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THE GIFT OF LIKE
MEADOWVILLE, Pictou County, Nova Scotia, March 19, 2022 – Jesus’ one command to us, his followers, is to love our enemies.
Thank God he didn’t command us to like them.
That Jesus commanded us to love rather than to like is a very important distinction.
You can love someone without liking them. In other words, you don’t have to like someone to keep Jesus’ command to love them.
The world today is premised on likes. We see that now especially in social media, but it pervades every aspect of the world. Likes are in fact the realm of the world and are based on conformism to a specific ideal. They are also heavily weighted and guided by fleeting and superficial “feels”.
Love, on the other hand, can be surprisingly devoid of feelings. You don’t need to feel love in order to do love. Jesus taught us that loving is less a feeling and more a doing – you love your enemies not by liking them, but by praying for them and doing good to them, even as they curse you.
I have found it helpful, over the years, to remind myself of the distinction between liking and loving. It’s been particularly helpful over the last two years, when I’ve been stigmatized and exiled from society not for something I did, but for something I wouldn’t do (cover my face and inject drugs). I despise many of the values that now prevail in Western society. I despise and reject those values, but I don’t despise and reject the people who hold them. I don’t particularly like those people and I wouldn’t want to spend time with them (unless they, on their own volition, wanted to spend time with me), but I don’t despise them. The command is to love them, regardless of my personal feelings towards them.
Even so, I would never tell them that I love them according to Jesus’ command and that I’m praying for them. My words would be unwelcome. If they outright asked for my prayers, I would unhesitatingly tell them that they have them. But otherwise, I pray for them in secret, like Jesus taught us to do.
Knowing the difference between liking and loving and using that knowledge as the basis for how we interact with the world is crucial to living in the Kingdom. We cannot survive as born-again believers – or even call ourselves Christian – unless we love our enemies. But at the same time, we cannot in most cases love our enemies unless we also understand that we don’t have to like them.
Jesus’ command was not to like but to love. Again, it’s a COMMAND, not a suggestion. And like the other Ten Commandments, it has no asterisks after it, meaning there are no exceptions to the rule. No matter what people say, no matter what they believe or how they live their lives, no matter what side of the military or political or social battle they fight on, and no matter how they treat you or those you actually do like – you are commanded to love them, which means you are commanded to pray for them and do good to them. And because they will likely reject whatever good you would do to them, you need to do your loving of them in secret, without their knowledge and without fanfare.
As I mentioned at the outset, I thank God that I only have to love my enemies rather than to like them. But I find that the more I pray for and bless them, the softer my feelings grow towards them (although I would never show those feelings to them, because they would be unwelcome). The softening of my feelings is the presence of God’s Holy Spirit working through my obedience to God. The Spirit doesn’t work through fake like or love, only through genuine submission of the will.
Like Jesus, I submit to no-one but to God. God alone has my heart, and I willingly give him my will as well. And also like Jesus, I don’t have to give God my heart or my will – I’m not forced to do it; no-one’s forcing me: it’s something I choose to do. I have the capacity to do it and I choose to do it. There is no forcing going on.
When we do that, when we willingly put everything we have and everything we are into God’s hands, he can work through us. He can’t (that is to say, he won’t) work through us if we fake it; he’ll only work through us if we’re genuine in our submission to him.
Submitting to God means keeping his Commandments.
Loving our enemies is a choice we make; coming to like them is a gift from God.
SPIRITUAL VALUE
MEADOWVILLE, Pictou County, Nova Scotia, March 9, 2022 – I have to tread lightly with this topic so that my words of encouragement aren’t interpreted as condemnation. This is not condemnation. This is encouragement.
We all have a spiritual value. We are all equally loved by God, but we all have a different spiritual value that is expressed as a score. Some of us have a high value, some of us have a low value, and the rest of us have something somewhere in between. We can’t avoid having a spiritual value score. It can change depending on a wide range of factors, but none of us can opt out of having one. It’s calculated automatically in the spiritual realm and is perpetually being updated.
