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WHEN THE WORLD PRESSURES US TO SIN
HALIFAX, N.S., July 22, 2024 – Jesus once famously stated that “the Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath”.
The same could be said of the Commandments.
The Ten Commandments were made for man, not man for the Commandments. God gave us the Ten Commandments not as a burden but as a support, not as a barrier to living as we choose but as a guide to be applied in our everyday lives and especially in moments of temptation and pressure from the world.
As such, the Ten Commandments are a gift, not a curse, and should be cherished and adhered to and applied every day, not just carted out and quoted on certain occasions. They are a gift not only for their invaluable guidance but also because they assure us – with God’s full backing and endorsement – that we never need to compromise, not for anything or anyone, and not under any circumstance.
Pressure to break a Commandment is a temptation that we should never give into because we don’t have to give into it. That assurance is writ in stone by the very hand of God.
I read an article this morning on mainstream Canadian media about ordained Christian ministers getting involved in the state-sanctioned and state-enabled suicide ritual known as “MAID” (medical assistance in dying). When I say “involved”, I mean their presence was requested by the patient or the patient’s family for spiritual support during the suicide ritual.
For clarification purposes, genuinely spiritually supporting someone who is actively and unrepentantly committing suicide means doing everything you can to persuade that person not to commit suicide. Anything else is aiding, abetting, (and worse) condoning sin, which is not something a Christian minister should be doing. Suicide is self-murder, and the Commandment forbids murder of oneself or others. This Commandment is as clear-cut as every other Commandment. MAID is murder, not just suicide, and everyone who signs off on it or is present during the murder/suicide and doesn’t try to persuade the person not to commit suicide is guilty of murder.
Even so, how those who reject God and his Commandments perceive MAID is not our business. It is not our business, as born-again believers and citizens of God’s Kingdom, to impose our views on the world. Jesus never imposed his views on the world, but he also never cowed from stating his opinions on any matter when asked. We, his followers, should follow his example in this as in all things.
Jesus also told us that the world is under the administrative authority of Satan, as directed and sanctioned by God, so we’re not to intervene in the laws the world passes. They are worldly laws that have nothing to do with us and frankly we need to mind our own business when it comes to the passing and upholding of these laws. We should be aware of them, yes, but not try to strike them down or petition against them. State our opinion on the matter? Certainly, when requested or directed by God. But otherwise, we should let the world be.
Worldly laws (like MAID) exist because God has permitted them to exist, in the same way he permitted Moses to introduce bills of divorce – because people are so hard-hearted against God and his Commandments. Laws like MAID and divorce are not meant for children of God – that is, those who are reborn of God’s Holy Spirit. Laws like MAID and divorce are meant for those who are children of Satan – that is, those who are not reborn of God’s Spirit and instead have the spirit(s) of the world in them. This, sadly, includes most ordained Christian ministers these days.
If someone asks your support or presence during a planned breaking of a Commandment, you respectfully refuse to give your support or to be present. That is your duty and your right as a born-again believer. Or you can agree to be present, but only with the expressed intent to intervene – through persuasion and prayer only – to prevent the Commandment from being broken. You never, under any circumstance, condone the act of breaking of a Commandment, but you also should never attempt to force compliance with a Commandment or threaten someone into compliance. Jesus never did.
The freedom of an individual’s will is unconditional in this realm, and we need to respect people’s right to choose as much as God respects their right to choose, which is unconditionally. Still, if we’re requested to attend a planned breaking of a Commandment, we need to state our position on the matter unequivocally and unapologetically. We should never, and I repeat NEVER, be knowingly complicit in the breaking of a Commandment just because we’re asked to do so, whether in our role as a minister of God or not. If we knowingly choose to willingly lend our support in the breaking of a Commandment, the spiritual blowback on us will be enormous and may even result in our eternal damnation.
This is how important the Commandments are but also how important it is that we honor people’s free will. Pray for those whose stated plan is to break a Commandment, but also keep in mind that being present during the planned breaking of the Commandment – other than in an openly adversarial role – is support for the breaking. That is a spiritual fact.
The Commandments are a gift from God that we need to apply every day in our lives. The world may tempt us or pressure us into breaking them, but we can stand firm in the knowledge that we have God’s full backing to uphold the Commandments under every circumstance, regardless of the worldly consequences.
I would rather be punished by the world for upholding the Commandments than punished by God for breaking them.
PRAYING THE WITCH AWAY: SPIRITUAL WARFARE FOR BORN-AGAIN BELIEVERS
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, July 14, 2024 – Someone contacted me the other day, wondering what could be done about a witch in the family. I had written about this dilemma a few months ago, and my answer remains the same: You continue being a follower of Jesus. That’s how you deal with a witch in the family.
What does being a follower of Jesus mean? You live the Gospel teachings.
What are the Gospel teachings? Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength; treat others as you want to be treated; love your enemies; and keep the Commandments.
