Ross' Sermon

Our Involvement Mininster, Ross Mitchell gave a sermon today at church. It was about harboring bitterness in our hearts and what the Bible says about it. He had some very intriguing comments in his message. Among many, here are some:

"There are few things that will happen to us that will enable us to exemplify the cross of Christ more than being mistreated."

"Why would you make someone pay for what Christ has already paid for?"

Abraham Lincoln, when he was elected into office, appointed many of his political enemies to high places within in his cabinet. Someone confronted him about it and asked, "Why didn't you crush these people? This was your chance to destroy your enemies." To this, Honest Abe replied, "If I make my enemy my friend, have I not then destroyed my enemy?"

Amazon Book Review

I just read a book review on Amazon, and it had some very insightful things, so I copied and pasted it! Here it is.

Bottom line: Biblical Evangelism is MESSAGE DELIVERY - Packaged in Genuine Love & Concern for the Whole Person Lost in Sin's Darkness. Deliverance. Search & Rescue. Proclaiming unpleasantries. Telling the whole truth. Confronting controversy. Risking offending the one we really care about, like compassionate intervention with an addict to stop her/him from ongoing harm to self & others. Call it CAREFRONTATION. Boldness, availability, genuine love, faithful obedience, courage, Biblical training, Spirit-filling are all we need to share Jesus in life and lips. Lips without life is hit-and-run hypocrisy. Life sans lips is sweet sentiment. Jesus requires BOTH life and lips of effective witnessers for Him. Picture true evangelism like being a cancer-survivor telling people who need to be diagnosed that they too have the deadly disease. They need immediate medical help. Urgent care. Befriending the person and being nice and all, while withholding the dire truth, is no love at all but callous disregard for God, His Message and the Cure of the Cross, Jesus' shed Blood as chemotherapy and miracle treatment of life.

"Well, I don't like to think about that stuff."

I was listening to someone share their faith with an unbeliever the other day on "Way of the Master," and Ray asked this guy if he thought about death. He said, "Well I don't like to think about that stuff because it's kind of a bummer, you know?" I just don't understand people who say that. Death is eminent, obvious, eventual, and inevitable. It is the common denominator of the human race. EVERYONE WILL DIE!! Sorry...... But, seriously, shouldn't we at least ponder it sometime?? I think it would behoove us all to ask ourselves the question, "What if?". "What if what the Bible says is true? For that matter, what if Islam is true? Or Hinduism, or Judaism, or Scientology?" It will be a faith builder, for sure. I've delved in it (very shallowly, admittingly) and it does nothing but drive me back to the truth: Jesus Christ.
Back to the unbeliever - this guy's response is equivalent to saying, "Well, I don't like to think about my test tomorrow, because that's kind of a bummer." I say, think about it, and think about it some more (and study, of course). Another common response to the Christian faith is, "Well, I don't believe in that stuff." That's equivalent to saying, "Well, I don't believe in that mack truck that's coming straight toward me while I walk down the middle line on the interstate." What you believe doesn't matter. It's the truth that matters.

Everybody Steps On Raymond

I'm watching "Everybody Loves Raymond" on TBS, and I can't help but see the subtle nuances of a society that has begun the spiral downward. In this sitcom, the man is no longer head of the household. In fact, the very term, "head of the household" almost has a stigma attached to it when you refer to a "man" being the head of the household. In today's politically correct world, you can't assume or expect the man to be the leader of the home. These days, the position is up for grabs - the wife can assume the position just as easily as man can. Ray's wife, Deborah, barks orders at Ray while he cowers in her presence. Even their kids are misbehaving, and instead of invoking their natural instinct to punish the child, Ray and Deborah enroll in classes that are supposedly suited to instruct the parent on how to "discipline" the child. However, their definition of "discipline" is not the same as mine, or the Bible's. They intend to "reason" with a 6 year old child - yes, I just said "reason with a 6 year-old child"- about why she should do her chores. Ok, ok, can I just say here that I'm glad my parents didn't try to "reason" with me and utilize "active listening" when I was a kid???? In fact, I probably could've used even more sessions with the belt or the yardstick-to-the-buttocks. The KJV Bible says in Proverbs 23:13, "Withhold not correction from the child: for [if] thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die." Umm, ok, a clearer translation would be, "Don't fail to correct your children. They won't die if you spank them." Spare the rod and spoil the child. I'll take it further and say that sometimes God causes something to happen in life that is a little bigger than "reasoning with a 6 year-old." We are all like 6 year-olds in God's eyes, and when He tries to reason with us, whether it be through His Spirit, or through His Word, we need to listen, but we don't always follow that formula. Thank God that He doesn't give up after that. He chastens us in order for us to turn around from what we're doing and follow Him again. Take that, "Everybody Loves Raymond."
P.S. I use this sitcom because I think everyone will agree with me when I say that "ELR" is probably the closest thing we have to a normal real-life scenario in the home today. It shows you that the world's plan for family and God's plan is for His children are totally at odds with each other.

