ON CAUTIONARY TALES
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, May 31, 2023 – I read the Bible cover-to-cover several times a year. I don’t stop after each word and mull it over, but I do get a good overview of the history of God’s people across the millennia. What I see is the same thing happening over and over again – God setting limits to people’s behavior through a covenant, people promising to abide by the covenant, the promise slowly being bent and then broken, God giving his people time to repent and turn back, God finally running out of patience, followed by a major upheaval… and then God setting a new covenant, his people promising to abide by the new covenant, the slow bending and breaking of the new covenant, and so on, and so on, and so on.
And yet despite the obvious cyclical nature of this process, most people haven’t learned from the mistakes of those who came before them because they keep making the same mistakes themselves.
It’s disheartening to read how easily people fall back into sin after promising God they won’t. It’s especially disheartening to read how people turn their back on God after they’ve heard (and to all appearances received) the Gospel.
Scripture says we’ll all be tried and tempted. I’m an expert at being tried and tempted, not to mention a poster child occasionally for what NOT to do when tried and tempted. Yet the whole purpose in God permitting us to make mistakes is that we learn from them so that we don’t make those same mistakes again. Jesus was very clear in his warnings to the people he’d helped not to sin again or they’d find themselves in a worse state. He said, and I quote: “Go, and do not sin again.”
Ideally, we’d learn not only from our own mistakes but from each other’s mistakes as cautionary tales, so that we don’t make the same mistakes ourselves and go through the same suffering. Yes, ideally, we’d learn from each other’s mistakes, but this rarely happens. I guess maybe we learn best by personally suffering consequences, but just how many mistakes can we make before God’s patience runs out?
For some sins, we only get one chance. If we do the same thing again, after being explicitly warned not to do it, we may not get a second chance. It might be our spiritual undoing.
There is no judgement in this piece. I am not judging, simply pointing out that sin leads unavoidably to spiritual pain. The problem with spiritual pain is that most people when they feel it run to other people for help rather than to God. They hide from God, like Adam and Eve hid from God in the Garden of Eden after they’d eaten the forbidden fruit and suddenly realized they were naked.
Whole denominations with creeds that deviate from the Commandments exist solely because people are hiding from God. But if you hide from God and refuse to repent, God has no option but to turn the spiritual thumbscrews on you. When he does that, the pain is immense.
(And yes, I do speak from personal experience.)
Many people in the Bible were forced into similar situations when God had to resort to the spiritual thumbscrew option. The wise ones responded by immediately repenting in sackcloth and ashes but the foolish ones doubled down on their sin, continuing to refuse to repent. It’s all laid out there for us in the Bible, the right way and the wrong way to respond to God’s corrections. All God asks of us is to pick up the Good Book and read it and heed it.
Read it and heed it. That’s all he asks.
*****
Every time I read through the Bible, I get more and more frustrated with the people who didn’t heed it, and I’m not talking about the “heathens” here – I’m talking about God’s people who had full knowledge of God’s Laws and instructions, who willingly bound themselves to God’s covenants and then turned around and broke them. I get frustrated to the point where I don’t even want to read those passages any more, so I skip over them. I don’t want to read and reread what most of the kings after David did, the ones who purposely did evil in the sight of the Lord. So I skim through the kings until I get to the ones who did “that which was right in the sight of the Lord” and I read about them instead.
Jesus expressed the same frustration with the educated temple elite. They knew all of God’s Laws and had for the most part memorized the prophets, and yet there they were, raining all over Jesus’ parade and acting worse than the worst of the heathens. Recall that it wasn’t the heathen Romans who were agitating for Jesus’ execution (Pontius Pilate wanted to let him go); it was the temple elders who demanded that Jesus be crucified.
And so, it seems, we have two types of people who defy God – the ones who are ignorant of him (the so-called heathens) and the ones who think they know better than him and proudly refuse to repent, even when God applies the thumbscrews. The heathens we can get to with our prayers, but the proud (or what God in scripture calls the “stiff-necked” and “hard-hearted”) will have to suffer and suffer hard, like King Manasseh or like yours truly. The stiff-necked and hard-hearted need to be thoroughly broken before they can turn, if they ever do.
