Daily Repentance

 

AN OLD WOMAN having lost the use of her eyes, called in a Physician to heal them, and made this bargain with him in the presence of witnesses: that if he should cure her blindness, he should receive from her a sum of money; but if her infirmity remained, she should give him nothing. This agreement being made, the Physician, time after time, applied his salve to her eyes, and on every visit took something away, stealing all her property little by little. And when he had gotten all she had, he healed her and demanded the promised payment. The Old Woman, when she recovered her sight and saw none of her goods in her house, would give him nothing. The Physician insisted on his claim, and. as she still refused, summoned her before the Judge. The Old Woman, standing up in the Court, argued: "This man here speaks the truth in what he says; for I did promise to give him a sum of money if I should recover my sight: but if I continued blind, I was to give him nothing. Now he declares that I am healed. I on the contrary affirm that I am still blind; for when I lost the use of my eyes, I saw in my house various chattels and valuable goods: but now, though he swears I am cured of my blindness, I am not able to see a single thing in it." (An Aesop Fable) Be sure your sin will seek you out – repentance is due.

[Luke 24:44-47] When Jesus commissioned His disciples to preach the gospel to all the world, He explained the Old Testament theme of His coming death, burial, and resurrection (v.44-46). He then continued with this intended purpose - “…and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all the nations…” (v.47). While addressing the Men of Athens, the apostle Paul said, “Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent…” (Acts 17:30). Repentance is a God-given command which is necessary for salvation (Acts 2:38). It is not a one-time act, as some suppose and display, but rather an ongoing change of mind and heart that results in being shaped and transformed by the will of God (Romans 12:1-2). If Christians expect to receive remission of sins on a regular basis, the Bible teaches they must daily live for God – a relationship that involves a constant state of repentance and confession of sins (Luke 9:23-26; 1 John 1:7,9). 

What happens when people stop repenting? * People stop having a sense of sorrow for their sins. * People start feeling a false sense of eternal safety. * People justify sinful acts. * People crucify Jesus all over again. * People let their faith grow weak, their dedication diminish, and their relationships fail. * People harden their heart and become nearly untouchable when it comes to spiritual and eternal truths. Nobody is immune to the reality of this problem. When Jonah preached in Nineveh, the whole country repented. But God allowed them to be destroyed a few years later – why? They stopped repenting! Strong Christian marriages fall apart after years of success – why? Because spouses stop being sorry for poor behavior and they stop forgiving each other. Aging, mature Christians leave the church – Why? Because they cease to call upon their indebtedness to Christ. 

And YOU – well, YOU struggle in the same areas of faith – why? Because there are some things, even in this moment, for which you need to repent, but you have allowed Satan to talk you out of it. “For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted…” (2 Corinthians 7:10). Allow God’s love through Christ to continually shape your mind and heart and empower your life unto salvation - and you will be saved! Only bad things will happen when people stop repenting. The opportunity to repent is a great blessing from God. It is cleansing; it is transforming; it is eternal life! Don’t step into eternity blind!

A View From The Top

 

Several folks were enjoying a meal together in a restaurant with conversation among themselves about nothing in particular and everything in general. One of them was preparing to leave and mentioned they hoped to see everyone again. Someone at the table responded by saying they hoped the next time they saw each other it would be right here sharing a meal. We meet people in a wide range of places under a variety of circumstances. We meet them during times such as illness, loss of loved ones, dealing with some emotional stress, at parties, at school, at work, and during worship. I know you can think of other times and places, but you get the picture. Some of those times of being together are wonderful and we certainly would want to see one another again in a similar situation. There are however those times when I wouldn’t want to see that person again, in the place I left them. If I last saw someone with health issues, I would hope to see them next time well and happy. I would not like to repeat a visit to a funeral home to see you again because you had lost another loved one. If I had parted ways with someone on bad terms, I would hope the next meeting we had would be to mend our differences. If I had spent some time with someone who was not a Christian, I would like to think that the next time we met they would have obeyed the gospel. Better yet, I would hope that I had taken time to teach them and encourage them in the way of the Lord. A lot of the folks we meet are brief encounters and we will probably never see them again upon this earth.

A story is told of a little boy who sat in his grandmother’s lap and looked up at her as she worked on her needlepoint. After a while, the boy noticed that the more she worked the uglier the underside of her needlepoint became. It wasn’t until she was finished with it that the boy got a look at the top of her work and saw that she had created a beautiful garden scene. There are times in life when we just can’t understand what’s going on and why life seems to be so tough. We get bombarded with sickness, suffer the loss of loved ones, endure relationship problems, get entangled in family feuds, encounter financial woes, school troubles, and the list goes on and on. It can make it seem as though life is a constant up-hill climb. I wonder if we aren’t often like the little boy and can only see the messes in our lives because we can only see things looking up from the bottom.

