Potholes

In the past, believing God in times of struggle just seemed useless to me. Why? Because no matter how I prayed, nothing changed; bringing me to the point that I wanted to throw up my hands and scream … why God? But then I remembered that we are the ones that limit God by how we perceive Him, as to His greatness, wisdom, mercy and love. So I ask you, how big is God in your eyes?

If I may, I would like to give you a few thoughts that just might encourage you, as you travel this road of life. Most of what I write won’t even be scripture, but I prayerfully hope it will be from God's heart and not mine. All of the words won’t be mine only, but from others I have learned from.

All of us no matter how strong our faith is; come to a point in our life where we question God. That's ok; I really don't think God minds. I'm of the opinion that He wants us to be honest with Him when we come to Him with our questions.

We need to impress upon our hearts the knowledge that God loves us, and to recognize that God is at every moment, intimately present with us. There is no moment when His eye is off us, or His attention is distracted from us, and no moment therefore, when His care falters. He can’t fail us, right. Or can He?

For over a year I didn’t believe that statement because I thought He had failed me. During my daughter Teresa’s first pregnancy, she started having trouble between five and six months, and was checked into the hospital. God gave me some promises from the Word, which I shared with her. Her smile was so beautiful; her eyes were full of trust and faith when I shared them with her. God was with her. Everything was going to be okay. A few days passed, more tests … can’t find a heartbeat! Her baby was dead.

"I have to stop writing here … it still hurts! Sorry … it's hard to write when you can't see through the tears."

What hurt the most was when my little girl looked up at me in that hospital bed, now with so much pain and disbelief in her eyes as she asked me the hardest question I have ever been asked by anyone … "But Dad, what about those promises God gave you?" Now what was I going to say? The only answer I could give her was … I don’t know. Wasn't that a lot of help.

In truth looking back, I have to say even after 20 years, I still don’t know … not about the promises … but whether God gave them to me, or did I just think He did. But now I will say this … God can’t fail … period! I just thought He failed me because He didn’t DO what I wanted Him to do.

The Lord has been asking me lately … Do you trust Me? This question at first put me on guard; now what? But I had to say to Him … yes I do.

God has many ways of allowing us to show that trust. One way is called, the road of life. The vehicle we travel in is called … "faith."

As you travel this road it has many potholes; some God puts in our way, some are from the devil, but most of them are just … "life." Many potholes we can drive around; others we can’t. Some small potholes will give you a little bump and we go on. Bigger potholes can damage a wheel when you hit them. A few people unknowingly, though no fault of their own, drive into huge potholes that wreck their whole faith vehicle, and need someone to help pull them out. That's why I write each week … to offer you a hand if you need it.

Someone once said that as we travel on the road of life, God often permits that we should suffer a little bump now and then to wake us up and oblige us to continue calling on Him. I don't know if that is true, but from my experience, that sounds about right.

Phillip Yancey's book, "Disappointment with God" has helped me better understand my own feelings when I experience some of life's potholes. In it he asks this question …

"How can we reconcile the exalted words of the New Testament with the everyday reality around us?"

He goes on in the book and says … "The kind of faith God values seems to develop best when everything fuzzes over, when God stays silent, when the fog rolls in."

It's like God wants us to trust Him when we aren't in control. Good … we don't know where we are going anyway … but He does. The truth is … we are never in control of our lives … but He is.

Think about another statement from his book. "You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is required." Sorry, but I also find that's true.

Remember what Job said about God? "Though He slay me, yet will I serve Him."

Phillip Yancey says … "Faith like Job's cannot be shaken, because it is the result of having been shaken."

Jesus said in John 14:27 … "My peace I give unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." The word peace used here isn't used any place else in the Bible. It means a quietness in your spirit and soul (in your mind, your thoughts) … a rest.

I pray this peace for you … as you try and drive around life's potholes.


Comments welcome.

