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Friday, February 21, 2014

The hard facts of a loose life…

Update: Heaven on earth is hard to achieve!

News flash: Heaven on Earth is humanly impossible!

Our day seems like a scene from Hell, the bills pile up, the phone is ringing with calls of angry people demanding this and that, there is little time to help the family and then getting to work involves pleading for a ride from people who are tired of giving it to us.

Life hurts and so do we!

There are times when every step seems to be one that strains our energy to the last drop and each sound seems to reverberate around our heads with thuds that drive nails into our consciousness and make us wish for the oblivion of sleep.

Ever been there? Are you there now?

Probably if you are it is because our world is hugely imperfect. We do not live the way God wants or desires, and those around us are focused on anything except doing God’s will in each situation.

Never mind our own pride that stops us accepting or asking for help. Pride like that is a sin folk!

Remember that we as Christians are not to be too proud to ask for help from other Christians and from God himself.

Jesus said “Turn away from your sins! The kingdom of heaven is near.” Matt 4.

Okay so what are sins? I remember the definition using a simple memory tool…S for selfishness, I for Ignorance, N for nastiness,... and then I review what I have done that falls into those categories that would displease or go against Gods guidelines for living. I always come up with something because I am certainly not perfect.

What does Jesus mean by “turn away from your sins”.

I guess it means rejecting these tendencies, attitudes and actions that take us into doing wrong things.

It means looking to Jesus for answers, forgiveness and guidance.

So today is tough.

There is more than I can do and I don’t have resources to do what I have to do. I have also heard Jesus said “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven. Only those who do what my Father in heaven wants will enter.” And I am not sure I can do what God wants. In fact, what does God want from me? Sometimes it feels as if God is one of those angry people each wanting something from me. The pressure is overwhelming if I think of all that, isn’t it?

Yet Jesus also said “Every teacher of the law who has been taught about the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house. He brings new treasures out of his storeroom as well as old ones.” Matthew 13

Jesus teaches some of us about his kingdom and we see opportunity, we see a relief. We hear his words “Come to me, all of you who are tired and are carrying heavy loads. I will give you rest.” Matthew 11

We need to be regenerated. Jesus points out “What I’m about to tell you is true. You need to change and become like little children. If you don’t, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

What does he mean by become as little children?

Do children with a loving father worry about clothes, food, shelter?

No! That is the loving father’s responsibility.

Do children take the gifts there father hands out without reservation?

Sure!

Do children of a loving father second-guess his intentions?

Never!

We need to become like children and trust him with our most precious and intimate fears, handing them to him to deal with and doing what we believe he is asking us to do each moment of the day, checking each thing we think he has asked against the truths in His bible since he never goes against his own word.

That way we know we have turned away from sin.

Here and now we can live in God’s security. It’s still hard, particularly since the world is full of others who shout, show and do sin. Yet, God somehow finds a way to lead us around the sin of life, he takes sin out of our lives and enables us to move forward.

Just ask Him to help, and take the help Christians and others extend to you.

Turn away from sins no matter how nice they look now, because sin is excrement made to look like chocolate bars. No matter how good it appears, it is horrible!

Let us instead get the true help, love, joy and peace that can only come from the pure and glorious God of the universe and those that let that love flow through themselves to us. Be a person who accepts that love or flows it through to others.

That’s my prayer for you today!

James says "So get rid of everything that is dirty and sinful. Get rid of the evil that is all around us. Don't be too proud to accept the word that is planted in you. It can save you. Don't just listen to the word. You fool yourselves if you do that. You must do what it says."

Heaven on Earth is humanly impossible, but is possible with Jesus!

“What [does] it look like to bring heaven to earth right now? We can, in the power of God’s spirit, prayerfully help restore the Creation so that when King Jesus is unveiled behind the thin veil that He is behind right now, and heaven and earth come together at last, this place will then seem to be a place that is fitting for the King that’s come home. That is the Christian vocation.” ~ Chris Kugler

Fri, February 21, 2014 | link Comments

Thursday, February 20, 2014

Can we live in righteousness, ... all the time?

Righteousness: righteous, integrity, equity, justice, straightness, upright, just, straight, innocent, true, sincere best understood as the product of upright, moral action in accordance with some form of divine plan.

We as Christians have a problem that is uniquely ours. We are expected to live righteously.

