Self-Control versus Self-Indulgence (Jude 1:3-4)

Jude 1:3-4

"Beloved, being very eager to write to you of our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. For admission has been secretly gained by some who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly persons who pervert the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ."
The description of the Christian life is filled with opposites; we are supposed to be this and not supposed to be that. We are supposed to do this and not supposed to do that. As a teacher who deals with student behavior, it can be difficult only to focus on one side of the equation. Sometimes we need to know what we should do and know what we shouldn’t do.

Back in the 60's, a new idea came into the Church, particularly the American Church. It was the idea that God loves us regardless of our appearance or our lifestyle. That, in itself, is true. But it is not entirely true. As my pastor often says, "God loves you just the way you are, but He loves you too much to leave you just the way you are." In other words, we come to God honestly ("This is who I am"), but we don’t stay as that person. Our relationship with the Lord should move us from where we are to becoming more and more like Christ. We should not only be discontent with our sin, we should be ashamed to the extent that we work, in the power of the Holy Spirit, to change! We should want to not sin. And that "want" should come, not from our emotions, but from the knowledge that we have been saved by a sinless God Who desires that we choose righteousness over sin.

In these two verses, Jude describes a situation where ungodly people have come into the Church, posing as Christians, but are trying to convince the believers that it is okay to continue to embrace sin. The word "licentiousness" is interesting. It has a number of connotations.

Licentious, in English, means lacking legal or moral restraints, marked by disregard for strict rules of correctness. In other words, believing that the rules don’t apply to us; we can choose to sin and not worry about it. After all, Christ died for our sins, so it doesn’t really matter what we do. The apostle Paul addressed this very issue in Romans 6:

"What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?" (v. 1-2, NRSV)

Shall we continue in sin . . . for whatever reason . . . once we are saved? Paul (and the Holy Spirit) say emphatically, "No!" It doesn’t matter that this sin, these habits, these behavior patterns, are who we are. We weren’t saved to continue to be "who we are." We were saved to become like Christ! We were saved to choose the fruit of the Spirit, not the lust of the flesh (Galatians 5).

The problem is that, even after we saved, the Lord continues to give us–and to honor–our free will. We can choose at any moment who we want to be, what we want to do. If we choose sin, while God may create circumstances to try to compel us back to Him, He will not forcibly make us love Him or obey Him. He will, instead, allow us to reap the consequences of our choices. And that include even the possibility to rejecting the salvation once so freely embraced.

Strong’s defines aselgeia (G766) (translated here as "licentiousness") as "unbridled lust, excess, licentiousness, lasciviousness, wantonness, outrageousness, shamelessness, insolence." And while this is about sexual lust, it is not only about sexual lust. It is much more about rebellion, about refusing to change our behavior so that we don’t have to obey anyone else. It is about refusing to submit to the will of God as outlined in the Word and as taught by His godly teachers and preachers.

Beloved, we have embraced those teachers and teachings that have allowed us to remain in our own self-indulgence. We want salvation in that we don’t want to go to hell, but we also want to be able to continue to live with our creature comforts. We are willing to sacrifice in some areas as long as we can indulge in others, while the point was to discipline and sacrifice in all areas so that we could indulge in communion with the Holy Spirit and that alone! But we aren’t content with God; we also want _____ (and how we fill in that blank differs with all of us, but the fact that blank exists at all is the problem).

Jude tells us to "contend for the faith." This connotes an active struggle. In other words, this isn’t something natural. We won’t easily embrace the things of God. We need to spend time preparing (studying the Word and praying), encouraging each other as we see both failures and successes, and practicing over and over what it means to live the Christian life. We need to memorize scriptures (such as Galatians 5) so that we can easily describe what our lives should look like and we need to constantly be confessing our sin when we fail to allow God to direct our footsteps (and our mouths)!

A Church infiltrated is a Church that will soon fall. A Church contending for the faith is a Church that will stand. Where do you want to belong?

　

© 2014 Robin L. O’Hare. All Rights Reserved.

For permission to copy, please contact servinggodalone@yahoo.com

Mercy, Peace, and Love . . . Multiplied (Jude 1:2)

Jude 1:2

"May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you."

I don’t know about you, but when reading the epistles, I often breeze over the salutations, thinking them to be merely form and not much substance. Sort of like reading a letter that has "Dear . . ." and "Regarding" at the beginning.

