Recently, I was out of town on a speaking engagement and flipped on the TV searching through the channels in the hotel room. A show was on where two people were discussing some problem, and one replied to the other, “You know I’m your best friend, and I’ll tell you anything you want me to tell you.” I immediately thought how silly that was to think that was a friendship. Yet, sadly, that is where our society is in our relationships, politics, and even in our churches. We are no longer interested in the things that are true, but rather what we want to hear. The best of friends is not always saying what we want to hear, but what we need to hear. 

Paul warns Timothy of the same issue. He states there will come, and in our age has come, a time when people will not be interested in truth or sound doctrine but will only be interested in what they want to be true rather than in truth itself. This web of deception has crept into the walls of churches and infiltrated the ranks. It has distorted a true view of who God is for so many because there is so much preaching that is according to “our own desires” verses the truth of sound doctrine. C.S. Lewis put it this way, “If you don’t listen to theology, that won’t mean you have no ideas about God, it will mean you have a lot of wrong ones.” There are a lot of wrong ideas about God, even among believers, because so many have deviated from the truth of Scripture.

II Timothy 4:3-4…For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.

Have you had to recently walk through a dark time in your life? Maybe it came in the form of a broken relationship, a unwanted diagnosis, a loss of a job or even the death of a loved one. These periods of our lives can be daunting, overwhelming, and so very painful. We wonder where do we turn or who do we turn to for help and companionship through these times.

Many times we need the companionship of a close friend or even a professional counselor, but no matter what we are going through or how dark the valley, there is always God. We may not understand our circumstances, but we can lean on One greater than our circumstances. He has stated many times in Scripture that ‘He will never leave us or abandon us’ (Joshua 1:5; Hebrews 13:5) God is a God of comfort and companionship during our darkest trials. David experienced this when he faced Goliath. He later wrote Psalm 23 that speaks of God being there ‘even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.’ I imagine when he was penning these words he was reflecting how God had accompanied him into the Valley of Elah to slay a giant enemy. Whatever you are facing and no matter how dark the valley, God is there, even when we don’t feel Him, to be our constant companion to lean on during our times of trouble.

Psalm 23:4 NIV – Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

Have you ever had a question about life and someone responded, “just have faith”? In the angst of having a question it can be quite discouraging when someone gives you such a pat answer. So what does it mean to have faith?  

There are two types of faith that we can discuss: Blind Faith & Evidential Faith. Blind faith is how many describe their faith. Sadly, many believers, give this definition which is having no reason to believe something, but believing it anyway. It’s almost like a badge of honor to some. This understanding of faith is absurd, furthermore dangerous, and why people do crazy things in the name of religion!

The Biblical understanding of faith is one of evidence. It is not faith or reason, but rather faith and reason. Reason reveals the bread crumbs to follow and faith sees the inference. We have all watched the CSI shows where one rationally finds the evidence, and then can infer the most probable outcome. It is the same way with faith according to Scripture. As Ravi Zacharias once put it, “God has placed enough evidence before us to make Christianity a rational endeavor, but left enough out to make it a relational experience.” There are in fact reasons for faith such as the reliability of the Bible, existence of God, the person of Christ, and ultimately His resurrection.

Hebrews 11:1 NLT – Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see.

Today, as I write this, I celebrate my grandfather’s birthday. He was born August 20^th, 1928. He would have been 91 years old today. He passed away in 1995, but forever left a mark on my life. So many memories and stories to tell that will forever be a part of my life. He didn’t leave me with great riches of material things, but he left me rich. Rich in the things that matter. I’m forever grateful for his legacy that he left behind.

He was an old school cowboy. A giant in size and personality. Full of fun and laughter, and massive in strength. He was a gentle giant, not that the giant couldn’t be riled, but in nature he was gentle and kind. I remember him singing in church as a stood next to him. I remember him knocking a cow down with just a stick telling us boys to get off the fence because we looked like a bunch of black birds on a highline after she put us up that fence. I remember three weeks before his unexpected passing his desire to go to heaven. I remember the loss I felt when he arrived.