Keep the Commandments. All of them. Especially the one about honoring your mother and father, keeping in mind that honoring means to be respectful of them in your words, deeds, and thoughts. If you have issues with your mother and father, you take them to God, not to your minister or random strangers on the internet or “health professionals” or friends, neighbours, relatives, or spouses. You take your issues to God and God only, in prayer, and ask God to help you keep the Commandment.
Spiritual warfare isn’t waving crosses around and dousing the offending person in holy water. Spiritual warfare is being kind to people who are unkind to you – kind to them in your thoughts as well as in your deeds. Being kind to them in your thoughts is the most difficult and highest level of spiritual warfare, but also precisely the level of warfare that we’ve been called and equipped to do as born-again believers.
Spiritual warfare is also helping people who come to you in sincerity looking for help. For those people, God will give you the means, wisdom, and wherewithal to help them. But like the person who contacted me about the witch in his family, the people coming to you for help might not always want to hear let alone heed your advice. They will probably want immediate action to end the offending behaviour, but that’s not what the Gospel teaches us. We don’t wave a magic wand and make everything nice and good in an instant. That’s not what we’re called to do. We respect other people’s free will to make the choices they make; we don’t have to respect their choices if they choose against God, but we do have to respect their free will. God does.
We also need to remember that prayer (which should always be our default in every situation, whether good or bad) is not talking to God but talking with God. If you’re not hearing from God (that is, if your conversation is one-sided), you’re not praying, you’re petitioning. You can petition God all you want, in the same way as you can send someone a letter in the mail when you instead could just visit them in person. Prayer is visiting God in person.
As a born-again believer, you should always visit God in person. Jesus sacrificed himself so you could do that.
Once upon a time a long time ago, I was the witch in the family. My grandmother prayed for me without telling me she was praying for me, and she did so for nearly 36 years. That’s a long time to be praying for someone while seeing the someone you’re praying for get progressively worse and worse. My grandmother didn’t confront me or throw holy water on me or wave crosses at me: She simply was kind to me in all her interactions with me and prayed for me with a grandmother’s heart, in her room with her door closed, not announcing it.
God showed me all this after I was born-again; that is, he explained it to me after I was born-again, because although I’d seen evidence of it at the time, I hadn’t understood what was being done behind the scenes, being blind and deaf and dumb as I was.
We don’t get to the top of the mountain by flying there; we can’t fly there, because we don’t have wings. We get to the top of the mountain by walking there step by step, prayer by prayer, kind thought by kind thought, helping hand by helping hand, prayer by prayer by prayer by prayer.
The world is under Satan. God made the world and then put it under Satan’s administrative authority. All those who aren’t God’s people are Satan’s. There is no third option. With the majority of the world being under Satan’s administrative authority (with God’s permission), it’s no wonder that we all now have at least one witch in the family, likely more. But the answer isn’t to rant at them or warn them of their coming perdition if they don’t change their ways: They’ll be too blind, deaf, and dumb to hear you, like I was when I was a witch. Pray for them. Treat others as you want to be treated. Love your enemies. Keep the Commandments.
Being a follower of Jesus rarely involves grand gestures in the worldly realm of Satan; the grand gestures take place behind the scenes – in God’s realm in your prayer closet and in your heart, soul, and mind.
ON ZOMBIE SINS AND THE GREATEST SEDUCTION
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, July 1, 2024 – Jesus was a man before he was a eunuch for the Kingdom of Heaven’s sake, and a carpenter before he was the Messiah, and the brother of his siblings before he was our brother, and the son of Mary and Joseph before he was the Son of God. That’s not to say he wasn’t a man while he was a eunuch and a eunuch while he was a man; that’s just to say that before the signal was given and the switch was flicked, one took precedence over the other, though both realities co-existed in the one body and soul of Jesus throughout his time on Earth.
We, too, as born-again believers, were also men or women before becoming spiritual eunuchs, and labourers in some field before becoming ministers of God, and the brother or sister of our siblings before becoming Jesus’ brethren, and sons and daughters of our parents before becoming children of God. In these things, we are like Jesus; in these things, we follow our leader, as he said we would. And yet, underneath, we’re still men or women, labourers in some field, siblings of our siblings, and children of our parents. Those realities don’t change, though the other reality – the spiritual reality – takes precedence since our rebirth.
But in one thing we differ from Jesus, and that is that we were all born with the spirit of the world and were guided and informed by the spirit of the world before becoming born-again and receiving the Spirit of God. Jesus never had the spirit of the world in him; he had only God’s Holy Spirit from the get-go, from the moment of his conception. In this he differed from us, but in all the other things, he was the same.
The spirit of the world and the Spirit of God cannot co-exist in the same body and soul. When one goes in, the other goes out.
Scripture tells us that Jesus was tempted in all things, as we are. A temptation is exterior from us, body and soul. It is a lure and a bait, aiming to catch us, usually unawares; aiming to seduce us. Seductions can come from God or from the devil. When I was still a slave to sin, I was lured by God and seduced by God and that’s how I became born-again. It is the greatest of all seductions to say “Yes” to God for the very first time. If you’re genuinely born-again, you, too, were lured and seduced by God, so you know what I’m talking about.
