As you wind down from a weekend of celebrating St. Patrick Day, pause for a moment and read a portion of the real St. Patrick’s prayer, one he prayed every day.
May it be our prayer, also.
Christ with me,
Christ before me,
Christ behind me,
Christ in me,
Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ on my right,
Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down,
Christ when I sit down,
Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.
For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. – Philippians 1:21
There are days when one sleeps late, therefore doesn’t get out of bed on time to go to work, or something like that.
Then there are other days when you’ve worked hard (or partied hard) the night before, so you decide to sleep a little longer in the morning.
Sometimes we get the flu, or just a cold, and when morning comes there’s nothing else to do but pull the covers over your head and have your spouse cancel all your appointments.
Then there are times when the last thing you want to do is get out of bed and face another day. Putting your feet on the ground will mean having to do something, to think through something, to deal with somebody, or face an insurmountable situation.
That’s the kind of day I’m having; I just didn’t want to get out of bed.
Nevertheless, I’m up, or I wouldn’t be writing this. If nothing else, having a little dog that can’t figure out how to use a toilet and can’t open the front door sorta makes staying in bed indefinitely a problem. Oh for a doggie door!
But I must remind myself that each and every day is a day the Lord has made. To waste it – even the parts I don’t like – is to waste a priceless gift the Creator has given me. It might be difficult at the moment, but I must “rejoice and be glad in it.”
I have the physical strength to face another day, but my mental and spiritual strength is weak. Does that give me an excuse? Well, what does “when I am weak, He is strong” mean? Does it only apply to the day after a workout?
Some might call it depression. Some might call it the blues. Some might chalk it up to working, more or less, seven days a week (wait, how could I work “more” than seven days?). Some might call it burnout. Whatever it is, I’m breathing, the sun is shining, I’m just a steward of what has been given me, and there’s no guarantee of a tomorrow.
Both riches and honour [come] of thee, and thou reignest over all; and in thine hand [is] power and might; and in thine hand [it is] to make great, and to give strength unto all. – 1 Chronicles 29:12 KJV
The LORD will give strength unto his people; the LORD will bless his people with peace. – Psalm 29:11 KJV
Uphold me according unto thy word, that I may live: and let me not be ashamed of my hope. – Psalm 119:116 KJV
God gave this day to us for a reason, so we must seize it! Carpe diem! Who knows? Home might be just around the corner.
Normally, I don’t celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, but I figured today would be a good day for green.
March, 2010
Somewhere in my ancient past, somewhere beyond the reach of genealogy software, I know there must be some Irish blood. It’s not something I can prove, but I do look good in green andturnip greens are one of my favorite foods. I also likegreen grass, the beauty of a rainbow, pots of gold, and Lucky Charms breakfast cereal.
Irish Hymns
But if there is anything Irish that makes a chill run up my spine, it’s the ancient hymn, “Be Thou My Vision.” I consider it one of the “battle hymns” of the faith: every time I hear or sing it, I am encouraged to draw my Sword and wage war with the Devil.
I had not been pastoring long when in 1996 I went to the Promise Keepers Clergy Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. It was a rare three-day event featuring a once-in-a-lifetime lineup of speakers; everyone from Chuck Swindoll and E.V. Hill, to Jack Hayford and Tony Evans, just to name a few. 40,000+ ministers came from all over the world to this event, including 200 Native American pastors who took 2 months to walk from out West. Believe me, it was incredible.
Towards the end of the gathering of all these men who had dedicated their lives to the service of the Lord, all 40,000 men stood to sing what was to be the first time I had ever heard “Be Thou My Vision.” The power…the chills…the call to do battle with the Enemy was nearly overwhelming. 40,000 pastors singing “High King of Heaven…” could make the deadest doorstop of a Christian stand to his feet and shout!
So, after searching YouTube, I found this video with a stirring rendition of the Irish hymn I love so much. Along with the song, there are pictures of great preachers and missionaries of the church. The only thing is that it ends with a picture of John MacArthur, so if you are not a MacArthur fan, just close your eyes, OK?
On this St. Patrick’s Day, please keep in mind something else…theology! Here’s another little video you should watch 😉
The other day I saw a poster on the wall of my physical therapist’s office. I took a picture of it just for you, my readers.
I thought to myself, “Self, there’s a blog post if I’ve ever seen one.”
Self replied, “Yes, I believe you are correct, as always. Why not take a photo of it?”
“Already on it,” said I to self.
