I don’t know how many times in my life I have heard people say the Law
of Moses was a matter of form religion only, that the heart did not matter to
God one way or the other.  How anyone could think this of a religion whose mantra seemed to be Thou shalt love the Lord your God with all
your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might (Deut 6:5) is
beyond my comprehension. Yet all of us have blind spots where what we have heard all our lives keeps us from seeing things right under our noses.
            
Here is a list of passages to read at your convenience in the next week.  It will amaze you, stun you, and forever more settle the matter.  God expected his people to live the Law every day of their lives, not just on the Sabbath.  He has always wanted their hearts.  Isa 1:11-17; 29:13; 30:8-14; 58:13,14; 66:1,2; Jer 7:8-10; 8:8,9; 22:3,4; Eze 33:13, 30-33; 34:1-31; Hos 6:4-6; 10:12; 12:6; Amos 5:11-15; 8:4-10; Mic 6:6-8.  
   
Yes, form was important to God.  It showed exactly how much faith and devotion his people had to obey him in even the smallest details.  As God told Moses, See that you make things according to the pattern which was shown you in Mount [Sinai], Ex 25:40.  Jesus even said the Pharisees were right to be careful to follow the Law exactly:  Whatever [the Pharisees] bid you, do and observe…for these things (tithing even their herbs) you ought to have done, Matt 23:1,23.  But he went on to say that the heart was even more important:  You have left undone the weightier matters of the Law, justice, mercy, and faith.  God expected their obedient following of the pattern of worship to match an obedient life of righteousness, coming from a pure heart of faith, love, and mercy.  He flatly told them that none of their worship would be accepted otherwise.
             
Why do you think Jesus was so angry with the scribes and Pharisees?  They prided themselves on knowing and keeping the Law, but they seemed totally ignorant of those scriptures listed above.  He quoted several of those passages to them (Matt 9:13; 13:14,15; 15:8,9), ending with, Go learn what this means, the ultimate insult to a scribe, a “teacher” of the Law.
             
Those Jewish leaders were still under the Law at the time.  Do we, who have a better covenant, a better priest, and better forgiveness, think God will expect any less of us?  God demands more than simply following His law to the letter. 
He expects a life of service from us, Inasmuch as you have done this unto the least of these my brothers, you have done it also  unto me, Matt 25:40.  Let’s not sit on our pews congratulating ourselves because we are following all the rituals correctly, if we have left so much else undone throughout the week.  As Peter reminds us in 1 Pet 4:17, judgment will begin with us.  We had better make sure our hearts are ready for it.
 
I hate, I despise your feasts, and I will take no delight in your solemn assemblies.  Yes, though you offer me your burnt offerings and meal offerings, I will not accept them, neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts.  Take away from me the noise of your songs, for I will not hear the melodies of your viols.  But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream, Amos 5:21-24.

Dene Ward


  

You can find a million diets out there, but there is one thing none of them can get around:  your calorie intake must be less than your calorie outflow if you want to lose weight.  That doesn’t mean it is easy or that other things do not play into it. Just ask a middle-aged woman about the difficulties of losing weight, and you will get an earful.  I can vouch for those “other things” myself, having gone through middle age and now arrived at “old age.” It’s true—several million women could not make this up and it not be valid.  Be that as it may, you still must count those calories and burn up more than you take in.

Keith and I do more calorie counting these days.  Our activity level has decreased due to illness and just being too old and tired to do as much.  That
means we have to be much more diligent than before when Keith was riding his bike 50-75 miles a week and I was jogging 25-30 miles a week. Something about being in your 60s slows you down a bit.

The other morning I was making a light version of baklava—half the calories and a third the fat of the ordinary Greek pastry.  I had phyllo dough leftover that I needed to use up and a brand new jar of raw honey. Such was my excuse that day—but at least I had found this lighter version.  After I poured the honey
syrup over the baked dough, Keith came along behind me with a spoon and started scraping the pan.  In between licks he said, “This doesn’t count, right?”  Oh, if only…  

I heard a chef say one time that he had to work-out about two hours a day
to burn off the estimated 6000 calories he took in just tasting the dishes he
made before sending them out to his customers.  I get it.  My local brethren have so many potlucks (at least two a month for some of us), plus company meals and family meals, wedding and baby showers, that I am sure most of my extra calories come from that tasting.  No way will I send something out there that I don’t know is good. And if I took diet food to a potluck I might just be excommunicated.