Jesus was tempted in all things. We know of the temptations he had in the desert, but they didn’t stop there. He was tempted right up until the instant when his soul left his body, as we will be. He was tempted while he was awake and he was tempted in dreams.
God permits us to be tempted of the devil. This is a great comfort to me, knowing that God permits these temptations, because I also know that if God permits them, he’ll give me the strength and the means, through his Holy Spirit, to withstand the temptations, whether I’m awake or asleep. We should never fear temptation; we should never bring it on to us (or to others) or entertain it, but we shouldn’t fear it. Temptations are tests that, when successfully passed, take us up higher in the Kingdom.
Never having had the spirit of the world in him, Jesus had no sin, and he remained that way throughout his time on Earth. That is to say, he had no memory of sin because he never sinned. We, on the other hand, had to be purged of our sin at our rebirth, though we remember it still and at times it seemingly comes back to life to haunt us, that is to tempt us. Like a zombie sin, it reanimates and rises up, usually in dreams, borne of our memories. It is not real sin but the memory of sin, though it can still very much catch us and bite us and drag us down.
We need to be careful of the zombie sins because they are the most powerful of all the seductions, next to God’s. The rose-tinted memory of what we once had is stronger than the desire for what we never had, which is why God had to lure us to him in the way that only God can, as only God knows everything about us. We continue, even now, to be lured by God and tempted of the devil, being children of God while also still children of our parents.
This will continue until we arrive Home.
SCATTERED
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, June 21, 2024 – We’re scattered now, scattered each to his own place.
Scripture says it will be given to him to scatter the power of the holy people, and so it has, so he has. We no longer live in communal settings like the early Church, or in convents and monasteries like the later worldly church; we live alone, aware there are others like us but not knowing who they are or where they are, only knowing that they are, and that they’re here.
Still here.
Scattered, but still here.
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I’m still here. Twenty-five years into my rebirth (and counting), I’m still here, protected under God like a restless chick under the proverbial hen’s wing. Without God’s 24/7 protection I wouldn’t be here; none of us would be. The devil doesn’t come to us waving a pitchfork, with horns sprouting from his head; he sidles up to us sweet-smelling and smooth-talking and offering us a hand up or a hand-out when we need it most, but only if we’ll agree to this one little thing….
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We’re scattered now, scattered but not broken. It’s possible for kingdoms to continue broken for a time before the final breakdown, like a car cruising on fumes when the gas gauge is on “E”. Jerusalem cruised on “E” for a few more decades after Jesus’ resurrection. But we, in the Kingdom, are not on “E”. We’ll never be on “E”. The Kingdom is a strong as it’s ever been, though there are considerably fewer born-agains in it now. Being fewer, each of us needs to have the faith of 10 or, better still, the faith of 10,000.
Those mountains aren’t going to move themselves.
Elijah stood alone against hundreds of the devil’s prophets, defeating them all (though it wasn’t Elijah who defeated them but God working through him, just like it’s not us moving the mountains but God’s Spirit moving them through us).
Every day is moving day in the Kingdom of God.
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We need to think of Saul, King Saul, and how he thought he had it all, until he didn’t. He lost what he’d been given because he didn’t understand the importance of obeying God. Saul thought his way was at times the better way, but that’s not how it works with God. If God tells you to do something, you do it; if he tells you not to do something, you don’t do it. Easy-peasy, right? So simple, even a two-year-child can understand it.
Then why couldn’t King Saul?
Humbling yourself under the mighty hand of God is sometimes easier said than done. Sometimes, the spiritual fog is so thick, you can’t see the way forward and so take matters into your own hands, even if it means directly disobeying God. This course of action never ends well. There is never a time when you disobey a direct command of God and it turns out well for you. Show me one example in scripture of that happening. You can’t, because there is none.
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Louisiana has made it mandatory for all classrooms to display the Ten Commandments on the wall, and other states are indicating they’ll soon follow. This may sound like a win, but what can the people then use as a cloak for their sin if they know the Commandments and then break them with impunity? Because Western civilization is all about breaking the Commandments with impunity and with the blessings of society and the state. Heck, even self-professed Christians break the Commandments daily, the main one being honoring their mother and father.
The only one who benefits from people knowing the Ten Commandments and yet choosing to break them is the devil.
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We’re in the days of Noah and have been for some time. There are now billions of Sauls running around on “E”, kings of their own castles taking matters into their own hands, knowing what’s right but instead choosing what seems expedient at the time. The Ten Commandments on the wall will only make things worse for them. You cannot preach the Word to those who don’t want to hear it. Jesus never preached to the bored. You can wallpaper the entire world with the Ten Commandments, but if people don’t want to follow them, there’s nothing to be done.
God respects everyone’s free will and so should we.