I know God doesn’t want me to be disheartened by the cycle of sin that repeats over and over in the Bible or by the record of those who fell and didn’t get back up. I know that every time I open the Good Book he wants me to learn from it so that I don’t fall into the same traps as other people, so that I’m encouraged and comforted by those who got it wrong at first but who eventually learned the right way, so that I’m encouraged and comforted by his kept promises.
The Bible is not meant to discourage and dishearten us – far from it. If it were meant to discourage and dishearten us, it would be promoted 24/7 by the mainstream media, and that clearly isn’t happening. Part of the reason why I keep this blog is to show what being a born-again believer looks like in real life. I’m not perfect, but that doesn’t stop me from aiming for perfection. I make mistakes every day and occasionally I make whoppers, but THANK GOD I crawl back to God and make amends as he sees fit. If it’s the thumbscrews, it’s the thumbscrews. Even Jesus’ closest disciples had to go through those occasionally.
*****
I hope that you pick up the Bible every day and read it. I hope that you learn from it and that if God’s Spirit convicts you in some way while you’re reading it, you accept the conviction and not hide from God. (You can’t hide from God anyway, so you might as well not even try.) I hope that you’re encouraged by God’s Word and fed by it so that it becomes part of you now and for all eternity, because all things that are good come from God and stay with you forever. Those are the treasures you take to Heaven; the rest you leave behind.
I hope that when God opens the Book of Life at the Judgment and reads from it, you’re in it. I hope that far from being a cautionary tale, you shine brightly like all of God’s saints, and while not perfect on Earth, you finally achieve perfection in Heaven. And I hope that when we both settle into our respective places in Heaven (if we both make it), we’ll visit each other. I know we’ll have a lot to talk about and a lot to laugh about, too. We won’t remember our mistakes that we made on Earth, but we will remember the good times – the godly times – and we’ll remember everything we’ve done and said in Heaven up to that point.
And we won’t have any more cautionary tales to share with each other ever again, just treasures.
OUTRAGED? PRAY!
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, May 26, 2023 – Every day, it seems, globalized corporations are releasing more and more explicit ad campaigns promoting degeneracy. The videos and images are meant to shock, not sell, as the aim of the campaigns is not to win customers but souls. They do that by trading in the currency of outrage.
Have you been outraged lately? Have you seen the images of the all-but-naked men parading around in high heels in libraries (of all places), thrusting their bikinied groin just inches from a child’s face? Have you seen the lite beer ads? How about the ad campaign for children’s “rainbow clothes” for “rainbow season”?
Christians, according to Christian forums, are in a constant state of outrage these days about what is happening all around them. But if an ad is obviously aimed to shock and promote outrage, Christians need to step back and take the high road.
Outrage will get you nowhere good spiritually. Outrage fuels the devil and makes him stronger. Jesus told us to be offended in nothing, and that includes satanically inspired ads meant to shock you into outrage. We’re not to be outraged. We’re to pray, not denigrate; bless, not curse; do good, not evil. That’s what Jesus taught us.
Prayer, as I’ve said many times here on this blog, is the most powerful force in the universe. When you bypass outrage and go straight to prayer, you give God permission to intervene in the situation. When God intervenes, he knows exactly what to do. He knows all the sweet spots of every soul on Earth; he knows exactly what to whisper in the ears of the lost at exactly the right time. We, on the other hand, don’t know the sweet spots or what or when to whisper, which is why we need to react with prayer, not outrage.
Jesus never protested. Scripture prophesied that the Messiah would not raise his voice in the streets like a rabble-rouser or an insurrectionist, and so he didn’t. The only time we see Jesus visibly angered is in the temple, when he overturned tables and whipped the money changers, which he did in accordance with prophecy.
Outrage is not a valid Christian response to worldly provocations. Outrage is not righteous anger. What Jesus did in the temple is righteous anger. Getting mad at men who wobble around in high heels is not righteous anger. If something or someone provokes you, put aside your outrage and start praying. Ask God to intervene and to help and heal all those involved. That’s how you fight against the current tidal wave of degeneracy. That’s how you don’t sell your soul. If the devil wants you to be outraged because it makes him stronger and God’s Kingdom weaker, call his bluff.
Default directly to prayer.
That’s how you win this game.
