What has happened to create this doubt [doubt from hidden conflicts] is that a problem (such as a deep conflict or bad experience) has been allowed to usurp God’s place and become the controlling principle of life. Instead of viewing the problem from the vantage point of faith, the doubter views faith from the vantage point of the problem. … The world of faith is upside down, and in the topsy-turvy reality of doubt, a problem has become god and God has become a problem." (Guinness, "God in the Dark," 151–152) 
            "'I am the LORD your God. … You shall have no other gods to set against me' is not only a principle of correct theology but of sound psychology. Whatever assumes in our lives a practical importance that is greater than God will become god to us. And since we become what we worship, to let an unanswerable problem become god to us is the surest way to guarantee that life will be characterized at its heart by defeat." (Ibid., 152, ellipsis in original)

Os Guinness, God in the Dark

As winter turned to spring this year, we noticed all the usual signs.  The azaleas spilled white, red, and all shades of pink and purple blooms under every live oak in sight.  The dogwoods created white spotlights in the forests when a sunbeam broke through the gloom.  The robins made brief rest stops on their return migration north, and hummingbirds buzzed our feeder, empty since last October, letting us know they were back and ready to be fed.  Oak pollen sifted down in a yellow powder all over the car.  The temperature and humidity rose as did the gnats, flies, and mosquitoes out of the swamps and bogs.  And Chloe started shedding.
            Magdi always sheds individual hairs as she rolls in the grass, as she scratches, as we pet or brush her.  But Chloe sheds in clumps.  Whenever she rose, she left behind wads of red fur on the grass or carport, reminding me of the floor of a beauty salon after a haircut.  Every time we scratched her head, the clumps stuck to our hands and clothes, or floated off with the breeze as if we had blown red dandelion puffs.  Before long she looked like an old sofa with large threadbare patches.  Eventually all her winter coat fell off—everything except a two inch fringe running down her hind legs.  Now she looks like a canine cowgirl wearing chaps.
            But you know what?  She is still Chloe, our one-year-old Australian cattle dog.  She still loves to eat.  She still nips at Magdi’s heels.  She still chases butterflies and grasshoppers, and plays tug-o-war with ropes and rags.  She still has a sweet little face that melts my heart.
            When we become Christians, Paul tells us we should lay aside the old self, Eph 4:22, crucify ourselves, Gal 2:20, and become new creatures, 2 Cor 5:17.  Too many times we do what Chloe did, shed the outer self only.  The inside stays the same.  We still consider ourselves before others, we still give in to every temptation, we still excuse our poor behavior instead of grabbing hold of the power of Christ to really change who we are.  We are still exactly the same person; we just have a new haircut.
            Changing is hard—it does not happen overnight.  But how many of us can examine ourselves honestly today and see a change from that day we claimed to make a commitment?  How long has it been?  Even one year should show a significant change for the better, and how many of us have twenty, thirty, forty years or more under our belts and still make the same mistakes on a regular basis?
            Don’t just sweep some hair off the floor today.  If you haven’t already, start making a real change in yourself.
 
I beseech you therefore brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.  And be not fashioned according to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God, Rom 12:1,2.
 
Dene Ward

I have never been so disappointed in a book.  The author comes well-recommended by readers of his earlier work, Twelve Ordinary Men, a book of essays about each apostle.  So when I picked this one up, I expected more of the same.  I did not get it.

Since I have made a lifelong study of the women of the Bible, I first used it sporadically, reading the women I was studying in particular when they intersected those in this book.  As luck would have it, that meant I only read the essays on Mary and Hannah, two of the four I subsequently deemed acceptable when I finally sat down to read it all.  By "acceptable" I mean more right than wrong.  The other two were Anna and Mary Magdalene.  In fact, Mary M almost got an even higher rating because of the excellent job Mr. MacArthur does in debunking many of the wrong beliefs about her.  On the other hand, his view of her possession by seven demons left me shaking my head and saying, "Huh?" 

I was especially sad to see scriptural errors in the book.  When he correctly states that Isaac was born when Ishmael was 14, then says that he was weaned at 2 or 3, so Ishmael was 14 at that time, I had another head-shaking moment.  In fact, I had quite a few in the whole Sarah essay, which eventually garnered a "NO" next to it in the table of contents.

