Awesome Classic Cars and Dusty Treasures

I wonder if my son, David, saw this news item:

http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2014/03/25/wheres-steve-mcqueen-when-need-him-16-shelby-gt500-found-under-40-years-dust/?intcmp=latestnews

If he had, I am sure he would have just flipped.  Can you imagine going through your family member’s estate, and finding some gem like this tucked away in the back of a barn?  A precious coin or stamp in the back of some drawer?  A rare antique dresser gathering dust in some attic?

This individual apparently only enjoyed his treasure enough to know it was there.  He was so afraid of damaging it that he did not even take it to have it washed.  Eventually it was parked and no longer driven, in fear lest it should be damaged.  Now, I don’t know about you, but even at the sticker price it had in 1969 (5200 dollars) it represented a signficant drop of cash!  And then to stop driving it?  Just because it might get a scratch? Wow! I guess he understood that possessions are only temporary (proverbs 23:5) but that knowledge apparently did not give him the freedom to enjoy what God had given (Ecc 5:19).

I know what that article is making you think of doing.  You are thinking about that old coin collection you stuck aside years ago.  You are dreaming of the things you could get today if your mom hadn’t thrown away those old comic books or the baseball cards you saved as a kid.  Maybe you are wondering if there is some lost loot in that old barn that maybe you missed when you first bought the old farm house?

I can tell you that there is treasure in your home.  Hopefully its not covered with dust!  Hopefully its not buried in some old drawer, or lost in the back of an old barn.  Know what it is?  Yeah, you know where this is going…

Its your Bible.

Now you feel ripped off.  You thought this would be a great article about a classic car and it turned out to be another trap to make you feel guilty about not reading the scriptures.  But if you have not been reading them, I am trying to make you feel guilty.  You already are!!

Ok, folks.  Its time to get out those Bibles and dust them off.  Time for us to read and be renewed!  There is treasure in “them thar” pages!

Gone Postal

Did you hear about the Postman who was caught dumping his mail into the trash?  Somewhere in New York state, a Postman dumped, by his own count, 15 loads of mail.  One news source reported: ”The motive, according to federal agents, was that Paskett could not be bothered. He allegedly thought it was a nuisance in the cold and snowy weather to complete the deliveries.”

Wow.

Here is a man who is charged and entrusted with a duty to deliver other people’s possessions...some of them perhaps quite valuable, and he could not be bothered to complete the delivery.  Perhaps an important bill was destroyed.  Perhaps someone’s check did not arrive in a timely matter.  A vital correspondence may have been missed that could have mended or resulted in a broken relationship. 

He admitted to the dumping, and even showed investigators some of the places where he dumped the mail.  Thankfully, a small amount of the mail was recovered, yet, amazingly, the man is still employed by the USPS as a sorter, while the case is investigated.  I thought they arrested people for things like that!

There once was a day when hard work and solid effort were part of our culture.  We believed, as a people, that sweat on your brow and pushing through difficulty was a virtue.  We believed that work was a blessing from God to form your character and make you a channel for blessing others.  We called that the “Protestant work ethic.” 

There once was a day when being a government worker was a sacred trust.  We also believed that when you handle other people’s property, you ought to handle it as well as or better than anything you owned of yourself.

There once was a day when people who stole and destroyed other people’s property were properly tried and punished by our justice system.

Sadly, all of these “old timey” traditional values that were part of what made our culture strong have long been thrown out the window.  Young people today are taught to snicker at patriotism, and that hard work and working your way up the ladder is degrading.  Government workers are surrounded by numerous protections now that empower them to these kinds of misadventures, making it difficult, if not impossible to fire them.  This is not to say that there aren’t solid workers for the government or the USPS.  But the values that made this nation great, cast aside by the liberal establishment, has created an environment where these kinds of behaviors are not rarities, but happen nearly every day.  The young people we have coming of age in our culture know nothing of sacred duty, of integrity and honor, because our schools no longer teach such things. They can’t.  They have removed the God who is the judge of such things as the foundation for such “Outdated” enculturated ideas.

The best thing for America’s future is to teach kids that there is a God, and that he holds us responsible for how we treat our neighbors.  He holds us responsible for how we handle our neighbor’s goods.  He will catch and execute justice on us if we remain uncaught by the human justice system.  

Too busy for God

Even Pastors get too busy!

Its easy for Pastors to get busy.  Its easy for us to fill up our schedules and justify all of it as ministry.  There is so much need.  There is so many things to be done to fill that need.  So I can pack each day full, and then draw up a theology to justify why every single thing had to be in that list.  The only problem is, will I even have time to do that?  You know your schedule is getting a little too full when you find yourself having to justify the inclusion of everything to yourself or to others.

A great way to regulate yourself is to consider your calling.  Every person has a calling and a purpose to fulfill.  Even you.  I tell the seniors that I minister to at the Assisted Living center that “Where there is life there is purpose.”  If God has kept you alive, then he still has a role for you.  And the same is true for all of you who are able to read this right now.  Serving God is not something you get a degree to get.  God has wired you for serving, and when you turn to Christ for your salvation, He gives you His Holy Spirit to empower and guide you into effective and powerful service for Him.

So as you consider your schedule and what you include in it, you can find lots of reasons to justify all that “BUSYness.”  But does it really fit what God has made you to do?  Its time to start comparing the calling to what you are doing.