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We born-again believers have the Ten Commandments graven on our heart, so we have no excuse for not following them. But we didn’t learn to love the Commandments and then learn to love God. No. We weren’t force-fed the Commandments and then told at gunpoint to love God. No. We were born-again and loved God like a newborn loves its mother, and in so doing loved his Commandments. First comes rebirth and then the love of God and his Commandments, and none of this is forced on us. We obey God because we love God.
Like David, I crave the Commandments and would be lost without them. I thank God for his Commandments. Like David, I too think about them night and day and weigh my thoughts and actions against them. Am I loving God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, and am I treating others as I’d want to be treated? These are the only questions that matter, really. They may in fact be the only ones asked at The Gate, if any are in fact going to be asked.
It’ll go something like this: “Did you love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and did you show it by treating others as you want to be treated?”
If you heard that today, if you were asked that today standing at The Gate, could you honestly say “Yes”, or is there room for improvement? If you’re still here and reading this, I guarantee you there’s room for improvement. If you’re still here, there’s room for improvement.
Better get it right, because the rest is just noise.
DOOR WIDE SHUT
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, June 18, 2024 – When I was born again, God shut the door to evil. I didn’t have to do anything to keep the evil at bay; God did that for me as one of the signature terms of service of his grace. He continues to keep that door firmly shut even today, 25 years into my rebirth.
But I also bear some responsibility for maintaining my grace. There are a few doors that God won’t close but that he may advise me to close, as a test of sorts (and as a nod to my ongoing free will). These “test” doors, once shut, I dare not reopen. As tempting as it might be to open them just a crack to see what’s happening on the other side (or to get down on my hands and knees and peer underneath the door), I must never do those things. When God means business he means business, and when he commands us to shut the door, he means shut the door, and shut it for good.
I received such a command a few nights ago in a dream. I dreamt that I was lying on my side facing a wall, drowsing. Behind my back, evil was creeping toward me from the next room. I could see it coming through God’s eyes, but I was too tired to do anything about it. Closer and closer the evil approached the open doorway (the way my cat used to creep toward me, but only when I blinked), until suddenly God commanded me to shut the door.
I heard God loud and clear, but I was too comfortably relaxed in my warm bed to get up. I wanted to keep on drowsing and so I ignored God’s voice. That’s when he turned up the volume and changed his tone and his command became both a warning and a wake-up call:
“SHUT THE DOOR!”
This caught my attention, and in my dream, I immediately sprang out of bed and rushed to shut the door before the evil could slip through.
It’s easy to be lulled into spiritual complacency. It’s easy to ignore God’s voice when we’re side-tracked with “non-God” things. It’s easy to slide into a comfortable slumber, turning our back on possible dangers and expecting God to take care of us. What isn’t always easy is shutting the door and keeping it shut. There’ll be any number of excuses as to why the door could remain just slightly ajar or why it shouldn’t be shut at all but left wide open. Satan is very good at devising excuses and justifying exceptions to counter God’s commands, like he did in the Garden of Eden. And we’re very good at buying Satan’s lies, like Eve and Adam once did.
What about you? Are there any doors that God has commanded you to shut lately? Have you, like me in my dream, pushed God’s voice aside and left the door wide open, letting the evil draw closer and closer to you? Or did you, as soon as you heard God’s voice, immediately rush over and slam the door shut?
Evil comes in many forms. As born-again believers, we have enormous protection in our day-to-day dealings with the world and we’re also protected while we sleep, but that doesn’t mean we should expect God to do everything for us. God is not going to keep every form of evil at bay from us; some forms of evil God will even permit to approach very close to us, unless we do as he says and shut the door.
I know the form of evil that God was alluding to in my dream. I have since shut the door on it and resolved to keep it shut permanently, but I know I can’t do that without God’s help, as this particular form of evil is highly alluring to me, the way the Tree of Knowledge was alluring to Eve or the dark arts were to Solomon. Not all curiosity is healthy. I can even point to the many alleged benefits of succumbing to this particular temptation, but none of them come from God. When God says to shut, we’re to shut, not to argue or whine or attempt to strike a bargain. Nor should we roll over and keep on slumbering as if we hadn’t heard God.
What God says to shut, we’re to shut, and never open again.
WHAT HE SAID
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, June 16, 2024 – Jesus is our gold standard. During his time on Earth in a human body, Jesus had the full measure of God’s Spirit, which means that everything Jesus said was God speaking through him. Jesus wasn’t God, but God spoke directly through him by his Holy Spirit. Having the full measure of God’s Spirit gave Jesus ultimate authority in everything he taught.
If Jesus is our gold standard, then everything else must be compared to Jesus. Moreover, what Jesus said in the New Testament takes precedence over whatever was said in the Old Testament, if what Jesus said conflicts with the Old Testament. So, for instance, it’s no longer hate and kill your enemies, it’s love and bless your enemies; it’s no longer get a bill of divorce, it’s divorce leads to adultery (so don’t do it); it’s no longer shun the lepers, it’s heal the lepers; it’s no longer gather riches to yourself, it’s give all your riches away.