The larger problem I have with this book is the theology he tries to cram in where it does not belong.  Women who pick up a book like this, especially with the subtitle "How God Shaped Women of the Bible and What He Wants to Do with You," are not looking for a treatise on original sin or the direct operation of the Holy Spirit.  They want something practical, something they can use every day as they face their own particular trials or their own individual searches for meaning in their discipleship.  They do not need lessons on Calvinism, which is what the essays on Eve and Lydia are all about.  As someone who is not a Calvinist, they left me out in the cold.

Let me say this however:  the Introduction on God and the Bible's view of women is outstanding.  If it weren't for all the Calvinism, it would be worth the price of the book alone.  So, if you find it in a bookstore, stand there and read it.  Take notes if you have pen and paper.  It is that good.  But when I have only 4 "yeses" next to essays, along with four "nos," only two "Oks" and one "maybe", I am not sure you should be wasting either time or money on it.

Twelve Extraordinary Women is publilshed by Nelson Books, a division of Thomas Nelson Publishing.
 
Dene Ward

I bet you have all used them sometime in your life, maybe even every day.  Leo Gerstenzang, who was born in Poland on June 3, 1892, invented the cotton swab.  He sold them under the name "Baby Gays."  We know them as Q-tips, but did you know that the Q stands for "quality?"  And despite doctors' warnings, I bet most of you stick them in your ears.  The doctors may not like it, but sticking a spiritual Q-tip in your figurative ears is a good idea.
           Jesus once made a statement that has always made me flinch.  After the parable of the sower, when listing all the various soils and what went wrong with each hearer, he added, as Luke records it, Be careful therefore, how you hear, 8:18.  In a society big on blaming everyone but ourselves for our problems, this is truly one of the biggest.  Unlike the early church, which seemed to thrive on helping each other overcome problems with confessions and exhortations, we seem to think that no one has the right to tell us anything that might even slightly indicate that we might need to change.  Or we “wear our feelings on our shirtsleeves,” as the old saying goes, so we can be offended at the least provocation.
            Jesus makes it plain in this passage that how I take what people say to me is entirely up to me.  It only makes sense when you think about it.  If I had no control over my reactions to what others say, then it would be to my advantage for people to say hurtful things to me, wouldn’t it?  In fact, getting my feelings hurt would be the ideal way to go.  Then I could be angry and strike back with no qualms at all. 
            I could ignore the rebukes others offered for my sins as long as I felt insulted, and could keep doing them, couldn’t I?  But Paul says in Rom 2:6 that God will render to every man according to his deeds, not according to how someone corrected me.
            I could ignore the one who tells me I am wrong about what I believe if I thought he had evil motives and bad intentions, couldn’t I?  But Paul also says of those who preached with bad intentions, What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed and therein I rejoice, Phil 1:19.
I could hear false teaching and not have to worry about checking it out, right?  But Jesus said in Matt 15:14, they are blind guides and if the blind guide the blind, they both fall into a pit.
            So here is my obligation:  Listen to what others say, and evaluate it based upon truth, not upon how they say it, who they are, and whether or not I like them or their teaching.  Judgment Day will not dawn with three groups of people, including a group who “got their feelings hurt,” or “didn’t like the preacher,” or “were provoked,” and because of that did not do what they should have done.
            There will only be two groups:  the ones who did right and the ones who did not.  Let’s get out those Q-tips and clean out our ears.  Be careful how you hear.
 
He who corrects a scoffer gets to himself reviling, and he who reproves a wicked man gets himself a blot.  Reprove a scoffer and he will hate you; reprove a wise man and he will love you.  Give instruction to a wise man and he will be even wiser; teach a righteous man, and he will increase in learning, Prov 9:7-9
The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but he who is wise listens to counsel. Prov 12:15
 
Dene Ward

A long time ago, when Keith preached for a small country church, he and I used to do our visiting on bicycles.  With two toddlers aged 3 and 1, we each had a child seat over the back wheel of our bikes and off the four of us would go for an afternoon or early evening of making the rounds to our elderly or ill brothers and sisters, or to make new contacts in the rural community whenever someone moved in. 

We rode sometimes as far as five or six miles one way.  We learned the roads far better than we would have by car.  The traffic on the highways was scarce so we could easily avoid the potholes.  We learned to use the center of the dirt roads.  You simply couldn't plow your way through the thick white sand on the corners and edges.  We also learned why lime rock roads are often called washboards.  Talk about vibrations—our teeth were still chattering a half mile after we turned off of one.

