As You Are Going…

¹⁷So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there.

Today I get to spend time with Mr. Bell.  That doesn’t mean a lot to some of you but I like the idea.  He not only is a friend, a member of the church, my deacon, but he is also the Chairman of Deacons on a mission.  He has determined to take the “Deacon of the Week” ministering to the Southside church family.  He has some wonderful testimonies of how God has already used these visits since the first of the year to touch lives and change their own lives as well.  He is the Deacon of the Week for this week and it falls my lot to have to put up with him today.  I am praying about this and the text this morning has to do with Paul traveling around from place to place facing different kinds of people.  He travels to one city and faces great opposition.  He travels to the next place and they are open to all he has to say and even spend time testing what he says against the scriptures.  He ends the chapter enjoying company of men who have no idea of his commitment to Christ and totally disagree with his personal ideas but he is willing to share the gospel with them as well.

I am encouraged that Mr. Bell and I get to share in that same kind of thing today as we wander from place to place.  From the scripture this morning I take great comfort in the fact that the Heavenly Father has put us on assignment today and we will meet different kinds of people and be able to love the folk we are around.  It is a “get out of the office” kind of day.  Since the wind is blowing and the temp is cool we will find a great deal of excitement in being together and on assignment with the Father.  Go God!

I will take note of what God does today.  It will be a long but fruitful day!

God made me Blind and unable to Walk – Big Deal!

You go figure!

Severely Flogged would have led to Severely Ticked!

I haven't been there but the person that took the pic said that it was a prison hole like this one!

⁴⁰After Paul and Silas came out of the prison, they went to Lydia’s house, where they met with the brothers and encouraged them. Then they left.

Maybe part of reading the Bible this way is one gets to journey with a group of men who are serving God.  They obviously went into a town where God led them.  On the way to pray for goodness sake (they weren’t robbing a bank or stealing candy from the corner market – just going to a place of prayer) God allows them to cross paths with a young woman “with a spirit”.  She was the cash cow for several men who were not concerned about her just interested in her ability to make money for them.  It must have been lucrative.  They got really ticked off when Paul spoke to the “spirit” and it left her!  ”Sorry, boys.  Lucrative business now down the toilet!  See you later when you can find someone else to pick on!”  Obviously God was ready to free the young lady up.  Go God!

I guess that serving the King of Kings causes you to be in some interesting conditions.  Let’s see!  drug out in to the street…accused by a group of people who are emotionally charged…magistrate orders them stripped…beaten…severely flogged (I wondered if there were steps in this “flogging” thang – flogged is flogged in my book…suffice it to say they were not in some comfortable position)…put in stocks…inner cell (must have been reserved for the most special guests)   I complain when the sound in the service is not right or if I don’t get my way in something minor.  But then Paul decides at midnight to have them “get their hymnbooks out and turn to hymn numbered ______” and have an old fashioned praise time in prison.  Let’s just say for the record that I don’t believe I am at that point yet.  Severely Flogged would have led to Severely Ticked…probably not in the mood for an old fashioned hymn sing.  Paul sings.  Prison is shaken.  Guard and family get saved!  Go God!  And they are legally escorted from their illegal prison predicament.  I would have loved to be a fly on the wall listening to the conversation between whoever and the magistrate when they find out he is a Roman Citizen and they stood a great chance of being severely flogged and enjoying the ambiance of the inner cell themselves.  Crowd craziness leads to that kind of stupidity.  They are free.

The verse that got me was ⁴⁰After Paul and Silas came out of the prison, they went to Lydia’s house, where they met with the brothers and encouraged them. Then they left.  OK!  They didn’t stay in that condition.  God still amazes me at times.  I am still looking for that verse that says that God promises that all lives have nothing to do with prisons, severe flogging experiences, stocks, and inner cells.  All they did was help a young girl.  It has to be some where.  I just can’t find it.  I really do want a God that draws good straight lines and nothing bad happens to good people.  I am reminded that there is a jailer and his whole family that are really glad today that Paul and Silas ended up in that place.  Obviously they had to be thrown in there to get near him.