Yes, those calories count.  And so do those little bitty sins—you know, the little white lies to keep yourself out of trouble, the little bits of gossip that you just can’t seem to keep to yourself, the pens and paper clips you “borrow” from work, that side job you did for a little extra cash that doesn’t get reported the next April.  We seem to think that because we assemble on Sunday mornings and don’t do the big bad sins—the ones in the Ten Commandments—that nothing else counts. The fact that our language makes people think less of the body of a Sacrificed Savior never seems to cross our minds.  
 
The Treasury of Scriptural Knowledge states that the Jews believed that “he who observed any principal command was equal to him who kept the whole law.”  Their example was idolatry.  If you didn’t worship an idol, you were good to go!  The little stuff didn’t matter.  All you have to do is read about Jesus’ dealings with the Pharisees in the gospels and you can see the results of that doctrine.

First century Christians must have had the same problem.  “He who keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it,” James said in 2:10.  The context? People who said they had faith but didn’t take care of the sick and needy, or visit the fatherless and widows, or welcome the strangers to their assemblies.  The same God who said, “Do not kill,” also said, “Do not commit adultery,” he reminds them.  All sins count in God’s eyes.

This is not new with God.  Ezekiel said in chapter 33:12,13, “The righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver him in the day of his transgression…if he trust to his righteousness, and commit iniquity, none of his righteous deeds shall be remembered, but in his iniquity which he has committed, therein shall he die.”

Yep, all those calories count, no matter how small the spoon or how tiny the taste.  And so do all those sins.  The only cure for the problem is to quit sampling the goods.

Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 5:19

Dene Ward

My floor is finished. I am thrilled to have my house back to myself after three weeks of sharing it with the installer.  He was a nice guy.  My dogs loved him.  He brought them stale doughnuts every morning.
             
The morning after he finished I stepped outside to an empty carport and
the sound of silence where there should have been the click of claws and pad of paws on concrete, rushing to greet me.  I started up the drive and there they were—sitting next to the gate, gazing down the road, obviously pining for the man and his doughnuts.  
          
I called them back.  Chloe came more or less eagerly, but Magdi stopped every ten feet or so and looked over her shoulder toward the gate.  I had to call and clap my hands every so often to keep her coming my way.  
 
This has happened for several mornings now.  I may pet her, and do it often, but I don’t give her doughnuts.  She has sold her soul to a new master just for a doughnut!

What do we sell ours for?  We may even think we have not.  Magdi still lives on our property.  She still comes when we call.  She still allows us to medicate and feed her the healthy stuff, but all the time she is looking over her shoulder toward the gate, yearning for a doughnut.

Are we still showing up at the right places, saying the right things, even acting the right way most of the time, but secretly looking over our shoulders, longing for something else?  We needn’t even bother trying.  No man having put his hand to the plow and looking back is fit for the kingdom of God; remember Lot’s wife, Luke 9:62; 17:32.

I cannot explain to the dogs that if they lived on a steady diet of doughnuts they would actually die of malnutrition, not to mention the woes that come with obesity.  They just know that a nice man gave them something that tasted
good.

We should be smarter than a couple of dogs.  We should have the sense to know that the things we sell our souls for are not worth the end result—not wealth, not power, not social acceptance, not a physical high that only lasts a moment, not the satisfaction that comes with vengeance or simply putting someone in his place.  
 
Whatever it is we are selling ourselves for, however smart it may appear
to the world, however good it may feel, it might as well be doughnuts.  

Then Jesus said to his disciples, If any will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.  For whoever will save his life shall lose it, and whoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.  For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?  Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?
Matt 16:24-26.