We found another good reason to avoid the edges of the roads—snakes!  More than once one of them jerked back from the road and slithered further into the grass it had been just about to leave.  Whenever we passed a flattened rattlesnake or moccasin in the road, we gave a little cheer.

And we also learned about wind.  I was reminded of it the other day when Lucas called and told me his experience with his bike and the wind.  It goes like this.  You are having the greatest ride of your life.  You feel great.  Your legs seem to fly on the pedals.  You can up the gears with impunity and virtually zip down the road.  Then you turn around to head back home.

Suddenly you understand why the ride out was so easy.  You are headed into a wind that had formerly been at your back.  You pedal harder in lower gears.  Your calves and thighs burn.  You begin to huff and puff.  Sometimes you wonder if you are making any progress at all.  And it takes you half again longer to get back home than the ride out.

When I see someone trying to navigate the trials of life without God that's what I think of—pedaling against the wind.  I cannot imagine facing problems without God.  What's the use of it all?  You can't count on help from anyone because, like you, they are all in it for themselves.  You don't believe that anything good will come from it.  You are pedaling into a headwind so strong you will be lucky to even stay in the same place instead of being blown backwards.  Who will listen to your cries?  Who will hold you up when things get even worse?  And why did it happen to you anyway?  Nothing makes sense.  And sooner or later, even if you get through this one, another problem will rear its ugly head and there you go again.

But with God on your side things are different--the wind is at your back.  It may still be a rough ride.  Life can deal you some bad moments.  The French have a phrase:  c'est la vie.  Such is life.  You can't get through it unscathed.  But with God behind you, you know you have help.  You have someone to lean on, to talk to, and to count on.  Because you have His Word in your heart you can make better decisions.  Because you pray you can feel calmer and more content.  Knowing that He will send help through your brothers and sisters, through Providence, through his Holy Spirit, and because you believe He will answer your prayers, you can face the impossible and come through it far better than you might have otherwise.  You know there is a reason—be it learning or growing stronger or refining your soul, you know you will be better on the other side of this affliction.

Are you riding with the wind, or against it?  If you don't have that relationship with God, if you don't know Him through his revelation to us, and if you never bother to talk with him unless you want something, maybe you are headed in the wrong direction.  Just because you sit on a pew, you aren't necessarily on the right road.  It's easy to get bogged down in the sand corners.  Just because you were once baptized into the Lord's body, you aren't necessarily a part of it now.  There is a snake out there just waiting to strike at your ankles.  You need to turn that bike around.  He wants to help you, but He can't as long as you keep riding against the Wind.
 
Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. (Isa 40:28-31)
 
Dene Ward
 

Sometimes the craziness people come up with, both scholar and layman, amazes me.  Yes, the Bible is the inerrant Word of God and must be followed to the letter, or why bother at all?  But God did spend over a millennium trying to communicate with us in our language, exactly the way we use language, so that we could understand exactly what that Word means and follow it.  And guess how we communicate?  We use idioms.  We use hyperboles.  We use all sorts of figurative language every day.  Yet still people think that every single word in the Bible is meant to be taken literally and ignore obvious figures to the point that entire convoluted false doctrines can come from it.
            Here is a simple example:  And there was one Anna, a prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher (she was of a great age, having lived with a husband seven years from her virginity, and she had been a widow even unto fourscore and four years), who departed not from the temple, worshipping with fastings and supplications night and day (Luke 2:36-37).
            We could spend a lot of time on those two verses alone.  We could talk about the family Anna came from, and their obvious devotion to God, a devotion that sometime in the distant past caused them leave their property in the northern kingdom and travel south at probably great loss.  We could talk about the difficulty translating her age and marriage so that we really are not sure if she was 84 or whether it had been 84 years since she became a widow—not really as far-fetched as you might imagine if you do some research.  But let's just concentrate on the last couple of phrases:  who departed not from the temple, worshipping with fastings and supplications night and day. 
            Many would have her living at the Temple and doing nothing else in her life.  But look at the things she did "night and day."  I don't have to be a Greek scholar to know this:  if "night and day" means 24/7, she would not have lasted more than a few days because one of the things she did "night and day" was fast.  What applies to fasting applies to the rest.  She simply made a habit of fasting.  Not every single day all day long.  What does an exasperated mother mean when she says of her teenage son, "All he does is play video games?"  See?  We use the same sort of language all the time.  (See what I just did?)
            So this good woman made a habit of going to the Temple, of worshipping God with fasting and prayer.  We can do the same thing, except our temple is the body of Christ, the church.  Are you following Anna's example so well that someone would say of you, "She worships God all the time?"  That's what we should learn from Anna, if we learn nothing else at all.
 
