or alcohol addiction and even suicidal thoughts. And so often it’s because someone is a sheep of God who is separated from the flock.

What a wonderful verses that is, “Underneath are the everlasting arms.” (Deuteronomy 33:27) If we will receive it and recognize it, the Lord doesn’t just have our backs but He’s got our floors. “Whosoever shall fall on this stone...”. (Matthew 21:44) The Lord talked about building our house on a rock. We’ve got good floors because we’ve got a good foundation, which is actually built upon a Rock, the Lord Himself.

The problem of course is that we rather easily get our eyes off of this. Like Peter, we start looking at the waves, start looking at ourselves, our present conditions, anything actually as long as it doesn’t involve our remembering the foundations of our faith and the multitude of promises that the Lord has made, to “be with us always, even unto the end of the world.” (Matthew 28:20)

So if you aren’t exactly hitting the ceiling right now, maybe at least you can be thankful for your floor. Or the Lord’s floor that He keeps under us, all the things that don’t happen to us each day because of His protection. The accidents that don’t happen, the sicknesses we don’t experience, the overall good fortune that is almost always a constant of our lives.

“Mark! What are you talking about!?! Mark, I’m sick, my kids turned against me and the Lord! I don’t have almost any friends! I’m struggling to pay my bills!!”

Yep, that does happen to most of us, at times. But here’s a verse that has greatly inspired me and one that I really recognized when I came to the Lord as being true, even during the horrific times before I got saved, when I was on drugs, in mental anguish and in many ways suffering the torments of hell, while just living here on earth as a college student.

Here’s that verse that I experienced during those times, even before I got saved. “The Lord will not allow us to be tempted above that we are able to bear. But will, with the temptation, also make a way to escape, that we may be able to bear it.” (I Corinthians 10:13)

Truly, things can get really rough, really. But for those who know the Lord, He always makes a way to escape and doesn’t let us be tempted above that we’re able to bear. He prompts us to phone someone and ask for prayer. Or even to ask if we can come to their house and visit before we go crazy. Or He speaks to our heart. Or we unexpectedly meet someone who turns out to be the Lord’s love for us.

“Been down so long, it looks like up to me”, someone once said. I’ve experienced that. Still, even there, God put a floor. “If the foundation be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” (Psalm 11:3) God’s foundation doesn’t get destroyed. It’s just good to remember this and to even claim His promises like this at times. Certainly our own foundations can be destroyed, especially if we’re building and standing on foundations and floors that are not of Him.

“Underneath are the everlasting arms.” And He even does the work of helping us to somehow recognize it, to “see God” or at least His workings in our lives. Thank God for the floors; they are just as important as ceilings.

 

An Answer from the Lord

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I got a little answer from the Lord today to a major question that’s been on my heart a while. He’s so faithful to get through to us with some new viewpoint or insight on what’s been a personal dilemma. For me, it’s been about how much I should be involved in what many could consider just worldly, secular politics.

Politics is the background I come from. I was planning for a political career before the Lord really “rang my bell” with a horrific near-death experience while I was in university that thrust me from atheism into being a startled believer. Months later I came to Christ and became after that a missionary abroad for close to 40 years.

I embraced the words of Jesus that He spoke to His disciples and took those to be His words to me. His cause became my cause, His solution to the problems of individuals and the world at large became what I’ve held to be the highest and best path for all mankind.

But for a couple of years, I’ve been deeply concerned about situations happening in my local community. I wrote about that in a recent article, “Checking your local school board”.

All the while though, there’s been this gnawing question on my heart, “Are you getting tripped off? Moving from your calling as a Christian missionary and disciple back into your former ways and mindsets?” It’s been a real question on my heart as I try to be certain that I’m following the Lord’s leading and not my own personal inclinations.

Today though, I feel I’ve had a breakthrough with this uncertainty. So often with these things, it’s just a simple thought that comes to you, a new viewpoint that you’d not had before that brings light and simplicity as well as clarity and relief. The Lord put this whole question about involvement with the local school crisis into a framework of what some have called “consider the poor”. This comes from the verse in Psalm 41:1 that says, “Blessed is he that considers the poor, the Lord will deliver him in the time of trouble.”

