Today I have been reminded of the old Christmas song that says but hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on Earth Goodwill to men. Then rang the bells more loud and deep, God is not dead nor does he sleep. The wrong shall fail, the right prevail. With peace on Earth, Goodwill to men.
When you are hated openly for being a Christian on the same sites that promote everything else, from witchcraft to pride parades, you can’t help but wonder. Why just me? I will go out and see these people and they will ve nice to my face but they show their true colors when hidden behind a laptop. The thing is, they hate your light because it shines on their darkness and these people cannot handle that. They are promoting bills that will make public Christianity illegal and instead of being fired for public religous discrimination, they are patted on the back. It is easy to see this and feel hurt and abandoned. But the Bible speaks constantly about not letting yourself get down when you see those who have declared themselves your enemies prosper. If you were a Christian who never felt hate and who never saw cruelty simply due to the fact that you were a Christian, then you wouldn’t be living as a proper Christian. It hurts. It makes us angry. Yet God told us these days would come and these things would happen. He also told us to keep on the Narrow Path and to fight to win the race, to keep the faith, and someday we would see right prevail and wrong fail. Hate maybe strong but God is always stronger. God is not dead and he does not sleep he will save us.
Month: June 2024
Dear Fathers
Dear Fathers.
Recall in the horse and his boy by CS Lewis? All the things that saved Shasta in the end, Aslan (the Jesus figure) says. Those were me.
The cat who protected you from the jackals in the desert by the tombs. The Lion who scared you away from the cliff edge. And the Lion who gave you strength of fear to run the last few miles. And the lion you do not recall, who pushed the boat to shore when you were a baby. That was always me. – Paraphrased
This makes me think of a story of Papa. When I got my first horse at 13 years old, I thought I knew everything. Papa knew an awful lot about horses and was constantly trying to help with him but you know it teenagers are like. In an old video I found of when I first had River and was saddling him, you see me put on all of his tack and then you say papa very quietly step up behind me and tighten the saddle. I never knew that he had done it until I saw the video. We don’t always see the things you do for us dad’s, but we will see it if they ever stop, because we have taken for granted a lot of your protection and your caring. Sometimes we don’t thank you for the times we woke you up a quarter to 1:00 because we had heard a big noise in the house. Sometimes we don’t thank you for taking time out of your meetings to help us figure out how to multiply decimals. Sometimes we don’t thank you for the days off work you took to take our pets to the vet’s appointments. Sometimes we don’t think to thank you for all those Christmases you lifted us up so we could put the star on top of the tree, a spot we could have never reached without your shoulders. Like our fathers quietly and constantly protecting us and caring for us we don’t always notice that God is. He’s always there protecting us guiding us comforting us and we don’t always notice and we don’t always remember to thank him but we should remember to thank him.
God is called our good Father because that who He is. He loves us enough to direct and discipline, but He also loves us enough to protect us at all cost. It takes a strong man to be the imitation of God as Father within the home.
Rise up men, daddy’s of courage, strength and Valor! We need you! And if we haven’t said it yet. We love you, thank you for all you do.
Nineveh
[1] Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: [2] “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.” [3] Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very large city; it took three days to go through it. [4] Jonah began by going a day’s journey into the city, proclaiming, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” [5] The Ninevites believed God. A fast was proclaimed, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.
Jonah did God’s will and the people repented immediately. They were ready to accept God and to change.
How did Jonah feel about that? Look at the amazing thing God did through him. See him sitting on a hillside all…. not quite happy.
Jonah 4:1-3 NIV
[1] But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. [2] He prayed to the Lord, “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. [3] Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.”
Wow. Thanks God for using me to change these people, now I just want to die. As I said. Jonah hated these people. With just cause. He didn’t want to see them in Heaven! He wanted a plagues of Egypt response. Now he felt like he had been used to help his enemies. Which he had.
But what does God say?
