I am still walking on that elliptical machine I told you about a few years ago.  With another measureable loss of vision lately, it becomes more and more the only safe way to exercise—you don’t step in any holes or trip over limbs or vines on an elliptical machine
            I stepped off one day a couple of months ago and looked at the read-out.  It informed me that I had “walked” three and a half miles in 30 minutes.
            “Wow,” I thought.  “Not bad.”  And then I thought to myself, “Wait a minute.”  Thirty years ago I only managed five miles in 48 minutes JOGGING.  That’s over nine minutes a mile.  And thirty years later I am supposed to believe I beat that rate WALKING?
            “Hmppph,” I muttered with my new perspective, “If that’s true, I’m a Martian.”
            Looking at myself through the eyes of cold clear logic, I cut the read-out figures almost in half.  Maybe I managed two miles—maybe.  I don’t have much faith in that read-out now.
            But—can I be just as clear-headed when I examine my heart?  Can I see with cool logic that my words and thoughts give me away?  For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks, Matt 12:34.  Can I see the flaws, the weak spots, the chinks in my armor?
            Believing the best about myself may seem “healthy. “   It may feel good.  It may give me a boost, and surely it’s more important to be encouraged than depressed, isn’t it?  Spiritual buoyancy is not the way to Heaven.  In fact, it will lead you the other direction quickly. 
              I need to see clearly.  Deluding myself about my faults won’t fix my soul any more than walking two miles will burn the same calories as walking three and a half.  And one is a whole lot more important than the other.
 
Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise, 1Cor 3:18
 
Dene Ward
 

Today's post is by guest writer Lucas Ward.
 
            This begins a series on "Love of the Brethren."
What does it meant to love my brethren?  What does it entail?  "Do I really hafta?" (said in the best whine possible).  The logical place to start any study of love would be 1 Cor. 13:4-7.  In fact, this is an even better place to begin than some might realize, because this passage is NOT talking about romantic love, but brotherly love.  It is often read at weddings and if a man endeavors to love his wife this way and his wife reciprocates the effort they are guaranteed a long and happy marriage.  The context, though, is Paul telling the brethren at Corinth to stop fighting over who has the best spiritual gifts and learn to work together.  Right in the middle of that he gives us this definition of love:
"Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."
            The first thing you should notice is that love, as defined by the Bible, is not an emotion.  Love is not warm, mushy feelings, nor is it wild, passionate desires.  Love, as defined by the inspired Apostle, is action.  Love is what I do, or refrain from doing, for the one I love.  If I say I love someone but I am not patient and kind, but, rather, arrogant and rude toward them, then I don't really love them.  This is not the way the Bible describes love.  According to Paul, I can have warm, mushy feelings towards someone and not love them, while disliking someone else and still loving them.  This is how we can follow Jesus' command to love our enemies (Matt. 5:44).  I don't have to like them -- if they are my enemies and "spitefully use" me, I probably don't like them -- but I can love them by treating them as described above.
            A second thing to notice about this list is how often patience of one kind or another comes up.  "Love is patient" or long-suffering, as older translations say.  It is not irritable but does bear all things and endure all things.  That's four out of fifteen descriptions.  How much of loving someone is just putting up with them?  Honestly, you people married 30 or more years, how much of the reason you are still together is you've learned just to put up with each other?  Sure, you are fond of each other and do nice things for each other and rely on each other, but if you hadn't learned to overlook certain things over the years, you wouldn't still be together, would you?  If that is true of a marriage, wouldn't it also be true of my relationship with my brother in Christ? Be patient.
            Finally, "believes all things, hopes all things" means that I don't automatically assume that everything my brother says or does is mean-spirited and meant to hurt me.  Instead, I believe the opposite:  that my brother would never intentionally hurt me or undermine me.  "He must have misspoken."  "I must have misunderstood his meaning."  We are going to give every possible benefit of the doubt.  If more Christians believed and hoped all things about their brethren, there would be a lot less fighting in the church. 
            Love of and for the brethren is a concept much discussed in the New Testament.  Learning to live the concepts in 1 Cor. 13:4-7 is a good way to begin.
 