The whole Bible is full of this, as was the life of Jesus on earth. He said for us not only to love God but to love our neighbor. To explain, He told the story of “The Good Samaritan”. The Samaritan stopped on his way to help a man who’d been beaten by robbers. According to Jesus, several very religious priestly types had already passed by before but they’d done nothing for the beaten man. In other words, taking personal, physical action to alleviate the wrongs we are confronted with in this world is definitely what Jesus did Himself and what He taught in the gospels as well.

And this morning the Lord brought back to me a time when I was in my early 30’s, a missionary in Vienna, Austria with my wife and kids, trying to reach the nearby closed-to-the-gospel countries of Communist eastern Europe. We’d taken some clothes and food to a nearby camp for Romanian refugees who were in very meager circumstances. It was a way to get to know them, to try to help and to try to bring the gospel message to those folks.

But it created a stir among some of our missionary friends who thought we were going down a strange path, getting off into social work and humanitarianism, rather than really sticking to evangelism. Then, back then, someone shared  some wise council with us on this subject. It went something like this, “Feed the poor and cloth the needy if it gives you an opportunity to share the truth and love of God with them. But don’t let feeding the poor become your main occupation. Continue to primarily follow the example of the Early Church in putting salvation and ministering the Word first.”

This was such a help at that time to clarify the place and priority of this kind of activity. And it was a very similar feeling I had in the Lord’s thoughts this morning. I came away with the feeling that the Lord approved of my concern for the situation in the schools near me. It doesn’t have to be a trip-off or a departure from Christian discipleship to be involved and active in that.

But at the same time, there’s the gentle guidance that it shouldn’t become my all in all. And I do approach it as an activity that the Lord is leading me to be involved with, rather than as a political activist of some political party.

And meanwhile I still have plenty of other things that the Lord has done in my life, such as the two web sites and the YouTube channel in many languages that I’ve been maintaining for the last few years.

It just helps to know that I’ve gotten a word from the Lord on this, some direction and guidance on how a measured approach to these present distresses in society around me are things that He approves my taking some time and involvement with.

Maybe it’s like what Jesus said, “These ought you to do, and not leave the other undone.” (Matthew 23:23) I feel freer to go forward with these things but to also keep it all in perspective within the overall plan of God in my life. I hope it’s ok to share this personal lesson and victory with you as we all individually keep looking to the Lord for His daily leading in our lives. God bless you!

 

Checking your local school board

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I’m flooded daily with info/spin regarding our society. But I’ve come to feel that the local schools in, not my country but my county is the realm in which I can and should try to take action.

In all the overstatements and hyperbola that’s so normal now, I hesitate to explain how important I’ve come to see simple school board elections going on in the 20 miles around me. In the last few months I’ve often spoken at school board meetings for the independent school district that I live in, which has around 40,000 students.

Again, there’s so much overstatement in our times that if I try to tell you what’s going on, you’ll very easily default to the “my eyes glaze over” attitude that so many of us have had to take on, just to survive all that we’re almost assaulted with.

But, friends, this is not about the border, not  about gun rights or black lives matter or Afghanistan, Hillary, Hunter, Benghazi, Israel, Iran, inflation or the price of gasoline. This is about your and my children and grandchildren. It’s plainly and simply as clear as that.

Let me offer you a realistic scenario that’s not at all outside the possible. Your 11 or 12 year old son, daughter or grandchild comes home from school and wants to talk with you or their parents. Haltingly, they announce that they’re no longer the gender they were born with. They explain that they’ve been learning in public school that they’re free to choose their gender and that they can be liberated from the shackles of society’s bonds and “to be what they inwardly have come to realize they really are.”

Ones in school have been helping them in this “transition”, there are medical procedures that have been offered them and they feel they have the boldness to break free and to change their sex and their identify.

You gasp. “Where did you get that idea?!” They calmly explain that they’ve been getting council and help for months if not years from teachers and councilors at the public school you’ve been trusting was taking care of the most precious thing in your life, your child or grandchild. But it is too late.

Without your knowledge, this influence has been going on for months or years in the public school your child or grandchild has been going to. And by the time you find out about it, it’s too late. They openly now wear clothing contrary to the gender they were born. They’ve morphed into another person than the one you raised. You are helpless, enraged and desperate. But it’s too late.

And this scenario is playing out in innumerable families across America and the world for that matter. While parents and grandparents were lulled into a false sense of security that “certainly our children are safe in the public schools of Texas!” or where ever you live, these outside forces have persistently and with great organization and cunning been able to implement agendas in schools across the country that have made this nightmare a reality for parents and grandparents across this nation.