The world also assigns its own forms of valuation in the form of scores. China is leading the way in assigning a social credit score to each of its citizens, while the rest of the world, for the time being, only assigns evaluations such as credit and academic scores. Social media is rife with scores. When I was growing up, men assigned women a value out of 10 as a form of appraisal. (I think many men still do that.) We’re also assigned number valuations in the form of age, income, height, weight, vision acuity, etc., and scores on our various abilities and disabilities, including athletic achievements. Our intelligence is expressed numerically. All of these features are given a value that is almost always a number, so that eventually, in the eyes of the world, we become little more than a collection of numbers that hang off us like so many price tags fluttering in the appraisal breeze.
As born-again believers, we know that our worldly evaluation is unimportant. What people or worldly entities think of us is irrelevant. Our only concern should be our evaluation in the spiritual realm, so our spiritual value score is the one we should constantly work to increase. Counter-intuitively, however, we increase our spiritual value score not by focusing on it, but by focusing on God and his righteousness.
Again, I need to stress here that spiritual evaluation is not meant to discourage you. There is no need to be discouraged. Your spiritual value is in your hands. You determine what it is by the choices you make and by the words and images you choose to entertain within your own mind and to share with others. Unlike with worldly scores, your spiritual value score is not downgraded for failing to accomplish a particular task. In fact, sometimes our failures give us the biggest boost in spiritual valuation, because it’s not necessarily in the winning that we win, but in our sincere desire to do what’s right in God’s eyes.
In Old Testament times, there were hundreds of laws that the faithful followed in order to stay in God’s good graces, as directed by Moses. But we’re currently in New Testament times. Beyond the Ten Commandments, we no longer need to adhere to the Mosaic laundry list of to-do’s regarding purification, ritual, and sacrifice. Jesus took care of all that once and for all time by his sacrifice on the cross. But we do still need to stay in God’s good graces. We can’t go to Heaven otherwise.
So how do we raise our spiritual value score? This is a question we need to ask ourselves because we should always be aiming to raise our score, no matter how high we may think it is. We can’t know our score (only God and those he designates to know can know it); we can only guess our score, and we can definitely guess wrongly. Think of the parable of the sheep and goats. In the parable, Jesus divided them into going to Heaven and not going to Heaven. The goats he dealt with first, telling them they hadn’t made the cut and informing them why. They were shocked that they’d been condemned not based on things they’d done, but on things they hadn’t done. The sheep were also surprised to find that they were justified based on things they’d done without realizing they had even done them.
And that’s my point – we don’t raise our spiritual value score by checking off a laundry list of “to do’s”, like in Old Testament times. We don’t go out looking for people to help; we help whoever God brings to us to help. This is a critical difference. The sheep who were justified did all the right things in God’s eyes without realizing it; they just simply and quietly went about their lives righteously. The goats, on the other hand, ignored the cries for help of those God brought to them, and as such lived unrighteous lives. Even if they’d checked off every box of the Old Testament laundry list of laws, the goats would still have ended up condemned, because they chose not to help those God put in their path to help. Think of it as the Good Samaritan law that we’re all bound by and that’s encapsulated in the Ten Commandments and in Jesus’ command to love our enemies. There are no asterisks (*) in any of those commands denoting exceptions under special circumstances. That includes war.
I don’t know about you, but I want my spiritual value score to be as high as it possibly can be during my time on Earth. I know I’m responsible for it: My score is 100% my doing. I know it doesn’t go up by my checking off a laundry list of to-do’s, but by living righteously in God’s eyes. Whoever he sends to me to help, I help. Whoever he sends to me to forgive, I forgive. Whoever he sends to me to slap upside the head, I slap upside the head, but lovingly, so as not to discourage them. This is how Jesus lived and moved through the world, and this is how we’re to live and move.
I can only imagine how high Jesus’ spiritual value score was during his time on Earth. None of us can ever achieve that, but we can still aim for it.
WHY DID JESUS GO INTO THE DESERT FOR 40 DAYS AND NIGHTS?
MEADOWVILLE, Pictou County, Nova Scotia, March 8, 2022 – Time, as the adage goes, heals all wounds. The passage of time – one tick-tock after another in steady, constant procession – also has the capacity to change one’s focus. Sometimes the best approach to conflict is simply to wait it out, to wait for the anger and emotion to fizzle out, to sleep it off.
In nearly every case, things do look better in the morning.