Religious Freedom

As I stated in an earlier post entitled … "A True Native American Patriot" … I have decided to post from time to time things that I think might be helpful or needful for believers to know and understand concerning the dangers that face our nation if we still want America to remain … Christian.

At present there is a controversy brewing over the building of a Muslim Mosque close to Ground Zero. I feel building this mosque is just one more attempt to establish a foothold for Islamic (Sharia) Law in America. This must never be allowed.

Barack Hussein Obama has made the case for Islam in America, on the grounds that America's religious diversity promotes the religious freedom of all people and faiths. Yet if introducing Islam into America promotes religious freedom, then why is there no religious freedom in the Muslim world?

Muslims demand religious freedom, yet are not willing to give it to others.

His endorsement of the Ground Zero mosque is another case of Obama standing "with the Muslims" and against Americans of all other faiths, who want the freedom to practice their faith in peace without harassment, persecution and violence from the followers of Islam, who believe that all other religions are invalid, and that all forms of government and law that are not governed by the Koran, have no right to exist.

The man who sometimes occupies the Oval Office in the White House, Barack Hussein Obama, made the following statement … "One of the prettiest sounds on earth is the Muslim call to prayer at sunset." (And he says he's a Christian?)

At a recent Ramadan dinner in the White House (Ramadan marks the beginning of Islam's intolerance for other religions), Barack Hussein Obama proclaimed that he supports the building of the Ground Zero mosque as part of his … "unshakable commitment to religious freedom." This sounds very noble and good, until you ask the question … "Where is the religious freedom in the Muslim world?"

This mosque will be used for Muslims to pray to their non-god "Allah," with one of their daily Muslim prayers from straight out of the Koran … "Guide us the straight way, not (the way) of those who earned Your Anger (such as the Jews), nor of those who went astray (such as the Christians)."

America was not founded on "religious freedom" to worship any evil, satanic faith; but rather on the freedom to worship Jesus, the Son of God as a "Christian nation."

Such then is the case for posting the following article once again written by Dr. David Yeagley, the great-great-grandson of Comanche leader Bad Eagle. Dr. Yeagley is well qualified with a Master of Divinity from Yale University. But his greatest qualification is … He is also a believer in Jesus.


"The Ground Zero Mosque: Not About Freedom"

Religious freedom? NOT. The proposed Cordoba Mosque at Ground Zero in New York has nothing to do with religious freedom. It has nothing to do with tolerance, either. It is simply to honor Muslim murderers. For Americans to "tolerate" such a permanent gesture is truly a Freudian death wish.

Freedom of religion is not something this country was founded on at all. This is a grave error, and a most precarious, pernicious presumption. There is no justification of any mosque, or even cathedral, in the United States of America. And "justification" is a misapplied term altogether. Why?

"Religious freedom" is not a term found in the American Declaration of Independence, nor in the United States Constitution. "Religious freedom," as a term, is a subsequent abstraction, or a theory. It is a proposed principle, found in later commentary. It later developed into a political slogan.

To attempt to read the concept of "religious freedom" into the 1st Amendment is to commit scholarly error. To consider "religious freedom" as a principle, divorced from historical context, is to transcend history with personal application. It is abandon to the subjective, with a certain arrogance of soul.

So what is the historical context of the Constitution, of America’s foundations? Freedom from England. The men who rebelled against the Crown wanted independence, economic and religious, from the Church of England. The historical context of that European socio-political development was the general trend away from Rome, from Roman Catholicism. If the abstract term "religious freedom" ever occurred in the minds of America’s founding fathers, it would have been in reference to the tyrannies of England and Rome.

The fathers of America wished to practice their Biblical beliefs the way they wanted to, without dictation from state authority. They wanted to practice Christianity the way they saw fit. That is the bedrock of America. The economic independence was an evolution of that "protestant" Christian faith.