Jonah 4:11 NIV
[11] And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”
Today is missions Sunday. For missions Sunday we all like to think about missionaries like David Livingston who was amazing, or like brother Andrew, or like David Wilkerson. We like to think of these incredible people who wanted to go and had a calling from God and a passion in their hearts to serve these people and to love them and to show them Jesus. But Jonah isn’t like that. He had one of the greatest revivals in history under his belt, but he hated it. He hated doing it he hated the good result. We feel like we are going to minister to and preach to and show love to people who are going to be wonderful and Worthy. But in truth at least half of the people you meet in your life will probably kind of suck. People are rotten a lot of the time and it’s because we live in a broken world and those who don’t have Jesus are broken by this world. We feel like if the people we are speaking to or ministering to are awful or cruel or Wicked then it’s probably not God’s will. We feel like if they are people we hate and are disgusted by then we should just leave them all to burn. But that’s not what God says. He says go to Nineveh and preach to those people who have tortured and killed your people Jonah. He says if you run I am going to throw you over the side of the ship and feed you to a big fish. Then he says when you’re angry about their transformation what right do you have to be angry I created these people too. There’s a lot of sinners in this world. People totally sold out to their evil desires. And not all of us want to see these people change. It makes me think of an African lady who was a missionary of sorts who rescued girls out of dangerous parts of Africa. She rescued them from horrible horrible things little girls of 5 to 8 years old. And when she was speaking about what she did the Christian man came to her and asked her please tell us the names of the men who are hurting these girls so we can pray for them to be changed. And she said no I don’t want them to be changed I want them to go to hell. Now that is between her and God. And I bet every last one of us standing here just judged her for saying that. But if we looked closer at ourselves there’s a lot of people we think are so wicked we don’t want them to change because they deserve to suffer for what they did. We think of murderers and child pornographers, we think of people who distort things and mess in the minds of the innocent, I personally think of animal abusers. Do we really want these people to change and come to know Jesus? Or do we deep down really want to see them pay for what they’ve done? That’s the thing with Jesus. When you repent he forgives you there is no more condemnation for that sin. So when these people who do deserve to suffer for what they have done change and become Christians and are set free, it’s easy to have a little feeling of but they’ve never suffered for what they did. And that’s really hard. It’s really hard because in the end Jonah was right. He was right to be angry that God wanted him to help people who had hurt his people severely change so they would not suffer for what they did. He was right in the thinking of people. But if we are living as Christians as representatives of Jesus and we think of him, what did he do? How did he deal with these people who deserved suffering for what they had done? From what I recall he died on a cross for them. The fact is we are all sinners. That statement has been taken and contorted so it is used to make it so people don’t judge sin as Sin. But what it’s supposed to mean is that we have all sinned we all ow Jesus for our lives we have all fallen short we have all deserved to suffer for what we have done, and we were going to suffer for what we did. But God in his mercy and Grace the same mercy and Grace that Jonah condemns him for, he sent his only son to suffer in our place. Does that mean that these people who were living in horrible Wicked Ways who are influencing the world in wickedness, who are causing suffering and confusion and illness of the Mind or pain and and death of the body, does that mean that these people have sinned no more than the rest of us so we should stop judging what they’re doing? No. We should always judge sin as Sin. But we must continue to hope that they will change and will stop living like this and will come to know Jesus. Yes that means they may never suffer or be punished for what they have done, but we will not be punished for what we have done either even if what we have done is nowhere near what they have done, I recall the Bible once said
Luke 7:47 NIV
[47] Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.”
Perhaps we have been forgiven for only little things. But those who have truly repented and have been forgiven for many, truly awful things, often become the greatest warriors for Christ. Why? Because they have known the devil and they want to see him be destroyed. We forget as did Jonah. The person who is doing this evil, is simply a puppet. The one pulling the strings is the one who needs to suffer. And he never will be forgiven. The devil is to blame. But it’s up to you whether you fight him or not. Jonah may have been miserable the whole time. But he still did God’s will. Let us not judge Jonah. But to instead realize we are all Jonah in some ways and we all run from God’s sending us. We all have people we don’t want to save. And we all must choose whether to follow God anyway and do what we don’t want to do, or to turn and chance being swallowed by a predetermined fish.
Who is your Nineveh?
A whale of a time
Jonah 2:4, 7-10 NIV
[4] I said, ‘I have been banished from your sight; yet I will look again toward your holy temple.’
[7] “When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple. [8] “Those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God’s love for them. [9] But I, with shouts of grateful praise, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will make good. I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord.’ ” [10] And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.
Okay. I know we all have read Jonah probably several times over. But tonight I read it and learned something new.
Jonah said that he felt God had banished him from his sight because he had run away. He thought he had gone so far that God had actually turned His back on him. Don’t miss this. His answer to that feeling was to pray. He called out to God. Even though he though God had cast him from His sight, Jonah’s answer we to pray. What faith!
Here’s the best part. When Jonah prayed, God answered. He heard Jonah and listened even though it had take a storm and a giant fish to get Jonah to pay attention to Him, as soon as Jonah turned his heart to God, God responded.
It doesn’t matter how far you feel, it doesn’t matter what you’ve done. God will listen when you repent. He is not angry with you. Even if you’ve made it so He has to put you into the belly of a whale, God is still with you. He hears you. He loves you. All you have to do is call out to Him.
Carried in the cross 