The two aspirins and a good night’s sleep are in fact all you’ll need to feel better.
But what underlies these changes and apparent miracle healings is time and the things that move and change under the surface and behind the scenes where you don’t (and can’t) see them.
Forty days and nights is a sizeable chunk of time. Throughout scripture, we read time and time again of the 40 day and 40 night timeframe. The rains lasted 40 days and nights during the flood, Moses spent 40 days and nights on the mountain with God, learning the Law and the laws. As well as spending 40 days and nights in the wilderness prior to starting his ministry, Jesus ended his ministry with the same timeframe, appearing 40 days and nights to his disciples and followers after his resurrection and before his ascension.
But why 40? What is so special about 40 days and nights?
I don’t know the answer to those questions. What I do know is what can happen to a human body over a 40-day period. It can change without trying to change. It can survive without food without dying.
It can change without trying and survive without food. I read somewhere that the average time a human can survive without food is 42 days. Jesus, after 40 days without eating, would have been emaciated but still functional. But why do this to yourself? What would be the purpose of fasting nearly to the point of death?
The advantages of fasting are well-known. They include physical as well as mental/spiritual/emotional benefits. I would suggest that one of the main reasons Jesus fasted for 40 days and nights was to gain an extremity of those benefits, and that the reason he went into the desert to do the fast was to change without trying to change. He let the isolation factor of the wilderness and the passage of time change him rather than trying to change himself.
Isolation brings you face-to-face with yourself. It also – and more importantly – brings you face-to-face with God, like Moses on the mountain. Full disclosure here: I have never fasted for 40 days and nights in a wilderness setting, mainly because I haven’t been “driven” to do so, as scripture says Jesus was. So I don’t know what happened to Jesus’ sinless mindset during that time, but it obviously was to his benefit and to ours.
From a purely practical perspective, Jesus left the Martha work (his carpentry) and the cares of the world behind. When your days and nights are not filled with your own and other people’s expectations of what you should or should not be doing, a massive amount of time and spiritual space frees up. It’s like in spring, when you open the doors and windows again to let in the fresh cool air after months of trying to keep it out, only instead of just opening the doors and windows, you also take off the roof and knock down the walls. All you have left is the floor beneath your feet, so you can walk and sit and lie down. You could even dispense with the floor, if you wanted to, and just use the ground.
This is what Jesus did. He walked and sat and slept and on the ground for 40 days and nights – no walls, no windows, no roof, and not even a floor. He had no daily rounds or tasks or carpentry orders. He didn’t have to prepare meals, or eat them, or clean up afterwards. He didn’t have to do laundry or make his bed. He didn’t have to make small talk. He didn’t have to solve people’s problems for them. He didn’t have to listen to local gossip or stay caught up on the latest news. He didn’t have to care about the cares of the world. Simply by relocating himself to the wilderness in isolation, all of the cares fell away. They left him as much as he left them. It was a mutual parting.
From a spiritual perspective, I can only speculate how the isolation and the fasting and the passage of time interplayed with Jesus’ one-on-one with himself and with God. But I get excited thinking about it. It’s like Jesus the caterpillar carpenter entered the pupal stage and emerged after 40 days and nights as the most beautiful of all spiritual butterflies. And all he had to do was to do nothing but be with God.
We ourselves may or may not someday be driven into the wilderness like Jesus. It may or may not be for 40 days and nights; it may or may not involve fasting from food. Each of us is different and has a different relationship with God. Jesus is our example, but we’re not cut-out dolls of him. We are, each of us, unique before God.
What Jesus had to do was very specific to his role in the Kingdom, just as what we have to do is specific to our role in the Kingdom. We follow Jesus’ example, but we don’t mimic him. We don’t go 40 days and nights without food because he did. We don’t wear a crown of thorns and carry a cross around because he did. We are unique before God. What Jesus had to do was between him and God, just as what we have to do is between us and God.
Even so, the benefits of fasting for a prolonged period of time were clearly demonstrated by Jesus. By “fasting” I don’t just mean fasting from food. It could be fasting from anything that takes you away from your focus on God and from doing his will. Time has a way of changing us without our trying to change ourselves. If you remove yourself from the influence of the world and open yourself to God by throwing open your spiritual windows and doors and knocking down your spiritual walls and roof – something amazing happens.