The fathers had no mind for Islam, Hinduism, Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Voodooism, Satanism, Buddhism, Shintoism, or any other kind of religion in the world. America was not conceived as a haven for non-Christian, non-Protestant religion or culture. To think it was is profound error in interpretation. This is anti-historical, unscholarly, and wholly unjustified and unreasonable. Such a concept leaves America as some multi-cultural buffet, or an international bazaar. The haven idea makes American society worse than a melting pot. It turns American into a big brown bowel movement, ineviscerably impacted with infectious bacteria.

For this conceptual error, we suffer the constipated stupidity of the Ground Zero Mosque issue. Yes, there are many reasons why there should be no mosque at Ground Zero; yes they are all obvious. But they are also subjective, non-historical, and superficial. Bad taste, insensitive, inappropriate; yes, these are all reasons to disallow such a mosque. But the best reason is the unfair, preferential treatment the murderous Muslims received by the defiant, Communist city council of New York–who unanimously voted in favor of the Ground Zero Mosque, while at the same time have nothing to say for the 85-year-old Greek Orthodox congregation who want to rebuild their St. Nicholas Church–which was destroyed by the 9-11 attack. (Just why the Port Authority is cited as the offending body instead of the city council is unclear–but it apparently has to do with money, $20 million, which was due the church, which the Port Authority refuses to turn over.) Why are the Greek Orthodox ignored, and the Muslims coddled and indulged? Because the Greeks pose no threat. They are not murderous. The Greek Orthodox do not bomb American interests, or seek to destroy America.

But again, the concept of religious freedom is not an American foundation, and that such a concept should form the essential justification of the proposed Mosque is laughable. It is the most idiotic, non-historical discussion in modern political discourse.

Those Americans to prefer the Hebrew take on reality (i.e., the Bible) need to be reminded that there is really no such thing as religious freedom. There is one God and one Word. Religious freedom may be a political concept, used originally to justify independence from England and/or Rome and to let Christians practice Christianity in the way they wished, no matter how many different groups of Christians developed different styles of worship. But tolerance never included that idea of allowing murderous Muslims to build shrines to their murderous beliefs and practices.

Tolerance is insulting, deceptive, and suicidal as applied to the Ground Zero Mosque fiasco. The Islamic lust for death has already infected America, and it accentuates the liberal perversions of anti-Americanism. Too much discussion about "religious freedom" is wholly subjective and naive, bordering the inane.

"Religious freedom" is a curse to America. As articulated by the ignorant, and the politically biased, "religious freedom" is a lethal deception.

Written by Dr. David Yeagley … August 17, 2010

Visit his website at … www.badeagle.com


Posted by permission … comments welcome.

I Must Be a Deist

Well, not all the way I guess. A pure deist believes that God created the universe and then abandoned it. I don't believe He has totally abandoned it; it just seems that way most of the time. Maybe I'm just … part deist … about 90%.

The historical Christian view is that God created the universe to operate in the laws of nature that He predetermined. But I also believe there is more to it than that. I believe God is in control over everything that happens in the world either by direct cause from His hand or by the secondary causes that He has already put in nature.

The Bible states in both the Old and New Testament that God works all things …

(Ecclesiastes 11:5) "… you know not the work of God, Who does all."

(Ephesians 1:11) "… according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will."

Worketh means … "to be active" and involved in all things. All means … "all, any, every, the whole thing" … with nothing left out.

Part of being God, is that He must be in total control of everything He created … everything. If there is even one molecule that is not under His control, one tiny little speck running around in God's created universe that He is not in control of … just one … then that means that God is not in total control of what He made. Do you know what that is alluding to? God is not God. If anything is outside of His authority, outside of His control … then He is no longer God over all things … and that can not be.

If God made it, then He owns it. And if He owns it, then He is in charge of it. It's just that simple. (Psalm 24:1) … "The earth is the LORD's, and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein."

The only exception to that rule is … man's will. God gave us a "free will of choice." Good or bad, right or wrong … it's our choice.

Even knowing and accepting the fact that God made the world, owns the world, and can control the world … it sure seems as if many times God must be "on a break."