[1 Timothy 6:12] I’m reminded of what God told Job when he was looking at the ugliness of his own life. “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements? Surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? To what were its foundations fastened? Or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God (angels) shouted for joy?... (Job 38:4-11). I know it’s hard to realize now, but God is preparing something beautiful for us, and we have to be patient until we can see life and our life with a view from the top. Life is so uncertain as most of us have experienced so it is always important to make the best of the moment we have. What would we do before departing a happy gathering if we knew we would never see one another again? Paul, the apostle, and some elders of the church faced this dilemma. “And when he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all. Then they all wept freely, and fell on Paul’s neck and kissed him, sorrowing most of all for the words which he spoke that they would see his face no more. And they accompanied him to the ship” (Acts 20: 36-37). All of God’s faithful can say, “I hope to see you again, but if not here, then in a far better place.” What makes a good life? Fight the good fight of faith and lay hold to eternal life.

Change Is Possible

 

As he was standing in line at the grocery store checkout counter, a friend of John’s noticed he was purchasing a dozen roses and a card. “You in trouble with your wife?” the friend asked. “Nope!” John replied. “Preventive maintenance.”

Poet John Holmes (1904-1962) said something about people and dogs that caused my mental wheels to whirl when I read it. See what you think – “A dog is not ‘almost human,’ and I know of no greater insult to the canine race than to describe it as such.” Sounds like Holmes might have been a little sour on the human race. But before you totally dismiss his statement, read the following story (author unknown), and think about it. 

A man e-mailed a hotel to see if his dog would be allowed to stay there with him. He received the following answer: “Dear sir, I have been in the hotel business for over 30 years. Not once during that time have I ever had to call in the police to evict a disorderly dog in the wee hours of the morning. No dog has ever attempted to pass off a bad check on me. Never has a dog set the bedding on fire because it was smoking in bed. And I have yet to find a hotel towel in a dog’s suitcase. Your dog is most welcome at our hotel. P.S. – If the dog will vouch for you, you can come too.” 

Okay, I know the story is a little goofy, and it may be a little overreaching to make a point, but there is a point to the story. It is humans who sin and make a moral and spiritual mess in the world that God created for us to live in together. Daily headlines remind us that we live in a badly fractured and fallen world. Instead of peace there is war; instead of love there is hatred; instead of harmony, hostility; instead of acceptance, rejection; and instead of kindness there is often killing in one form or another. The borders and barriers that divide and hold human beings apart in homes and communities and nations are not just physical. Sin also separates people from God (Isaiah 59:2). And race, religion, class, caste, greed, breed, place, face, prejudice, and pride divide and sometimes cause people to do awful things to one another. Is there any reason to hope for real change in such a fragmented world? Can hostile people come together and live in peace and harmony in spite of the physical, philosophical, verbal and/or emotional barriers and borders that have so badly caused division for so long? Some people don’t think so. You hear this conviction in the old expression, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” On hearing this as an excuse not to change for the better, one lady responded to a speaker, “So isn’t it good we aren’t old dogs?!”

[Ephesians 2:14-18] The Gospel holds out prospect not only for the possibility people can change but also for the power that brings it about. In speaking about the intense hatred and hostility that existed between Jews and Gentiles, the apostle Paul wrote these stunning words found in our reading: “For He Himself (Jesus Christ) is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross (the church), thereby putting to death the enmity. And He came and preached peace to you who were a far off and to those who were near. For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father.” God’s way of bringing warring people together is not to teach them new tricks. His way is to bring them to an old rugged cross. If you come closer to Christ and His will, and I do the same thing, will we not be coming closer to one another? The question is are we willing to come closer to Christ? “…let the peace of God rule in your hearts…” (Colossians 3:12-17).

How Do You Measure Up?

 

In Washington D.C., the Bureau of Standards houses the perfect standard for all measurements for the United States. Every weight and every length used in the United States is supported by a carefully guarded strict standard. Stored in the bureau one can find the perfect inch, the perfect foot, the perfect yard, the perfect gallon, the perfect pint, and the perfect pound. In addition, one would find copies of all the metric measures (e.g. millimeter, milligram, milliliter, etc.). Every weight, length, and volume is judged by those standards which are never allowed to change for any reason.

In Biblical times the standard measure of distance, or length, was the cubit. One cubit, using a typical adult male, was the measured distance from one’s elbow to the tip of the middle finger, about eighteen inches. The problem with that way of measuring is that one man’s cubit will differ from another’s. To solve that dilemma, one man’s arm became the standard for each construction project. When measuring really mattered, reeds would be cut to the length of his cubit for everyone to use while measuring because it was impossible for the “standard man” to be in multiple places at once.