THE DEMONS IN THE BASEMENT
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, May 24, 2023 – Years ago, when I was much younger and even more foolish than I am today, I used to hitchhike back and forth between Halifax and Vancouver in the summertime. I did it so often, it became like an annual pilgrimage to the west coast. During one of those pilgrimages, I got picked up by a young man, probably in his mid-20s, who took me to his basement apartment just outside Calgary. I spent the night there.
The apartment was filthy and had a strange stench that I could not identify. What looked like leftover meat was rotting on plates here and there around the kitchen and living room. I don’t remember much beyond the filth and mess and strange, strange smell. The place was very dim and the only functioning light was the hall light. Shortly after we arrived, I remember telling the guy I was tired and wanted to get to sleep early so I could leave first thing in the morning and try to make it to Vancouver by nightfall.
The guy led me to a small bedroom with a single bed and left me there alone. I laid down with my clothes still on and fell into a restless sleep that was punctuated every so often by the guy standing at the bedroom door, silhouetted by the hall light, asking if he could come into the room and ‘sleep’ with me (for decorum’s sake, I won’t use his exact words here). Every time he asked, I told him “No”, and he went away. This bizarre ritual went on all night, too many times to count.
At daybreak, groggy but determined to get the heck out of that apartment, I got up and gathered my few things together to leave. The guy was already up and sitting at the kitchen table waiting for me. I think he’d been sitting there all night. Without saying a word to each other, we left the apartment, got into his car, and drove to the closest highway onramp, where he pulled over and let me out.
I thanked him for the lift and for letting me spend the night at his place. He stared straight ahead as if he didn’t hear me and then drove off without saying a word.
I never saw him again.
Years later, for what I thought was the first time in my life, I was exposed to a dead human body that had begun to putrefy. The smell of the rotting corpse immediately took me back to that basement apartment all those years ago and the strange smell that I could not at the time identify. I finally knew what it was.
My hitchhiking as a teenager and young adult had exposed me to many dangerous scenarios that I was too naïve and foolish to understand were dangerous. But that man constantly asking my permission to come into the room to rape me was among the strangest of all the bizarre situations I’d ever found myself in. Until I was born-again, I didn’t understand why he didn’t just come into the bedroom and rape me, why he kept asking my permission to enter the room. Now I understand that he needed me to say “Yes” in order to break through the spiritual safety net that even as an unbeliever was all around me. I didn’t put the net there; God did, on behalf of the few people in my life who were praying for me.
The demons in the guy could not get past that spiritual barrier without my permission, which even in my youthful atheistic foolishness I wasn’t about to give.
I recalled this incident today after reading about a young man in Lethbridge, not far from Calgary, who’d held a woman captive in his basement for days, repeatedly raping her. I thought: There was a woman who had no safety net of prayers around her, not from her own prayers or the prayers of those who love her. I had no idea at the time that I was being protected by the prayers of my loved ones, but I know now that I was. God honored their prayers and protected me, even when I didn’t believe in him, even when I persecuted those who were praying for me.
We need to be reminded every now and then about the power of the prayers of God’s children. These prayers are the most powerful force in the universe because they allow God to directly intervene. I experienced that power as an unbeliever, when I was rescued on umpteen occasions from being raped and abducted or otherwise molested during my hitchhiking days. The strangeness of the protection, at the time, and how I escaped in ways that to me and to those who witnessed it defied logic, puzzled me for years until my rebirth. When I was born-again, I finally understood.
Please pray for those you know who need your prayers. They may not be believers and they may hate your guts but please pray for them. The safety net of my loved one’s prayers played a critical role in keeping me alive long enough to realize the error of my ways and turn back to God. I might not still be here – even worse, I might not be born-again – had it not been for those prayers.
Please pray for your loved ones, especially for the naïve and foolish ones who’ve lost their way. Your prayers may be the only thing standing between them and the demons.
GOD’S FORGIVEN YOU; HAVE YOU FORGIVEN YOURSELF?
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, May 23, 2023 – One of the devil’s classic tricks is to remind you about sins already forgiven by God. That’s the first part of the devil’s trick – reminding you of the sins. The second part is to get you to feel guilty about them all over again.
This two-part trick is a devil’s classic because it works (nearly) every time. How often do we hear people bemoaning what they did before they were Christians, relaying their deeds in gory detail and wondering how they can ever forgive themselves?
