The Perfect Gift

Have you ever had one of those mornings when you just did NOT want to get out of bed? Every morning, right? Lol! I had one of those recently and as I lay there my mind went to a wonderful place, filled with the best gift anyone could ever receive. Love.

We humans spend a large part of our lives looking for love. It's like we were created to love and to be loved. Hmm. Perhaps that's why Jesus told us the first and greatest commandment in "To love . . ."

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.” - Luke 10:27

Whether it is God or our neighbor we are commanded to love. Seems simple, yet people have a hard time doing that for some reason. Instead, we hate, we kill, we ignore, we talk trash. Satan is good at what He does. But he can't stop our desire to love and to be loved.

As a former youth leader at church I have seen many young men and women "looking for love in all the wrong places." They seem to think that having sex is the same thing as love. It's not. That's called lust and lust is a sin.

Sadly, today as I look at these same youth group kids, now adults, I see many of them with children. There are no fathers in their pictures on Facebook. The guys who said "I'll love you forever, Babe" are now with someone else. Sex does not equate with or create love. It creates children.

Here's another thing that people get wrong. Living with someone and having sex with someone without their being married FIRST. Having sex without being married is called fornication in the Bible. Here's what the Apostle Paul says about it. There are many other examples to choose from as well.

"Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites,
nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God." - 1 Corinthians 6:9-10

Ouch! Did you catch the part that said "will not inherit the kingdom of God?" Yet today many of these things take place as if it's a "lifestyle," not a sin. Why? Because it is something that our culture teaches. It's rampant in our schools and universities. It is even condoned in some of our churches, even though the Word of God clearly calls it a sin.

Like I said before, Satan is very good at what he does. And if we are following Satan's plan and not God's, what does that make US?

Satan worshipers. Not God worshipers.

Let me return to my warm comfy bed where all is right with the world. Where love is pure and unconditional. And where I can pray to a God who loves, not as the world loves, but as GOD loves. It's how we were CREATED to love.

Let's not mess with God's prefect plan. We need to repent of our sins and turn / return to God. Only then can we find true love. We will find the love we always knew we wanted because we will no longer be looking for it in the wrong ways or the wrong places. True love is the perfect gift. Not because we receive it but because we first give it.

"He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." - Micah 6:8

Looking For Love In All The Wrong Places - Johnny Lee
Courageous - Casting Crowns

Satisfy Me

Why do foods that are bad for us taste so good? Why do things that are bad for us feel so good? Why do we do the things we do knowing it will get us into trouble later on? There are a couple of reasons. That's easy. We're not thinking about the consequences of our actions and we're thinking about ourselves and our desires.

Think about it. What's the first thing we do when we're born? We cry and complain because someone removed us from our warm, comfortable mommy and turned the lights on! Why?

Chef's like to cook up wonderful tasting things. They taste good and they look good. They also contain a bazillion calories.

When we open the refrigerator door looking for something to eat, why don't we just grab the first thing we see and eat it? I have even opened the door, looked and closed the doors without taking anything out. Why? We're always searching for something that will satisfy our every desire.

Look at our relationships. Why do we continue to "look" when we're already in a relationship? We're always looking for prettier, sexier, more voluptuous, hunkier partners. We're looking for someone to satisfy our sinful desires.

What's the problem? Time to go look in that mirror again.

Have you ever read Romans 1? The whole chapter is quite revealing but I'll just end with the last paragraph.

"28 Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. 32 Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them." - Romans 1:28-32

Where is the hope? How can we end this viciously repetitive cycle of consuming?

Jesus. Pain and simply. Forget self, focus on Jesus and set your self free. Free indeed.

"So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed." - John 8:36

Gimme Gimme Gimme - Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfuss

Hi I'm Samson

If you heard the story of Samson in Sunday School chances are you only heard part of it. They probably left out the Lust, Sin, Betrayal, Vengeance, and Death parts. Yeah, we do that to make things all warm and fuzzy, instead of telling the truth.

I just read the story of Samson in my daily reading. You can read it here in the Book of Judges (Chapters 13-16). What struck me most as I read it was the sadness I felt for Samson. His life started off well but then went wrong because of sin.

