Shipwrecked Faith

Wednesday, October 18, 2023

Cling to your faith in Christ, and keep your conscience clear.  For some people have deliberately violated their consciences; as a result, their faith has been shipwrecked.  1 Timothy 1:19

Everyone is born with faith; life is a series of faith choices, both good and poor.  When we place our faith in a chair, by sitting on it, we exercise our faith that the chair will hold us up.  If it does, it was well-placed faith.  If we place our faith in a man who whispers to us on the street corner….psst, buddy…you want a great deal?  I got these Rolex watches worth twenty grand each; sell ya one for $75.  Chances are rather strong, our faith in that guy will rust as fast as the watch.

It's one thing to be naïve about the worth of a trinket; it’s quite another matter to allow preconceived notions about God shipwreck our faith.  Faith, in spiritual matters. is supposed to guide our choices towards God’s open arms.  Misplaced trust in anything other than God’s will and way leads to a shipwreck of our faith.  Sometimes we cling to a hope that is ill-founded merely because it sounded good, or real when we first heard it from a friend.  We didn’t run it through the God-filter; instead, we just believed it (placed our faith in it), and couldn’t believe how badly it turned-out.  It’s like the story of the man who worried himself over the question of whether life wasn’t fooling him, and he began to think he was dead.  He started believing it and telling everyone he was dead.  No friend or family member could convince him otherwise.  Finally they got him into therapy.  The psychiatrist had no better result; the man thought he was dead.  Frustrated, the shrink decided on a graphic, undeniable test.  He asked the troubled man:  Do dead men bleed?  The man said:  No, dead men don’t bleed.  With that, the shrink pulled out a pin, pricked the man’s arm with it, and it started to bleed.  The shrink pointed to the man’s arm and asked:  So what do you make of that?  The man, now puzzled, finally offered:  Well, I’ll be durned…dead men DO bleed!

What Apostle Paul was telling Timothy is a stern warning for any one of us to beware of letting our faith settle on anything that won’t pass the blood test.  There is so much heat these days on television news, social media, blogs and vlogs galore, which promote hatred, violence, and rebellion, as well as perversity as a normative good choice, if that’s what you want.  That kind of stuff conflates a small amount of truth about political and sociological problems, with isolated Biblical verses to create a wedge of doubt between your conscience and the good sense given to you by God’s kindness.  We can fall victim to good sounding, but false theories of how to view the world.  We can be like Eve who heard the serpent whisper did God REALLY say that?  Satan even used that tactic, quoting Scripture to Jesus (way out of context, of course); the devil was tempting Jesus to abandon the Father’s mission and serve the darkness of Hell.  In all three of the temptations recorded in Matthew[1], Jesus denied Satan’s offer with Scripture, appropriately interpreted, countering Satan’s use of twisted Scripture.

For You Today 

We must use our faith, nurture our faith, and grow in our faith.  But we must be careful to grow straight, rather than crooked.  To grow straight requires bathing our worldview in the Word of God.  There is nothing about popular worldview opinions that can match the strength of God’s Word to avoid shipwrecking our faith.  Paul gave this advice to his young ministry student, Timothy:

Work hard so you can present yourself to God and receive his approval.  Be a good worker, one who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly explains the word of truth.  2 Timothy 2:15

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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There are about 2,600 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road library.

Title Image Pixabay.com  Images without citation are in public domain or cited via weblinks.  

Unless noted, Scripture quoted from NLT^©  

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[1] See Matthew 4:1-11

An Elephant in the Room Kind of Thing

 

Monday, August 14, 2023

For God did not spare even the angels who sinned.  He threw them into hell, in gloomy pits of darkness, where they are being held until the day of judgment.  And God did not spare the ancient world—except for Noah and the seven others in his family.  Noah warned the world of God’s righteous judgment.  So God protected Noah when he destroyed the world of ungodly people with a vast flood.  Later, God condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and turned them into heaps of ashes.  He made them an example of what will happen to ungodly people.  But God also rescued Lot out of Sodom because he was a righteous man who was sick of the shameful immorality of the wicked people around him.  Yes, Lot was a righteous man who was tormented in his soul by the wickedness he saw and heard day after day.  So you see, the Lord knows how to rescue godly people from their trials, even while keeping the wicked under punishment until the day of final judgment.  He is especially hard on those who follow their own twisted sexual desire, and who despise authority.  These people are proud and arrogant, daring even to scoff at supernatural beings without so much as trembling.  2 Peter 2:2-10

