The Fundamental Blog

This being New Year’s eve, many people are putting the finishing touches on their resolutions for the coming year. If past performance is any indication of future performance then it is safe to say that most of the resolutions made tonight will be lucky to last more than a couple of weeks into the new year. When I stopped to consider this it seemed to me that a part of the problem, by far the largest part of the problem, with being able to keep the well intentioned promises to ourselves is that we make them thinking that we have the power to carry them out.

“… apart from Me you can do nothing.” John 15:5. or better yet; the example given in James 4:13-16, “Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’” When we make grand claims that, “We,” will stop smoking, or lose weight or stick to an exercise regime or whatever it may be, we are leaving God out of the mix! What fools we are, we can not even open our eyes in the morning except that God wills it for us.

I used to smoke. I started sneak-smoking at 10 years old because it was cool, (according to my friends), and I finally was free from tobacco at the age of 50. There’s a literal 40 years in the desert for ya! I had become an expert on quitting though, I did it all the time, maybe even three times a week, but it never worked. How did I finally manage to kick it? I started on my knees and stayed on my knees, and God did the rest. I finally came to Him truly broken and begging for His grace, and He was there to answer me. No withdrawal, no weight gain, no cravings, no back sliding - when God does something, it’s DONE! I didn’t even pretend that I had anything to do with it, I know where my willpower ends; this was a supernatural happening.

The first point then is that we truly can not do anything on our own, it is only by the will of God that anything occurs in our lives. So the very best place to begin is in prayer, but with a broken spirit and a contrite heart. “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” Psalm 51:17 This is a promise made by God and God can not lie. Even so, this does not necessarily mean that God will always give us what we ask of Him, we must learn to ask, “in His will.” It is to God’s glory that we should receive His blessings, but often times we do not know what to ask for. The things that we think would be best for us are usually not the things that God sees as best for us.

Most people have, at some point, asked God to let them hit the lottery. “Why, if I had all that money I would be able to tell the world how greatly God blessed me and He would receive the glory for it.” But it doesn’t work that way. To ask for the heart that is better able to withstand the trials ahead gives a better witness of the grace of God in one’s life than does a vacation house in the Bahamas. We need to really examine our motives in order to develop effective prayer lives. God knows what we need and what will best serve His purposes for us, we don’t. Satan has polluted our minds with such misshapen images of what we think we should want, that even if we were to get them, we would be far more miserable than before we asked!

For quite some time now I have been asking God to supply the need of a dear friend who is extremely sick. But I have stopped asking that. Instead, I ask that my friend may receive the strength to endure, the faith to persevere, and the witness to honor Jesus Christ through his ordeal. You see, I have no way of knowing whether or not the complete healing of this friend is the best use of his life in the eyes of God. God may have an entirely different plan and the little part that I am allowed to see may be completely in error. What I think of as a great outcome may be insignificant in the grander plans of God.

I would love to have each of you reading this to commit to showing these articles to one other person each month for the coming year. That’s only 12 people during the course of the year who currently are not receiving any benefit from the words I write, but that might find a pearl of truth that they would have otherwise missed; but what’s my motive? There is the altruistic ambition of reaching people with the Word of God, to better the kingdom and there’s the less honorable ambition that more readership will prompt more hits on the ad links which put a couple of pennies in my pocket, or perhaps even a couple of direct donations. Then there’s the wildly insane hope that I could grow readership and donations to the point where I could devote myself full-time to writing and come off the road and stay home. After all, surely God doesn’t want me to be apart from my wife all the time, right?

So what’s my hearts motive, I am thankful for the Holy Spirit living in me because honestly, I have a hard time sorting out my own motives sometimes. What about you? Are you wanting to lose weight so you look hot at the beach this summer, which may bring you more opportunities to succumb to fleshly lusts, or are you simply trying to get healthy enough to go on a mission trip? Do you want to stop smoking because in so doing you are honoring God with your body, or is it merely that the expense of the habit is draining your wallet? Are you praying for what you believe God wants to do through you or are you charting your own course and asking God to meet you there?

John 15:8 says, “This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be My disciples.” What fruit are we asking God to allow us to bear? The Bible tells us to bring all our petitions before the Lord in prayer but we can not think that after rattling off a laundry list of desires we can simply throw an, “… in Jesus’ name Amen,” after it and expect to get everything we think we want. I would pray that every reader that sees these words might, (you might), really search their hearts and see if they are praying in the will of God; then commit to changing their prayer lives so that they are.

I began writing because I was discouraged by the number of people that play church, that toy with theology, there are so many that only care about their souls one day a week, for a couple of hours at most, and barely even that. It is not much different in our prayer lives, it’s too easy to go through the motions and never really offer an acceptable prayer. If we find ourselves feeling like our prayers are bouncing off the ceiling, maybe they are! A lot of people are under the mistaken opinion that God wants us to all be happy, He does not, He wants us to be HOLY. This is the pilgrims path, the road to holiness, how do we get there? Together.

