March 11, 2025

Exodus 14: 14 “The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.” (NIV)

God does not open paths for us before we come to them, or provide help before help is needed. He does not remove obstacles out of our way before we reach them. Yet when we are at our point of need, God’s hand is outstretched.*

In this verse we read Moses’ words to the Israelite people as they are being pursued by Pharaoh’s army. They are - not surprisingly - terrified by the sight of the Egyptians’ horses, chariots, horsemen, and troops advancing on their vulnerable position by the Red Sea. Was Moses being ironic when he told them to be still? They had nowhere to go! And was his irony double-edged, followed as it was by God’s next words? “Tell the Israelites to move on.”

I don’t think Moses meant, “Don’t move.” I think he was urging the people to be still in their thoughts; to adopt an attitude of waiting for God’s instruction. How are we to hear the still, small voice of God if we are running around in panic? The Lord will fight for you if you will just wait. He will come through for you – in the nick of time and in amazing fashion! Could any of the Israelites have imagined what form God’s deliverance would take? When Pharaoh’s army is upon you, and the Red Sea is behind you, what else can you do besides be still?

God will never arrive too late nor with too little for our needs.*

March 10, 2025

Genesis 6: 5, 6 The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. (NIV)

“I wouldn’t go around preaching it. But don’t you think there’s more evidence, sometimes, of evil everywhere, than of goodness?”*

Satan is famous for being a deceiver, a tempter, and a shrewd manipulator. He is so twisted and full of hate that when God condemned him to hell, he made it his mission to take all mankind with him. We look at the world around us and we see evidence of his success. The world is as evil today as it was in the days before God decided to destroy mankind with a world-wide flood. The thing is, based on this passage, God doesn’t seem to blame Satan. Men and women were responsible for their own wickedness and evil inclinations.

Don’t get me wrong. I believe that Satan is the source of all evil in the world – but he doesn’t force us to make sinful choices. He has put temptations in place; he knows our weaknesses; he is diligent in exploiting our weaknesses. But there seems to be a point at which Satan can leave a person to his own devices. There is no purpose in tempting someone who is already full of hateful intentions. Those parents who do horrific things to their children; those terrorists who blow up churches; that dictator who tortures Christians – Satan didn’t tempt them to perform their atrocities. They were already drowning in their own evil natures. No. Satan isn’t concerned about them. They are already on the road to hell.

From tempting Jesus in the desert to enticing you with your favorite vice, Satan has his hands full with the good people – and the marginally good people. He is victorious if he can cause a Christian to give in to the temptation to sin, but he does his best work when he can get an individual to believe a lie. Believers of false doctrine are just as lost as the remorseless serial killer.

I would never purposely mislead my readers, but if you don’t check my words against scripture, Satan has two potential victims – me, for perpetrating false teaching; and you, for believing it. We have a responsibility to seek the truth for ourselves. We are blessed to have God’s word so readily available to us and we have no excuse if we neglect to search out its truths. The Holy Spirit’s power is activated when we open our Bibles. Satan has no defense against us then.

We blame things on the devil that are actually the result of our own undisciplined natures.*

March 9, 2025

James 5: 13 Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise. (NIV)

Worship is the truest and best expression of both sorrow and joy.*

If someone had asked the Apostle Paul what to do if he was in trouble, Paul might have replied, “I thank God for you. I have heard of your troubles and my heart is sad for you. When your heart is troubled, you should pray.” James, on the other hand, just barely says more than, “Duh! Pray.” Paul did a lot of his writing from prison so perhaps he had time to be wordier. James, on the other hand, did not have Paul’s education or the time to be subtle. As someone said of him, “He was a simple, homespun preacher, perturbed at people who were not living right.”*

James’ advice to the troubled is pretty much the same as he offers to the happy: worship. For the non-Christian, life’s problems prompt negative responses. Depression. Blame. Retaliation.  A non-believer’s expression of happiness may resemble that of a Christian’s, but it is a shallow sort of celebration when you have no one to whom to direct your joy. Meanwhile, we Christians can become arrogant when we fail to acknowledge God as the source of our happiness.

Because James is succinct in his advice, we might miss the subtext. The first is that praying in times of trouble is the appropriate response, not a solution. Your troubles may or may not go away - God may have a purpose for them. The second subtext is personal responsibility. The appropriate response to trouble or happiness requires us to be proactive – to take the initiative. James reminds us that prayer and praise don't always occur spontaneously, arising out of our feelings. We must be intentional. 

In good times and bad, God wants us to turn to him in worship. He is worthy of our praise and his Spirit is our Comforter. He multiplies our joy and divides our sorrow when we bring them to him.

May praise and worship of You be my first response to every circumstance.*

March 8, 2025

Matthew 5: 21, 22 “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment.” (NIV)

Jesus revealed the true intent of the Old Testament law, rather than its legalistic interpretations.*

In a court of law, a person cannot be convicted of a crime he thought about. He can’t even be held responsible for one that he planned and dreamed about. Until he commits the crime, he is not guilty under the law. The same was true under the law of the Old Testament. Through the Law, God provided a code of conduct for the Israelite nation and included appropriate punishment and penalties for violations. The Law made no provision for inappropriate thoughts, but it clearly revealed God’s feelings about how people should treat each other. Anyone who was paying attention should have realized that merely being a law-abiding citizen was not all it took to please God.

