A preacher, reaching an emotional pitch on radio, let go a fiery illustration to make his point about fickle human nature. “People are so lost that if someone came out on the street with a dead rat on the end of a stick and said, “Follow me”, there would be those who would.” While that may be a little over the top it describes exactly what has happened over the centuries, in a bit more sophisticated fashion of course. That fashion is religion, man’s verbal and visible attempt to deal with…

Extra-terrestrial life, flying saucers and alien beings: are they real? Are there other civilizations, more highly developed cultures and super beings wandering about in space? Should we fear them? Speculation abounds, stories of alien sightings and abductions fill books and movies. A whole culture has been built around alien fascination. According to UFO researchers over 4,000,000 people in this country have seen or been in involved in a personal encounter. Every kind of conclusion has been…

It's a Question of Faith

You are riding along blissfully in your convertible enjoying the air in a rolling mountainous countryside along the Blue Ridge Parkway you’ve come to really feel part of. Beautiful green trees cropped in the foliage of wild flowers and the fragrance of freshly rained air join the warmth of the morning sun as each curve brings another piece of scenery you wish you could put in a box and take home. Suddenly there is a pop, the car begins to shake with the…

Every year we celebrate Good Friday and Easter, the Cross and the Resurrection. The first is about suffering and the second about the victory over suffering. Let’s look into suffering first.

Suffering began when Adam and Eve chose to break spiritual and relational ties with their Creator. The result was aloneness, the ultimate suffering, and the proof of sin, its ultimate cause. Sin is the spiritual collapse of our connection with God and others. Sin is the spiritual distancing of…

Several years ago when traveling from Paris to London, we went by train at lightning speed across the French landscape and only slowed down to pass through “The Chunnel” that went beneath the English Channel and came up in England. Except for the lights in the train there was nothing but darkness outside as we caromed along. But the thought of being hundreds of feet beneath the surface of the English Channel, well, it does entertain some anxiety as you consider the possibility that the whole…

As we continue looking at what happens when our spirit leaves God we need to consider the whole of the spiritual dimension and especially its dark side. It’s this side that has the senior exploiter of our aloneness and sin pulling the strings of our consequent self-centeredness. Adept at sending his spirits to pressure our weaknesses, the devil hides in the corners and alcoves of our aloneness working hard to trip us up. Just as God dwells in the praises of His people so the devil slithers…

Here is the critical loss that began the downward spiral of mankind into sin’s aloneness. It was the spiritual disobedience of Adam and Eve that separated them from God’s Spirit. They were tempted to think and make choices apart from God. Then they carried them out on their own.

That was when they lost spiritual contact with God and when they lost their spiritual perspective. The first symptoms of their separation were shame, guilt, fear, hiding from God and each other and feeling…

Jeremiah tells us that the heart is deceptive above all things. Let's look at where we may be.

Suffering is not a word we easily accept in conversation much less in our private thoughts. It brings up all kinds of images in our minds, unpleasant memories, experiences and the emotional shuddering accompanying it. But yet there on life’s highway, just around the curves with few warning signs to alert us, lies this pain collecting noun.

Suffering is not an objective reality, a thing…

If you’ve ever been hiking and gotten caught in a drenching shower there’s nothing like finding a shelter where you can dry off, change clothes and have something warm to drink. Then, waiting awhile for the sun to break through, you walk out into its soothing rays, breathe the invigorating after-the-rain air, rest in the shadow of the lighted blue sky, hear the sounds of birds singing, leaves dripping and behold a refreshed forest of washed trees, and canopies of blossoming…

“If you’re five minutes away from the Bible I can’t trust you and if I’m five minutes away from the Bible you can’t trust me (Earl Sandifer).”