As I consider my call, I think about the fact that my specific call is to “present every person complete in Christ (Col 1:28).”  I do by “proclaiming him and teaching,” as he writes in v. 29.  This is a specific functionality that God has given me in order to be able to impact the body of Christ.  We all have a specific functionality that is to be expressed in the context of a church family (1 Corinthians 12).  I also consider the fact that there is a general call to meet needs in the lives of others (Luke 10:29-37). So, there come times when I feel a bit “too busy,” and need to begin to sort through some things in light of my call.  I also have a specific calling as a Father and a Husband, as an accountability partner, and a general calling to share Christ with others who don’t know him.  I need to sort things in light of these callings. 

You have callings as well!  How often do you take time to sort through the BUSYness of life and see how everything compares to what God has made you for?  Have you taken time to discover the specific calls God has given you?  Have you been justifying not serving through the church because of all the things life has you entangled with outside of it?  Remember, those things will perish!

So I am going to “clean house” in my schedule to make myself more effective.  You have to trim the vines sometimes to get more grapes!  And God wants us to be fruitful for Him.

Persecution: Coming for the Church?

We had a discussion this morning about the course of direction of our country during our men’s breakfast.  We were all in agreement that we are coming to another important crossroads in our nation, when Christians will be forced to make a hard and difficult choice.  Will we swim with the stream?  Or will we turn our back on the fear of man, and turn toward our God despite what our culture WILL do to us.

It has been so for God’s people throughout most of history.  For the Jews, the choice was whether or not they would fall down before Baal, or the image set up by Nebuchadnezzar.  For the early Christians, would they worship the image of Caesar?  Later Christians might be required to submit to the Pope, or to the Mass.  Others would be forced to recant teachings on baptism.  Still others would be forced to convert to Islam, or be killed by Hindu masters.  All because what Christians believe swims against the tide of they most of humanity runs.

Many are under an illusion that Christians here in the United States will not suffer persecution before Jesus comes back.  I wonder what Bible they are reading.  It has been the normal state for Christians to suffer.  We, here in the US, ARE the aberration of history.  Jesus tells us that we will suffer, as does Peter.  Paul points out that everyone who lives godly in Christ will suffer.  Maybe people who believe Christians in the US won’t suffer for Christ are subtly admitting that they are not living godly.

The more I read the Bible, the more convinced I am that Christians world wide WILL suffer before Jesus comes back.  When I say “Comes back,” I mean for his Church in the “Rapture.”  I do believe that the rapture takes place before the time of “Jacob’s Trouble,” which is often termed by many “The Great Tribulation.”  I don’t see from scripture that the church is destined for that.  But I am convinced that we, the Christians of the United States, will be forced to swim against the tide of culture.  That this will cause us to experience real persecution; that many of us will be arrest and imprisoned for our conscience; our property vandalized (this is already happening); forced to give up our worldly positions either in the courts or by the hands of the executive branch of US government; beaten and lynched by mobs.  

I prayed that God would find us men in the church faithful should that day come.  I do not love that day.  I do not rejoice to see it coming.  I do not want to suffer loss for the sake of Christ. I admit that.  Yet, the only question really is, will I do it willingly should it come?  Will God find me faithful?  Will I bear witness to this culture that Christ is worth more to me than anything this world offers?  

Plan on it, Christian, so you will not be surprised when that day comes. Plan for these things to happen.   Plan to say goodbye, and to be arrested, beaten and hated by the people of this world.  

Jeremiah and American Culture

I have been reading through Jeremiah for my quiet time, and I am struck by how much of what he says really does fit where our country is today.  For instance, in Jeremiah chapter 9 Jeremiah’s oracle discusses the increasing evil of the land.  The people of the land are treacherous slanderers, full of deceit, progressing from evil to evil.  They are full of falsehood (3) and weary themselves in committing iniquity (5).

Consider how often you catch your neighbors in what we call “tall tales.”  It seems like our culture has become full of the notion that “it ain’t wrong unless your caught,” and people take such a maxim into all that they say for and about themselves.  It seems that almost weekly we hear about some government official or major business executive that inflated their resume with false claims of degrees and training that never really happened.  

And slander!  Its the stock and trade of coffee clubs and the media.  From high to low in our culture, any unverified report is fair ground for discussion.  We are more than willing to buy the lies that the people around us tell.  And we always assume its the truth and the full story.

Look at our culture of entertainment.  Jeremiah’s oracle points to how people “weary themselves in committing iniquity,” and “progress from evil to evil.”  Think about it.  The people our culture chooses to entertain us seem to progress further and further into smut.  Carol Alt, a super model of the past, called out Sports Illustrated recently for how far they have descended into pornography.  Major entertainment figures now are permitted, and publicly broadcast TV to engage in behaviors that were once only tolerated in strip clubs!  Looking at you, Miley Cyrus.  Entertainers with little talent have to push deeper and deeper into evil if they are going to make money from a public that is only too fascinated with their antics.

Our culture gets bored with depravity, and moves on the to the next, deeper level.  We are a lot more like the culture of Ancient Judah than we want to admit.  And bear in mind, the next thing that happened for them was judgment.  Not any ordinary judgment either.  It was destruction.  

Read through Jeremiah, and note the similarities to our culture.  Can judgment be too far away for us?