When I worked in elections, I often found myself in the position of weighing what the law said against the law’s intent. The purpose of every election law on the books boiled down to: ensuring the voters’ rights; protecting the privacy of each person’s ballot; and making sure each vote was counted as the voter intended. I recall several occasions when strict adherence to the letter of the law conflicted with our ability to comply with the intent of the law. When deciding how to proceed, I would ask myself: If I had to explain myself to a judge, which position would I rather defend?

There is no doubt that society is protected and improved by unambiguous and enforceable laws, but Jesus presents a radical new perspective on the Law: God’s intent. The Law serves not as a mere civil function but as a personal (spiritual) one. God doesn’t want us to murder each other because he wants us to love each other. 

If you had to explain yourself in God’s courtroom, would, “I didn’t kill him,” be an acceptable defense if you also didn’t love the person?

The Christian should regard obedience, not as an onerous chore, but as an evidence of Christ’s nature within him.*

March 7, 2025

II Peter 3: 10-13 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar, the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare. Since everything will be destroyed . . . what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives . . . That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. (NIV)

I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.*

As a Christian and a political conservative, I think I’m supposed to scoff at the very idea of global warming.  As a non-scientist, I make no claim to expertise in the matter so I tend to refrain from commenting. But . . . doesn’t this passage seem to describe some very extreme global warming?

After God destroyed all life on earth with the use of water (all life except those in the ark, that is), he placed a rainbow in the sky to remind us that he is never going to do that again. Instead, next time around, he plans to use fire. It sounds like it will happen instantaneously, as in nuclear warfare, rather than gradually, as in global warming, but does it matter? Peter doesn’t waste time on speculation and neither should we. What kind of people should we be is the critical question. We should live holy and godly lives, he says.

It is important to know what the future holds for our planet – else God would not have included the information in his word. But how much of scripture is devoted to the subject? Not as much as is dedicated to instructing us in how to live a Christian life. Not as much as there are words of hope about this life and eternal life. Not as much as there is about sharing the good news with the lost.

Concern about our physical environment is not silly or unscriptural, but as someone has stated: “It’s not that such issues are unimportant. It is rather, that they often take on importance only in the absence of more basic, more life and death matters.”* Concern about our spiritual environment should be the driving force in every aspect of life on earth. The right spiritual balance leads to the right physical action. To rephrase the recycling motto:  “Think globally. Act spiritually.”

If the priorities of our heart are wrong, nothing we do is really holy to God.*

March 6, 2025

Acts 17: 23 “For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.” (NIV)

To whom are you addressing your worship?*

Paul was in Athens, waiting for his friends to join him. He was distressed by the sight of this city that was full of idols. It wasn’t enough for him to reason in the synagogue or with the people in the streets; he delivered a speech in the Areopagus – the home of the supreme tribunal of Athens.

The beautiful part of this story is how it illustrates Paul’s ability to turn anything – and everything – into a teaching moment. He may have taken advantage of the ignorance of the people of Athens as a launching point for a sermon, but he never called them ignorant. How effective would his message have been if he had started by trying to make his listeners feel stupid? Beginning with what they knew – and with what he knew about them – Paul crafted a speech to appeal to their level of sophistication without compromising the truth.

I don’t know the demographics of my readers. I tailor my daily posts for the audience that I think is out there. I assume that each of you believes in God and that you are familiar with Christianity, even if some of you don’t claim to be a Christian. I always encourage you to read the scripture for yourself because the context is important to understanding the message, and because you should verify that I am being true to the word.

So, here is where I apply today’s passage to you and me. Before we feel superior to the Athenians, let’s examine our own convictions about the God we worship. 

Have you ever heard someone express this sentiment: I would rather believe in God and find out I was wrong than not believe in him and find out I was wrong. It sounds good at first. But how different is that attitude from that of the Athenians who added an altar to an unknown god to their mythological pantheon? If you can allow the possibility that God might be a fairy tale, you are not worshipping God. God can’t be worshipped “just in case.” As Jesus proclaimed, in John 4: 24, “God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in spirit and in truth.”

The worshipper can rise no higher than the god he worships.*

March 5, 2025

John 6: 28, 29 Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” (NIV)

Good works do nothing to help us obtain God’s favor, but they follow naturally as we experience the love of Christ.*

When the people asked, What must we do to do the works God requires, Jesus knew what was in their hearts. Chances are, he saw that they were more interested in what he could do for them – feed them, perform miracles – than in how to be saved. So Jesus doesn’t answer a question they didn’t ask. Their faith is at ground zero so that’s where he starts. “Believe that I am the Messiah,” he says.

Doesn’t sound so hard, does it? It’s where we all have to start. But we can’t stay there. It sounds paradoxical: there’s nothing we can do to save ourselves, but we can’t be saved if we do nothing. But like these people, we’re always wanting to know what we can do – to please God, to be saved, to meet the minimum requirements . . . Why do we think God is so hard to please? And if we believe he’s hard to please, why are we always on the lookout for what we can get away with?

God hasn’t drawn up a check-list of requirements for us to perform before we get his approval. All he wants is for us to love him. When we love him, we will want to please him. We will find out what pleases him by looking into his word and being directed by the Holy Spirit. Our works will not be items on our to-do list - they will be the bouquet of roses and the box of chocolates we bring to our true love.

His deepest desire is not that we would do great work, but that we would desire His fellowship above everything else.*