False Advertising

I visited a local chain grocery store last week and I saw the sign to the left. You see, I live in the garden spot of the world when it comes to produce. South Georgia farmers grow some of the best produce you can find anywhere in the world, but it is difficult to find true South Georgia produce in South Georgia grocery stores. For some reason, the buyers for the chains strike deals with inferior providers and our farmers have no other option but to ship their produce to other parts of the country. So, I was excited to see that at least I could get produce grown from some hard working, deserving Georgia farmer.

Before buying some, however, I thought I would do a little research. The picture featured watermelons (my favorite), tomatoes, beans, and bell peppers. Commercial farmers within ten miles of my house grow all of those items. I looked at the watermelon labels first. A farmer in Raleigh, NC provided the watermelons. The green beans and bell peppers had no label indicating their place of origin, but they looked "well-travelled." We have a farmer in Mexico to thank for the tomatoes and blackberries, and one in California provided our strawberries. So much for the "Georgia Grown" produce advertised on the sign.

As I thought about that later in the day, I realized that we as believers sometimes do not deliver what we advertise either.

    We say that Jesus can change your life,
                 yet we live very similar lives to those around us who do not profess faith in Jesus.

    We say that we want prayer in our schools,
                 yet we fail to pray in our own personal prayer closets or in our homes with our family.

    We bemoan the moral decline of our culture,
                 yet we watch the same filth on TV, visit the same sites on the internet, listen to the same      
                 ungodly messages in music.

    We complain about dishonest and self-serving politicians,
                  yet we bend and break the rules and conveniently rationalize our behavior.

    We say that more people ought to go to church,
                 but we are only there – especially during the summer – when something more "exciting"
                 does not lure us away.

    We object to the violence, language, and sensuality found in our entertainment industry, 
                 yet "life imitates art" in our own language, dress, and behavior.

 
Church, let's make sure that we are not guilty of false advertising. Let's demonstrate a genuine and growing relationship with Jesus that permeates every facet of our lives.

Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you… - 2 Corinthians 6:17

What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? … So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. – James 2:14, 17

The Elephant in Our Hearts

One of the greatest indicators of our spiritual health is our attitude toward sin. As God's children, we should view sin as He does. Here is a sampling from His Word.

Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it. – Psalm 34:14

O you who love the LORD, hate evil! He preserves the lives of his saints; He delivers them from the hand of the wicked. – Psalm 97:10

I will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless. I hate the work of those who fall away; it shall not cling to me. – Psalm 101:3

The fear of the LORD is hatred of evil. Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate. – Proverbs 8:13

Hate evil, and love good, and establish justice in the gate; it may be that the LORD, the God of hosts, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph. – Amos 5:15

Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. – Romans 12:9

Do you get the picture? Sin doesn't just frustrate God or hurt His feelings, it breaks His heart. Sin sent Jesus to the cross.

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit. - 1 Peter 3:18

We have become so adept at rationalizing our behavior that we fail to call our behavior SIN. We justify our actions by our circumstances or the actions of others. We openly engage in gossip, we harbor ill feelings toward others, we live in adulterous relationships, we conform to the world's standards of right, success, and pleasure, and we arrogantly defy anyone who would dare challenge us on Biblical grounds.

The saddest part of it all is that even though we live the way we do, we still pray and ask God to "bless" us and expect Him to. We continue with this charade while our unforsaken, sinful lifestyle looms like the proverbial elephant in the living room. Something is badly wrong with this picture.

Remember the encounter Jesus had with the woman caught in adultery? (John 8:1-11) We like the part where He rebuked the crowd and challenged anyone without sin to cast the first stone. We find solace in the sins of others, thinking that disqualifies them from confronting us with ours. We conveniently fail to remember, however, Jesus' exchange with the woman at the end of the scene. When He points out that her accusers had departed, He assured her of His forgiveness, BUT THEN . . . He sends her on her way with the admonition to SIN NO MORE. Jesus didn't excuse, justify, or ignore her sin, He called her behavior SIN then He forgave her and enabled her to FORSAKE her sin.

My prayer is that we stop this nonsense of "playing Christian" and that we seek to be holy unto the Lord. May God burden us to leave behind our sin and pursue Him. Let's put the elephant where he belongs, out in the jungle, and make our heart a sanctuary for the Holy Spirit.