One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple (Ps 27:4).
 
Dene Ward

Today's post is by guest writer Keith Ward.
 
I have a brown cap that I wear only around the house.  Though the thermostat says the house is warm, my head gets cold because I have no hair.  I mislaid the cap.  I looked everywhere I had been and everywhere it could be.  I found another, less well fitting cap to keep my head warm and looked everywhere it could not be.  I looked in all those places again.  Still no cap.  In fact, the time I spent looking far exceeded the value of the cap which has no sentimental value either.  But, I had to know where it had gotten to.  
 
After 3 or 4 days, I put on a pair of old knock-around jeans that I'd tossed in the floor of the closet during a warm spell here in Florida when I wore shorts.  The cap fell out.  Did I mention the jeans were brown?  Or, that I had moved them at least twice (and everything else in the floor of the closet) looking for the cap?
 
Now, the cap did not know it was lost.  Neither did the coin.  The sheep probably knew when it looked around and there were no other sheep nearby, but he did not know the way home.  The son never knew he was lost until things got so bad that he had nowhere else to go—but at least he knew the way home.
 
Sometimes attitudes and facts are so ingrained in us that we do not realize that everyone does not know what we know.  When we preach the gospel "to a lost and dying world," they do not hear because they not only do not know they are lost, they do not know what "lost" is any more than my cap did.
 
Jesus did not tell his parables for the lost but for those who were sure they were not lost, who saw no need for salvation for themselves.  We need to learn the lessons of the parables to understand how to show the lost their need.
 
Sometimes we appeal with love and companionship to a lost sheep who realizes a need for others of a spiritual bent, but unless we teach them, they are not really "found."  When their feelings are hurt, they have no truth to fence them in the fold.  This is happening in many churches and their numbers swell with those who are still lost but who are warmed by association with sheep.
 
We do not have to wait until the sinner hits "rock bottom" like the prodigal.  Paul converted many by the appeal of a God who loves and who knows each of us individually.  He also taught them that they were lost and destined to a fiery judgment without Jesus, "when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus." (2Thess 1:7-8).  These sounded forth the word because they knew the reality of having been lost and being saved (1Thess 1:8).
 
In vain do we teach those who, like my cap, have no sense of being lost.  They may learn facts, they may respond to some things that have some appeal to them, but they cannot be saved.  Many of our religious friends fall into this category.  We must sweep them from their hiding places to find them, expose them to the light and bring about repentance unto life.
 
Let us give thought to how we can show people that they are lost in order to motivate them to seek the salvation we wish to teach them.
 
When you follow the desires of your flesh, the results are very clear:
sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures,
idolatry, sorcery,
hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger,
selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy,
drunkenness, wild parties,
and other sins like these.
Let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the Kingdom of God. (Gal 5:19-21).
 
