Month: January 2009

Hello Friends,

On this week’s delay… The Wii made me do it. Complete and total distraction. Anyhow, I’ve got our Wii online now. If any ya’ll got a Wii too, let me know and let’s hook up sometime.

So did you all notice how you reacted to circumstances over the past week? Did you observe the inner you and what it was telling you and/ or commenting to you about so and so? I hope you did. This may seem like a silly thing to do or an “I already know about that so I don’t need to do it” exercise, but understanding what it going on inside your mind is absolutely necessary to “Take stock”, as it were, of your spiritual condition.

The Bible says in 2nd Corinthians 13:5,
Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves!

Why Jim???

Remember Adam (not Reynolds) and Eve in the Garden of Eden? (Review the 12/29/2008 message if you need to.) Remember they disobeyed God’s command not to eat the fruit of a certain tree. And remember I suggested they became spiritually alienated from God at that time… thanks to sin.

Well, the reason why we examine ourselves is to see if WE are alienated from God or not. You know the old saying… Won’t seek the cure if there’s not a problem. And sin is a problem…. A huge problem. But just look at how we are apathetic towards everyday sins. Thinking back to your “fruit” over the past couple of weeks… were you apathetic to your sins? I know I was for a couple of days. (And God chastised me for it too.) That apathy has a source…

Genesis 3:13 [Post fruit eating] Then the Lord God said to the woman (Eve), “What is this you have done?” And the woman said, “The serpent (Satan) deceived me, and I ate.”

Aha! The Specter is revealed! Do you like the Rolling Stones? They sang a song about Satan:

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what’s puzzling you
Is the nature of my game

And the nature of his game is still what Eve described… deception. And the pattern of the fruit you bear is a tell-tale sign of whether you are deceived as Eve was or not.

Matthew 7:17-20 So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor a bad tree produce good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. So then, you will know them by their
fruits.

Satan tricks people into thinking they’re good trees bearing good fruits. I know this from 30 some years of experience! I was deceived on the state of my faith until just a couple of years ago. Check this out:

1970s Went to occasional Sunday school class
1983 Got baptized after taking Eucharist class at All Saints’
1984 Helped as VBS aid during Summer
1985 Go to Linton Hall Catholic Military school, recite Lord’s Prayer/ Rosery
1987 Answer altar call at Stryper Concert
1989 Get “Slain by the Spirit” and “Gift of Tongues” in DR
1990s Yadda Yadda Yadda
2005 Rebaptized “The Real Way” a la full body submersion in outdoor setting
2006 Realized I was a bad tree, one day to be cut down and thrown into the fire

So you see? It can happen to the best of us, ;)! Satan is the master deceiver.

Now our dear ancestors Adam and Eve were originally told to multiply and subdue the earth… Be kinda like keepers of the earth, (Genesis 1:28). God made the earth (And it is still His), but He gave control (dominion) of the earth originally to Adam and Eve. When Satan came along and tricked them, their disobedience was also a forfeiture of their rule of God’s earth. Guess who received it then and has the rule now?

1st John 5:19 … the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.

So Satan has a hold on the system, the machine, the prevailing attitudes of the world. He’s got a big hold on religion too. His control is sooo massive and all encompassing that it can be hard to know which way is up.

I vividly recall a conversation I had with Mark Reiter (roughly 15 years ago) about the effects of the McDonald’s Happy Meal promos… sucking kids into ungodly worldviews at a young age. After all my waxing eloquent he quipped, “It’s all evil Jim, everything is evil.”

Despite Satan’s grip and trickery, God in His mercy gives us the truth revealed in His word, the Bible:

John 14:6 Jesus said to him (Thomas the disciple), “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father (God) but through Me.

How’s that for political correctness? How’s that for black and white? As I like to say, “Them’s fightin’ words!” If Jesus says that, then anything else, by default, is from Ye Olde Dragon. Is this why people say, “Ignorance is bliss”?