Jesus said...

For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

That was in Matthew 5 and if we think he meant it in an offhand manner and it was not central, we need to see what was his words leading up to this.

He said...

For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. ¹⁹Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

This is a New Testament reinforcement of the Old testament words in Deuteronomy 6

And if we are careful to obey all this law before the Lord our God, as he has commanded us, that will be our righteousness.”

Can we do this? None of us is perfect and if we were Jesus didn’t need to die, rise and give us Holy Spirit to be with us.

When we sin, we are not righteous and as we have just read, it requires keeping to all of God’s guidelines to be righteous. Then the smallest sin takes us away from that state into unrighteousness.

Yet Jesus wanted us to be righteous!

In Galatians 2 Paul says “I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”

Jesus wants us to be right with regard to the law, but Paul explains the law just gives power to evil since we cannot keep to it.

Being human we fail continually!

In fact Paul explained to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 5 how Jesus influences righteousness when he said...

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Holy Spirit operating through God’s grace and our requests for forgiveness brings us into a situation where our faith in Jesus and Holy Spirits power cleans away the evil of our life and leaves us in pure righteousness of God.

Now in this righteous state it is as if we had never sinned and the power of God to enable the good and right activities of our lives is exposed to enable us to do amazing things.

Last night I was watching a movie made about Kevin Richardson who is known as the “Lion Whisperer”. This man walks among lions, wrestles with them lies down with them and does things no other person could do. At one point in the movie, a lion comes to the car filming Richardson and he makes the comment that the lion has smelled their fear. Sure enough, the wing mirror is broken as the lion claws at the car and those in the car are forced to drive away with lions in pursuit.

Richardson was within a few feet of the car when this was happening and stood watching it drive into the distance with angry lions around him.

How come he was safe?

The King of beasts could not take fear and Richardson has none when working with them. Lack of fear makes him safe and able to do amazing things.

While God is not a lion and should not be compared to a lion except in the simplest ways, but we can see that God’s reaction to sin and evil is like that lion's to fear.

We cannot have sin and be safely in God’s presence.

Yet Jesus took the attack of sin and drew all the sin from us making us righteous. We can be in God’s presence without fear due to this.

What does this mean to us?

If we sin, we can go to God and ask for forgiveness and to be protected under his son, Jesus’ grace. Then Holy Spirit will clear away the sin and we become pure.

While being righteous ALL the time is difficult because we all sin, being righteous most of the time is easy if we love Jesus ask God for forgiveness when we sin and accept Holy Spirits control of our life.

That’s my plan for today...what’s yours?

Thu, February 20, 2014 | link Comments

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Let’s be slow to let our words go to anger…

Those who talk a lot are likely to sin. But those who control their tongues are wise. ~ Proverbs 10:19

Letting our mouths spew forth angry uncontrolled words is like licking a sharp blade, ... the more intensely we do it... the more likely it is that we will get hurt.

When we are placed in situations where there is a negative situation that we face and have to overcome, we need to be aware that our words will probably be ready to surface in self-righteous indignation.

This tendency should be avoided!

The knowledge that we are likely to get into the situation should be enough to slow us down in speaking our mind.

We need to be extra careful with our words if our hearts are not full of peace and God’s joy.

This is the time when words escape that undo years of good work, that destroy with the power of evil.

We as humans have the extraordinary power to be the mouth piece of God himself in one moment, and then become the vitreous vile mouthpiece of evil in the next.

This should not be!

James 1 says…

¹⁹My dear brothers and sisters, pay attention to what I say. Everyone should be quick to listen. But they should be slow to speak. They should be slow to get angry. ²⁰A man’s anger doesn’t produce the kind of life God wants.

²¹So get rid of everything that is dirty and sinful. Get rid of the evil that is all around us. Don’t be too proud to accept the word that is planted in you. It can save you.

We need to listen to James, all of us!

We have two ears and one mouth.

Let’s listen twice as much as we speak.

Let’s listen to both sides of each argument.

Let’s not prejudge because pre-judgement blocks our ability to hear others perspectives.

Our need is to do right in each situation and we cannot do fair judgement of a situation if we go in with a view that is coloured by self-preservation, or our own perspective alone.

If God had looked at mankind from his perspective he should have sent lightning bolts to reduce us to ashes because we are evil. Each and every one of us have been evil at some time or other, haven’t we?