Except . . . each salutation at the beginning of the New Testament epistles is different . . . and these are books Spirit-breathed. In other words, this isn’t just Jude writing to the Church; this is God the Father writing. These are the things that He wants to say to us and His words are never form without substance. They are always substance.

• May mercy be multiplied to you.
• May peace be multiplied to you.
• May love be multiplied to you.

Mercy . . . peace . . . love.

I believe that not only the words themselves but the order has significance for our lives, so why mercy first? Why not love first? And why peace after mercy and before love?


Mercy
Mercy is God’s patience at work. It is His understanding that we are sinners desperately in need of salvation and unable of obtaining it ourselves. It is His willingness, because of the death of the Lord Jesus on the cross, to extend forgiveness instead of judgment to us.

Vine’s Dictionary explains it like this:

"eleos is the outward manifestation of pity; it assumes need on the part of him who receives it, and resources adequate to meet the need on the part of him who shows it. It is used of God, who is rich in mercy, and who has provided salvation for all men."

I am a sinner. There can be no equivocation about that. If there is even once in my life where I wasn’t loving, kind, generous, patient, or self-controlled (and there are many more than one instance), I have demonstrated my sinfulness. And the "wages" or natural consequence of sin is death (Romans 6:23). It is only because of God’s mercy—His compassion—toward me, His fallen creation, that I have a chance for life. And that chance has been provided through the death and resurrection of my Savior, the Lord Jesus.

Salvation must come before anything else. Without it—when I am in a state of spiritual death—God cannot interact with me. Sin cannot come into His presence. And only He, through His sinlessness, could make a way to remake me into a sinless being. Thus, God sees me through the perfect sinlessness of the Lord Jesus. This transformation must occur before I can have any other communication or relationship with God. Thus, mercy must come first.


Peace
As Westerners, we have a very different idea of peace. Our concept of peace is almost always about the freedom from something else . . . the freedom from discord, the freedom from conflict, the freedom from distress. The Jewish concept of peace, in their word "shalom," is entirely different. It means freedom with . . . and the "with" is God. Shalom means freedom or peace between me and God. It is the resolution of the conflict that occurs, but this peace isn’t about resolving circumstantial conflict. It is about resolving the conflict between me and God due to sin. Thus, this peace is about salvation, about the ability to come into His presence boldly because I have accepted the saving act of the Lord Jesus on the cross.

Mercy . . . then peace. We cannot have peace without mercy and we cannot have peace first. We cannot be reconciled to God without recognizing that we first desperately need His mercy—His salvation—in order to then have peace between Him and us.


Love
While God’s love is always present, we cannot experience it without first being reconciled to Him. Romans 5:10 tells us that prior to salvation we were God’s enemies. We can’t have God’s love while we are His enemies. His friends—His children—experience His love. His enemies experience His judgment.

This is why it’s wrong to state that all people are children of God. Until we are saved, until we are adopted into His family, we are His creation, but not His children. We only become His children once we are saved.

God loves all people all the time. "While we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:10). But we cannot experience that love until we are reconciled to Him. And we can’t be reconciled without first experiencing His mercy and His peace. It is only then that we can understand and experience God’s love for us.

Multiplied

When Jude writes that he wants us to have mercy, peace and then love multiplied, he is recognizing that we are habitual sinners who need over and over again God’s forgiveness and His reconciliation with us. Not only that, but the word also means increased. Jude wishes that our experience, our relationship with God increase each day. When we are fully willing to recognize our sin, to confess it, and to understand that we are desperately in need of forgiveness, it is only then that we can embrace the mercy, peace, and love that God is instantly willing to give to us through the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus on the cross.

© 2014 Robin L. O’Hare. All Rights Reserved.

For permission to copy, please contact servinggodalone@yahoo.com

Servants of Jesus Christ: Called, loved, kept (Jude 1:1)

Jude 1:1

"Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ" (NRSV)

Just in this small introduction we learn four things about our standing in the Lord, four characteristics that we become when we are grafted into the family of God:

• We become servants of Jesus Christ
• We are called
• We are loved by God the Father
• We are kept for Jesus Christ

What are all those things and how do they affect who we are?


Servants of Jesus Christ
During the First Century (and before) there were basically three ways one could become a slave or bondman/bondmaid: (1) One could become a slave during a battle, being on the losing side, and then being captured by the victors. (2) One could be sold into slavery by someone else (Think about Joseph being sold into slavery by his brothers). (3) One could sell themselves into slavery as a result of a debt. The Greek word doulos literally means "one who gives himself up to the will of another" (Vine’s).