There is a very common, albeit empty-headed trend today, as in the days of Noah:

Whistling in the darkness – imagining that since God is only loving, there can never be judgment for sin.  Scripture, however, answers:

And just as each person is destined to die once and after that comes judgment, Hebrews 9:27

Denying the existence of Hell and judgment, in favor of universal redemption, is (at least) the work of fools, uninitiated as to the eternal consequences of sin!  Denying judgment places one squarely in the crosshairs, a target for Satan’s lies.  If the enemy cannot convince someone that there is no God, the next evil tactic will be to blunt the idea that God would punish sin.  Scripture replies:

For all people are mine to judge—both parents and children alike. And this is my rule:  The person who sins is the one who will die.  Ezekiel 18:4

The Scripture speaks to the spiritual argument, but (for those who lean to the skeptical side) there is also logic.  The logic of punishment speaks to the nature of God, including His love for all He has created.  There are abundant numbers of proofs from logic at this point, but for time’s sake, we consider just this one truth:

Equal, but Opposite

In physical dynamics there is for each action an equal, but opposite reaction.    UP requires (by definition) DOWN, HOT means there must be COLD, and RIGHTEOUSNESS demands we are capable of UNRIGHTEOUSNESS.  Evil and Good cannot coexist without the consequences of either.  For there to be a REWARD (Heaven), there must be RECOMPENSE (Hell).  Evil requires punishment in the same way righteousness deserves reward, or God cannot, in fact, be good.  The corollary then would be:  to avoid death, forgiveness must intervene, or, if God does not step-in, death in its eternal finality must ensue.

For You Today 

Billy Graham once said:  If the Bible is false, then nothing matters, and if the Bible is true, the Bible is all that matters.  And this is what Scripture said about the penalty of sin being death, and how God intervenes:

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.  Romans 6:23

Placing one’s faith in God, through Christ’s substitutionary death on the cross, is the only means of forgiveness for our sins.  It’s free for the repenting and asking!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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There are about 2,600 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library. 

Title Image:  1) Pixabay.com   2) Pixabay.com  (images combined)

Images without citation are in public domain.   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from NLT^©   

Paul's Legal Review

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Thursday, September 12, 2019

The purpose of my instruction is that all believers would be filled with love that comes from a pure heart, a clear conscience, and genuine faith.  But some people have missed this whole point.  They have turned away from these things and spend their time in meaningless discussions.  They want to be known as teachers of the law of Moses, but they don’t know what they are talking about, even though they speak so confidently.  We know that the law is good when used correctly.  For the law was not intended for people who do what is right.  It is for people who are lawless and rebellious, who are ungodly and sinful, who consider nothing sacred and defile what is holy, who kill their father or mother or commit other murders.  The law is for people who are sexually immoral, or who practice homosexuality, or are slave traders, liars, promise breakers, or who do anything else that contradicts the wholesome teaching that comes from the glorious Good News entrusted to me by our blessed God.  1 Timothy 1:5-11

There’s an old story about a young man who was challenged in his intellectual development.  The good people of the small town in which the fellow lived had compassion and gave him a job polishing the cannon near the town square flagpole.  Every day for 6 years the young man showed up at 9am and polished the cannon until mid-afternoon.  Finally, one day he was a no-show; this continued for two weeks.  The town manager saw him on the street the next week and asked him why he had been missing work.  The young man proudly answered:  well, I’ve gotten pretty good at polishing the cannon, and I’ve saved half my salary the past couple of years; last week I bought my own cannon and now I’m in business for myself.

There is reality, and there is delusion.  The debate which pits traditional, orthodox interpretation of God’s purpose in sexuality, against neo-interpretive permissiveness has been tried in the court of popular opinion, and in the Supreme Court of the United States.  But the supposed new day of LGBTQ++ acceptance and normalization in culture still flies in the face of common sense, or theological correctness.  When God has plainly said something is sinful (such as Paul’s denunciation of liars, slave traders, murderers and those who indulge in homosexuality), no matter how much you polish the cannon of God’s compassionate patience, you will never undo what He has declared as sin.