Is there any solution? Can anything be done? If we change Presidents, will that change things? Or change governors or senators? From what I’ve been experiencing, I’ve found that the lynchpin in all this lies much closer to the local level. Evidently the real center of power in these things is the local school board that oversees the local schools in your area. Where I live, there are 7 members on the school board. Presently, one of them is a dedicated Christian, vehemently opposed to the gender dystopia that is funneled into the school district classrooms from “woke”, ultra leftist gender-bender organizations at the national level.

And there are school board elections coming up in the elections in November. While we are so swapped with controversies about national elections, the fact is that the members of your local school board are the ones who make the decisions as to what is let into the curriculum of the schools your kids and grandkids go to. And what is kept out.

You didn’t know that? The local media didn’t report any of this? They don’t because even here in supposedly ultra Christian central Texas, virtually every element of the media is safely in the hands of the most “progressive” elements of the leftists. So what I’m sharing here just goes unreported.

I grew up in a media family and was around newspapers almost daily from the time I was 4. This is the background I was brought up with and it grieves me how much the modern media has ceased to portray any form of balanced, unbiased information.

The bottom line? If you don’t know where to put your time and energies, I suggest you check out the situation in your local schools where your kids and grandkids are being educated. Concerned, often Christian, parents and grandparents have been “flipping” local school boards in Texas and elsewhere over the last year or so and have been able to turn the tide of ungodly filth that has made such an inroad into the lives of our children and grandchildren. “Woke” school trustees have been voted out in elections and ones with traditional values have been voted in to turn back the influx of evil that has been filing schools.

Thank God we still have a pretty good dose of democracy still with us. I mean really, thank God. Elections can still change things, especially at the local level. So, I suggest you perhaps look into it. What kind of “gender studies” are your children and grandchildren being subjected to in elementary and middle schools, not to mention high schools? What kind of books do they find in the school libraries? Have you ever looked at some of those books? So often books are there that are literally “as gross as it gets”, fully illustrated. Your local media didn’t tell you that? No, they usually don’t.

This may be one of the greatest spiritual battles of our times, of our generation. It reminds me of the place in Revelation where it says “The dragon stood before the woman to devour the child as soon as it was brought forth.” (Revelation 12:4) Whether the Dragon devours children though abortion, before birth, or whether it devastates the souls of children through gender dystopia in public schools, either way the devil is in an active onslaught against children in these times and he’s gotten away with a lot.

“The thief comes not but to kill and to steal.” (John 10:10)

In our times, if the devil can’t kill them through abortion, he now tries to steal them in public schools after they are born. So there is nothing new under the sun.

But if you’re waiting for the news of this to appear on your local TV, you may not hear of it until your children tell you they want a sex change, if then. And it will be too late.

In summation, simply put, check it out. Before it’s too late. Which it already almost is.

Jesus returned to earth in 70 A.D.?

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Did Jesus of Nazareth’s 2nd coming happen in 70 A.D? Did the fulfillments of dozens of prophecies reach their final climax then? Don’t laugh. Sadly there has been a ripple in the community of those who believe in the Lord’s return, somehow gazing toward this view that the return of Jesus to reign and rule happened in 70 AD.

Instead of sharing thoughts I have on this, I think it would be best to just share what the Early Church Fathers said on this subject. Several of these men died a martyr’s death. And they lived and led the Christians at the time when the vehement fires of Christian discipleship were at their strongest, in the first one to three hundred years after the ascension of the Lord.

If anyone had a close understanding of the original mindset of the “church” that Jesus left behind on earth, it would be these men and women. Did they believe the Lord had come back in 70 AD? Were they looking to that date as the time of the fulfillment of most all prophecies?

Of course you know the answer. None of them talked or taught that way. They all looked forward to the future, yet-to-be-fulfilled return of the Lord, after 42 months of great tribulation and the revelation of the endtime antichrist spoken of in prophecy throughout Scripture. Here’s what they said.