Keith Ward

Both solar and lunar eclipses, while easily explained by science, were in the past viewed as frightening omens. 
           Herodotus records that on May 28, 584 BC, a solar eclipse occurred, having been predicted by the Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus.  This happened during the sixth year of a war between the Medes and the Lydians and so impressed them that they stopped their fighting and immediately began to work on peace plans.
            On August 2, 1133, a solar eclipse lasting nearly five minutes occurred in England and was taken as a sign of an important upcoming evil event, possibly an important death.  Sure enough, King Henry I, who had traveled to Normandy around that time, died the same year on December 2.  Despite being four months removed, it was immediately connected to the eclipse.
            All this superstition and fear led Columbus to use it against the Arawaks in Jamaica.  He had run out of food for his crews and he "foretold" a lunar eclipse, using an almanac he had studied.  He told the chief that his Christian God was angry with them for not sharing their food with him and that in three nights He would obliterate the moon and it would be "inflamed with God's wrath."  On March 1, 1504, his "prediction" came true.  Needless to say, the Arawaks were terrified and readily agreed to support Columbus and his men with all the food and supplies they needed.
            But some good things have come from eclipses too.  On May 29, 1919, an eclipse occurred, viewable in a path across South America that included Brazil.  Sir Frank Watson Dyson conducted an experiment there that proved a portion of Einstein's theory of relativity because during that eclipse, several stars that were too close to the sun to be seen and their distance measured, could be while the sun was dark.  Somehow it involves bending light rays, and while it is far too complicated for me to even understand much less explain, I am told it was the most important eclipse in the history of science.
            But there are even more important eclipses than that.
            In a study of faith I did, I found this passage:  I made supplication for you that your faith fail not…Luke 22:32.  I looked up “fail” and found this Greek word, ekleipo. 
            I’ll have to admit—I saw nothing at first.  Finally I looked up other uses of the word and found, just a page over in my Bible, Luke 23:45:  the sun’s light failing.  The context was the crucifixion when, according to the verse just above that one, darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour.    
            “Aha!” my feeble brain said, “an eclipse,”--ekleipo.  The light of the sun failed because something overshadowed it.  Now how do I use that in my study of faith “failing?”
            Twenty years ago I woke up with what I thought was an earache.  I called the doctor and he prescribed an antibiotic.  The next morning some of the ache was gone, but enough remained for me to discover the true source of the pain—it was a tooth.  I had developed an abscess and the pain had simply radiated to my ear, but the medication at least knocked it back to its original source. This time I called the dentist and left a message.  It was late on a Friday afternoon and I needed to see someone before the weekend. 
            By that time, nearly 48 hours into this, I was moaning on the couch, totally unable to function.  I hadn’t even thought about dinner, much less started cooking it, even though I expected Keith home within the hour.  I hadn’t finished putting the clean sheets on the bed, or washed any dishes all day long.  I hadn’t accomplished any bookkeeping, or filled out the forms that were soon due for my students to enter State Contest.  Nothing mattered but that aching tooth and the sore lump now swelling on my jaw line.
            A few minutes later the phone rang, and I eagerly snatched it up, expecting a dental assistant.  It was an ex-Little League coach of my sons’.  Keith had suffered something resembling a seizure while riding his bike the thirteen miles home from work, and was lying right in front of his house, in the middle of the rural highway. 
            “The ambulance just arrived,” he said.  “I think if you hurry, you can be here before it leaves.”
            What do you think I did?  Lie back down and moan some more?  I was out of that house in a flash and did indeed beat the ambulance’s departure for the hospital.  I sat in that hospital for five days. 
            You can think your faith is important to you.  You can think you would never let anything “eclipse” it.  You can be positive that you are strong enough to handle the most intense trial or the most powerful temptation.  You can be absolutely wrong.
            I have seen men who stood for the faith against the ridicule of false teachers commit adultery.  I have seen women who diligently withstood the long trial of caring for a sick mate become bitter against everyone who ever tried to help them, and ultimately against God himself.  I have seen families who were called “pillars of the church” leave that very group when one of their own fell and was chastised. 
            Look to that passage I found:  I made supplication for you that your faith fail not.  Jesus was speaking to Peter, who subsequently declared, “I am ready to go both to prison and to death,” but not many hours later, denied the Lord when those very things confronted him.  He was not prepared, and his faith was eclipsed by fear.
            Just as surely as my worry over my husband’s health totally eclipsed a very real and intense pain in my physical body, just as certainly as fear eclipsed the faith of a man like Peter, the events of life can eclipse your faith, causing it to fail.  Carnal emotions can overshadow you—lust, bitterness, resentment, hurt feelings among them.  It’s up to us to keep those things in their proper place, to allow nothing to detract from our faith in a God who promises that none of those things really matter because of the spiritual nature of the life to come.  It is, in fact, up to us to be spiritually minded, instead of carnally minded, to put the physical in the shade and let the light of the Truth shine on the spiritual.
            With a spiritual mind-set, nothing can eclipse your faith.  Your faith should, in fact, eclipse everything else.
 