Phil._1:9  "And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and all discernment"
 
Lucas Ward
 

A couple of times when I was young my family, together with my aunt, uncle, and cousins, shared the rent on a house in New Smyrna Beach for a week.  It was an ordinary cement block house, probably built in the 1940s, two bedrooms, one bath, a living room and kitchen.  What made it worth renting was its location—right on the beach, which was not nearly so crowded in those days.  Every morning we four girls were out building sand castles and playing tag with the waves, floating on the undulating water just past the sandbar or diving below to play shark attack on one another.  We all smelled of suntan lotion and seaweed, coconuts and salt, and only came in for lunch and an afternoon of card games and board games during the worst of the heat, and were back out again in the evening when the sea breeze cooled enough to give us a shiver after once again dunking ourselves in the brine.
            Our parents got the two bedrooms, but we girls didn’t mind sharing the floor in the small living room, the gray, white-streaked linoleum tiles covered with quilts, the floor beneath crunching with a little grit despite all the sweeping our mothers did every day.  You live on the beach, you WILL have sand.  At 8 I was the oldest and usually the last one asleep.  No air conditioning in those days meant the windows stayed open wide and I loved listening to the roar of the ocean.  Over and over and over, the steady pounding of the surf gave me a feeling of security.  I did not have to guess if the next wave would roll in; all I had to do was wait for it, and eventually it lulled me to sleep.
            Fast forward to a time thirty years later.  We were camping on Anastasia Island, a beach 60 miles further north.  The state campground was still small back then, only one section just a few feet off the dirt trail to the beach, acres of palmetto groves separating it from the bridge to the city streets of old St Augustine.  The boys had their own tent, and as we lay in ours once again I listened to the surf crashing onshore, just as it had all those years before.  Over and over, as steady as a ticking clock, as a piano teacher’s metronome, as a heartbeat on a hospital monitor.  All those years and it had not stopped.
            And then another twenty years passed and we two spent a weekend on Jekyll Island.  This time we were too far from the beach to hear it in the night, but after a wonderful meal at the Driftwood Bistro we stopped on the beach for a walk and there it was.  The wind whipped around our legs and plastered my hair across my face, gulls screamed over us in the waning light, and the waves were still coming in, again and again and again, just as they have since the dawn of time.  They never stop.  Some days they may be rougher than others.  Some days the sea may look almost calm.  But check the water’s edge and that lacy froth still creeps onshore in its never-ending cycle.
            Thus says the LORD, who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar— the LORD of hosts is his name: ​“If this fixed order departs from before me, declares the LORD, then shall the offspring of Israel cease from being a nation before me forever.” Jer 31:35-36
            Jeremiah tells the people that God will restore his nation and establish a new covenant in the verses just preceding those, a covenant in which their sins will be “remembered no more.”  He uses the stability of the natural phenomena that God created as a guarantee of His promise.  Only if the sun stops rising, if the moon stops shining, if the waves stop rolling in, can you discount my promises, He says.  That guarantee counts for all of God’s promises.  He never changes, we are told.  He is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, so yes, He will keep the promises He has made to us of redemption, of protection, of spiritual blessings and a final reward.
            Are you a little blue today?  Has your life been upended in a way you never expected, in a way you can hardly bear?  The sea God made is still roaring.  Those waves are still rolling in just as they have for generation after generation after generation.  The white caps you see are the same your parents saw and your grandparents and your great-grandparents on back to your earliest ancestors.  And God is still faithful to His people.  Close your eyes, listen to that perpetual roar, and breathe a little easier tonight.
 
I am the LORD your God, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar— the LORD of hosts is his name. ​And I have put my words in your mouth and covered you in the shadow of my hand, establishing the heavens and laying the foundations of the earth, and saying to Zion, ‘You are my people.’” Isa 51:15-16
 