Barnabas, who  traveled with the Apostle Paul,  wrote: “The final stumbling block approaches…for the whole past time of your faith will profit you nothing, unless now in this wicked time we also withstand coming sources of danger….then the evil one Antichrist may find no means of entrance….” (Epistle of Barnabas, chp.4)

Justin Martyr (100-165) wrote: “The man of apostasy, [Antichrist] who speaks strange things
against the Most High, shall venture to do unlawful deeds on the earth against us the Christians..” (Dialogue with Trypho, chp.110)

Irenaeus (138-202)  a contemporary of  Justin Martyr, wrote: “And they, the ten kings who will arise, shall lay Babylon waste, and burn her with fire, and shall give their kingdom to the beast antichrist and put the church to flight” (Against Heresies, V, chp.26)

Tertullian (150-220)  a contemporary of  Irenaeus,  wrote: “The souls of the martyrs are taught to wait [Rev.6:9-10] that the beast Antichrist with his false prophet may wage war on the Church of God…” (On the Resurrection of the Flesh, chp.25)

Cyprian (200-258)  a contemporary of  Tertullian,  wrote: “The day of affliction has begun to hang over our heads, and the end of the world and the time of the Antichrist to draw near, so that we must all stand prepared for the battle…” (Epistle, 55, 1)

Cyril of Jerusalem (315-386),  wrote: “The church declares to you the things concerning Antichrist before they arrive…it is well that, knowing these things, thou shouldest make thyself ready beforehand.” (Catechetical Lectures, 15,9)

And there is much more than this, from the pillars of Christianity from the Early Church Fathers to modern times, pointing towards the future coming of the Lord as well as the end time events that the Bible says will happen in the very final days before His return. If you have an interest in these things and want to read more on this, you could go to this link, https://earlychurchbelief.blogspot.com/2008/08/early-church-fathers.html

But certainly some will ask, “Why does any of this matter?”

If the enemy of God can get us to drop our spiritual sword and shield, then he gains victory over us. And it can be a very disarming thought that virtually all Bible prophecy was fulfilled in 70 AD, that the climactic, world- shattering prophecies of Daniel, Revelation and many others in the Bible, not to mention the words of Jesus Himself, were all drained of their significance at the time of the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD.

It’s like that cartoon I put in another article on this subject, which I’ll add again here. “Relax, it all happened in 70 AD.” Exactly, if that’s the conclusion you come to. Relax.

Except that that’s not the voice of the Lord and the doctrine isn’t either.

I’ve tried to make this article short enough so that folks will feel they can read it without getting bogged down. If you’ve somehow come in contact with this doctrine, it’s technical name is “preterism”, I hope that these quotes on the subject from the Early Church Fathers will persuade you that the earliest Christians did not at all look at 70 AD as “the end”. But they looked forward, as many of us now do, to a coming return of the Lord to establish His Kingdom on earth. God bless you.

 

 

Smoke and Mirrors

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Have you ever felt you were surrounded by fluff and froth? The hype, the posturing, the flaunted pretenses? Just think, did Jesus have a public relations team? Did Jesus worry about His image and issue press releases? Umm, no.

One of the greatest blessings of being a discipleship Christian is that the Lord strips away the pretension, the falsehood, the insincerity that’s so naturally a part of the landscape of this present world. The Lord has ways of putting us through the fire to burn away the dross and the immense vanity that is the accompanying baggage of virtually every person in this world.

The Lord said He would have us be as children with their guileless innocence and their nearness to the fundamentals of life. But the farther we go in “the course of this world” (Ephesians 2:2), the more we take on what Jesus called “leaven” (Luke 12:1). That’s not a word used or understood much anymore but it refers to the yeast that bakers would use back then. The yeast “leavened” the bread. It made it rise and be bigger but it didn’t really add much in the way of substance or nourishment.

The Bible said it so simply 2000 years ago that people get “puffed up”. But when that’s all that you can see anymore, it becomes the new normal, “par for the course” and the emperor’s clothes that everyone is suppose to see. But a few still blurt out that there really isn’t anything there!

I can’t tell you how thankful I am for the pureness and reality that can be found in a life of following the truths of the Bible. As so many poets, song writers and thinkers have said through the generations, this present world is an upside-down, backwards fantasia that we all have to navigate through each day. And it’s a battle for the people of faith as we’re just humans of like passions and can easily succumb to the sirens of Satan that seem to be virtually on every corner and on every web site.

And the funny thing is, nearly everyone is still strangely aware that something is not quite right. So many things have a funny ring to them. Or, like food, you bite into it and you can just tell there is nothing there; no nourishment, no value, just fluff. So I am dumbfounded that somehow the high God has made it so that I can turn back to the truths that were revealed to me when I was 21 years old. I can go back to the Bible verses I memorized at that time and find that they still strongly resonate with me, like dear old friends whose companionship is still as strong and real as it was when I first met them long ago.

