I got to thinking…

Have you ever seen or owned a dog with a sense of humor? What about a cat? Perhaps your pet African Grey? Slate, our African Grey Parrot, 6th child, 28 and still living at home, and in the Guinness World Book of Records as the smartest bird has a sense of humor? Absolutely not, although he probably thinks he’s a riot. How about your pet gold fish? Pet rock? No; none of the above… I thought not.

If none of the other “animals” on this planet have a sense of humor where did we get ours?

I believe it must have come from our maker… as “Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth,” (Gen. 1:26, NASB).
I believe in a literal translation of Scripture… God invented language, makes no mistakes, meant what He said and He said what He meant! But, He obviously didn’t tell us everything.

Our sense of humor had to come from somewhere, especially since it is not evidenced in any other living plant or animal, but is in nearly all humans… just in man. We must have gotten it somewhere… So, I think perhaps my Father must have an extremely intense sense of humor and I think He’s used it from time to time.

And, while our Savior was the “man of sorrows and acquainted with grief”, He was also acquainted with that wonderful peace that “passes all understanding” and although Scripture does not record that Christ laughed, in all likelihood He too had a sense of humor. After all He is a man and He is God.

Can’t you just see God the Father, with His son on His right hand side, sharing a laugh… most likely at some really stupid something one of us has done… perhaps at the prayer request they have before them… that Luci not have a screw loose…

I for one just can’t wait to hear God’s laugh.

If I could make this vacation happen… all by myself… by brute force, if you will… I would have… But guess what? God has had an incredible lesson to teach me this year…

Earlier in May I blogged about James 4:13-17 which says,
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

And that is exactly what the focus of the last 2.5 months has been…. actually God started the lesson before that… way back to when I bought our tickets to go to Russia to visit our son and his family…. at some point during the last couple of months I began to think I’d sinned by not looking for the Lord’s will truly, nor at all… rather insisting (yet once again) on my own desires… but the lesson has really been to write His word on my heart with a keen understanding that I would not have been able to achieve without His repetition and the driving home of the point….

It’s one thing for me to write blithely a verse from Scripture… it’s another thing completely for God to write it indelibly on my heart.

Gordon (my husband) had been experiencing TCIs, small mini-warning strokes. Of course, at the time we didn’t know what they were… his right hand would go numb… he was seeing various doctors for this, and they were trying to come to a diagnosis as to the cause. Then one day in June… his right arm went numb and his left eye got blurry… very scary!

The doctors sent Gordon to the emergency room, where he was immediately hospitalized… they found his left carotid artery 99% blocked. They had to perform immediate surgery to correct this. He had the surgery and was recovering.

After 3 weeks of being in the hospital and at home, Gordon was finally well enough to return to work at the beginning of July. He worked just 2 days….

All of a sudden… when I left for work Gordon was fine… by that afternoon… he wasn’t… His neck, at the incision site, was swollen and inflamed. Gordon noticed, but didn’t pay much attention to it… He had a doctor’s appointment about a rash on his leg… The doctor told him the rash was fine, but that he needed to go to the emergency room because it looked like he had an infection at the incision. By the time I arrived at the hospital his neck had swollen (and was red and hot to the touch) to the point that it was incredibly obvious that he had a serious infection.

I knew that the source had to be down around the artery; otherwise the infection would have progressed slowly… this sudden appearance could only mean that it was deep and was well along.

They had to immediately reopen Gordon’s incision site, clean it out and replace the synthetic arterial graft (which turned out not to be infected – although all of the surrounding tissue was) with a vein from his leg. The infection was the one typically gotten from bacteria at hospitals although, thank God, not the MRSA strain.

Not only was my much loved husband in ICU for 5 more days, but he also had to be on IV antibiotics for 5 weeks, followed by a course of oral antibiotics for an additional 3 weeks.

Of course, the likelihood of our going on vacation… was not very.

After praying continuously requesting that my Lord spare Gordon’s life yet once again, and with His loving answer being, “Yes”… I then had to come to grips that perhaps I hadn’t been seeking the Lord’s will about going on this trip… and had instead forged ahead of God on my own… never a good thing to do.

My constant issue about “hearing God” is that I listen for Him and that I not hear just what I want to hear. And in this case that’s what I thought I’d done… insisted on what I wanted for myself.