However, they DID have good friends.  They left the prison and went to their house.  They didn’t have to hunt.  They had some folk that were part of a group of people who loved on them and cared for them.  They comforted Paul and Silas.  Paul and Silas encouraged them.  Now they were on their way to the next assignment.  Today at lunch I will have the joy of meeting with Ken Sandifer and W. L. Collins and hopefully Daniel Inabinet.   These guys love me and I love them.  They comfort me and encourage me.  I have not been in the inner cell and flogged severely.  Everyday life brings its own stuff!  I am just glad I have my own friends who let me come to their house on Tuesday at lunch.  I pray for them today!

He don’t look like me!

²⁰Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood.

It grabbed me this morning.  There is this big argument going on.  There are Jewish zealots who are guardians of the law who have wandered down Grace Boulevard and have just tried to kick in the freedom door.  It seems that the Jewish folk who were highly committed to tradition and the way they have always done it, and were protectors of the way it has always been done, began to try to slip their rules and regulations in to the world they lived in.  Of all the issues of massive importance to a Jew, circumcision was one of them.  And these poor pitiful painfully ignorant Gentiles had no idea of the rules and it was now time to share them and educate this crowd.  A major set of meetings arise out of this whole deal.  The group is divided.  One group said that in order for the Gentile believers to be “real” believers in Christ they they had to be circumcised.  The other replied that there is no way that’s true.  It is not that the Gentiles did not come God like the Jews did – the Jews actually had to come to God like the Gentiles – by faith.  They took some kind of vote or something and resolved the whole deal by saying that it was salvation by grace alone…no need for circumcision.

James says that there is no circumcision needed.  However, (now there is the classic legalistic phrase) let’s tell (make the strong suggestion to) them to abstain from “…from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood.”  Now there is where it peaked my interest.  Let’s cut out one rule and throw three in.   (Leave me alone, Smith!)   No circumcision needed but, hey, we can’t just leave it empty…we have to add somethings in there.   And that’s when it hit me.  The Jews were jealous of the Gentile’s freedom.  [DISCLAIMER:  Let me get this out of the way.  I don't believe that Christians are free to live like they want - like animals.  Now I can breath!  We are to live like we ought to live...like redeemed people!]  That’s what hit me.  They literally cannot hang around with other believers who have a different lifestyle than they do.  If they smoke or drink or have body art of some kind, or if their clothes are  hung on them or off of them differently especially if they have black finger nails and not wearing a school uniform – on and on ad nausium…  I think that the Jewish believers did not have the personal resources or spiritual stuff it takes to love people who are different than they were.

I think it is healthy to say to the Gentile believers that  eating food polluted by idols, sexual immorality, from meat of strangled animals and from blood…are things that are highly offensive to their Jewish brothers and sisters.  Grace might have freed me up to experience life as I see it…but it gives me a real chance to be sensitive to those around me as long as they are not using rules and regulations to control people.

Illustrate this?  I could.  The temptation is great.  One in particular is my own perception of what “normal” should look like.  I grew up with the Beetles and “…them thar hippie types…”  It was a strange time to say the least.  I look back and laugh.  You know you are getting old when a young man or woman walks in with tattoo’s and piercings all over them and I start sounding like the people I tried to avoid when I was young.  I hear folk wonder why can’t those young people can’t dress like proper young Christian people.  I don’t know.  Maybe they are just different.  Do I have tats?  No! and again I say, NO!   Do I have piercings?  No! and I ain’t going there!  I have some great friends who do.  They are Christians!  No they haven’t kept my rules, but they are OK!

Now remember, the issue here is not whether the preacher likes or dislikes tattoos and piercings.  The issue is whether or not God grants people the ability to love others who are different.  I just chose to play around with that topic.  As long as there are more than on person alive…there will be divergent opinions about everything.