I mention this as a preamble to a critically important teaching that is more, in fact, a fact, which is – we are followers of Jesus, not followers of his disciples. The New Testament covenant is with Jesus, not with Peter or with Paul or with any of our other brethren mentioned in scripture. Our allegiance is to Jesus, and Jesus has the final word if something he says conflicts with something someone else says in the Bible or elsewhere. Everything Jesus said was the word of God, which is why (spoiler alert!) Jesus is called the Word.
Paul famously had a lot to say as a follower of Jesus, and some of it has been recorded in the New Testament. But not everything Paul said and wrote was from God. He wasn’t Jesus; he was Paul, and as Paul, he didn’t have the full measure of God’s Spirit like Jesus had while on Earth, which means that sometimes Paul spoke or wrote amiss, as we all do (not having the full measure of God’s Spirit). Just because what Paul said or wrote is included in the New Testament doesn’t mean it’s correct. We need to be very careful to distinguish the words of Jesus from those of others. Jesus’ words we can take the bank; the words of others we need to carefully weigh against Jesus’ words to see if they balance, to see if they fit with what Jesus taught us.
One example is the spiritual fate of the genetic children of Israel. Paul was adamant that God continued to favour his genetically “chosen people” over everyone else and that they ultimately would triumph spiritually as a people, not as individuals, whereas Jesus (and Old Testament prophets like Isaiah) made it clear that genetics had nothing to do with salvation, and that the people formerly known as chosen were no more favoured by God than anyone else and had no more guaranteed claim to Paradise than anyone else. This is a thorny issue for many believers, but it shouldn’t be. Again, Jesus has the final word here, not Paul or anyone else.
Another example is Paul’s demoting of women to secondary status to men, especially when it came to roles of leadership and teaching in the Church. Paul tried to silence women’s voices, whereas Jesus amplified them. We know that Jesus amplified them because he was constantly defending his female followers and in so doing giving them a voice and teaching us that they needed to be heard as much as his male followers. In the Kingdom, there is no distinction between male and female or Jew and non-Jew or old and young. We are all the same in God’s eyes, endowed with his same Spirit (though to different measures).
To me, it is highly telling and symbolic that God chose Mary Magdalene as the first human to see Jesus after he rose and the first one to the bear the news of his resurrection. Unfortunately, many of the male followers dismissed her claims, only later to be sharply corrected by Jesus. Worldly Christianity may have evolved over the centuries as a male-centric belief system, but Jesus didn’t plant a male-centric belief system, not according to his recorded words and actions. Again, it’s to Jesus that we need to look for guidance, not to his followers, if what his followers say conflicts with what Jesus taught us.
Jesus is our gold standard for everything in life. We look to him to inform us through his words recorded in scripture and – just as importantly – we look to him in prayer, where we meet with him one-on-one in real time, which is a privilege promised to his born-again believers. If a teaching or a position doesn’t line up with what Jesus has said or shown us, we need to reject it. God has given us a Spirit of discernment for just such a reason, but it’s up to us to use it.
By all means, read the words of Paul and of other followers of Jesus, but remember that they aren’t infallible. There is much wisdom in them, but they aren’t infallible. Use the measure of the Holy Spirit that God’s given you to discern what is true and what is not, and weigh everything – EVERYTHING – against the Word.
JEREMIAH IN CHAINS
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, June 13, 2024 – Jeremiah left Jerusalem in chains. Along with the other prisoners, Jeremiah had to walk the perp walk of shame, shackled and humiliated, while Jerusalem lay smoldering in ruins behind him.
It didn’t matter that Jeremiah had spent years begging people to turn back to God to avoid this very thing. It didn’t matter that he’d already done hard time in a slime pit and elsewhere with only a scrap of bread a day to sustain him. He had to suffer along with everyone else, sinner or not, deserved or not. It’s what he signed up for as a prophet.
And why not? Being a prophet of God is not all wine and roses. Jesus wore a crown of thorns, not roses, and was offered vinegar on the cross, not wine. He suffered what he hadn’t earned and endured cruelties for our sake as well as for his. Why should it be any different for us or for Jeremiah? Why should it have been worse for Jesus than for us?
This is a hard truth for many who allege to be followers of Jesus. They recoil at the pick-up-your-cross-daily part of the requirements, the perp-walk-of-shame part of the deal, the grinding poverty part of everyday reality that characterizes true disciples of Jesus, and so they gravitate towards the false prophets who promise them a life of prosperity and blessings. Yet all genuine prophets have had a rough go of it, including Jesus – especially Jesus – because the higher a soul strives, the more that soul will be targeted and tested.
I love God so much it hurts sometimes. But that doesn’t exempt me from being tested and tried. Being a child of God guarantees you’ll be tested and tried until you’re finally fitted for your own crown of thorns.
The roses come later, if and when you make it Home.