As people who participated in a youth group seeking a more uplifting environment and meaning, we need to actively continue to uplift our souls by first examining ourselves. Having grown older does not make this moot does it? Nay, it does not, but all the more so.

God loves us too much to leave us ignorant of our natural (inherited) spiritual condition. Let’s jump from the familiar story of Adam and Eve and Satan in the Garden of Eden and fast forward to Moses and the 10 Commandments. They’re very helpful to us… they can teach us what we may have forgotten about ourselves…

But first, any people out there want to give their take on the 10 Commandments?

Peace,
Jim

Hi Everyone,

Did you notice your inner person over the last week? Did you observe how it (you) reacted to various circumstances?

I noticed mine getting irritable one afternoon. I was hungry and making lunch for everyone at home. And then everyone was busy doing other things. During this time I recalled doing some other useful things for my family over the past several days and how they were content to let me do it during those times too. Slowly but surely, the seeds of bitterness were being sown in my mind as I started to think I was being taken for granted.

Ah ha!!! My cockroach of pride slithered from under the counter of my emotions. As it scurried about, my behavior was thinking of turning ugly too. Yes, a sharp word of sarcasm was long overdue. A snipping at my wife and kids looked so delicious. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so
accommodating… “Don’t know what you got until it’s gone”! Yessss!

And then moments later I was rescued from that awful weed of resentment. The alarm of my conscience rang out in my head… Almighty God bared down on me:

1st Peter 1:16 …You shall be holy, for I am holy

Coming to my senses and taking a deep breath, I whispered a prayer at the kitchen sink, “Heavenly Father, forgive me for not loving my wife and kids. Please strengthen me by Your Spirit in me to be patient and kind at this time, for I am unable to be so on my own. Thank you. In His name I pray, Amen”.

I also remember my spirit reacting more joyously on another day. I was driving to work just as the sun was about to rise. Off in the horizon, I beheld deep purples, oranges, pinks, and blues in the sky. Wow! Sooo beautiful. There’s no getting tired of gazing at such a sight. And later that same day, as I was leaving work, I saw the sunset!  More glorious handiwork of God on display! I thought to myself that wintertime produces some great sunrises and sunsets. But then another thought entered my mind… Almighty God who made those fascinating skies has set His love on me. And my heart leaped!

Mark 5:19 … Go… and report… what great things the Lord has done for you…

I could not help but praise God in song while driving home.

So notice from these two reactions I had, they came from within and manifested themselves on the outside. And this reveals a monumental principle:

What we say or do is motivated by what we think,
and what we think is motivated by what we believe.

Matthew 7:16 You will know them by their fruits…

Our words and deeds are our “fruits”. So if you look at how your spirit (you) reacts to good things and bad things, easy things and hard things, simple things and complex things…. mandatory things and voluntary things, certain things and uncertain things… Over time, you
can see your pattern of behavior. And your pattern of behavior is simply a manifestation of your inner person. You know that axe- murderer has some serious internal issues… and those saintly people who never strike out have something entirely different going on in the inside

You know this as “Garbage in, garbage out” – “Stupid is as Stupid does” – You are what you think (not eat, ha ha) – and maybe some others.

Homework assignment: Get to know yourself better. Let’s take another week and observe what fruit comes forth from us 😉

Peace,
Jim

Hi Everyone,

Happy 2009! Another year of bliss awaits us, heh heh! I want to take this first paragraph to say that I will be changing the Subject line of the Bible Study messages to reflect the content, not merely the date. In so doing, perhaps it would be easier to have a sense of what I am writing about. This morning I was finishing reading the book of Hosea in the OT, and the last verse struck me as appropriate to reiterate our studies for the last month of December 2008:

Hosea 14:9b … For the ways of the Lord are right, and the righteous will walk in them, but the transgressors will stumble in them.

