Category Archives: truth

Feb 1 2012

A Chariot Ride Into Teachability

We live out our lives making decisions.  Many are like ‘forks’ in the road.  They are made and they shunt us in another direction.  Some are dramatic, we see very quickly that the road is going to take us in a radically different path.

Sometimes, if we’re honest, we will admit to backtracking, retracing our route back to the point we turned.  A lot of time it is too late, and the moment has past.

I think I have been learning to receive correction and rebuke from others.  I’m thinking of that Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8:30-31,

“So when Philip ran toward the chariot, he heard the man reading from Isaiah the prophet. Philip asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?”

 31 He answered, “How can I understand unless someone explains it to me?” Then he invited Philip to climb in and sit with him.”

There is a humbleness, a teachableness that this eunuch possesses.  He is confident enough to acknowledge that he just doesn’t know.  He is so eager to be set on the right course that he invites Philip to a Bible study in the chariot.

We are responsible for our receptivity to truth.  It is our personal decision to either seek or not seek.  No one else can make this decision for us.  We come to a decision point and we go the way things seem to direct us.  And we learn; God and how we learn!

The book of Proverbs is saturated with ideas on being guided by our humility when it comes in contact with truth.  Furthermore, there are many warnings about receiving correction and reproof gracefully.  If we believe what we are reading, at that point all of a sudden our stubbornness and rejection become a very bad thing.

I have learned that scriptural truth is almost always negative when it is first encountered.  It will not sit well, and I will try to shake it off.  But truth can be remarkably persistent.  ‘Forgive your brother’, the Holy Spirit says.  And you say right away, ‘Not a chance!’  But give it time, and the Word will soften rock.  If you respond properly, humbly, you be able to make the right decision.

One more thing, Jesus told us in Matthew 18:3,

  ” I promise you this. If you don’t change and become like a child, you will never get into the kingdom of heaven.”

There will need to be a complete alteration in our hearts if we are to accommodate this command.  Becoming a child is more difficult as adults as becoming an adult is for a child.  It takes a great amount of brokenness to make the transition.

God fully intends to work with you on this.  He doesn’t seem to ever give up.  He is wonderfully persistent, and for some reason, He loves you. LOL

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Jan 1 2012

Welcome Home, Dear One

1 In the beginning there was the Word. The Word was with God, and the Word was God.

14 The Word became a human and lived among us. We saw his glory—the glory that belongs to the only Son of the Father—and he was full of grace and truth.

John 1:1, 14, NCV

So very much, swings on an understanding of these two verses. When we can grab on these, and make them our own, we make the transition into a nuclear power. In our bright darkness of faith, John could be saying, “I trust you Father, whatever you decide for me will be true. You are concrete, and you are true.”

We talk about the beginning, and suddenly we encounter someone called the Word. He has always been here. We process that “the word is God.” This can swirl us around, until we concretely decide that the Word is indeed God. This decision is quite solid, and quite true. Many will never get this fixed in their minds.

In Vs. 14, we are struck by this idea that the Truth is now human. He has become real in His humanness. If we decide to hit Him with a stick, rather hard, God will bleed in front of us. He is human flesh. It staggers us to think that God is so vulnerable.

There is coming on us a true day. We will be brought into this, in a deep moment of time. We are the rascals, the deniers, the evil, and the misfits. But upon our arrival, there will be a light in the window, for us. There will be a sign put up, that says, “Welcome Home.”

And that dear one, will make complete sense in the light of “Amazing Grace.”

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Dec 25 2011

The Tree is Speaking

***

There is so much I would like to share with you.  Christmas Day is here (finally), and we celebrate that God has reached out to us through His Son.  Jesus is fully and completely like us, and yet He is fully God.  It was arranged for this Son to grow up and then die in place of us.  The image was that of the Jewish festival of a lamb dying to pay for the sins of a family.

I could say much on this, but if you will commit to finding out about this yourself,  God will give you as much as you can handle.  I would suggest starting with the Gospel of John.  Don’t let others decide for you.  Find out for yourself, after all eternity is a long time.  The decisions you make are vast and significant.

Please, contact me if you think that might help.  No religious goofiness, but a sounding board as you sort things out.  Joy, and the joy of forgiveness are very close to you. I’m at flash99603@hotmail.com.

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Dec 20 2011

A Rose in the Snow

Merry Christmas, dear ones!  I can only hope, and also pray that Jesus will direct and keep you in His care.  I’m looking to a Christmas a thousand years from today, when He will bring us all together.  I think that we’ll all kick back, and we will try to remember Christmas, 2011.  We will most likely say, “But that was so long ago, it feels like a dream, I’m not sure now…”

Like me, I trust your deepest hopes are pinned on an incredible grace.  The gifts that are for me, under the tree are fabulous.  But we have been given a gift, of gifts.  It is something that ‘rocks our world’.  It’s called ‘eternal life’.  It has been given to us freely, and without any stipulations.  We’ve been ‘cut-loose’ from the tangled mass of sin.  We are now very much free.

I know I need to learn to live like a free man.  But by extending myself and straining, I can just touch this grace, I pull it in and take and make it as my own.  Jesus has freed me, and I want to walk in truth, with Him, and with you.

