You Want to Change Your Life? Start by Being Thankful.

An Elder

One thing I've noticed in life is that thankfulness and negativity do not go together. In fact, I've never met a negative person who was also truly thankful. Nor have I met a positive person who was ungrateful. Even more contrasting is that a lack of thankfulness might actually lead to a whole host of evils. Thankful people, after all, have a perspective, or a mindset, that helps guard their heart from darkness. Perhaps this is why the bible speaks so much about having a thankful heart.

The psalmist commands us to give thanks to the Lord because He's good and His steadfast love endures forever (Psalm 106:1). This command is so profound that it is repeated exactly that way at least 4 times throughout the bible. But it isn't just the command of the psalmist singing his song. It's also intimated by Paul in his letter to the Thessalonians. He tells them to give thanks in ALL circumstances, because this is the WILL of God (1 Thessalonians 5:18). It is the will of God that we be thankful in ALL circumstances.

Now for a moment, you might think Paul a bit callous. What do you mean Paul? Do you mean that those people who witnessed the bloodshed in Paris a week ago in a very up-close-and-personal way should be thankful for that traumatic experience? Well obviously, Paul isn't telling us that we are to be thankful for the evil that comes our way. We are to shun evil – even hate it (Proverbs 14:16, 1 Thessalonians 5:22). Instead, Paul's point is that we are to be thankful that God is in control, has a plan for our ultimate well being, and is seeing to it that the lives of those submitted to him will have meaning, purpose, and an ultimate reward (Romans 8:28-29). God knows that in order for us to be truly thankful, that we will have to acknowledge His place in our lives as provider, protector, author and finisher, and to recognize our place in the universe – which is to be a subject of the greatest of all kings.

When we are thankful, we cannot be ungrateful. When we are thankful, we cannot be resentful. People are never disobedient to those masters to whom they are really thankful. When we are thankful, it is difficult to be arrogant or proud. Now, notice what people who don't know Jesus will look like at the end of time on earth. 2 Timothy 3:1-5 tells us they will be arrogant, proud, disobedient and among many other things, ungrateful!

So if everything around you looks dark, follow the commands of the bible, and find something to be thankful to God for. If you look, you will find many things.  And it will change your perspective.  

Rash Decisions and a Little Honey

Mike Hoey, an Elder

If you are anything like me (or most of the human race) you’ve made some rash decisions in your life.  I’ve discovered that these decisions are almost always birthed from a place of emotion, rather than a true faith.  In my experience, the rashest decisions are made from negative emotions, although I’ve also made some rash decisions from quite a few “feel good” moments as well. As a side note, these rash decisions can be avoided through prayer, and by seeking the will of God (John 5:30, Hebrews 4:12).

We begin making rash decisions based on emotions from an early age.  I know one little boy, who, when he would get in trouble with his parents, would blurt out, “I’m never going to eat again!”  His parents will tell you how he would tell them not to pack him a lunch, and how when they, being good parents, would pack one anyway, he would throw it in the trash while at school.  His rash decision only made his situation worse, since by the time he got home he would be tired, irritable, and even more prone to getting into trouble.  At that age, he didn’t have the sense to understand fully the needs of his body, or the social, cultural, or disciplinary needs of the situation he was in.  You’ve seen that kind of behavior with adults before too, I’m sure. “I’m never going to that church again!” “I’m never going to talk to that person again until they do x, y, or z.”  Too many times, we make unconscious decisions not to enjoy ourselves until some unrealistic criterion is met.  For instance, “I’m not worthy to enjoy myself there because of what I did then.”  Such rash decisions are dangerous because they deprive us of things that we actually need.

Saul made a similar decision in 1 Samuel 14:24-30.  The men of Israel were engaged in battle with the Philistines. They were hard pressed and taking losses.  Saul charged the men not to eat until the evening, and until his enemies had been pounded pretty decently. As you can imagine, an unfed soldier doesn’t do as well in battle. Interestingly, Saul’s son, Jonathon didn’t hear the command, and when he came upon some honey, he took some, and his mood and general constitution were enhanced.  The people told him of his transgression, but he immediately knew that his father’s command had prevented them from doing better in battle.

Here’s the thing to remember: A) avoid rash decisions.  Instead seek God first, and B) remember that you NEED to taste and experience the good things of God at the appropriate times.

God Provides BUT You Just Had to Be There to Get it!

Mike Hosey, An Elder

When Abram was living his sweet and comfortable life in the land of Ur of the Chaldeans, God came to him and told him to leave that land.  “Go to a place I will show you,” God told him.  He provided no details (Genesis 12:1). He only told him to leave his comfortable “here” and go to an unknown “there.” Abram simply had to take it on faith that God would provide for him. In fact, if he didn’t have that faith – if he had been so comfortable that he was numb to that faith -- he wouldn’t have acted.  Thankfully he did act, and God certainly provided for him. Eventually, Abram’s name was changed to Abraham, and his children became a great nation – a nation that preserved God’s word for us, and was later used to give us that word in the person of Jesus.