Dene Ward

I was standing before my 4th grade class while the teacher took out the canned goods my parents had sent for the food drive.  We had always participated before, but never before had I brought such treasures.  All my fellow students oohed and aahed as the teacher pulled out beef stew, chicken noodle soup, Beanee Weanees, Chef-Boy-Ar-Dee, along with some fruit and applesauce.  I clearly had the best offering of the bunch, at least in the minds of children.  Even the teacher was impressed.  The only thing that confused me was her writing my name on each can with a big black marker, as she did for each student.  We took them to the shelves lining the back wall of the pink portable school room “until they’re needed.”

That same day our history lesson suddenly jumped forward a few hundred years to World War II.  The teacher said she had a surprise for us. “In the war, soldiers had to wear identification called ‘dog tags.’  While we study this section, you will get to wear your very own dog tags just like they did.”  And there they were, my own shiny silver dog tags hanging from a chain, with my name, my daddy’s name, our address and phone number (Cypress 3-3363, if I remember correctly), my birth date, and something odd up in the right hand corner that no one ever explained, O+.

I suppose the strangest part of this whole World War II study was the “You are there” experience.  The teacher said she wanted us to know what life must have been like for those poor people who lived in the war zone, so from then on, whenever she shouted, “Plane!” we would all dive under our desks with our hands clasped behind our necks until she gave the “all clear.”  Far from being frightened by all of this, we were thrilled.  As it happened, a couple of television series about the war were running that year, and it was like playing a part in it.  None of us had ever been touched by the horrors of a real war, so it was just a big game to us.

After a few days, our war study ended.  We were instructed to leave our dog tags at home, and, for some reason, the poor people no longer needed the food, so we all took our cans back home.  Why none of us questioned any of this is beyond me.  It was a simpler time, I suppose, when children just did as they were told without asking why.

I gradually forgot about that odd experience, but when I was a teenager studying American History I suddenly figured it out.  On October 14, 1962 American satellites had just discovered Soviet missiles carrying nuclear warheads on the island of Cuba, and the Cold War was on the brink of becoming the hottest war ever fought. 

We lived on the west side of Orlando, about halfway between Cape Canaveral and Strategic Air Command at MacDill AFB in Tampa, two prime targets.  Should we be attacked while in school, the dog tags identified us until a family member could be located, the blood type expedited care if we were injured, the food fed us a few days if it took that long to find us a place to go, and all that “war” practice was to keep injuries at a minimum—from the normal things anyway.  There was not much they could do about radioactive fallout.

I cannot imagine how it must have felt to send your child out alone in times like that, but, as I recall, no one stayed home.  We sat every day with our dog tags jingling as we jumped up and down to the shout of “Plane!”  My parents went to work every morning and so did the neighbors.  Life went on, but we took some pretty elaborate precautions—it would have been foolish to do otherwise.

Things are not really that different now.  We’re not afraid of bombs falling at any moment, but there are much worse things out there to harm our children.  Are you taking any precautions?  Do they know who they are and where they belong?  Do they know what to do in case their faith is attacked?

Send them out well-armed.  The doctrines of Satan, most notably humanism, lie between the lines of practically every school textbook. Look through them the first day they cross your threshold. “Values clarification” is just a fancy way of saying “situation ethics.”  You need to know the teacher who is teaching it, and her own moral code.  Talk to your children every night about things they have heard from teachers or friends.  Start doing this their first day of school.  If you wait till they are teenagers, it is too late.

The Cuban Missile Crisis lasted just a few days, but look how carefully the parents prepared “just in case.”  You have a crisis today that lasts far longer.  You need to prepare even more than those parents did.  The “just in case” is a whole lot more terrifying.

Give ear, O my people, to my law; incline your ears to the words of my mouth.  I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings of old, which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us.  We will not hide them from their children, telling to the generations to come the praises of Jehovah, and his strength, and his wondrous works that he has done…that the generation to come might know them, even the children that should be born, who should arise and tell them to their children; that they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments, Psa 78:1-4, 6,7.

Dene Ward

Pearl Reid Skirvin was born on October 12, 1889.  The daughter of an Oklahoma City real estate tycoon, she never knew anything but high society.  She married George Mesta, a Pittsburgh machine tool magnate, and was widowed after only 8 years.  She never remarried, never had children, and became heir to both her father’s and husband’s fortunes.  Somewhere along the way she changed the spelling of her first name and became Perle Mesta, an influential hostess and political fundraiser in Washington DC.  And somewhere else along the way, she was labeled “the hostess with the mostes’.”  As a young child I had heard of her myself, but her glamorous parties were things far beyond my family’s imagination, much less actual attendance.

