Self Inflicted Wounds

Catchy title, hey? I am not writing about physical inflicted wounds so I hope you will not be disappointed if you thought the article would be about those. The wounds I am addressing come from "self" but impact us emotionally and spiritually. As you well know I have had the opportunity afforded to me by God to talk to lots of people who are in crisis situations over the past years. In the beginning I was overwhelmed by the problems that people face and the critical decisions they had to make in order to bring resolve. I have learned from experience that life 101 does not always have fairy tale endings. The best we can expect sometimes is to survive and live another day. Some of the problems we face are not of our own making of course. Some of them are. Hopefully and prayerfully we learn which is which.


It seems that we are quicker to forgive people their trespasses than we are to forgive our own. There is a big difference between the Holy Spirit bringing conviction upon our hearts and our own convictions we bring upon ourselves, or even worse, the attacks the enemy brings against us. The Holy Spirit has one goal in mind for us, to be of one mind and one accord with Christ. To allow Him to mold us into the person He created us to be. When we veer off track He will convict us in order to get us back on track. He does not excuse us but He does forgive us if we are willing to accept His instruction. He does not give up on us and does not "kick us" when we are down but always extends the Spiritual hand of Christ to lift us back up.

When it comes to our self conviction we are harder on ourselves than the Lord is! I think it comes from our desire to be a "good Christian" and somehow we get caught up in the illusion that we can do it. When we fail we blame ourselves for being a "bad person" or nothing but a hypocrite. We feel that we have failed Christ and we try to work harder to make up for the failure. Promising ourselves that we will "do better next time" and promising God that we will not fail again. If we were able to keep those promises we would not need Christ in our lives. If we could live a Christian life without Christ there would be no need to have Him in our hearts! We begin to fail over and over and each time we do we inflict wounds to our spirits and our emotions and therefore we find it more comfortable to just quit trying and not have all the pressure of trying to be a Christian; and we give up. Which pleases the enemy of our souls because he is always ready to tell us how much of a failure we are and that we should just accept that fact and not worry about it.


Here are some Words of Encouragement for you today; God does not expect you to live a Christian life. He expects you to allow Him to live through you. With Christ in your heart you do not have to fear failure. He will guide you, instruct you, forgive you, and love you unconditionally. As long as you are willing to receive His guidance, instruction, and forgiveness He is willing to abide with you; forever. Pride is the biggest reason for our self inflicted wounds. Once we realize that our righteousness is as filthy rags and therefore we have to allow Christ to put His robe of righteousness upon us, He will be able to heal our self inflicted wounds.



Prayer: Our Father in heaven, Hallowed is Your name; help us this day by searching our hearts and healing our self inflicted wounds. Remove our pride by humbling us in Your presence. Thank You for not giving up on us and loving us unconditionally. Thank You for accepting us as we are but loving us to much to leave us that way! We ask this in Your name Jesus; Amen.

A.D. The Bible Continues Slights the Holy Spirit

I heard the hype about the series A.D., The Bible Continues on N.B.C. One of my favorite preachers, Dr. David Jeremiah, even wrote a book about it and highly endorses it. I watched the first couple of episodes and it was following the Bible accounts in my opinion. I realize the dramatic parts are added to imitate what life may have been like during those days. Last evening, Sunday, April 19th, was about the Day of Pentecost and the Holy Spirit coming upon the disciples. I was disappointed with this episode because they did not follow what Dr. Luke recorded happened in the Book of Acts.

They had the disciples waiting in the Upper Room along with Mary as Luke wrote when the Holy Spirit came upon them. The program followed the Bible at this point. The problem comes after that. They showed the disciples speaking with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance as the Bible teaches but they stopped in the Upper Room. Then they came out of the Upper Room into the crowd below and walked through them like hero's. Here is the problem. Dr. Luke writes this; "Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. ⁶ When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. ⁷ Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans?
⁸ Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language?" Then he writes, "Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: “Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. ¹⁵ These people are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning! No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:
“‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people." Then Peter closed his sermon this way the Bible says, "When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” ³⁸ Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." Read it for yourself in Acts, Chapter 2.