Jeremiah 29:11 says, “I know the thoughts that I have toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.”
If God is real… He is loving… If God is real… He is consistent (never changing)… If God is real… He IS!

So in my present dilemma either (1) I had not heard God correctly – that is – He had not given me permission to go on a ths trip or (2) He was trying to teach me something… I continued to pray for God’s guidance and truly gave over to Him my selfish desires.

Last week… just one week before our scheduled departure… the Doctor’s said Gordon amazingly was well enough to travel… (yesterday they removed the IV line). So God said “yes, my child” after all??? Maybe not…

Then came Fay…. Here we were just a couple of days from our scheduled departure and we were threatened with a hurricane… Was I listening? Had I meant it that I wanted “God’s will” and not my own?

Yes… but…

Yesterday morning… while still not completely out of Fay’s way… our airline cancelled our flight. (I almost want to stop here and leave you hanging……)
We’re on another flight…. But the message on my heart, so clearly this morning is…. IF THE LORD WILLS…. We’ll be going on a wonderful excursion… and if He does not, then we won’t… and I’m very, very fine (and have tremendous peace) with that.

God knows all, sees all, planned all long-long ago…. And He loves me, even when He says “no, my child”.

God IS real and loving… and He teaches us! For the rest of my earthly life… this is a lesson I want to own… He is not great because He said yes to a vacation… He is Great because He loves me (us) enough to teach us His lessons individually, He’s involved in each of our lives, and because He is consistent and dependable. This time, He may be saying yes; next time He may tell me, “No, that would not be good for you.”… In either case… I want my Lord’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

Therefore, God willing… my husband and I will be taking a trip later this year… and God willing… it’ll be the trip of our life time… we plan to go to Europe… we were going to see our son who lives in Siberia, but his plans have changed and he’s coming stateside for a year… that’s a blessing in itself… to be near to him, his wonderful wife, and 3 of our grandchildren… dare I say it??? .. YIPEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

After a great deal of thought and indeed, prayer… we’ve decided to go to Europe anyway… we already had our tickets… while we’d originally planned to bring son & family to meet us and spend a couple of weeks in St. Petersburg, Russia… we really didn’t want to do that without them… so we had to come up with Plan B.

Our time frame is fixed… time off from work scheduled… and one son getting married in California at the start of our vacation… we only have 3 weeks total… Our budget is fixed… we’ve saved for this for awhile… sorry kids… no inheritance

We considered just renting a car and driving around Germany… my Great Grandfather was from Germany and his mother was from Poland…. but we were concerned about the Euro vs the dollar, and the high cost of gas… after some additional research we settled on a cruise of the Baltic….

I’ll be blogging much more about this in the coming days and weeks… the planning process and pictures and stories we upload during our trip. First things first… “God’s will”.. that’s the most important thing…

I don’t want to be outside of His will for me… why?… because He’s got the whole picture… me? … well I just “see through a glass darkly”… and a very small glass at that… His way leads to the least damaging “bumps”… any bumps in that path are meant for my own good (Romans 8:28). And He loves me… MORE… much more… than even I love myself…. He made me… He restored me to a relationship with Him through His own death on the cross… I am His!

He knows the thoughts that he has towards me are for good and not for evil. I can rest and trust in that!

Her whole life wasn’t very long… she served in the Navy and was currently working on her computer science degree… she was very smart, a very hard worker, she loved her job, her family, and her friends… she loved to fish and to cook… she was in her early 30’s… her life so short.

Scripture says, “And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.” Hebrews 9:27.

Elaine has met God now… and if she could reach back, what would she say?

It’s real.. God IS real… the judgement is REAL!…. don’t delay…

We don’t know how short life is…. we don’t know when we will see God… She and I talked often of God’s love for her and she knew the truth.

As for those of us who remain… Will our debt towards God be marked “paid” through Jesus’ death on the cross or will we be judged to be “in debt”?

The question really isn’t, “What will you do with Jesus?” rather… it is… “What have you done with Him?”… at least that will be the question when we each as individuals face God.

My heart goes out to Elaine’s family… who are heart broken over the loss of their daughter, sister, aunt, and her friends all of whom really love her.

I’ll miss you Elaine… Goodbye Dear Friend… I won’t forget you!… I’ll look for you on my appointed day…..

The question IS – “What will YOU do with Jesus?”

