So today I think I’m going to talk about issues of the heart.  All of them, maybe.  One at a time.  Easy enough?  Here goes (I’ll start off complex and work my way progressively to more simple stuff):

A boss today essentially told me I needed to straighten up my act.  There’s a guy who works for me that has serious problems with authority.  He is a classic case of aggressive-passive (intentional wording).  Given a task, he will comply to the very minimum requirements of the task and grumble, back-bite, whine, blame and whatever-else-can-issue-from-the-mouth to the very maximum tolerance of his surroundings without actually crossing the line into blatant defiance.  And he cares not a whit for who hears him or observes it.  But this whole thing isn’t about him.  It’s about me.  The boss said I shouldn’t take that from him.  He said I really need to ratchet down on my little problem-child and basically tell him to put up or shut up.

The boss is right.  And I agreed with him.  As explanation (as opposed to excuse), I said I’d never really run into this type of character at work before and I wasn’t sure what buttons I could push to start getting through to him.  I’ve been in a lot (I think, A Lot) of odd situations with odd circumstances and a broad variety of characters, but honestly I don’t think I’ve ever been saddled with this type of total butt-pain.  So I’ve never really had to use the #9 boot calibration method, which is required in this situation.

The boss said “You wouldn’t let this kind of garbage go on at home with your kids, right?”  To which I obviously had to say, “Of course not.”  And that, of course, gave me pause and I really had to think.  Would I?

It’s two different situations.  I’ve spent my life with my kids and 13 years with my Wife.  I think I know how to diffuse, control, stop, bypass and deal with this sort of mess at home.  And I enjoy an authority and influence at home that I certainly do not possess at work.  So he’s right.  I wouldn’t let that go on in my own home.

At work, I’m in a different situation (keep with me here, it’ll make sense).  I’m experientially subordinate to the people who work for me.  They’ve been in the specific field we work in for a dedicated 3 years wherein I’ve been at it for less that 6 months.  They’re well acquainted with each other and the majority of the other workers in the environment.  I am not.  They have become set in their routine, methods and practice.  I am not part of that.  All of this combines to make a battlefield in which I am at serious disadvantage.  I don’t really know the lay of the land.  The enemy is thoroughly entrenched and they know the ranges, weather, terrain and maneuvers to get what they want done.

Bullshit.  If a guy consistently cusses you out behind your back and essentially tells you where you can stuff it, even if he ultimately complies with orders, he is an insubordinate failure.  And you have allowed him to fail.  Point one to God’s law.  As leader, I am responsible.

If someone persistently offends, practicing unacceptable practices, hurts others, leads the progression of others’ growing skills in the same negative behavior, then that person is a failure.  And you have allowed him to fail.  Point one to God’s law.  As leader, I am responsible.

It’s a matter of the heart.  I’ve a better grasp and performance rating in this leadership process at home.  While nowhere perfect at it, I strive as patiently and enduringly as I can to battle uprisings of bad attitudes, hurtful actions, fighting, backbiting and general monstrocity daily.  And I am as relentless as I can be.

I have not taken that integrity, ethic, standard to work with me.  Because I am afraid.  Because I’m dealing with people with whom I’m not intimate and with whom I’m not familiar.  So I err on the side of weakness, avoiding conflict with the problems because I want to be liked.  Because I want work to be good.  O do I want the work to be good.  But instead I hate my job.  I spend no little amount of time hating myself because of what I do (rather, don’t do) at work.

I have not kept my faith in my God in focus.  I faith myself to death at home.  Praying doggedly for my family in general and in specifics.  I push my kids’ buttons with as much strength as I can to get them as sin-free as I can, knowing each time that success is of God and not of me.

But I don’t do that at work.  I change faces at work.  And the face I have is not particularly admirable.

Simple bit:  It’s of the heart.  I’m not sick.  It is not the fault of the jerk at work.  It is not the environment at work.  It’s not the lack of fulfillment at work.  It’s not stress at home making my work wrong.  It’s me.  Me resisting the pulls of the Spirit to pursue God’s ways at work.  I have let the World work a weak spot of corrosion in my character.

It’s of the heart when you’re dealing with a liar.  It’s of the heart when you have a deep depression.  It’s of the heart when you’re battling someone who just. won’t. listen.  It’s of the heart when you can’t seem to give up this or that.

Yes, physical conditions, the environment, other people, the weather, body-odor can all contribute to aggravate a problem.  But the real root is just that, the heart.

We’ve been studying in Romans at church.  We read in Chapter 1 how things suck so bad that if we really grasped the depth of the problem, we’d probably all just curl up into little balls and wait for the meteor to obliterate us.

Romans 1:28,

“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 which are not fitting; being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful; who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them.”

Simple.  31 flavors.  One for everyone.  Pick.  I have most of them in my toolbox.

Simplest:  Just in case anybody didn’t see their personal colors in 1:28, here’s the catch-all:

Romans 3:10 (and Psalm 14:1-3)

“As it is written:  ‘There is none righteous, no, not one;’”

We’re messed up.  It’s in the heart.  Can’t blame it on the rain.

Now how does it apply to the current theme here on my little blog?  Healing?  Look.  I am aware of the physical problems.  I know about medications now, and clinical diagnoses and everything.  I may not know everything, but I know way more than I really want to know now.  I’ve done research and see the light.  There’s no denying a physiological and environmental part, huge part, in all this trial.  But in the end, should all those things be cured…

It’s still in the heart.

And that’s what I’m praying for most of all.  That He’ll put us all in the way of fixing her heart.  He’ll do it, I’m sure.  I just want the joy of being a part of that miracle.  And I want it more than I want to fix the thing at work.

But, I think, as I’ve said and have been told a million times before:  If you can’t be trusted in the little things, how can you make it in the big time?

Parable of the Talents, Matthew 25:14-30.  Look it up.  I did.

Not entirely related, all those words up there.  I just have some thoughts I have stowed in my noggin that seemed to collate this morning.

First, the Palin thing.

I’m not into politics.  There’s just nothing there for me to chew on.  I don’t get the lip-sync thing and all the empty words.  I have a great distaste for ambiguities and the hollow things that fly at all these speeches.  People verbally assaulting each other, digging dirt, promising vast, glorious nothing.  It’s not something I understand.

The emergence of McCain’s Pick has sort of illuminated me.  I actually saw a few minutes of her speech at the convention, saw her kids, was impressed.  I think overall, I was taken by the fact that Palin seems, just, normal.  I like that.

But the point I want to get at here is not about her, but about me.  In the ensuing blog-o-flood upon Palin’s unveiling there is a HUGE amount of discussion about various family values and female roles and general dynamics of why this lady is good for the job.  Why is it okay for her to be on this job?  Why is it okay in light of her family and the baby thing and in relationship with the church.

I have to admit, I learned a lot from cruising the discussions.  I started out skeptical about whether a Mommy should be entering a field that will take all her focus away from her Mommy world.  I didn’t think it was a good idea for a woman to be in charge like this when she has so much to be in charge of right in her family.  Yep, I think I was all mixed up in the difference between worldly and churchly orders.  There is a huge difference between the two.