“Good play, my boy! Bravo!”
“Yes,” I answered, “I know.”
So, here is the poster, followed by my thoughts.
By the looks of it, running, golfing, tennis, and swimming can do almost as much harm as good! I mean, exercise could kill you!
On the other hand, the Apostle Paul didn’t totally dismiss exercise; he admitted there was a “little” profit.
For bodily exercise profiteth little: but godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come. – 1 Timothy 4:8 (KJV)
The thing to remember is that no matter how healthy you become, death is following close behind. It’s our spiritual health that matters most of all.
Enough with all the bickering and fighting, not to mention the constant maligning of each other in the media, let’s pass some real healthcare reform that is fair, realistic, and responsible.
In other words, submit the following 10 points to Congress, get it approved, have the President sign it, then let’s get on with life.
Baker Healthcare Reform Plan
1. Allow insurance companies to sell across state lines.
2. Create a high-risk pool for those with pre-existing conditions such as cancer, etc., and develop ways in which those with chronic illnesses can receive care without affecting premium costs for healthy citizens.
3. Encourage tax-free accounts such as Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) and Health Savings Accounts (HSA) in which people can put money to be used for medical expenses, further encouraging better pricing options.
4. Encourage doctors, hospitals, and all medical facilities to list actual prices and offer discounts for cash payments (including payments made from FSA’s and HSA’s).
5. Re-educate the public on what insurance is and is not. Create courses in high school and college which will teach young adults how to manage their healthcare costs.
6. Encourage lower medicine costs by reducing regulations which cost manufactures millions and delay drugs being introduced to the market.
7. Develop a strict, but less-burdensome vetting process which will allow foreign prescription drugs to be sold in the United States, thereby providing more options to the consumer.
8. Re-evaluate laws which govern how legal firms bring class action law suits against prescription drug companies.
9. Encourage self-insurance options for the wealthy.
10. Allow insurance companies to create a wider variety of affinity group options.
Honestly, much more could be said about each of the above points, but these alone would have fixed a lot of problems with the previous healthcare system, all without having the government come along and take over everything.
If you’ve been around this blog for more than a few years, maybe you’ve noticed that I have been going to the archives and bringing back some older posts. It’s not that I have writer’s block; it’s just that I don’t have as much time as I’d like and there is a lot of good stuff packed away in over 1,000 posts.
Some stuff is worth repeating, don’t you think?
Anyhoo, here’s something from 2014, and it’s still true…
Scary Things
There aren’t many of things that scare me now that I am an adult. However, as a child I lived in dread of a lot of things. I was afraid of vampires, clowns, Russians, and girls with cooties. Now I know that vampires can be killed with a good flashlight (the handle part, that is) and Russia is less of a threat than China, I think. However, clowns and girls are still a problem.
On the other hand, I used to love to fly in airplanes, drink from unwashed soda cans and public water fountains, and drive sports cars at ungodly rates of speed down curvy mountain roads. Now, as an adult, I know that it takes a long time to fall from 30,000 feet, germs are everywhere, and deer have a habit of walking in front of good drivers.
But the biggest thing is that most of the scary things in life are either in my mind, or avoidable. I have no fear of them eventually catching up with me. If killer bees get too close, I’ll just move. The wicked, however, have no such hope.
Gonna Getcha
The fear of the wicked, it shall come upon him: but the desire of the righteous shall be granted. – Proverbs 10:24
I like the way the NIV translates the first part of this verse, “What the wicked dreads will overtake him…” This proverb is telling us that the wicked are running from something, while the righteous are running to something. And more than that, whatever the wicked are fleeing from will eventually catch up.
What do the wicked fear? What will eventually overtake them? A few things come to mind: being alone, pain, loss, falling, and death. Huh…coincidentally, all of those will be present in hell. Go figure.
Gonna Grant It
But for the righteous…the ones who know every good gift is from God, the ones who know grace can’t be earned…their desires will be granted.
Amazing, isn’t it? What does the righteous desire? To be loved. To be healed. To have treasure that won’t decay. To be caught up. To have eternal life. Wow! Everything that heaven will bring!
But there’s one more thing: the righteous will welcomed into the presence of their greatest Desire – Jesus.
Don’t run from Jesus. Run to Him. Make Jesus your desire.
“As the bird by wandering, as the swallow by flying, so the curse causeless shall not come.” (KJV)
“Like a flitting sparrow or a fluttering swallow, an undeserved curse goes nowhere.” (HCSB)
Curses!