The interesting thing about Samson was how much like you and me he seems to be. Apart from his super-human strength he really was a lustful, backsliding hypocrite just like me.

Samson started out on the right path in life - devoted to God - but then he met a woman, a prostitute, and things went downhill from there.

How often do we get distracted by sin like Samson did? Too often would be MY guess. We can start out the day with the best intentions but before long we get distracted and fail the very God we profess to have faith in.

Samson's ultimate downfall was another woman named Delilah. She was not an Israelite and her people wanted to see Samson dead so Delilah betrayed Samson. A sad story indeed. But the last thing Samson did before he died was pray to God for his strength to return. Why? So he could kill God's enemies . . . along with himself.

^"28 Then Samson prayed to the Lord, “Sovereign Lord, remember me. Please, God, strengthen me just once more, and let me with one blow get revenge on the Philistines for my two eyes.” ²⁹ Then Samson reached toward the two central pillars on which the temple stood. Bracing himself against them, his right hand on the one and his left hand on the other, ³⁰ Samson said, “Let me die with the Philistines!” Then he pushed with all his might, and down came the temple on the rulers and all the people in it. Thus he killed many more when he died than while he lived." - Judges 16:28-30

When God's Holy Spirit convicts us of our sin, don't we also pray to God and seek His help in overcoming our iniquities?  What or whom is OUR Delilah? Is there something that is keeping us from following God's commands and being obedient to His will?

In the end Samson sacrificed himself to accomplish god's will. He repents. Isn't that what WE are supposed to be doing?

The story of Samson also proved another thing to me. How forgiving and loving God is. 

Samson Movie Trailer
Samson - Walk In Faith Interview

When We Say "I Love You"

Love can be so confusing. Any human heart can tell you that. The word 'love' itself can be has multiple meanings.

"I love my camera", "I love my best friend" and "I love my wife" all contain the word 'love' but each of those "expressions of love" contain different connotations of the word.

It is written that "God is love," but do we really understand  what that love is? Are we understanding the true meaning of the word as it relates to God? Consider this example from Ravi Zacharias.

"When I tell you that God loves you and now I tell you "I love you," it's the same word but a different connotation. When I love you and you refuse to love me, I hurt because I have lost something. When God loves you and you refuse to love God, God hurts because YOU have lost something.

Do we love like that? Is our love for others dependent upon whether or not they love us back? If it is, we are using the wrong connotation of the word . . . the wrong definition?

How do you define love? Do you love someone enough to give yourself away sexually to another person? That is NOT love. That is lust. There is no sacrifice, only selfishness. Look to God's Word for the true definition of love and just what it means to say, "I love you."

"In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." - 1 John 4:9-11

Before my father died, his children all had the opportunity to tell him we loved him. What a blessing that was! Since that day I have not been hesitant to tell other I love them. It's kind of liberating really. It is liberating because I myself am not looking to BE loved but to love. Any love received in return is simply icing on the cake and a blessing. But OH, what a blessing it is.

Tell someone you love them today. That is your challenge. Tell someone "I love you" and see what happens. You might be very surprised. But be sure to define the meaning of your words first! You could wind up in jail . . . or married! LOL!

God has blessed us with the ability to love and to be loved. Let's do that! As long as it is called today. :)

"34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.  35 By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” - John 13:34

Let It Rain - Eric Clapton

Porn

Well. That was certainly disgusting. I wasn't really expecting what I saw on television that night. Maybe that's why it made such an impact on me. It made such an impression in fact that it moved me to do something I rarely, if ever, do.

My wife and I were sitting in the living room Thursday night eating our dinner. The TV was on. My wife likes to watch the evening news. I like to eat her cooking. Seemed like a perfect time for both of us. Appearances can be deceiving.

If was about 6:00. Like I said, we were watching the evening news. Truth be told, I was probably more focused on my plate than I was on anything else. I randomly looked up at the television after taking a bite of food and saw a scantily-clad woman, "dressed" in a black leather thong, thrusting and rubbing herself rather sexually on a car.

"Umm, what are we watching?" I asked my wife.

"Oh, that's a Hardee's commercial," she replied, indicating by her words that she had seen it before.

