Happy Year's End

Another year is coming to a close in a couple of hours or so and again it's hard to believe.  The year has fairly flown by.  Seems I just got used to saying "2017" when another year is attempting to introduce itself to me.  This year has been a bit trying but still I look around and see that we have had it better than many and for that we are grateful.

Although atrial fibrillation has plagued me off and on since 2014 and began a non-stop attack at year's end last year, running into the new year this year and after a failed attempt at an ablation I finally had a pacemaker installed on Groundhog's Day, totally missing General Lee's AND Punxsutawney Phil's predictions, and hubby and I both had the flu in March and I had a complete hysterectomy in June, which required weeks of mandatory recovery period and missing our yearly beach visit, and hubby had a GI bleed after a colonoscopy and ended up back in the hospital for a repair, we still count ourselves among the very blessed in the world and indeed in this nation.  A nation which has shown out for the TV cameras pretty much all year, and not in a good way.  A nation which should also have considered itself among the most blessed in the world because it is.

I have to say that although it has been a good year for us compared to the trouble so many people have suffered, and I'm grateful for the good year that we had, I'm still somehow glad to see it come to a close.  I am petitioning the Lord for a healthier coming year for hubby and me and asking Him for good health for our family and safety for us all.  I ask Him to guide us into witnessing to those around us the goodness of Jesus Christ and the salvation that can only come through Him.  There are many who do not believe this, and some that never will, but I hope and pray that we can witness to some who will believe.

To you and yours, I wish a safe, healthy, prosperous 2018, and that you will trust Jesus Christ with your life in every way, that He will bless you in every area of your life because you trust Him with it.

God bless you.

THE SINNER'S PRAYER UNDER ATTACK

There are those now who are trying to make a case against The Sinner’s Prayer.  The argument is that it is superstitious and unbiblical, or so goes David Platt’s conclusion.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPhEEzjU8xQ (accessed on November 21, 2017)  He says it is nowhere in the scriptures.  To that I say, neither is abortion or the rapture, but conclusions can be made from other scriptures about God’s instruction on those subjects.

To address what the Bible says about salvation and how someone may have come up with The Sinner’s Prayer (I have no idea who came up with it or how, but Biblically it appears to be okay to me) let’s go straight to the Bible.  No better place to start…or end, for that matter.

The argument some people make is that what the Bible actually says is that we should orally confess that Jesus is Lord and believe in our hearts that God raised Him from the dead.  The basis for that is Romans 10:9, which actually says:  that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.  That is absolutely true.  However, are we not taught that we should compare scripture with scripture?  Is that ALL the Bible says about salvation, or is there more?

Can we also offer these scriptures? (From the New American Standard Bible, NASB)

John 1:12 – But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God even to those who believe in His Name…  There is no mention of confessing with your mouth or believing that God raised Him from the dead here.  Neither is there mention of receiving Him and believing in His Name in Romans 10:9.  So we must believe in His Name and receive Him.

John 3:16 – For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.  There is nothing from Romans 10:9 here.  "Believe" is mentioned in both but with different meanings.  In Romans 10:9 it is that we are to believe that God raised Jesus from the dead.  In John 3:16 it is that we are to believe in Jesus.  Two distinctly different ideas.  So we must believe in Him.

Romans 6:23 – For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Again, there is no mention of confessing with your mouth or believing that God raised Him from the dead here.  Neither is there mention of John 3:16’s message of believing in Christ.  So we must believe salvation is free to us but we must accept this gift.

Ephesians 2:8-9  - For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not as a result of works so that no one may boast. Again, there is no mention of confessing with your mouth or believing that God raised Him from the dead here.  So we're saved through faith and accept His free gift.

Ephesians 3:17 – …so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith…

None of the previous scriptures contribute to this one’s message except Ephesians 2, which says you’re saved through faith.  If you don’t accept Christ into your heart, how is Ephesians 3:17 going to happen?  If you're a Christian, not only has He come into your heart, He is DWELLING there!  No one DWELLS at your house unless you invite them.  Just like there are probably not squatters in your house (I hope!) there aren’t squatters in your heart.  If someone is in your heart, you’ve allowed it.  You’ve invited them in.  So by faith we must invite Christ to dwell in our hearts.  He does not force His way in.