Separation from God cont'd

So, do we sin because we are separated from God, or are we separated from God because we sin? I think it's both.
We sin because we don't have the presence of God around us.
As a Christian, I know that God dwells within me (Romans 8:9-11; 1 John 4:13), which makes it very hard for me to willingly want to sin. In fact, we can't live in a continuous life of sin if we're Christians. As Christians, we are called to give our lives as living sacrifices (Romans 12:1) and to die to ourselves. As Christians, we are brought back into the presence of God through Jesus Christ. Therefore, God's presence sustains us and allows us to do those things we long to do (Philippians 4:13) for His Kingdom. Without God, those things would be impossible.
When I think about it, that might explain some part of why people in hell have no hope - because hell is a place of eternal separation from God, where God will not go and where man can not escape. If God does not abide in hell, there is no hope of redemption, and no hope of earning your way out. God is the only source of anything good, and without Him, there is a void of good. What do you have when there is a void of good? Hell. Without His sustaining presence, hell is and will forever be an endless cycle of sin.
We don't have the presence of God around us because we sin.
God punishes sin. So, when Adam and Eve sinned, he banished them from the Garden of Eden and put Cherabims and a flaming sword at the entrance (Genesis 3:24). That was their punishment. There was still hope of reconciliation, though. God knows that His creation has an innate longing for the One who created it. God's presence is what will be so splendid and pleasurable in heaven. We will be with God!
Like I've said before, I have no problem with saying that I'm not God. Some people would have a problem with saying that - I've talked with those people. I'm not God, therefore I'm not good, therefore I'm a sinner. God made me with arms, but that doesn't give me license to blame Him if I beat up someone. God gave women everything they need to be prostitutes. That doesn't give them the right to go downtown and stand on a street corner, all the while saying, "We were created that way, so blame God." Yes, we did inherit sin, but we are also responsible for it. "But," you say, "that just doesn't seem fair." To this I answer you as I did earlier. What if it were you in that garden? What if the serpent were talking directly to you, tempting you? Would you persevere? I'll leave it to Paul to wrap it up: "Therefore, as through one man's offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man's righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man's obedience many will be made righteous." Romans 5:18,19.

Separation from God

I just finished a book in preparation for sharing and, more importantly, defending my faith in the face of questions and persecution with the coming attraction, "The DaVinci Code." The book is called "Cracking DaVinci's Code." Hopefully this will equip me with some more apologetic ammo. Anyway, in the book, the summary at the end brought up a very interesting notion about sin. We are separated from God by original sin, and not necessarily by our actions in the present. At first, I admit, it almost seemed heretical. Of course, we are to be responsible for our actions, and we can't blame Adam and Eve's original sin for what we do in the here and now. So how can we adopt that concept of sin- that it's not our sin that separates us from God, but the fact that humanity itself is and has been separated from the beginning of time, and is therefore continually apart from God? Well, when I got to thinking about it, it makes sense. I haven't thought it all out, but frankly, the fact that we start out without connection with God when we are born is matched with this concept. We are born into the world with sin in our genes. We start out separated from God, and we can only be reconciled to Him by being perfect, and as we all know, that has not been done (Romans 3:23). So, Jesus comes into the picture and puts His cross over the gap and asks us to "cross His cross" back to Him. Sounds theological to me, but many atheists (or unbelievers) would probably not be too comfortable with this teaching. They would say something like, "So it's Adam and Eve's fault for our being separated from God? That doesn't seem too "loving" to me. We have to pay for someone else's sinning." Well, my answer to that would be- if you were the first human created, would you be perfect? Is that what you are saying, that you would make no mistakes and do no selfish deeds? Hardly... none of us would. That's a big load to bear, being blamed for all humanity's sins. I'm glad Jesus bore it anyway. In my opinion, even if we are separated from God at the start, and continue to sin after that because we aren't close to Him, it seems a rather small price to pay just to admit one's selfish, depraved, sinful self and to cling to God for reconciliation. Let's let Jesus do the work. Then, let's praise Him forever for it.

So I finally gave in

Ok, it was only inevitable that the next step in my cyberspace journey was to create my own blog. After all, I try to keep a personal journal at home, but pen and paper are just so inconvenient... I mean, first there was email, then came facebook after much pressure from my wife, who is a fanatic. Then, of course was myspace, which was more of an effort on my part to create something on my own that was not Ashley's idea (I'm an original, what can I say). So here we are: Eliot's Blogs. Ok, I will quite typing now and realize that I'm basically talking to myself. I'll see you back here soon, Eliot.