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DISCLAIMER FOR UNBELIEVERS
It has been my intention from the very start of this blog to reach out to born-again believers, not unbelievers or people who identify as Christian but are not born-again. This is not an evangelizing blog. If you’re not born-again and you’re reading this, please be advised that it’s not written for you. I wouldn’t go so far as to say you’re not welcome here, but I will warn you that you won’t find anything of interest here and it will likely offend you. At the very least, it will not make much sense to you, as it’s not written in your tongue.
BLOG FOR BELIEVERS
My sole intention here is to reach out to other born-again believers. More specifically, I started this blog to be a virtual “safe space” for born-again believers, a place we can feel at home in the vast wasteland of the internet. In the early days of the Church, believers would find safe spaces in the homes of other believers, but those places were few and far between (because believers were few and far between), and outside their walls danger lurked everywhere. The same is true in the Church today regarding the fewness of true believers, but instead of street addresses, we have web addresses to take refuge. Even so, danger still surrounds us.
The world is not our friend. You can’t fully trust people who are not born-again because they don’t believe they’re answerable to God. Dealing with people who don’t consider themselves answerable to God means you’re always dealing with some degree of risk. Cultural norms and the laws of the land only extend so far in reining in people’s desires to do as they please. If this weren’t true, we wouldn’t need cultural norms and laws.
Paul advised us to be at peace with everyone as much as is possible, which means that even in our risky dealings with people of the world (all dealings with people of the world are risky) we should be kind. This can be challenging, yet Jesus was kind even to Judas Iscariot, both during his ministry years and at his arrest. Jesus knew from the outset who and what Judas was, but he treated him the same as he treated all the other disciples. This is the model we should follow in our dealings with the world. We should be kind but never compromise who we are and what we believe just to “keep the peace”. Kindness is not weakness.
If people are offended by who and what we are, the problem is with them, not us.
Jesus said that if we make it Home, we’ll be like the angels in Heaven. My understanding of heavenly angels is that God sends them on missions to protect, rescue, warn, advise, and inform people, whether believers or not. He also uses his heavenly angels to deliver some of his punishing rewards. In a sense, our time here on Earth is a form of training to prepare us to take our place among God’s angels in Heaven and to go on the same missions they do. Being kind to the unkind, especially under challenging circumstances, is a major part of that training, which is why Jesus taught us to love our enemies.
We live and move among God’s enemies. If they’re God’s enemies, they’re our enemies. Most if not all of our in-person dealings are with unbelievers. This makes the world an incredibly hostile place for us. We tend to forget how spiritually hostile the world is because we’ve adapted to it over time and so don’t always notice it. God also works hard to keep us from focusing on the omnipresent dangers around us and to protect us from them. Without God’s diversion and protection strategy, we wouldn’t last a minute.
I write this today as a reminder of how we’re separate from the world. We’re not physically separate; we’re spiritually separate. We’re spiritually marked as God’s people, and the spiritual realm acknowledges this distinction. It then plays out in our interactions with the world. Jesus said that for his namesake we would be hated without cause, and so we are. We get under people’s skin simply for existing. And the minute we speak up in defence of God and Jesus, the hellhounds are released. I’ve seen it time and time again. Their barks are startling and their growls can be menacing, but they can’t bite us, the hellhounds, not on God’s watch: Not until it’s our time.
I’m now entering the 10th year of keeping this blog. Whether I’ll be keeping it for another 10 is up to God, but if I have a say in the matter, I’d rather go Home. Like Jesus, I want to get done whatever needs to get done and get outta here. I know what Heaven is; God’s shown me “sneak-peeks” of what he has waiting for me, and I’m getting more and more impatient to be there.
The world can only grow worse and worse even as we need to grow better and better. For whatever time we have left here, we need to rise above the decay and degeneracy and continue to grow what God has planted in us. We must never stop tending what God has planted. We must never say: “Well, I’ve done my part. I’ve done enough” and slide into complacency.
We are God’s Church: every born-again believer is in God’s Church and is God’s Church. There is only one Church and has only ever been one Church – the one Jesus established nearly 2000 years ago. There are no denominations within God’s Church. There’s just us. We should be humbled by this knowledge. We should never boast that we’re born-again believers or crow that we’re children of God. We should never be proud that we’re God’s Church. We should be humbled and grateful and honored and full of the fear of the Lord, like Jesus was, and oh, so careful to remain in God’s Church, because it’s not a given that we’ll remain here, any more than Heaven is a given.
We work out our salvation with fear and trembling, as Paul warned us; we don’t work it out with boasting and cockiness. We don’t work it out with complacency and compromise. We don’t work it out with demands on God to do this or to do that: We work out our salvation with fear and trembling and with gratitude for everything God does, whether we understand it or not, whether we see its benefits or not. Every day and in every circumstance, we submit ourselves humbly and entirely to God and let him take it from there.