In the hierarchy God established, were Palin going to be PIC (Priest In Chief), she’d be in the wrong place.  But this government isn’t a Christian government.  It’s a government of the people.  Through all my reading, it’s pretty clear to me that I’ve not thought things too clearly through.  I thought the idea was a bad one.  I inconveniently forgot about a couple of weighty arguments, which, when remembered, cleared the fog.  Margaret Thatcher?  Queen Elizabeth?  Didn’t they manage pretty well?  Weren’t they highly regarded?  I humbly submit that I wasn’t thinking straight.

That done, On to Moses.

It recently occured to me that Moses’ job is a role to be scrutinized.  His life was the epitome of trials, insubordination, frustration and perseverance in leadership.

Mommy and Daddy.  Do we lose it when our kids do that same thing over and over, no matter how many times we chastise, cajole, correct, debate, pray, teach?  Take a look at Moses.  He had the literal presence of God multiple times throughout his career to lend eternally formidable weight to his leadership of the Israelites.  Didn’t work out for him every time, did it?

Teachers.  There are so many moments when we just can’t grasp why our charges just don’t get it.  They’re disruptive, they’re slow to learn, they’re just not interested.  We’re impatient.  1 + 1 = 2 and that should be easy enough to get.  But it doesn’t work.  We’re livid; the refusal to do homework, pay attention, the backtalk and argument all put us at our wits’ end.  We’re teaching straight from the Bible.  We’re giving straight truth with the desire to see kids know what they must to function in the world.  We’re intent on seeing children come to Christ.  But they consistently fall short of our desires.  And we fall short too.  Take a look at Moses.  He’s as prime an example as any of us could ask for.

Moses ran through a generation of history, reviewing every incident during his tenure, when he gave his opening words in Deuteronomy.  He reminded his people of what he had done, what they had done, what God had done, all in pretty good detail.  Take a second look at the list of failures.  Not just the people’s failures, but Moses’ as well.  He lost his temper, he was ready to give up on ‘em more than once.  The appointed leader of the People got fed up, pulled his hair out, even flipped his lid so much that God revoked his admission to the Promised Land.

Are we all not like that?  Both like Moses and like the Children of Israel?  We can’t seem to find success in our teaching and leadership.  We can’t seem to obey our worldly masters or our Lord either.  We arrive easily at wrath and easily at despair.

But God is still with us.  Regardless of our miserable attempts and spectacular failures, He Still Is (I AM).  He forgives us.  He takes more time than we deserve to resolve us into what He wants.  He brings us Home, whether we have lost our temper or given up our temporal hope.  We’re still His children.

Finally, the food thing.

This is more trivial, but it shows a direct impact of God’s putting me together with a family.

I’m terrible about taking care of myself.  I don’t do well at the routine stuff that a bachelor should be able to handle.  Mostly I’m talking about food, here.  I can’t cook.  Not that I Can’t Cook, but that I can’t bring myself to do so.  I just don’t have any desire to get up and just do for me as I should.

I don’t do very well at all when not in what I believe is my natural environment.  When I’m home, it all works.  I don’t always cook there, but I can.  I eat.  I actually remember to make food and eat it.  I remember because of my girls, because of my Wife.  If it’s eat time, I’ll get food going.  If I’m hungry, I’ll figure out food, and usually tune the creation to something the rest will like too, if possible.

At home, I love making Chip-n-Dip for my Beloved.  I love making GPBC or One-Eyed-Monsters for my girls.  I make it, we eat it and we’re happy.  Sunday Special Breakfast is always the rage.  Outside home?  I’m slow, lazy and eat when the body says “or else!”  A reader might harrumph and comment that I’m just plain stupid, failing to take regular time to care for myself.  That reader just don’t get it.  I’m admittedly incompetent at the basics.  I think one of my kids suffers from the same fault, and I begin, slowly, to understand her frustration as well as mine and her mother’s about her.

Some people are naturally capable at everything, or at least capable enough to manage for themselves. I don’t think I got the same gear issued as those Some People.  I think I function fairly well when I’m safely cloaked in my 5, remembering the chores, the duties, the necessities, and I get them done (with joy and satisfaction, too!).  Just not when I’m alone.  There’s a dependency that I have, and it’s not a bad one at all.  I am more than myself when not at home, or maybe I’m more Fully myself then.

There are plenty of other things I just can’t bring myself to deal with when I’m not home.  I won’t detail the long list here, suffice to say it’s fairly annoyingly long.  I just wanted to illuminate the fact that, with out my family, I’m a pretty shoddy human.  God provided a home, a Beloved, an entirely lovely family for me, just as I had hoped for over and over for a very long time.  And that family has benefited me immensely in return.  I wasn’t meant to be a single guy, I’m sure.

Granted, I don’t transform into superhusbandaddy whenever I walk in the front door.  I have bad days, bad weeks.  I don’t make a sweeping victory over the bum in me consistently as I would dearly wish.  But I’m so glad I’m going home.  I’m no good at this single thing, clearly.  Here’s praying that I don’t have to suffer this trial too many more times.

All that done and said…

I found something I want for Christmas (shameless plug).  There’s a new Bible study media out.  The ESV HDNT.  It looks really handy.  I’m a growing fan of the ESV (gave my copy away to a friend in need, so I am on the lookout for another one when I get home).  The HDNT is a really cool potential addition to my slowly growing Bible Study Library.

I love the gimmicks, I admit.  This really does look like a good bit of work, though.  Somebody really thought this out.  Wish they had test-drives available.

And finally (finally finally)

I fiddled with my About Me page.  Nothing much.  Just kinda fleshed it out a little.  Tried to be more poetic and spiffy.

ommands that are not God specific come next. We can’t forget, however, that whatever we “do to the least of these” is what we do to Him, and in loving our Fellows, both brethren and the unsaved is integral to our loving God (Matthew 25:40 and 1st John 3:16-17).

First, what I think is the most striking commandment of all of them. Notice the uniqueness of #5:

“Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, that your days may be long, and that it may be well with you in the land which the Lord your God is giving you.”

Not one other of the Ten Commandments is specific as this in regards to persons. In the first 4, God is specifically a recipient of the action (or inaction) directed by the commandment. In the last 5, the instructions deal with X where X = any fellow man, whether or not he is a Christian.

Here is why this is so significant:

Ephesians 6:2 refers to Number 5 as “the first commandment with a promise.” This is true in that a specific reward is promised, that of long life and “wellness.”

This “wellness” pretty much can be explained by what every kid knows by the age of 3 or so, likely even earlier (I have one who knew well the difference between well and not well by the age of 6 months). Peace with parents is the very first peace a child encounters. It is often the very last peace, as well, depending on how the child encounters the world later on.

My Wife and I preach this to our kids on a regular basis. I firmly believe it is paramount to a stable family to instill the value of honoring parents before most anything else. My parents demanded the same thing and my strongest memories are those in which I failed to honor them. Life was pretty smooth – it was well with me – when I did right by my Mom and Dad, so well in fact that I don’t remember much but feeling safe, secure and comfortable.

But those bad days when I was strung up on the wall, whacked, grounded and everything else? I REMEMBER those times, probably every one. It was NOT well with me and my life may well have been shortened by the consequences of some of the stunts I pulled when I did not honor my parents.

Most importantly of all, PAY ATTENTION: This commandment is the foundation for all the other commandments.

How so?

What is a child’s very first exposure in the world? PARENTS. What are the tangible landmarks in a human life?

Birth, birthdays, graduations, marriage, parenthood, grandparenthood, death and somewhere in there, hopefully, salvation.