So then…  If you’ve been reading these weekly Bible Study thoughts, I’ve mentioned an aspect of our being that is easy to overlook… our spirit. A fundamental truth of all human beings is that we have a spirit. We have an inner part in addition to our body that makes up who we are. And yes, even atheists have a spirit.  😉

I watch “The Dog Whisperer” sometimes. Have you? Caesar Milan refers to someone’s “energy” and/or “spirit” frequently when counseling people how to live with their dogs. Think also of the phrase, “A prevailing spirit” or “A spirit of anarchy”. Spirit in these senses refers to attitudes, moods and how we carry ourselves in a given circumstance. But the spirit I am referring to is the real you, the God-given life force that is inside your flesh and bones.

I’ve been teaching my kids to recognize their spirit. I tell them when they think thoughts with their mind or when people read not out loud, but to themselves, or when they feel bad when they’ve done something they know they shouldn’t have done, what is doing all that is their spirit. I tell them their brain controls their body, but that their spirit controls their brain. They also now know that when people die, their spirit is no longer inside the body and that is why dead people can’t walk, talk or do anything. Now, please… my kids ask me all sorts of questions… such conversations with them are not morbid 😉 When they want me to read the part (over and over) in their Kids Rhyming Bible when Jesus dies on the cross and then comes to life 3 days later, their little minds start wondering how all that is possible.

Okay… so whether you like it or not, you have a spirit. Can you recognize it? If you are reading this email to yourself and thinking thoughts about it, you (your spirit) are doing the reading… your spirit is seeing with your eyes and running it through your spirit’s information/ memory bank stored in your brain. Your flesh and bones  together is merely a tent for your spirit. Put another way, your spirit resides in your body.

I know you’ve heard: “The mind is willing, but the body is weak”. Guess what the mind is? Your spirit! Body is outer part, spirit is inner part. We all have a material/ outer part and immaterial/ inner part. Our spirit is invisible.

As an aside: I grew up thinking man was made up of three parts: 1. Body, 2. Spirit, 3. Soul… However, I never could quite see the difference between the spirit and the soul. I now have come to believe the spirit and soul are essentially synonymous in the Bible. Both words denote living, both words describe our inner part. Just think of the words “thoughts and intentions” as a way to understand. They’re essentially the same thing… can be used interchangeably. Saying “My heart and mind” is like saying “My soul and spirit”, it is essentially the same thing. A couple of verses…

Romans 8:10 If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit (inner part) is alive because of righteousness.

1 Corinthians 2:11a For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit (inner part) of the man which is inside him?

How else to recognize your spirit? When you feel guilty, that is your conscience. Your conscience is a spiritual component of who you are on the inside. When you comprehend the lovingkindness of God and joy springs forth from your heart, that comes from your inner part. Other things like our rational nature, intelligence, volition (decision making), attitudes, and so forth spring forth and are realities
because of our inner part.

Why focus on our spirit so much? Ready for this?…. Your spirit will never cease to exist. According to the Bible, when our body dies one day, our spirit will live on in either heaven or hell.

God is invisible right? We can only see the results of His works, but He Himself resides in the spiritual dimension. Angels (including Satan and the demons) reside in the spiritual realm. Departed loved ones reside in the spiritual realm. One day we’ll reside in the spiritual realm. Not meaning to sound too X-file-ish… everyone currently living on earth is a spirit residing in a physical body made of flesh and bones. Is this not true?

Our spirit is like the big pink elephant in the living room that no one sees. Consider your spirit. The Bible has a lot to say concerning our spirit and how it (we) relates to Almighty God.

Remember Adam and Eve. Remember the test in the garden of Eden. And recall that they made a choice (volition)… Where does volition come from again? It is a spiritual attribute, right? So even way back when, God related to man on a deeper level… on a spiritual level. And He still does so to this day! Thus to relate to God, we have to relate to Him spiritually. But to relate to Him spiritually, we first have to be aware of our spirit.

Hopefully you are now aware of your spirit. See how your spirit works and acts over the next week. Once we have a good awareness of our spirit, we’ll see some fascinating things in the weeks to come!

Peace,
Jim