YOUR CROSS
CHARLO, New Brunswick, February 8, 2024 – When Jesus advised us to pick up our cross daily, he didn’t mean what most people today think he meant. The cross Jesus was talking about isn’t what most of us envision when we think of a cross. During the heyday of the Roman Empire, a cross was simply the crossbar that was used in crucifixions; it was a large and heavy piece of wood that was affixed crossways to a tree or pole, which is why it was called a cross. The cross was separate from the tree or pole and was fastened to either one or the other during a crucifixion and then removed after the prisoner was dead. The cross would then be reused for the next crucifixion, as would the tree or pole. The cross was mobile; the tree and pole weren’t.
So when Jesus told us we should pick up our cross daily, he was referring to that large and heavy mobile straight piece of wood that was intended to be carried by the condemned to the execution site, where it would then be affixed to a tree or pole and the prisoner hung on it with cords or nails until he or she died.
The structure that was temporarily formed from these two separate pieces of wood was not called a cross in Jesus’ day; only the crossbar was called a cross. At some point, the entire structure took on the name of the cross and became symbolic of Jesus and Christianity. I’m not sure this has been to our benefit, for the following reason.
If you’ll recall, along with picking up and carrying our cross daily, Jesus also invited us to take his yoke upon us. What he meant was that we should yoke ourselves to him, like cattle are yoked together, two by two, in a team. He said that the burden of his yoke would be easy and light. Like the cross reference, the yoke reference would have been readily understood by his contemporary audience. These references aren’t quite as well understood today, mainly because we don’t often see cattle yoked together and working in a field anymore, but also because of the confusion caused by what was meant by a cross in Jesus’ day and what is meant by a cross today.
I don’t know about you, but the yoke reference made a lot more sense to me after I found out what a cross was in ancient Roman times. I could envision the two different pieces of wood being used interchangeably as a metaphor, and I think that’s what Jesus was aiming for when he talked about the cross and the yoke. In both cases, whether we’re labouring under a crossbar or a yoke, we’re labouring side-by-side with Jesus, we’re following along next to him in his footsteps and he’s helping us carry our burden. He’s gently showing us what to do next and how to do it, and he’s quietly encouraging us every step of the way. As followers and disciples of Jesus, we’re working in tandem with him; we’re not working with other people: We’re working with Jesus.
Sometimes we’re plowing. Sometimes we’re harvesting. And sometimes we’re being driven to the slaughterhouse or to a place of sacrifice. But regardless of the type of task, test, or temptation we’ve been given, Jesus is always right there next to us, carrying the lion’s share of the load. We can be absolutely sure of this because he told us he would be doing just that.
And I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of anyone I would rather be yoked together with in my labours daily than Jesus.
GOD’S BABIES
For since the beginning of the world men have not heard nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen… what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him.
Isaiah 64:4
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, February 4, 2024 – Forget the Museum of Natural History. Don’t waste your time watching Jurassic Park. Why pore over old bones locked up in dusty display cases or sit in the dark staring at CGI dinosaurs when you can live the real thing, up close and personal, in Heaven?
Every creature that once roamed the Earth has a forever home in the celestial realm, and they’re all tame and friendly and surprisingly quite talkative. That’s right – if you make it to Heaven, you’ll not only see the dinosaurs, along with every furry, scaly, feathery, and leathery creature that’s ever existed, you’ll be able to talk with them as easily and as naturally as Adam once talked with the animals in Eden. You’ll be able to hang out with them and go on adventures with them. And the best thing (for me, anyway) is that glorified creatures don’t bite, sting, scratch, or poop, not in Heaven. Nothing bites, stings, scratches, or poops in Heaven.
I mention this about God’s glorified creatures because as lovely as Earth is and as blessed as we are to be here and to have Earth as our temporary address, it doesn’t hold a candle to Home. It just doesn’t. On a scale of 1 to a million in wonderfulness, with “1” being occasionally wonderful and “a million” being mind-blowing, Heaven soars beyond countability while Earth barely hangs on to “1”.
Not to denigrate Earth. I would never do that. I’m grateful to be here and I love what God’s done with the place. But God doesn’t want us to get too attached to our earthly lives or to his time-and-space-bound imperfect creation. He wants us to enjoy everything, certainly (he specifically made it for our use and pleasure), but he doesn’t want us to get too attached. Earth is like a glossy brochure, a 30-second ad, a sneak-peek preview of what’s waiting for us at Home. And not surprisingly, the dinosaurs are as much of a draw in Heaven as they are on Earth.
