When you listen to either the world news or the local news we see so much pain and heartache. We see so much devastation, division, and destruction that overwhelms us and makes us not like the world we live within. We see people struggling with a sense of meaning and purpose finding themselves often discouraged and alone. Well, no new news here, but this is the world in which we live. We live in a Fallen World where not everyone recognizes the Prince of Peace as Jesus and desires to follow Him. Many choose the Prince of Darkness and follows him because he seems to offer selfishness and pleasure as the end goal whereas Christ offers a new life.

The trouble is we often don’t know or realize when we are being deceived. The Prince of Darkness seeks to destroy, divide, discourage, assists us in our doubts and to ultimately deceive. This is evident every time we turn on the news. This world’s Prince of Darkness loves to hurt and devastate where the world’s rightful Lord and King wants to heal and bring peace in unity. With each choice we make in our life we either are supporting the Prince of Peace who is the Light of the World, the Lord Jesus Himself, or the Prince of Darkness which comes to destroy without bias. C.S. Lewis once said, “There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.” Who are you turning to in your choices today? Whose agenda do you support in your choices? Ultimately to have world peace, peace must begin within our own heart, and this begins when we choose to follow the Prince of Peace, King Jesus!

Recently, as I was going through some of my books, I ran across a book entitled C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children. Lewis had a belief that if anyone wrote to him regarding one of his books that he was obliged to reply. Lewis was most well-known for his Chronicle of Narnia series and many other books on the Christian faith such as Mere Christianity, Miracles, The Problem of Pain, etc. It was his custom throughout his entire life to write back those who took the time to write him. One of the last letters he wrote was to a young girl named Ruth. It was October 26, 1963, the last month of his life (as he died November 22, 1963 the same day as JFK’s assassination), and he gave her some of the best advice an older believer can give to a young believer. This was the legacy of Lewis. He said, “If you continue to love Jesus, nothing much can go wrong with you, and I hope you may always do so.” Lewis was a man known to academics, skeptics, and to the broader Christian community around the world as one of the biggest Christian minds of the 20^th century, yet in his final days he shared something so simple yet profound to a young girl writing her literary hero. I wished more heroes today lead their followers to Jesus.

May we never forget that it’s not how much we know, but rather who we know. Lewis knew a lot, but his greatest reminder was not how much he knew, but rather that he knew Jesus, and at the end of his life it was in Jesus that he put all his hope and trust in. In a few short days after this letter was written he stepped into the presence of his Lord. I believe out of all of his writings it was this short letter that was some of his greatest content. 

James 3:16-18

For where envy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every kind of evil. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peace-loving, gentle, compliant, full of mercy and good fruits, without favoritism and hypocrisy. And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who cultivate peace.

I just saw a quote on social media today that said, “We are drowning in information while starving for wisdom.” I believe this is such a true statement. Humanity has never had such access to information like we do in the present, yet it might be safe to say that humanity has never struggled more with knowing how to think, not just what to think, and allowing wisdom to produce discernment. I heard in a talk one time by an Oxford professor that “non-sense is still non-sense even when given by an intelligent person.”

We as a culture are starving for wisdom, but wisdom will not be found through the mass of information that we have at our finger tips or through what our emotions tell us. Wisdom is only found from above given by God producing good fruit in our character. What we need more of today is leaders leading from good character not just mere talents,  and followers following the wisdom and character exemplified in their leaders. As the verse below says, wisdom is first pure, but we live in a culture where purity is being lost and scoffed at. We see more and more selfish ambition and envy rearing their nasty heads and producing chaos and disorder. The more we push God out of our society and even in our churches the less we will see wisdom and the fruit which it produces.

Psalms 119:105

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

In a world and society that seems so misguided and confused, this verse has a lot to say. Who would have ever thought that we would see a time when so much confusion ruled the day such as gender identity, to the debate about when life begins, to the question of marriage, etc.? I know these are hotly contested subjects, but they don’t have to be if we looked to the Author of Life for His answer to these questions. The problem lies in that mankind believes that we are the final authority omitting the real Authority on the matter, but this is not new because humans have been trying to play ‘god’ since the beginning.

What does this verse mean to us today? First of all, God’s Word invites us down a path where truth illuminates the way just like headlights on a vehicle. God’s Word gives us a sense of real direction when the cultural climate seems so tossed about like a ship on a tumultuous sea. It also gives us a declaration in which to follow. God’s Word does not question truth, but rather reveals and declares it. To add further, God’s Word makes certain demands on our life that many refuse to recognize, but logically makes sense. If there is a God who created the world, then He and only He, understands the inner workings of it which we as humans often question. Humans can never see life until we surrender to the Authority of the Author of life. (See how the word ‘Author’ is inside the word ‘Authority’) God does not do this out of ego, but rather out of compassion. In the same way we are only guessing at the meaning of an artist’s work without the artist, and in the same way we are only guessing and making false claims to life without the Author or Artist of life. Without God we can’t understand the true meaning of life and His creation so we often find ourselves living in wrong opinions rather than in God’s truth that gives freedom.

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.

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.

It has been my experience that there are two basic reasons in which people make changes in their lives: 1. Truth & 2. Tragedy. Let’s begin with the first. Truth is our greatest protection in life, mainly from ourselves. We are so easily tempted into different delusions in which we buy into because most in today’s society has bought into an understanding, which is false, that truth is whatever in the end I want it to be. Truth in actuality is how reality works which is independent of my wants and wishes as a person because I cannot, nor can anyone else, control reality except for God. The second thing that promotes change sadly is the one that most of us know…tragedy. This actually is the major cause for a person to produce change in their lives. This could be from heart attack, a bankruptcy, divorce, or a death, and many more examples could be given, that promote people to change. And it is in this condition in which people begin to ask questions regarding their lives involving the idea of what is true about life.

It is much better to come to the first, first, rather than having to go through the second to get to the first. But what makes so many of us have to experience tragedy first is the hardness of our hearts. Tragedy reminds us that life is beyond our control, and that reality has a voice too which when it speaks is not always what we want to hear. This is why Jesus, who is the voice of truth, calls us to Himself to avoid the wake-up call of tragedy, but also be the comforting voice of truth when tragedy strikes.

Revelation 3:20 – …Anyone who hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and eat with him, and he with me.

Christ wants to have fellowship with us to speak truth into our lives, even amidst tragedy, because He loves us.

Genesis 1:1

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

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.

Joshua 24:15
… But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

Every day we are faced with choices to make. Some of us like making decisions and some of us run from making decisions in our lives. We are faced with choices in how we are going to spend our time, money, educational goals, etc. that one day will make up the sum of our life. One day all of us will look back and see what kind of life we lived based on the culmination of choices we made throughout our lives. This is important to remember because it is in this thought that often forces us to reconsider what choices we are making. The choices we make today create the legacy we leave behind tomorrow.

            In Scripture, Joshua made a declaration that as for he and his household they were going to choose to serve the Lord. In the context of this verse he was giving the people an ultimatum of going back to their old ways and serving foreign deities or making a conscious decision to serve the only living God that brought them out of Egypt. So here is the question for us today? What god are you serving in your life? Is it the god of self or is it the only living God? I’ve noticed in my own life that when I choose to serve the living Lord that I am proud of the decisions that I make in doing so. Our choices are derivative of whom we serve in our hearts. May I encourage all of us to serve Jesus.

This week our country has a birthday. We are celebrating its 245th 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.