That’s a guarantee.
And then, when time is up and the fast is over, you take that amazingness back to the world, like Jesus did. You shed the caterpillar fluff, like Jesus did, and you get your wings.
CHRISTIANS DON’T CHOOSE SIDES
MEADOWVILLE, Pictou County, Nova Scotia, February 26, 2022 – Just a timely reminder that Christians don’t choose sides in a war.
Also a timely reminder that Christians don’t fight in a war or in any way support a war.
We are to treat all people as equal before God and all people as loved by God.
We are to love and pray for those who hate and oppose us in the same measure as we’re to love and pray for those who love us.
You don’t kill or malign those you love.
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If you choose a side in a war, you are not following Jesus, you’re following the world.
Even Jesus, in his occupied country, didn’t favor his people over the occupying Romans.
Just a timely reminder, because Satan is working overtime to get God’s people to fall for the war propaganda.
Don’t be tempted into hating or supporting one people over another.
Don’t be fooled.
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Love all equally. We are all made in God’s image and all equally loved by God.
Remember how kind Jesus was even to Judas Iscariot, knowing full well who Judas was.
That is our model of how to treat people: love all, without exception.
That is our job description.
And that is how we differ from the world.
A CALL TO SPIRITUAL ARMS: PREPARING FOR PASSOVER
MEADOWVILLE, Pictou County, Nova Scotia, February 25, 2022 – When I started this blog several years ago, it was not my intention to form a ministry. This was never meant to be an outreach or evangelical site. It was just intended to be a place where born-again believers could touch base, see their views reflected, get some guidance, and maybe get a spiritual spanking, if one was warranted. There are few places like that left in the world, even online, and even fewer among those spaces designated as Christian.
My intentions for this blog have not changed over the years. This is still not a ministry and still not an outreach or evangelical site. If anything, I work hard to push people away by constantly challenging them. It’s more a boot camp than anything else and I’m the drill sergeant. I play the role willingly and well. That’s why God put me here.
If you’re not DAILY examining your conscience before God, comparing your thoughts and actions with those of Jesus and adjusting them accordingly, then you’re falling short of your duties as a born-again believer and you’re getting spiritually flabby. Those who are spiritually flabby won’t make it home. I don’t care what your worldly pastor or some donation-grubbing, feel-good “Christian” on YouTube tells you – being born-again is not a guaranteed ticket to Heaven. Being born-again is a pass that gets you into the Kingdom and a blank check that pays for the services of God’s Holy Spirit to guide and protect you as you make your way through the temptations of this world. But born-again believers can still lose their grace. That is scriptural. “Once saved, always saved” is a lie to keep you spiritually flabby.
In the Bible, every major transition to a higher spiritual state is preceded by a fast or some form of significant separation from the world that lasts 40 days and 40 nights. We see it with Noah during the flood. We see it with Moses on Mount Sinai. We see it with Jesus in the wilderness and again after his resurrection, when he appeared to his followers off and on for 40 days and nights before his ascension. The 40-day-and-night time span is clearly important in God’s economy, so we need to pay attention to it. We should be constantly striving to evolve to a higher spiritual level by following ever closer behind Jesus and drawing ever closer to God.
Over the next seven weeks leading up to Passover, we have the opportunity to do a 40-day fast of some kind. How you choose to fast is between you and God, but I strongly suggest that you do it. A reminder is in order here that Jesus says God requires mercy not sacrifice, and that Isaiah 58 gives a very clear explanation of the kind of fast required by God and the rewards that come from doing it. Again, I’m not telling you how to fast (that’s between you and God); I’m just saying that you should fast in the weeks leading up to Passover.
For us born-again believers, Passover is the annual commemoration and celebration of our freedom from physical, political and spiritual slavery. It also commemorates and celebrates our reconciliation with God. Through Moses, God told us we should always celebrate Passover while we’re on Earth, and through Jesus, God showed us the new way to do it – with wine and bread, rather than with blood and a slaughtered lamb.