How many of these are directly related to parents? Almost guaranteed, every single one of these involves having or being parents. INCLUDING salvation. Salvation is the claiming of the ultimate parent, God.

If parents are not honored, all of the course of life is disturbed, tragically. Parents are the foundation for every other relationship and authority role in existence. Being subordinate to anything is first demonstrated by parents. Additionally, all the imprinting of what a leader is supposed to be like is founded in the parents’ demonstration.

Child to parent

Christian to pastor

Student to teacher

Worker to supervisor

Youth to senior

Christian to God

This truth is key to incredible amounts of issues in our culture, and has impact that strikes so far down the road that even the great prophets from Israel would have a hard time predicting it. Our kids, raised by us, have Mom and Dad as their first and sometimes ONLY role model for honor, both submissive and authoritative for up to ONE THIRD OF THEIR LIVES!

Let’s reverse this, as I like to do, and see what will happen if we don’t Honor Father and Mother.

Kids won’t know how to honor teacher? Bad conduct in school or bad performance. Bad job later on. Bad parenting skills. More bad conduct or performance by grandkids… ad nauseum…

See what this means?

Go back to Deuteronomy 5:9.

“…visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me,”

Many of us wonder that a just and loving God could extend punishment to this extreme. I don’t, for it is as obviously a natural course as that of a flash flood in the desert following the wash. Start with the wrong ingredients, and you will finish with the wrong product. Plant the wrong seeds and you will end up with the wrong plant which, allowed to propagate, will continue the wrong generations of plants to follow. It’s simple and alarming all at once.

How does this commandment govern the others, again?

I am not going to have a clear understanding of what it means to honor God if I did not start with an understanding of honoring my parents. This idea debunks the theory that we all have a “little bit” of goodness or God-likeness to our natures and will all eventually come to know Him by default. If my parents don’t demonstrate their love and submission to God, I will not know it when I see it. Therefore salvation will, depending on God’s will, be more difficult to receive, and may well prove a challenge in further Christian growth as well.

This is not to say that GUBAs (Grown Up Born Again) have it easy. They have specific challenges that somebody like me, for instance, will likely never face.

I am not going to have much skill in honoring my fellow men in the manner of Commandments 6-10 if I don’t already have that concept imprinted by my parents. Parents demonstrate as well as teach honor. If I learn to respect Mom and Dad and abide with their ways, I will at least have the guidelines to proceed similarly with others.

Can I stress this enough? Doubtful. Here’s a thought for exercise. Find any parenting book and test it against the parenting instructions in the Bible. Starting with Commandment #5 and Ephesians 6, continuing to the guides of 1 Timothy 3:2, Titus 1:6, and more examples of love and honor in Genesis 28:7, Hebrews 12:9 and Proverbs 13:1.

A case can (and should) be made that honoring parents is the first, most important thing for a child to learn after breathing and eating (sleeping and eating what’s provided with minimal mess both being part of honoring parents, of course).

In essence, I think I’ve also validated Mother’s day and Father’s day, so without Further Ado:

HAPPY MOTHERS’ DAY TO MY MOM!

Thank you for instilling in me the knowledge of what honoring means. I pray wholeheartedly that I might honor you every day of my life, with distinction and love (or at least love and innovation?)

.

And

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY TO MY BELOVED!

I pray I will honor you all the days of my life, in deed and thought (and coffee!).

And for all you other Mommies out there, Heather, Laura, Tori, Lydia et all,

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY TO YOU TOO!

I’m proud of you all!

I have a lot to start talking about concerning leadership. I’ve put my test products up on Paperscreams but want to stop here a minute and throw a few ideas and hints for what’s coming up here.

First the real papers that I’ve put together.

http://paperscreams.com/?cat=9

Now here’s why I put it all up on Paperscreams. I want to delve into the Biblical foundation behind these discussions. I have tried to stay “official” in the originals, for to introduce my “religion” into documents that I want to someday make waves in the organization would be to violate principle. But here, I intend to follow into the right motivations and ideals for a Christian (that would be me).

As ethics and morals are as individual as individuals are unique, leadership techniques and scope must be able to flow and flex to compensate. There is a lack of study on this in my little bubble, so I want to hash it out. I think that pondering is the best means of getting somewhere, and now that I’ve done some of that, I will be cracking open my Bible and hitting the subject full speed.
My studies in 1st John and Deuteronomy have started me thinking more on the subject already, and the Navy has obliged by presenting great targets for my fire. I think it’ll be a huge wordcount when I get there.

here’s some more I want to engage here before moving on. This will be more like a synopsis and a theme I’ve gathered from the first three chapters and little bit of #4 so far. It’s come to light as I returned from work today. Bear with me on this one.

Motivation. This is what everything is about. What makes us move? What is the force that drives us to act as we do? I believe that every single man and woman must take a deep look inside to figure this out repeatedly in life. This is not a take-stock-and-look-back sort of look that happens every ten years or so, nor is it an annual sort of thing such as the old (and worn-out) New-Years’ resolution thing.

Examining our motivation is a daily event. It requires pondering beyond a quick look in the mirror before heading out the door. Herein I find the real significance of morning devotions or prayer. I find that my days are governed by the first actions of my morning. But I’m not here to establish principle on morning ablutions as such. I’m talking about motivation.

Moses, in all these words, is talking about motivation. Get this. He reviewed a generation of history (40 years) to his people. He didn’t just do this for a history lesson. Our own history lessons in High School, in college, are often approached from the wrong perspective as well. We don’t need to know history for its dates and details. We need to know history, just as the Israelites needed, for its lessons, for the purpose of generating motivation. We learn the past to know what to do, what not to do and why. Why Why Why. I am confused why this generation is called the Y generation when so few of us young bucks don’t see any point in the answer to our why-questions.

Moses recanted the events of the wars, the wanderings, the conflicts and the peaces. He regaled the great moments of faith and those of failure to his people. He didn’t do this just to talk. He didn’t do this just for posterity so that it would eventually (over 1400 years later) begin collation into what we call the Bible right now (a word unheard of in Moses’ day). Moses told these stories to define the motivations of the people. He told his children what they needed to know for both positive and negative feedback so that they would correctly know the ideal motivation to continue in their mission.

What was their mission? It was the same as ours is today. Glorify God and enjoy Him forever. What was the motivation? Immediately, the motivation was to receive the blessings and avoid the punishments that God had ready for them. God is the parent, ready to lovingly adore and bless, and ready to lovingly chastise and direct His people. The people knew this. Moses knew this, but He had the final, most grave opportunity to tender a lasting motivation to the Children of Israel.

How does this apply to us? Here’s the Moses of our day: The Holy Bible. Every day we have access to the lasting testament to our motivation. We have the very words of Moses before us. We have the fount of motivation that is Peter, James, Paul, John, Luke, Isaiah, David, Samuel, Solomon, many men, ultimately Jesus Himself in our hands, and that motivation is clear and absolute.

We have more. As priests, we have the joy, the honor and the obligation to commune with our Lord God Almighty at all times in our days. We have the ability to put our thoughts, dreams, fears and confusion at His feet. We have Him, immediately and directly, to align our motivation.

What is our motivation? Is it success? Breaking out of the monotony of this usual sort of life? Is it “making a difference?” Is the motivation money? Is it converts to Christianity? Is our motivation a good image, untarnished in public? What is the motivation of a Christian?