It appears to me that God offers us a free gift:  salvation through Jesus Christ.  It also appears that we must take ALL the scriptures on salvation (and surely I have not listed them all here) and compare them, put them together, and tell the whole story.  Let me ask you this:  if I stand in front of you holding a wrapped gift and tell you that it’s yours, don’t you have to accept it?  Don’t you have to walk up to me and take it from my hand?  I guess I could put it on the ground in front of you and walk away, but you still have to pick it up.  You still have to accept it.  Accepting the free gift of Jesus Christ as our salvation is VERY Biblical, in my humble opinion.  The gift is there.  If you never accept it, do you really have it?

God is not going to force Himself into your heart.  If Ephesians 3:17 is true...and it is...it’s up to you to invite Jesus Christ into your heart.

Have you done that?  Or have you left His beautifully wrapped gift lying on the ground and walked away?

UP ALL THE TIME

I saw this posted on Facebook this morning.  In my opinion this is one of the most misleading and, yes, even foolish quotes I’ve ever heard.  The person who posted it is a friend of mine and I love her, but I think she didn’t really get the full impact.  Again in my opinion, this is just another example of how easily we Christians are deceived.  I know a lot of the people who hit the “like” button and I just simply believe they took the post at face value, maybe just skimmed through it and it sounded good, and didn’t really concentrate on it.  At first glance to some, this seems like a great read.  For me it wasn’t.

"We shouldn't be so up and down. There ought to be consistency. We should be the same all the time, because if we're walking with Jesus, He's 'the same yesterday, today, and forever' (Hebrews 13:8). If we're up sometimes and down other times, it's because sometimes we're trusting Jesus and other times we're walking in our own flesh. WE OUGHT TO BE SUPERNATURALLY NATURAL. The same power that raised Christ from the dead is in us at all times (Ephesians 1:19-20). It never fluctuates." ~ Andrew Wommack "Living in God's Best"

Is there a Christian on earth that doesn’t on occasion walk in the flesh?  How about those of us who go for that second piece of cake when we know we shouldn’t?  How about those who give in to premarital or extramarital sex?  And, yes, that happens to some Christians.  They may not be very strong Christians but they’re Christians nonetheless.  All of us give in to temptation, which Jesus never did.  Mr. Wommack is asking me to BE Jesus, not be LIKE Jesus.  There’s a great difference.

And speaking of Jesus, how about Him?  He cried when he was at the tomb of Lazarus…and He knew He was going to raise him!  Doesn’t sound like a very “up” moment.  How about when He was in the Garden of Gethsemane?  That was not a very “up” moment for Him.  He was grieving.  How can you grieve to the point of sweating drops of blood and be “up” at the same time?  If it was possible for anyone, it would have been possible for Him, but it doesn't appear that way when you read this account in the Bible.  Probably not an “up” moment for Him.

And what about being “supernaturally natural?”  It is not natural…or even human…for someone to be “up” all the time.  Even a Christian.  I guarantee you that if you know someone who is “up” every time you see them, they’re having a “down” moment sometimes when they’re alone.  One of our emotions is sadness.  Am I to believe that there is a Christian who has never been sad?

Anyway, here is my response to her post.  Oddly, one of the people who first made a positive comment on the post hit the “like” button on my response.  Maybe my response made her reread the post and come to a different conclusion.

However, we are humans and this is just not going to happen. A person going through something devastating (divorce, sickness, etc.) is going to have a down moment or two although they know Jesus hasn’t left them. Jesus also asked us to be perfect as He is perfect and holy as He is Holy but we all know that’s not going to happen on this earth. I appreciate the thought but it is a crushing burden for anyone to expect that of me. And, really, if you know me you know I’m usually “up” but it’s just not that way every moment of every day. I wish it were, but Jesus is always there in those moments.

Soooo…what do you think?

GRAPE JUICE

Usually I come at you with something serious, something that disturbs me or even ticks me off.  Today I want to be lighthearted.  Maybe it's because the world seems to be going crazy from the ground up.  To' up from the flo' up, as my friend likes to say.  That's actually supposed to be "tore up from the floor up."  Proper English would be "torn up from the floor up," but that doesn't rhyme and isn't nearly as funny.  So here's the giggle story.  It's okay to laugh at me about it.  I did.  Eventually.