I remember my first attempts to be a hostess.  I had watched my mother feed guests for 20 years.  She seemed to do it effortlessly, not that she didn’t work at it, but it never seemed to stress her out.  Me?  I was always worried that my recipes wouldn’t turn out, that I had chosen something no one liked, and that the house wasn’t clean enough. 

For several years I kept a file with an index card for each family we had invited for a meal.  I listed the dates they came, what I had served, and at the top a list of things I knew were disliked.  Roger Pink hated liver, I remember—not that I would ever serve specially invited guests liver, but you can see how concerned I was with being a good hostess.  These days you get pot luck, and I don’t worry so much any more.

Being a good host or hostess had almost sacred connotations in the scriptures.  Inns were few and far between.  Everyone depended upon the people they encountered in their travels to put them up, and those people knew they would someday have similar need, so they readily offered the hospitality.  You cannot read Genesis without seeing the importance of hospitality—a host laid down his life for his guests.

So the metaphor in Proverbs 9 was an apt one for the times.  Two hostesses seeking guests, one named Wisdom and the other Folly.  A quick reading will only obscure some of the finer points.  This is too short a venue to touch them all, so sit down some time with a pen and paper and make two columns.  Go through the verses yourself and find the contrasts between the hostesses, their offers, and the guests who take advantage of the proffered hospitality.  Then figure out which side you are on. 

But three quick points: Wisdom offers a great feast—“she has slaughtered her beasts; she has mixed her wine,” v 2.  Folly offers only bread and water, v 17, but notice how enticing she makes it sound:  Stolen water is sweet and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.  Not only is her meal scanty, it’s forbidden.  If the only reason I want to do something is because someone else told me not to, the proverb writer says I “lack sense,” v16, as do all of Folly’s guests.

Wisdom offers her feast to all, but specifically to “those who lack understanding” and are wise enough to realize their need.  Folly offers hers to those who are “going straight on their way,” v 15.  They already think they know what they need to know.  They may indeed be simpleminded, v 16, but they don’t realize it.  Going to someone to ask for advice is beneath them, unless of course it’s someone who will tell them what they want to hear. 

Wisdom tells her guests that they must break off from bad company, v 7-8.  Folly, on the other hand, loads her guest list with the worst company of all, and bids the fool to come join them, but he does not know that the dead are there, that her guests are in the depths of Sheol, v 18.

You won’t find a more chilling metaphor, but if you insist on ignoring good advice, trusting in those who scorn the word of God, and whooping it up with the Devil, you will find yourself exactly where Folly holds her parties, consorting with the spiritually dead, and killing your own soul in the process.

Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived, 2 Timothy 3:12-13.

Dene Ward

Among the other things we have dealt with recently is the discovery that I am allergic to dust mites.  This is not just a small nuisance.  We found out after I ran a low fever for 6 months, accompanied by horrible headaches. Finally a CAT scan showed that one of my sinuses had been infected for so long that the lining, which should not even show up on a scan, did in fact show up as a gray wall nearly half an inch thick.  The doctor operated, ripping out bone and tissue to open up what had become a sealed incubator for anaerobic bacteria. 

So we began vacuuming upholstery, washing sheets with a special de-miting solution, and zipping up mattress and box springs in special casings.  The doctor also suggested I hire someone to dust for me.  That’s not going to happen, but I am much more careful when I do the dusting myself.

Keith has also decided that we need to rip out the carpet and put down new flooring.  Yes, the doctor says, good idea.  Too bad she can’t write it out as a prescription we can deduct from the taxes next April.

The money is not the only problem.  Do you know what a mess this place is in while we are having this done?  Do you know how many things we need to go through and toss, and how many others need to be picked up and moved, or stacked and restacked as progress is made across the house?  How about a freezer filled with several hundred pounds of garden produce and meat?  How about an antique grand piano?  Will I ever again be able to find a certain book in all these bookcases?  Just thinking about it stresses me out, and I have an idea that we have not thought about every problem that will arise.