We should be constantly challenging ourselves as born-again believers. We should never be satisfied to remain where we are spiritually; we should always be striving to be better than we were yesterday, with our ultimate goal to “be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect”. No, we’ll never attain that goal while we’re in our imperfect bodies, but we still need to strive for it to our dying breath.
To do this, we need to be constantly comparing ourselves with Jesus, not with the world. Our standard should be Jesus, not the world. If we have problems, we turn to God, not to the world. If we need guidance and healing, we look to God, not to the world. If we’re angry and frustrated, we go to God, not to the world. Jesus always went to God, and we need to do that, too. But we can’t do it if we’re too attached to the world and its ways. The world has a way of coming between us and God. We need to prevent that from happening.
Separating ourselves from the world through a 40-day fast is a good way to refocus everything on God.
You have your marching orders.
Passover starts at sundown on April 15th, 2022.
A HIGHER STANDARD
MEADOWVILLE, Pictou County, Nova Scotia, February 25, 2022 – As born-again believers, we’re held to a higher standard.
We can’t compare our thoughts and actions with those of people who are in the world. We need to compare our thoughts and actions with those of Jesus. How do we know Jesus’ thoughts and actions? We can read about them in the Gospel. That’s why we continually need to learn from the Gospel, so we’ll know the right way to act and and the right way to direct our thoughts in any given situation, especially in emergencies.
Note that being held to a higher standard doesn’t mean we hold ourselves to be better than those who are held to a lower standard. In no way does being held to a higher standard mean that we’re somehow “better” or that God loves us more. It just means that God expects more from us, in the same way that parents expect more from their eldest than from the baby of the family.
We need to remember this when we feel drawn – tempted – into issues that are affecting the world, such as war or mass protests. We need to look to Jesus for guidance in these issues, not to the media or the government. The guidance provided by Jesus is much different than that provided by the media or government. In most cases, it’s the opposite.
We also need to remember that the Commandments have no asterisks next to them denoting exceptions to the rule, and that they haven’t changed in meaning or content since they were first given to Moses thousands of years ago. The guidance provided by the Ten Commandments remains valid to this day. So we continually need to read and learn from those, too, and to remind ourselves of them whenever temptation comes our way.
War and the loyalties demanded by war are temptations.
We are to love our neighbours and our enemies without exception. There is no exception to that rule. We love and pray for our neighbours and our enemies equally and without distinction. That is our job as born-again believers. In John’s vision of the Kingdom in the book of Revelation, people of all nations and races and tongues stand before and serve God TOGETHER as one.
We are not the world.
We are the Kingdom.
And the Kingdom is ruled by different laws than the world.
Please remember that in the days and weeks to come.
Love all, without distinction.
That is our Commandment.
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27 But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you,
28 Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.
29 And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloak forbid not to take thy coat also.
30 Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again.
31 And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.
32 For if ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? for sinners also love those that love them.
33 And if ye do good to them which do good to you, what thank have ye? for sinners also do even the same.
34 And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye? for sinners also lend to sinners, to receive as much again.
35 But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.
36 Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.
37 Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven:
38 Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.
(Luke 6:27-38)
SOMETIMES VICTORY LOOKS LIKE DEFEAT
MEADOWVILLE, Pictou County, Nova Scotia, February 22, 2022 – Just before he finished the work that God had sent him to do, Jesus told his disciples that he would soon be arrested, beaten, and killed. The disciples immediately went into a war huddle, vowing they would never let such a thing happen to Jesus, even if it meant they would have to die with him. To their shock and confusion, Jesus was angry with their response and accused them of thinking as man thinks, not as God thinks.
We, as born-again believers, need to think as God thinks. The thought of Jesus getting arrested and killed was unimaginable to the disciples, not only because Jesus was their leader and they loved him, but because it would mean Jesus’ defeat. There was no way they were going to let Jesus be defeated. They knew that if he went down, they all went down, and they weren’t going to let that happen without a fight. They’d sacrificed too much too long to fail.
This is how man thinks – you fight your way out of a bad situation. You fight with your fists or you fight with your sword or you fight with your money or you fight with whatever you have at hand, but you put up a fight. Jesus didn’t want his disciples to fight. He wanted them to stand down and let happen what needed to happen. He wanted them to put their ego and testosterone and weaponry aside and let God do what God needed to do. He wanted them to stay out of it.