I recently watched a funny scene from the movie Despicable Me. Vector, the really bad guy, had stolen a stolen shrink ray and was playing with it in his bathroom (lavatory), and that’s when he purposely shrunk his toilet. He then proceeded to mock the toilet like it was a defeated enemy. When the shrunken toilet popped off the water line, Vector yelled, “Curse you, tiny toilet!”
Curses are as old as mankind, I suppose. They have been around long before Vector, Scooby Doo, Endora (Samantha’s mother), or the literal witch of Endor (1 Samuel 28:7). The first curses recorded in the Bible can be found all the way back in the book of Genesis. There God cursed the serpent (Gen. 3:14), the ground (Gen. 3:17), Cain (Gen. 4:11), and even the anger of Simeon and Levi (Gen. 49:7). So, it would seem that the earliest curses came not from witches, but from God.
However, when God pronounces a curse, it is usually a denunciation of sin (Nu. 5:21, 23; Dt. 29:19–20), His judgment on sin (Nu. 5:22, 24, 27; Is. 24:6), and the person who is suffering the consequences of sin by the judgment of God is called a curse (Nu. 5:21, 27; Je. 29:18).[1]On the other hand, men use curses as tools to bring something about. However, the difference between a curse from God and a curse from man is capacity: man’s is limited, but God is omnipotent.
Capacity
Those who spew out curses typically have no ability to see them come to fruition. In Eccl. 8:4 we read: “Where the word of the king is, there is power.” In other words, a king can pronounce a curse on his subject’s land or life and have the ability to make it happen. But for most people, “damning” someone is pretty useless.
I once made a video depicting a monkey puppet making fun of evolution. The video asked the question: “What do you get when cross a monkey with time?” The answer was, “A man? No, just a monkey.” Immediately I received hate mail and curses from atheists around the globe.
Click the picture to watch the video for yourself.
On other occasions I have written about my views on marriage, which have brought even more hateful language, and even threats. The curses came by the boat load and generally read like this: “I hope you get sick and die!…go to hell!…damn you!” But therein lies the point of today’s proverb – cursed curses are useless.
Causeless
Solomon said, “the curse causeless shall not come.” Therefore, we should not fear the curses of fools, for they do not have the capacity bring about the end result. They presume upon a Power beyond their own to bring about the judgment they declare, but “there is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1).
Let the witch doctor cast spells; let the voodoo doll be stuck with pins; let the curses come from Hell itself; they will fly by me like sparrows on the wind, for they are as powerless as the cursed fools who send them.
[1] J. A. Motyer, “Curse,” ed. D. R. W. Wood et al., New Bible Dictionary (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 248.
The above post was copied from my other blog, ProverbialThought.com., and adapted for this site.
I am a few months shy of 50 years old, yet I still feel like a kid…most of the time…at least mentally…well, that makes me sound stupid…I mean, emotionally…now I am emotionally unstable…I didn’t say that; the keyboard did. When am I going to be the mature person I always wanted to be? When am I going to grow up?
From i4Daily: Plastic army men waiting for Smurfs to return.
If given the opportunity, I would like to take a box of plastic toy soldiers out to a dry, dusty field, cart a load of bottle-rockets and firecrackers, and sling across my shoulder a CO2 pellet rifle with a scope. Then, with the PG-version of a Gen. George S. Patton inspiring my verbiage, I would unleash the “shock and awe” of my personal arsenal in an bombastic display of testosterone-infused mayhem.
You women are probably rolling your eyes, aren’t you?
Is there something wrong with me? No, I’ve just got an IMAGINATION!
Growing Up
Since when did it become necessary to lose one’s imagination in order to become an adult? Did Jesus ever say that pastors should check their imaginations at the door when they entered the hallowed halls of ministry? Of course not! What kind of preacher would I be without an imagination? A pitiful, orthodox, dry, and sad one, I would think.
Growing up has nothing to do with the desire to have fun or play (even with plastic army men). Growing up has everything to do with being the person we are designed by God to be.
Growing up means accepting responsibilities, finishing tasks, taking stands, and putting others first. Growing up means not being tossed back and forth with every wind of change, or every wind of doctrine (Ephesian 4:14), but committed to truth, and speaking it in love (v.15).
Growing up may mean taking up one’s cross, but it doesn’t require crucifying the imagination.