But when you say “how can I ever forgive myself” about a sin that God’s already forgiven, it’s like a slap in God’s face. It also shows profound spiritual ignorance. As born-again believers, we should not be spiritually ignorant, and if we are, we should work to overcome our ignorance through knowledge.
Did you know that when you resurrect your repented sins, you relive them in part? When you relive them, you partially reopen old wounds that otherwise would have remained closed and healed. You pick at the spiritual scab, as it were. And we all know what happens when you pick at a scab that’s covering open flesh: an infection can set in that’s worse than the original wound.
But even more concerning is that in resurrecting forgiven sins, you question God’s grace of forgiveness. When you’re reborn, you’re wiped clean. Every sin you’ve committed up to that point is forgiven, and when God forgives you, you are well and truly forgiven. You no longer are under conviction for any pre-rebirth sins. It doesn’t matter if people still throw those sins in your face; if God has forgiven you, you’re forgiven.
As for the sins you’ve committed since rebirth, if you’ve repented them, you’re forgiven them, and they assume the same status as your pre-rebirth sins, which means they’re expunged from your record.
I still occasionally get confronted by people who’ve rejected God. They dredge up old sins God’s long forgiven me and demand I pay some kind of emotional price for them. Since I no longer owe anything on those sins, I simply tell the people that I’m sorry they’re hurting, which I genuinely am. But I don’t apologize for what God’s already forgiven me, even if my lack of an apology makes the people angry.
If you know the devil’s tricks, you shouldn’t fall for them. God allows the devil to tempt and test us – whether in our own minds or through unbelievers – because he needs us to strengthen our faith and deepen our spiritual knowledge. Until we get Home, God will permit us to be tempted and tested by the devil. That’s just part of being human.
Is there something you’ve done that still haunts you on occasion? If you know God’s forgiven you (and you’ll know; he doesn’t keep those things a secret from you), then you need to forgive yourself. If the devil tries to play his classic trick of reminding you of those sins, just simply say to yourself “God’s forgiven me”, and that’s it. No mulling over the details, no “how can I ever forgive myself”. Just simply, “God’s forgiven me” and move on.
If an unbeliever throws a forgiven sin in your face, don’t apologize for it again (you have no reason to apologize); just tell them you’re sorry they’re hurting. If your lack of an apology for the sin angers them, let them be angry. Their anger is not your fault. Be sorry that they’re in pain (which comes from their unrepented sin), but don’t be sorry for sins you’ve repented and been forgiven. Never be sorry for those, because they don’t exist anymore, not in God’s eyes.
If God’s forgiven you, you are well and truly forgiven and you need to forgive yourself, no matter what the devil or unbelievers may do to convince you otherwise.
I AM WHO I AM
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, May 22, 2023 – It’s important to remind yourself every now and then that God called you to be YOU. It’s important to remind yourself, because the world will try to change you to be something that you’re not.
But God didn’t call you to be something that you’re not. He didn’t call you to change your personality or anything about you. He called you to be you, but with his Spirit in you.
When God puts his Spirit in you, the core essence of what makes you YOU does not change. If you had a sweet personality before you were born-again, you’ll continue to be sweet. If you had a salty personality before you were born-again, you’ll continue to be salty.
Your personality (what makes you YOU) doesn’t change when you’re born-again – your values change. What you believe changes. What you’re willing to fight and die for changes. But your personality doesn’t change.
So having an outspoken and bold personality, I get razzed every now and then for being abrasive. I’m told it’s not Christian to be abrasive. I’m told that being plain-speaking (not sugar-coating the Word) comes across as judgemental. I’m told not to judge.
But God called me to be who I am, just as he called you (if you’re born-again) to be who you are. If I had an abrasive personality before I was called and God still called me, then he has need of an abrasive personality in the Kingdom, and I’m happy to comply.
Every now and then, before I was born-again, I tried being a people-pleaser on for size, but it didn’t fit. I tried being nicey-nice, but that didn’t fit. I tried to like what I didn’t like or to agree with what I didn’t agree with or to go along just to get along, but none of those things worked for me. I felt like a fraud. I felt like I was pretending to be someone else, pretending to be something and someone I’m not.
So I stopped pretending and was just me. It didn’t win me many friends (or the support of many relatives), but at least I didn’t feel like an intruder in my own skin.
