Thank You, Veterans!

I had an uncle by marriage who fought in the Spanish-American War, and he also fought in World War I. By the time WWII came around, he was in his sixties. He went down to enlist, and they told him he was too old. Now the odds are Uncle Joe offered to fight everybody in the place, one at a time or all at once to prove he wasn't too old, but they turned him down anyway.

He came back to my grandfather's farm where they were stacking hay. He grabbed a pitchfork and started throwing furiously to the stacker. Someone said, "Slow up a little, Joe. We can't keep up with you. What do you think you're doin'?"

Uncle Joe replied, "I'm fightin' for my country."

Veteran's Day movies recommendations: Zulu and We Were Soldiers.

Thank all of you for your service.

God bless you, and God bless America.

Three's Company

Passages in both Ephesians 5 and Colossian 3, speak about relationships: husbands and wives, children and parents, slave and masters. How we relate to others seems to be important to God. Let’s take a look at what Paul says in his letter to the church at Colossae.

Wives, be submissive to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and don't become bitter against them.

Children, obey your parents in everything, for this is pleasing in the Lord. Fathers, do not exasperate your children, so they won't become discouraged.

Slaves, obey your human masters in everything; don't work only while being watched, in order to please men, but work wholeheartedly, fearing the Lord. ... Masters, supply your slaves with what is right and fair, since you know that you too have a Master in heaven. -- Colossians 3:18-22,4:1

Notice, first, that these are perfectly paired statements. Nothing is asked of one side of the relationship without something being asked of the other. Yet it is not simply a reciprocal response. The requirements on each side are absolute. Husbands have to love their wives even if they "don't get no respect". Children have to obey their parents even if the parents are unworthy.

Here are the verses I left out, Colossians 3:23-25 –

Whatever you do, do it enthusiastically, as something done for the Lord and not for men, knowing that you will receive the reward of an inheritance from the Lord -- you serve the Lord Christ. For the wrongdoer will be paid back for whatever wrong he has done, and there is no favoritism.

As it says in Romans, "God is no respecter of persons". Our position in life is not what is important. Whether husband, wife, child, parent, slave, or master, none of that matters to God in its essence. What matters is what we do with it. A relationship, though it appears as a couplet, is really, then, a triad. Christ is between us, always. If a man's wife disrespects him, she is disrespecting Christ. If a man becomes bitter or is unfaithful to his wife, he is bitter and unfaithful to the Lord.

My job is to take my position, however humble or exalted, and see what I can do with it. I need to see if I can keep Jesus in focus when my kids are acting like fools, when my boss makes unreasonable demands, or my wife snatches the remote control.

Initially I was thinking about the husband and wife relationship as kind of a means of overcoming our natural tendencies. Men, especially young men, probably gravitate toward idolizing women, while women may tend toward wanting to be in control (for some reason I laugh even as I write that).

By acting in accordance to God's requirements, we are forced to refocus and put our eyes on Him. The woman who would manipulate her husband, because she can, will have to see that she is really trying to manipulate and control the Lord. A man unwilling to put the Lord first in his life is doing his wife a disservice by making an idol of her. The man who would fail to love his wife and give himself up for her must see that he is failing to love Jesus. Consider marriage as a means of helping your spouse and, at the same time, yourself reject the bondage of the old nature and live in the liberty of the kingdom.

What God is asking of us may not come easily, and perhaps that’s the whole point. We need to break free of the world’s perspective and see Him in the middle of everything.

Malignant Comfort

And at that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps and punish the men who settle down comfortably, who say to themselves: The LORD will not do good or evil.

Their wealth will become plunder and their houses a ruin. They will build houses but never live in them, plant vineyards but never drink their wine. – Zephaniah 1:12,13

The well-known quote from Psalm 119:105 says that God’s word is a lamp. Psalm 105:19 tells us that the word he had received tested Joseph. When Jerusalem was in apostasy, the prophetic word came through men like Zephaniah, Isaiah, and Micah.

I am sometimes like those comfortable men. I hear the word and I know God is speaking, but I settle back. I talk about grace, faith, and mercy, forgiveness and love. The prophetic word does not sting or stir but sounds, instead, like a pleasant song lulling me to passivity and ease.

So My people come to you in crowds, sit in front of you, and hear your words, but they don’t obey them. Although they express love with their mouths, their hearts pursue unjust gain. Yes, to them you are like a singer of love songs who has a beautiful voice and plays skillfully on an instrument. They hear your words, but they don’t obey them. Yet when it comes – and it will definitely come – then they will know that a prophet has been among them. -- Ezekiel 33:31-33

I gather with my friends and I sing along about loving God, being humble, and exalting Him. I listen to the word and admire the speaker’s eloquence and erudition. I put some money in the plate, walk out of the building, and say I have been to church and done my Christian duty.

But I never believe that God will really intervene or that He will call in the markers -- let alone kick the door in.