My personal prejudices cloud my perceptions.  There are some great folk out there.  Help me keep my mind focused on God who loves me, Jesus who died for me, and the Holy Spirit who will guide me today!  Let’s see… does it go like this… Love the Lord your God with all of your heart…and OTHERS?  as you love yourself?  Yea, I think I got it!

I am loving me some Jesus!

¹ Then the Lord said to Moses, ² “Give the following instructions to the people of Israel. This is how you are to deal with those who sin unintentionally by doing anything that violates one of the Lord’s commands.

My first response to reading through Leviticus is “God, please help me to get through this without gaging!”  I know there are those who will read this and think for some strange reason that a Minister of Gooooooooodddddddd should love the scriptures and not make some silly comment like that.  I don’t care who you are.  When you read Leviticus  just as it is…the rules cause you to gag.    Knowing Christ and seeing how HE fulfills these regulations and frees us – is exciting.  There are times when I get there that I say to God, “Please don’t make me walk through that again, Please!”  Yet today, I celebrate again the joy of the whole counsel of God.

The older I get the more I absolutely abhor lists of “if someone is found in a fault then…” kind of thing.  I was  reminded that the more of the law one reads the heavier it becomes.  It is like carrying around a open container on your back as you walk through the rules and regulations.  These self imposed monsters are able then to throw in one boulder after another weighing you down until you scream, HELP!   It is almost like you are walking through the stories of Genesis and Exodus and then you come to the road of Leviticus and fall among thieves and robbers who are throwing rocks at you, mug you and leave you under the stifling load of rules until they almost take the life out of you.  Then along come Christ.  He took that load of “stuff” put it on himself.  He is completely dedicated.  He is the Priest that does not sin yet pays the price for me.  He is the one that is my continual living burnt offering and now I am free from having to tote that religious stuff around!  Thank God in heaven!

I want to struggle with the people who guard the “lists”.  I am more and more convinced that Christ likeness flows out of a relationship with Him where HE writes the laws on my heart and they flow from the inside out and not from the inside of the pocket of some self righteous person who thinks they know what righteousness is.  I want to see HIM manifest in my life.  I am building a great resistance to living up to other people’s standards of living.  I cannot live out of their perspectives.

However, read this!  Hebrews 10:1-14 (and I purposely place the New Living Translation here…)

¹ The old system under the law of Moses was only a shadow, a dim preview of the good things to come, not the good things themselves. The sacrifices under that system were repeated again and again, year after year, but they were never able to provide perfect cleansing for those who came to worship. ² If they could have provided perfect cleansing, the sacrifices would have stopped, for the worshipers would have been purified once for all time, and their feelings of guilt would have disappeared.

³ But instead, those sacrifices actually reminded them of their sins year after year. ⁴ For it is not possible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. ⁵That is why, when Christ^[a] came into the world, he said to God,

“You did not want animal sacrifices or sin offerings.
But you have given me a body to offer.
⁶ You were not pleased with burnt offerings
or other offerings for sin.
⁷ Then I said, ‘Look, I have come to do your will, O God—
as is written about me in the Scriptures.’”^[b]

⁸ First, Christ said, “You did not want animal sacrifices or sin offerings or burnt offerings or other offerings for sin, nor were you pleased with them” (though they are required by the law of Moses). ⁹ Then he said, “Look, I have come to do your will.” He cancels the first covenant in order to put the second into effect. ¹⁰ For God’s will was for us to be made holy by the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ, once for all time.

¹¹ Under the old covenant, the priest stands and ministers before the altar day after day, offering the same sacrifices again and again, which can never take away sins. ¹² But our High Priest offered himself to God as a single sacrifice for sins, good for all time. Then he sat down in the place of honor at God’s right hand. ¹³ There he waits until his enemies are humbled and made a footstool under his feet. ¹⁴ For by that one offering he forever made perfect those who are being made holy.

Religion weighs me down and the load steals the joy.

Jesus woke me up this morning and said, “Come on Crooks, Let’s dance!”