Several years ago before our Winn-Dixie turned into a Harvey's, I was there doing a bit of shopping, and as I finished up and was leaving the checkout pushing my haul in the buggy (yes, in the South it's mostly a buggy but sometimes a cart) I slipped on something and landed on my back.  You know, like in the cartoons.  Exactly like that.  I guess to some, like my daughter who has always had this uncontrollable tendency to laugh when someone takes a spill, this would be funny.  Of course, people came running from all over as I lay there in my stupor.  See, I was still trying to figure out how I got from a standing position, yea, even a healthy gait, to sprawled on my back on the cold, cold tile.  I was standing, and then I was lying.  I know it sounds like a page straight out of a Winnie-the-Pooh book, but there I was...gone from standing to lying in a nanosecond.  That has to be a record.  Someone check with Guinness while I finish the story.

It was a bit surreal, y'all.  I paid for my items, started to push my buggy toward the exit, and all of a sudden I was laid out on my back looking around like a blooming idiot.  I'm sure my mouth was gaping open and my eyes were big as saucers, as my mother used to say.  Employees (Do they still call them that?  Maybe it's associates.  No, that's Walmart.  Oh, well.) were bending over me and I started telling them, "I'm okay.  No one's going to get sued."  After they were sure I was steady on my feet (and no lawsuits were forthcoming) they left me alone and it occurred to me that it might be interesting to find out how I fell.  You don't go from standing to lying in a billionth of a second for no reason.  I went back to the checkout lane and there it was.  The culprit.  The antagonist.  The villain.  A smashed grape.  A freshly smashed grape.  I could tell because it had not become grotesquely smashed.  It just looked like it had been smashed one really good time.  (Not my grape.  I didn't buy grapes that day.)  Still...it was ugly.  Wow.  Well.  Okay.  Satisfied with my discovery, my groceries and I turned and headed for the exit...again...this time actually making it to the car and home.

There's something mildly satisfying about finding out why something happens.  As far as all the craziness that's going on in the world right now, well, the end is near.  That's not original with me.  I'd like to claim it but I can't.  That's from 2 Timothy 3:3-5 "But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come.  For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power..."

Oops.  I threw something serious at you again, didn't I?  Honestly, this really did start out to be simply a funny story on myself.

NOT TOO SPORTY, BUT...

Anyone that knows me very well knows I’m not much on sports.  I wasn’t as a child and I’m not now.  I got into the Braves big time back in the 90s when they were all the rage, but I even gave up on that after awhile.  I like to go to my grandson’s baseball games because…hey, he’s my grandson!  I like to go to my church’s softball games because my son and son-in-law play on the team.

Although I sorta like baseball and like to watch a few of the events in the summer and winter Olympics, if you pressed me to pick a favorite sport “just because,” even though I don’t even like racing, I’d have to say NASCAR, and here’s why:

You couldn’t pay me to go to a race (never been to one…I hear they’re too loud, too dusty, and you’re too likely to be splattered with “something,” most likely beer, or vomit because of the beer) but I pick NASCAR for several reasons.  While driving, the drivers’ bodies are all covered up by car, and even when the dash cam is on, their heads are covered up with helmet, so you can’t see if they’re swearing, and they pretty much don’t use foul hand gestures because they have to hold onto the wheel.  Besides, their gloves fit like big old marshmallows.  (They’re not perfect…you will catch one outside the car sometimes unloading on someone.  They’re human.)  Before the race starts, there is ALWAYS a prayer that is televised and many times prayed “in the Name of Jesus.”  There’s a whole slew of us that like that.  The drivers stand in silent respect as the National Anthem is sung and the prayer is prayed.  (They even take off their hats.  They take off their hats!  Wow!)  If anyone is offended by any of this, no one knows it as they keep it to themselves and don’t spoil everyone else’s good time by running and screaming that they don’t feel safe or that their rights have been violated.  If any of them is homosexual or lesbian, no one knows it because they’re not in front of a camera trying to thrust their lifestyle in our faces.  This is how NASCAR is done, this is how it’s been done for years, and if that is a problem for you, then you need to pick another place to spew your beer or political rantings.  Don’t support NASCAR if you’re not going to support NASCAR.

And today I have a whole new reason to choose NASCAR as my favorite sport.  Hubby’s been watching the race and they just ran a commercial involving several of the drivers, one at a time, saying “Thank you,” some even mentioning names and one saying, “Thanks, Navy.”  It ended with, “Home of the free because of the brave.”