Yet Jesus comes and takes our perspective so well that he takes over that evil from us, and in compassion dies instead of us.

Why?

Love allows God to see our perspective and have compassion and grace.

We need to be like God and view arguments from everyone’s perspective.

We need to put our needs and wants aside to enable us to do the best we can in each situation.

Let’s prefer listening to speaking. If possible let’s let everyone speak first before we jump into a discussion or argument with words.

Push anger aside since it does not do much at all. While Jesus was known to get angry on this earth, think of all the times when he didn’t where we in the same circumstances would have.

Jesus was very slow to anger. Let’s be like him!

We need to make sure our lives are pure and clean. Let’s get rid of hatred, selfish ambition, greed and other selfish sinful attitudes.

Look for evil in a situation and reject it. Take it to God and give it away to Him to deal with. Let’s unveil it to God, not those around us.Let’s look to biblical truths in dealing with situations. Using God’s wisdom is a way to avoid adding incorrect words into a situation.

Let’s remind ourselves that

The tongues of those who do right are like fine silver.

But the hearts of those who do wrong aren’t worth very much. Proverbs 10:20

Let’s be sure that we fall into the situation that

When the storm is over, sinners are gone.

But those who do right stand firm forever Proverbs 10:25

Words do count. Let’s say less but make it more truth filled and focused by God’s guidelines. Let’s apply what Jesus taught rather than react before we can apply the stability of biblical truth to the situations we come into.

Jesus said “⁴¹Suppose someone forces you to go one mile. Go two miles with him. Matthew 5

In those days a soldier was limited to forcing others to carry their loads for a mile. If the person volunteered a second mile, the soldier could be in trouble if the porter did this and then pressed charges at being forced to go a second mile. The soldier would have to have made sure everyone knew the person had volunteered and was no longer doing it at his command. The second mile was one where soldier and porter were on equal footing and could speak as equals.

No longer was the porter in servitude, but the porter was now an equal with the soldier. They could talk as peers on this second mile.

Let’s endeavour to find these situations where by some service offered we can find common ground where everyone can be heard equally.

Let’s allow God to save us and those around us in situations.

Let’s avoid licking sharp blades!

Wed, February 19, 2014 | link Comments

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Second guessing ourselves, and how to reduce the stress it causes

Second guessing ourselves, and how to reduce the stress it causes.

I'm not going to allow myself to second-guess projects. I'm just going to do the ones that I fully love and believe in - that's a real privilege.~Joel Edgerton

Sometimes I do ask myself if the first thing I decide on is the best, but not often since I spend a fair amount of time and take care in making that first decision.

Yet, I know many people who will spend huge amounts of their time making a decision and then worrying about whether they have decided incorrectly, then changing their minds, and then repeating the process and changing it back again.

This can go on for a long period of time.

Worse than this , as the years roll by, it can become a habit that is self-depreciating and stress inducing.

Why do we do it?

Why do we let ourselves get in the way of our own enjoyment of life?

Someone once said that “Good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions.” ~Unknown

Even bad decisions can provide positive growth in our lives and we can learn from them so they cannot be all bad.

Christians should know where they are going in life.

God has shown us clearly how we are to live and the final destination of life.

Not only has that been laid out but we are also given the ways to live successfully.

For us Christians, a decision should be taken with a good deal of prayer and biblical reflection on what God would want. This is simpler to accept as the best way to go is not really totally up to us to figure out by ourselves.

The God of the universe has already given guidelines that if followed makes decisions taken in the direction of these guidelines correct.

It becomes far easier to make decisions. We have less opportunities where second guessing ourselves can going to occur.

This means it's easier for peace to come into our heart and joy to fill our lives and for us to know we have made the right decision.

Those who have no relationship with God have much more of a challenge since there is no set of absolute guidelines in their life. This creates stress.

The day-to-day person struggles with the future impact of those decisions and does not have clarity on how they will work out in the universe over time. They may make a decision that if they end up hurting feelings or going against the flow of life, they are doing wrong. Yet this may be incorrect in some cases. A few experiences of this type of ambiguity and they get bogged down in the decision making exercises of life.

Okay, so how about we look at a few ways of closing on some of those decisions we all face?

Regarding our time the bible says to not be idle so let's not waste our lifetime being idle. Decisions should be ones that keep us actively doing God’s work whatever form that takes.