Of all the sights that await us in Paradise, the plants and animals will probably overwhelm us the most (that is, after we recuperate from our first glimpse of God!). And we’ll see all of God’s creatures in Heaven, not just the ones we’re familiar with. We’ll see plants and animals that are long extinct and for which no bones or fossilized remains have been found, and we’ll see plants and animals that were never on Earth. Quoting Isaiah, Paul reminds us that what God has prepared for us in Heaven is beyond our comprehension. In other words, we, as humans, not only have no point of reference on Earth, we simply don’t have the capacity to comprehend what’s waiting for us. A big part of that unimaginability is the glorified plants and animals in every conceivable (and inconceivable) size, shape, color, texture, and personality.
All of our beloved pets make it Home, too. The ones that are no longer here are there. (There’s no third option for them: they’re either here or there). So you can imagine how big Heaven must be, if every creature that ever lived on Earth is now in Heaven! I find this to be a great comfort as well as an ongoing source of amazement. When I think about my pets being perfected and permanently safe and happy in their real forever home, I can’t thank God enough and I want to be there with them as soon as I can. Knowing they’re in Heaven massively motivates me to get my butt Home.
Theologians and preachers don’t talk much about plants and animals, but they should, since God’s creatures are all over his Word, from Genesis to Revelation. Plants and animals play a huge part in God’s plan of redemption and also feature prominently in scriptural visions of Paradise. My little piece of Heaven that God shows me is full of my favourite plants and animals, all perfected and waiting for me. God has done this, showing the depth of his love for me, just as he’s done the same for you, showing the depth of his love for you. God loves his creatures so much, he’s even surrounded his throne with them. They’re always in his presence. (They’re his pets!) We’ll get to meet God’s pets, too, some day, if and when we make it Home.
And in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four beasts full of eyes before and behind. And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle. And the four beasts had six wings… and they were full of eyes… and they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God almighty….
Revelation 4:6-8
Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit….
Corinthians 2:9
I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.
Matthew 11:25
HOW THE DEVIL EMASCULATES GOD’S WORD
They have filled the land with violence and have returned to provoke me with anger…. Therefore will I also deal in fury: mine eyes shall not spare, neither will I have pity: and though they cry in mine ears with a loud voice, I will not hear them….
I will recompense their way upon their head.
CHARLO, New Brunswick, January 22, 2024 – The quote above is from Ezekiel (8:17-18/9:10), where God explains what he is about to do to his own people, and why. As with everywhere else in the Bible, God does not mince his words. He is not afraid to offend Ezekiel’s sensibilities: He simply says what he means.
Most Christians no longer say what God means. They’ve been trained by the devil to sugar-coat and even compromise God’s Word so as not to offend or hurt people’s feelings. For example, Christians are now watering down what love means to include sinful acts, again for the sake of not hurting people’s feelings or risking “alienating” anyone.
But we as born-again believers are not in the business of being nice or popular; we are not trained by the devil. Prophets of God should never sugar-coat God’s Word so as not to hurt people’s sensibilities. Our job is to represent God and to speak his Truth as he reveals it to us, no compromise.
And God’s Truth is at time intensely hurtful. It’s meant to be. God uses emotional and physical pain as a way to get people’s attention – to snap them out of their sinful delusions. He also uses pain as a reward for ungodly behavior (as evidenced in the opening quote) and as a test. Allowing people to experience pain is part and parcel of who God is. We can’t expect to go through this life, whether as a sinner or a saint, and not experience some level of emotional or physical pain.
In other words, God doesn’t shy from doing what needs to be done. His justice, like everything else about him, is perfect, and sometimes his justice requires the swift, mass, and fatal infliction of pain even in his own people as their due reward. You cannot sugar-coat this reality or you risk offending God. Yet as we see in the watering down of the meaning of “love”, many Christians have no problem offending God as long as people still like them.
I have zero problems offending Christians if the choice is between speaking God’s Truth and not hurting someone’s feelings. In fact, my consistent choice to offend Christians by speaking God’s Truth has become my calling card. Most pastors caution that we should be speaking God’s Word in “love” and “grace”, again with an eye not to offend or alienate, but I don’t see any attempt by God, in Ezekiel or elsewhere, to water down the description of what he intends to do to his people. The unadulterated Truth of God is that pain is part of love and that pain is part of grace. To deny that reality is to speak the lies of the devil rather than God’s Truth.
The devil scores points when we bend and twist God’s Word so as not to offend. He’s taught even God’s people to do this and continuously whispers in our ear to act “in love”, after having redefined love as meaning “good feels” rather than evidence of God’s presence. But when you reduce God to good feels and restrict his prophets to not hurting anyone’s feelings, you emasculate them. Misrepresenting God and his Word is not acting in love; it’s supporting and promoting sin.