I’m not talking about politics or nations. This is Jerusalem, the City of God. These are God’s people laid back in the shade, counting their money, and idly watching American Idol.

He called to the man clothed in linen with writing equipment at his side. “Pass throughout the city of Jerusalem,” the LORD said to him, “and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations committed in it.”

To the others He said in my hearing, “Pass through the city after him and start killing; do not show pity or spare them. Slaughter the old men, the young men and women and little children, but do not come near anyone who has the mark. Now begin at My sanctuary.” So they began with the elders who were in front of the temple. -- Ezekiel 9:3-6

The Apostle Peter put it this way, “For the time has come for judgment to begin with God’s household; and if it begins with us, what will the outcome be for those who disobey the gospel of God?” (1 Peter 4:17)

Inevitably, complacency will bring judgment. It will fall first upon the Church which should of all people be the least apathetic and the least comfortable. As a sort of professional outsider, I see congregation after congregation where the talk is about “winning souls” and “bringing in the harvest”. Sometimes the Church seems more like a multi-level marketing scheme than the Body of Christ. If we have superfluous cells in the human body that are multiplying, we consider it a pathological condition and call it cancer. “Winning souls” to what? -- to help fund a bigger building?

If I am not fully integrated into Christ, if I am not fully drawing my life from Him, then I am merely making myself more subject to judgment on a personal level. I am being blessed, as we said about Jacob yesterday, but to whom much is given of him much is required. Those unbelievers who serve God’s purposes in ignorance will be judged less harshly than the informed rebels, and we will, like the one-talent servant, think the Lord a hard Master.

Peter understood because he had asked Jesus the ultimately stupid Christian question, as the King James translates John 21:21, “Lord, and what shall this man do?” Peter had just been told -- not only his mission -- “Feed My sheep”, but his destiny and death as well, “Follow Me.”

Peter turns, sees John, and says, “What about him?”

Jesus replied to all of us who think it’s about somebody else, or think it’s about what we do instead of who we are: “What is that to you? As for you, follow Me.”

Me and My Shadow

In the womb he grasped his brother’s heel, and as an adult he wrestled with God. Jacob struggled with the Angel and prevailed: he wept and sought his favor. He found him at Bethel, and there He spoke with him. Yahweh is the God of Hosts; Yahweh is His name. But you must return to your God. Maintain love and justice, and always put your hope in God. – Hosea 12:3-6

Jacob means “supplanter”, one who worms his way in where he doesn’t belong, a deceiver, a grasper, a clinger. Jacob supplanted his elder brother as the rightful heir of the Abrahamic covenant and its blessings. He himself was deceived and manipulated by Laban, his father-in-law.

When he returned to Canaan, Jacob knew he would encounter his cheated brother Esau, who had sworn to kill him. Sending his herds, flocks, servants and family on ahead, Jacob halted on the other side of the brook Jabbok. During the night, he was approached by God and there he struggled.

Years earlier, then fleeing his brother’s hot wrath, and possessing nothing but the staff in his hand, Jacob had encountered God in a night vision at a place he named Bethel, "the house of God". He had made a covenant with the Lord, and by God’s blessing, he had prospered materially. Yet he remained essentially the same man, unchanged, still Jacob. What’s more, the threat of conflict with Esau still remains. All he has gained can be lost in an hour to the sword and bow of his own twin. Facing the loss of his own life and everything that gave it meaning, Jacob halts alone to seek God again.

The Genesis account of this same story gives the sense of a desperate wrestling match. The Being with whom the man strives has the upper hand, but Jacob hangs on. Think of it as a clinch. Jacob knows that if his opponent breaks free he has lost, so, like a weary boxer, he clutches and holds. For hours the struggle continues with no change. At last his opponent, seeing that He could not defeat him, touched or struck Jacob’s hip and dislocated it. Still, Jacob clung to Him as dawn was about to break. The Lord demanded to be released, and Jacob demanded a blessing.

He got a name change. He became Israel, and the place of his encounter Jacob called Peniel or Penuel, "the face of God". And when he walked away from it, he walked with a limp.

Paul says in Romans 7:24, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”

Like Jacob, I have an “evil twin”, my very own resident Esau, the carnal man. We came out of the same womb together, but his presence forebodes my death and loss. I’ve tried running away from him, but that doesn’t work. God’s answer is not to remove Esau but to remove Jacob. In a sense Jacob dies at Peniel, for no one sees the face of God and lives. He is reborn as Israel, with whom Esau has no quarrel.

To visit the house of God brings blessing. To see the face of God is deliverance.

Israel is crippled in the process of his transformation. He gets a limp along with his new identity. To realize my true identity, it may be necessary for me to hobble a little. When Saul of Tarsus became Paul the Apostle, his initial blindness was healed, but a thorn in the flesh remained. That limp keeps me humble and dependent upon God. It reminds me I am not who I thought I was. Like a war wound, it reminds me that I have been in the battle, and prevailed.