Thankfully, when it came time for Jesus’ arrest, most of them did stay out of it, not because they took Jesus’ advice to “think as God thinks”, but because they were terrified for their own physical safety. They were afraid that what was happening to Jesus would also happen to them. That Jesus was actually in the final stretch of a race that he was winning by leaps and bounds was the last thing that occurred to any of them at the time. They saw in Jesus’ arrest his defeat, and in his defeat they saw theirs, and their real (rather than hypothetical) response to their perceived failure wasn’t to fight, but to run and hide.
Sometimes victory looks like defeat.
Our job as born-again believers isn’t to fight physical battles, but spiritual ones. We know that God and all those who side with him ultimately win the war, so what happens to us in between – which battles we win or lose – doesn’t really matter. What matters is that we stay the course and remain true to God, regardless of the witness of our eyes. To think as God thinks is to see beyond what is in front of us: to see by faith, as Jesus did all through his life, and especially in the hours of his crucifixion.
We know how it all ends. We know God and we know Jesus, not as our enemies or as a spiritual concept that is ‘out there somewhere’ – we know God and Jesus as our Father and our brother, respectively, who are always with us. This deeply personal relationship we have with both of them is inseparable from who we are as born-again believers and is all we need to be victorious in our daily battles, regardless of what happens to us physically. We don’t need to use physical weapons because we are weapons. Scripture says that Jesus rides into battle wielding a sharp sword that comes from his mouth. As Jesus’ followers, we have that same sword coming out of our mouths. We just need to remember to use it.
When you take up physical weapons with the intention of using them, you’re fighting as man fights, not as God fights. When you protest the way of the world and the unfolding of God’s justice on Earth, you’re thinking as man thinks, not as God thinks. We need to fight as God fights – with the sword of God’s Word – and to think as God thinks, through the witness of our faith.
Sometimes victory looks like defeat, but only because you’re viewing it with your eyes.
A CALL TO REPENTANCE: THE SERMON THAT SHOULD BE HEARD IN THE CHURCHES OF EVERY FORMER CHRISTIAN NATION
“I have set before you life and death… choose life.”
MEADOWVILLE, Pictou County, Nova Scotia, February 13, 2022 – When a nation turns from God, and instead of repenting, rebels; when a nation chooses death instead of life, and yet still demands the reward of freedom that comes with choosing life; when a nation cries in its anthem for God to keep its land “glorious and free”, and yet opposes God by supporting laws that kill the unborn, the sick, and the aged: then God has no choice but to give that nation its reward not according to its cries and demands, but its due.
God is giving that rebellious nation not what it wants, but what it has earned.
All formerly Christian nations are now reaping the rewards of choosing death, even while the people of those nations take to the streets and demand the rewards of choosing life.
Instead of repentance, there’s rebellion. Instead of understanding, there’s confusion. Instead of turning back to God and choosing to live in accordance with the Gospel, there’s a doubling down of sin and pride and the tabling of further demands.
But these rebellions now taking place across former Christendom are nothing new. They’ve been seen before, in heavenly places, when a third of God’s angels refused to accept God’s rule and rebelled. I don’t think I need to remind you that their reward for rebellion was a fall from grace followed by eternal damnation.
We who call ourselves Christians are supposed to be children of God. We who call ourselves Christians are supposed to be followers of Jesus. Children of God and followers of Jesus need to set the good example and show guidance to others, not fall in lockstep with the rebellious, many of whom don’t even believe that God exists.
As Christians, we need to lead the call for repentance in former Christian nations, not in an effort to bring those nations back to what they were previously (that will never happen), but to call forth any among them who still love God and still choose life. We need to remind those few, through the call to repentance, that rebellion against the way things are in the world – including restrictions on freedoms – is rebellion against God’s justice as it plays out in the world. We need to remind those few that God’s justice is perfect, and that to rebel against it is to rebel against God. We also need to remind those few what the rewards are for rebelling against God.
And we need to remind them what the rewards are for doing God’s will.