Dene Ward
 

My mother taught me when I was a teenager, that if you make the bed the minute you get out of it, it's done in 5 minutes and it was no big deal.  Marrying a man who thinks that making the bed is ridiculous got me out of that habit, but I still get it done eventually, and usually before the morning is half over.
            I've heard it from many:  why make the bed when you are just going to get back into it that night?  Well, for one thing, I like for things to look tidy and making a bed makes a bedroom 90% tidy all by itself.  For another, my bedroom is visible from our dining room table, which is usually where we are entertaining guests.  For another, when you leave it unmade, all those sheets that you put your face on all night long are open to catching whatever dust falls on them—and I have a dust mite allergy.           
            But as for that reason most people give, "why make it when you are just going to get back into it?"  Let's think about that for a few minutes.  Why wash your clothes when you are just going to wear them again?  Why wash the dishes when you are just going to eat off of them again?  In fact, why cook dinner when you are just going to get hungry again?  Doesn't work so well with all those things does it?
            What I am afraid of is that attitude will bleed off into something really important, like why try to overcome a temptation when you know you are just going to sin again?  I hope you can see that one really doesn't work.  Overcoming once will make it easier to overcome the next time, and then the next, and then the next, and someday you may find yourself sinning less often.  Isn't that what you are hoping for?  Not to mention, God always gives you a way out.  Try working your little argument on him after he has gone to all that trouble, and his Son has died in order to help you win those battles over Satan.
            No, it isn't a sin not to make your bed, not even if your mother said it was, but be careful with the arguments you use for the simple things.  Don't let it affect the things that really do matter.
 
For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world— our faith (1John 5:4).
 
Dene Ward

Our grandsons stayed with us for several days in late May.  We had a wonderful time, but it was a bit different than it has been in the past.  They are now old enough to take care of things we always had to do before, like bathe and dress them, feed them, help with brushing and flossing teeth, and keep an eye on them practically every minute.  Now they do all the personal hygiene and care for themselves.  They even remember their own medicine—which didn't keep me from checking to make sure it was taken.  We still spent a lot of one on one time with them, which is the point, isn't it?  Keith had a homemade slip and slide which required him running a hose continuously over a long piece of plastic on the slope between the two sheds, and I let them help me cook—cookies, waffles, and yeast rolls.  We played the prophets game, as you have already heard about.  And I was the official judge of the Construx car building contest.  (Kind of touchy, that one.)
            Still there were times that we had things that required our attention and they needed to keep themselves busy.  For one of those times I taught them solitaire.  Not the one on the Kindle or the computer, but the one using real cards.  They ate it up and played for literally hours one afternoon while I did the laundry and cooked dinner.  Once I was free again I sat down to see how they were doing.
            "Good," one said.  "We've been experimenting."
            A little careful questioning told me what kind of "experiments" they were doing.  You and I would call it "cheating."  When every third card left them stuck, they changed it to every second card, and finally every single card, in an attempt to keep the game going.  Another time instead of putting a red five on a black six at the "bottom" of a stack, they lifted the stack and put a red queen behind the black jack at the top.  They thought it worked a whole lot better that way because they won more often and got more enjoyment out of it.
            "You know you're not allowed to do that, right?"
            "You’re not?"
            "Nope.  It's against the rules."
            "Oh.  We didn't know that."
            After that, they cut out the "experimenting."  They understood the concept of "rules" and "cheating," and that whether you liked it better or not was not the issue.  The question is:  are you playing solitaire or are you making up a whole new game you like better?
            I know a few people who need that lesson.  They decide that they don't like the way we worship, or the way the church does its business, or the life a Christian is expected to live.  So they do some "experimenting" to find something they like better.  Somehow it never crosses their mind that God ought to have a say in this, that He ought to be able to decide how He wants to be worshipped, how His kingdom ought to run, and the way His servants ought to live.  Some of them may not have thought about that before, that God has the authority to tell us these things and expect us to conform to His rules.  In fact, I have even heard one brother denigrate the idea of authority at all, as if it were rules people made up instead of God.  I worry for that one.  There are too many illustrations in the Old Testament of how God reacted to people who were presumptuous enough to change His commands and do as they pleased.  God has not changed because we live under the New Covenant now.
            So let's set the record straight here.  God is the Supreme Authority.  All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to Jehovah. All the families of the nations will bow down before Him, for dominion belongs to the Lord and he rules over the nations (Psalm 22:27,28).
            When it comes to the kingdom, He has given that authority to His Son.  And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all (Eph 1:22-23). 
            Jesus gave his apostles authority to tell us how to live and worship.  And Jesus came and said to them, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ​Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age (Matt 28:18-20).  That you should remember…the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles (2Pet 3:2).
            You may not like the rules.  You may find other ways of doing things that you like better.  But authority is authority and it won't go away just because you want to "experiment."  My little guys understood that and they followed the rules the rest of their stay.  It actually made winning a lot more satisfying than changing the rules so they could win.  And that's only for a game.  Trying to change God's rules is no game.  Learn them, follow them, and then enjoy the win.
 