Shortly after I was born-again, I also tried (for a time) to be nicey-nice and to go along to get along, thinking I had to do so to “be Christian”. But even as a Christian, being nicey-nice didn’t suit me. I again felt like a fraud. So I decided that, Christian or not, and regardless of how people disliked it, I was going to continue to be a straight-shooter and not sugar-coat the Word, because that’s who I am, and who I am is how God made me and why he called me.
We need to remind ourselves of this every now and then, that God called us to be us. He didn’t call us to change our personality to please others. The last thing God would ever want me to do is to change my personality. He made me as I am for a reason. He called me for a reason. So if you’ve got a problem with the way I am, take it up with God.
Oh, and have a nice day. ;D
IS IT LOVE?
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, May 22, 2023 – There is no love without God.
Only God is love, so where God is not welcome, there can be no love.
What many people call love is a mimicry of love expressed through a wide range of emotions such as companionable comfort, physical desire, the need to be loved, and even obsession, but none of these emotions – however strong, enduring, or overwhelming – is love.
Where God is not involved, there can be no love, because God is love.
God rarely blesses relationships these days because most people exclude him from their lives. Where God is not invited to bless a relationship and where the people in the relationship are not living godly lives, what these people feel for each other is not love, even though they might label it as such.
God will not go where he is not welcome. If you live your life denying God and his Word, you will not experience love. You might experience what seems like love, but it isn’t love: It can’t be love. If you’ve rejected God and Jesus, you’ve closed your heart to them, which means you’ve closed your heart to love.
We need to remember this indisputable spiritual fact when people who stand in open defiance of God insist that what they feel for each other is love, and then demand that we see it and accept it as such. The truth of the matter is that whatever these people feel for each other, it’s not love. How can it be love when God’s not involved?
You cannot force God to bless sin, and you cannot love God and support sin at the same time. As followers of Jesus, we are to pray for those who are deluded by sin into believing that what they feel is love, but we’re not obligated to support their delusion. When we support their delusion, we deny God and spit in the face of Jesus. We are under no obligation before God or any worldly authority to support the delusions of sinners; our obligation to sinners is to pray for them and to help them if they come to us for help (that is, to feed them if they’re hungry, give them a drink if they’re thirsty, house them if they’re homeless, clothe them if they’re naked, and visit them if they’re sick or in prison).
But we are not obligated to deny that God – and God only – is the sole source of love, and we are not obligated to bless a relationship rooted in sin.
Please remember that.
SLICK
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, May 20, 2023 – One characteristic that nearly all YouTube prophets have in common is that they’re slick.
They pique your interest with a catchy video title and then draw you into a spiel that usually opens and/or closes with a plea to subscribe to their channel. What they say in between the opening and closing frames is essentially filler for the plea to subscribe. They want your attention just long enough to get your contact info, which they will then either sell to a third party or use later to hit you up for donations.
I suspected already a few years ago that nearly all the most popular Christian video channels on YouTube had auto-generated content. I now suspect that even the videos that are hosted by people are using an AI-generated script. This is the easiest way around not knowing scripture or even being a Christian – just plug a theme and other specs into an AI, and it will generate the content for you. Heck, you don’t even need a human (let alone a believer) to deliver the AI-generated content anymore. You can just use an automated voice feature synched to a computer-generated “person”.
It’s difficult not to be disgusted by how cheaply God’s Word is held by those who only see it as an easy way to feed their ego or bilk people. To avoid getting angry about this, I remind myself that God can use anything to his benefit, including AI-generated text read by computer-generated images on YouTube. If it didn’t have some capacity (however indirect) to benefit his Kingdom, God wouldn’t permit it to exist. So even slick YouTube prophet channels have their place in God’s grand plan.
Contrast these flashy presentations with those of genuine prophets, like Paul. By his own admission, he was awkward, stammered, and wasn’t much to look at. His letters were powerful, but his physical presence was unimpressive. The devil’s agents, on the other hand, are almost always charming, charismatic, persuasive, and good-looking. They draw you in with their slick words, like snake-oil salesmen have been doing since the beginning of time. Knowing that what they’re telling you is a lie or at best half-truths, they compensate with a shiny and seductive surface.
It’s hard not to be tantalized by the superficially attractive because God made us to be attracted to beauty. Slickness has all the appearance of beauty, but without the substance. Spend too much time on this or that YouTube channel watching this or that false prophet, and you start to feel like you’ve eaten way too much dollar store candy.