I’ll bet any reader here can identify a dozen excellent motivations for Christians. I’ll read your mind right now:

• Give all that I have to the Lord, that He might make great use of it, be it money, time, things or my skills.
• Win souls for Him.
• Lead other Christians in the way that they should go. Commit myself to my family and ensure that my spouse and children are faithful, God-fearing Christians.
• Dedicate my time to my church, serving in any way that I can.
• Go overseas to the missions fields and help the hurting, showing them God’s love and grace.
• Commit myself to knowing God through study, prayer and fellowship with other Christians.
• Be an example of Christ-like integrity, honor and love in my career, serving loyally and rendering unto Caesar as I should without sacrificing my service to God.

There, I got a pretty good list.

Which one is which? What’s the right motivation?

Look, here’s what I’m getting at. We must hit this charthouse daily. A charthouse is where the navigation starts. It’s the room where all the maps and directions, guides and planning are put together for a voyage. Additionally, in the course of navigation on a voyage, all the data for that trip is set up, put out in front of the navigator who is piloting the ship. It isn’t studied and then left in the charthouse, but kept at hand, reviewed, updated and scrutinized regularly. On my ship, we checked the charts hourly, sometimes every 30 minutes, even every 15 to 30 seconds in tight situations. If a navigator on a ship must do this, should not a Christian before his God?

We must shuffle through the files and see our situation. Know what is going on around us and determine what it is we face. I used to think (and still fall into it from time to time) that I could just pray for health and faith and wisdom and the blessings as God wished to lay upon me. I would pray for my family and friends, the unsaved, the saved, and for help with my daily routine. That’s a great sort of prayer example. It’s showing a care for family and others, for God’s will and all that. But it wasn’t really communicating.

When you put a message in a bottle, what do you do? (Don’t bare fangs, this will make sense, prayer is not just a message-in-a-bottle)

Do you write “Hi!” on a yellow sticky, slide it into the bottle, seal it up and let it head off to sea? Do you write “I hope all goes well today.” and off it goes? Or do you express content that will mean something, pertinent something, to the eventual recipient? “Hi, I’m alone on a desert island. It’s very nice here, except I would like to have my family here with me, or at least let them know I’m okay, so heres where I am and how to get in touch with them. Oh, and I’m always thirsty. There’s not much water here and I could use a new fishing pole.”

Practical. Explicit. Clear. Involved. Engaged. We find our motivation in being clear to God what motivation we need. Of course we are to glorify Him and enjoy Him forever. But how do we go about this from moment to moment? We keep Heaven in our sights, but we live in today, so how do we handle today?

I have since learned (and found reinforcement tonight), that my prayers, my studies and my thoughts need to be on the immediate motivations as well as the over-arching grand ones. What am I here for today? What am I still up against that hasn’t been resolved yet? I must know my history so that I know what God has already demonstrated as His likes and dislikes, His ideals and His bans. I must know what is going on around me, in my own mind and in the place where I am, be it work, family, church or whatever, so that I can ask my Lord for His wisdom in that place at that time for access to my motivation.

I have a tough time at work here (this is where I get into my real-life situation). My desire is to shake the foundation, for I perceive a problem. My limit is lack of the influence and backing to do so. I am surrounded by a mass of differing characters and motivations all of which do not necessarily share my desires and dreams. And I’m in a place where I cannot just walk away, either. Notice that I didn’t use the word “motivation” anywhere in there. My motivation is what I need defined so that I can find the tack to take. What does My Lord have for me here?

• Am I to simply observe, as this is a lesson I must learn (I have much to learn from this) and thereby honor Him by my patience and endurance?
• Am I to strive to make the moves to change things, to bring to light that which I know is the better way, and thereby honor Him through courage and wisdom?
• Am I to quietly maintain as I am, and abandon this apparent challenge which so engrosses my thoughts, and honor God in obedience and peace?

Or is there more? What is it that I must do? I need to know, but my motivation for my action is what makes things right, not that action itself. So there is a need for direction. I need to have that moment of analysis, and regularly, for numerous tempting situations rise up around me frequently during each day. When do I bring up an issue? When do I sit on my hands? When do I depart in haste?

If I don’t keep a hand on my motivations, my thoughts in line with God’s will, I will take on the motivations that are unacceptable, those which compromise my integrity, my devotion, all those things which I am to be in Him can be tossed to the side in one fell act. I must start fresh each day, end fresh each night and stop during the day, frequently as needed, to recap what’s going on around me, what I need to do, why I need to do it, why I did what I just did. And I need to bring it, specifically, clearly, to the Lord so that He might have His say.

God isn’t prone to just reaching out through the Ethernet with an email or texting a quick note to me on the cellphone. He waits for me to call upon Him through the most technologically advanced medium ever invented. Prayer. It’s instant, it’s immediately beneficial and it’s unfettered communication. God wants us to clear the air between Him and us. He wants us to claim our dependence on Him. He wants to help us, but He’s left it to us to take the steps toward Him. Like a father and his baby on the first steps, He’s but inches away, waiting for us, His children, to reach out to Him so He can help us to stand. And as soon as we all start to remember that we’re going to be doing this with Him for the rest of our lives here on Earth, the more we’re going to gain from this relationship.

Far off the track from the Moses stuff? Nope. Read through again. How many times does Moses say “and God said…” or “The Lord God heard…” and so-on. There’s no doubt that communication with God is key in Moses speech. In fact, since he didn’t take much time to elaborate on the importance of prayer, I would suspect that Moses considered it fairly well understood by his people that prayer was inherent in all this history junk.

Motivation. We have to recharge. We have to consider. We can’t drive out until we know where we’re going. And we have to have gas and a maintained engine. We have to know the lay of the land, the will of the Lord and the condition of our actions before we move an inch.

am going to take on Deuteronomy for a while. This will be a little different from 1st John in that I’ll be reading through the book, but lifting my comments to the table as I go, not verse-by-verse. This is a bigger undertaking and I don’t want to trap myself into a massive discourse on every detail. I’m not at the masters level, I think, and so will peel of what I think I can chew. That being said, I’m very sure I’ll find plenty on which to gnaw. Enjoy.

A little background on the book should come first. This book is Moses’ final words to his people after the 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. Israel was about to embark on the conquest of Canaan, the Promised Land. Moses speeches here are a reiteration and explanation of the God’s Law as first presented in Exodus. Deuteronomy should not be considered a “second law” as the title would suggest. It is a fleshed-out repeat of the original.

“And I spoke to you at that time, saying: ‘I alone am not able to bear you. The Lord your God has multiplied you, and here you are today, as the stars of heaven in multitude. May the Lord God of your fathers make you a thousand times more numerous than you are and bless you as He has promised you! How can I alone bear your problems and your burdens and your complaints? Choose wise, understanding, and knowledgeable men from among your tribes and I will make them heads over you.’ And you answered me and said, ‘The things which you have told us to do are good.’

So I took the heads of your tribes, wise and knowledgeable men, and made them heads over you, leaders of thousands, leaders of hundreds, leaders of fifties, leaders of tens, and officers for your tribes.

