Not Men Of Understanding.

 The more that I spend time with guys here the more concerned I am at how shallow their understanding of the Bible is. Things that I take for granted they have never thought about. Things that I consider basic they get all wrong.

Salvation is about a miracle of a moment in time. You have a birthday to mark the day you were born. You should have a birthday to mark the day you were born again. Mine is 12/8/1973.

God set creation into order. Science is a discovery of God's order. It is not proof that the universe exists without God's direct involvement. The universe and everything in it is here by Divine inspiration and creation. Not by evolution and physics.

Faith is not anti science. Faith explains science. Science that omits God from it's calculations is wrong and misleading. All honest science leads to God.

Maybe God left the dinosaurs off the Ark on purpose. 

I could go on and on.

A New Day and a Better Day

 Today is a new day full of hope and promise. I hate when I dream about the failures in my life. I have had plenty of failures, but today I plan to succeed. 

Living here I sometimes wonder how different my life would have been compared to living in the low wage capital of Arizona. I might have had a career in a field that was important. I might have made a lot of money. I might be retired in luxury right now. But I didn't live here. I lived there.

But, would I have been saved living here? Would I have met the love of my life and stayed married for 40 years to her? Would my children have turned out so well if they had grown up here? The answer is no to all of these issues and any others that you can think of.

God brought me across the country from a broken home and a lonely life to begin to walk by faith and to continue to follow Jesus like I have for a very long time.

This is the day that the Lord has made, I will rejoice and be glad in it. Amen and amen!

Home Visits?

 I recently had a home health visit from a nurse. Nothing critical, just a well patient visit. After the nurse left it made me wonder when was the last time a health professional came to my home to check up on me?

This made me wonder when was the last time a pastor came to call on me in my home. This was not something that pastor Mitchell ever did. My pastor here came to pray for me in my home once a while back. Calling on people at home seems to be a lost art.

In Prescott they have a pastor whose primary job is to minister to the elderly, which often means visiting them in their homes. 

One thing that I can be sure of is that if I end up in the hospital I can be sure that one of our pastors will come to visit me. I appreciate that.

I am grateful that I do not need personal or constant care from anyone, doctor or pastor. I am in reasonably good health and am of a sound spiritual mind.

Wednesday Ramblings

 Wouldn't it have made life easier if ancient people had written down everything that they knew? Maybe they did and it is lost to history. Adam named all of the animals, but we do not know what he called them. Didn't it occur to him to keep a record of important things like this?

Perhaps before sin corrupted mankind, we had superior mental power and we could remember and recall things that today must be written down. No doubt Moses, to write down history contained in the Bible, received this information through oral retelling of the beginning of time. That might explain why it sounds so simple to read the first three chapters of Genesis. Moses wrote down the story as it was not only inspired but remembered by the ancients.

The fall of man in the Garden was more profound and catastrophic than we understand. Man went from being the ruler of planet Earth to being a servant scratching out a living. It is not until the new heaven and new earth that we as human beings will once again enjoy that status and ability that Adam and Eve had in the Garden.

Sin is not just drinking and smoking and fornicating. It is a fall from place and a loss of status and a lack of dominion. Jesus went to the cross to satisfy God's demands, not to make us better people. We will be better people in eternity.

Bigger Is Easier, But Is It Better?

 I have been wondering about something. When did our bigger churches plant the most workers? When they were bigger and had nice convention center buildings, or when they were smaller and more agile in how they operated? What I am wondering about is how many of our bigger churches, for whom the flow of pioneer church plants has fallen off, have spent a lot of money on  bigger buildings?

Bigger churches with big buildings are good for hosting conferences. But they used to host conferences before they got bogged down with convention center buildings. They made it work. It was exciting. A big building takes away the excitement of seeing a service or a conference packed to the rafters with people. SRO is more exciting than empty seats.

Another thing that I noticed is how some pastors, who seem to miss the exciting days of living on the edge, seem to work hard to try to make it happen again in the new, large building. They talk about the early days a lot. They seem to struggle with how to deal with church life as it is. They travel a lot.

The size of a church is directly linked to the ability of the pastor to minister to the church that the Lord has given him. No matter if that church is 50 people or 500 people or 5000 people, the truth is that the Lord will not waste converts on a man who cannot care for them adequately. 

"A man's gift makes room for him, and brings him before great men." Prov.18:16

I once asked pastor Mitchell why our Fellowship had so many small churches. He told me it was because we had so many small men. It is an unfailing rule of God that a church will never rise beyond the ability and the ministry of the men who shepherd God's flock.

Dance With The One Who Brung Ya.

Here is a thought that I had today. Is it possible that the people who threw out hymnals and who gave us modern translations of the Bible are attempting to destroy the faith once delivered to the saints? They have no respect for ancient songs, maybe they have no respect for ancient words or ancient books either.

I am tired of modern emotion based self focused worship songs that tell more about how I feel about Jesus than about who Jesus is and what He did. I am tired of modern versions of the Bible that try to make the word of God hipper sounding. 

The old wine may not be better. But the old songs and the old words got us to where we are today.

Dance with the one who brung ya is all I am saying. 

Search The Scriptures

 "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness." 2 Tim. 3:16

Pastor talked about reconstruction Sunday. He talked about how young people are reconstructing their core beliefs and the result being that they reject the faith of their fathers. He said that this is a bad thing.

I see another problem that has to do with putting the Bible under the microscope of study and the result being that we think that the Bible is an ancient book written by mere men. We think that Genesis was written by Moses and that it was Paul who wrote most of the New Testament. And by doing this we dismiss the wonder of how God brought the Bible into being.

The Bible is not a book of men's ideas on God. It is God's self revelation of Himself to show us who He is and how we should live. The Bible is older than we think and is contains words that are spirit and life.

"It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak unto you are spirit, and they are life." Jn.6:63

First and foremost the Bible is a book about Christ. It is God's plan of redemption written down in book form for us to read and study and obey.

"And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded to them in all the scriptures the things concerning Himself." Lk.24:27

We ought to reverence the Bible and do our best to obey all the things that are written there for our edification, exhortation, and comfort. Pastors need to study it and find the truth contained in it.

"You search the scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me." Jn.5:39

Finally, you need to know Jesus Christ, not just to know about Him. You must be born again. You need to repent.