Monthly Archives: January 2016

WHY IS IT THIS WAY?

Did you ever wonder why God does things the way He does? I think all of us have, at one time or another.

I think it would be helpful if I could explain why God thinks and acts the way HE does. I hear someone say, “You can’t know that!” “Yes, you can know that!”

Why does God’s forgiveness of man’s sins and acceptance into HIS family have to be all about Jesus Christ? Why can’t we have a more reasonable way? And why does there have to be ONE WAY and no other way?

We will start with the nature of God. If you can’t or won’t believe in God – there is no other way. In the Bible, book of Hebrews, Chapter I, we see the explanation of the apostle Paul about God’s speaking to us humans. In time past, God spoke to man through the prophets. Now HE (GOD) speaks through HIS SON JESUS CHRIST.

If we do not respect God’s authority, we can never be part of HIS plan of salvation. Read the first 7 verses of Hebrews I, where God places HIS SON Jesus Christ above the position of the angels. God the Father speaks to The Son: “Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever.” God the Father calls God The son: “GOD” And HE IS!!

God came to earth in the form of Jesus Christ to grow up as a man, witness, teach, heal and do every possible kind of miracle. Jesus had that authority and still has.

It is up to us, as sinners, falling short of God’s perfection, to be forgiven, God’s way – not some other way – not our own way. Not some way in which MAN is lifted high, but in a way where JESUS CHRIST is lifted high.
We read in Romans, Chapter 4, verses 1 through 3, that Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness. This is the righteousness of salvation, friends. This passage of Scripture deals with the life of Abraham, hundreds of years before the 10 Commandments were ever written.

Forgiveness and salvation must be all about GOD, with no merit to man. God has no credit or glory if man can be his own savior. Those who say there are many ways to heaven and forgiveness than through Jesus Christ, are glorifying man and his ingenuity rather than God.

Then again, we have another wonderful but startling truth – every sin committed against anyone, is a sin also against GOD, because GOD is the Creator of the universe. So the forgiveness for man must be forgiveness FROM the very One who has been sinned against. You would not expect a neighbor to forgive you for a sin against someone else, and not the neighbor, would you?

So, you see, there is really NO EXCUSE for anyone not to be saved – not to confess their sins before Christ and be forgiven, pardoned and healed – NO EXCUSE!

Now I am quite sure there may be some who will say I’m making it too simple. I’m not – because the idea and the very means to salvation is very simple for us to act upon, but also very profound and deep in its meaning and accomplishment.

How wrong people can be, and yet how close to the truth can they be? We see in Luke 5:21 the following: After Jesus had healed a man with the palsy (a shaking disease), Jesus said, “Man, thy sins are forgiven thee.” Then the scribes and Pharisees said, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” These misguided leaders could not deny that healing had been accomplished, but they could downgrade what Jesus said.

They were correct in saying that only God could forgive sins. They were wrong because they did not acknowledge Jesus as God, since Jesus did the forgiving. So people can perhaps be right in a half-sense, but wrong in failing to acknowledge God in the process.

And since GOD, in the person of Jesus Christ died on the cross in Our Place, we the sinners, do not have to die for our own sins. It is simple, yet so profound!! Ezekiel 18:4 says, “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” From many other Scriptures we learn that spiritual death is meant here, not physical death. We all will undergo physical death eventually. (Spiritual death is eternal separation from God.)

So salvation establishes our forgiveness for our sins, and we are drawn into God’s family – to enjoy a home in heaven – FOREVER!!

I’M OFFENDED

”I’m offended by that!” I hear this kind of remark all the time! I hear remarks like this reported over the news and at other times. “I’m offended by a baseball or a football coach’s praying while his players are gathered around him before the game”. “I’m offended by the cross – as a symbol of life and belief.”  “I’m offended by the crucifix I see some people wear.” And the list goes on [ad nauseam].

You know what? I’m offended by a lot of things, too…it’s just that I don’t make such a fuss about many things. I don’t whine and complain about them like some do, and call attention to their endless chatter about their “so-called” rights.
Although, my complaints about the actions and the lifestyles of many others don’t often, if ever, make the front page of the paper or the leading TV headline.

I am offended by the lifestyle of those who would bully or injure or kill someone and cause the person’s family to suffer pain without end. I am offended by people who take the freedoms that U.S. citizenship provides (or is supposed to provide) and then use those freedoms to trash and to downgrade the God-given freedoms of others.

I’m offended at t-shirts, which promote hatred, violence, sexual violence, and any kind of bad manners, and the downgrading of women or the exploitation of women. And I am certainly offended by court rulings that take away, or cast doubt on one’s personal freedom within the law and within common sense and social decency.

Do you know what I think? I think that in the U.S.A., I have, or I’m supposed to have religious freedom, the freedom to believe and to worship according to my heart’s dictates – so long as I do not trash the different belief of another.

There are, in my humble opinion, entirely too many people who think that their rights, and only their rights are important – their rights in society, in the home, in the marketplace, and in their business. They have either forgotten or never knew, that the greatest country in the WORLD respects the rights of EVERYONE. But the respecting of the rights of everyone absolutely means that the governing rules of their country cannot be ignored or changed, but MUST be preserved. Otherwise, everyone’s rights will be gone within a very short time.

Now, let me be perfectly clear. One would think that what I have said would already be understood. I’m sorry, but in my experience, it hasn’t.

Each person’s freedom should be subject to or modified by the freedoms of others. And this is only within the freedoms of the laws of our country. No one should have the right to challenge or infringe upon my personal rights if the laws of my country are obeyed. Going against the laws of your country almost always goes against common sense. Also, when, if ever, does the infringing or denial of your country’s rights constitute freedom in the sense of freedom for all? Freedom for some and not freedom for all is NOT true freedom for anyone.

Such activity as I have described is called Dictatorship, which destroys the rights of a free people. This freedom-less way of life is for a citizen who has a king and an absolute monarch for the head of the nation.

Most of us may be able to remember that great movie of a past time which told about the Civil War and its happenings. It showed, in a correct, graphic, and historical manner, the collapse of the South and the ways of slavery. The name of this film was Gone With the Wind.

This so-called genteel lifestyle of the U.S. southern plantations and the way of life there disappeared. The South lost the Civil War, the North won, and slavery was abolished. A way of life founded on a wrong principle came to an end – it was “gone with the wind.”

So, in the same way, when our Constitution and our Bill of Rights are trashed by the wrong people we may vote into office, our way of life, our freedom of religion and conscience with protective laws for all, will vanish – it will all be “gone with the wind.” And it may be much later, or never, when our former way of life with freedom for all within laws that protect everyone’s rights will ever again be established.