Next move towards what we believe is the goal God has for our life. Note that I used the word “believe” not "know". At a given point of time we will believe something. Maybe we have prayed and are uncertain, but have an idea that something may work out. If we imply start towards the goal, and ask God to change our direction if we are wrong, we are not going to sit in indecision. We will be moving and if God turns our path, it will be easy to change direction because we have have momentum.

Next, push away those thoughts of inadequacy. God built us adequate, it’s up to us to live within that adequacy. This differs for each person, but we know that God established our life for a specific purpose that no-one else could complete. Let’s know this and not undervalue the abilities God has given us.

Okay now for a big one. Our needing love and relationships! We all need love and relationships, but let us know that diving into relationships without choosing wisely and listening carefully to ALL of God’s guidelines will probably introduce huge complexity and pain into our lives. It is better to be alone than in the company of the wrong person. Ignore God's guidelines and it's likely we will suffer!

God made us a certain way.

Even if we don’t want to respect this, we must. God designed us, not we ourselves. We are not here to redesign ourselves, but to unveil our abilities and talents, and nurture what we have into fullness and power.

Be careful of grasping at love when we are reacting from a point of previous abuse or loss of love. Until full forgiveness has been extended and the love of God is in our heart, we must be careful of grasping new relationships with what may be grimy hands.

On the other hand, let's accept the possibility of a good new relationship rather than avoid it simply because a previous one didn’t work out. Closing oneself to love is not only wrong, but starves us of our joy and experience of the completeness of life.

Let's let grudges go and move on. Even those grudges we hold against ourselves must go. They are not fruitful!

Let’s move ourselves to higher levels of Christian living each day. In this there is joy and fulfillment, and as we go on we learn the great truth that our God who loves us takes us through our bad decisions to good ones, even turning the bad into good as we go, if we trust Him.

¹²Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.

¹³When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; ¹⁴but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. ¹⁵Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.

¹⁶Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. ¹⁷Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. ¹⁸He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.

James 1:12-18

Let’s not second guess ourselves but step out in God’s love and power.

Tue, February 18, 2014 | link Comments

Monday, February 17, 2014

I was asked about Free Mason’s and Christianity...

I was asked about Free Mason’s and Christianity...

We Masons are among the fortunate ones who are taught to meet together with others opposing or competitive ideas and yet respect each other as Brothers.~ author unknown, Caledonia Lodge 637

Can a Free Mason also be a Christian?

There are heated debates on this and long arguments.

Those who are Free Masons that are part of Christian Churches will say “yes”, and get very involved and emotive about this.

Certain church groups say “no”, and yet other church groups make no stand in this regard.The Roman Catholic Church forbids their members from being free masons.

Various protestant organizations say that Masons follow mysticism, occultism, and even Satanism.

Yet arguments are sometimes limited and clouded due to the inability to get clear statements of the beliefs of Masons from them. Why is this, if everything is true and good?

Personally I have little experience of Masonic anything.

A grandfather of mine was a mason, but all he did was shrouded in mystery that no-one in the family ever understood or was exposed to. That included my grandmother. Yet, I believe both he and my grandmother loved Jesus.

Can sinners be Christians? Yes!

The bible teaches us this.

So can a free mason be a Christian? Of course!

Yet, can Christians be deluded and living in sinful ways without knowing it? Yes, of course!

This leaves us with the potential question...Can honest Christians be duped and within an organization that they do not understand fully, and that is providing confusing truths to them?

What can we say with some factual knowledge that can shed a little light on these discussions?

It is a fact that Free Masons represent to their members a masonic god as "The Great Architect of the Universe" (G.A.O.T.U). [Note: Different lodges may give different designations of this god, but the core concept is consistent]

It is a fact that Masons accept people of all religions into their organization provided they speak allegiance to this Great architect of the Universe.

These are two well respected facts.

I doubt any Mason would deny these.

Multiple religious faith’ed people on joining the Free Masons express allegiance to the supreme god of the mason’s.

As Christians, we have accepted Jesus as God and his commands as supreme.

We all know and respect John 14:6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (NIV)

Can this statement align with that of the Masonic Great architect of the Universe? Taken alone, yes!

Jesus could be the Masonic Great architect of the Universe, if we look at it from this perspective.

However, is there more to it than this?