Power in all its forms is inextricably linked with pride. We take pride in ourselves when we can exhibit power over ourselves, others, and our possessions. In today’s society many consider power to be a positive thing, such as in being the ‘Master of Our Own Destiny.’

But we are only kidding ourselves if we think power and/or its pursuit is a good thing.

It is power that fueled Lucifer’s quest for God’s throne; power of knowledge that induced Eve to pick up the apple. Often, it’s the pursuit of power that drives men and women in the workforce to climb the corporate ladder, run for office, or own a business. Power is the reason people rape, murder, and abuse other people. It’s power that drives countries to depossess other people of their property and lands.

Look around our world today and one way or another most of us are trying to exhibit power in our individual lives. It is this real quest to own and/or utilize power and its resident co-evil pride that utterly destroys man. It abases us as we try to elevate ourselves to preeminence above God.

Even in our games it’s all about power. The Massively Multiplayer Online-Role Playing Game (MMORPG), The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar the players have characters that achieve “levels”. Each level exhibits its own “power”. When fighting a “bad guy” one looks at their own level and compares it to the “bad guy’s” level to see who has the most “power.” In the Lord of Rings Trivial Pursuit game power is exhibited by knowing more than the other players. These forms of power would seem innocuous at worst. After all, we all enjoy them.

Back to Tolkien’s heroes… they were humble, and this humility gives us (the reader) a sense that their attitude was just and right. In all my readings I’ve not found even one person who expressed that these heroes were stupid or foolish. I don’t think we could understand that it’s better to be humble than to pursue power in and of or for ourselves. We should consider where our sense of morality (right and wrong) comes from. This is an excellent example of myth containing truth.

I agree with Tolkien, that only Divinity has the right to own and exhibit power. Jesus said he is sitting at the right hand of Power. That tells us clearly that it is God who has the right to power. Jesus also said he has all authority… that IS power… real power.

We are creatures not The Creator. If we focus on God first and foremost as we ought and humble ourselves to Him and His guidance He will demonstrate power on our behalf. What a wonderful, peaceful position to be in…. That where The Creator takes care of us (of me)…

On humility… God tells us to, “… consider others as better than [ourselves]..” Christ said, “No greater love hath any man than that he lay down his life for a friend.” We’re also told that the second commandment is “… to love others as we love ourselves.” These actions keep us humble and defeat the quest for power… humility and power are mutually exclusive…

I need to learn to be more humble!

It’s “rich” because it has a true foundation: God the Creator, the Word (Logos), the Spirit and their perfection and reality. If these weren’t real, what then? …. Nothing, it wouldn’t matter… there would be no resounding thrill in our hearts when the good guy (Frodo) destroys the ring, because there could be no morality… no good… no bad… without God.

Tolkien believed that there is only a story to be told when you have a “fall” from creation perfection.

Think about this for a moment…

If Eve hadn’t been deceived…. if Adam hadn’t willfully disobeyed… before that…. if Lucifer hadn’t coveted the Supreme Position… what would we have? A very boring, flat, dry… story… history… life…. what would we talk about? What would we appreciate?

More importantly… what would we “be” without “the choice”… between good and evil?

We certainly couldn’t be “redeemed” if we weren’t “fallen”… while on the one hand, Christ would not have needed to lay down His life for us, He wouldn’t have had to be brutally beaten and that would have been a good thing…. then again, we wouldn’t really know just how bad we really are… how much He loves each one of us… the lengths to which He’d go… We wouldn’t know what grace is… nor know humility in the presence of God… we’d have knowledge of His Superiority, but not of His grace and love…

Scripture points out that there’s a very real battle going on between principalities… God and His followers versus Lucifer and the other fallen angels…. Do you see it? Do you want to?

Will we deny ourselves and follow God or will we try to agrandize ourselves and follow Lucifer? Is our choice humility or pride?

My company has a very nice relocation package, but the temporary housing (paying for my hotel) is coming to a close… it’s only initially good for 60 days, which is up next week…. so two weeks ago I started the ball rolling in my company trying to get an extension…. then last night I got an email from my boss saying I had to submit the request through the relocation company, which would then send it back through my company… now I’m faced with not having any where to live (one of my personal “fear generating” events)… Last night I started to get very upset about it…. If I’d only known… I could have submitted it to the relocation company 2 weeks ago….