The Church's Wake-Up Call

It is a bit of an understatement to say that our culture is a mess. Sin not only runs rampant throughout the culture, it arrogantly parades itself proclaiming to be normative. There is no shortage of preachers and other Christians bemoaning the encroachment of culture's evil and its apparent lack of regard for the Church and the values we for which we stand.

We hear a multitude of excuses for the sprawl of darkness in our culture. Some say we can lay the blame squarely at the feet of a country who allowed one woman's crusade to remove prayer from public schools. That crusade has led to a push to remove all things "Christian" from the public forum altogether. One judge recently suggested a local school in Virginia could display the Ten Commandments if they reduced them to six, eliminating the first four that deal with God and the Sabbath. ("Judge Suggests Six Commandments" NBC12, Richmond, VA)

Others blame the proliferation of sin in the entertainment media such as TV, Movies, and Music. Still others might cite the growing liberalization of our culture, or the drift away from the moral right in our government. The problem with these explanations, however, is that none of them are the problem, but rather they all are symptoms of a deeper problem. Consider what Jesus said should be our relationship to our culture:

"You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet.

"You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven." – Matthew 5:13-16

Our culture is in a mess because the Church is in a mess. Our culture is rotting because the preserving agent, salt, is rotten. We have "lost our saltiness" and consequently our culture is trampling us under its feet. The darkness is sprawling because the light only burns under the "basket" of our church buildings. The darkness has not grown; it has always been there. Until now, the light shone so brightly that it dispelled he darkness. Now, however, with fewer Christians shining their "good works" the darkness prevails.

No, WE are to blame for this mess.

• We expect our culture to respect the Church and our values, yet we view the Church as an option when we can't go to the lake or when our kids have no conflicting activities. Why do we expect our culture to have more respect for the Church than we do?
• We call for our culture to respect the sanctity of marriage, yet we openly live adultery and enable our kid's fornication and we get highly offended if the church holds us accountable to a higher standard.
• We decry the open sensuality in the entertainment media, yet we attend the movies, watch the shows, and buy the music.
• We wonder why teens are more sexually active, yet we dress our daughters (and our moms, too) in clothing that leaves little to the imagination. We even wear such attire to worship God!
• We lie, cheat, swear, drink, cut corners, steal just like the rest of the world then wonder why our culture does not listen when we proclaim that Jesus offers a better way to live.

Church, we have become the laughingstock of our culture because we are hypocrites. We proclaim one thing on Sunday, then we live differently the rest of the week – adults on their jobs and in their families and kids in their schools and among their friends. On the one hand, we have become so like our culture and then on the other hand we try to tell them they are wrong and we are right. Am I the only one who sees the foolishness and sadness in this?

The time has come for the Church to repent of our sin and get right with God. The time has come for us to get our act straight and then let Christ work through is to redeem the world. The time has come for us to remove the log from our eye AND THEN proceed to help our culture remove the splinter from their eye.

Come on, Church! Wake up before it's too late. Eternity is at stake.

For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? – 1 Peter 4:17

Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lamp stand from its place, unless you repent. – Revelation 2:5

Christians in a Kettle

A science project I once heard about – I doubt that it really happened – faced the challenge of boiling a frog in a kettle of water. The students would get the water boiling and then put the frog in the kettle. As soon as the cold-blooded frog hit the water, he would jump right out. Of course, who among us wouldn't, reptile or not. Eventually they discovered that in order to boil the frog in the water, first they had to put cool water in the kettle and put the frog in the kettle with the cool water. The frog liked that, you see. In fact, he liked it so well, he didn't even notice when the students put the kettle over a low flame and slowly increased the temperature of the water. The cold-blooded frog adapted to the changes so well he didn't even recognize the change.

Unfortunately, as Christians we are a lot like that frog. If we are not careful, we get so numb and desensitized to sin that we fall prey to its temptation before we barely even realize the temptation is there. Life bombards us with so many images of sin each day that this desensitization can take place gradually and unnoticed. We see bad attitudes, actions, thoughts, and words paraded in front of us every day. We get so used to the sin that we no longer even notice it, and then if we are not careful we become willing allies in sin as well.

King David was like that. I do not believe for one minute he ever set out to have an affair with Bathsheba. He got lazy and he got closer to sin than he was to God. One thing led to another and he found himself in adultery – and to make matters worse became a cold-blooded murdered. THIS MAN was the apple of God's eye. How much more do you and I need to be on guard? Let me suggest some steps we all can take to avoid having the heat turned up around us unawares.

First, guard your heart. Proverbs 4:23 teaches us,

Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.