So many people today want the cotton candy lifestyle, but my grandfather was a steak and potatoes kind of life. He was real and those type of people are becoming harder and harder to find. He wasn’t perfect, and he would be the first to admit this, but he knew God. He knew the love of Jesus in a real way. He wasn’t pushy in his faith, but he also didn’t budge in his beliefs. He is the kind of person we need more of in a society of sugar and cream.

When I was young a piece of advice my grandfather gave me was this: Fear God and anything that can eat you! It is why the words “Shark” & “Grizzly” catch and keep my attention today. As a young boy that sounded like pretty sound advice to me, and now as a man it still sounds pretty commonsense. The truth of it is we humans spend a lot of our times trying to figure things out, trying to outwit the next person, make the big bucks, drive the fancy cars or have the dream house, but all in all those things are temporal at best. What is the thing we fear the most in life? For many it is reputation or failure, but we must ask what are we trying to compare ourselves to in the end. We must learn to consider what really matters in life. I have been to both the funerals of those that have money and those that didn’t, and their funeral was the same minus a few flowers I guess.

We must begin to ask ourselves what really matters regarding life. In the book of Ecclesiastes, the wisest man in history, other than Jesus, King Solomon writes the verse below. Basically when all is said and done we are to fear God and keep His commands. Why is this the case? Because God is all that matters in the end. When death comes, and death surely will for all of us, how have we feared God. Now this fear is not the type of ‘scary afraid’ but rather a ‘stand in awe’ type of fear. The greatest way we can fear God today is to place our faith in His Son, Jesus Christ, who is God and became man so that we could become children of God. The only way to escape the judgment of our bad deeds is to find forgiveness in the life and the work of Jesus who stood in the judgment on our behalf.

Ecclesiastes 12:13-14

When all has been heard, the conclusion of the matter is: fear God and keep His commands, because this is for all humanity. For God will bring every act to judgment, including every hidden thing, whether good or evil.

As a pastor I hear many complaints on a weekly level about how our country and society is turning away from God. This of course is not new news, but one has to begin to ask why is there such a turn in our culture away from God? First, we can say that humans are rebellious to God and a turning away from God is to be expected. This is true without question, but secondly, we as Christians need to be open to what part we play in this downward spiral.

Many Christians may want to reject that we as believers have any part to play, but they would be downright wrong. Jesus called His followers to be the light of the world (Matthew 5:14). When the light goes dim the rest of the room gets darker. I believe this has a lot to say about why our country is getting darker in its moral compass. Followers of Christ are simply not being the light. The lack of commitment in churches is astounding, particularly when you ask what those believers say that believe. If a believer truly believes that Christ died for them to make them right before God, how in the world can so much other stuff come before God, worship, and learning His truth that should shape our lives? How many “Christians” go to church either because they feel guilty because they haven’t been in a while, or there was nothing more entertaining on their calendar that Sunday? There is nothing wrong with missing church every so often to go on vacation, etc., but when rodeos, baseball, the mall, and the like become regular replacements for worship then you believer have become the major part of society’s problem. When parents make God only an option, when there’s nothing better going on, then don’t come whining to your local pastor when your kids grow up making poor choices that reflect that God’s only an option to them. Remember you taught them to make such choices. If you do this for only a few generations you can begin to see how the moral sands begin to shift.

1 Peter 4:17

For it is time for judgment to begin with God’s household;

Hebrews 10:23-25

Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

Do you struggle with prayer? Many of us do, and if you do you are not alone. Recently at our church, I’ve begun a series on the Model Prayer, often called the Lord’s prayer, in which we are attempting to answer common questions around prayer. One of those questions that we’ve asked is “Do you pray?” There are many other questions to ask regarding prayer, but this first one is obvious. Why? Because so many of us fail to pray in our lives.

We all need prayer and all need to pray. Jesus taught that our prayers are not about length or performance, but about honesty, humility, and our deep needs such as forgiveness, provision and protection. As believers prayer should be the safest of all places in our lives because we can share our hearts openly with God and be the most vulnerable. There is nothing we need to hide from God because 1) He already knows our needs before we ask Him, and 2) He loves us unconditionally. Unconditional love can only come from God because He is the only One who knows all our conditions. He invites us to share our hearts with Him because He loves to hear from His children. No, we aren’t informing God of anything when we pray, but rather we should be enjoying Him which is where true happiness is. This is why He wants us to have fellowship with Him in our prayers. My encouragement today is quit worrying about how well you pray, or if you sound as good as the next person praying, and just pray openly, honestly, and with humility. Open your heart to the Lord, and He will meet you wherever you are.