Sure enough. The woman was now taking a rather large bite out of a big, juicy, dripping burger.

"Seriously?"

Suddenly another woman appeared on the scene. Paris Hilton I think. She told the other woman that she had "missed some" and she then proceeded to lick some cheese off the car's hood.

"Are you sure this is an ad? I thought most people pay for this stuff."

It was incredibly pornographic in my opinion. It was SO pornographic that it prompted me to take some action. I e-mailed both Hardee's and the local news channel, who somewhere, somehow came to the conclusion that this was somehow appropriate for family viewing during the dinner hour, and I let them have it - in a wonderfully Christian way, of course.

I simply told them that they should let me know when they pull the explicit ad so I could resume watching their network / eating their food. It's been four days now. No response.

This past Saturday, I went for one of my long walks in the woods. As I walked I listened to several books from the audio Bible I carry on my iPod. One of them was to Book of Ephesians. Hearing God's words reminded me of a few things.

If you have your Bible handy, please open it to the second chapter. Paul is writing to the church in Ephesus - a political, educational and cultural center. It could very well be that the influence of the culture on that local church caused it to stray from the early teachings of Priscilla and Aquila. Let's see what Paul says. We read.

"And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience -  3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind." - Ephesians 2:1-3

The things I take out of this text are these:

1. We were, or are, all living a sinful lifestyle at some point in our lives but we were called out of that lifestyle through our faith in Jesus Christ (verse 1).
2. We tend to follow our culture. What's "hot", the latest trends and fads (verse 2)
3. Satan - "the prince of the power of the air" - is at work in us and in the world we live in (verse 2).
4. We used to live in the passions of our flesh. "If it feels good, do it!" Maybe we STILL do (verse 3).
5. We were no different than anyone else on this sinful planet. Destined to suffer the wrath of God, just like everyone else (verse 3).

There was a time when I would have gladly watched that Hardee's commercial . . . without my wife in the room of course. I would have allowed my mind to wander off in whatever direction it wanted to go, as long as it pleased me.

So what has changed? Why am I now different than the rest of the world? Why has a commercial like that suddenly become so repulsive? What happened? I was so happy, or so I thought, in the lifestyle I was living. What changed? Let's continue our reading.

"4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved -  6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them." - Ephesians 2:4-9

As I read those words of Paul's and then I also recall his words to the Romans about how we are no longer to conform to the pattern of this world (Romans 12:2) I feel convicted. Why? Because I know that I have not totally left "this world" behind. I still have one foot firmly planted in it, in sin. We ALL do!

So what do we do about it? How do we get rid of some of the sin in our lives? Ask yourself this question, as I did a few weeks ago. What is something I am doing right now that I could give up and replace with reading the Bible, or volunteering to serve others someplace? What could I do, right this very minute, that would honor God above all the other thing I am doing?

Could I turn of the computer a little earlier? The same for the television. Could I chose not to watch TV shows (or commercials) that do not honor the God we serve? Of course! Movies in theaters. How many went to see Noah or Heavens For Real instead of learning more about God? There was little biblical truth in either of those movies yet thousands flocked to see them.

We must think through everything we are about to do and ask ourselves this question. Will this honor God? If no, we should reconsider what we are about to do. If yes, the by all means proceed. We serve a great God, not some two-bit fallen angle on an ego trip. Stand tall, in the name of Jesus, and flee from Satan. God will be glad you did. It is His will that we are to follow, not ours. Celebrate your God-honoring decisions and choices. You are growing closer to God when you make them. And that's a GOOD thing! :)

Are The Two Wills In God? - A Sermon by Matt Chandler

Lust

 

Recognize the guy in this picture? Yeah, it's Gregory Peck. He was a really good actor. Here's a little test for all you movie buffs out there. Do you know what movie this picture is from? There are clues. What can you tell about the character Mr. Peck is playing. It looks like this guy is from Biblical times. Check the shirt. That emblem is the Star of David, isn't it? And he's staring at something. And I mean he is REALLY staring at something! And it looks like he likin' what he sees. He's got that little Gregory Peck smile. :) And look at his eyes. He's looking down on something, or someone. And it looks like he's up high, like on a roof. Hmm.


