The Sound Word

Gun control, health care, abortion, euthanasia; all topics that have little in common except their ability to almost immediately polarize and divide a crowd. In the same manner, Christianity is facing internal polarizing division as well. In the case of the Christian church, the division is not new. But with the ever increasing liberalization of the world, and the greater number of Christians who choose the liberality of the world over the biblically dogmatic moral absolutes, Christianity is facing some real issues, most especially in America. Sean Hollen, Sr. Pastor of Harbor CC in Aberdeen/Hoquiam, WA. once shared this analogy with me. He said that the church is supposed to be like a boat. The sea of water that the boat floats on is the fallen, sinful world. The purpose of the boat is to float ON the water. By staying on the surface of the water, where she is designed to be (by her designer), she will fulfill her intended purpose. What a great analogy. Digging into that of that a...

Last Sunday for our time of worship in church, we sang Joy to the World. It has been spinning around my head ever since. Christmas time IS about the birth of Jesus, the Christ, the Savior of the world. Why should this not be the joyous season of the year? And why should all earth not receive her King? The answer, because receiving the King means we must give up ourselves. But in a world of instant internet gratification, and a population blinded by consumerism, it is easier to fool ourselves into rejecting what it true, so that we can live a life that is false, and yet, oh so gratifying. It should come as no surprise that the King is rejected. Some reject simply as a matter of rejecting all things that represent authority. When the King not only wrote the laws from the foundation of the earth, knowing that they are all fulfilled by grace and love… AND, that only the King can rightly judge a man's heart – THAT my friend is authority. Some reject out of spite to the King, or to other...

Seems that in my devotional time the Lord has given me a focus this week. Healing. Preparing for, living through, walking with God during – our trials. While God's promises are there (what we shared Monday), and while we may not have had the perfect earthly example of how to do this (something we talked about yesterday), we know that we have a heavenly Father whose promises are true and righteous. Still, it is often very hard to remember to lean on Him when we need to. We need to train ourselves to remember that we can always rest in, and lean on Him in our times of need. In doing so, I also feel that it is very important that we seek growth from our experience. God does not allow things to happen in our lives that cannot be used for good, despite how bad things look at the time. A favorite Christian artist of mine is Sara Groves. She is sort of a mix of folk with biblical inspiration. There have been artists like this in almost every generation, but few that carry such a biblical ...

I was reviewing some of my pictures from our recent trip to Israel today, and I'm still just utterly amazed that we can literally walk on roads, streets and sidewalks that were made over 2,000 years ago, and some of them even older. With each new city we went to, no matter how ancient, there was always another city or civilization built on top of that one. This eventuality continues until either that city dies to be buried in the rubble of history until someone stumbles upon it and digs it up again, or a modern city is built right over top of it all. In the villages that we looked at there were easily seen archeological evidence of buildings built right on top of the foundations of those that had come before them. This is what got me thinking. Our lives, each and every one, are living examples of just that. Lives, new and modern, built on the foundations of those that came before us. In some cases, our lives include self-generations where we destroy what we were living on in order ...

If you want to get people's attention when you share a devotional or personal thought with someone, here's how to do it: "I have a confession to make". And, that's where I'm at. I have not even shared this with my wife yet simply because I have no idea where the Lord is taking this… or me. But what I can tell you that she does know ~ is that God is alive and working in our church body, perhaps like we have never seen before. When faced with hard times, and tough decisions, people who love the Lord and seek to serve Him band together in prayer and sacrifice. I can see and feel this happening. Sometimes God has to show us the end of the rope so that you know you really need to hold on to Him with all of your spiritual might. So here's my confession: My life has been changed by a sloppy wet kiss. Legalism is not me, and it is not becoming. I abhor legalism and God has given me the nose of a hound, and the eyes of a hawk to seek it out. But we must carefully b...

Sometimes I have a specific spiritual experience. In this experience I come to have a sudden realization of the total pile of garbage that I really am. As a friend has told me time and time again, that you realize that you are nothing more than a wart on the backside of a hog. Seriously, when you truly recognize the gospel, and the 'bigness' of God, you realize that you are nothing. Outside of a biblically foundational world view, this experience can be startling and hurtful. By worldly standards, this can be devastating, and entire lives are spent trying to 'recondition our psyche' to recognize our self worth and to grow our self esteem. But as a Christian, soon after this realization strikes, the real struggle begins That struggle is to use the experience or realization that God has allowed me to have (or has actually engineered) and to use it for good. We struggle against using it for our benefit, vs., allowing the enemy to use it to his advantage by bringing discour...

Paul once said, "I have become all things to all men". Since those words have been spoken, they have been used to mean a great many different things to a great many different people. For the most part, this verse is referenced to show how a Christian must be willing to interact with the people of the world in order to take the gospel of Jesus Christ to them. As they should. For some, this verse is sighted to show that if we as Christians are going to be effective in reaching 'this generation', we need to ' do as they do ', look as they look, and act as they act. Is this what Paul really meant when he wrote those words? Let's work off the assumption that we all agree that the lost of the world need to be reached with the gospel. It's a good place to start. Christians are called to evangelize. "Go" unto the world, cannot be done from your desk, from inside your church, or even from your computer. You have to go and rub elbows as they say, and ...