They skipped that entire section! Peter never peached, people never asked what to do, repentance and forgiveness was never offered, and it was never mentioned that each would be given the Holy Spirit.

If you take the preaching out of what happened that day, and they did, you have missed the whole point of why God sent His Holy Spirit upon the disciples to begin with! The show portrays the disciples as rebels against Rome instead of servants of Jesus. The episode went on to show Peter and John reaching out to the invalid and then being arrested; totally leaving out the entire Peter preaching to the crowd sequence. They slighted the Holy Spirit and His work in a major way. You don't have to be a Pentecostal Preacher to know they left it out, just read it for yourself. When you take the ENTIRE work of the Holy Spirit out of the initial founding of the church, you have left it up to just those disciples present to be the "hero's" of the faith by following Christ and rebelling against Rome. The Bible says; "Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day." They totally went right over that part. The whole point of Pentecost was to build the Kingdom of God, the Church that Jesus said He would build, and they never showed it. I am utterly disappointed but not surprised. We are living in the last days people so get ready for more and more "half truths" to be preached. Dr. Jeremiah, I would have thought you would have caught that. Read your Bible's people to get the WHOLE truth.

 
 







 

Why Study When I Can Google.

I am amazed at the number of Christians that I converse with sometimes about Bible verses. Did you know that there are a certain number of verses that about every Christian knows? John 3:16 for example seems to be the one they know most. I ask them what John 3:17 says or even John 3:18, only to get a blank look. Now before you begin to think that I am saying that every Christian should remember every verse in the Bible, or at least the New Testament, I am not. That would certainly be very beneficial for all of us to do though! The other thing I have found out is just how little many Christians really know in regards to certain doctrines of Christianity. I think one reason is the fact that so many do not study the Scriptures. I know people who have read the Bible through over 10 times; but they could not tell me what Jesus meant when He said that we must "Eat His flesh and drink His blood." How can Scripture really benefit us if we do not know how to apply it? If we had just read a manual about how to drive a car but we never got under the wheel would we really know how to drive it?

I have noticed a big drop in Sunday School attendance over the years. The church I attended as a kid had a ton of people in Sunday School. Half of them would leave after it was over and not be in the "preaching service." Today, most people attend a worship service and not Sunday school or even a weekly Bible study. Many of the churches in our area no longer have Wednesday evening or Sunday evening services; because they don't have enough people coming to make it worthwhile they say! That is why I consider myself a "treacher." I spend most of my sermon time teaching coupled with some preaching. It is easy to tell people what to do but without telling them why they need to do it and why God wants them to do it, there is a good chance it will never get done.

There has been an information explosion in the last decade and the amount of information available to us on any subject we choose has contributed to us taking the quote that someone once said to heart: "You don't have to know everything, you just need to know where to find it when you need it." We can access any Scripture in the Bible in a matter of seconds. We can read hundreds of commentaries and blogs on that Scripture. We can "self educate" ourselves on every subject in the Bible at the touch of screen. We can generally select the information we like, that says what we would like to hear, and discard the rest. All this information flooding our brains eventually finds it way into our spirits and we no longer need the Holy Spirit to teach us or tell us anything; we can Google it. If the congregants that listen to my message on Sunday morning or night are offended by something I say, they can always Google it and find someone else that will say that I am wrong. It is almost as if there is no absolute truth any longer so what is the point of studying if we have no real answers.

Oh, my friend, there is absolute truth; and it is the Bible. Not the bloggers (like me), not the commentators opinions, or the theological explanations, but the Bible. The Word of God Himself. For no prophecy recorded in Scripture was ever thought up by the prophet himself. It was the Holy Spirit within these godly men who gave them true messages from God (2 Peter 1:20 The Living Bible). Many folk think that the teachers and pastors do all the studying for them, even believing that is what we "get paid to do." People have a doctor, a dentist, a hair stylist, a therapist, and the pastor that will take care of their spiritual needs. I hope it does not come down to Jesus asking someone, "Why did you believe that?" Only to have them say, "Because my pastor told me it was true." Do like the Bereans that the Apostle Paul talked about: They received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so (Acts 17:11).