Then I commanded your judges at that time, saying, ‘Hear the cases between your brethren, and judge righteously between your brethren, and judge righteously between a man and his brother or the stranger who is with him. You shall not show partiality in judgment; you shall hear the small as well as the great, you shall not be afraid in any man’s presence, for the judgment is God’s. The case that is too hard for you, bring to me, and I will hear it.’

And I commanded you at that time all the things which you should do.”

Note Moses’ tone in this passage. He opens up with some beautiful, poetic stuff. He sounds proud of his people, praising the Lord for the fulfillment of the prophecy to Abraham, and even asking for greater blessing from God. Moses’ doesn’t sound too upset that his days are at an end and there doesn’t seem much of a bad attitude, though he’s been forbidden entry to the Promised Land even after 40 years of faithful service in the Wandering.

But I’m at the practical part. I want to say that I see the hand of the Lord in this organization. I think Moses was well blessed with his father-in-law when Jethro put the organization scheme up to him. It shows that even the greatest leader can be taught. It shows that practical matters are important, and should be considered, even in the office of leading the believers.

What’s the point? God is organized. I constantly battle with my own organization. I also battle with others’ as much as my own. I try to teach this concept to my children, share it with my wife, emulate it to my coworkers, teach to my subordinates, sneak it onto my superiors’ desks. I’m nowhere near organized, but I’ve learned a few tricks that keep my head above water. It’s clear in the Bible that God is after this quality. He wants it in us, and we know this from the wisdom and the events that occur all over. Exodus 18 has the story of Jethro’s “Organize Moses” campaign.

Acts has the organization of the church. Jesus set up the partnership of disciples when they were sent out to witness. There were kings and generals in the Old Testament. There are divisions and classes of angels in Revelation. Adam was put over Eve as the head of the family in Genesis. Children are under parents, laymen under pastors, elders over juniors, you name it, God has organized it. Time itself is organized. God organized the timeline of the Bible to perfection. Isn’t it convenient that one critical event spurred the next one, EVERY TIME? This isn’t just happenstance. God is organized.

It’s evident in my life, too. He’s teaching me to be organized, personally, but He’s already lined up the timeline of my life itself. I like the story of my family best as an example of how God tailored time and events to lead directly to where I am now, where my family is now. Each event, first look, first child, first home and so-on were set upon each other as a master-mason’s brickwork. It’s all interlocked, and just plain smells like organization. The kitchen smells like pancakes on Sunday Morning at my house (usually, when I’m home) and that’s because there are pancakes. My life smells like organization because God is in here, organizing.

One of the most incredibly important organizations is that of leadership. Moses wasn’t just lucky to have a good father in law (like I’m not so lucky, either, since God must’ve planned that one out too in my favorite #2 Dad). Moses was set up for success on purpose. God knew what Moses was against. God also knew what Moses would be up against in 40 years. And He knew what the Israelites needed.

Sure, in a perfect world, all those people could work out their issues, differences, conflict, spiritual wrangling, all by themselves, as individuals before God. But it hasn’t been perfect in these parts since about the same time Eve took an interest in talking snakes. People stopped trusting each other and God, and they stopped thinking about the same time Eve stopped thinking. Adam ratified the new order, and trust, reason, understanding and peace went out the door. Something had to be installed to fix everything, and what could anyone ever come up with that could compete with….

Organizing the masses. It’s simple. Get the smartest guys (which the people will all agree on), get the most faithful, the toughest, the charismatic, the capable, and put them in charge. Put the hierarchy in place to keep them all in check. Have the ultimate reporting direction point at Moses. Moses, being the senior representative of God would still be the head of the nation, but now he had workers to support him, make it possible for him to accomplish the task which was to lead the people of Israel.

What was done here was to create accountability first off, and then, also, a means for all voices to be heard. Accountability means that there’s a person who can be identified as the Go-To for problems. This person is able to help resolve issues, knows his people, can identify problems and lead in spiritual issues. Moses was a great man, among the greatest in creation ever, but he was still just a man. God chose, rather than make Moses omniscient (silly notion for a human), to make Moses omnipresent, through representatives.

In a crowd that is “numerous as the stars” it is very unlikely that everyone is going to get their say. They wouldn’t be able to make the waves in the multitudes, and were unlikely to get the right words to the right person to fix things. Having divisions, rank, file and order, make the anomalies more noticeable. Hurt people, miserable people, confused people and even joyful people will be noticed when they’re organized. An unstructured mass becomes too amorphous to pick out the tiny important bits.

So when we balk today against the order that is imposed upon us, either in Church, or at home, at work or in society, take a fresh look at the source of the rebellion. The precedent for mass organization is actually dated somewhere around 3,500 years ago, by men of God. Not much has changed since then. Take a look at your favorite pyramid-scheme sales business (PL, PC, MK, AW, SU) or look at the military. Look at banking and office structure. It’s everywhere. People fight it, but in all reality, the precedent was of the people and God, (cooperating!) in the first place.

In case you’re not convinced, and think God just forced it on us? Maybe you think God only did it because some nutcase asked for it? Sorry. I already noted God’s organization. But here are a few interesting additions: God let the people have what they wanted in 1st Samuel 8. They asked for a king. God set up the priesthood himself for the Israelites. In the New Testament, He set the leaders of the church in place, handpicked, then let the rest of the organization flow as the leaders found necessary. It’s not some arbitrary idea, this organization. It’s also not some gross mistake. God started out organized with creation. Everything under the sun is organized. It makes sense that people are going to be organized, too.

Practical? We all need to keep this in mind. We need to realize that the disorganization we see around us and in ourselves is sin. What? Sin? NO WAY! Yep. Look, as the world spirals down in to the depths of corruption, do you think it’s just going to be obsession with drugs, or alcohol, or date-rape, or murder? War gets more warrish? Meanness gets more mean?
Think about how much damage is caused by disorganization. Mentally shut off all the traffic lights in your home-town at rush-hour and imagine the result. Okay. Multiply that catastrophe times all the people in the world. There’s your sin for you. We fight organization every day.

Our world is no longer even remotely pursuing God, and therefore is no longer remotely interested in preserving organization. We complain about the liberals, killing off structure and at the same time, we complain about bureaucracy and red tape. C. S. Lewis was convinced there is some tiny shred of God’s original design still left in us. I believe he’s right, for the complaints about organization indicate that even the basest of us, the meanest and cruelest ungodly ones, have some concept of what is the proper process for flow. Which should lead those who want to know God right to this next part.

The right structure, organization, is what God offers us to hold together. With the organized God in our lives, our churches will survive the battles, our families will remain whole, our children will grow up in His ways, rather than the rebellion all through the schools and public places. The evil that that kills our ministries, our kid-volunteer organization (Scouts, Awana, Ballet, Soccer), our military success, all that is the sin of not conforming to God’s organization, either by actively avoiding it or perverting it into something unholy.

I need to keep this in mind daily. My personal system is pretty awkward, and it’s evident in my workplace and in my family. It’s evident in my private life, too.

Worth praying for.

hy must we force ourselves to preserve a semblance of rightness and security in our homes when it is clear that such is not the case? When the rafters of our lives are falling down around our ears, and we have no rewarding relationship with those to whom we have committed, what good is it to hide behind illusion?

I say that if relationships are failed, then God is not between the related. If the clouds of disaster are lurking outside the walls of home, we must drop what we are doing and rebuild the walls. Rebuild walls of faith, perseverance, love and trust! Sheetrock, 2×4s and concrete will not withstand the demise of the spirit.