This past weekend my wife and I went with some friends to Lake Texoma to go striper fishing. It was a great time being on the water, and a lot of fun. The first question that everyone asked when we got back was how many we caught. (My wife did better than me, but that is a whole other story, and we won’t go there.) The truth is we didn’t do that great over all. Nobody limited out, and for those who had gone before it was under expectation. But I’ve learned something and thought a lot about it since we’ve gotten home. If we had known what the results would have been before, the trip might have been canceled, but then so many other things we got to experience would have been canceled such as the great meal, the jokes, the laughter, the conversations on the boat, the beauty of the sunrise on the lake, the fish we did catch and seeing the joy of my wife whoop up on me catching those fish. Sometimes it is easy to measure success by the wrong thing, and therefore leave out all the peripheral benefits that were enjoyed.

Sometimes our Christian walk is measured the same way. We count our successes or blessings based in goals reached rather than the experience and life lessons learned. Our goal as believers are to be like Christ, yet that is a goal that will never be obtained. Many, therefore, beat themselves up in the failure, get frustrated, and their joy is robbed. We should rather measure our blessings not by the pluses or minuses of being like Jesus, but rather the experience of becoming like Jesus. Sure we are going to fail, and God already knows this, but the joy of the experience should be much more of our focus rather than only seeing our failures and faults. We are covered in grace, and we strive as we may to be like Jesus, but we should also enjoy the ride on our way to that goal. 

History is an important subject. Looking into our past gives us a sense of identity, and learning from our past helps us navigate the future. We seem to be failing in this area in our present time. You cannot rewrite history, but there is a belief in our society today that thinks you can. We may not agree with the decisions made in history or like the outcomes or narratives that history tells us, but we cannot change them. The only way to do things differently than our past is accept what has been and allow new present decisions to impact a future consequence. To believe otherwise that we can somehow erase history not only exudes arrogance at its core, but also sets up future generations for past failures if there is no access to the actual history to learn from regarding our past.

Truth is a necessity to live by and to have our lives be based on. Our society believes that truth is subjective not objective, therefore, supporting the belief that one can rewrite anything even history itself. When a society gets to a place that one can’t honestly look at the past then that society is heading for disaster. Again we all can see events we disagree with from our past, but there must be a sense of emotional fortitude within us all to be able to look at our what has been so that we may learn from our past to have a better future. I don’t honestly like what humanity did with the Son of God in our past, but as we look to that horrific Friday we see our own need of forgiveness and can now live in the grace of Christ which secures our future. To erase that event would affect our eternal future!

For the believer joy is a fruit of the spirit. To know that our sins are forgiven, our account is cleared, graced bestowed, and hope granted should create an inner celebration for those who have put their faith in Christ Jesus. Therefore, as followers of Christ, our perspective of life should be different than the rest of the world not rooted in the circumstances of life but in the reality of a loving and forgiving God.

My question for us this week: Is your temperament, mood, or attitude towards life rooted in your circumstances or the reality of God’s love for you?  I’ve heard many times the statement, “Well under the circumstances…” For the Christian one must ask, “Why are you under the circumstances?” Your reality in Christ is greater than any circumstance that comes your way in this life. See beyond today through the spectacles of eternity.

Paul writing to the Philippian church from a Roman dungeon clearly is not under the circumstances of his situation where his hope would be minimal and future dreary. No he is rejoicing at the fact  that He knows Christ, he has been recognized by the world as a spokesman for Christ, and is willing to be punished and even die as a prisoner for Christ. Paul would tell us that no matter the circumstances you are in, even if death is inevitable on the immediate horizon of your future, as a believer you have reason to rejoice in Jesus. May we as His followers rejoice in God’s love no matter our circumstances.

Philippians 4:4

Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!