For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, Vengeance is mine; I will repay. And again, The Lord will judge his people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Heb 10:26-31).
 
Dene Ward

More than once I have been outside weeding and accidentally pulled up a fistful of thorns.  Usually it’s a blackberry vine, though stinging nettles are not far behind on the list.  Either one makes for pain and blood loss for at least a little while and I try hard to look a little closer before the next pull.
            Not too long ago I saw a picture of a plant called “Crown of Thorns.”  It’s an import to our country, a type of cactus, but one that is notoriously picky about its surroundings.  You can only grow it in Zone 10 or higher, but once you get it going, it’s nearly impossible to kill.  It is heat and drought tolerant.  Long after other houseplants would have died from neglect, it will even bloom.
            The photos I saw made me think of the crown of thorns we are familiar with as Christians, the one the soldiers wove and placed upon Jesus’ head.  I doubt it was the same plant, but it looked as I imagined that one would, a thick stem covered with long sharp spines.  I cannot even imagine trying to weave the thing without leaving yourself a bloody mess.
           
            We sing a song with these lyrics by William Featherston:

1. My Jesus, I love Thee, I know Thou art mine;
   For Thee all the follies of sin I resign;
   My gracious Redeemer, my Savior art Thou;
   If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ’tis now.
2. I love Thee because Thou hast first loved me,
   And purchased my pardon on Calvary’s tree;
   I love Thee for wearing the thorns on Thy brow;
   If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ’tis now.
3. I’ll love Thee in life, I will love Thee in death,
   And praise Thee as long as Thou lendest me breath;
   And say when the death dew lies cold on my brow,
   If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ’tis now.
4. In mansions of glory and endless delight,
   I’ll ever adore Thee in heaven so bright;
   I’ll sing with the glittering crown on my brow,
   If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ’tis now.

            I missed it all my life until Keith pointed out the thirds lines of verses 2 and 4.  “I love thee for wearing the thorns on thy brow,” and, “I’ll sing with the glittering crown on my brow.”  Jesus wore a crown of thorns so I could wear a crown of glory.  If it was anything like those plants I saw, it was a bigger sacrifice than one might ever have thought, but the symbolism is profound because everything he went through that horrible night was for me.  And you.  Even that prickly crown.
            Now, as his disciples, what sort of crown am I willing to wear for others?  Can I, as the Corinthians were chided to do, give up my liberties?  Can I concede a point even if I know I am right because in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter?  Can I stop an argument instead of continuing one?      Can I let someone else have the last word?
          Can I give up my time and convenience for the sake of someone who needs an encouraging word?  Can I skip a meal to visit the lonely?  Can I miss a ball game to hold a Bible study?
           Can I stay up a little later to pray a little longer?  Can I turn off the TV to spend some time in the Word?  Can I make teaching my children about God a priority instead of something we just try to fit in when we can?
            None of those things will cause the kind of bloodletting those thorns did, but if I cannot even do those paltry things, how can I even hope to wear that “glittering crown on my brow?”  If that makes me uncomfortable and ashamed, good.  That’s why we sing those songs.  They are to teach and admonish, not produce feel-good pep rallies.
         When I am weeding in the garden, I do my best to avoid the thorns.  Maybe in life, I should be out there looking for a few to wear.
 
And the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head and arrayed him in a purple robe, John 19:2
I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing, 2Tim 4:7-8.
 
Dene Ward

Did you ever notice that the higher you advanced in the educational system, the quieter and more attentive the students became?  Finally, as we approached those last few years of college when the majority of our classes were in our chosen fields, discipline problems virtually disappeared.  We had matured to the point that we understood our need for the things we were being taught.  Maybe that explains a lot about those who choose to miss Bible studies or simply choose not to study the Bible at all, in spite of claiming to believe it.
(from Growing Toward Spiritual Maturity by Dene Ward) 

For everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil (Heb 5:13-14).