This is exactly the process a person goes through when he makes Christ the new foundation in his life.  Those of us who have grown up “going to church” have no real comprehension of what they are facing when we talk to our friends and neighbors.  We too often show no sympathy for the upheaval conversion will cause.  In fact, the disruption in their lives may be the biggest hurdle they must cross, and the least we can do is be understanding.  Too many times we dismiss those poor people, who so desire to have the peace we do, as “not worthy” because they cannot make an instant decision to change themselves, and then do so overnight.  “They were not truly converted,” we proclaim.  Shame on us.

Let’s not turn into hecklers instead of helpers.  I have seen too many new Christians lose their way because the people who should have been guiding them were moving too fast for them to keep up, and simply grew impatient, leaving them behind.  Putting in a new floor is a nuisance.  Putting a whole new foundation in one’s way of life is a monumental change that deserves help and respect.

And just perhaps, the reason we do not understand is that our foundation is not what it should be.  Is it habit and comfort, or is it commitment?  Maybe I need another kind of new floor as well.  Do you?

According to the grace of God which was given unto me, as a wise master builder I laid a foundation, and another builds thereon.  But let each man take heed how he builds thereon.  For other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ, 1 Cor 3:10,11.

Dene Ward

What busy mother doesn’t love a one dish meal?  Whether a casserole, a Dutch oven, or a crockpot, that dish satisfies all the nutritional needs of the family, leaving little mess and full tummies. 

Soups and stews, pot roasts, and pot pie may be the stuff of one pot wonders, but there are many others in the pantheon of gustatory delights that I have used.  If I have time, I may add some homemade bread, or maybe a salad, but those are redundant when the meat, starch, and vegetables are already included inside that single beautiful piece of steaming kitchenware.  I have a particular fondness for a half Swiss steak-half steak Creole concoction, braised in a tomato-y, herby vegetable sauce, dolloped with cheese grits.

I was reading several passages the other morning when the thought crossed my mind that God’s Word is the ultimate one-dish meal for the soul. 

It creates faith at the very outset of your relationship with God, Rom 10:17. 

It instructs and enlightens, 1 Cor 10:11; Eph 3:3-5.

It gives you a scolding when you need it, 2 Tim 3:16,17, and encourages you when you need a boost, Rom 15:4.

It reminds you when you have forgotten, 2 Pet 3:1, and comforts you when the pain is overwhelming, 1 Thes 4:18.

It can reveal your heart if you are brave enough to listen, Heb 4:12, and defeat the enemy if you wield it faithfully, Eph 6:17.

The Word of God is indeed a one dish meal, satisfying all the spiritual needs of those who partake.  The world will tell you it’s irrelevant, it’s out-dated and obsolete, that things have changed too much for it to be of any use to you at all.  Yet Jesus quoted an Old Testament that was just as far removed from him in time as the New is from us as if it were as pertinent as the latest newsflash.  For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God, 1 Cor 1:18.

From the feast of Psalm 119 to the quick power snack of passages like Rom 1:16, the Word of God will strengthen your faith, purify your heart, and save your soul—“words whereby you shall be saved,” the angel promised Cornelius, and sent those words with a preacher.

Keep yourself healthy.  “Eat these words,” God told Ezekiel in Ezek 3:1, just like your mother telling you to eat your vegetables.  She knew what was best for you, and so does He.  

Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called by your name, O LORD, God of hosts. Jeremiah 15:16

Dene Ward

Until we got Chloe, we had always practiced what pet owners know as “self-feeding.”  You fill up the feed pan and a few days later, when you notice that it is finally empty, you fill it up again.  Magdi always just ate what she needed to eat and no more, like most animals do.  In spite of the fact that she was an athlete who worked off an incredible number of calories every day, she was never tempted to overeat.

Then came Chloe.  We kept up with the “self-feeding” once she started eating adult food because we wanted to make sure she got enough.  Magdi had a tendency to claim the feed pan as hers and guard it whether she was eating or not.  But we should have realized when we stood over Chloe and looked down that she was getting plenty to eat.  Instead of a straight line from her shoulders to her hind quarters, there was a significant bulge on each side.  When we took her to the vet, the doctor strongly recommended a low calorie diet.  Self-feeding does not work with Miss Piggy dining in the doghouse.