His Imagination
Aren’t you glad God had an imagination? Who else could have thought up everything that is when there was nothing to compare it to? We should praise Him for His wonderful imagination!
PRAISE the LORD! Praise the LORD from the heavens; Praise Him in the heights! Praise Him, all His angels; Praise Him, all His hosts! Praise Him, sun and moon; Praise Him, all you stars of light! Praise Him, you heavens of heavens, And you waters above the heavens! Let them praise the name of the LORD, For He commanded and they were created. – Psalm 148:1-5 NKJV
Stop and think about it. We were made in the “image” of God (Gen 1:27). Surely, “imagination” was included in that likeness. We are the product of His very own “creativity.” He created us with an imagination so that we could appreciate the beauty of the unseen and long for the yet-to-be.
Eyes have not seen, and ears have not heard; we can only imagine.
One thing I love doing is taking old hymns and turning them into sermon outlines. Frankly, many of the old songs of the church were nothing more than condensed sermons put to music. They were not only meant to give us a means to sing praise to God, but to learn of His character, of his goodness and grace.
Last week I explained to the congregation at the church where I pastor that the songs we sing should be known and understood. I mean, how profitable is it if we stand as a group and sing something that makes no sense? What kind of corporate praise can we offer to our God if we cannot relate to the lyrics? It is so much better when we can all stand and sing from the bottom of our hearts the words of a hymn that means something vital to our soul!
An Outline
The following is an outline which I will be using soon, maybe even this Sunday. The outline is based on the song “My Jesus I Love Thee” by William Featherston (1864).
Please note, Featherston wrote this poem when he was between the ages 11 and 16 (he died age 27, long before the song became well-known). Adoniram Judson Gordon (founder of Gordon College and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary) added the melody. How many teens do you know these days who could write something like this?
On a different note, how many teens could God use if they would only let Him?
“My Jesus I Love Thee”
My Jesus, I love Thee, I know Thou art mine; (Jn 21:15-17)
For Thee all the follies of sin I resign; (2 Tim. 2:19)
My gracious Redeemer, my Savior art Thou; (Ruth 2:10)
If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ’tis now. (The Place of Regeneration)
I love Thee because Thou hast first loved me, (1 John 4:19)
And purchased my pardon on Calvary’s tree; (1 Peter 1:18-19)
I love Thee for wearing the thorns on Thy brow; (Mt 27, Mk 15, Jn 19:2)
If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ’tis now. (The Place of Realization)
I’ll love Thee in life, I will love Thee in death, (Job 13:15)
And praise Thee as long as Thou lendest me breath; (Job 33:4) And say when the death dew lies cold on my brow, (Ps. 116:15)
If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ’tis now. (The Place of Resignation)
In mansions of glory and endless delight, (Jn 14:2) I’ll ever adore Thee in heaven so bright; (Rev 21:23)
I’ll sing with the glittering crown on my brow, (2 Tim 4:8)
If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ’tis now. (The Place of Revelation)
I would love to know what you think of this, especially after you read the biblical references.
What do you think of topical sermons like this? Expository preaching is something I regularly do, but I also think we need to mix up the delivery styles every so often. Doing it this way – a song sermon – is not only a good way to explain a song, but doing so with Scripture helps reinforce the truth the next time the song is sung.
Head’s up, South Soddy Baptist! You might be hearing this sermon tomorrow morning 🙂
“The belief that one’s internal sense of self determines maleness or femaleness and that subjective feelings take precedence over an objective physical reality constitutes a severing of mind from body. Our sex is who we are: it can’t be amputated from our body like a limb. But the true believers in gender ideology are hard at work, pulling in converts to this gnostic worldview that shuns the material that we humans are made of: the body. You can be assured that an ideology like this will, to use Pope Francis’s words, lead to the “annihilation of man” in our culture, in the law, and in the lives of those who fall prey to the tenets of this weaponized “civil rights” movement.” – Emily Zinos
The above quote comes from an article published in Public Discourse, a publication of The Witherspoon Institute. I would encourage you to read the article as I have included a link to it for your convenience.
Why did I choose to share this article? Because I, too, reject the subjective and arbitrary “gender identity” craze. Emily Zinos makes some very strong arguments with which I agree.
What do you think of topical sermons like this? Expository preaching is something I regularly do, but I also think we need to mix up the delivery styles every so often. Doing it this way – a song sermon – is not only a good way to explain a song, but doing so with Scripture helps reinforce the truth the next time the song is sung.
The Recovering Legalist 