We cannot, as born-again believers, tolerate the misrepresentation of God and his Word, any more than we tolerate any other sin. We call it sin and refuse to participate in it. Our job is not to mollify people’s sensibilities but to speak God’s Truth boldly and as he gives us permission and instruction to speak it. It is the greatest of all privileges to be a prophet and child of God, to be called his people, but it’s not a free ride: there are equally great responsibilities in being such. I’m not saying you should set up a soapbox in the middle of a pride parade and start railing against sin – no. That is not the time or place to speak God’s Truth. But if someone in a space designated as God’s House demands that sin be tolerated, you have an obligation to speak God’s Truth, and that obligation is to God.
God has no problem obliterating even his own people if his justice calls for it. That is who God is. As his prophets speaking his Word in Truth, we need to remind “those who have ears to hear” that God is revealed as much in Ezekiel 8 and 9 as he is in John 3:16, and that the same God of John 3:16 will not hesitate to Ezekiel 8 and 9 you, if you have it coming.
I tell you all this because the devil certainly won’t, and the devil has infiltrated all denominational churches, emasculating the pastors and their congregations by watering down God’s Word. This is not what Jesus had in mind when he said we should become eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven’s sake. Jesus modeled what it is to be a child of God, and if you’ll recall, he was his boldest and hardest hitting when speaking God’s Truth to those who should have known better. There was zero compromise and zero sugar-coating in his confrontations. Jesus had no trouble revealing that side of himself or that side of God when circumstances called for it.
Neither should we.
THE ONE-STEP PROGRAM
MCLEODS, New Brunswick, January 19, 2024 – A while back, I attended a Bible Study at a homeless shelter. I only went for a few sessions, as I quickly learned that the study was less about the Bible and more about persuading the participants to attend the 12-step addictions program meeting held in the same room as the Bible Study, but on different days.
I will say from the outset – full disclosure – that I am not a fan of the 12-step program. I’m definitely not a fan of it for Christians, but I’m also leery of it for non-believers. I think at its core it’s a cult that aims to suck you in for life and make you dependent on it. It also aims to get you to bring others into the cult. I do not buy their assertion that alcoholism or any other kind of addiction is a disease. I do not buy that a person who hasn’t had a drink in decades should still privately and publicly label him- or herself an alcoholic. I do not buy that you need to lean on “mentors” for support rather than God. And I definitely don’t buy that you refer to God as a “higher power” rather than God. Frankly, the whole program and the people who run it give me the creeps. I think the higher power they worship is not God.
As I said – full disclosure. I never mince my words for believers.
If you’re a Christian, you don’t need a 12-step program because you’ve got the one-step program, courtesy of Jesus. The one-step program is calling out to God for help, in Jesus’ name. If you sincerely call out to God for help, he will help you. That is his promise, graven in scripture and on your heart. But if you only half-heartedly call out for help or do so in a double-minded way, God won’t help you. That is also graven in scripture. If you call yourself a Christian but then run to other people for help, God will probably also not help you. And if you call yourself a Christian and then bypass the one-step program for the 12-step program, you no longer have a right to call yourself a Christian.
What is a Christian? A Christian is a born-again follower of Jesus. As a born-again follower of Jesus, a Christian does what Jesus taught, guided, instructed, and directed his followers to do. Jesus taught them to go directly to God for help, in his name. Jesus did not say to go to other people for help: He said to go directly to God.
I’m talking to Christians here. If you’re suffering from some kind of addiction or obsession or something that keeps popping up in your life that you know is not right, you run to God for help. You don’t run to a doctor or a counsellor or a friend or a spouse or a minister or a priest or a 12-step program mentor. You run to God in Jesus’ name. You 100% submit to God, and he will help you. Sure, you can run to a doctor or a counsellor or a 12-step program mentor or even Santa Claus, if you want to (you still have free will as a Christian), but the only help you’ll get from them is the help that they can provide, which is a far cry from the help God can give you.
When God helps, he heals miraculously, and the healing, when it comes, is instantaneous, full, and permanent. Almighty God “makes whole”, which is the very definition of healing. People who offer their help, whether informally or professionally, usually only treat the symptoms, and that over a long period of time, and only partially and temporarily, and at great emotional and financial cost.
I was healed by God. I cried out for help and God healed me. He didn’t make me perfect; he made me spiritually whole. At the same time, he put his Holy Spirit in me and I became a follower of Jesus. The whole thing happened in an instant but has remained my reality for nearly 25 years.