The deistic view of all this is … God created time, and like the master watch maker He is, created the world as if it was a clock; and then He wound it up and set all things in motion with built-in secondary movements and causes of action; one movement causing a different motion, each with its own effects on the natural scheme of things.

I do agree that like a clock that has been wound up and starts ticking away time, the earth and all of mankind will someday run out of time when God's clock runs down and no longer ticks.

Now here is where I differ from the pure deist. The true deist believes everything works automatically … just as God intended when He spoke all things into existence. The deistic view states that all God did was to set the earth's natural laws in motion like a clock and then … God steps out of the picture … and simply observes and watches everything that takes place in the world. He never intervenes; He never intrudes in man's affairs because God is only an onlooker.

With this view of God, He is absolved of any blame for the catastrophes that happen in life. He leaves man to operate by the dictates of his own heart, with his own free will whether it is good or evil. If the deistic view was 100% accurate, then God would never have sent Jesus … "to seek and save that which was lost."

There are some people who believe just the exact opposite; that God determines everything; that He actually causes wars, accidents, floods, storms and brings sickness and disease … God does it all. They say anything and everything that happens is a direct result from the hand of God as He directs and dictates all movement, both good and bad.

Well … is that all we see; is all this bad stuff the only evidence of what a loving God would do or has already done for us, if for no other reason, to keep man from destroying himself and the world God made for us to inhabit. I don't think so. So … maybe I'm not a full 90% deist after all. I'm now thinking maybe it's more like a 50% deist.

I'm beginning to think God is only an onlooker 50% of the time even yet today; that He steps back a little distance from us, folds His arms and only watches as we struggle seemingly on our own as He observes our walk of faith. The other 50% of the time it looks as if He directs everything that happens to us to fulfill His plan and purpose He has chosen for our lives. I'm speaking about His followers, not the rest of the world.

But the truth lies somewhere in between not doing anything and doing everything.

The biblical view …

1.) As with the deistic view, God has stepped back somewhat, just not all the way to the role of only an observer. God observes, but will intrude into the affairs of man if and when He so chooses … and does He not have the authority and the right to do so?

2.) Many times He is the cause of how things work, directly intervening in our lives unknown to us. He can keep us from the storm or He can send us out into the storm. God may for a season lead His own children into various trials to test the integrity and honesty of their own hearts; and to help them discover any strongholds of sin hidden in their hearts.

3.) At other times the decisions we make may be the result of His indirect influence at work on our lives to bring about His sovereign will. But usually God will let each man, because of free will, make his own decisions … good and bad.

4.) God has endued the will of man with a natural liberty and freedom of choice that is not predisposed to good or evil. Basically … it's our choice.

So … what have I decided about how much control God has on our lives? Let me say it this way …

God, working out all things in His providence … makes use of various means; yet is free to work within those means, outside those means or against those means … at His pleasure. He has a right to give whatever He so chooses, in whatever proportions, at whatever times, and with whatever conditions He pleases, to who ever He pleases. He may therefore give or withhold any or all of His blessings, as He pleases.

My view is this …

"The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want" … more than He gives me.


Comments welcome.

They Were Correct

There is an interesting story in Mark 2:1-12 that I would like to share with you. If I may, I'm going to edit the story into my own words simply because the twelve verses in the old K.J.V. is a little lengthy. Please feel free to read the original version for yourself … in fact anyone who takes the liberty I am taking to transpose Scripture into their own words … you should always confirm what they say with the Word of God.

"When Jesus returned to Capernaum, and the news was spread around that He was in this one particular house, it then filled so full of people wanting to hear the Words of Jesus that even the door was blocked from anyone else trying to enter."

Mark doesn't say that Jesus was preaching or even just teaching, but I assume He was when …

"A man sick of the palsy, carried by four men was brought to Jesus for healing. But because of the large crowd of people in the house; being unable to enter, they decided to gain access to Jesus another way."