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I stayed for a few weeks in a household of a few dozen assorted humans, none of whom (other than me) claimed to be Christian. Theoretically, that should mean I was the kindest, most generous, and most patient among the residents, but the reality is far from the truth. I’m humbled by what some of them taught me from their place of unbelief. Even so, knowing I’m a Christian, a few of them watched me like a hawk, swooping in on occasion to bait me, expecting me to snap at them or let loose a tirade or (even better) launch into a sermon so they could have their “gotcha!” moment and triumphantly march me to the door. Thank God I didn’t snap, though I was tempted. Thank God that God keeps me reined in, at least in public.
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I wandered into a worship service last Sunday and then a few minutes later wandered back out. The music (live band with amplifiers) was ear-splitting and I had the sense that I was at a rock concert rather than a church service. I’m open to accepting that the fault was all mine for having sensitive ears and expectations that didn’t line up with reality, but is it wrong to expect people to turn off their smartphone and do without their sippy-cup of coffee for just one hour? To me, it’s not enough that they “at least made the effort” to show up on a Sunday morning, any more than it’s enough for a student to pass a course just for showing up in class. Showing up is not the required effort; doing your best at the task at hand is the required effort.
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We can only imagine what was going through Jeremiah’s mind as he trudged out of Jerusalem in chains, knowing he’d never return and that Jerusalem and its temple would never return, not to their former glory. Jeremiah was as near starvation as the rest of the prisoners and just as shell-shocked and traumatized by the horrors they’d witnessed, yet he would also likely have been expected to endure more stoically than the others, being a prophet of God. He would have been expected to boost the morale and have a timely, encouraging word from God for them. He would have been expected to be more than merely Jeremiah in chains.
Prophets are always expected to be more than merely human.
We, as born-again believers, bear our own chains. We bear them daily and in all circumstances and some of them are ungodly heavy and cut into us. But the chains don’t come from God, they come from the world, and we’ll bear them as long as we’re here on Earth. The world not only expects us to bear them, it demands that we bear them and that we do so publicly. They like to see us bowed down by their weight. It makes them feel justified for rejecting God.
And if you’re thinking there must be a way for you, on your own volition, to quietly slip out of your chains – remember that God permits them for your edification, and what God permits, you need to endure. God will remove your chains when it’s time. No point in trying to pray them away. The heaviest of Jeremiah’s chains were removed by an enemy of Israel (who had respect for him as a prophet of God, though Israel didn’t), and the rest of his chains Jeremiah bore until he went Home.
This is how it will be for us, because again – why should doing hard time on Earth be any easier for us than it was for Jeremiah or for Jesus?
FIVE RIGHTEOUS SOULS, AND COUNTING
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, June 9, 2024 – YouTube’s algorithm recommended a video to me a while ago featuring a YouTube prophet with a following of nearly a million. I know he had a following of nearly a million because that’s the first thing he mentioned in the recommended video. But rather than rejoicing that he was reaching so many people with (what I hope was) the Word, the YouTube prophet was instead lamenting that he “only” had nearly a million subscribers and that he was praying to get millions more.
This got me thinking about Jesus and about how many followers he had during his ministry years. We don’t know exactly how many he had (and I suspect he didn’t know, either, unless God told him), but their numbers waxed and waned according to what he was preaching. When Jesus was preaching about love and healing and being showered with blessings, the numbers were high; when he was preaching about loving your enemies and doing without, the numbers dropped off. Towards the end of Jesus’ time on Earth, the numbers dropped off especially precipitously (leveling off at nearly 0 at one point) before slowly and steadily climbing to where they are today.
But where are they today? What I mean is: how many genuine followers does Jesus have? I’m not talking self-professed followers; I mean people marked by God and filled with God’s Holy Spirit. How many of these do you reckon Jesus has today? I’d wager it’s a lot fewer than the YouTube prophet’s “nearly a million”. I doubt it even breaks 10,000. Whatever it is, it’s a number known only to God (and maybe now also to Jesus).
The exact number of Jesus’ genuine followers is important, though, because it determines how much more time we have before the Judgement. Remember how Abraham bargained with God to forestall the destruction of Sodom if a certain number of righteous people lived there? Abraham was a pretty good negotiator because he bargained God all the way down to five righteous souls. Abraham probably thought that five righteous souls would be a slam-dunk – what self-respecting metropolis couldn’t come up with at least five righteous souls? Sadly, Sodom couldn’t.
So numbers are important, just not the way the YouTube prophet views them. Also important is the degree of a soul’s righteousness. Every righteous soul has a specific degree of righteousness, depending on the measure of the Holy Spirit that God has granted that soul. Another word for degree is value, but most people don’t like the word “value” in relation to souls. They don’t like the thought that some people’s souls have a higher value than others, even though it’s true. God loves us all the same, but that doesn’t negate the fact that our souls have different spiritual values depending on the choices we make.