God worked in a similar way in 1 Kings 17:1-24. It is there that Elijah the prophet tells the evil King Ahab that there will be no rain in the land until Elijah declares it to be so. God then told Elijah to go to the Cherith brook where he could drink from the brook during the drought, and where the ravens would bring him food. Elijah obeyed. And he experienced God’s provision as he was fed and watered during the drought.  But because there was no rain in the land the brook dried up. Elijah had to move. God told him to leave his “here” and go to the “there” of the small coastal town of Zarapheth.  “I have commanded a widow there to feed you,” God told him (1 Kings 17:9).  Once again he obeyed. But when he got there he found a hungry widow and her child. She fully expected to die of hunger. She didn’t even have enough flour or oil to make a final meal. She certainly didn’t have enough to feed Elijah.  But Elijah commanded her to make a meal from the flour. He had seen the provision of God already. He told her that her small amount of oil and flour would not run out until it once again rained in the land. She obeyed, and they ate for many days.

What if Elijah had not gone to the brook at Cherith? What if when he got to the brook he had become too comfortable? What if the brook had not dried up? If he had been so comfortable in his “here” at Cherith, what would have happened to the widow at Zarapheth?   

What about you? Are you so comfortable in your “here” that you won’t be able to move “there” if God requires it? . . . Because you just have to be "there" to get His provision.

Planning Your Party

Mike Hosey, An Elder

There are some events in life that seem to demand formal recognition. For instance, it seems strange for a couple to call themselves married, but to never have had a wedding.  Although it is possible to be married and not have any human observance whatsoever, almost everyone in every culture expects a marriage to be marked by some kind of ceremony.  The same is true for funerals. When someone dies, his or her people almost always, in every culture, execute some kind of funeral ritual.  Obviously, death doesn’t require this formal recognition, but it is somehow expected. When a person graduates from high school, college, basic training, or any kind of significant education, there is expected by society a graduation ceremony. Once again, you can skip the ceremony and still get a job, but this is not the expectation.

These formal recognition events are actually pretty important.  For instance, the wedding publicly communicates to the world that one is serious about being committed to one’s new partner. The ceremony also cements and reinforces the couple’s vows to one another by making them part of a special event that everyone sees and easily remembers.

In the Old Testament book which bears his name, Nehemiah noticed that the walls of Jerusalem had fallen into disrepair. He agonized over this because the city was a symbol of his people and their relationship to God. He could not allow this, so he secured the right to repair the walls, and set about getting the men and material to do so.  But sometime before he dedicated the repaired wall, he put together a ceremony (which may have lasted as many as 6 hours) where Ezra the priest stood on a stage with a large number of other men and both read and explained the law of God to the people (Nehemiah 8:1-18).  The ceremony allowed the people to see how their own lives were in disrepair, just like the wall they were about to restore. They wept when they realized how much of the law had been ignored or forgotten.  They were then ordered to celebrate, with wine and food, and recognize the day as holy, and to remember that the joy of the Lord was their strength. This event helped them rejoice that God was going to restore them, as His word promised.

The Christian walk has these kinds of events as well. Baptism, for instance, is a major ceremony which symbolizes to the world that the old sinful self has died, and the new self has been raised with Jesus. 

Have you planned a party to recognize your walk?  Do you remember one you have had?

You've Got To Keep Them Separated

Mike Hosey, An Elder

Have you ever taken strips of raw steak or chicken and mixed them in with your nice, crisp, beautifully colored raw vegetables, then put them into the refrigerator for a quick snack later?  Of course you haven’t!  Common sense tells you that your meats will ruin your vegetables. And you almost intuitively know that if you eat that “quick snack” without cooking it, then you could become deathly ill.

The reason is cross contamination.  Raw meat is seething with bacteria that will ruin a human being pretty fast.  If you place that meat in the midst of the vegetables, its bacteria will colonize on them, and make them unfit for consumption. You have to keep them separated!

The bible teaches this concept in many ways.  Perhaps the most notable way is found in 2 Corinthians 6:17, where we are taught to be separate and holy.  We are to be separated from the systems of the world.  We are, after all, not of this world.  Instead, we are simply in it (John 17:14-19).  If we don’t keep ourselves separated from the world, its sin, or its ways of thinking, then we will become more like it, and consequently, less effective for God’s purposes. But God clearly wants us to be in the world for a reason. He tells us so in that passage above. Jesus doesn’t pray for us to be removed from the world.  In His prayer to the Father, He says, “I do not ask that you take them out of the world.” Instead, He asks that we be kept from the evil one.  He then argues that we are sent, just as He was sent! That’s a great privilege! And it’s an ironic one as well.  We are not to be contaminated with the world by allowing its dangerous bacteria in us. Instead, we are to be like an antibiotic that invades and battles the bacteria in whatever host it has taken up residence in.  In our case that bacteria has taken up residence in the world God has created.  And he is using us as his antibiotic to reclaim it.