Make those resolutions but be sure to start with God. Let’s bring all our requests and petitions to the cross and pray over them, that the result of our every day, might better magnify the Lord. Let’s examine the heart of our prayers so that we are asking for the best outcome in the eyes of God. Let’s start asking that our lives display the kinds of things that result in behaviors which are…


All for the Glory of Christ

The foolishness of man seems to force him to repeatedly fall prey to the consuming pangs of pride and the ridiculous bitter fruit of self-elevation. Even in this, the season when the Christian celebrates the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ, we succumb to the folly of ourselves. Do you feel joy in your heart this Christmas? I believe that we all have the moments when we can answer, “Yes,” but why not more often than mere moments? I fear the Satan is harder at work during this time of the year than at any other, we seem to be consumed with the imagined responsibilities of self imprisonment.

We have the family gatherings to which we look forward with no small amount of anxiety. The economy is in the dumper but we still want to keep up the traditional giving of gifts and then there’s the dinner, it needs to be just right and be sure that the disaster of seating Aunt Harriet next to Uncle Henry doesn’t happen again this year. Keep a close eye on the cousins too, we don’t want to catch them trying to shave the cat … again! We hate it when grandma starts her innocent inspection of the house, did we remember to dust the tops of the door frames? The list of things to worry over is nearly endless, so much so that we can lose sight of what is important about this day.

God gave His Son to a dying world that we might be reconciled to Him and find, through faith, everlasting life. This is reason for joy. After all, the angel told the shepherds, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.” Consider the value of this announcement for a moment, and that it came from a Heavenly being. This angel, this messenger, received the message from God Himself; God put the words into his mouth. This means that God considered the joy in response to this good news, “great.” It isn’t like someone asking if you liked that new restaurant… “Oh, it was great!” no this is a proclamation by the essence of perfection telling us that the joy surrounding the birth of the Christ child was great, even by God’s own standard.

Who can dispute that the prospect of pure perfection being born into the earth carries with it the greatest possible joy? What could top the perfect plan of God that would allow for the redemption of mankind? To consider the prospect of a fallen world in a fools rush toward Hell being given the opportunity to reverse its course makes everything else pale by comparison. Satan doesn’t care much for this whole Christian view of Christmas though, he would be happier if he could muddy the waters and send us reeling in all sorts of other directions.

We have all the images of the perfect family holiday in our heads, though none of us ever seem to realize anything close to them. This causes a certain amount of discord as we strive for the unattainable. Depression is at its peak at the same time that joyfulness should be filling our hearts. All the possible problems of gathering a group of people together who are supposed to love each other, (but sometimes don’t even like one another), come to the surface and work to destroy the joy that should be abundant, but is frustratingly just out of reach. And its all pride.

We want to be able to know that we hosted a great dinner, that we gave the best gifts, that we pulled off the Rockwell Christmas that the rest of the family members have been unable to accomplish over the years, that we, we, we, we…. It isn’t an intentional thing, we didn’t mean to turn it into something that was all about us, it just sort of happened and when it did… Satan scored! We are too easily led into the desires of our own hearts, as well intentioned as we believe them to be, only to end up not feeling fulfilled when its over. What happened to the joy that God had given to His creation?

Now, I know that I have painted a fairly grim picture here and I know that there are many families who are not in the scenario I just depicted; I pray that there are more joyous hearts out there than not. I pray that the realization that God has given us the security of an eternity spent with Him in Heaven is kept foremost in the hearts of those celebrating this season, that we might be given the chance to spread the good news of the great joy which God has given to the world in Christ Jesus, and that it not be for a day only, but for every day. We have been saved by the grace of God and we live for the glory of the God who gave that grace. Every day we have the choice to live either for ourselves, or for God; we must choose well.

It is really all about love. We must give the love and grace which God has given us, to those around us, even though by our judgment they may not deserve it, because neither did we deserve it when God gave it to us. “That’s easy for you to say!” No - it isn’t. Believe me when I say that this is as much for myself as for anyone else, perhaps even more so; after all, you don’t know my family! There are those that I’m sure I have hurt and I would love to make those relationships whole again, there are those who have hurt me that leave me feeling like a fool if I give them the chance to do it again. I have to open myself up one more time, even though I feel certain that the same beast that bites me every time I do will bite me again.

God has forgiven me time and time again and still I turn and find myself doing the very things that I do not want to do, how can I not extend the same grace to those who repeatedly injure me? Pride tells me that I should not be treated this way but why not? Christ suffered unfairly for us, He warned that we would suffer for Him, can any of us refuse the cup, now that He has drained it for our salvation? Do we dare think that we deserve to have the world treat us any better than it did Him? Jesus suffered and died while loving the world that killed His body and He was innocence in perfection; what right do any of us have to think that we, who are plainly guilty, deserve anything less?

There is unspeakable joy in salvation, this is the banner we wave, the reason for the Christian to celebrate Christmas, the thing that must carry us above the foolishness of a commercialized retail annual event. We know what it is that we have been saved from, who saved us from it and how fortunate we are that while we were yet in our sin, Christ died for us. That is, “great joy!” Find ways to share that joy this year, in the simple smile to the weary, in service to others and through understanding our common failures without the desire to exact recompense for them. Whether our holiday more closely resembles entering the gates of glory, or the portal to the fiery furnace, may we all find ourselves displaying the joyfulness in a Merry Christmas, lived…


All for the Glory of Christ