Yeah, I’ll choose NASCAR.  Now hand me that remote.  I want to watch an old movie on TCM.

CHRISTIAN MUSIC

Christian music used to be so simple.  You knew what to expect.

You went to church.  You waited until the song leader indicated that it was time to sing.  (I went to a small church.  We didn't have a music director.  We did well to have fifty people there.  We had a song leader.)  You  picked up your hymnal and the music portion of the service began.  You turned to the page selected by the song leader, the pianist (only a pianist...no guitars, drums, horns, etc.) played a short introduction, and you started to sing.  A very familiar tune.  Someone's favorite, for sure.  I think my daddy's was "In the Garden," but I'm not sure.  We didn't talk about it much.  I have no idea what my mother's was.  Again, we didn't talk about it much.  What was there to talk about?  This is the way it was.  Everywhere.  This was the ritual.

Admittedly, there was not much life to the ritual.  Don't get me wrong.  I loved the people.  They were either neighbors or people my parents knew or relatives.  I loved them.  I loved the songs.  I loved the pianist.  She was only a year younger than me and we took piano from the same wonderful teacher.  Marla was better at it than I.  She had that playing-by-ear thing going on sometimes.  I don't do that.  I wish I did but I don't.  Sometimes we girls would sing.  There were four or five of us.  Sometimes Marla's mother would play and we girls would sing.  Sometimes Marla would play and we girls would sing.  Sometimes Marla would play, "Whispering Hope," and I would sing.  That made me only slightly nervous.  Playing the piano would have made me sweat bullets.  I'd much rather sing.

Over the years Christian music has changed.  If you listen to Christian radio, unless you're listening to a lively gospel station, you hear some contemporary, upbeat music that just might make you tap your feet.  I like some of it, but some of it I find a bit problematic.  The rap music makes me wince.  In the first place, it doesn't do much for me because, truthfully, if I can't understand the words (and this is radio, folks, there's no lipreading) it doesn't do much to minister to me/help me minister to others/bless me/encourage me/draw me closer to Christ/teach me to reach others.  It could be any of that other foul stuff on those other stations, for all I know.  Right now, I'm trusting that it's not, seeing's how it's on a Christian station.  But "Christian" rap is just, for the most part, a bit garbled, in my humble opinion.  It has the rebellious sound that the other rap music has and the words just don't always come through the speakers.

Then there are the "Jesus is my boyfriend" songs.  I wish I had come up with that cute little phrase, but I didn't.  I heard a guy on Christian radio tagging them as such once and I realized that's a good name for them.  You know the ones, don't you?  There's one out right now called, "Hold Me," and honestly she could be singing it straight to her boyfriend as she says, "I love the way you hold me," and "Just when I feel this crazy world is gonna bring me down that's when your smile comes around."  There isn't a real hint that she's talking to God.  I looked up the lyrics online and she doesn't even bother to capitalize "Your" to make sure everyone knows she means any part of the Trinity.  I searched for something that made me know it was a Christian song and the word, "Lord" is in there three times.  You know, like, "Lord, I was born a ramblin' man."  Or "Oh, Lord.  Stuck in Lodi again."  Or "My Sweet Lord," George Harrison's tribute to Hinduism.

Call me old-fashioned (I've been called worse) but I think Christian music should have something to do with Christianity.  You know, God, Jesus, or the Holy Spirit.  It should say that Jesus Christ is my life, that He is the One Who gets me through my day (which I think is what "Hold On" is supposed to convey.)  It should tell you about Him, lead you to Him, praise Him, worship Him, scream that I'm nothing without Him, encourage you that He is your help in times of trouble.

You probably aren't getting the fact that I love contemporary Christian music by reading this, but I do.  I love the songs that do what I just described, not the ones that someone hoped would be crossover songs and make it on the pop, rock, or rap charts.  I like the ones that don't do a lot of "oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, whoa, oh, oh, oh" but that have actual words and that lift Jesus Christ up to people, that offer what He wants you to have, that praise and worship Him.

Church is for worshiping the Savior and telling folks about Him and what the Bible says, and I think the music part of the church service should do that as much as the sermon does.  Thankfully, my church does a pretty good job of that most of the time.  Thank you, Stacy.