This idea of separation is found all throughout the Bible.  And Jesus is the pinnacle of that separation.  Consider that Jesus died and brought us the Holy Spirit, so that God’s people can be separated from the world. The church is then created from those people so that it can go back into the world as an instrument for God’s continuing redemption of a sin infected world. In fact, Satan should fear CROSS contamination in the world he has stolen.

Are you allowing God to separate you from anything so that you can be a part of that redemption?

LIfe's Interruptions, or God's Opportunities

Mike Hosey, An Elder

We usually think of interruptions in life as evil. They’re troublesome. They bother us.  They keep us from being productive. They slow everything down, and get in the way of our scheduled goals for the day.  They’re almost always frustrating.  If you’ve ever had kids, you know about interruptions in all of their multi-faceted and very deep glory. In fact, there have been a few times where my children gave me major interruptions.  Now that I’m older and wiser, I wish I had seen those interruptions for what they were – opportunities to bring love, kindness, patience and Jesus into their lives.  

Interruptions are part of daily life. Just the other day in my office I had several administrative goals I had to reach before going home.  But every time I tried to start working on one of those goals, someone came through my door and asked for help, or guidance, or just for someone to listen to their plight.  It didn’t let up for most of the morning. In fact, those interruptions forced me to re-arrange the whole afternoon.  But the truth is that those people needed assistance. I am, after all, there to serve those people. I am there precisely to serve my clients, and precisely to serve those who work under me. These were not interruptions, really.  These were opportunities for me to fulfill my duty to God and his calling on my life, both with active effort, and by demonstrating a personal example of patience -- a patience that they will surely know comes from the Holy Spirit as they get to know me more.

Jesus tells the story in Luke 10:30-36, of a man who was traveling, and was mugged by thieves and left in a state of near death.  Two men from Jewish upper society passed him by, perhaps viewing him as an interruption. But a third man, a despised and lowly Samaritan, helped restore him.  He didn’t see an interruption, but instead an opportunity to do good, and display the love God intends for all of us to exhibit. C.S. Lewis put it this way in a letter he once wrote to his friend Arthur Greeves: “The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s ‘own’, or ‘real’ life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life – the life God is sending one day by day: what one calls one’s ‘real life’ is a phantom of one’s own imagination.”

 

Lewis recognized that real life, with all its interruptions was, perhaps, the best way to recognize God and His divine opportunities. 

Asking the Right Questions

Mike Hosey, An Elder

If you want to have any degree of success in life, you must, at the very least, be able to ask the right questions.  It is, after all, the right questions that help us to understand the world around us.  For instance, you will never be able to know why the sky is blue, unless you ask the question, "why is the sky blue?" The answer to that question, of course, will lead to many, many other questions, which will lead you into a deeper understanding of why the sky is blue, which may in turn lead to a better understanding of light, refraction, and a whole bunch of other stuff about your world. Obviously though, unless they're nerds like me, most people don't care why the sky is blue.  But most people do want to know why their boss wants things a certain way, or why their employees keep making the same mistake, or why their spouse likes this or that. Asking the right questions about the people in our lives absolutely impacts our relationships with those people. When things are wrong, the right questions get us past the symptoms, and take us directly to the root cause.  When things are right, those questions get us past the fluff, and increase our wisdom.

Anytime that I am given the opportunity to interview someone, I will often pepper them with a barrage of questions.  This does a number of things, but chiefly, it tells me A) what the person's position is on a particular topic, and B) has this person taken the time to think about the things I'm asking.

Jesus once asked His disciples a very important question, in part, to elicit similar information.  He asked them, "Who do the people say the Son of Man is?" His disciples answered that some people thought He was Elijah, or Jeremiah, or some other human prophet. Then He asked them who THEY thought He was.  Peter replied, "You are the Christ, the son of the living God (Matthew 16:13-19)." Peter had paid attention!  He had listened to Jesus, understood His allusions to Old Testament prophecies, made the leap of faith, opened himself up to God, and therefore recognized Jesus for who He really was when God revealed it.  That recognition changed his life.

Who is Jesus? Your answer to that question will determine much about your life.  If you answer that question with He is my Lord, Savior, Son of the Living God, or my King, then you will want to do His will, and you will march against the darkness of the world.  And the gates of hell will not prevail against the advance you make for His kingdom!