To be honest, perhaps all of us of the people of faith get hit with the idea every so often, “I guess I’m a little weird.” Ha! Do you think Moses in Egypt ever thought that? Or Noah before the Flood? I guess that’s the price we have to pay for being “strangers and pilgrims on the earth” (Hebrews 11:13).

But here’s a thought. Pity the multitudes of pitiful “sheep” in this present world, people who are mingled among the great mass of humanity in these present times but who don’t really know the Lord yet. That was how I was. I was a sheep of God but I didn’t know it. So I tried to run with the wolves and the people who are truly comfortable with the darkness and the valueless vanity of these times.

I just didn’t fit in, although I really tried. I was a sheep of God but I didn’t know it. And there are still multitudes like that now, misfits, “queer” characters who don’t know who they are until somehow the voice of God breaks through to them. It could be someone who shared some snippet of the truth of God with them, some Christian song they heard, some dream they had, something that awakens them out of the present darkness and draws them into the light of God’s truth and love which is what they were actually looking for all along.

But really, how can any of us discern the fluff from solid, tangible truths and realities? For the people of faith, we have the measuring stick of God’s truths in His Word and personal contact with the Spirit of God who can “lead us into all truth” (John 16:13), even in times such as these.

Thankfully there is an alternative to the smoke and mirrors, bells and whistles and façades and charades of these times. There is the blissful resonance of the truth to be found in the Word of God. There is the warmth to be found in the matchless love that the Lord can bring to you through a fellow Christian. Without the truth and reality of the Lord, those of us who are His would not be able to withstand the forces of the insanity that is upon the world at this time.

Perhaps that is why there’s such an increase in suicides and drug use. May the Lord help us all to continue to be His light and salt, to be His hands to reach out to help the immense number of people who are fainting and dying in this time that’s so lacking in truth and flooded with shadows.

Truth us, oh Lord!

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Can “truth” be a verb? Can God “truth us”? I never thought of that before. But, my gosh, how we need God to truth us. What darkness we live in, what confusion, what banality. But God can truth us. He can just almost blast us with the truth, blowing away the clouds and the gloomy uncertainty.

Oh, how we need that. Left to ourselves, we would be quickly overcome with the onslaught of bewilderment that assails us every day. No wonder many people just leave all to go live alone in the woods. Maybe they hope to find their sanity again there. Or they reluctantly take their little children out of public school because they realize how much darkness now dominates those formerly happy halls of learning.

So we need a powerful infusion of truth, the same way people die without an infusion of oxygen. It’s that serious in these times. Maybe that’s something I like, strange as it may seem, about this present indescribable war in Ukraine. I lived in eastern Ukraine for 18 months just over 10 years ago so I know those cities , those roads, those fields, those people and those children and orphanages. But, strange as it may seem, the war in Ukraine has brought a glimmer of sanity back into the Western world and the world overall.

When your personal friends who you know and love are face to face with one of the strongest armies in the world, when they could die any day along with the hundreds of people who they are regularly ministering to in a city you once lived in, then the whole question of “fake news” and what the “elites” are doing really fades out of the picture.

I don’t know what’s happening in Ukraine from the mass media. I know from what my personal friends are telling me from there. And this is good because for far too long so many of us have been imposed upon to live in some kind of fantasia “la-la land” where there virtually is no truth but everything we hear and read is doubted and questioned. I don’t question the war in Ukraine. I wake up every morning to find if my personal friends still in Kharkov, Dnipro and Kiev have survived the night and are alive this morning.

The Bible says “God is not the author of confusion” (I Corinthians 14:33). But then who is the author of confusion? Truly, it’s the devil himself. He thrives on sowing confusion at every opportunity and that confusion is so much a hallmark of our present times.

We need the Lord to truth us, to just be that powerful that His love, His truth and His reality will be that much greater than the confusion and insanity of this present evil world. I’m so thankful for the promises of God in His Word that He will tell us the truth, that we will be able to continue with a “sound mind” (II Timothy 1:7) and that the onslaughts of the enemies of God, as well as the meandering confusion of the lost sheep, goats, snakes, foxes and wolves of this world will not be victorious over the truth of God that He continues to pump into His children.