In just a couple of weeks of measured daily feeding she slimmed down. She was much more active, running with Magdi across the fields as they played, and tearing up the ground to greet Keith at the gate when he came home.  She even leapt into the air chasing a bee a few weeks afterward and managed to get all four feet off the ground a foot or more.  We no longer have a piglet with a cold wet black nose and a wagging tail.

God practices a sort of spiritual self-feeding.  His word is available to us any time we want it.  He has given us elders, wise leaders who see to our more formal spiritual meals, and who take that responsibility seriously.  But we can reach into the “pantry” any time we want and snack to our hearts’ content.  In fact, the shame is that instead of looking pleasantly plump in a spiritual sense, too many of us look like we have been on a fast.  When I have labored over a meal for several hours and hardly anyone comes to the dinner table, and those few just pick at their meals, I get a little miffed.  Don’t you suppose God does, too?

Now, more than any other time in history, and here, more than any other place in the world, we can study the Bible any time we want to.  Where is our appreciation of the providence of God?  Where is our hunger for the meat of the word?  Have we filled ourselves up with the empty calories of pop culture and the simple carbs of modern philosophy to the point that we have no room for real food? 

Take a moment today to examine what you are taking into your spirit, what you are filling your soul with, and determine to make a change in your spiritual diet.  Jesus called himself the Bread of Life.  Aren’t we interested in that life at all?

Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, as it is written, He gave them bread out of Heaven to eat.  Jesus therefore said unto them, Amen and amen, I say unto you, It was not Moses who gave you bread out of Heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread out of Heaven.  For the bread of God is that which comes down out of Heaven, and gives life to the world.  They said therefore to him, Lord, evermore give us this bread.  Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of Life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes on me shall never thirst, John 6:31-35.

Dene Ward

I suppose it’s because of our age.  Or maybe it’s because Keith recently lost his mother, and it has only been two years since I lost my father. Between us we have only one parent left.  Suddenly, we are the ones at the top of the escalator.  No one stands between us and eternity and it is indeed sobering.  All things being equal, we will be next to step off on the upper floor.

Maybe that’s why we have spent a lot of time lately looking through old photographs.  What did we find?  Dogs and cats from puppy- and kitten-hood to grizzled muzzles and bent old bodies, baseball teams, science projects, birthday parties, and Christmas presents; old friends and their young children, who are now grown up like ours; school pictures of the boys, all the way to college graduation; even a few pictures of a couple of kids in 70s polyester, freshly married and far skinnier than I remember.  Occasionally we looked at a faded picture of a toddler and said, “Are you sure that isn’t Silas?  Or Judah?”  Those always made us smile.

We also found pictures of this place of ours from back when we first arrived.  A before and after picture probably wouldn’t do justice to the monumental amount of work we have done.  We have turned an old watermelon field into a homestead.  Sometimes I wonder what will happen thirty or forty years from now.  Will someone else enjoy my jasmine vines and eat my muscadines?  Will they exclaim over the profusion of volunteer black-eyed Susans and the heat-hearty crepe myrtles?  Will they build a better house up under the oak grove in the middle of the property, just west of the fire pit?  I used to dream of the time we could do that ourselves, but it will obviously never happen.

One thing that surprised us the most was the live oaks.  When you see something every day you don’t notice how much it grows.  I have always thought of those trees as huge, but now they are twice the size around they were 28 years ago, and many feet taller.  If I hadn’t looked at those pictures, I might never have noticed.

Sometimes we do that to our brethren.  We tar them with a brush based upon their behavior decades before and never give them any credit for improving.  Can there be anything more discouraging to a brother in Christ? 

Think today of your various brethren and how you would describe them to someone else.  What exactly are you basing that description on?  Something that happened yesterday, or something that happened twenty years ago?  Are you giving them any credit for growth?  “Judge righteous judgment,” Jesus reminded his disciples in John 7:24.  This poor judgment isn’t just a careless mistake of no consequence; it’s a matter of righteousness. 