Jesus is our gold standard in everything we do, including how we share God’s Word. No-one could ever accuse him of being slick, but he wasn’t awkward or clumsy, either. He was the full package, the real deal – confident but not boastful, authoritative but not demanding, engaging but not cloying. He simply relayed what God asked him to relay, and those who had ears to hear heard.
I understand that some people feel the need to do whatever they need to do for clicks and subscribers, but that’s not how God wants us to relay his Word. We’re not midway barkers at a county fair, shouting ourselves hoarse at passersby and trying to hustle customers over to our target-shooting booth. We’re God’s messengers and prophets. Not everyone listened to Jesus, and not everyone’s going to listen to us, no matter what kind of gimmick we might feel compelled to use to catch their attention.
Here’s a thought – instead of trying to catch people’s attention, let God bring people to you. Let God bring whoever needs to hear what he’s relaying through you. When Jesus walked from village to village, he didn’t look for people to heal; he healed those who came to him or were brought to him. God was his agent. We need to understand that the same dynamic is at play today, that God still uses his messengers and prophets in the same way as he used Jesus, and that God is our agent, too.
We’re to make ourselves visible and available as we preach and teach the Word, but we’re not to be slick or push ourselves on anyone. Jesus never pushed himself on anyone or resorted to hype. He simply relayed what God asked him to relay and healed everyone who came to him for healing.
The rest he let be.
WHY WE WORSHIP GOD
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, May 20, 2023 – An unbeliever asked me yesterday why God needs us to worship him, which is an excellent question. You can always count on unbelievers to ask the hardest-hitting and most uncompromising questions. The short answer I gave him is that God doesn’t need us to worship him; he doesn’t need anything from us. We need to worship him, and to do so for our own benefit, not for his.
When we worship God, we benefit.
Case in point. I had an unsettling dream last night that left me with an accusing mindset when I woke up. Still half asleep, I was mulling over the dream in my mind when I heard a choir of what I can only assume were angels singing a song of worship to God. I listened for a few seconds and then I couldn’t help but join in. It was a very simple and very catchy tune (it just went up and down the scale) with very simple lyrics, so I picked it up fast. As soon as I started singing, the accusing mindset melted away and the unsettled feeling resolved into joy.
Glory!
Glory all together!
Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!
Glory all together! Praise the Lord!
In the name of Jesus!
Praise the Lord!
This is why we worship God. When we praise him, his joy finds an outlet through our worship, however we choose to express it. When we worship God, it opens all our spiritual doors and windows, enabling his Spirit to work powerfully through us. While it’s true that God’s Spirit is always with us born-again believers (if God’s Spirit isn’t with us, we aren’t born-again), praising and worshiping God – especially through singing – amps up the measure of the Spirit God has given each of us. It doubles, triples, quadruples our measure of God’s Spirit during the time of worship, which is why people who love God love to worship God – it just feels good!
Worshiping God is the best thing we can do for ourselves, which is why God made worshiping (loving) him the first and foremost of his Commandments. Worshiping God is also the highest form of spiritual warfare: It steers us away from thinking things we shouldn’t by resolving any enmity we might have in our heart and putting our focus squarely on God.
So the next time someone asks you why an omnipotent God needs us to worship him, tell that person God doesn’t need anything from us; we need everything from him, especially his joy, which he’s made us to receive simply by worshiping him.
Glory!
Glory all together!
Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!
Glory all together! Praise the Lord!
In the name of Jesus!
Praise the Lord!
(* Repeat as many times as you need to!)
BIBLE-BURNING: HOW JESUS RESPONDS
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, May 19, 2023 – Someone sent me a video yesterday featuring a group of teen-agers burning Bibles. The person was outraged and assumed I would be, too. I can’t say I was happy to see the video, but I wasn’t outraged. I was deeply sad for the kids doing the burning and advised the person who sent me the video to pray for them, not be angry with them.
As Christians – and especially as born-again believers with God’s Holy Spirit with us 24/7 – we can’t respond to provocations the way the world does. Jesus tells us not to be offended in ANYTHING, and that includes Bible-burnings. The devil does these things (with God’s permission, by the way) to provoke us to hate rather than love, to curse rather than bless, and to dismiss certain people as being unworthy of our prayers rather than pray for them. The reason Jesus taught us to love our enemies specifically through prayers and blessings is that he knew we would be tempted to hate them and therefore not to pray for them and not to bless them.