Lord help us all to hold onto the truth of God the way an underwater diver holds on to their oxygen mask. Truly we are like that, under water in this world of misinformation, confusion and lack of absolutes. So we need our good Godly helpers in the Spiritual world on the surface above us, like as if they were in a boat above us in the water, to keep that spiritual oxygen pumping to us, so we can stay alive down here in these present depths.

As strange as it may seem, this is perhaps how those in the spiritual world and God’s great hereafter view us who presently live in these realms below. That we are totally dependant on the armor of God, sustained by the lifeline from above of truth-giving Spirit and life itself that only comes from God. Thus we survive and can function here in this alien world but only as we work together with our life-giving sustainers, the angels of God and the Sustainer Himself, God’s Holy Spirit.

Stay alive brethren. Don’t get “the rapture of the deep” where you just get enchanted with the strange underworld we presently live in and decide to go sauntering off into it. Keep the vision that we are not of this present underworld. Keep breathing the oxygen that is from above, pumped down to us by God’s blessed Holy Spirit through the mask and piping of His salvation so that we can continue to exist in this strange reality that we now dwell in, “as strangers and pilgrims” (Hebrews 11:15).

And may the Lord continue to “truth us”, to powerfully pump His truth to us so we can make sense of things and keep our heads while all about us others are losing theirs. So it is for now. Amen, Lord truth us!

Do you ever feel dumb?

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Do you ever feel dumb? Sometimes I do. But Jesus said, “The children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.” (Luke 16:8 ) He also said, “Be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” (Matthew 10:16) The Lord closed His thought with the injunction not to be dumb sheep but instead wise, even wise as snakes. Clearly, it’s not that the Lord wants us to just be ignoramuses.

But some people want to portray us as uneducated, bigoted, racist dummies. Sadly, at times they are able to do that because some Christians just default to simplistic, under-educated clichés or sound bites. And they sadly are prone to being uncharitable towards folks who are not of their race, background, nationality or education. Let’s face it, this happens. And it shouldn’t.

Things are very serious now. Incredible battles are being waged in local school board meetings across America where the forefront of cultural/spiritual battles are being waged for the future of the children and grandchildren of this nation. Astonishing inroads have been made into the curricula of public schools to where books that are just gorged with filth and infested with perverse indoctrination are freely available to elementary school kids in school libraries, as well as being put forward by some teachers.

It’s not a time to default to dummy-ism. If you study history, you’ll know that there’ve been some extremely smart Christians over the centuries who’ve championed the cause of Christ in the secular world and have helped to turn the tide of evil in their day.

A few days ago I saw a movie that really spoke to me, maybe you’ve seen it. It is called “Amazing Grace” and it is the story of William Wilberforce who was an implacable foe of the devil and fought for the love of God and the liberty of African slaves 200 years ago in Great Britain. It’s a tremendous movie and really spoke to my heart.

Is there ever a time when a fully dedicated, consecrated Christian who is seeking first the kingdom of God should take his efforts into what could be considered the political sphere?

Wilberforce deeply struggled with this question. But his friend, the future Prime Minster of Britain, William Pitt the younger, was instrumental in persuading Wilberforce to use his considerable speaking talents and his passion to champion the cause of the ending of the slave trade in the British parliament.

It is an amazing movie and an amazing story, probably very seldom told in secular modern education since it so much glorifies the truth of God and those who follow it. I do recommend it, especially at this time when Christian values are being overwhelmed by “identity politics” and so-called “Progressivism” which is working successfully as a carnivorous beast to destroy Christian values as fast as it can across most of the Western world.

If ever there was a time for parents to stand up, and grandparents, against the forces that are successfully proselytizing and seeking to convert our children and grandchildren openly in public schools across the supposedly advanced world, it is now.

But you’re going to have to be sharp. They are. And they will eat your lunch if you let them. If you haven’t done your homework and are just pratering away with weak platitudes about “the Left”, “the Communists” or things like that, they’ll make a fool of you and utterly defeat you in the realm of public discourse. And this is important because all kinds of people have not made up their minds.

No, everyone has not already made their decision. Multitudes are heart-stricken by what’s going on in public schools. But they need to be informed of the facts without being forced to join one camp or the other on the political left or right.

It’s a great time for those who’ve spent years in the struggle for the cause of Christ to recognize this fight that’s presently raging. It doesn’t at all have to be a matter of “Left’ verses “Right”. I strongly resist being labeled that way.