In one sense, as sinners, we have a debt, the debt of sin. When we give ourselves up to the will of the Holy Spirit, we are placing ourselves in His care as His slaves as a means to begin to pay the debt, a debt which, of course, we can never repay!

In another sense, Paul, in Romans 6:6, stated that we are either slaves to sin or slaves to the Lord. Those who aren’t saved are slaves to sin. Think of it! They have given themselves up to the will of sin and must follow that master. We who are saved—who are part of the family of God—have willingly given ourselves up to the will of the Lord.

I think for me, and perhaps for many of us, the problem comes that we believe there is a third option—giving ourselves up to our own will. According to Romans, there are only two choices, submitting to the will of sin or submitting to the will of God. There is no third, or no neutral, other choice. As Christians, our responsibility—and our free choice—is to give ourselves up to God’s will, to listen to His voice through His word and through the whisperings of the Holy Spirit.

The question becomes, can I truly call myself a servant of Jesus Christ? Are my actions, my choices, my directions in life wholly determined by His will . . . or by my own? My own will comes from a sinful nature, that old person who was surrendered wholly to sin. As someone who has been saved by the power of the cross, I need to give myself up to the will of the Father. And how easy that really should be! God is loving, kind, generous, forgiving, and patient! He only wants the best for me all the time. I need to fully surrender to His will and to discover then what He has planned for me.

"For I know the plans I have for you," says the Lord. "They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. In those days when you pray, I will listen. If you look for me in earnest, you will find me when you seek me. I will be found by you," says the Lord. "I will end your captivity and restore your fortunes." (Jeremiah 29:11-14a NLT)


We Are Called
According to Strong’s (G2822), kletos means to be divinely selected and appointed. Calling, then, is a two-pronged identity. First, we are selected by God. That doesn’t mean that God selected some and not others. No, we know that it is God’s will that all would be saved.

"The Lord is not slow about his promise as some count slowness, but is forbearing toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance." (2 Peter 3:9 NRSV)

We are all selected to receive salvation, but only some respond. Billheimer is convinced that one of the reasons that only some respond is a lack of prayer on the part of the Church:

"Without violating the free moral responsibility of any individual, the Church, by means of persistent, believing intercession, may so release the Spirit of God upon a soul that he will find it easier to yield to the Spirit’s tender wooing and be saved than to continue in his rebellion.

"God will not go over the Church’s head to do things in spite of her, because this would abort His plan to bring her to full maturity in the Son. He will therefore do nothing without her. To this John Wesley agreed when he said, ‘God does nothing but in answer to prayer.’" (Paul Billheimer, Destined for the Throne, p. 17).

Thus, we are all called in the sense that we are all selected. God has chosen to give the life of His precious Son in order to save His own creation, mankind. The fact that all are selected doesn’t make salvation any less wonderful. Think about those you love who are not yet saved. Don’t you wish for them to know the Lord Jesus as you do? You wouldn’t want God to have not selected them, those you love?

But there is being selected and accepting the selection. I could go on a job interview and be selected for that position. But if I don’t show up for work, then the selection becomes null and void. If I refuse to submit myself to the will of God, the fact that He has selected me comes to naught. The loved ones you want saved, God has selected them. We need to be in continuing, fervent prayer for their salvation.

Because of kletos, we are also appointed. As a part of the universal Church, we each have a specific place and purpose. And those purposes may even change throughout the seasons of our lives. As we grow and mature in the Lord, as our circumstances change, God moves us into different situations. Our job isn’t to cling to the past or long for the future, but rather do what He has put our hands to do today. Our purpose is to exhibit the fruit of the Holy Spirit in each interaction that we have during this day, to focus on the people that He so loves and to be His hand to them.


We Are Loved
Being loved by God is such a basic Christian belief that I think we often just run over it without basking in the idea that God, the Creator of the universe, the One who made all, controls all, determines all loves me! It doesn’t matter what my circumstances or what my problems. It doesn’t matter that I have sins and habits that still plague me. God loves ME! And He loves YOU! He loves us. John 3:16 begins: "God so loved the world that He gave . . ." He gave His Son. And He continues to give . . . His provision, His protection, His direction . . . His love!