We are well over a thousand now—and counting.  I have been writing up these little things so long I can’t watch something happen without thinking the phrase above.  In fact, more than once Keith and I have looked at one another after some oddball event and said it in unison: “There oughtta be a devo in that.”
            “Go to the ant, thou sluggard.  Consider her ways and be wise,” Solomon wrote.  “Look at the birds,” Jesus said, and, “Consider the lilies.”  Both of them taught valuable lessons from the things around them.  The parables were nothing more than every day occurrences with analogous meanings.  Parables were not uncommon in the Old Testament either, and many of the prophets taught lessons with the visual aids of their own lives or actions.  Hosea and Ezekiel come instantly to mind.
            Even the writers of the New Testament used athletic contests, farming truisms, and anatomical allegories to teach us what we need to know about our relationship with God, with one another, and in our homes and communities.  Telling stories is a time-honored and perfectly scriptural way of teaching God’s word.
            In fact, maybe if we started looking at the world that way, at the things that happen in our daily lives as if they had some meaning beyond the mundane, some deeper spiritual use, it might just be that our lives would change for the better.  It might be easier to see where we need to grow, maybe a place we need to make a one-eighty before we get much further down the road.  There is something about watching a dumb animal and thinking, “I didn’t even have that much sense,” that will straighten out your attitude.
            If I have done nothing else for you in all these years, maybe I have accomplished this.  Maybe you have learned to look at the things around you and say, “There IS a devo in that—I need to make a change.”
 
But ask the beasts, and they will teach you; the birds of the heavens, and they will tell you; or the bushes of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the LORD has done this? Job 12:7-9.
 
Dene Ward

It's been a couple of years since I shared the Life of David game with you, a board game I made up and used with my children, my young Bible students, and now my grandsons.  That's not the only one I made.  This past spring my grandsons had their first time playing the Major Prophets game.
            First, let me explain this:  this is not about the five books we call the Major Prophets, Isaiah through Daniel.  This is a game about the four major literary prophets—Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel—and three of the major nonliterary prophets—Nathan, Elijah, and Elisha.
            Second, this is not a wind around the trail start to finish game.  This one is built along the lines of Monopoly, a repetitive rectangle with squares all around the perimeter.  You play for a certain amount of time or until someone reaches a certain point total, however you wish to do it.  My grandsons and I play for a half hour, after which the one with the most points wins.  And, when we hit the half hour mark, we finish a round so that each person has the same number of turns.  Each square around the board contains one prophet's name or a place that is important in one of their lives, scattered at intervals.  Only the names are repeated here and there; the places are not.
            Third, unlike the David game, you do not have to know much to start playing.  You learn as you play, as long as you keep control and don't let them try to rush from one person's turn to another's.  You have to explain the stories as they come up, and the children must listen as you go, so YOU need to know your prophets' lives even if they do not.
            In the center of the board are places to put stacks of card (each the size of one-third of an index card) for each of the prophets.  On these cards are events in the prophets' lives or events they prophesied.  For example, in the stack of Nathan cards you will find, "Go to Jerusalem.  Tell David the story of the ewe lamb, 10 points," and when a child draws that card it is up to you to tell that story.  Or you might find in the Elisha stack, "Go to Shunem.  A wealthy woman there has built a room onto her house for you to stay in when you travel through.  10 points."  Or you might find in the Jeremiah stack, "Go to Jerusalem.  King Jehoiakim burns your book.  Lose 10 points."  Each time you tell a story or explain an event, go over pertinent details carefully, and repeat them at least once.
            Also in the center of the board is a stack of questions.  If they have listened carefully to all the cards, which they will eventually hear again and again, they will be able to answer them when they land on a "?" square, several of which are also scattered around the perimeter of the board.
            And finally, you will find in the middle of the board the really bad places they might have to go should they pick up that particular card:  the Lion's Den, the Miry Pit, Prison, and the Cave of Mt Horeb.  At any time you might draw a card from the Daniel or Jeremiah or Elijah stacks and be sent to one of those places.  The only way to get out is to answer a question correctly.  Instead of rolling, they will choose one from the question stack.  If they get the right answer, then they come out one square (three squares lead out from each place), receive the points on the card, and the next turn they roll as usual, finding their way back to the outside perimeter trail.
            Just as with the David game, this is not rocket science.  And it must be painfully obvious that I am not any kind of artist at all, but it has never bothered any of the children who played these games.  You can do this yourself.  This one does require more work for you than the David game did.  Not only do you have to know your prophets, but then you have to make the cards for each prophet and the question cards, besides drawing the board itself.  Click on the gallery in the left sidebar to see what it looks like, but you can use and adapt  this idea for any number of things you wish to teach your children or your Bible class.  You will have also taught them that Bible study can be fun and interesting as well. 
 