But when it comes to our poor children who are being indoctrinated with perversion in public elementary schools and then they are told to not tell their parents about it, this is outrageous . And it seems to me it needs the intervention of seasoned veterans of the cross to enter the fray and fight for the survival of our children and grandchildren, right in our own nation, states and cities.

Seeing light through the mists

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Without God, life can be like being nibbled to death by ducks. The enemies of our soul want to exhaust you and wear you down with distractions, vanities, “rabbit trails” and meaninglessness. Without God, you ultimately crumble, surrender to the fog and become numb within the mists you’ve come to live in. Certainly, this is not the will of God.

But then tonight, it was like a fresh wind from God that blew through the house. We watched the movie about the “Free Burma Rangers”. It’s the story of a man from Texas who was raised on the mission field of Thailand but then felt led to become a soldier. After having become an elite “Rangers” member of the US military, he felt the call of God to use his training and Christian/military background to help the marginalized peoples of Burma.

It specially spoke to me as this man, with his wife and 3 children beside him, has lived a life of zealous Christian discipleship which has been similar to what I’ve experienced at times in my life on the mission field.

This movie touched me on so many levels. While I‘ve not had exactly the same life as this man and his family, I could very much relate to their commitment to the Lord and their willingness to put their lives on the line for Him in very extreme situations in the hinterland of Myanmar (Burma) for years and then in northern Iraq at the height of the ISIS threat there.

It made me reflect on where I’m at now. I’m still amazed at what the Lord has done in the last year to make it possible for me to get the first house I’ve ever owned in my life, against the backdrop of a crazy housing market in central Texas at this time. Plus the Lord has put me together with a couple I met barely a year ago who now rent two rooms from me here who I get along with very well and with whom I share a background of Christian discipleship faith. So “the Lord has done great things for us, whereof we are glad.” (Psalm 126:3)

At the same time, this movie about these dedicated people at the very front of Christian discipleship in Burma and Iraq helped remind me to not “sit at ease in Zion” (Amos 6:1), as is so normal and acceptable to do here in Christian circles in America. The movie reminded me of my calling and background, my experience and all that the Lord has invested in me and all I can still be used by Him to do, if I will be cautious to not get comfortable and settled in this present wonderful situation I’m in.

Desperation often brings on a clarity that comfort and ease really doesn’t. There’s so much confusion and vanity that every person here in my country is mightily assailed by every day. It’s like living in mists that effectively obscure spiritual realties. So we can end up quibbling about trifles while the starkest realities of the spiritual world mostly escape us in all the Babylonian chatter of our daily lives.

But this movie tonight about this dear, precious man was a bit of a shakeup and a reminder of my calling and life up to this time. Jesus said, “No man having put his hand to the plow and looking back is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:62) Or it’s like the old prophet and the young prophet (Kings 13). The young prophet was really going great for the Lord. But then he took time out to rest under the shade of a tree, in direct disobedience to God, and this was his undoing.

One of the greatest dangers to Christians in my country is the incredible surge of sickening swill and sludge that flows at us night and day through every organ of the media. It’s virtually all tainted, brackish and deeply polluted by any number of agendas and outlets, trying to sell you their viewpoint or product.

Strange as it may seem, counter-intuitive as you might think it to be, those dear people in the jungles of Burma or the poor souls who were assailed for years by ISIS in Iraq and Syria had a leg up on many of us here. Because they didn’t have to try to sort out reality from fiction. The enemy was right there, real and clear and in their faces, ready to literally kill them physically right then.

It wonderfully concentrates the mind in situations like that. I haven’t experienced it a lot but I definitely have from time to time in my encounters on some far flung mission fields. It quickens you, clears your mind and mostly gets you very desperate as you are face to face with forces greater than you. And you realize perhaps as much as ever before how very much you desperately need at that moment the presence and power of God. Or you may die in the next minute. [Here’s an article I wrote about when I was about to venture into a city on the Syrian border when ISIS was at its peak and how desperate prayer was a life or death matter.]

But are most people in my country experiencing that right now? No. Sadly another manifestation of Satan assails them and for the most part utterly defeats them: lulling distractions, “the pleasures of sin for a season” (Hebrews 11:25), meaningless political debates and diverse vanities that suck the air out of our lives and the clarity of the Spirit out of our hearts.

It was a real wake up call for me tonight to watch “Free Burma Rangers”. I’d better not get drawn in to the allurements and futility of “this present evil world” (Galatians 1:4), but instead keep my eyes on the Lord and my commitment to His cause.