And therein lies the rub; as in any sin, for God’s forgiveness to be effectual, there must be wholehearted repentance.  Absent of an outright admission of sin, a glutton remains in his cholesterol-infested guilt.  Without confession, a liar remains a liar.  And without ceasing the sin – at the very least, steps taken to forsake the sin – a homosexual continuing his or her lifestyle of sexual aberration remains outside the realm of obedient contrition required to stand before God forgiven! 

No matter what sin we’re discussing, the only sin never forgiven is the one never confessed.  But, in a massive, egotistical display of pride the sin of homosexuality today is not confessed; rather it is baptized and brought into the church as neo-conventional.  Granted, that is no different than ignoring other sins.  It only points out that the church today has lost its’ way and stands in its greatest need of revival!

For You Today

The apostle James reminds us that so-called faith which doesn’t result in a changed life is spurious and merely a delusion:

What good is it, dear brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but don’t show it by your actions?  Can that kind of faith save anyone?...Just as the body is dead without breath, so also faith is dead without good works.  James 2:14, 26

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

 

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[1] Title Image:  Courtesy of  Pixabay.com     Unless otherwise noted, Scripture used from The New Living Translation©

Faith That's BAD for Business

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Wednesday, December 14, 2016

When Jesus arrived on the other side of the lake, in the region of the Gadarenes, two men who were possessed by demons met him.  They came out of the tombs and were so violent that no one could go through that area.  They began screaming at him, “Why are you interfering with us, Son of God?  Have you come here to torture us before God’s appointed time?”  There happened to be a large herd of pigs feeding in the distance.  So the demons begged, “If you cast us out, send us into that herd of pigs.”  “All right, go!” Jesus commanded them.  So the demons came out of the men and entered the pigs, and the whole herd plunged down the steep hillside into the lake and drowned in the water.  The herdsmen fled to the nearby town, telling everyone what happened to the demon-possessed men.  Then the entire town came out to meet Jesus, but they begged him to go away and leave them alone.  Matthew 8:28-34 ^(NLT)

Stories are legion about big businesses being taken-down.  Enron was Houston’s golden child of an energy mega-corporation.  Formed in 1985, it was originally a regional natural gas cooperative.  Then, through a series of mergers it grew fantastically!  In 2000 it reported revenues of 101 billion.  The report was somewhat exaggerated.  Through a series of manipulative and illegal accounting practices, shell companies, and offshore fantom entities, the leaders of the company had taken advantage of deregulation in the energy market to fill their pockets…and they were some pretty large pockets!  When the irregularities and illegalities were brought to the surface in 2001 it brought  about the disassembling of Enron like a piñata in a wood chipper.  Some went to prison!

Compare this to a small conglomerate of pig herders.  When Jesus arrived in Gadera he was met by a bunch of demons inhabiting and trying to destroy two men.  The battle that ensued was short.  The demons immediately understood the power Jesus possessed to dispossess them of their hold on the men, so they begged him to let them enter the herd of pigs nearby.  Jesus consented, and the pigs, driven to a wild frenzy by the presence of the demons, stampeded off the nearest cliff.

That is a sad story for the pigs, but we must never lose sight of the healed men.  Which is exactly what the herdsmen did.  Jesus was bad for their business, and they begged him to leave town – and what was implied in their request:  …don’t come back!

The common thread running through Enron and Gadera’s piggy bankers is protecting the bottom line.  Let’s face it, when faith begins to whittle away at capitalism’s profit margin, prophets have got to give way to profits!

The flip side of this is using faith to generate bigger profits.  There have always been those who used faith to manipulate the easily convinced to part with big bucks.  Television is the home to some so-called “ministries” that produce lavish lifestyles for the religious personalities and their producers.  More flash than faith!

None of this is new under God’s heaven.  There will be more of the same materialism-is-king brand of false faith coming out of Madison Avenue and Hollywood in this Christmas season.  And if Jesus shows up because the demons are oppressing people, there are those who will buy him a one-way ticket to anywhere but here.

For You Today

Recognizing false faith is a task that requires a Christian to stay awake!  This is that time of year when having some “holy NO-Doze” in your spiritual tool bag would be a good thing!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road…have a blessed day!

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NOTES

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[i] Title image: Vinko Rajic, via Wikimedia Commons