All of us want to be loved. We crave the attention and affection that comes from someone loving us. And yet every earthly relationship will fail us. We will fail others. But God’s love cannot fail, will not stop. Our desire to be loved has been answered through His love. We need only recognize it, embrace it, bask in it. The Father loves us! There is nothing else so precious, nothing else so necessary.


We Are Kept
This is an interesting word, tereo. It means, in this context, keeping the eye upon. God is keeping His eye on us. He is watching us, but not only watching. As He watches, He takes care of us. There isn’t one thing in our lives that He isn’t aware of. There isn’t one need that He hasn’t already met. There isn’t one problem that He isn’t already solving.

If you think about that, there is great freedom in living, understanding what God is already doing in our lives. We are free not to worry about the future, not to bemoan the past! God is taking care of it all (and much more adroitly than we ever could). We are free to live today in the fruit of the Spirit and not concern ourselves with how things seem to be turning out. The Father—OUR Father—is in control and is going to take care of everything! Even when we sleep, even when we fail to think of Him, even in the most dire circumstances, He is keeping His eye upon us, making provisions at every step.

We are His slaves, willingly surrendered to His will, and in becoming this, we are called and appointed, we are kept, and we are loved. Is there anything else? Not for me!　

　

© 2014 Robin L. O’Hare. All Rights Reserved.

For permission to copy, please contact servinggodalone@yahoo.com

Waiting in the Darkness

Psalm 130: 5-6

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in His word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord
more than those who watch for the morning,
more than those who watch for the morning. (NRSV)

Sometimes waiting doesn’t seem like waiting. It seems, instead, like loss.

The disciples knew that Jesus had been crucified, that He had died. For them, death was an end. Mark 16:10 tells us that they were mourning and weeping. Their understanding of what had happened was ruled by the immediate and the physical. Death had come. Death was final. Everything they had lived and believed for the past three years was over.

Or so they thought.

The fact was that God was not done! And that’s what we need to remember in each seeming loss in our lives. God is not done! Rather than giving up, rather than trying to regroup, rather than believing there is no hope, we need to learn how to wait and how to hope in the Lord.

The Psalm says, "more than those who watch for the morning." Have you ever stayed up all night, wishing for the sun to come up? The waiting seems interminable, but eventually the sun does come up. In our lives, the rising sun is a constant. No matter how long the night seems, the sun eventually rises. Even in the northern lands, where night lasts for months, eventually the sun rises and light appears.

It is the same with the Lord’s plans, plans that He has for our good. Jeremiah 29:11 says:

"‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ says the Lord. ‘They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.’" (NLT)

And again, Romans 8:28:

"We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to His purpose." (NRSV)

God Himself is working out the plans He has for our lives. Sometimes those plans include times of darkness, times of loss, but that loss isn’t the end. It isn’t even a break in the plans. These times are there to strengthen our faith, to give us opportunities to learn how to trust His Word.

That Saturday between Good Friday (the crucifixion) and Easter (the resurrection) wasn’t a break in God’s plans. Rather, it was an integral part of what the Lord was doing in His glorious plan to save the people He created, the people He loved. The disciples didn’t understand that, rather than a time of mourning, it was a time of thanksgiving, of celebration. The promised salvation had finally come!

When darkness comes in our lives, rather than fighting with God or surrendering our faith, it is a time to praise Him and learn how to trust. There isn’t anything to be afraid of in the darkness; He has been there all the time!

© 2014 Robin L. O’Hare. All Rights Reserved.

For permission to copy, please contact servinggodalone@yahoo.com

Isaiah 53

Who has believed what we have heard? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For He grew up before Him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; He had no form or majesty that we should look at Him, nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him. He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity; and as one from whom others hide their faces He was despised, and we held Him of no account. Surely He has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted Him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the punishment that made us whole, and by His bruises we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and He was afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so He did not open his mouth. By a perversion of justice He was taken away. Who could have imagined his future? For He was cut off from the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people. They made His grave with the wicked and his tomb with the rich, although He had done no violence, and there was no deceit in His mouth. Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush Him with pain. When you make His life an offering for sin, He shall see his offspring, and shall prolong His days; through him the will of the Lord shall prosper. Out of His anguish he shall see light; He shall find satisfaction through His knowledge. The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous, and He shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will allot Him a portion with the great, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong; because He poured out Himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. (NRSV)

"When will we get there?"

"Mom, how many days ‘til we go to Disneyland?"

"Only seven days until we get married."