Again, God made me whole at my rebirth; he didn’t make me perfect. I still have temptations and tests to grapple with, but I run to God for help with those and he always helps me, fully, instantaneously, and permanently. So when I tell you to run to God in Jesus’ name, I’m not simply repeating what Jesus told us to do: I’m telling you from deep personal experience gained over a long period of time as a born-again believer.
Submit yourself 100% to God in Jesus’ name, and God will help you.
It takes only one step.
In Jesus’ name.
Amen.
ARE YOU HELPING FOR GOOD OR IN VAIN?
MCLEODS, New Brunswick, January 17, 2024 – Jesus spent his entire ministry helping people. In fact, helping people was the reason God sent him. As Jesus’ followers, we also have that same impulse baked into us to help people: It’s part of who and what we are as Christians: we can’t help but help. Certainly, helping people is a good thing in and of itself, but we need to remember that Jesus didn’t just go around randomly helping people for the sake of it; he waited for God to show him who he was to help and how he was to do it, and then he helped them.
I was reminded of this when I read an article the other day about a homeless encampment in suburban Halifax. The camp has been growing for months on an unused baseball diamond and has gained some notoriety through constant media coverage. The fall-out from all the publicity is that members of the general public – including some local churches – have started dropping off “donations” to the homeless at the camp. These are usually in the form of food, gift cards, clothing, tents, sleeping bags and other camping items, and personal care products. Some people also drop off cash.
The reason the camp was in the news on that particular day is that a drug dealer had set up camp (literally, in a trailer) next to the homeless encampment. Using the camp as his cover, he’d been plying his trade for months. When the dealer was arrested and his trailer seized, the police found hundreds of gift cards as well as unused winter clothing, sleeping bags, tents, and other items with street value. The police also found a large amount of cash.
While no witnesses have come forward to attest to the homeless people at the camp trading their donated goods for drugs, the evidence is overwhelming. Thinking they were helping the homeless, the people who’d dropped off donations were in fact only helping the drug trade and enabling the drug-addicted homeless to sink deeper into their own personal mire. In other words, they were making a bad situation worse.
What the general public chooses to do is their business, and I would never tell them who or how to help. It’s not my job to do that. But what Christians do or don’t do is very much my business. We’re here to help each other as much as we’re here to help non-Christians. Please allow me, then, to offer you a gentle reminder (for those who need it) about the importance of helping people the way Jesus helped them and the way God invites us to help them.
First and foremost – wait for God to show you who and how to help. If you wait for God to show you, he will also enable you, and the help you provide will be blessed. When your help is enabled and blessed by God, it won’t end up in the hands of a drug dealer. It won’t make the situation worse. If you wait for God to specifically tell you who needs the help and how you can help them, you will genuinely be blessing people.
Secondly but just as importantly, “don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing”. In other words, don’t make a big show of your help. Don’t blow a horn and announce your help. Just do it.
And thirdly, let people know you’re happy to help them in any way you’re able to help them, and then leave the offer with them. Don’t force your help on anyone or guilt them into thinking they need your help. Wait for them to come to you. If they come to you, God has brought them to you, and God will help you help them.
I worked for a major international Christian charity several years ago on a short-term contract, coordinating the charity’s volunteers at Christmas time. My office was on the main floor of the main building, so I got to see all the comings and goings of the charity’s interactions with the general public. A few weeks before Christmas, an elderly woman dropped off a garbage bag full of mittens and hats she’d knitted over the past year, intended for the homeless and needy (there was a homeless shelter attached to the main building). She’d brought her donations to the charity assuming that the charity would then dispense the items to people who could use them. This was a tradition for the woman, that she’d donate a garbage bag full of her labours every year just before Christmas. The charity staff made a big deal of thanking her for her donation and waved her out the door. Then one of the staff took the bag of mittens and hats upstairs.
A few weeks later, just after Christmas, I was rummaging through one of the storage rooms to find a pair of winter boots for someone at the hostel, when lo and behold I stumbled across dozens of dusty garbage bags full of handknit mittens and hats, moldering in the dampness. By the looks of it, none of the woman’s donations over the years had gone any farther than that storage room, and now they were no good to anyone.
One of the most sobering parables in the Bible is the one about the people who’d attended church and performed miracles and preached in Jesus’ name but who were shut out of Heaven because they’d done all these things on their own volition. When we rush to help people without God’s prompting and guidance and without God’s blessing, we aren’t helping them in any real way and are likely only making things worse. As Christians, our job is to help people, but we need to help them as God guides us, in his way and in his timing. When we rush to help people just for the sake of helping them, our efforts are not unlike those who claimed to preach in Jesus’ name but who preached in vain because God hadn’t sent them.
David’s advice to “wait on the Lord” (Psalm 27) is as applicable to helping people as it is to every other aspect of our lives.