The challenge is Jesus did not allow for other beliefs to be put at the same level, or on par with Christian beliefs in any way.

Here is the statement about this in Deuteronomy...

³⁵You were shown these things so that you might know that the Lord is God; besides him there is no other. ³⁶From heaven he made you hear his voice to discipline you. On earth he showed you his great fire, and you heard his words from out of the fire. ³⁷Because he loved your ancestors and chose their descendants after them, he brought you out of Egypt by his Presence and his great strength, ³⁸to drive out before you nations greater and stronger than you and to bring you into their land to give it to you for your inheritance, as it is today.

³⁹Acknowledge and take to heart this day that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth below. There is no other. Deut 4:32-39

This states no other God can be acknowledged in the Christian faith.

None!

Ephesians 4 puts it more succinctly...

⁴There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; ⁵one Lord, one faith, one baptism; ⁶one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

If there is one God, then accepting alliance to the Masonic Great architect of the Universe would be fine provided this Masonic Great architect of the Universe was acknowledged as the one true God and if everyone who joined agreed this God was the Christian God, represented by the trinity of Holy Spirit, Jesus and the Father.

Is this what occurs?

No!

Masons take pride in accepting all religious faiths and yet all have to subscribe to the Masonic Great architect of the Universe as being the supreme god of a Mason.

Christians may be deluded in thinking this is the Christian God, but then Buddhists, Krishna, and Allah worshipers are equally welcome to be free masons so this Masonic god cannot be the Christian god.

This Free Mason organization cannot be Christian from this perspective. This is a fact!

Can Christians belong to non-Christian organization? Yes!

So where is the problem?

Christians can belong to organizations provided it does not ask them to submit to idol worship or agree that any other god other than the Christian God is supreme.

Masons, have a god entity, but we have shown conclusively that it cannot be the Christian God.

Submitting to be under this god entity, the Masonic Great architect of the Universe, is submitting to an idol, and no Christian can do that with honesty and truth.

Therefore by this one fact alone, Christians who are part of this organization have compromised their faith.

Does this mean they are not Christians? No!

Does it mean they are doing the right things? Also ...No!

A deluded sinning Christian is still a deluded sinning Christian, no matter how sincere they are in their delusion.

I contend therefore that while I totally love my Christian brothers and sisters even if they are part of a masonic lodge, if this information is brought to their attention and they chose to remain to be part of the Lodge, they should not be placed in a deacon or leadership role over other Christians since the bible also says 1 Timothy 3...

Whoever aspires to be an overseer desires a noble task. ²Now the overseer is to be above reproach, faithful to his wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, ³not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. ⁴He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him, and he must do so in a manner worthy of full^[a] respect. ⁵(If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?) ⁶He must not be a recent convert, or he may become conceited and fall under the same judgment as the devil. ⁷He must also have a good reputation with outsiders, so that he will not fall into disgrace and into the devil’s trap.

⁸In the same way, deacons are to be worthy of respect, sincere, not indulging in much wine, and not pursuing dishonest gain. ⁹They must keep hold of the deep truths of the faith with a clear conscience. ¹⁰They must first be tested; and then if there is nothing against them, let them serve as deacons.

Unfortunately, a Christian who is a Mason while being totally welcome in any Christian group, cannot be an overseer or deacon, since they are not holding to the deep truths of the faith.

They cannot withstand the testing as they are agreeing with others that it is okay for everyone to hold different beliefs on the Masonic Great architect of the Universe. This contravenes the first commandment of God.

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
³“You shall have no other gods before me. Exodus 20.

Mason’s submitting to a Masonic god principle, while at the same time knowing that many others who do not worship the Christian God are doing the same, are unfortunately deluded into universalism. They believe religion is a universal human quality with devotional and ritual observances. That religion is a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.

This is not Christianity!

One cannot believe this and be a deep true Christian at the same time.

This does not mean these are not amazing people, sensitive, focussed on helping others, and loving others.

Yet, if I put this argument to one of these people, I would suggest the levels of anger and annoyance that would arise would be extreme. Self-justification would become prominent and irrationally held to.

What more evidence is there to say that a Christian should not be a free mason than these simple facts?

Have a great day, and pray for our Christian brothers and sisters who are deluded into thinking the Masonic and Christian god’s are compatible.

Mon, February 17, 2014 | link Comments

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