I hope I am preaching to the choir here, but I know there are some hearing this sermon who will reject its message and will continue to embrace rebellion. Those same people will also continue to call themselves Christians, even as they trail behind Satan, waving banners cursing their neighbour and doing the will of the Father of Lies. Some will do these things conscious that they’re rebelling against God, while others will do it blindly, lost in confusion.
But for those very few of you who understand that the way forward is through repentance, not rebellion – your job is to lead the way. Even if you’re the only one – lead the way. Stand separate from those who rebel. Repent and pray for those who have been blinded and have gone astray. It is the job of the Church to pray for those who are in the Church as well as for those who have gone astray. I see in the protests in former Christian nations only rebellion against God’s justice and curses against those who are administering it. These things should not be done by Christians.
This is a call to repentance to all those who choose life. The fall from grace of former Christian nations is nothing new, and neither is their rebellion against the rewards for choosing death. Scripture tells us that such falls from grace have happened before, but scripture also teaches us that the way forward is always to stand separate from the rebellious and to repent.
Stand separate, repent, and preach repentance, and you will receive the reward of repentance, which is freedom.
Run with the mob, rebel, and preach rebellion, and you will receive the reward of rebellion, which is slavery.
The choice, as always, is yours, but the right choice – the one that leads to life – is to stand separate, repent, and preach repentance.
May you always choose life.
Amen.
ON THE LAW, THE LAWS OF THE LAND, AND GUARANTEED RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS
MEADOWVILLE, Pictou County, Nova Scotia, February 11, 2022 – As a Christian, I know that the Ten Commandments are the Law for me. The Commandments tell me what I can and cannot do, and they comfort me.
At the same time, as a Canadian, I also know that I have rights and freedoms that are guaranteed to me under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom. The Charter is part of the Canadian Constitution and is the highest law of the land. No Canadian law is higher, and no Canadian law can supersede my rights and freedoms as a Canadian. Even under a state of emergency, my rights and freedoms remain intact. They cannot be nullified by any temporary directive or order. That is my guaranteed right as a Canadian.
I mention this because Paul knew his rights and freedoms as a Roman citizen. He was first and foremost a follower and apostle of Jesus, but he was also a Roman citizen. The rights afforded him as a Roman citizen gave him special protections by the Roman soldiers who helped him escape from the posse of temple elders who were planning to kill him. Being a Roman citizen also enabled Paul to live a life of relative freedom and comfort in Rome during the years he was awaiting trial.
While we’re yet in the world, we need to know what our rights and freedoms are in whatever country we are a citizen or resident. And not only do we need to know those rights and freedoms – we need to claim them, we need to assert them, and we need to stand on them, like Paul did. If we don’t know our rights, we can easily be misled by threats and coercion, or by the ignorance or malignance of people in positions of authority over us.
Case in point: Several years ago, I rented an apartment in Nova Scotia that was heated by electricity. The landlord told me, when I signed the lease, that the electricity bill was a certain amount per month on average. When it came time for me to move into the apartment, I called the power company to have the electricity account changed to my name. I also asked, out of curiosity, what the average power bill was. I was SHOCKED (pun intended lol) to hear that it was three times the amount I’d been told by the landlord.
When I got off the phone, I prayed. I knew there was no way I could afford the apartment with the power bill that high, and the apartment just wasn’t worth the high cost anyway. So I asked God to help me find a way out of the lease that wouldn’t involve me simply walking away from it.
He immediately had me go online to a website that had a verbatim copy of the Residential Tenancies Act, which are the laws governing landlord and tenant relations in Nova Scotia. I had never read the Act before. Once on that website, God guided me to the very clause that would get me out of the lease. I remember staring at it for a few minutes and thinking: “This can’t be real, I must be misunderstanding it”. So I called the government department responsible for landlord tenant issues and asked them to confirm whether the clause would in fact get me out of the lease. The woman I spoke with confirmed that it would. She herself had to consult with a colleague to make sure her interpretation of the clause was correct, because, as she confided, she’d been working at the department for over 20 years, and no-one had ever, to her knowledge, used that clause to get out of a lease.
I called the landlord and informed him that I was moving out (I’d never actually moved in) and told him why and on what grounds. The landlord then consulted with his lawyer about what I’d told him, and he was informed by his lawyer that the reason was sound and irrefutable. The lawyer also advised him to give me back all my money and to let me go. To the landlord’s credit, he did, and that was that.