TO DO OR NOT TO DO: PRIORITIZING GOD
MCLEODS, New Brunswick, January 15, 2024 – Paul mentions how we’re always doing the things we shouldn’t be doing and not doing the things we should. He was talking here about things that are right in God’s eyes and how we have a tendency to slide towards the sinful rather than the righteous. He’s not wrong about that. Even Jesus had his moments when he had to rein in the tendency that was trying to pull him away from a righteous response. Thank God he always had the upper hand, regardless of the circumstance; we, on the other hand, not so much.
I was reminded today of our tendency to slide towards the sinful, but in a different context. I caught myself thinking how I never seem to have enough time to do the things I’d planned to do in the run of a day. I reasoned with myself (in my defence) that there are only so many hours in the day, and of those hours, only so many when I’m awake, and of those I’m awake, only so many when I’m fully functional, and of those when I’m fully functional, only so many when I’m operating at the top of my game. Yes, I’m being somewhat facetious about the “operating at the top of my game” part, but you get the gist. When you’re operating at the top of your game, everything flows, and you’re not so much “in the moment” as you are the moment.
As for the non-glorious rest of my waking hours, my “to do” list is perpetually longer than my day. What’s a poor sinner to do?
The answer, as always, can be found in scripture. If we do those things that we know we shouldn’t (or better said, if we don’t do those things we know we should), it’s because we prioritize the wrong things. It’s not rocket science. What you spend your time doing reflects your priorities.
But scripture very clearly tells us what our priority should be and how to make sure it stays a priority and dominates our waking hours. Note that I’m talking to believers here, not to unbelievers. What unbelievers choose to prioritize is not my business. They can prioritize whatever they want. My business is pointing out what believers should prioritize, and in a word, it’s God.
Believers should prioritize God.
Jesus says that that the most important Commandment is also the first Commandment, which is to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. So, our priority is to love God and to do so with every faculty and ability we have. So far, so good. Simple and straight-forward. But knowing we’re supposed to do something doesn’t necessarily translate to our doing it. If we know that loving God should be our priority, how do we avoid all the distractions trying to lure us away from doing it?
Remember that Jesus also had a to-do list. He worked ceaselessly even on the Sabbath, because his work was God’s work, which meant he could do it 24/7. But Jesus’ to-do list didn’t include vacuuming the house, doing the laundry, or shoveling the driveway. It didn’t include picking the kids up after school and taking them to the dentist’s. Jesus had one job and one job only – being God’s Messiah – and so everything on his to-do list reflected that.
What I’m saying is that if we feel we’re not giving enough of time to God, it’s because we’re not giving enough time to God. Full stop. And we’re not giving enough time to God because we’re not prioritizing God. If we’re not loving God (that is, if we’re not putting him at the center of everything we do and not doing what he’s showing us to do), it’s because we’re prioritizing something or someone else over God. We should never to this, not as believers. When we come to the Judgement and God asks us why we didn’t get around to doing the work he sent us to do, “sorry, I was too busy” is not going to fly as an excuse. Truth be told, at the point (the Judgement), no excuse is going to fly, so we’d better make sure we get our priorities straight before we get there.
Immediately after Jesus called them, his disciples gave up everything to make God their priority, and other than for Judas Iscariot, they continued to make God their priority for the rest of their time on Earth. They walked away from their families, their jobs, their homes, and their possessions – their entire focus from that point onward was God, and their entire to-do list was “do God’s work”, as was Jesus’ list.
If you’re genuinely born-again, you’ve been called to put God first and make him the only priority in your life. God doesn’t ask us to this because he’s an egomaniac who wants to dominate our every waking minute. Far from it. God asks us to put him first because he knows that’s the only way we’ll avoid sliding into distractions. If we prioritize anything or anyone other than God, we risk backsliding, and if we backslide long and far enough, we won’t make it Home.
So, what’s on your to-do list for today?
More importantly, what’s on your to-do list for tomorrow and every day after that?
WHEN YOU TAKE GOD SERIOUSLY
MCLEODS, New Brunswick, January 13, 2024 – Jesus didn’t spend his ministry looking for people who didn’t believe in God and trying to get them to believe. That wasn’t his aim or purpose. Jesus spent his ministry inviting people who already believed to commit to the highest level of belief that encompassed every aspect of their lives.
What he essentially did was to invite people to take God seriously.
As followers of Jesus, we should not only be taking God seriously but aiming to get others to take him seriously, too. We do this not by threatening them (as some religions do) but by reminding them of Jesus’ teachings.
What does it look like when you take God seriously?