“But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall.” Matthew 7:26-27

It is fairly accepted that money is a great threat to the integrity of the family. As such it should have a place in priorities. But money is of this world. God made money. He does not coexist with it as an equal influence. Faith proves money, not the other way around. Sustenance is of God. God is not of sustenance.

Our careers, our money, our basic sustenance, are these things coming between us and our loved ones? I propose that these three material things have come between us and our families and our God. We use commitment to a stabilized home as our expression of love and caring. If the bills are paid and the things are got, then our lives are good. We are trying to use the world to solve our problems and all that is happening is holding together, with duct tape and rubber bands, a failing system.

It’s not the fact that we get our needs, it’s about where we go to get our needs met.

“Now the disciples had forgotten to take bread, and they did not have more than one loaf with them in the boat. Then He charged them, saying, ‘Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.’ And they reasoned among themselves, saying, ‘It is because we have no bread.’
But Jesus, being aware of it, said to them, ‘Why do you reason because you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive nor understand? Is your heart still hardened? Having eyes, do you not see? And having ears, do you not hear? And do you not remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of fragments did you take up?’
They said to Him, ‘Twelve.’
‘Also, when I broke the seven for the four thousand, how many large baskets full of fragments did you take up?’
And they said, ‘Seven.’
So He said to them, ‘How is it you do not understand?’” Mark 8:14-21

We conceal the truth. God is what makes our lives good and right. We are lying to ourselves, our families and to Him. Putting family first does NOT mean keeping traditions and the norm at all costs. Putting family first means doing the best thing for the family.

“Likewise deacons must be reverent, not double-tongued, not given to much wine, not greedy for money, holding the mystery of the faith with a pure conscience. But let these also first be tested; then let them serve as deacons, being found blameless. Likewise, their wives must be reverent, not slanderers, temperate, faithful in all things. Let deacons be the husbands of one wife, ruling their children and their own houses well. For those who have served well as deacons obtain for themselves a good standing and great boldness in the faith which is in Christ Jesus.” I Timothy 3:8-13

First, the head of the family must put his faith into the family. He is responsible to God for leadership of his little flock, whether the children have grown and gone or are still in their PJs. No amount of money and stuff can substitute for the Word and Christian wisdom. This may be a balance that is challenging, but the Lord has set His priorities in our lives and as such can be trusted to ensure we are cared for. Where are we in our pursuit of the Word and putting it to work in our lives? Are we humble before our God and our family, transparent in our failures and hangups, ready to keep His commandment before all other decisions?

Being the head of a family, whether referring to the sole headship of a father and husband, or the co-headship of parents, the role of pastor is put upon us, and suddenly we are under the command of all the qualifications and mandates for pastors. All of I, II Timothy and Titus become our Standard Operating Procedures when we become leaders, even of a little team consisting of a couple of kids, a husband and a wife.

Are we in the Church, with our family, being fed by that pastor and congregation as no other relationship can provide? Are we bringing that church home with us and continuing the conversation, the relationship as if we had never left? Or are we back at work, in the zone, in the money. Or are we back in our own world, propping up the roof and walls, hiding the truth? The pastor is commanded to feed his flock, and he is given these duties with great attention to detail and specific qualities. The command to feed the flock includes, to me, the command for the flock to feed. Go to church. Go to a GOOD church that teaches the word without compromise. The less we enjoy the conviction when in church is a good indicator that it’s a good church. The more we enjoy true honesty, exhortation and teaching when in church is a good indicator that it’s a good church.

“I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom: Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables. But you be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.” II Timothy 4:1-5

Second, the family must put its faith into the head, thereby showing faith in the Lord. Is our family stabbing us in the back, unraveling all that we are to stand for? Is there a rapport of mercy, trust and love in the air within the walls of our home? Or is there ice and muffled sounds of whispered despite? Does hope grace the halls of our home, or despair? Loving others is never applied by doing our best to conceal the darkness within us. Loving others is being willing to see the sin and take action against that sin.

Whatever comes between us and our family, rest assured that if it is not God, it is Satan. There is no alternative.

Is there hope? Yes, in the Lord. We cannot change anything other than our own tack. But our lives will reflect in that of others, for that is how the Lord works. We must find ourselves on our knees, find forgiveness, replace the trust that has gone. Not their trust, OURS. We must remove the barriers with renewed commitment to our lives as the shepherds of our little flocks, serving the Big Shepherd. Drop the ball, leave the court and pray, pray, pray. Let us read our Bibles, find the sustenance in the church that we NEED, and pray some more.

And when we take this to heart, start acting on it, we must be prepared for upheaval. Know that the Lord will cultivate the vine, with results that will certainly be distressing to the sinful self.

PAEM PART 1

PAEM PART 2

he hopeful part?

So I’ve had a couple of days to mellow, and now I’m just in tired mode. But I’ve been able to ponder more, and try to really gain insight on me. Some things seem clearer.

I’ve never done a good job of either contemplating or communicating myself. This may be for various reasons. One chief source is probably lingering reluctance to do so held over from my unsaved life. Spending so much time knowing I was wrong, yet working so hard to convince myself and others that I was right (speaking of morals and ethics and rights), has made it very hard, even in my liberated Christian state to be candid, transparent and truly introspective. I have become so very superficial in my self expression.

That sort of makes me wonder about my poetry, but that is a rabbit I won’t chase.

Another source of communication failure is probably my mistrust of people. I have a good repertoire of giving my trust and intimacy to the wrong people. Things along this line have improved greatly since I got saved, but I still suffer from the disability. I’m not sure what that is, whether a sinful condition, or a personality feature for which I haven’t found application or a way to combat. But my sometimes colossal failures in this context certainly can contribute to my inability to both express myself and deal with these highly stressful change situations in which I find myself.

I recognize that I don’t like risking my neck by causing ripples in other peoples’ norms. Or, more clearly, I don’t want to disrupt others’ routine and therefore give them reason to find negative feelings toward me. This is rather stupid of me, for I usually don’t have much issue with people who don’t like me. I guess, maybe, I don’t want more people to not like me. That, of course, causes stress.

What I’m getting at, I think, is that first, all this is a matter of discernment. There are multiple influences in my sphere which are throwing me out of alignment.

I don’t like change. I don’t want to risk damaging others’ opinions of me (hard as that is to admit, because I’ve prided myself in just the opposite too many times). I don’t want to reveal my character or internal feelings because I don’t trust people, or myself, to honestly understand or honestly communicate. Those are some of my problems.

What can I work with, here? I’m going to go backward, in order. The ones at the end are probably most direly in need of handling.

I don’t want to reveal me because I can’t honestly communicate or don’t trust others to treat me with understanding. This reveals a few problems.

I don’t trust God. Forget about trusting myself, or even others. Where is my trust best placed? Heck, even typing the last 17 words is scary. First someone could call me a moron for going so long without realizing this. Second somebody could call me a moron for actually believing it. Who is right? Duh, the first guy, of course, and I feel kind of like that first guy. So, a sinful state revealed. Check this out, Psalm 22:6-11:

“But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised by the people.

All those who see Me ridicule Me; they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying,

He trusted in the Lord, let Him rescue Him; let Him deliver Him since He delights in Him!

But You are He sho took Me out of the womb; You made Me trust while on My mother’s breasts.