 

A note on the tenor of the times

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Many of us know just how fast and far things have plunged into darkness. The whole trend of light being called darkness, truth being called a lie and love being called hate has already permeated the society I live in and is almost taken for granted in everyone’s lives.

One example stood out to me tonight, not even that much of a major but I was seeing it as an endemic example of the times we’re living in. I was reading about “fat shaming”, maybe you’ve heard of that. Simply put, someone ends up saying something to someone who has become “morbidly obese.”

There’s another relatively new word. When I was a kid, I had a good friend and his grandfather weighed 300 pounds (about 135 kilos). It was the kind of thing you said under your breath. That was the outside edge of what anyone ever weighed when I was 12 years old. Nowadays that’s pretty much within the range of normal here.

But the issue is that to say anything, to even “speak the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15) to someone who’s been unable to restrain themselves and who has become morbidly obese, this effort to say anything to that person is now called “fat shaming”. I don’t know if it has become a felony yet but I could certainly see how that could happen.

Maybe I’m old fashioned but I don’t see it as being wrong to try to find a way, in sincere and humble truth, love and wisdom, to speak to someone who’s been overcome by their physical desires to the extent to which they’ve become vastly overweight. Certainly here in America this has gone on to the extent to which it is not even mentioned or almost even noticed. It’s not unusual to see people weighing 300 to 600 pounds (about 270 kilos), barely able to carry themselves about because of their girth.

Of course for Christians and actually for everyone, it should go without saying that to tease, mock or in any way make someone feel condemned for their looks or their weaknesses, this is not what I am talking about. Jesus taught love and love is totally different from mean-spirited taunting and teasing.

But it’s now a negative thing for anyone to say or do anything to help any of these people to try to be delivered from this dilemma. You’ll be accused of “fat shaming”. Honesty, I don’t even know if this article will survive the surveillance of the internet powers that be as this may be a bridge to far in the way of social/Christian commentary and observation. Possibly therefore it may be banned from the platform. Being “deplatformed” is the risk one runs for making comments like this.

But, are we “our brother’s keeper”? It’s a fundamental tenet of the New Testament that we are.  And we are to speak up in order to be a help to others who are struggling with human weaknesses, whatever they may be. Obesity is a leading cause around the world of a shortened life span.

When someone suffers an early death because of struggles with any number of cravings and addictions, it’s not just the victim that dies. They often have children, parents, brothers and sisters or friends who miss them dearly as their life is snuffed out prematurely through their “flesh”, as the Bible calls it, getting the best of them and ruling their lives.

But in the modern atmosphere, if any of us speak up, we’re likely to be called out as the guilty ones, guilty of “shaming” someone which is seen as a modern aggression, when actually it’s an effort to admonish and reason with someone who’s been “overtaken with a fault” (Galatians 6:1).

What’s the point? None really, but just an observation, a reflection on the deeply perverse nature of this time that to do good, to try to help recover someone from a series of choices and a lifestyle which can easily mean their death, to do that is seen as an affront and an aggression against the poor soul that needs someone to speak lovingly but plainly about how their choices are leading them to destruction.

Quite possibly some reading this know exactly what I’m talking about. What I’m presenting here is not even that much of a big issue. But it just fades into the overall bedarkening of our times where, on the right hand and the left, the Christian voice of conscience is powerfully hushed by the tenor of the times, the mood of “tolerance”, a mood of independence to the neglect of responsibility and of where doing basic Christian good can now be framed as ethical, moral evil, even to the extent of being criminal.

Christians everywhere are being confounded by these kinds of confrontations in their lives to what the simple prompting of the Holy Spirit would lead them to do. Common decency and brotherly love would lead someone to speak up to a friend or loved one to bring to their attention their being defeated by the desires of their flesh. But in these times, to do that is to invite strong censure from the society which tries to frame that as aggressive cruelty, rather than an act of loving kindness. And this kind of thing is seen everywhere.

What can anyone do? For one, they can recognize it. We are our brother’s keeper. Lovingly admonishing another in order to try to help them is the will of God and is a natural product of common, even human love for another.

As the darkness deepens, it will be decisions like these (against the mood of the times) that will be necessary for true Christians to make, if they’re to follow the leadings of the Lord through the Holy Spirit in our daily lives. God help us all.