And the raccoons looked up

The sun and the earth seem to have no regard for the end of the world. This morning is clear and the eastern sky turns from midnight blue to red and gold. I have seen this before, and it has always foretold the advance of light, the day. To see it as other than a semaphore from God would be to miss the point. To regard it as a message to the world would be to miss the point as well. Moses wore a veil among his people, but he removed it when he went in before his God. What can be shaken will be shaken, and removed – not, say I, from the world, for the world is not my business: I am in it, not of it. What can be shaken will be shaken, and what cannot be shaken, that alone shall remain in me and of me.

I have seen clouds looking like mountains, and, in the distance, I have seen the mountains and wondered if they were clouds. Not long ago a great storm passed to the south of me as the sun sank in the west and the last rays fell long upon the vast thunderhead. It towered above any earthly mountain, with its top sheered into an anvil, and thunder did sound like the boom of Thor’s hammer falling upon it, as lightning, like the sparks from the smith’s blow, flashed within.

The storm beat upon those beneath it. It was the shaker, and yet the shaken, for it passed on and was no more, a bubble, nothing more, a tool in the hand of God. That which could not be shaken remained.

The mountains remained, silent, dark, worn, and ancient.

Sunrise.

Short Night Leading to a Long Dark Night

The pollsters were right and I was wrong. I still rather hope I went to sleep and just woke up in the wrong country. Apparently we are now officially a fascist state, fed propaganda by the Democrat-controlled Ministry of Media -- formerly known as the Free Press. The MSM makes Pravada look fair and balanced.

Soros and Buffett have bought themselves a nice little superpower for a few hundred million.

I won't say I'm shocked -- sick, but not shocked. The last round of polls just did not show enough momentum coming into today. I would guess it came down the economy, and particularly to the mortgage crisis which was skillfully laid on Republicans by the media. I suppose they deserved it, since they went along with the bailout. Really how much more socialist could Obama be? -- OK, don't answer that.

I survived LBJ, Carter, and Clinton. Whether or not I survive Obama's attempt to turn us into a third world dystopia, I won't be anybody's serf.

I still have my Bible, and if they take that, I still have Jesus, bitter clinger that I am.

Goodnight, America. It's been nice knowing you.

What Is To Be Feared

Brothers, I tell you this: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, and corruption cannot inherit incorruption – 1 Corinthians 15:50

Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us hold on to grace. By it, we may serve God acceptably, with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming fire. – Hebrews 12:28,29

Dear friends, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him because we will see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself just as He is pure. – 1 John 3:2,3

It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God -- Hebrews 10:31

When we say God is Love, do we teach men that their fear of Him is groundless? No. As much as they fear will come upon them, possibly far more. But there is something beyond their fear – a divine fate which they cannot withstand, because it works along with the human individuality which the divine individuality has created in them.

The wrath will consume what they call themselves; so that the selves God made shall appear, coming out with ten-fold consciousness of being, and bringing with them all that made the blessedness of the life men tried to lead without God. They will know that now first they are fully themselves. The avaricious, weary, selfish suspicious old man shall have passed away. The young, every young self, will remain – remain glorified in repentant hope. For that which cannot be shaken shall remain. That which they thought themselves, though they misjudged their own feelings, shall remain – remain glorified in repentant hope. For that which cannot be shaken shall remain. That which is immortal in God shall remain in man. The death that is in them shall be consumed.

It is the law of Nature – that is, the law of God – that all that is destructible shall be destroyed. When that which is immortal buries itself in the destructible – when it receives all the messages from without, through the surrounding decadence, and none from within, from the eternal doors – it cannot, though immortal still, know its own immortality. The destructible must be burned out of it, or begin to be burned out of it, before it can partake of eternal life. When that is all burnt away and gone, then it has eternal life. Or rather, when the fire of eternal life has possessed a man, then the destructible is gone utterly, and he is pure.

Many a man’s work must be burned, that by that very burning he may be saved – “so as by fire.” Away in smoke go the lordships, the Rabbi-hoods of the world, and the man who acquiesces in the burning is saved by the fire; for it has destroyed the destructible, which is the vantage point of the deathly, which would destroy both body and soul in hell. If he still clings to that which can be burned, the burning goes on deeper and deeper into his bosom, till it reaches the roots of the falsehood that enslaved him – possibly by looking like the truth.

The man who loves God, and is not yet pure, courts the burning of God. Nor is it always torture. The fire shows itself sometimes only as light – still it will be fire of purifying. The consuming fire is just the original, active form of Purity, that which makes pure, that which is indeed Love, the creative energy of God. Without purity there can be as no creation so no persistence. That which is not pure is corruptible, and corruption cannot inherit incorruption.

The man whose deeds are evil, fears the burning. But the burning will not come the less because he fears it or denies it. Escape is hopeless. For love is inexorable. Our God is a consuming fire. He shall not come out until he has paid the last penny. – George MacDonald : Sermon, “What Is To Be Feared?”