First and foremost, you totally and willingly submit to God. You don’t submit 50% or 75% or even 99% – you submit 100%. When you take God seriously, you take him at his Word, which means you keep his Commandments, the first of which is to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. You don’t love God just a little bit or when it’s convenient for you, or just on Sundays for an hour during church service. You love him 24/7. You fall asleep thinking about God, you wake up thinking about God, and he’s on your mind all day long. God and Jesus are your constant companions, through God’s Holy Spirit that you received at your rebirth, and you do nothing without their prompting. Jesus said he only did what the Father showed him to do and only what pleased the Father. Jesus didn’t dream up this or that scheme and then run it by God for his approval; he waited for God to show him what to do. We’re to do the same.
When you take God seriously, you understand that he means business. Yes, God is loving and merciful, but he’s also just, which means he dictates and approves vengeance. The God of the Old Testament is the God of the New Testament. They are not different gods, as some would have you believe. The God who incinerated two of Aaron’s sons for burning incense to demons and then forbid Aaron to mourn them is the same God who lovingly called down from Heaven that Jesus is his son and we should listen to him. The same God who directed the children of Israel, under Joshua, to stone Achan and all his family to death and then to burn their corpses and heap rocks on their remains is the same God who sent his Holy Spirit to baptize the disciples at Pentecost. The same God who utterly and without remorse destroyed Sodom is the same God who lovingly nurtured John the Baptist in the wilderness.
What this means is that unless we want to end up like Aaron’s sons or Achan and his family or the people of Sodom, we need to take God seriously and thoroughly understand that he means business. It’s not enough to say that “God loves me” and “God is merciful” and “Jesus died for our sins so I’m covered” and then go on our merry way, living the life of the world. The hypocrites, as Jesus pointed out, thought that being children of Abraham was their spiritual covering and automatic ticket to Heaven, but they were dead wrong. We’re also dead wrong if we think that being followers of Jesus is our spiritual covering and automatic ticket to Heaven or that “pleading the blood of Jesus” is going to be a sufficient defense on Judgement Day.
Trust me – the last thing you’ll want to find out at the Judgement is that you are indeed judged on your every word, thought, and deed, just like Jesus warned us we would be. The devil is working overtime to get you to believe that’s not the case, that all you need is “faith” and to throw a little charity here and there and you’re good to go. The devil would have you believe that the Commandments are old school and optional, and that all that matters is “love”. He’s fooled a lot of people in that regard. I hope you’re not one of them.
When you take God seriously, your life looks nothing like the life of the world. You understand that, like Jesus, your time is short and you’re here only to do what God sends you to do. You don’t make long-term plans or any plans at all: You’re entirely in God’s hands. Also like Jesus, you don’t marry or have romantic relationships but instead become a eunuch for the Kingdom of Heaven’s sake. That doesn’t mean you cut off your genitals; it means you live as if you don’t have any. If you’re married, you leave your spouse. You don’t divorce, you separate. A spouse will only take your focus off God. So will children. You live celibately and without ties, attachments, or dependents. You don’t have a mortgage and you don’t have credit cards. You don’t take out loans. You owe nothing to anyone. You don’t own a house or land. If you have a job, you don’t have a boss. You work just enough to earn your daily bread and with the understanding that you might have to stop working from one day to the next. Your job is not your priority; your family is not your priority; your possessions are not your priority: God is your priority.
When you take God seriously, nothing written here shocks you or unsettles you. You agree with every word and see yourself reflected not in the hypocrites or in Achan and his family, but in Jesus. When you take God seriously, you respond with enthusiasm to his invitation to take your commitment to the highest level and you send God your RSVP right away; you don’t make excuses as to why you can’t or won’t: You simply do it.
When you take God seriously, spending all day, every day, with him and Jesus is not an obligation or an imposition: It’s pure pleasure. It’s life itself, outside which there is no life.
When you take God seriously, you do the right thing for no other reason than it is the right thing. You treat everyone as you would want to be treated, no exceptions. And if you fall short of these aims (and you will, we all do; only Jesus didn’t) – if you fall short, you make your amends and you keep going. You don’t wallow in self-pity or self-loathing; you don’t tear out your hair and berate yourself publicly or privately; you don’t make excuses or point fingers of blame: you make your amends and you keep going.
When you take God seriously, your life is blessed morning, noon, and night, wherever you are and wherever you go. You’re the happiest creature on Earth, when you take God seriously.
THE QUESTION
“Do you need to pee?”
“No.”
“Pee anyway.”
This is how our family trips would start when I was a kid. It was like a ritual. Before we piled into the back seat of the car with Dad patiently waiting behind the wheel, my mother would stand at the front door and ask us The Question. We’d always say “no”, she’d always tell us to pee anyway, and then we’d race to the bathroom. One by one we’d take our turn, and we’d always manage to squeeze out at least a trickle. It never ceased to amaze us how our mother knew our urinary tract better than we did.