I was cast upon You from birth. From My mother’s womb You have been My God.

Be not far from Me, For trouble is near; For there is none to help.”

There it is, my reproach, definition and hope all in one. I expect to be ridiculed, about myself, my passions, my troubles and my actions. But I also am to expect to be saved by God, in whom I must trust. And I am defined by the fact that I must trust him since my origin in this life. He made me and hasn’t broken trust with me in any way ever (though I’ve spent the majority of my life so far in giving no reason for His trust).

Something for which I am immensely grateful today is the grace God has given me to finally sit down and crack open “The Discipline Of Spiritual Discernment,” by Tim Challies. His writing in the first 3 chapters has really brought to the forefront the likelihood that sin is a probable main contributor to my condition. He also reminded me that I must expect the trials that come with the decisions I make in my life, if I am living for God.

My desire to avoid conflict and judgment against myself has an overwhelming affect on my spiritual state, and clearly enough, that when my comfort levels are tweaked, the un-Christian defenses go into overdrive. Challies reminded me of Matthew 10:34-37:

“Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a man’s enemies will be those of his own household. He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.”

So, am I breaking the rule from 1st John about loving the world? Yep. Is the resolution of this problem, this sin, going to solve my problem? Sort of. Yes. The full resolution of the sin will alleviate the problem. I do not expect, however, that I’m going to get through this mess so easily. One does not, by simply reading and apprehending a truth, cure the ailment. I’m going to have to work on this. First by repentance, and truly repenting, seeking forgiveness, and then striving to walk in the light once more.

I appear to have dealt with more than just one of the listed issues. What’s left? I’ve dealt with others’ opinions and treatment of me, certainly. I’ve dealt with my own communication, actually, since I’ve established where trust belongs. So about change?

There are two aspects of change. There is the moral aspect, which is the rightness or wrongness of a change, and there is the impact of the change, which includes disruption of routines, comfort levels and means more or different work. Basically there’s biblical change and the discomfort that ensues from breaking out of sin.

Does this apply to work, though? What if the change has nothing to do with biblical issues. What if efficiency is being subjected to improvement? Sin plays a major part in the effectiveness of even an assembly line change. Pride of position, comfort in routine, laziness, fear of the unknown, all are sinful in one way or another, betraying trust in the Lord, putting self first, inconsideration for others. So I want to make a change. I’m afraid of the massive impact (imagined or real), and that makes me uncomfortable.

I don’t want to do what I’m driven to do? Sound like Paul? Here’s his take on sin and the old self, and I think this has not a little shadow to cast on locating and improving trouble areas at work. Romans 7:15-25:

“For what I am doing, I do not understand.

For what I will to do, that I do not practice;

but what I hate, that I do.

If, then, I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good.

But now, it is no longer I who do it, but the sin that dwells in me.

For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh), nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find.

For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice.

Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.

I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good.

For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man.

But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.

O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?

I thank God — through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.”

I do not apologize for the really long read. I believe that understanding this passage is vital to understanding sin. Paul deals with the battle against sin here in a way that I don’t think is anywhere else so clearly laid out. I regret that my first introduction to these verses, long ago in Sunday School was but a short reading (very rapidly skimmed) by the teacher and only two real comments: “Here Paul writes about sin,” and “This might just be the most confusing passage in the Bible.” So I never read it again. Until I came to the Lord. Now, I broke the verses up into what seems the most easy breakdown for reading. If you skimmed over it, go back and read again, and it should be clearer now that you’re paying attention.

My sinful self does not want to make changes. I do not want to face the aftermath or the workups. No matter how much I see the good reason for the change, I cannot just commit to the change and get to work. Some people may be very good at this sort of thing, bringing in a realignment and impacting peoples lives, very capable of dealing with the “victims’” reactions and the aftereffects of upheaval. I’m not one such. I’m not confident and savvy about this stuff.

But the Lord keeps putting me into these situations. It’s been going on off and on for years. I’m convinced it’s Him, not me. Each change has been a result of identifying a need, something that is broken, and my ability to see not only the problem but a resolution. I’m not tooting my horn, here, saying I’m Mr. Fix-it by any means. I’m really good at messing stuff up, too. But I have, on several occasions, and ALL of those in question, found the need and the way to meet the need. Today, my dilemma is not just my own. I’m sharing both the sight and the solve with a couple other people, so it’s not solely my battle.

I need to remain steadfast in my commitment to God’s ways. I need to keep my confidence in Him. I need to trust what He is doing, whether I see the method or result. I need to trust Him to deliver me from the world’s reaction to my dedication. I need to trust Him to reveal me to myself, too. I need to be discerning in not only my external life, working and living, but in seeing my own flaws and problems that are internal. I can’t keep secrets very long, can I?

My failure has hurt more than just me, so now I need to get into some repentance.

But I’ve prayed, studied and written my way out of this funk, for which I praise the Lord, and with a less shaky, renewed heart, intend to move out and get back on track.

As for the “physical” symptoms of this whole debacle? Maybe I won’t see a release from them when these trials arise. But I sure do have the means to minimize them, and though I wish I’d realized earlier, I’m glad I have better now.

…Thanks, Heather, for being a part of illuminating this for me.

…And Thanks, all who were praying. I do believe you got answered. Keep praying — This is fun! (sorta)

utside influences are subject to the Word. We don’t take even the most reputable instruction at face value.

“Therefore let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the Son and in the Father. And this is the promise that He has promised us — eternal life.

These things I have written to you concerning those who try to deceive you. But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you , and you do not need that anyone teach you, but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will abide in Him.”

Main point:

The Bible is true. If it is true, why change it? Why trust anyone who deviates from the Bible’s teaching? People say paranoia is a bad thing. I say that paranoia over whether someone’s teaching is true or not is healthy. Don’t just blindly trust the teacher.

If I trust blindly in a teacher I’ll eventually end up in a great place for worship and connection with a charismatic leader who knows how to reach out to the masses. I’ll be challenged and satisfied in a corporate pipeline where my inputs and skills are appreciated. If I stop worrying so much about the Biblical specifics, I’ll be comfortable, fed and illuminated. If I trust my teacher implicitly, with no regard to the Bible (because my teacher is far more intelligent and educated than I), I’ll be joined with thousands of others who are artistic, musical, dedicated, faithful and just like me. Through all this I’ll have the pride of knowing I’m doing things for the Lord in a way that the world finally understands. I’ll be able to use all the tools at my disposal to relate to the people, to make them comfortable around my God. I’ll be unstoppable.

And I’ll be an antichrist.

John says I must let what was in the beginning abide in me now. The Lord brought me to Him through the Bible. I’ll often talk of how all of my family’s prayer was a pinnacle of the force in my conversion, or how Ben was influential in my salvation or how much reading “The Case For Christ” was the final stone’s throw that brought me to my knees. Yes, those are true statements. But they didn’t save me. None of them. God, through His Word, saved me. If I hadn’t known what the Bible said about my current and future state and how all that could be changed through repentance, submission and faith, I wouldn’t be His child right now.

The Bible was in the beginning. The Gospel. The whole Truth and nothing but the Truth. What would it do to me to turn from that Truth now?

