Centering

Tuesday, September 27, 2022

Don’t make your living by extortion or put your hope in stealing.  And if your wealth increases, don’t make it the center of your life.  God has spoken plainly, and I have heard it many times:  Power, O God, belongs to you; unfailing love, O Lord, is yours.  Surely you repay all people according to what they have done.  Psalm 62:10-12

Centering is the act of deciding on a focal point for your attention,  Related to life with faith in Christ, to center is putting every distraction, whether good things, or practices, on the outside of the center.  And barring access to all evil things.  Simply put, Christ must be the center of your life, or you violate the basic premise of being His disciple.  Christ is not a means to an end; He IS the end…the center point of the universe, and therefore, the target for everything we do.

The Psalmist held up the image of a powerful person (in a worldly sense), one who extorts secretly, or steals unashamedly, or both.  God says it plainly, this is dead-wrong.  But what about if your wealth increases honestly; even then the opportunity to sin is extant, if you allow wealth to become the center focus of your life.  The reason is, as the previous paragraph, it violates the priority God has laid out for believers – Jesus is the incontrovertible center of everything – money and power are a corrupting influence to the believer who would live godly.

And here’s an unsettling fact for those of us who might shrug that off, thinking since we are in no danger of being called “wealthy” by most of the world, it just doesn’t apply.  The reality of wealth is its’ relativity.  You can be just as centered on money when you’re on the poverty line, as you are living in a mansion you bought for $40-million dollars.

As a pastor, I’ve had much access to people’s thoughts as they share with me.  I have seen this principle of corruption at work in both the rich and poor, and everyone inbetween.  People on the margins of life are worrying about where the next meal might be found.  The person on the other side of the tracks, with cars, houses, and all kinds of toys and disposable income, fear that tomorrow’s stock report might take it all away.  Both persons are slave to things and the power to control them. 

But I have also known people on both sides of those economic tracks who trust God for everything.  They are those who are living the completely free life of a believer who is also a true disciple of Jesus.

For You Today

Let’s listen to Jesus for our final thought on this subject as he taught that famous Sermon on the Mount:

“No one can serve two masters.  For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other.  You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money.  “That is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life—whether you have enough food and drink, or enough clothes to wear.  Isn’t life more than food, and your body more than clothing? 

Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.  “So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries.  Today’s trouble is enough for today.  Matthew 6:24-25, 33-34

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

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these: 

Preciou$ Promi$e$ and Blank Check Theology  and Basic Trust; Basic Fear

[1] Images:  via Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©   

The Crowns of Glory and Grace

 

Thursday, June 10, 2021

And furthermore, it is not angels who will control the future world we are talking about.  For in one place the Scriptures say, “What are mere mortals that you should think about them, or a son of man that you should care for him?  Yet for a little while you made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor.  You gave them authority over all things.”  Now when it says “all things,” it means nothing is left out.  But we have not yet seen all things put under their authority.  What we do see is Jesus, who for a little while was given a position “a little lower than the angels”; and because he suffered death for us, he is now “crowned with glory and honor.”  Yes, by God’s grace, Jesus tasted death for everyone.  Hebrews 2:5-9

The writer to the Hebrews was pressing a familiar point to people who have always experienced trials and oppression, his fellow Jews.  But in a broader perspective he was talking to everyone who trusts in the name of Jesus Christ.  If you have placed your faith in Jesus’ act of taking your judgment for your sins on Calvary’s cross, the grace that drove that sacrifice, where Jesus tasted death for everyone, prepares you for a crown of glory and honor. 

This passage also says clearly that angels, who, in their complete obedience  to God, surround the throne of God, will not be the primary object of God’s affection in the coming Kingdom.  God’s honor will be showered upon those who love His Son, Jesus.  The simple math of this thought is that if we love Jesus now, His grace and glory will be ours then. 

The pressing issue of what to do with all the trials of living in the kind of world that now exists is also covered by this math; God is leading through every moment of pain and suffering imaginable, and the grace that sustains us will one day be transformed into the glory that is life eternal in the presence of the Almighty! 

Paul said it this way:

Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later.  Romans 8:18

For You Today

Your life’s story may read like a success manual, blessings poured out like the Niagara River spills water over the falls.  Or it may read like Jean Valjean’s diary in Les Misérables, suffering piled on top of injustice without measure. 

Someday God is going to straighten out what is crooked, and set at right whatever wrong ever existed.  And for those who love Jesus, that grace, and the crown of glory will be an eternal reality.

As Horatio Spafford wrote in that great hymn of the church, you also will be able to proclaim:  It is well with my soul!

