God Still Speaks.

 I heard pastor say something today that I had never heard before from the Bible. He said that the book of Ecclesiastes was written by Solomon after he had come back to God after having been backslidden for a long time. And that the tone of the book and the perspective of the book make it sound like Solomon was writing as one who knew, and who had disregarded, and then returned to the faith of his father.

One thing this tells me is that wisdom is not enough. Solomon had wisdom and still turned his back on God.

Another thing it tells me is that once you have wisdom, you always have it. You do not have to start over from chapter one.

With God, there is always hope of redemption. Whether you are wise or not. Whether you are important or not. If you will turn around and look to Jesus, He will take you back.

There is more to the Bible than we can ever know. God still speaks!

Are You Ready?

 I was sorry to hear the news about James Dobson. He died today. 89 years old. Like I have said before, no one in this life lives forever, no matter how good they are and how influential they have been for God.

Every Christian wants to go to Heaven. It's just that no one is eager to die to get there. We're all hoping for the Rapture. But unless it happens soon, some of us in our Fellowship and in our church here will die first.

The two big questions are: are you right with God and ready for eternity? And, are your affairs in order and are you ready to die concerning your family and your estate?

" But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope." 1Thes. 4:13

Addicted To Growth?

One thing I notice as I read the New Testament is that none of the writers seem to be addicted to growth. You do not read about the apostles fretting over growth and wondering how they could replicate the day of Pentecost results again and again. They were wrestling with what to do with the results that God had given them and how to care for the people who had been added unto the early church. 

We, on the other hand, seem to be addicted to growth. We thrive when we are growing in numbers. And we become stressed when those numbers are not explosively growing like our early days. We love the excitement of the early days of revival, and we seem to not know what to do when we are not growing. Growth is our answer to all of the local church's problems. Nothing we are facing would matter if 50 new converts appeared.

Nothing grows forever. Even ancient trees stop growing and just get old at some point. Scientists make it their life's work to study things that used to be alive and growing and that died out a long time ago.

The only thing that we hate when it gets bigger is our weight. We work hard to not get bigger around the middle!

Instead of being addicted to growth, maybe we ought to follow the Biblical mandate and work on being addicted to the ministry of the saints. (1Cor. 16:15).

Monday Musings

 Jesus seemed to be aware that he was the Christ at 12 years old. He realized that he had to be about his Father's business. He wasn't talking about his stepfather Joseph. Somehow, though Christ lived in eternity as God's son and as a part of the trinity, he came into this world as a man and he had to live and ultimately die as a man to pay the price for man's sins.

When the risen Christ talked to the men on the road and showed them in the scriptures the things concerning himself they said their hearts were burning. The Bible is a book about Christ. It has history, it has poetry, it has wisdom. But first and foremost it is a book about Christ and the Cross. Your heart needs to burn sometimes when you hear divinely inspired preaching.

Every question that we have concerning God and truth is answered in Christ. Christ is the Word made flesh.

We do not have to understand in order to believe. A child can understand. Anyone can believe. Faith is simply taking God at His word.

Jesus promised to never leave us or forsake us and to go with us to the end of the age. This gives me great hope.

A World of Debased Minded People

"So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them." Genesis 1:27

"And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things that are not fitting." Romans 1:28

I have been wondering about life under the influence of Chat GPT. One thing no one is talking about is how easily society has been drawn into the world of generative AI and how quickly we have embraced this brave new world.

This is a society that has given up on God and so it seems that God has given up on them. The madness and anarchy of the modern world is evidence of a world filled with debased minds.

We hate God to the point that we seek to destroy His image and likeness in people. We try to turn boys into girls. We encourage girls to be masculine. We have rejected normal marriage for same sex unions. We have pornified the act of married lovemaking. All of this and more that we do to discredit God and to devalue His image and likeness in humanity.

A debased mind is a mind that thinks up robosex and the idea that cheating your way through university is okay. A debased mind sees more than two genders, and thinks God's idea is stupid. A debased mind is a mind that calls light, darkness, and calls darkness, light. It calls good, evil, and it calls evil, good.

I think it is significant that the first word of the Gospel that was preached in the first century is Repent! God's great love sent Christ to the cross. But God is angry with sinners every day because of the lives lived in mockery of God.

"Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent." Acts 17:30

The Blessing of Sleep

 "It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows; for so He gives His beloved sleep." Psalm 127:2

There is a lot of valuable truth in Psalm 127. But that may be for another time. Today I want to focus on the final statement in our text. God loves us and He gives us sleep at night. Pastor Greg once preached an entire sermon on sleep and I was surprised at the response from the Prescott church.

With heart failure like I have, sleep was something that I had trouble with. I could not lay down in bed, I was driven to try to sleep sitting up. I often did not drop off to sleep before 3am. My doctor prescribed sleep aid medicine that barely helped. But now, with my heart failure being treated, sleep has returned.

I am grateful to God every morning for a good nights sleep.

God Provided

 A short while ago I received a windfall of unexpected money. I had no pressing needs at the time so I simply left it in the bank. Then recently my vehicle needed some work done on it. It turns out that the windfall of money that I had received was enough to cover the cost of repairing my vehicle. God provided before I knew that I had a need.

Thank God for His provision in my life!