Most homes usually had stairs or some other type of access to the normally flat roof that was used for cool sleeping in the hot summer nights. Again I believe this was the case here.

"These four men carry the sick man to the roof and tear a hole in it large enough to lower this man and the pallet or bed he was on down to Jesus."

I can just imagine the noise and debris from the roof falling into the house and stopping Jesus in the middle of His teaching or whatever He was doing at the time. The Scripture goes on and says …

"When Jesus saw their faith, He said to the sick man … 'Your sins are forgiven'. But there were some Scribes there and after hearing what Jesus said … reasoned in their hearts, 'only God can forgive sins.' Jesus knowing their thoughts asked them this question …

Why do you think these things? Is it easier to say … 'Thy sins be forgiven' or 'take up thy bed, and walk.'

And then Jesus says to the Scribes … But so you will know that I have the power to forgive sin … (Jesus then says to the sick man) Arise, take your bed and go home. And immediately he did just that."

Mark ends this story with … "They were all amazed, and glorified God."

Notice Mark says … "When Jesus saw their faith." How do you see faith? Through action taken. When these four men couldn't get the sick man to Jesus through the door; no problem … they just tore open the roof. These men were so confident in believing that the sick man would be healed if they could get him to Jesus, took action and put their faith to work.

This tells me … that there are times when we can spiritually carry (through prayer) a weakened believer; whether weak in spirit or flesh … makes no difference. If we can get them to Jesus … just as these four men carried this man … Jesus can touch them.

Jesus said to the sick man, "thy sins be forgiven thee" pointing perhaps to the root of all sickness in the world … sin.

Jesus said in Mark 2:17 … "They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."

Sin is the greatest sickness that man has. Man in his fallen state of sin has been the cause of all the natural evil in the world which includes sickness and death. Jesus goes right to the source of all sickness, treating the original cause of sickness … sin in the world; giving the sick man first … the healing of his soul and secondly healing for his body.

I am not saying that if you are sick you have sin in your life. I am only saying that the sickness that surrounds us in the world is the result of the fallen moral state of man that began with Adam and Eve choosing sin. Sickness is just one result, one part of God's judgment pronounced upon the sinful world as a whole.

It was a Jewish belief that no sick or diseased person could be healed until all their sin was first blotted out. Jesus forgives the sin first, and then heals the body of this sick man. This belief appears to have been founded on Psalm 103:3 …"Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases …"

Pardon in this case … proceeded … healing.

This Jewish belief is also aligned with the instruction in James 5:14-15 … "Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him."

Is James saying … forgiveness first, healing second? Which is the most important?

Here in this setting in Mark, Jesus had been talking to the Scribes who mistakenly thought He was a mere man. They were partly right; for although He was a man, He was God as well as man. Jesus did not cease to be God by becoming a man; nor did He lose any of His power as God while in the flesh as a man … including the power to forgive sin and to heal the sick.

One could question why, since the sick man came only to be healed, that Jesus first declared … "Thy sins be forgiven thee."

One reason may be … Jesus used this occasion to show the Scribes that He, as God had the power to forgive sins. Had he stated … "Thy sins be forgiven thee" … without the proof of this miracle, the Jews would not have believed it. With the proof of the healing of palsy, no one could doubt that He also had the power to forgive sin. The pardon of sin and the healing was for the sick man; but the fact that he was healed in front of the Scribes was for their benefit since they had been reasoning in their hearts as to whether or not … Jesus was God.

One other observation in this story; Mark states that … "they were all amazed, and glorified God." Some people say the word "all" does not include the Scribes, but rather only the common people that followed Jesus. I'm not too sure of that.

The Bible states they were … "all" … amazed. This could also include the Scribes because this was early in the ministry of Jesus. The Scribes hadn't made up their minds about Him yet; they were just getting to know Him; they were trying to figure out this man Jesus who claims to forgive sins. They said … "Only God can do that."

They were correct.


Comments welcome.