Laws are made for a reason. God cherishes laws, and he wants us also to cherish them and to use them to our benefit. The Ten Commandments are there for our guidance and comfort, just as the laws of the land are there for our protection. Like Paul, we need to know the laws of the land pertaining to our rights, we need to claim them, we need to assert them, and we need to stand on them. For me, whether it’s the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms or the Residential Tenancies Act – these laws have been put there by God for my protection as much as the Commandments have been put there for my guidance and comfort.
God wants me, as his child, to take full advantage of every right and freedom afforded me as a Canadian. But it is my responsibility to learn about my rights under the various laws of the land, and then to assert them. No-one is going to do that for me; I have to do it for myself.
I invite you now to acquaint (or reacquaint) yourself with the laws of whatever land you’re living in. I’m going to post a link to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms below, for any Canadians who are reading this. As with the Commandments, we are responsible not only for knowing the laws, but for informing others about them. Informing others about them is as important as informing ourselves.
Remember – the rights afforded Canadian citizens under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms cannot by nullified under any circumstance, including a state of emergency.
May God bless you for reading this, and may you be blessed for keeping informed of – AND ASSERTING – your rightful freedoms. Just as God helped me to use a little-known law to get out of a deceitful lease, he will use his Law and the laws of the land to help all of his children thrive in the Kingdom and survive in the world. That’s his job as our Father.
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The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms: http://www.charter.ofrightsandfreedoms.ca/
GOD’S JUDGEMENT ON FORMER CHRISTIAN NATIONS
MEADOWVILLE, Pictou County, Nova Scotia, February 7, 2022 – A judgement is falling on former Christian nations.
It has come in the form of loss of freedoms and serves as a warning of worse to come if those nations don’t return to their Christian roots. A nation’s level of freedom reflects that nation’s godliness. Considering the current state of the world, it’s no wonder there are now few if any nations that we can honestly call free.
Canada, for example, is in the grips of near civil war for the first time in its history, but also for the first time in its history, only a minority of Canadians identify as Christian, while the majority voice their support for the mass murder of their fellow Canadians through abortion and euthanasia. Abortion has been legal in Canada for some time, and euthanasia was legalized in 2016. What’s changed over the past few years is the majority’s vocal support for these abominations. Murder-on-demand (i.e., abortion and euthanasia) has also become progressively easier to access as a free “healthcare service”.
Do you think a nation in which the vast majority of the population supports the mass murder of its most vulnerable deserves the same degree of freedom as a nation that deplores the mass murder of its people? Because I don’t in any way believe that an ungodly nation – which is what Canada has become in more ways than can be mentioned here – I don’t believe that an ungodly nation deserves the same degree of freedom as a godly one.
Like all formerly Christian nations, Canada has become a stronghold of the ungodly and is now reaping the rewards of that ungodliness through loss of freedoms, as well as through a crumbling economy, out-of-control immigration, appalling political leadership, and a state of near civil war. All formerly Christian nations are more or less in the same broken condition.
A nation where the majority has outright rejected God and his Messiah deserves very little freedom, and that appears to be what Canada has brought on itself. A nation’s leadership isn’t imposed on a people; a nation’s leadership is earned. So if the people of Canada are unhappy with their leaders, they have only themselves to blame.
I believe that scripture backs me up when I say that such a judgement has been seen before by those who strayed too far from God’s laws. The children of Israel also suffered the same warning judgments a few times in their history before God permanently cut them off. Christians are not yet at the point of being permanently cut off, but they’re definitely nearing it. They’re more at the stage where they’re about to be marched off to spiritual Babylon while their nation is plundered and destroyed.
I am not against a people’s cry for freedom – that cry rings loud and clear in my own heart – but freedom can’t reign where sin runs rampant, and sin is running rampant in former Christian nations. The only way out of this devolving situation is for the majority of the population to turn back to God, but I don’t see that happening any time soon, if ever. This is a dismal prognosis and an honest one.
The sole remedy is for the few remaining Christians to separate themselves, if not physically then at least spiritually, from those nations so that they don’t share in the judgement that is coming on all Christendom.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 