01.27.09
Posted in Mouth of Babes at 8:15 am by Administrator
This past Saturday some men met at the church to take down a Pecan tree that was too near the building that’s under construction. As these men worked Taylor, Noah, and Alex walked around in the woods behind the church. I’m not sure where it came from, but Taylor and Noah were relating some story about a robber living in the woods. Alex (age 12) asked the boys if they were afraid to walk around in the woods with a criminal on the loose, to which Noah (age 5) gave a profound reply. He looked at Alex and asked, “Are you saved?”
For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. Romans 8:15
Yea; have ye never read, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise? Matthew 21:16
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01.25.09
Posted in Bible at 5:01 pm by Administrator
For God to narrow all the things He wanted to reveal to mankind to fit in to a single Book is a truly amazing task. And yet to look at the size of the Bible and to consider that we’re to familiarize ourselves with such a large volume is almost daunting. I suppose, if we’re not careful, we can become frustrated at the fact that we truly undestand so little of what we read when we come to the Bible. And its been my experience that no sooner than think you have something really “figured out” you need only read a little further to find out, there’s much more that you don’t know. I’m fairly convinced now (although I didn’t always see it this way) that the Bible really isn’t a Book to be “figured out”. It is always a Book that is profitable (2 Tim 3:16), and it is always powerful (Heb 4:12), but it does not exist to be “solved” like some code or “put together” like a puzzle. When Daniel received the very last message of His prophecy, all he could say was, “I heard, but I understood not” (Dan 12:8). That may seem like a let down, but the Bible says of itself that “faith cometh by hearing,” not by understanding. The more we fail to understand, the more we can glory in the fact that God wrote this Book, and not some man no smarter than you or me. Paul wrote that when it came to the things that God has prepared for us that love Him that we’re dealing with things that “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man” (1 Cor 2:9). And then he turns right around and says that God has revealed them to us by His Spirit (1 Cor 2:10). There are some things about the word of God that can be laid hold of spiritually and yet can’t be fully explained. I guess this is why we Paul tells us that he writes that we might “understand his knowledge in the mystery of Christ” (Eph 3:5) and then describes that very same myster as being “unsearchable” (Eph 3:8). How exactly do you “know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge” (Eph 3:19)! “How” is not what is important. What is important is that we’re approved of God in our study (2 Tim 2:15), and that we seek out the Book of the LORD and read (Isa 34:16). Jesus Christ once told eleven men that would turn the world upside down, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but you cannot bear them now” (John 16:12). If that be so we shouldn’t be surprised that there are many things that God has yet to show us about the Book that He’s written. Just as it’s been my experience that “I know nothing as I ought”, so it is also my experience that, as long as I’m in the Book, God will give me understanding in the things I need just when I need them.
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01.22.09
Posted in Mouth of Babes at 12:09 pm by Administrator
It’s amazing how perceptive children can be at times. Yesterday Taylor (age 7) asked his mother about a picture of the Pope he had seen somewhere. He asked if those two fingers he was holding up meant that he was lying! I guess he got that whole crossing the fingers behind one’s back and holding two fingers up in the air for peace a bit confused… Or maybe not.
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01.19.09
Posted in Country at 3:38 pm by Administrator
All my life, I’ve grown up in “the Bible-belt”. Many of us wouldn’t know any better, for lack of ever leaving “the Bible-belt”, but there are few places in the world where you actually find a church on every corner and professing Christians in every segment of public life. I am truly thankful for the privelege to grow up in this heavily “Christainized” part of the world. I think it spared me many off-the-wall religious and political concepts before I was really able to process them. When I went to college for a short time I was confronted with a great deal of those off-the-wall ideas, and for as ignorant as I was (and am) as to how to answer all of those philosophies I atleast had a good eighteen years worth of some Bible truth in the foundations of my world-view. In case you didn’t know, liberalism, humanism, and paganism are closing in on the deep South and this Satanic attack is slowly, but surely, dismantling the Bible part of “the Bible belt”, and it will ultimately steal the souls of many of our publicly educated “Christian” young people. This is well illustrated by the recent lawsuit filed by the ACLU against the principal of Pace High School and the former Superintendent of Schools in Santa Rosa County (check here for details). Without a debate of what did and didn’t happen and the constitutional ramifications of the whole thing, it’s a bit surreal to think that this is even an issue so close to home. But it is. And things are bound to get worse. Evolution is common in the classrooms of our local schools and false views of God and His Son abound everywhere. What does it all mean? I’m not sure, but one thing is for sure, we Southerners are no longer exempt from many aspects of “the course of this world” that we’ve been sheltered from for so long.
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