Have you ever considered what your life would be like if it were being measured-up at the end of each day? Imagine what it would be like if your “batting average” in life was figured out at the end of every day and the next morning it appeared in bold newspaper headlines for everyone to see. Professional baseball players suffer that every day. How did Alex DeGoti do yesterday? What’s his average now? How would you like that? “Yesterday the batting average of T.W. Bonham dropped another five points as he went hitless four times at bat. He struck out on his visit to the hospital, flied out twice in his attempt to find volunteers for that important job that needs doing before the seminar next week, and his Sunday school lesson was a popup to the infield.” Try it yourself. “Yesterday, Jon Doe’s slump continued as he went 0 for 4. He lost a contract before noon, chewed out his secretary immediately afterwards, grounded out with his teenage son’s request for help, and was thrown out of the game for arguing with his wife.” The fact is that no one keeps up-to-date batting averages on us, and in the best of ways, I suppose that’s a good thing. But it also means that we can utterly stop growing without even knowing it. Nobody is measuring us. Nobody is timing us. Nobody is keeping the averages current. One day life slows down, we look around and suddenly realize that we’ve become stagnant. One person put it this way, “Growth is the only evidence of life; whoever isn’t busy growing is busy dying.” (Mirror, Mirror on the wall - never lies.)

[Philippians 3:7-16] Paul wrote: “…I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me …Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” We are to “grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18). God’s Word must become for our lives what the Bureau of Standards is for weights, lengths, and volumes. It shows us how God would have us to live the ideal life. The real difficulty is that we often try to establish our own standards derived from our desires, our feelings, and our failings. “All scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16). Each of us should be able to say with the old cowboy, “I ain’t what I ought to be; I ain’t what I want to be; and I ain’t what I’m gonna be; but thank God for this one thing – I ain’t what I used to be!

Why? Enemies of God

 

Political correctness is a set of beliefs that is in total opposition to God and righteousness. It is the system of the most ungodly and immoral people on earth. It is preached by our news media and entertainment industry, supported by our most radical politicians and is being taught to our children in the public school system as truth. The politically correct say we must support abortion on demand, accept homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle, decriminalize drug use, restrict religious freedoms, teach the theory of evolution in public schools as fact, punish the hard-working citizen while rewarding the indolent, open our borders to illegal immigrants, take weapons of defense from honest citizens, downsize our military to a point of ineffectiveness, allow for exorbitant lawsuits in our legal system, give preferences to minorities, oppose capitalism while supporting socialism, revise the taxing system so as to redistribute whatever assets are available thus eliminating the right to own property, give government controlled agencies more power and individuals less freedom, entrench the political party that is politically correct and attack all opponents of political correctness as often as possible. Their biggest claim to fame is they will save the planet from the people who live on it.

[Psalm 37] 7 “Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him; Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way, Because of the man who brings wicked schemes to pass…” Have you ever looked at life around you and become perplexed and frustrated? Doesn’t it seem that things go well for non-Christians? Doesn’t it seem like the very people that have turned their backs on God, displaying little or no interest in Him, are also the ones who “have it all together”? They seem to be really getting a lot out of life and enjoying a prosperous existence. Many, many righteous persons have felt these feelings. Job cried out in anguish of his soul, “Why do the wicked live and become old, Yes, become mighty in power?” (Job 21:7). The Psalmist observed, “Behold, these are the ungodly, Who are always at ease; They increase in riches” (Psalm 73:12). Jeremiah moaned, “Righteous are you, O Lord, when I plead with you; Yet let me talk with You about Your judgments. Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why are those happy who deal so treacherously?” (Jeremiah 12:1). It’s not so much out of envy that we look with astonishment at the apparent well-being of unbelievers around us. After all, the essence of a person’s life does not reside in his possessions (Luke 12:15). But absence of envy does not squelch the burning desire to know – WHY? What’s going on? Why do they seem to be doing so well? God answers these fretting’s. He wants us to be relieved of our perplexed and frustrated feelings. The whole of Psalm 37 is like a salve to an injured faith. 1 “Do not fret because of evildoers, nor be envious of the workers of iniquity. 2 For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, And whither like the green herb.” The battle may seem to be going their way, but the war is not over! There is a time frame to take into account that transcends the immediate and monetary! “But the wicked are like the troubled sea, When it cannot rest, Whose waters cast up mire and dirt. ‘There is no peace,’ Says my God, ‘for the wicked’” (Isaiah 57:20-21). All of this hustle and going on around us is nothing more than futile restlessness! They’re frantically kicking mud up on the shore. They cannot experience the peace which the Christian enjoys, “…and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7). God is still on the thrown and the righteous will hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant…” (Matthew 25:14-46).