Eternal life, the very concept, is based on abiding in Christ; abiding in the Truth. If I deviate from that specific abiding, in what is my eternal life based? I throw away the Truth: I throw away Christ: I throw away any foundation for my life. My today and my tomorrow, every day from now through eternity is pointless if I’m not living with Him. This has all the weight of life and death for the unsaved, for their destruction or preservation hinges upon this truth. For a Christian, who has the mission to show Christ to others, how much more weight is upon my shoulders? I have within me, having no foundation, all the tools in the world to turn sinners away from God. I’m not showing people the Lord when I dispose of that which was in the beginning. I’m showing people the world, making it okay to be of the world. Oops.

Other Main Point:

How do I avoid the catastrophe? I realize that there is no source of teaching that supersedes the Holy Bible. Should I go to seminary some day, what will I do there? I will learn how to learn what is in the Bible. When I talk with my brother over the things of God or this world, I am learning how to learn what is in the Bible. I pray that I am doing the same when I am with my family and we are in our studies of the Scripture. If there is one thing I can tell my girls it may well be this: You, dearest, are to read your Bible and know that the words there are for you, and nobody can tell you anything about God, you or how to live that is not in these Scriptures.

Have I completely discredited Bible teachers in this commentary? I sure hope that didn’t come across.

The Holy Spirit is in us for a reason. It is He who leads us through the pages of the Word and through the preaching and singing and everything we do amongst our fellow Christians. We can’t afford not to have the pastor, elders, Sunday School teachers or study leaders. These people are placed by God for us to learn from and follow (the Bible tells us that, too). But none of these are led by the world. They are not led by logic or gut feelings or popular demand. Bible teachers don’t sugar coat the hard stuff, and they sure don’t apply worldly principles to the Word. When they do, crack that Bible open a little wider and start being paranoid. You’re in for some entertainment.

took a lot of notes during the ethics section of my leadership course. I think in order to really deal well with ethics I might need to take some college courses. This is some hard stuff. I’ll try to keep it as clear as possible.

The book assigned in the class is “How Good People Make Tough Choices,” by Rushworth M. Kidder. Kidder is the founder of the Institute for Global Ethics.

Defining ethics is a big problem. Kidder’s organization says that Ethics can’t be a precisely defined term and essentially means study of what is right or good.

I have read through most of the book, and participated in the four-hour seminar concerning ethics in the class. My first hesitancy about the whole mess is the premise we started with: Just about all people have a common set of values (or morals), which guide our formulation of ethics. I hope to discuss this in contrast with Christian perspective without going into huge detail.

The title of the book is hard to swallow. People are not good. At least in my experience. The Bible says the same thing. We are corrupted, and therefore can’t be good in any fashion. But that doesn’t condemn the whole book immediately. It is possible for a sinner to do good (something that serves God’s will in a positive way). This is not to say that a sinner can actually do things for God, only that it good can come out of an action committed by a sinner.

Worst of all is that throughout the course we were taught to assume that people know what is good and right. C.S. Lewis claimed something similar, that we all have that spark of the Divine in us that gives us a standard by which we know the difference. That’s fine, but does the existence of this pretty much instinctual knowledge do any good? What is good?

All people are selfish. They act in their own self interest. I know this is true for me. Good for one person is not necessarily good for another. When I do good on my own I am serving myself in some fashion. It is clear in the passages of I John that if I’m not Christian, I’m not going to love my neighbor in the Biblical sense. I may help someone, but there is something in it for me, or I’m not thinking at all. That’s the way I understand a sinner’s good works.

Only with Christ in my life, me being guided by the Holy Spirit, with a goal of glorifying God will my actions be good. Is that not what comes out of I John? Good, defined by the Bible is doing God’s will. If I do the will of God I will live forever (I John 2:17) — So by tearing this verse apart to if-then statements, is there any way the unsaved do God’s will? They can’t.

Also, maybe more clearly, according to Romans 3:10-18:

“As it is written:

There is none righteous, no, not one; There is none who understands;

They have all turned aside; They have together become unprofitable;

There is none who does good, no, not one.

Their throat is an open tomb; with their tongues they have practiced deceit;

The poison of asps is under their lips; Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.

Their feet are swift to shed blood; Destruction and misery are in their ways;

And the way of peace they have not known.

There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

There is no clearer statement that people do not have the ability to do good. So I could chuck this whole discussion right now.

Christians, however, do have to deal with the world’s ethics systems. To do this we must first be fully aware that the ethics or morals of the world are skewed from the beginning. They are twisted in sin.

Let me stop here and be nice: The class got a few neat things right at least on face value.

1. When we justify our actions we are trying to make ourselves feel better for doing something wrong. This is compensation for sin. Christians do this too (I’m a pro at it).
2. We cannot change someone else’s values. Spot on. Only God can do that. It’s depressing, but a very essential fact that Christians (especially a Christian in a leadership position in or outside the church) must absolutely understand. I can’t make someone who works for me change their value system to comply with mine.
3. Everyone will agree on a moral standard (honesty, loyalty, freedom etc.), but they differ increasingly as goals, plans and tactics of achieving the standard are developed. The model we used in class was Honesty: Everybody votes for Honesty in school. Everybody votes that curbing cheating in schools is a great goal to build honesty. 1/4 of the class agreed with putting web cams in all classrooms to find cheating. 1 person agreed with awarding “CHEATER” teeshirts to people caught cheating on web cam.
4. Bad ethical practices in little things will impair our judgment in big ethical issues.

That was about it for the positive statements I could make out. The negatives were horribly far off in some places.

One value that apparently the Whole World agrees upon in this idea of global agreement is that of tolerance. I have a major problem with the term, tolerance, as it seems to be used today. Judgment of others is not permitted today in the name of tolerance (AKA diversity, acceptance, you name it). I firmly stand on the belief that this is the main source of the collapse of what passes for morality in our culture (yes, sin is the overall source. I’m speaking on specifics here-and-now). Tolerance is the active refusal to judge someone’s behavior. No one wants to make an evaluation on what is right or wrong beyond their own personal behavior.

I will claim that the opposite is true and that we must render a determination on the right or wrongness of another’s actions whenever that action intersects with our own. Does that make sense? What I see (countenance) and that with which I must interact both demand my judgment (Biblical Discernment). Romans 12:9:

“Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good.”

So, that being said, what in the world do I do when I encounter a wrong action in my presence, whether it directly affects me or not? Based on that verse just above, it affects me. It doesn’t take much exertion to figure out that abhorring evil is not specific to evil that doesn’t appear to affect me. Evil does, by the way affect me whether it’s directly impacting my current activity or not. Ephesians chapter 5 deals with our association with evil. Now, what do I do specifically about the evil? That is determined by the Bible. Once again, looking at the overall idea here, both my ability to act and my ability to discern are flawed. The only guidance I have, and my sole frame of reference, is the Word of God.

I’m sure this is all disjointed and maybe I can come back and clean it up at some point. I wanted to get the thoughts out while they were fresh.

I’ll leave you with this:

• Society does not determine what is right. Society decides what it wants.
• We do not decide what is right. We decide what we want.
• Only God decides what is right. He already has.
• God has told us what is right. We do what He wants.
• Our Code of Ethics is pleasing God, glorifying Him in our thoughts, deeds and very lives.

2 Corinthians 5:18:

“Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation,”

2 Timothy 4:18:

“And the Lord will deliver me from every evil work and preserve me for His heavenly kingdom. To Him be glory forever and ever. Amen!”