This morning I awoke prayerfully asking God to lead me in this… I know that part of this experience, like many others, is all about me trusting Him…. but I felt this morning it’s also about me learning to control my temper… self-control is one of the fruits of the Spirit, and I recall a couple of months ago praying for this specific gift… self control…

I should tell you also that one of my biggest fears is that I go out into the world making my own choices as opposed to following my Lord. You know if Jesus is Lord of my life, then I’m supposed to follow Him. Point of fact, is that one significant way I’ve always messed up in my life is when I do not follow, rather I try to lead… so I frequently pray for His guidance… it’s the only place to be… in the center of His will… looking / listening and following His guidance!

As I was saying.. This morning I felt the Holy Spirit telling me this was about me learning about self control… I was not to get angry OR fearful… as I sat down preparing for my quiet daily Bible study… I prayed… Lord, please, if I’m where I’m supposed to be… please let me know… Give me a special message just for “THIS DAY.”… Then I actually apologized to God for the short notice… after all how could He answer that kind of question immediately… as I opened the book I’ve been reading from, a daily devotional… “Thoughts for the Quiet Hour” by D. L. Moody… written some time ago…. today’s verse was part of Joshua 24:15….

Choose THIS DAY whom you will serve…

Wow!!!!

It’s the ONLY question, that matters… everything else fell away… I burst into tears… so humbled that my Lord loves me enough to speak to me… and that he planted his answer through Mr. Moody long ago… knew exactly when I’d read it, what I’d ask before hand… who am I but dust?… and disobedient dust at that… that almight God would take the time and effort to speak directly to me? … No one… I’m no one… not worthy… not good… but LOVED and REDEEMED…

I choose… yes, I do… I choose… GOD… can you hear my joy? My Almighty… All Knowing… All Loving… All Providing.. GOD… YES! Him will I serve… with every fiber of my being… for eternity… He and He alone… knit me so skillfully together in my mother’s womb… knows how many hairs are on my head… loves me… answers me… MY GOD is indeed the ONLY AWESOME GOD!
I bend my knee… I bow my head… I sing… songs of great joy…. THIS IS MY STORY… THIS IS MY SONG… PRAISING MY SAVIOR ALL THE DAY LONG!!!
ps… I didn’t get angry or upset… my house isn’t sold… my temporary housing is closing down on me… I don’t have an extension… BUT My God has it in control…. I can wait on Him!

Admittedly the bookstores in airports are smaller, but most of them have a fairly wide range of material. I look for books to enlighten me as opposed to grieving the Spirit within. Have any of you realized this is NOT an easy task?
I found a nice selection of different books on Islam, Wicca and other religions… but wait, where are the books on Scriptural Christianity? There’s even a whole section devoted to “New Age”, yet no section for Christianity. I can find a wide variety of novel type books offering alternate views of Jesus, yet nothing on the Jesus of the Bible. There are several books about religious tolerance, but have you noticed they aren’t very tolerant of Christianity?

The majority of this material is designed for one purpose only… to provide an alternate option to salvation. Oh yeah, haven’t you heard? Man can now set the rules… anything he wants them to be… If we don’t like one commandment, well, we’ll just ignore it or we’ll make up our own stuff… more palatable, more to our liking; stuff that makes more sense to us. We say to ourselves… Wait!Why do this God’s way? We can form Him to our image and then be able to basically do what ever we want. Isn’t that great? We can lay out the rules of whatever philosophy we want, we can even restate history (as is the case in one popular book) to our liking. And then we’ll be really free! Won’t we?
In college I took anthropology and the Professor told us that the one thing that was found in every society, ancient and modern alike was evidence of religion. Isn’t that interesting? Every society looks for God. I’m sure you can remember hearing about Roman and Greek mythology… so just imagine everyone, everywhere always trying to find God… lends credence to the old saying, “nothing new under the sun”, doesn’t it? (Which by-the-way is Ecclesiastes 1:9.)

Do you have any idea about why every society shows evidence of religion?

The first chapter of the book of Romans tells us that God made the truth evident to us. Another Scripture passage says He wrote knowledge of Himself on every heart. In Romans it goes on to say, “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made.”

Man has not changed… even today, s/he tries to account for God; even the atheist who tries to push Him away. If God truly didn’t exist why would the atheist work so hard to try to kill Him? Under the guise of “tolerance” others work just as hard to make Him not matter, to make truth about God irrelevant.