The reason this becomes a core principle is that the Father has a destiny for each of us, to live with Him forever in His Kingdom. But in this world there are all kinds of suffering, physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. Suffering on every level is accompanied by temptation. His Word carries us through them, “We rejoice in the hope of the…

In the last posting we pointed to the origin of cul de sacs, strongholds. It was when Adam and Eve disobeyed God (Gen.3) by following the path of temptation and found the cul de sac of aloneness from which there was no outlet only a dead end, literally. From that origin came the overall human condition of sin that historically ripened into a landslide of self-centeredness summed up in Gen.6:5 to where “every inclination of a man’s heart was only evil all the time.” Everyone by their sinful…

What we have described as cul de sacs are really strongholds with a fancy French name. Just as a cul de sac is a dead end the same is true of strongholds. They are heart freezers, the real ‘dead ends.’ They keep us from breathing the freshness the Holy Spirit brings to our spiritual life in every next moment. When you build an idea to live by that is not from God it causes increased pressure on the heart due to the erosion of our ability to breathe spiritually.

To give a picture of…

When we took that trip into cul de sacs in the last posting it seemed right to return and look at what we have done with the specifics of the image of God in us, turning the mind into a device to invent individual concepts to explain and excuse or hide their condition. These were the strongholds of belief we built outside of God’s will and Word, fueled by fear and pride, acted out with strategies we devised to guess our way through the minefield of a world without God. They were the…

Carpe Diem, 'Seize the Day.' (Latin quote from the poet Horace) and other cul de sacs.

Seizing the day is a popular idea. It implies we can take charge and control our attitude toward life and the world in general. Like many sayings from the past they are ‘ice-box (refrigerator) material’ we stick on the door or bulletin board to inspire our daily life. But I have to ask, does it work for you? No? Well then, read on.

Philosophers, poets and religionists work on the assumption…

That’s an expression used when someone lifts his drink to hope you enjoy yours. But it also carries with it the kind of eye contact that desires you’ll join them and justify their continued indulgence when they say ”Aw, just one more.” Two things happen at that point. First, they have someone to let loose with and second, you compromise and indulge them in their weakness which means you both lose. But there is a third and hidden issue. It’s the issue of sin that has already been the…

I know from time to time as I watch a game with a team I’m rooting for and they make a bad play or two, I’m convinced they’re going to lose. And that regardless of the score and the time left in the game. I can feel that way on the first and last play. That’s my pessimism. On the other hand when a player seems to have a good record to pull a team through I display some hope and optimism.

I have to admit, watching a game is a totally consuming emotional experience. I don’t want to feel…

When you contemplate the struggle in the human heart the solitary issue of life for every individual as they walk through the world is being right. It’s always there. We want to be right, feel right, think right, talk right, do right and the striving is a daily moment by moment experience. In fact most of us have ‘being right’ so woven into our lives that we don’t even think about that being a problem. This is what generates our work ethic, our work at saving ourselves socially,…

Political Correctness? Give Me a Break!

What we have been doing in these postings is to develop a set of principles by which we can walk along the path of transformation from sin to perfection. We haven’t necessarily named them as principles along the way but in this one we will. When Paul told us that we need to be transformed by the renewal of our mind it means we have to evaluate what we use for authority to think, decide and act. The Lord God has given us a mind (we are an image…

Transformation is a movement from self-righteousness to Jesus-righteousness, from sin to perfection. Clearing away the mountain of sin and living on the playing field of perfection. How does one get there? How do we experience perfection? How does one have a perfect attitude? What motivates transformation? Follow me for a bit as I reminisce.

One of the things I remember about living in New York City as a teenager was that I had to walk most everywhere I went. The exception was taking…

Those are the words from a familiar song. But when I was thinking about transformation those words reminded me we are in a sea, this world, but we are being transformed in order to go into a shining sea, the Kingdom of God. It’s a perfect Kingdom wherein we are in the process of being perfected starting right here on earth. It’s the bonding process, being bonded by faith in Jesus to our Heavenly Father and His Kingdom. How do imperfect people like me find perfection? Let’s take a look at…