And it is a temptation, the burning of a Bible. It’s a test to see whether you respond with love or with hate to the ones doing the burning. The devil’s betting that you’ll respond with hate, and God’s doing everything he can to get you to respond with love, including sending me to remind you how to react to the devil’s provocations.
It’s the devil’s job to provoke us, and he does it very well. Our job is to see the provocations as tests and temptations and to respond as Jesus taught us to respond, not as the world or our emotions goad us to respond.
I said a prayer for those kids yesterday, and I’m saying another one for them again today. I invite you to pray for them, too. They clearly need prayers.
If we don’t pray for them, who will?
I was blessed to have a grandmother who prayed for me for 36 years until I was finally freed from the devil’s bondage. I like to think that other people also prayed for me throughout the years, people I knew and maybe a few strangers, too, righteous people who saw in me a need for prayer and simply filled it. We need to remember that praying, not protesting and not outrage, is the most powerful force in the universe, and scripture says that the prayers of a righteous man availeth much. If we’re born-again, we’re righteous by default through the presence of God’s Holy Spirit with us. So it’s our job to pray, as much as it’s the devil’s job to tempt.
As you watch this video, please focus on the kids, not the Bibles. The Bibles can be replaced; the souls of the kids can’t. Even if all the Bibles in the world were burned, God’s Word would remain because it doesn’t live in a book; it lives in the hearts and minds of believers.
Please pray for these kids. And while you’re at it, maybe think about getting another Bible to have on hand for someone who may need it some day.
ARE YOU A MISERABLE CHRISTIAN? HERE’S THE SOLUTION
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, May 16, 2023 – At the root of every miserable Christian with weak faith and a messed-up life is unforgiveness, is a bitter heart, is finger-pointing and a refusal to let go of grievances.
John, in one of his letters, says that you can’t love God and at the same time hold a grievance against someone. Holding a grievance cancels out your love for God. What’s worse is that holding a grievance while saying you love God makes you a hypocrite, because you can’t hate and love at the same time. If you hate someone (which is what you’re doing if you hold a grievance against them), it’s impossible to love God.
And you know what Jesus says about hypocrites.
You definitely do not want to be on Jesus’ hypocrite list.
Did you know that you cannot get into Heaven with bitterness in your heart? If you die with a bitter heart you go to Hell first, and then to the lake of fire for all eternity. That’s the reward for having a bitter heart from refusing to let go of a grievance.
Having faith in God and Jesus necessarily means that you love them and trust them, but you can’t love them and trust them and at the same time hold a grievance against someone. It’s impossible to do that, and if you say you’re doing it, you’re lying to yourself.
Do you have any bitterness in your heart? Is there someone you’re still blaming, someone you talk about when they’re not around, rehashing what they did to you? Maybe you still throw it in their face when you talk to them. Maybe you don’t do it directly; maybe you just mention the grievance in passing. Or maybe your grievance is against the government or against a system you see as stacked against you. Maybe you’re blaming society in general or even the devil. Whatever it is, if it involves finger-pointing, you show that you’re still blaming, still hanging onto your grievance.
If you’ve forgiven someone – genuinely forgiven them – you don’t talk about the grievance anymore, not to your friends, not to your relatives, not to your lawyer, not to law enforcement, not to your therapist, not to your priest or minister, not to the person you’ve forgiven, not even to yourself OR TO GOD. If the grievance comes to mind, you simply say within your heart “I’ve chosen to forgive”. Anything else means you haven’t.
It’s important to note that you need to make the choice to forgive as many times as the grievance comes to mind. If it comes to mind 70 times 7 times a day (or more), you make the choice to forgive 70 times 7 times a day (or more). It’s that simple.
Did you know that a heart bitter with unforgiveness will separate you from God? If you’re separated from God, you’re separated from Jesus, and if you’re separated from God and Jesus, there’s no way you’re going to make it Home, never mind the miserable messed-up life you’re going have for the rest of your time on Earth.
At the root of every messed-up, weak-in-the-faith, unhappy Christian is a bitter heart that is harbouring unforgiveness. The only way to overcome it is to make the choice to forgive (as many times as you have to), and then God can forgive (heal) you.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 