All of this boils down to one thing and one thing alone…………..

People simple do NOT want to be accountable for their actions. They don’t want to acknowledge that they are (1) much, much less than holy ( hey this is me too… I’m right here beside you – I’m not better than you) and (2) folks don’t want to accept that there’s a huge price to pay for not being spotless in God’s eyes.

Even though you spend your whole life living by a creed, any creed, or none at all… what will you say when you are finally face-to-face with God? God gave you free will for a reason, He doesn’t want robots…. How have you used your gift of free will?

If you really want to know truth about God… you don’t need me… all you have to do is honestly ask God to reveal the truth about Jesus to you… find out for yourself. Because when you do see God, He isn’t going to be asking you about what I did with the truth…. He’ll be asking you…. about you.

The last part of that section of Romans 1 says, “… so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools…”

What book did I buy? “Taming Your Tongue”….

I’d like to clarify something… both of those statements in Romans are talking about us BEFORE we accepted Christ as our Savior. If you’ve never done that then those Scriptures are talking about you. But, if you have been saved then they are talking about your “old self”, the one that was crucified with Christ.

Now you’re redeemed and John 16:13 applies, “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak…” So, if you’re born again the Holy Spirit, which lives in you will illumine Scripture for you. But, before that (that is before you accepted Christ) you could not on your own understand. In fact, 1 Corinthians 1:18 says, “For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” This basically explains that God understands the unsaved folks will think Scripture is nuts and they do don’t they?

It’s also very important that we all understand we are not to argue over the details. As long as we have saving faith, the rest will get sorted out later.
Secondly, I’d like to explain a couple of other facts about me….

I have no preference that God says A or God says B… I want to simply know what exactly God says. When I attend a Church, I’m not looking for one where the Pastor preaches about things the way I “believe” them to be… rather I look for a Church where the Pastor tells me what the Bible says… I’m not looking for anyone to interpret Scripture for me… I want to know what God says… because I take Him at His word. (I talk about the Scriptures that support this in several of my other posts, predominately under “Truth” on your right.)

I can accept that God isn’t into tricking me, nor keeping things obscure from me, and that He laid what He wants from me out clearly. He expects me to study His word so that I can obey 2 Timothy 2:15, “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.” and 1 Peter 3:15, ” … sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence”.

I’d like to share with you the fundamental approach about interpreting Scripture. Now, I’m not going to bore you to death by repeating verbatim hermenuetic text books. But, lets look at this with logical clear thought.
As with many things there really are very clear steps to correctly interpreting Scripture:

1. Work from the assumption that the Bible is authoritative – anything else (i.e., tradition, feelings, or even our own reasoning capabilities) places man on top not God.
2. The Bible interprets itself; Scripture best explains Scripture – if a passage is obscure or vague use clearer passages. Don’t leave things out, and don’t ever add things in. Why would you or anyone – and I’ve already stated where I stand here – want less than the truth or a different truth. What good would alternate truth be? What value would a false view have? Simply let the Bible speak for itself.
3. Saving faith and the Holy Spirit are necessary for us to understand and properly interpret the Scriptures. If you haven’t already, but want to, confess to God that you haven’t met His standard of Holiness, that you’ve sinned and accept what Christ did on the cross to pay the debt for you. Romans 10:9 is very clear, “If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” Then ask God to give you understanding.
4. Interpret personal experience in the light of Scripture and not Scripture in the light of personal experience.
5. 2 Timothy 3:16 and 17 say, “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; 17 so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.”
6. Accept all Scripture at face value, exept when either (a) an inanimate object is used to describe a living being, or (b) Scripture explicitly tells us the passage is allegorical.
7. Interpret the words in their usual meaning.

Some other points to consider…

Scripture must be internally consistent… there can be no contradictions within Scripture. If there are then it all is waste. What good is truth if it’s not always truth… that would be an oxymoron, wouldn’t it? This doesn’t mean that we have to understand all the points of Scripture (example coming right up)… the point is that they are either things I don’t completely understand or they are inconsistencies… if they are the later I want nothing to do with it… The example of this is God being 1 in 3 persons… I don’t understand this concept, but I can accept it as true any way… fact is this side of the veil I don’t need to understand it… do I?

The truths of Scripture must be livable… again, what good would it be if we couldn’t do what God wants us to do?