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!

This week our country has a birthday. We are celebrating its 243^rd birthday if I’ve done my math correct. The 4^th of July has come to represent one main word, Freedom. The sad observance today is that we are losing a sense of what freedom actually means. Freedom doesn’t mean one can do anything one wants. If that were the case there would be no need for any laws to govern the people, and without laws to govern the people there would be wars and chaos within the people at catastrophic levels. Isn’t it interesting to think that in a free country where we consider ourselves free, we still need direction and accountability? It is because the human heart in and of itself is desperately wicked.

In the Christian thought there are two basic understandings of freedom. Freedom From & Freedom For. Freedom From regards the condition we have been set free from in the past with its governing statutes. In the sense of our country, the Revolution brought freedom from the tyranny of the  “old country.”  Freedom For brings us into the present freedom to express ourselves in ways the “old country” restricted. In the same we as believers since the cross have been set Free From the tyranny of sin. We are now set Free For the beauty to walk with Christ that otherwise could not have happened until we were set Free From the holds of sin.  Freedom always comes with a past and moves us into a future that is determined by the choices we make today.

Recently, my family and I traveled to our sister church of Bull Creek in Kaycee, Wyoming, Kaycee Community Cowboy Church. We have established great friendships there over the last few years in which we have come to love the people, the country side, and the weather (especially in the summertime). As we were doing our different things and having our conversations, it is hard to miss that people are people wherever one travels. There is a unique beauty of familiarity in this. We may express ourselves in different ways, traditions and personalities, often called culture, but the heartbeat of our needs are still the same.

In a world that often points out peoples differences and judging them for it, I think we must stop and consider how much alike we are. We all need the basics: food, clothing, shelter, etc., but more importantly the common bond of all people is a need for God, an object (or rather Person) of direction, meaning, and purpose. In Jesus, the reality of God becoming a human, God has given us the basic need of all, relationship with Him. Many are searching for the right relationship in this person or that person, or purpose in this career or that one, but ultimately we weren’t made for other humans or jobs, but rather for God Himself. No one can validate or invalidate you except the truth of who God says we are according to Scripture.

Our basic need is that we all need forgiveness and a sense of who we are. Jesus is the great Forgiver and “Do-over” where we can all punch the reset button on life. No longer trying to do it ourselves, but doing life with the One who created life itself. With Him life sure runs a whole lot smoother. Invite Him into your life and start building a relationship, not religion, with Him today.

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.

One of the great debates of our day is whether or not God exists. Many of our day choose to believe that the worldview of Atheism (NO GOD) is the best explanation over and above the worldview of Theism (GOD). So how can one determine which worldview is true? The only answer is in the evidence.

Now many want to point to Darwinism as a support to Atheism, but the reality is not whether one believes in evolution or creationism (another discussion), the bigger question is “Why is there something versus nothing?” Science is in agreement with the Bible in the fact that both state the Universe came into existence. So the question is “Why does it exist now?” From a logical standpoint the only game in town is that there had to be something prior to the existence of the Universe that brought the Universe into existence. This makes sense at every level regarding Cause & Effect. For example, if a book comes into existence there has to be an author.  Therefore, if the Universe came into existence at some point the only logical explanation was that there had to be a Cause behind it. It seems to take greater faith to believe ‘something came from nothing’ than to believe that ‘something came from something prior to it.’ The first statement of the Bible seems to be the most logical, and simply put I don’t have enough faith to be an Atheist.

Genesis 1:1 – In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth

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!