religion – Page 3 – Random Thoughts

JACOB’S WELL

It did not matter that she was a Samaritan, or a half-breed, as most Jews would have called her. It did not matter that she was a woman of ill repute who came to draw water at a less conspicuous time. It did not matter to Jesus that conversation with the likes of her would raise the eyebrows of the respected citizens of that area. She had hoped to get her water and go home without seeing or talking with anyone. Her sin had caused her to hide in the shadows of life. Her lifestyle could not stand the scrutiny of the public eye. She was already the topic of town talk.

As Jesus sat on the rim of Jacob’s well He saw hurt, guilt and shame written on her face. He initiated a conversation with a request “Woman, give me a drink of water.” She was startled to hear a man who appeared to be a Jewish teacher even talk to her in a public place. Her response was briskly stated. “How is that you, being a Jew, would dare ask water of me, seeing I am a Samaritan?” The cultural climate of that day was much too prejudiced for that kind of interaction. The years had created barriers of dislike between the two classes of people. A Samaritan woman could well be suspicious of a Jewish male who would make such a request. His intentions could be inappropriate.

Jesus, knowing who He was, had nothing to prove or nothing to hide. “If only you knew who was asking you for a drink you would seek from Him a water which would quench your thirst forever” was Jesus response to her surprised comment. “Give me this water!” she insisted. “Then I won’t have to come to this place of public gossip ever again.”

At this point Jesus wanted to talk about husbands. She wanted to talk about the best place to worship. Jesus explained that a time was coming and had arrived when the place of worship would be less important that the spirit and truth of worship. This prophet soon turned Messianic in the woman’s mind and she hurried into the village to announce her discovery. As a result of her uninhibited testimony, many believed.

Have you encountered a “Jacob’s well” lately where the water of “good-news grace” has washed away your bitterness, guilt and shame? Has Messiah helped you overcome the negative ways in which some folk describe you? Have you tasted the water that quenches your thirst for God? Come let us drink together of the Water of life.

VIRTUES THAT PROTECT

Have you ever considered the virtues of the Christian life as an antidote to every evil that seeks to possess us? The protective power of goodness is strong motivation for pursuing the Godly life. Every detail of life’s temptations are covered by the extraordinary influences of the righteous life.

For example, in the presence of hate there is love to sooth and heal our heated hostilities. As we struggle with doubt, there is the fact of faith to conquer our instability. In the face of fear we are confronted with courage that eliminates danger as a deterrent to the Godly life. Every ugly thought falters in its ambition to muddy our minds in the context of sober thinking. Despair is limited when hope is our daily companion. Lust is lost in the satisfying atmosphere of prayer. Pride is overcome by the humbling experiences that produce a gentle spirit.

Everywhere there is an evil, there is a virtue to combat it. The exciting fact here is God has not left us at the mercy of the devil. We have access to divine resources in our battle with sin. We do not have to succumb to the powers and principalities of this world. There is more to us than our evil inclinations. We are created sufficiently in the image of God to make our choice. “The devil made me do it” is no longer an alibi for misbehavior.

Even when evil overwhelms us and we sin; through confession and repentance we have the force of forgiveness to sustain us. As forgiven sinners we move through every evil situation by the virtues of God’s grace. “Blessed are those who persevere under trial for they shall receive the crown of life.” Amen

DEATH DEFYING FAITH

How does one die who never prays nor talks to God about anything? How does one approach death when there has been no effort to claim God’s death defying promises? Surely it must be a shock to one’s spiritual system to face the unknown with an unknown God. The trauma of death is too much for our human resources alone. The thoughts of dying requires us to have some serious thoughts about God. Our fragile understanding of our departure from this life is proof that we need more than the human intellect to guide us into eternity.

We are not equipped to face death with calloused indifference and that too is a part of God’s grace. He requires us to have sober thoughts about our eternal destiny and then offers us a place He has gone to prepare. He frightens us with the prospects of entering the darkness all alone and then He promises to be with us always. He lures us to the edge of life with resurrection hope and bids us come unto Him and find rest.

Our hope is a matter of faith and acceptance. He does not force His house of “many mansions” upon us. He does not walk beside us as an uninvited presence. It is a simple gospel of receiving what Jesus has to offer and we complicate it greatly when we try to earn it. Heaven is a gift we do not deserve, therefore, dying as well as living is a matter of grace.

Only with Christ can we face death with the assurance that God who called us into life has something special for us in death. Who knows what we might grow to become in the hereafter.