The inner self, the heart, is that part of us that constitutes our motivations, our likes and dislikes, our feelings, our desires, dreams, and aspirations. In many ways, it is the command center for our will. Our heart tells us what to do. We need often to evaluate if our heart is seeking God's will or our own selfish will. We protect our heart when we recognize things that influence us to want, feel, or dream anything that draws us away from God.

Second, take care what you feed your mind. Our brains are like computers in a sense; they cannot operate without data input. Every thought we think is the product of information that is already in our minds. Philippians 4:8 says,"

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

We do not think, speak, or do anything that has not first passed through our brain. If we want to avoid cultural conformity, we will carefully filter out those things we read, see, and hear so that nothing enters our brain that is counter to the work of remaking us that God is doing.

Finally, exercise your spirit. Galatians 5:17 reminds us,

For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want.

Our natural, physical desires play a cosmic game of tug-o-war with the Holy Spirit. Our natural urges pull us one way – toward self-gratification and away from God, while the Spirit pulls us in the opposite direction – away from self and toward God. We hold the key that determines which side wins, in fact, we choose the winner. Whichever one we give into . . . wins. We exercise the spirit in our lives when we refuse to give into those selfish physical desires that draw us away from God, and when we constantly engage in activities and attitudes that reflect the fruit of the Spirit found in Galatians 5:22-23: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. We exercise our spirit and strengthen it when we choose to act, react, and respond by asking the Holy Spirit to display these qualities.

In his translation of Romans 12:2, JB Phillips tells us, "Don't let the world squeeze you into its mold." That is my prayer, that rather than being molded by my culture, I would instead by salt and light and change the world around me. I hope you join me in this quest. Let's learn to think and act differently – like the Savior who we serve.

Our culture is turning up the heat . . . do we even notice?

My Gay Marriage Post

I usually do not delve into politics with Jim’s Gems, but in light of the recent outcry from some circles about the overwhelmingly majority decisions of the people of both North Carolina and Indiana to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, I feel the need to vent a little.  

I have grown beyond weary of hearing the highly popular yet mythical statement, “You can’t legislate morality.”  Says who?  I mean, really?  On whose authority can you make that statement? At some point in the past, some bleeding heart moral relativist made that comment and it sounded like such a great sound byte to those of like mind that it became something of slogan.  

The problem is that the statement is logically impossible, because what is “legislation” if it is not a code of morals. The dictionary that came with my MacBook (a product of Apple®, not exactly known to ever venture east of center on the political spectrum) defines morality as “principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior.”  Isn’t the exact purpose of legislation to define what is good and bad behavior according to a group of people?  Most of the people who say, “You can’t legislate morality,” really mean, “You are trying to pass a law against something I want to do or something I want others to be able to do.”

God created this world.  You may not believe that, but guess what…that doesn’t change the reality of it.  As Creator, through the years He revealed His plan for His creation and inspired men to write down those plans in what we now call The Bible.  The Creator, the One who made it all, the One who knows how best it works, gave us instructions on how to build an orderly and successful society.  The central core of that order is the family, and He defined the family from the very beginning as a man taking a woman and the two becoming one flesh.  This union provides the spiritual, emotional, and practical foundation for society. To alter the foundation is to weaken the structure and ultimately affect the collapse of society, as we know it.

Unfortunately, our culture has intimidated and/or deluded many Christians into believing that we should not speak out on the issue.  They have told us that homosexuality is not wrong, that it is a private matter between two people (then why don’t THEY keep it private), or that God created them that way (which is hypocritical since most of them do not believe God created).  

Christian, I appeal to you today to get your head back on straight.  When God establishes something for the welfare of His creation and calls it “good,” why in the world do we stand idly and let something as vitally important as the foundation of our culture fall into ruin?  The time has come – actually, it is WAY past time – for God’s people first to repent of our own sinfulness and idolatry and then to call our fellow citizens back to the standards God set for an orderly and successful society.

“So you, son of man, I have made a watchman for the house of Israel. Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. If I say to the wicked, O wicked one, you shall surely die, and you do not speak to warn the wicked to turn from his way, that wicked person shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the wicked to turn from his way, and he does not turn from his way, that person shall die in his iniquity, but you will have delivered your soul. – Ezekiel 33:7-9

The Little Things

I like to photograph signs.  I have amassed a bit of a collection from many different places.  Some signs make so much sense that one wonders why someone even needed to place it, while other signs defy explanation.  Some signs are informational; others, directional.  Regardless of a sign’s position or purpose, most all of them hold one thing in common – people ignore them.  