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

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[1] Title Image: Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©

Complacency

[i]

Monday, June 26, 2017

“I know all the things you do.  I have seen your hard work and your patient endurance.  I know you don’t tolerate evil people.  You have examined the claims of those who say they are apostles but are not.  You have discovered they are liars.  You have patiently suffered for me without quitting.  “But I have this complaint against you.  You don’t love me or each other as you did at first!  Look how far you have fallen!  Turn back to me and do the works you did at first.  If you don’t repent, I will come and remove your lampstand from its place among the churches.  Revelation 2:1-5^(NLT)

Complacency at any level just isn’t pretty.  It must have been a stinging, embarrassing moment when the church elders at Ephesus read this letter to the congregation.  It was one of seven letters Jesus dictated to the apostle John while he was being shown the future.  Mostly it was warnings to churches that had slipped off the serving trail.

Besides embarrassment, there had to be a wave of nausea rippling through the church as the gathered believers heard the warning that if they didn’t lose their complacent attitudes, their place of service in the Kingdom would be relocated to the unemployment line with other false prophets!  Jesus was saying, love me or leave me!  That is an either/or with no neutral choice!  In fact it is the choice against neutral!

This is a message any church can hear if we have enough sense to put our pride on hold and look past our former victories long enough to see how complacency, laziness, forgetfulness and just plain lack of caring have crept in and replaced what was once a passionate love for Christ.

If we can be objective enough to look at the clear handwriting on the wall (so to speak), we will see that most of the (so-called) “reasons” we have to explain why churches are falling apart these days is not a lack of programming, evil opposition, weak preaching, bad singing, too many choices, or indifference to God in the communities we serve.  The real reasons are unbelief in the pews, marked by unwillingness to tithe, serve, and give our time to the work of sharing the Gospel with lost people.  Joyfully serving Christ is the mark of first love in a believer; without that, how can we say we love Jesus?

Jesus told the believers at Ephesus they were at a cross-road, a tipping point, where their very existence as a church was at stake.  It was either return to first love of going all-out like they had at the start, or take the sign down from the door.

Complacency; not pretty and not honored in Heaven.

For You Today

There is a place to drop off the garment of complacency; it’s called an altar!

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

NOTES

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[i] Title Image: Pixabay.com

Nearly Abandoned

[i]

Tuesday, December 27, 2016

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has become a child of God.  1 John 5:1^(NLT)

Her mother was a migrant farm worker who was living in an old car.  Vicki was only two and her Mom had run out of money, food and options.  She walked into the Food Stamp office in Florida and was turned-down again because “her car” was not an address.  What she then said and did (according to the social worker) was reply, Fine; here, you feed her, and walked away.

That was how Vicki came to live with us as a foster child in 1978.  Within a short time Elizabeth and I both knew we would adopt this sweet, vibrant young lady into our family.  So we began the paperwork, inspections and more, making room in our hearts for yet another child.

God had other ideas; so did the State of Florida.  It seems the law on abandonment in that State don’t kick-in for a year.  So, just a few days short of 365, Vicki’s Mom returned and wanted her child back.  We were heartbroken, but the last we’d heard, Vicki and her Mom were doing well in Texas.

Forty years have not dimmed the imprint of that little one’s smile in our memories.  But she was  not our child.  The law said she belonged to someone else, and, as much as we were willing to open our hearts and home to adopt this little girl with the big smile, we had to give her back.

Nearly abandoned and loved, but not our child.

This is somewhat the essence of John’s sentence about becoming God’s child.  Often (incorrectly) someone – even a preacher – will say something like:  we’re ALL God’s children.  That may be true in one sense, that we are all born in the image of God, and we all experience the providence of God’s care, and there is the loving reach of God that would embrace us, much like (but better than) Elizabeth and I wanted to embrace Vicki as our own. 

But there is something which stands between that desire and reality.  That something is the law.  The law says we are born in sin, and because we all sin, the law condemns us.  John says we become God’s child by belief – faith in God that Jesus Christ is His son. 

Now that is not a very popular viewpoint, and there is pushback whenever you try to point out that some people are genuinely children of God by faith, and some are not.  Many people prefer that, like the Constitution says, we are all equal, we are all equally children of God.  But the Scripture isn’t the Constitution, and national pride has little to do with Scriptural truth.  So, what do you do with truth?  Jesus, Himself pointed out this very fact when the Pharisees argued that they were children of Abraham, making them God’s favored sons.  Here’s the hard truth Jesus declared to them:

Jesus told them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, because I have come to you from God.  I am not here on my own, but he sent me.  Why can’t you understand what I am saying?  It’s because you can’t even hear me!  For you are the children of your father the devil, and you love to do the evil things he does.  He was a murderer from the beginning.  He has always hated the truth, because there is no truth in him.  When he lies, it is consistent with his character; for he is a liar and the father of lies.  So when I tell the truth, you just naturally don’t believe me!  John 8:42-^45(NLT)

The line is drawn in the sand, if you choose to reject the Son, to not-love God’s only Son, Jesus Christ, you don’t have the Father, you’re not a child of God, no matter how much you want it to be otherwise.          

For You Today

Elizabeth and I wanted to welcome Vicki into our home, but she was the child of another.  That was a hard truth. 

A much more important question with a hard truth we must all face is: 

whose child are you?

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

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NOTES

[i] Title image: By Russell Brownworth