Love to all of you from Brokenbelievers.com!

 

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Sep 23 2011

Anxiety, the Common Coin of the Realm

“God the Father grant to me, All my daily needs.  Why should I not to Him flee, “When all the birds He feeds.”

Claudius

We wrestle with amazing issues, they oddly seem like certainties.  That is part of their strength.  Anxiety over our future, is a very difficult thing to separate from.  The dictionary has a simple definition,  “distress or uneasiness of mind caused by fear of danger or misfortune. a state of uneasiness or tension caused by apprehension of possible future misfortune, danger, etc; worry.

We can define it in a sort of abstract form, but anxiety has a vicious bite.  I believe it is the most common enemy of our souls.  Maybe “pride” would be the most challenging?  However our anxiety affects our children, finances and our status in this world.  We are so edgy, and have been for so long that it seems very normal.

Quite expectedly, Wikipedia gives us this explanation.  “Worry is thoughts and images of a negative nature in which mental attempts are made to avoid anticipated potential threats.  As an emotion it is experienced as anxiety or concern about a real or imagined issue, usually personal issues such as health or finances or broader ones such as environmental pollution and social or technological change.”  Ok, well, a bit intense and perhaps a bit complicated.  But as I read it, the phrase, “an anticipation of evil things”  pops into my mind.

I guess there is an effort on our part to somehow equalize the pressure.  But typically it’s only enough to make us “humanly” passable, and acceptable to our dear ones.  But the truth is, we fear way too much.  Our anxiety over the future has a corrosive effect, it just eats us up.  We are like ships, who periodically come into port to have our hulls cleaned.  Somehow, if we decide to forego this, we will find that it diminishes us, and often drastically.

Anxiety is a weight that pulls us down: spiritually, and emotionally and even physically. It is worry that has gone viral in our thinking. We can think of nothing else.  There exists something that our psychologists call an “anxiety disorder.”  To be blunt, today is the tomorrow we worried about yesterday. Worry, doubt, fear and despair are the enemies which slowly bring us down to the ground and turn us to dust before we die. 

There is not much more I can say.  As we grow more and more anxious, we will drive a simple faith in Jesus away.  Simply put, worry, and the presence of Jesus can never truly agree.  They are on opposite sides of the spectrum.  One will rule, and the other won’t.

Corrie Ten Boom dealt specifically with this, she shared this and it helps us to get adjusted, “Worrying is carrying tomorrow’s load with today’s strength, carrying two days at once. It is moving into tomorrow ahead of time. Worrying doesn’t empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength.”

Worry needs to be taken as if it were very dangerous.  Lust, pride and apostasy are certainly thought of as dark, and evil. But worry has to rank up there.  Our anxiety is a declaration of God’s unfaithfulness.  It is a “neon sign” that blinks out His perceived negligence and His ineptitude.

Please dear one, shake off this deep deceit.  Renounce your worry, your anxiety.  The One who feeds the sparrows, couldn’t forget you.  You are His, by blood.  He has gone far beyond the extra mile to obtain you to be His own.

“Don’t fear, little flock, because your Father wants to give you the kingdom. “

Luke 12:32, NCV

 

 
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Sep 6 2011

His Love, That Laments

 

 


The LORD’s kindness never fails! If he had not been merciful, we would have been destroyed. 23The LORD can always be trusted to show mercy each morning. 24Deep in my heart I say, “The LORD is all I need; I can depend on him!”

Lamentations 3:22-24, CEV

“I can depend on him!”  There is a deep and very significant commitment to a love that always energizes.  He is kind far beyond our human definition of kindness.  The verse in Lam. 3:22, says that “it never fails.”  It has an endurance and constancy that just isn’t diminished by our issues.  It is solid, and it won’t ever weaken on us.

We must wait, however, on mercy.  We need to beg for it, and cry aloud for it. On our knees, beseeching Him for it. “Mercy, give me your mercy, I will ask for nothing more, and nothing less.”  Lamentations as a book carries a lot of judgement.  Jeremiah seems to unload on unfaithfulness, idolatry and rebellion. Reading it, and thinking about it gives no comfort to our wounded hearts.

Not that it is a difficult book for us, rather we must understand His judgement on our sin to be tempered by a wonderful mercy.  Yes, we have sinned, and yes we can find mercy.

There was a significant ministry that poured out of Jeremiah.  The verses quoted become a clarion call to all of us who struggle to understand.  ‘How can we who sin so much, and so regularly, find a mercy so compelling that our future is now altered?’

Jeremiah, systematically evaluates God’s mercy.  He sees it and expresses it as a profoundly secure grace.  It seems to be concrete, it pours over us and solidifies over our hearts.  If we trust in it, we become quite solid and set in grace and a dear mercy.

“The Lord is all I need; I can depend on Him.”  Here we see a certain assurance that Jeremiah has found.  He always seems to move in the direction of strength and security.  And I think we should do the same.  Depending on someone simply means we put our confidence in that person.  Jeremiah simply states that he has become quite secure in God, and all that He does on our behalf.

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