Many restaurants sport directional signs indicating which driveway is the entrance and which is the exit.  One such restaurant in Tifton can lay claim to the most often ignored signs.  In order to “cheat” their way into the drive-thru line, customers often enter through the exit portal, causing a logjam of traffic in the parking lot. I am sure they think it is quite OK for everyone else to wait so that they can save themselves 50 yards of driving around the building.   

While I know that in the grand scheme of things, ignoring the directional signs at a restaurant (or any other sign for that matter) seems inconsequential, the practice reflects a deeper, more insidious attitude that pervades our modern cultures thinking.  We have no regard for the “small things.”  We pay little attention to the details, cutting corners and hoping to get away with neglecting the less obvious particulars of life.

We all have experienced diminished product quality, lax customer service, and empty promises.  These stand as convicting proof of our inattention to details.  The Bible, however, teaches us the importance of faithfulness to the “little things.”

His master said to him, 'Well done, good and faithful servant.  You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.' - Matthew 25:21, 23

"One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much.” – Luke 16:10

Let me encourage you to be careful to mind the minutiae in your life.  While we wait for the grand events in life, we lose sight of the fact that our faithfulness and honesty in the little and unseen will determine our success or failure.  A brick mason tediously lays one small single brick after another in the process of building a wall.  Each individual brick may seem small and insignificant when compared to the completed wall, but the mason must take great care to lay each brick, one by one, with precision and care.  If one brick is mislaid, the entire wall will be marred.  So also, our lives consist of several and individual opportunities to the right things and to do things the right way each day.  While each moment may seem small and insignificant when isolated, we must remember that one “mislaid” opportunity may prove to be difficult to overcome down the road.

Pay attention to your habits.  Be honest even when no one is looking.  Don't try to get away with something in secret - it will eventually become obvious.  Don’t allow bad attitudes to linger.  Be careful not to cut corners.  Don’t neglect time to pray and read your Bible.  Don’t think because no one is looking that you are free to skimp on any good thing or to get away with some bad thing.

So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. – 1 Corinthians 10:31

Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men… - Colossians 3:23

Quiet, Please

If silence is golden, most of us are in abject poverty.  Sound regularly surrounds us - the “white noise” of an unwatched TV, the interruption of a ringing telephone, the sudden alert of an email, tweet, or text message, and a plethora of other sounds.

The intrusive blare of the alarm clock begins our day, and the sounds of home send us to bed each night.  In between, the cacophony of life invades every waking moment.   We turn on the radio or play music in our automobiles, at our jobs, and throughout our exercise routines. Music even invades our restaurants, malls, elevators, and telephones as we hold while the robotic “operator” connects us to the party we called.  Apparently, we find silence highly uncomfortable.

The sad part of our noisy lives is that we drown out God.  God does not scream, alarm, or interrupt.  He patiently waits for us to meet with Him and hear Him.  In the Garden of Eden, He met with Adam and Eve in the “cool of the day.”  On the backside of the desert in Midian, Moses had to “turn aside” and leave the bleating sheep to hear the subtle voice of God in the burning bush.  In some of his most profound psalms, David employed a “selah” – a musical notation that meant everything was to stop and music was to cease for a moment that everyone might consider the import of what they had just sung.  Elijah did not hear God in the wind, storm, or fire, but when he quieted his heart and his ears, he heard the gentle voice of God.  Even Jesus exemplified the value of regularly retreating to a quiet place to pray and hear from His Father.

All too often, I hear people say, “God said to me . . .” and then claim that God told them something that clearly was NOT God.  I believe the reason we are unclear as to whether or not we have heard from God is that we have forgotten what God’s voice sounds like. We intentionally need to shut off the outside voices – turn off the TVs, cell phones, and mp3 players, log off of the computer – long enough and often enough to learn once again what God’s voice sounds like. If we are to reconnect with God the way we all need, we MUST build some margins of silence into our lives.  We must find ways to retreat from the noise and be quiet enough to hear what God is saying to us.  

Let me challenge you to develop the skill of living a quiet life.  May we heed the words of Paul in the first part of 1 Thessalonians 4:11: “…aspire to live quietly…”  Begin your day in silence.  Take your lunch break alone with God.  Carve out a few minutes at the close of the day to hear from God.  Turn off the music in the car.  Learn to listen for the voice of God, and before you know it, you will recognize His voice above all others.