2 Samuel 11:2-4 - "It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king's house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful. And David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, “Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?” So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her."

Lust.

The apostle Paul wrote of doing things he didn't want to do in the book of Romans (7:15) - "For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate."

I know exactly how Paul felt this past weekend . . . during the Superbowl.

I already knew that the Superbowl was going to be full of "worldly" commercials - lots of sexually explicit content. I was prepared for that. And after the game started, it wasn't long before the first disgusting commercial came on. GoDaddy.com. It featured race car driver Danika Patrick describing the mix of technology and glamor at GoDaddy's web site. The rest of the commercial was a close-up shot of a supermodel french-kissing some chubby, nerdy, techno-geek. Yeah. That'll make me wanna use their web hosting site!

Calvin Klein was next. They purchased some Superbowl ad space, trying to get you to buy some men's underwear. Their commercials are always racy, often stretching the envelope of decency. Their Superbowl spot was no exception. It featured a well-sculpted young man, wearing only his tighty-whities, gyrating around trying to show off every part of himself. He did that, and that was enough for me.

I put on my headphones and grabbed my Bible and began to read, shielding my eyes from the television. I really needed that break - to get away from the "world" and immerse myself in His Word. After my reading, still listening to worship music on my Ipod, I decided to check out Facebook. And that, my friends, was the beginning of my downfall.

As I scrolled down through all of my friend's posts, I noticed that most were about the Superbowl. "So-and-so just scored," "Jim Harbaugh sure is a whiner." Stuff like that. Then I came across a post from a lady friend at work. She and her friends seemed rather interested in that Calvin Klein commercial they had just seen, one of them saying, "I wish I could see that commercial again!"

Now, I'm a pretty helpful guy. But sometimes it is possible to be TOO helpful. And, as I discovered on Sunday, sometimes my desire to be helpful can even outweigh my desire to please God.

How easy it was for me to go to YouTube and type in "Calvin Klein Superbowl" in the search window. How quick it was for me to copy the link and paste it on my friend's wall. It was only after doing those two things that I thought about God. I obviously have not totally "died to self" yet. There is more "world" in me than I realized. And that saddens me.

Just one day earlier I had sat in a seminar at a Christian men's conference. The topic was about creating strong leaders in young men. The speaker told a story of going rafting in a spring-swollen river in northern Wisconsin and how easy it was to swept away under it's incredible power. That's exactly how I felt after posting that link on my friend's wall. Swept away by a power stronger than I am.

One of God's commandments is to not commit adultery. The husband/wife relationship is very precious to God. It runs throughout the Bible. Jesus even used the bride groom and bride analogy when he talked about himself and his relationship to the church.

In Matthew 5:27-28, Jesus tells us that to even lust after another woman or man is committing adultery in our hearts. Do you see what I did by posting that link to the Calvin Klein Superbowl spot on my friend's Facebook page? I helped her commit adultery.

Some might say, "Bob, you're being way to hard on yourself. It was just a stupid video. What's the big deal!?"

Well, it IS a big deal. I have sinned against a holy and righteous God. The next morning I went to my friend's Facebook page and deleted the link I had posted. In it's place I left a message saying it was wrong of me to post that video and I reqested an opportunity to talk with her about why. A few days later, we spoke about it. I explained why I had removed the link and she understood.

This country of ours has ignored and turned its back on God. As a nation, we keep putting more and more distance between ourselves and the loving God who gave us life. Personally, from this moment on, I am going to make a conscious effort to rectify that situation. I am turning off the television. I am spending more time in His Word. My goal is to reduce the gap between my self and God and to never, ever "feel distant from God again." Everthing I do, and I do mean everything, must bring glory to God or it is not worth doing at all. I serve a powerful, Holy God. He has saved me from a death I deserved to die. He requires obedience and I for one am going to increase my efforts and become "a good and faithful servant."

This country was established on Christian principals but we have drifted far away from the course they invisioned. It's time to change that course. We need to put our oars in the water and start rowing back upstream, against the current of apathy and disinterest, and return in repentance and obedience to our King.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart." - Matthew 5:27-28