There’s a threshold for righteousness in a soul. When the value is below that threshold, the soul is considered unrighteous; when it’s at or above the threshold, it’s considered righteous, and the more righteous choices that soul makes, the more righteous it grows. Again, the value of the soul comes from the choices people make, not from something God has or hasn’t done. God measures and designates a soul’s value; he doesn’t impose it.
These spiritual facts are crucial for understanding the state of the world. Just like every individual soul has a spiritual value, so, too, does every family, every neighbourhood, every village and town, every city, every state and province, and every nation. When summed together, these values give the world its total spiritual value.
I don’t think it’s very high these days.
I don’t know my spiritual value. I know I’m born-again and under God’s grace, but I don’t know my spiritual value. I think I’d prefer not to know (lol), kind of like I’d rather not know my exact weight. Better to focus on doing God’s will than worrying about my measured value. I don’t think Jesus thought much about his spiritual value during his time on Earth, any more than he thought about the number of his followers. He didn’t consciously try to raise his spiritual value; he just made sure always to do “that which pleased the Father”. Based on that alone, Jesus’ spiritual value remained higher than anyone else’s before or since.
Credit scores and social credit scores are the world’s latest human valuation products. Of course, you can buy good credit or social credit scores or even cheat your way into them, the way you can game pretty much every aspect of the world (including the algorithms that designate how many followers you have on YouTube). But God you can’t cheat; your spiritual value is measured and designated by God, making it fool-proof. The only measure you should ever be concerned about is God’s valuation of you. Any other value assigned to you by the world can be falsified and is therefore untrustworthy and not worth worrying about.
The takeaway from all this is that Jesus never worried about how the world valued him; his only concern was doing God’s will. As followers of Jesus, we should also not be concerned about what the world thinks of us or the numbers it assigns to us. Yes, God will love us whether we do his will or not, but it’s critical for the future of the world (and for our own soul) that we do God’s will and continue to do it to the end, as Jesus did. Being designated righteous by God and remaining righteous under God’s grace is an enormous privilege that comes with enormous responsibility.
As the scripture about Sodom attests, we’re all that stands between the continuation of the world and its destruction. We are children of God living in God’s Kingdom, so we can’t just do what we want; we need to do what God wants, regardless of the circumstances we find ourselves in at any given time. We need to be righteous and remain righteous in God’s eyes.
The unbelieving world – even as it hates us – is depending on us.
FLYING BY THE SPLIT SEAT OF YOUR PANTS: ON TESTS AND TRIALS
MCLEODS, New Brunswick, May 20, 2024 – In the work I used to do, I would help my clients prepare for their medical board certification exam, which they took at the end of their clinical residency. These exams were exhaustive and multi-day ordeals, but the examinees had years to prepare. By the time the examinations actually took place, the examinees had done so many mock written tests, interviews, and oral exams, they could have done the board examination in their sleep and still passed it with flying colours.
How different our tests are for us, as born-again believers! We take “exams”, too, but we don’t get years to prepare, let alone have the advantage of mock tests to pore over and practice. We learn as we go and we’re tested as we go, almost always with no heads-up whatsoever that a test is incoming. Even Jesus didn’t get a heads-up. For instance, he didn’t know his ministry was starting until his mother very publicly pushed him out of the nest at the wedding at Cana, and he didn’t know his ministry was ending until Moses and Elijah touched down at the “transfiguration” to give him his final orders. The non-Jew who came to Jesus asking him to cast out a demon from her daughter was also a test, as was the woman caught in adultery who should, by law, have been stoned, as was the “trick question” of whether Jews should pay the tribute tax to Caesar. Nearly everything in Jesus’ ministry was a spur-of-the-moment, sink-or-swim, baptism-by-fire kind of a test, and it’s the same for us.
For me, the most fascinating aspects of spiritual tests are first and foremost that you don’t know you’re in one until you’re in one, and secondly that they come out of nowhere and when you least expect them, and thirdly that they also usually come at the worst possible moment. In fact, the unexpectedness and I-don’t-need-this-nowness is part of the test. It’s all well and good to test someone on something they know they’re going to be tested on, giving them the time and resources to scrub their faces and put on their Sunday best, but it’s quite another thing to spring a test out of the blue. It’s the out-of-the-blue tests where you get the real results, and it’s the real results that God wants.
So let’s say, for example, that you had “one of those days” when things weren’t going so well. You’re finally on your way home, driving along the highway just minding your own business, when suddenly someone cuts you off, nearly causing you to rear-end them. Did you: a) curse and honk your horn at their recklessness, maybe even speeding up a bit to show your anger; b) take a deep breath, let it ride, and keep on rolling; or c) say a prayer for the driver and pull back, keeping a good distance between you and him. The correct response for born-again believers is obviously “c”, but how many of you seemingly instinctively did “a” before correcting yourself and reluctantly doing “c”? Or how many of you unapologetically did “a” and stubbornly refused to change that choice, thinking it was justified? Or how many of you never made it past “b”, thinking that was sufficient?
