Amusement, Children, and Prayerless Disciples

“But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves” (James 1:22).

Our children are bombarded with “fun and done.”  After one event of fun then we go on to the next.  Water rides, the pool, cookouts, trips, videos, gaming, eating out, and taking off from church ministry are the norm today.  America’s Christian Culture is entertaining our kids and ourselves to spiritual and emotional death.  It is not healthy.  We teach them inadvertently how to whisk their days away instead of numbering their days.

While we teach our children how to live by “do your work and then we play” attitude, adults are living continually on spiritual autopilot.  In our highly educated, technologically-hyped and prosperous society, and within our theologically almost astute Christian culture, we tend to settle for “zipper prayers” to open or close our days and gatherings.  Prayerlessness has become the attire of our independence from God.

Vance Havner said, “Few people would want to live where there are no churches but millions live as though there were no churches.” Church attendance is taken lightly today.  Hearing the Word of God cost aplenty in days gone by.  Where much is given, much shall be required.  Today’s land sees a famine of the hearing of God’s Word, not because we cannot hear it, but because we do not listen to it.  Moreover, as the text declares, there is the duty of doing it when we hear it.

Some things are inevitable, the status quo is here, but we do not have to be a part of this.  We should raise our heads and say, “Thy will be done.” I’m going for God and I’ll do my part and see that it is done. “As for me and my house we will serve the Lord“, Joshua of old said to the people of Israel.

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  • A Long Obedience In The Same Direction

    “Blessed are the people that know the joyful sound; they shall walk, O LORD, in the light of thy countenance” (Psalms 89:15).

    The enemy of our soul would like to sucker us into thinking that the “easy” way is the best way. But it never is. Strong people fail. But weak souls who depend upon another don’t fail. Not until we tap into Ultimate Strength, Limitless Wisdom, the Fount of Courage, the Source of Perseverance, will we find what we need.

    The very gates of hell cannot make any one of us stumble unless we choose to remove ourselves from God’s protection and power. It is “His divine power that has given us everything we need for life and godliness” (2 Peter 1:3).

    Where is the finish line? It’s different for each of us. The finish line that I have in mind is when we go to be with the Lord Jesus in glory. You might have forty years before you die, or you might have six months. That’s the interesting thing about this race. No one knows where the finish line is and that is what makes this race much tougher.

    Runners and swimmers want to know where the finish line is. It doesn’t matter if it is running the 5K or swimming the English Channel, they must know where the finish line is. And when that finish line is located, they block out everything else and fully concentrate on the tape. This helps with the pain and exhaustion and gets them to the finish line.

    The Christian doesn’t know where the finish line is. So what do we do? We finish strong by fixing our eyes on Jesus. We are in the boat with Jesus. He will encourage us, and He will instruct us. And then one day–in an instant–the race will be over! We’ll cross the finish line, and life as we know it on earth will be over. And because we have listened to Him (His Word), because we have obeyed Him (His Spirit), we will realize that we didn’t just finish. We finished strong!

     

  • Joy

    “Joy is withered away from the sons of men…Is not the meat cut off before our eyes, yea, joy and gladness from the house of our God?” (Joel 1:12, 16).

    Joy!  What a scarce commodity this is.  There are many who say they are abiding in Christ.  There are few who show that they are abounding in Him.  Joy seems to be elusive.  How indescribably blessed is the believer who has his soul filled with it.

    This joy is as real at the graveside as at the fireside.  Joy does not evaporate under the heat and pressure of adversity.  Joy does not collapse in the presence of calamity.  Joy does not sour under the test of poverty.  Joy is alive and deep down in the bottom of the heart of a Spirit-filled believer.

    Joy is not created by possessions, or by positions, but by a Person — Him!  Joy can stand all pressures Satan or circumstances bring against it, but, and ponder it well, the sun of joy in the soul can be eclipsed by our own disobedience.

    Joy requires two conditions:  submission and service.  “If ye abide” — submission — means staying put when you feel like quitting, or you think it smart to quit.  Joy also comes through service.  Most Christians are activists, they do a lot of things —  unprayerfully.  Winning the lost at any cost, abiding in Him, allowing Him to live through you — service — brings unqualified joy.