"The escrow will close in a month."

"Tomorrow we’re going on our first date."

Anticipation. It’s something that we live for, something that often fuels what we see as the mediocrity of our lives. We do our best to look into the future, to plan something "better" and then use that to fuel our efforts through the boring.

What did our Lord anticipate? When the Lord Jesus woke up that Thursday before Easter, what did He see? What did He sense? What did He plan?

He planned His death.

In fact, since the beginning of time, God has been planning His ultimate sacrifice, the sacrifice that would save us from ourselves and from an eternity with Him, the Creator within Whom we are made complete.

After God had finished creating this reality, He stopped and saw that it was very good (Genesis 1:31). Looking back over the six days of creation, He saw the good. But in Genesis 3:15, He looked forward into the future and saw our need for a Savior. The Father knew from the beginning that He would have to die.

So when the Lord Jesus awoke that Thursday morning, what He had to look forward to was a death of horrendous proportions. But His physical and emotional sufferings at the hands of His human torturers was nothing compared to what He would suffer at the hands of the Trinity itself!

All of His existence (which is eternally backwards and eternally forwards), the Lord Jesus had existed as the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He existed within that perfect, sinless communion of absolute love, absolute justice, absolute sinlessness. Even during His life here on earth, He was still completely God (just as much as He was completely man).

But the Lord Jesus knew that morning that He would be facing the most devastating time of His existence . . . in the rejection of the Trinity! As He hung on the cross and became sin for you and me, He would experience existence without the Father. How that is possible, I don’t understand, but we know from scripture that it happened.  The Father rejected the Son.

"At three o’clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?" which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" . . . Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom." (Mark 15:34, 37-39 NRSV).

While we can spend our lives in anticipation of heaven, God spent more than 6,000 years in anticipation this one brutal moment, the moment when the Trinity would somehow tear itself apart—even temporarily—so that the Son could become the sacrifice for our sin. The Lord Jesus woke up that Thursday morning knowing that the most savage of experiences would happen to Him . . . and yet He still walked down that path because of His love for us!

Somehow it makes the small things that He expects of me so much, much less. If He can do this for me, then the least that I can do is to live for Him through whatever pain, loneliness or suffering there is in store. At least I know that I will not be walking it alone because He has promised that the Holy Spirit will never leave me. The Lord Jesus suffered alone and rejected so that I wouldn’t have to.

© 2014 Robin L. O’Hare. All Rights Reserved.  For permission to copy, please contact servinggodalone@yahoo.com

Fighting the Right Kind of Battle

1 Corinthians 5:9-13

I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral persons—not at all meaning the immoral of this world, or the greedy and robbers, or idolaters, since you would then need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother or sister who is sexually immoral or greedy, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or robber. Do not even eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging those outside? Is it not those who are inside that you are to judge? God will judge those outside. "Drive out the wicked person from among you. (NRSV)

I tend to stay out of political conversations. Not because I don’t have an opinion nor because I’m convinced that things are going well in America. Neither is true. But I stay out of those conversations mainly because I believe that, as believers, most Christian Americans are on the wrong track. We are fighting battles we cannot win, in fact, battles we were told to avoid. And we are avoiding battles we were told to fight.

Exactly the kind of tactic the enemy—Satan—would use to undermine the Church. And it’s working. We are losing the battle because we are fighting on the wrong front.

Recently, there have been a number of articles (and news reporting) about how Christians have lost the culture war. Todd Starnes of Fox News recently reported:

"Seventy percent of senior pastors at Protestant churches say religious liberty is on the decline in the United States, and 59 percent of Christians believe they are losing the culture war. Eleven percent considers that war already lost." (http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/02/20/have-christians-lost-culture-war/)

But the fact is, that isn’t even the war! Satan has deluded us into focusing on what’s not real and to be convinced that we are actually losing something when that’s not what we have lost! What we have lost is the true focus of where the battle actually is. And while our eyes are on the wrong "battlefield," Satan may very well be winning where the true battle is waging.

The battle is all about focus . . . where we should focus our attention . . . and how we should interact with ourselves, our Christian brothers and sisters, and the world.

Currently, many fundamentalists are bemoaning the fact that American culture has taken a turn that is uncomfortable for them. Public schools are teaching evolution; 40 million children have been aborted since Roe v Wade; same-sex marriage is becoming legal in an increasing number of states. America is making a moral shift and many Christians are screaming about bad that is, how horrible the people are who are creating this shift. The problem with this thinking is that these people who are creating this shift are not the enemy. They are, in fact, the very ones that our Lord Jesus Christ died for.