The beauty of the tests and trials we undergo as born-again believers is that the results show our true colors. Unlike the medical examinees taking the board certification examination, who can ace their tests solely by memorizing the material and then promptly forgetting it afterwards, we have to fly by the seat of our pants, and if the seat of our pants is split and dirty and our butt is hanging out, we have no way to hide it. But this, I would argue, is good. We don’t endure our tests for bragging rights; we endure them so that we and God (and anyone else God permits to know the results) will see precisely where we stand spiritually. The test results cannot be feigned or faked: They is what they is.
Equally beautiful is that if we fail a test, God will grant us a redo while there’s still time. I’ve had quite a few redos over the years since my rebirth; I wrote about one here. The redos will also come out of the blue, but boy oh boy, you’ll know it’s a redo by the impossibility of the so-called coincidences leading up to the test. For me, because I’m such a loud-mouth know-it-all (say it ain’t so! lol), most of the redos involve being kind to someone I was previously rude to or simply biting my tongue and choosing to say nothing when what I want to say is unprintable even by New Sodom standards. In both of these scenarios, I’m also tested on whether I follow up with a prayer or continue to silently stew. God measures not only what we say and do at the time of our test, but also – and more importantly – the contents and state of our hearts and minds after the test. How many of us say: “I believe!” but then do and say things later as if we don’t believe? That’s not a trick question, and the answer is “way too many”.
We cannot avoid our tests and we cannot even prepare for them, not the way medical graduates prepare for theirs by memorization and mock tests. All we can do is listen to what Jesus is saying to us and then apply it in our everyday lives. In this way, we build our house on the firm foundation of a rock, minute by minute, hour by hour, and day by day, so that when tests come and we’re beaten and battered, our house still stands because it’s on a firm foundation. Not so if we build our house on sand, which is what happens if we hear what Jesus is saying but don’t apply it every day. In that case, when we’re beaten and battered, our house will fall (no other outcome is possible), never to rise again.
May you build your house on a rock with your every waking breath, no excuses.
Amen.
THE PARABLE OF THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE, IN PLAIN WORDS
MCLEODS, New Brunswick, May 17, 2024 – The parable of the pearl of great price tends to be overlooked in the rush to comb through Revelation looking for parallels to what’s happening in the world today. In fact, most of the Gospel tends to be overlooked in favour of Revelation. Certainly, Revelation is important, but so is “every word that comes from the mouth of God”, as Jesus famously schooled Satan. I’m not saying you’re Satan; I’m just saying.
If we took Jesus at his word (which we should do) and spent less time on Revelation and more time on the rest of the Gospel (which we should also do), we’d realize how pivotal the parables are, in particular the parable of the pearl of great price. As a refresher, I’ve copied it below:
Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls: Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it.
Scripture foretells of one to come who will “open [his] mouth in parables [and] utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world”. This “one” we now know as Jesus, our Lord and Messiah, and also our big brother and best friend. Any one of those roles sets him apart as someone we should heed when he speaks, in parables or otherwise.
But do we heed him?
The pearl parable isn’t shrouded in mystery. We know it’s talking about God’s Kingdom because it says so right from the get-go, and we know the kingdom of heaven is alikened to the pearl of great price, again because it says so. What else does the parable say? That we should sell everything we have and invest all the proceeds – not some of them, ALL of them – in the kingdom of heaven. This parable doesn’t require us to go into a private huddle with Jesus to learn what it means, like the disciples did when Jesus taught them the parable of the sower. No, the parable of the pearl of great price is as open and straightforward as it gets.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (a.k.a. Mark Twain) allegedly said about scripture: “It ain’t the part of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it’s the parts that I do understand.” Well, Sammy, most of us (if we’re honest with ourselves) are right there with you. The parts of the Bible that we do understand are the parts that God has brought to our attention and opened our hearts and minds to, which means we’re not only meant to “get” them, we’re meant to heed them.
From that perspective, let’s look again at the parable of the pearl of great price, and let’s make it personal:
Have you found the kingdom of heaven? Yes or no?
And if “yes”, have you set its value as being higher than anything else in your life? Yes or no?
And if “yes”, have you thrown caution to the wind and all your eggs into one basket and sold everything you have to “buy” the kingdom? This again requires only a simple yes or no answer. You either did or you didn’t; you either gave everything to God and Jesus, or you didn’t.
FYI – “I’m thinking about doing it” is a “no”.
FFYI – “I’m thinking really really hard about doing it and will likely probably maybe do it soon” is also a “no”.
Did you know that no “no’s” will get into Heaven? There are several parables in the Gospel about people who say “no” to God and Jesus only to find themselves shut out of Paradise forever. All their assumptions and good intentions came to nothing.
Here is my prayer for you today: If you haven’t yet said “yes” to all the above, I pray that you’ll follow through and heed the words of the pearl parable here and now. There is nothing more important or more valuable on Earth than the kingdom of heaven, and eternity is a long time to regret not having done what you knew you should have done when it was brought to your attention in plain words.
Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness,
and everything you need will be given to you.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 