  • God Created Us for Relationships

     “Commit thy works unto the Lord, and thy thoughts shall be established” (Proverbs 16:3).

      When we do the right things we will experience God working in and through us that will change our minds and attitudes as well. We usually take the opposite approach. We try to change our thinking before changing or reforming our actions. Obedience and doing are the best ways to get your thinking in line with God’s ways.

       As we personalize God’s truths we will experience God working through us in touching others for Christ. Instead of evangelism being “something we do” it will become that which is natural. Why? Because it is of the outflow of the Holy Spirit working through us. It is the practicing of the truth we know.  What power and freedom!

     

  • As It Was In the Days of NOAH

    “There is no fear of God before their eyes” (Romans 3:18).

    In Noah’s day the creation of the Creator chose to choose against God. They lived as if He wasn’t there. They were devoid of God. They were detoxing themselves from all that reminded them of the true and living God. They unanimously voted God off the island, eliminating Him completely from earth’s equation. Humanity hung by a thread of a thin, godly line. Though outnumbered by millions, Noah’s little family is the “why” God held back His judgment for 120 years.

    We see a sneak preview of things to come, an advance viewing of humanity in the last days. That generation was a God-hating breed, and their kind has returned in this generation. Noah’s contemporary message was ignored by the masses and the messenger was maligned and hated. They ate, drank, and pursued relationships without the acknowledgment of God at all.

    God was not in their human hard drive, erasing Him from their collective conscience and culture. They produced after their own kind, making more degenerates, just like them. They flocked together, sinned together, and hated together. Rejecting the words of a man who gave them the Words of God, they chose to suppress the truth and avoid all witnesses.

    We as Christians are, by nature, salt and light, we’re also masters at hiding in the salt shaker and hitting the dimmer switch. We must allow God’s Spirit to lift us and load us for love. For it is God’s people who again are postponing inevitable judgment. Noah’s world did not begin without God, but it sure ended up that way.

    Look around. Which way do you think we’re headed?

    And what are going to do about it?

  • Why Do We Mourn? 

    “Can the sons of the bride chamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then shall they fast” (Matthew 9:15).

    One glad morning the Lord Jesus will return. There are many a tired preacher who will rejoice when He returns. There will be many a people whose hearts have been true to the One they love, who yearn for that day, and then it happens. The Lord Jesus will return to get His bride.

    What a day that will be! What a glorious day when we shall see Jesus. What a wonderful day when all we have lived for, yearned for, longed for – when Jesus shall return. What a great getting-up moment that will be. Loved ones will return with Jesus. Their bodies will be raised from the dead graves from all over, and the power of the resurrection will reverberate throughout all the kingdom of Satan, and the bodies will be released.

    We mourn when the Bridegroom is not here. But one day we will be joined to Him. The older I get, the more I see, and the better I feel about the coming of our Lord. The sin I see, the unfaithfulness that surrounds, with the nations becoming more and more like Sodom, God’s bride yearns for the coming again of Jesus.

    May we say today, “Even so come, Lord Jesus!” We are in the days when the bridegroom is not here with us physically; He has been taken from us, and we fast while we wait. We mourn for Him but it will not be too much longer when we shall rejoice! For He will be with us. Hallelujah! Amen!

     

     

  • Praying the Bible

    “When they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness”  (Acts 4:31).

    On the cross the Lord Jesus only said out loud seven brief things. The Romans had flayed His back until it was ribboned and torn, and was seen by every eye that passed by. Severely dehydrated, His entire body weight hanging on three nails that held Him to the wood, the Lord of love had to push himself upward to be able to talk, and then only briefly before releasing and settling downward.

    Understandably, then, everything Jesus spoke from the cross was important. And as He lifted himself up each time I am convinced that He prayed through the verses of Psalm 22. As He weighed back downward, wrestling on those nails, He continued to pray silently through Psalms 22. Oh! How that pangs my heart. Yet, oh, how, it rejoices my soul! His first prayer from Psalm 22:1, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The last prayer was from Psalm 31:5, “Father into thy hands I commit my spirit.”

    Jesus prayed the Psalms. The final act of His earthly life was to pray the words of a psalm, the Word of the Bible. Friends, if the Lord Jesus prayed the psalms and the Bible, and the early church prayed the psalms should we not do as well? There is power in praying the Bible.