Battles

  Shout Isaiah 58:1 The Lord says, “Shout out loud. Don’t hold back. Shout out loud like a trumpet. Tell my people what they have done against their God; tell the family of Jacob about their sins. Over the last forty years as a minister I have spent a lot of time in scripture. Most of it has been preparing sermons and Bible studies but there is also my personal devotional time which is central to the development of my faith in God. I want to say that having spent all that time getting to know the God who inspired those who wrote all of that material in the Bible I like God and I really appreciate how God thinks. This might sound weird but let me explain. When I first came to scripture, I saw God’s word as commands to be obeyed because if we disobeyed we went to hell. When I really started studying the Bible, it came as a fairly large surprise that I did not actually understand what the Bible was all about or what God was trying to do with all the stuff God was telling us. ...

People Isaiah 57:21 “There is no peace for evil people,” says my God. There are some things in my walk of faith that have troubled me over the years. One of the most crushing problems I had was dealing with God’s anger. As a young man I feared God and worried about His anger a lot. When you read through scripture you find that though God is slow to anger when He does get angry it is a terrible thing. This was a frightening thing to me and it colored much of my faith as a youth. It is interesting that certain times of life help explain who God is and what He is doing. That is what happened to me when I had children. Very quickly I understood God’s anger with such clarity that it moved my faith in a very radical way. God calls us His children and there is a reason for that. It explains how God acts and what God does and when I had children I began to understand some things about God that I had no grounding to do so until then. Parents often get angry with their children when th...

Humble People Isaiah 57:15 And this is the reason: God lives forever and is holy. He is high and lifted up. He says, “I live in a high and holy place, but I also live with people who are sad and humble. I give new life to those who are humble and to those whose hearts are broken. In two thousand and twenty-four the state of Louisiana passed a law requiring all schools to post the Ten Commandments in each school class room. For some reason this caused a fire storm of criticism and condemnation. It confuses me why anyone would object to a poster of something that is objectively true. If schools are there to teach children, the fundamental truths about the world like math, reading and science it makes since that teaching the basic moral underpinnings of the universe should be there too. No one is forcing anyone to accept the truth that is found in those words but just like rejecting the truth that math gives us all that can happen are negative results. Learning to be moral people...

  A Quiet God Isaiah 57:11 “Whom were you so afraid of that you lied to me? You have not remembered me or even thought about me. I have been quiet for a long time. Is that why you are not afraid of me? Our faith is in the God who redeems us but what does that really mean and how do we get to that place of faith. We need to think about this on a regular basis because understanding our faith will shape how we live as people of faith. First we need to make the point that our faith is not in what God does but the very nature of who God is. In short we trust in the God who does the things not in what God does. Grasping this idea is central to what we are all about because it will directly impact how we see God and then how to react to what God says. The starting place of our faith is that God saves us from the death and destruction of our own sin but we do not trust in the redemption we trust in the God who delivers us from the death that sin brings. Our next step into real an...

  Resisting God Isaiah 57:4 Of whom are you making fun? Whom are you insulting? At whom do you stick out your tongue? You turn against God, and you are liars. For me one of the things that makes scripture work is the idea that God does not use perfect people but He uses people who are willing to listen and live as God calls us to. Abraham comes off as a regular human with real issues and struggles. When we look at David we find a flawed man who seeks to live by faith as best he can. Then there are the son’s of Zebedee or better known as the son’s of thunder. In one instance they wanted Jesus to call down fire from heaven and another one they had a little talk with some people who were not part of their group. And yet John would be the one who was loved by Jesus the most and James would have clear influence over the early church. Let us not forget people like Naomi who loses her husband and sons and is so completely lost she tells people to call her Mara which means bitter...

  Rest in God Isaiah 57:1-2 1 Those who are right with God may die, but no one pays attention. Good people are taken away but no one understands. Those who do right are being taken away from evil 2 and are given peace. Those who live as God wants find rest in death. Has anyone else thought about how thick the Bible is? Think about all the words that God has written down and how much material we have to direct us into the kind of relationship God wants to have with us. We have a God who wants to talk to us and wants us to know how the world works. God hides nothing and speaks about the human condition with clarity and certainty. The more time I spend in God’s word the more my faith grows just because of the sheer volume of stuff God talks about. From the very beginning God discloses how broken we are but instead of letting us be destroyed by our sin God then spends millennia explaining how He can fix us if we will let Him. One of the things that used to be a problem for me...