I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him (Deut 18:18).
 
You can find the article on the David game in the book Two Little Boys or the July 2018 archives at July 12.  Also a picture in the gallery at left.

Dene Ward

A lot of folks declare her presumptuous to even make such a request, but most of those people aren’t any better than she was when you come right down to it.
            Salome, the wife of Zebedee, mother of James and John, came to Jesus in Matthew 20 asking what seems, at first glance, to be an audacious favor.  Grant that these two sons of mine are to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left in your kingdom, v 21.
            Before you think to take her to task, read also Matt 27:56, Mark 15:40, and John 19:25.  If you take a moment to match up those women standing at the cross with the writers’ various descriptions of them, you will find excellent evidence that Salome may have been Jesus’ aunt, Mary’s sister.  When you sift through other facts it makes excellent sense.  If James and John were his cousins, no wonder they were in that special inner circle, and Peter would have been included because he was their close friend and business partner.  If John (the disciple whom Jesus loved) was indeed the youngest apostle, as seems likely, the “baby cousin” could have had a special place in Jesus’ heart from his birth, and it certainly makes sense that Jesus would put his mother, John’s own aunt, into his care after his death.
            It also means that Salome was Aunt Salome, and asking her nephew for this favor was not that much of a request, especially if these two cousins were his only relatives among the twelve.  Why shouldn’t they be his first and second “vice-presidents?”
            Then there are those who will fuss about her misunderstanding of the kingdom.  “Tsk-tsk,” it was all about the physical with her. Wasn’t it all about the physical with just about everyone, including his closest companions?  How many times did they fuss about who was the greatest among them, even the night Jesus was betrayed?  Even after his resurrection when he had been “speaking about the kingdom” for forty days, Acts 1:3, they questioned him just moments before his ascension, “Will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” (v 6).  Obviously, they still thought in terms of a physical kingdom.
            Was it only once that he had to resist the urge of the people to make him king, John 6:15?  I doubt it.  How many times did he have to say, My kingdom is not of this world, John 18:36, or, Behold, the kingdom of God is within you, Luke 17:21?
            Even the early Christians had to be reminded that the kingdom was spiritual; that the things that might have counted in a physical kingdom were of no value in the spiritual domain.  Wealth didn’t matter; race didn’t matter; gender didn’t matter; status didn’t matter, Gal 3:28; Col 3:11.  Our weapons are spiritual, not of the flesh, but mighty before God, 2 Cor 10:4.  The greatest in the kingdom is the servant of all, not the master.  Yet they still had trouble.
            The mainstream religious world today has the same problem.  Still carnal minded, still “immature” as Paul calls it in I Cor 3, they expect a physical kingdom for a limited amount of time on a physical earth.  What is that but the same old notion the Jews had, who laughed at the idea of a humble man with uneducated followers ever conquering anything, much less the world?  What is that but the disciples placing grandiosity ahead of humility?  And what is that any more than a mother wanting the best for her sons?  When you read the gospels, you can almost hear Jesus sigh in frustration, “How long must I bear with you?”
            We have exactly the same problem today when we expect nothing but physical blessings as a Christian.  How can it be right for me to suffer illness and loss, “after all I’ve done?”  How can it be right for me to face a severe financial setback from the relative wealth I have grown accustomed to or, horror upon horrors, to live in poverty “when I’ve been faithful to you Lord?”  Once again we are asking God to restore a physical kingdom with physical blessings.  Our shallow-mindedness has made it impossible to see that the spiritual is far more important, and that, I am afraid, will make us unsuited for that spiritual kingdom.
            But God is patient.  Jesus did bear with those apostles a little longer.  However, notice this—they finally came to grips with the reality of a spiritual kingdom, enough so that they gave up everything, including their lives.  Jesus will bear with us for awhile too.  Just don’t wait too long to figure it out.
 
For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Whoever thus serves Christ is acceptable to God...Rom 14:17,18.
 
Dene Ward