Now let’s put this in a spiritual context:
“Do you need to repent?”
“No.”
“Repent anyway.”
I’m wondering how many of you reading this will deny your need to repent. I’m wondering how many will deny that you might have even a trickle of a sin to squeeze out of you.
Repenting is not something you do just on special occasions. It’s not even something you do only when you feel the need to. Repenting is something you should be doing every day as a matter of course, the way you wash your face every day. You wash your face because it makes you feel clean and refreshed. You repent for the same reason.
Sin can creep into us unawares and hide in places we don’t think of looking. It can hide in unforgiveness and grudges, it can hide in coveting (that slightly strange old-fashioned word that just means wanting what we don’t need), it can hide in pride. Sin, like dust, can cling to anything. Did you know that dust even settles on walls and ceilings? I mean, who dusts their walls and ceilings? I actually know a man who vacuums his walls and ceilings because he well knows that dust can settle on them as easily as it can settle on furniture.
Sin can settle anywhere on a soul, and just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there. My mother well knew that we always had at least a trickle of pee in us, just as God well knows that we always have at least a trickle of sin. You can deny it, but go ahead and repent and see for yourself.
You might be surprised at what comes out.
ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS
CHARLO, New Brunswick, January 9, 2024 – Beginnings are not always at the start, but they always come after an ending. There is a clear dividing line between ending and beginning. Spiritual rebirth doesn’t happen at physical birth; but if and when it does happen, it designates an ending of that soul’s cursed life and the beginning of its blessed one. The two lives don’t overlap. The parting of the Red Sea and the parting of the Jordan allowed for the mass movement of the children of Israel from an ending to a beginning, the narrow passage through each body of water not unlike a birth canal. The children of Israel were birthed into their new life in the wilderness at the parting of the Red Sea and then later birthed into their new life in the promised land at the parting of the River Jordan.
We were birthed into our new life at conversion. We left behind whoever and whatever we were to become whole new creatures – children of God. We’re not born children of God, we’re reborn children of God, and that by the power of God’s Holy Spirit. The ending of our old ungraced life powered by demons and the beginning of our new life of grace powered by God’s Spirit mark a definitive ending and beginning; there is no overlap. There can be no overlap, as God’s Spirit will not occupy the same soul that demons occupy and God’s Spirit can enter into a soul only once. If that soul loses grace, God’s Spirit will not re-enter it. The state of being after God’s Spirit has exited a soul Jesus describes as better not having been born at all. The exit of God’s Spirit from a soul is a definitive ending that is followed by the beginning of that soul’s eternal perdition, from which there is no escape and no end.
The Bible begins with a description of an earthly paradise and ends with a description of a heavenly one. The tree of life features prominently in both. In the beginning, the tree is guarded and prohibited; in the ending, it grows abundantly and is offered freely for the healing of the nations. If you’re reborn, you have eaten from the tree of life and have been healed.
You need to end what you are not in order to begin who you are. The world, from the time of our birth, molds us into something we were never meant to be. Note that I’m talking here about most people, not everyone. Most of us, for a time, allowed ourselves to be molded into what the world wanted us to be, not realizing that the world was under Satan. Very few escape the molding process. We called demonic influence “inspiration” and satanic-level rebellion “freedom”, not knowing any better, not knowing Truth. God knows this and doesn’t hold it against us. He allows for blaspheming of him and Jesus when we don’t know any better, but once we’re under his authority and graced with his Holy Spirit, we’re held to a higher standard that we dare not violate. Truth be told, we wouldn’t dream of violating it, because we know the Truth as God, and knowing God (as Jesus promised us) has made us free.
We love God with a fierceness we never thought ourselves capable of.
The ending of this life will lead to the beginning of the next that will have no end, whether in Heaven or the lake of fire. Every breath we take here – every word, every deed, every thought – moves us towards either Paradise or perdition. God doesn’t move us; we move ourselves. It is not enough to say: “We have Jesus as our savior”, any more than it was enough to say: “We have Abraham as our Father”. The fruit of our doings is either good or bad and we are judged on that – not on a description of what we hope our fruit might be, but on our actual fruit, with all its bruising and imperfection.
I want to hold God’s hand and protect him. I want to shield him from the cursing that spills so easily from the mouths of some people. When they’re around me, they curse more than usual and confess to doing so, not understanding why. If I told them why they wouldn’t believe me, so I just silently bless them as they blaspheme. This is the lot of God’s children. The same people who have no trouble respecting my earthly father have no trouble disrespecting my heavenly one.
I will end when it’s time and begin where I deserve. In the meantime, every second counts.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 