TRUTH: OUR WAY OF SEEING THINGS

A fact we often fail to admit is that we do not always see things as they are, but as we are. It is the state of our own inner being which determines our interpretation of life’s happenings. This is not to say we are purposely dishonest about our views. It is a reminder that our objectivity is influenced by many outside factors. We are conditioned to believe what we believe by many circumstances over which we have had little control. We were born into a family of thought patterns and preconceived notions from which we rarely depart. Seldom do we go against the political, educational, racial and religious environment that has birthed us. We are cradled in the arms of a set of precepts we were taught would last forever.

This is not bad as long as we are willing to think for ourselves and make such truths a part of our own value system. We must distinguish, however, between inherited ideas and a personal encounter with God. So often we accept what is handed down with no questions asked. It is not until our faith is tested that we begin to scrutinize the content of our beliefs. There is emotional and spiritual strength in knowing what we believe and why we believe it. At some point along the journey we must stop living like spiritual parasites trying to imitate the faith of our fathers. Only when it becomes our faith do we fully appreciate what it meant to our fathers.

We are wise indeed if we understand the dynamics of a variety of influences that have converged upon us to make us who we are and cause us to think our kind of thoughts. Such knowledge frees us from inherited prejudices and enables us to find the truth that can make us free. Such freedom gives us a more objective way of looking at life’s events. We can begin to see things more as they are rather than as we are. We are able to shed our souls of biases which keep us chained to an unquestioned tradition.

Jesus came into the world with no preconceived notions. He was not locked into any set of principles He felt compelled to defend. He had no ego need to fulfill and nothing to prove. He came with love and truth as a message from the heavenly Father. The purity of His thoughts was evident in every teaching situation. His enemies were incensed by His departure from rules and regulations they held more holy than God Himself. Yet, Jesus saw things as they really were and made pronouncements on the basis of that reality.

He offers us the same spiritual objectivity today if we hunger for His truth and love. So, “let this mind be in us which was also in Christ Jesus.” Who knows, we may find the courage to admit some errors of thought as we trust God who alone sees things as they really are.

A Religion of Convenience: This God or That One

In our Sunday School class we’re studying the Old Testament books of Joshua, Judges and Ruth. These books occur just after the Israelites have occupied Canaan; The Promised Land, and after Joshua, the last of the patriarchal leaders has died. Without a patriarch to hold them to their religion, the people fall away from God, following the pagan practices of the Canaanites who were not driven out of the land as God had instructed the Israelites.

Baal worship religion — A temple to Baal

A cycle is set up where the people fall away and begin worshiping Baal, his sister Anoth and Baal’s wife: Asherah (who was known to the Greeks as Aphrodite, and to the Romans as Venus, figures who appear in society even today). God becomes angry with Israel and delivers them into the hands of an enemy for a period of time. Israel cries out to God for forgiveness, God provides a deliverer who leads them in a miraculous victory over their enemy and guides the nation for a time. But upon that leaders’ death, Israel slides back into pagan religion and the cycle begins again. Over and over and over.

Why Don’t They Remember?

Why, when the nation has been delivered so many times from its enemies, beginning with the exodus from Egypt led by Moses, would the people keep sliding back into paganism? Why is it so hard for them to remember the God who keeps delivering them?

Perhaps it’s the same reason we are doing it again today. Continue reading “A Religion of Convenience: This God or That One”

WALKING WITH GOD

Walking with God is a beautiful way of describing our Christian pilgrimage. “A Closer Walk With God” is the essence of our daily journey with Him. Even though we struggle to make this a goal of our lives, we often fail to be where God desires. We find ourselves in the awkward position of walking more by ourselves than walking with God.

There are times in walking with the Lord that we tend to walk ahead of Him. We become impatient with His slower pace and move on with what we assume is a better gait toward our goal. It is more like a race with God than a walk. We rush to conclusions. We hurry up our prayers. Rather than wait for clearer signals we compose our own agenda for the living of our days. In our haste to get where we are going we want God to quickly bless our plans. Walking ahead of God we tend to get exhausted. Because we do not wait upon the Lord we do not “mount up on wings as eagles.” We do not run without getting weary and we grow faint in our walk. Like children who refuse to hold their parent’s hand at a busy intersection we expose ourselves to much danger when we get ahead of God. Continue reading

MUMBLINGS OF A CHRISTIAN JEW

“Go ye therefore into all the world,” He said. “Does He really mean that”? Is this a command or a request? There is a difference, you know. It is a big, cruel world out there. Rome does not deal kindly with new movements. Surely Judaism will not tolerate competition for her converts. Our half-pagan world does not understand a religion of love, grace, and purity. Is it possible for this good news to be absorbed by crude and cruel minds?

