Ecclesiastes 12:10

  If you asked many to describe a typical Christian you might hear words like, grumpy, angry, condensing, pompous, judgmental, and complaining. This may be because of the negative view the world has put on Christians.    But there might be a bit of truth in it as well.   After working in ministry for twenty-five plus years, I can tell you some church attenders seem to love to be miserable and make others miserable as well. This is a shame since the word that we see used over and over to describe the faithful in the Scriptures is Joy.  Consider Romans 15:13, “ Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit .” Or John 15:11 “ These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full . Galatians 5:22 tells us joy is a fruit of the Spirit. Romasn14:17 says it is a characteristic of the kingdom of God. Still not convinced, read the bo...

    Satisfied with a job well done.  It is a nice feeling to be happy with what you have done. For many that is the sign that you have done what you are supposed to have done. You are happy with it.  Yet consider Proverbs 14:14: “ The backslider in heart will have his fill of his own ways, But a good man will be satisfied with his. ”   Now here it tells us that the good man is satisfied with his ways, but so does the wicked man. The term here is ‘one that has a disloyal heart’, one that has gone back into sin, one that moves the goalpost on his morals. That guy is just as satisfied. He feels as if he has done exactly what he has supposed to.   What is it trying to tell us? That being satisfied with yourself is not the best metric for if you have done the right thing. I know folks who have messed things up royally, that will swear they have done nothing wrong. Unless we think sensible and cautiously, we may just be fooling ourselves (Proverbs14:15-...

  Do we love too many things? Love is something they say you can’t have enough of. In some ways that is right, but we also understand that sometimes love needs to be singular.  If your spouse loves another person chances, are you not going to be too happy.    That is why we need to consider 1 John 2:15 which tells us, “Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” Here we are told that our love for the world is a contradiction to loving God. The analogy of an unfaithful spouse is used time and time again to show the relationship to God and his wandering people. When we love the world, it keep us from loving God.   So how do we know if we are flirting with the world?  It works the same as any relationship. When we spend more time with them, we seek to please another rather than the one we should love, when we focus our love elsewhere. When we take for granted the one that has done so much...

  In Luke 13 Jesus encounters a crooked person. Here a woman who “ for eighteen years had …was bent double, and could not straighten up at all”. But this was not who I was referring to.   The crooked person here comes after Jesus heals her. In verse 14 we read: “ But the synagogue official, indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, began saying to the crowd in response, "There are six days in which work should be done; so come during them and get healed, and not on the Sabbath day. " This official has such a skewed perceptive that he looks at a miracle as something wrong because it doesn’t fit into his narrow viewpoint of what was right.   I wish I could say there are not still people like this today. Folks that allow their viewpoint to cloud good that is being done. Maybe it’s their political leanings, their fanatic devotion to traditions, or their own self-importance, they condemn good work by finding some feeble reason to bring fault. Rather than celeb...