Maybe today would be a good time to reassess our opinions of our brethren.  Throw out the old photographs and take a new one.  Maybe—just maybe—they will do the same for us.

He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous:  both of them alike are an abomination to Jehovah, Prov 17:15.

Dene Ward

Because of double sessions in the later years, I missed them in high school, but I did have one year in a small town where grades 7-12 were packed into the same school.  Every Friday afternoon during football season, our three afternoon classes were each cut 10 minutes short so we could meet for the final thirty minutes of the day in the gym, cheer with the cheerleaders and their shaking pompoms, clap along with the band until our eardrums nearly burst and our hearts beat in rhythm with the bass drums, and get a gander at those beefy young men—16, 17, 18 years old, bigger than even my own daddy.  As a chubby, frizzy-haired 12 year old, it was the closest thing to a riot I ever experienced.  We all yelled and screamed and applauded and hooted at renditions of the opposing team mascot.  We were going to win, we were sure, and we screamed, “We will WIN, WIN, WIN, WIN,” till we all went home hoarse and hyped up on school spirit.

Sometimes we won, sometimes we lost, but we all showed up again Monday morning, bleary-eyed and less than thrilled to be in our first classes of the day, a long week ahead of us and all thought of football and “Our Great School!” a distant memory.  Pep rallies have their place, but if emotion is all that keeps the spirit going, it isn’t much of a heart is it?

Elijah found that out on Mt Carmel.  Everyone pictures this great contest as his ultimate victory, perhaps the biggest in the prophet’s life.  They forget to turn the page in their Bibles. 

Yes, the crowd saw an amazing miracle.  The prophets of Baal called all day to a deaf god made of metal.  They tried to get his attention with loud cries, with dancing and with self-mutilation.  No one answered. 

Elijah on the other hand, made the request as difficult as possible, soaking the sacrifice and the wood and filling up a trench with water till it overflowed.  Did you ever wonder what those poor three-year-drought-stricken people thought as all that water ran off onto the ground?  But none of it mattered when Jehovah sent fire from Heaven that licked it all up in a flash, and consumed the sacrifice.

Then the pep rally began in earnest.  The people fell on their faces and said, The Lord, he is God.  The Lord he is God, 1 Kgs 18:39.  Can’t you hear it now?  The chant probably continued on, over and over and over, louder and louder, as Elijah called for the prophets of Baal and slew them all.  The exhilaration he felt must have been amazing.  “We did it, Lord!” he must have thought.  “Finally your people realize that you are the one true God and they will worship you again.”

Turn the page. 

Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, "So may the gods do to me and more also, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by this time tomorrow." Then he was afraid, and he arose and ran for his life...1 Kings 19:1-3.

Our assemblies have a small element of the pep rally in them.  It is good to cheer one another on, in the same way the men of Antioch laid their hands on Saul and Barnabas, prayed, and sent them on their first preaching trip, Acts 13:1-3.  It is wonderful to encourage a weak soul who has come to us for help.  It fills the heart to sing praises to God and to commune with one another around the Lord’s Table.

Yet Paul does not spend much time on that emotional aspect of our assemblies in 1 Cor 14, about the clearest picture we have of a first century assembly.  Instead, his constant reminder is “Let all things be done unto edifying,” v 26.  It is, he said, the only thing truly profitable, v 6.  Paul understood that the pep rally aspect of an assembly wouldn’t last beyond the echo of the amen, but good solid teaching would carry one through life.

If your idea of “getting something out of the services” is that excited, heart-pounding feeling that comes with emotion instead of deeper insight into the Word of God through good teaching and hard study, you are stuck in high school.  Mature people can remain motivated without the hype.  The understanding wrought by hours spent with God in quiet runs deep in their hearts. It keeps them encouraged when times are rough, wise when Satan does his best to deceive, and controlled when temptation pulls every string and pushes every button.

Pep rally religion doesn’t last, but the Word of God in one’s heart abides forever.

Let us know; let us press on to know the LORD; his going out is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth." What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes early away...For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings...If you abide in my Word, you are truly my disciples,  Hosea 6:3-6; John 8:31.

Dene Ward