An honest man

An old one, but worth sharing

An honest man was being tailgated by a stressed out woman on a busy boulevard. Suddenly, the light turned yellow, just in front of him.

He did the right thing, stopping at the crosswalk, even though he could have beaten the red light by accelerating through the intersection.

The tailgating woman hit the roof and the horn, screaming in frustration as she missed her chance to get through the intersection. As she was still in mid-rant, she heard a tap on her window and looked up into the face of a very serious police officer. The officer ordered her to exit her car with her hands up. He took her to the police station where she was searched, finger printed, photographed, and placed in a holding cell.

After a couple of hours, a policeman approached the cell and opened the door. She was escorted back to the booking desk where the arresting officer was waiting with her personal effects.

He said, "I'm very sorry for this mistake. You see, I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn, flipping off the guy in front of you, and cussing a blue streak at him. I noticed the 'Choose Life' license plate holder, the 'What Would Jesus Do?' bumper sticker, the 'Follow Me to Sunday-School' bumper sticker, and the chrome-plated Christian fish emblem on the trunk.

"Naturally, I assumed you had stolen the car."


Brings to mind Galatians 5:16-26:

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please.

But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law. Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let us not become boastful, challenging one another, envying one another.

The Christian life cannot be lived in the flesh. You can try to live the Christian life in the flesh. You can try with great zeal to obey every commandment you can find in the Bible and some you can't find (denominational rules). You may have been told that God will "help you." After all, "God helps those who help themselves." (try to find that one in the Bible) You will try and you will fail. You might even resign yourself to getting back up and trying again and again and again.

But, is that what God desires? Is that the life that He promised through His Son Jesus? No! The Christian life cannot be lived in the flesh; no matter how hard you try. The flesh cannot cast out the flesh...."For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace" God doesn't want to "help" us live the life, He wants to be our life. He wants to live His life in us and through us. The only way that will happen is through complete surrender to Him and complete trust in Him. That is what walking in the Spirit is all about and only by walking in the Spirit will we not fulfill the desires of the flesh.

It is impossible for us to clean up our flesh no matter how hard we try. Those who try, noted by observation and personal experience, are doomed to a roller coaster ride of frustration and guilt. And their lives will exhibit the fruits of the flesh, "...immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these." In addition they will be the most critical of how their neighbor is living his life; always comparing themselves to others (I'm glad I'm not like that tax collector).

There is peace and rest in not having to struggle to keep a set of external rules that we can't keep anyway. Again, there are only two things that are required for a Christian to live the life he is called to live. Trust and Surrender. If you do so, God will live His life in you and through you and He will change you from the inside out. You will exhibit the fruits of the Spirit, "...love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control." Is their any part of God's law that doesn't find an answer there?

Living in a fog

I was driving into work this morning and it was foggy in several places along the way. It was not a very thick fog, so I was able to see for about 100 yards. Several things occurred to me while I was driving. One is that, while driving in the fog, my attention to details that were visible through the fog was sharper than during a sunny day. I was noticing things that I didn’t normally notice during a bright sunny day.

On a sunny day, when you can see for miles, you pay more attention to details that are far off and less attention to details that may be right in front of your face. If the fog is very dense, then all of your attention is drawn to details that are close at hand…because that is all you can see.

I think that this has an analogy to the Christian walk. A lot of Christians live their lives in bright sunshine. I am not talking in standard terms of bright sunshine equals good, and dark and gloomy equals bad, but in terms of where you are focused. When you are in bright sunshine, figuratively speaking, Jesus is close at hand and His closeness never changes. Yet, your focus is drawn to all of the other things you can see, your current troubles, your past that shouldn’t have been or could have been, and things you imagine that the future will bring or not bring.

Jesus is right in front of you, but your attention is drawn by all of the other things you see. I think that when Christians mature, God uses things in our life to cause a fog to descend over us. As the fog grows denser, the less you can see of the things around you; your circumstances, your past, or your imagined future that brings you so much anxiety. The fog finally grows so dense that the only thing you can see is Jesus. Your circumstances haven’t changed, your past still remains, and the future is yet to be. The only thing that is changed is your focus.

When your focus is on Jesus and you are completely surrendered to His will and His working in your life, He becomes the only thing that is important. This is the life that He has called Christians to live. A life where the only thing that matters is Him and He provides the power to live in the present, no matter what your circumstances are, or what you did in the past, or what your future will bring.

There are many Christians that have come to Christ for eternal life, but have never trusted Christ as their life. They have never surrendered their life completely to God and placed their faith in the fact that Jesus died on the cross not only to forgive their sins, but to live His life in them and through them. This is one of my favorite non-Bible quotes:

There are those who sincerely try to live a life they do not have, substituting religion for God, Christianity for Christ, and their own noble endeavors for the energy, joy, and power of the Holy Spirit. In the absence of reality, they can only grasp at rituals, stubbornly defending the latter in the absence of the former, lest they be found with neither!

There are those who have a life they never live. They have come to Christ and thanked Him only for what He did, but do not live in the power of who He is. Between the Jesus who "was" and the Jesus who "will be" they live in a spiritual vacuum, trying with no little zeal to live for Christ a life that only He can live in and through them, perpetually begging for what in Him they already have! Major Ian Thomas

There is a song we sing in church that has the line, “When we all get to heaven what a day of rejoicing that will be…” The song speaks about the time when we see Jesus in heaven and how everyone will be rejoicing. As Major Thomas stated, there is a vacuum in the lives of many Christians. They will go to heaven to see someone that they don’t really know because they have only seen Him once…when they were saved. There are others who will go to heaven to see an old friend face-to-face…what a day of rejoicing that will be.

Sovereignty

A man had a beautiful estate, with magnificent trees on it. But he had a bitter enemy, who said, “I will cut down one of his trees; that will hurt him.” In the dark of the night the enemy slipped over the fence and went to the most beautiful of the trees, and with saws and axes he began to work. In the first light of morning he saw in the distance two men coming over the hill on horseback, and recognized one of them as the owner of the estate. Hurriedly he pushed the wedges out and let the tree fall; but one of the branches caught him and pinned him to the ground, injuring him so badly that he died. Before he died he screeched out, “Well, I have cut down your beautiful tree,” and the estate owner looked at him with pity and said, “This is the architect I have brought with me. We had planned to build a house, and it was necessary to cut down one tree to make room for the house; and it is the one you have been working on all night.”

Donald Grey Barnhouse

Which book of the Bible are you?

Here is a quiz that purports to tell you which book of the Bible describes you.

Quiz

Here are my results...I think that it describes me very well.

Love is...

In 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, the Bible describes the characteristics of love:

Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Since God is love, these verses are a description of His love (Agape) for us and if we, as Christians, abide in Him, they are also the characteristics of His love expressed through us. An attitude of pride has characteristics which are polar opposites of the ones expressed by love. The following is a link to a table that relates the characteristics of love described in Corinthians to Christ's expression of that love through the believer who is abiding in Him. The table also describes the behavior of someone with an attitude of pride.

Love is...