“All the world” would mean telling Gentile folk about Jesus. I think we should keep His gospel for our Jewish people. After all, we are the chosen ones. He was birthed and nurtured by our kind. It was our scriptures that predicted His coming. It was our prophets who anticipated a Messiah. Why should we share this good news with anyone but our own? There are a lot of Gentile pigs out there who would trample the pearls of His marvelous story. Did not our fathers teach us that such people were unclean?

A little humor: God Sends the Best

She hurried to the pharmacy to get medication, got back to her car and found that in her haste she had locked her keys inside. The woman found a coat hanger left on the ground. She looked at it and said, “I don’t know how to use this.” She bowed her head and asked God to send her some help.

Within 5 minutes a noisy motorcycle pulled up, driven by a bearded man who was wearing leathers and a biker skull rag. He got off of his cycle and asked if she needed help.

She said: “Yes, my daughter is sick. I’ve locked my keys in my car. I must get home. Please, can you use this hanger to unlock my car?”

He said, “Sure.”

He walked over to the car, and in less than a minute the car was open.

She hugged the man and through tears said, “Thank You SO Much! You are a very nice man.”

The man replied, “Lady, I am NOT a nice man. I just got out of PRISON yesterday; I was in prison for car theft.”

The woman hugged the man again sobbing, “Oh, thank you, God! You even sent me a Professional!”

(Note: the above story was sent to me via e-mail. I edited it but cannot claim it as my own. Original source is unknown.)

SUCCESS AND FAILURE

Someone has said, “Success knows no strangers while failure has no friends.” On first reading it seems to be a fairly accurate observation. We do tend to applaud those who succeed and shun those who have failed. Society gives the limelight to those who have done extraordinarily well, yet it hardly gives a footnote to those who have not met public expectations. The friendship factor favors the successful. We clamor for companionship from those who can teach us how to be winners. We are indifferent to those who have allowed life to lose its zest. Business, politics, entertainment, and sometimes even religion focus upon beautiful people who appear to be bright and successful. Therefore our beginning statement seems to have some validity.

On the other hand, however, the issue of success and failure may be as much a matter of perception as reality. If we perceive ourselves to be successful, most likely we will have a more exuberant personality. Yet, if we perceive ourselves to be failures most likely we will be inhibited and withdrawn. From this perspective neither success nor failure is as much a matter of numbers as it is a matter of attitude. Successful people who have lost the challenge of achievement feel like failures. People who have failed are sometimes motivated to survive their setbacks and focus their sights on higher goals. In many ways we are who we think we are and we do well not to think more highly or lowly of ourselves than we ought. Continue reading

THE GOD OF OUR IMAGINATION

Do we worship a god, sometimes, who is the figment of our imagination? Do we create a god in our image rather than conform to the image of God created within us? Do we set our own agenda or do we seriously search for the will of God? False gods do not have to be made out of gold or silver. They can be the products of our speculation. Idols are formed in our minds long before they are created by our hands. Our most common human heresy is to make up our own set of rules. We pray to a god who permits. We serve a god who satisfies our carnal desires. Our religion is egocentric rather than theocentric. We invent ways to satisfy our thirst for heaven which fall short of heaven’s expectations. We are never at peace with God because the gods we create instigate chaos.

Sooner or later our house of religious cards will tumble. The bubble of synthetic spirituality will burst. The charade of pretentious Christianity will end. We cannot go on serving a god who does not exist. There comes a time when the issues of life demand a quality commitment to reality. Whenever sickness and death sting us with the tentacles of despair, we need an eternal hope. Whenever temptation lurks at the door and sin creates an uneasy conscience, we need more than a silly system of self approval. Whenever friends turn against us and we feel alone, we need the deeper friendship of divine devotion. Whenever crises come, as surely they will, we need more than human resources.

Simply stated, there comes a time when we cannot make it with a faith based only on convenience.

What, then, shall we do to cultivate an authentic attachment to our Lord and all that adds substance to the living of our days? We need to take God at His word and follow His guidelines for godly living. We must evaluate our tendencies to be less than honest with ourselves about God. We cannot serve a god who exists only in our imaginations. The altar of our own ego is a poor place to find the peace that passes all understanding. We need to confront our risen Savior and in the fellowship of His suffering find meaning in whatever penalties and blessings life presents us. We are never nearer to God than when we denounce our idols and make Him the primary focus of our lives.