"For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." (Ephesians 6:12 NRSV).

Satan very cleverly allowed the United States to become a bastian of Christianity and to allow us, as Christians, to become comfortable with our lifestyles. We became, as it were, cultural Christians rather than focused, strong believers. And when the culture began to wan, rather than to look inwardly at our own sin, we have risen up in anger at those who would shake us from our comfortable existence. Being a Christian has never been about creating a culture. It has been, rather, about proclaiming the good news (the gospel) of the salvation of Jesus Christ. And what is that good news? It is that "God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8 NRSV).

First came love. God loved us. And then came sacrifice. Christ died for us. THEN came salvation. We were changed into His image. And as His Church, our mission is to live out Christ in the world today. We cannot change the culture until we are willing to love—to sacrificially love—those around us who are not saved. And we cannot love them by demanding that they change their lives to suit us. Rather, as Paul explained in 1 Corinthians 5, we are expected to be out among the unsaved non-believers who live immoral lives. We are expected to love them, to minister to them, to reach out to them while they are living as sinners, just Christ died for us while we were yet sinners.

We were never given permission to judge the world. God has reserved that privilege (and duty) exclusively for Himself. What we are to judge is the Church within—beginning with ourselves!

Paul talks about this in Galatians 6:

"My friends, if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness. Take care that you yourselves are not tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. For if those who are nothing think they are something, they deceive themselves. All must test their own work; then that work, rather than their neighbor’s work, will become a cause for pride. For all must carry their own loads. . . . Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow. If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh; but if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit. So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up. So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith." (6:1-5, 7-10 NRSV).

• Let us not grow wear in doing what is right . . . don’t give up.

• Restore, in a spirit of gentleness, those are who detected in sin (within the family of God)

• If we sow to the flesh, we will reap corruption.

The focus is not about battling the evil that is without. We are expected to live among that evil, in fact, to preach the gospel both with words and deeds. To give a cup of water, to turn the other cheek, to give both coat and cloak, and to walk circumspectly.

We are also to judge within, first ourselves and then our brothers and sisters in gentleness lest we also be tempted and fall into their sin.

So, to my fellow Christians who own businesses, rather than turn away gay nonbelievers, why not give them the best service you can, emulating our Lord Who gave His finest—His very life—for us?

And, to my fellow Christians who are continuing to embrace all kinds of sexual sin, turn away before the sin consumes you and you draw those around you into its abyss.

This is the kind of U-turn that we need to make as Christians. We need to begin to be harsh with ourselves. I need to look at my own life and tear out all that is displeasing to my Lord and Savior. But rather than be angry with my unsaved neighbors and colleagues, I need to further reach out to them in love, to sacrificially serve them until they can’t help but see Christ in me. If we want to win the war, this is how the battle must be fought. There is no other way to gain victory.

　

　

Shine in the Darkness

Matthew 6:3-4

"But when you give to someone, don’t tell your left hand what your right hand is doing. Give your gifts in secret, and your Father, who knows all secrets, will reward you."

When I went out to water the backyard this morning, I was surprised to see only the moon and a couple of stars. I live in the desert and usually the night sky is crowded with stars; it can be an amazing sight. But this morning, the expected cloud cover obscured all but the brightest stars (which were, probably, actually planets). It got me to thinking. The stars that usually share these early morning reflections with me were still shining. I just couldn’t see them. But the fact that I couldn’t see them didn’t mean they weren’t there. They were, I’m sure, shining as brightly as ever, shining for an audience that was now invisible just as they were invisible to me.


They were still shining.


How often as Christians do we wait to "shine" until there is an audience? Forgetting that we always are living out our lives before an Audience of One? When we are in the shadows, when our lives are hidden by darkness, do we do things that we wouldn’t normally do exposed to the light of day, to the observations of others? Do we wait to be kind, to be forgiving, to be generous so that others will notice us?


Every good gift that we give, every loving act, every sacrificial service is always observed by our Heavenly Father. If our constant conversations are with Him, then we won’t worry about who else is present in the circumstance. We will express ourselves through love simply because it pleases Him.

© 2014 Robin L. O’Hare. All Rights Reserved.  For permission to copy, please contact servinggodalone@yahoo.com