 If then you were raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are upon the earth. For you died, and your life is hid with Christ in God, Colossians 3:1-3.                                                                                           
 
Dene Ward

When I was a city girl, over forty years ago, I was scared to death of snakes.  I still don’t like them.  The difference is I can tolerate a non-poisonous one on the property now, trusting they will pay their way with all the rodents they keep out of my house; and when a poisonous one comes along I don’t freeze or run around in circles, screaming in hysteria--I just dispose of the thing.
            You know the best way to kill a snake?  Well, it may not actually be the best way, but the city girl in me thinks it’s perfect—a shotgun full of number one shot.  For those of you who are still city folks, that’s a load for large animals, like deer.  We had a rattler once when Keith was at work, and even though I kept from freezing or panicking to the point of uselessness, I still forgot to unload the larger shot and replace it with number eight, a load for smaller animals.  That means when I shot that snake with that huge shot, I blew it to smithereens.  As I said, I was extremely satisfied.
            Well—mostly satisfied.  The thing kept right on writhing.  Yes, I knew all about their reflexes and that they thrash about after death.  But that thing was flexing and re-flexing entirely too much to suit me.  So I got the .22 pistol and put a few more shots in it.  Then I was satisfied.  When I picked the thing up with the tines of the rake to throw it into the burn barrel, it hung in chunks connected only with a few strings of skin—and it didn’t wiggle at all.  Best looking rattlesnake I ever saw.  The boys can make fun of me all they want, and laugh about it as they have for the past thirty-something years, but that snake was dead and there was no question about it.  And now I have evidence that I might have been right in the first place.
            On May 27, 2018, Jennifer and Jeremy Sutcliffe of Lake Corpus Christi, Texas, were cleaning up their yard for a barbecue later that afternoon.  Jennifer reached into her flower bed and found a four foot Western diamondback rattler who was not happy to be disturbed.  She screamed and Jeremy came running.  He chopped the head off the snake and killed it.  However…
            A few minutes later, he went back to dispose of the head and when he picked it up, the snake bit him.  Jennifer rushed him to a hospital as he was already having seizures, and he was life-flighted to one that had the antivenin he needed.  He went into a coma and it was four days before the doctors thought he might survive after all, which he eventually did.  But we almost had the headline:  "Man Dies of Bite by Dead Rattlesnake."
            So how does something like this happen?  Bryon Shipley, a rattlesnake researcher says, "It is a known fact…that one of the intriguing physiological oddities about snakes and other reptiles is the slowness of the death of…nerves and brain cells…The brain…may remain capable of controlling eye movement, jaw movement, venom gland compression, and even tongue flicking for an hour."  (havesnakewilltravel.com)  Bottom line:  Before you go picking up a dead rattlesnake, you need to wait at least an hour to make sure it's dead.
            Some of us don’t do that.  In fact, we not only leave it writhing, we put it somewhere for safe keeping just in case it isn’t dead after all.  That’s how we treat repentance.  I know I shouldn’t be indulging, so let me put it up on the shelf instead of down here on the counter top where I can see it every day.  No!  Let’s get it out of the house altogether!  Whatever it is.
            It doesn’t have to be a huge sin of the flesh.  It doesn’t have to be a bottle of booze or a stack of pornography.  Sometimes it’s a gossip-fest.  I know that my friend always dishes the dirt, but I still make plans to see her every week.  Or, if for some reason I must see her, then I go with no plan for how to avoid the sin, and yesiree, it pops up and I just couldn’t help it, Lord.  You know how she talks—and how I listen. 
            Whatever it is, God expects me to kill that snake (temptation) and make sure it’s dead.  Another one may come my way, but I should be doing my best to monitor my surroundings so it won't spring back to life.  If it does, maybe I didn’t use the buckshot--I just shot a BB and missed.
            Don’t cuddle up to a rattlesnake.  Kill the thing, and make sure it’s dead.
 
Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. Romans 13:11-14
 
Dene Ward

My mother recently moved and among the things she left behind were half a dozen old cookbooks printed in the 40s, 50s, and 60s.  I spent a few minutes leafing through them.  Our culture’s tastes have certainly changed in the past fifty or sixty years.
            Most of the recipes I found were for simple fare with plain ingredients.  When I was a child, my mother’s favorite market did not have an “International Foods” aisle.  The only pastas available were spaghetti and elbow macaroni.  The only salad dressings were Italian, Thousand Island, and that bright red-orange French.  All olives were green and pimento stuffed.  The only baked beans were Van Camp’s pork and beans or B & M baked beans, which none of us Southerners liked.  There was only one kind of rice and no couscous to be found.  The most exotic ingredient any of my mother’s favorite recipes called for was La Choy soy sauce.  No one had ever heard of Kikkoman.
            Yet each recipe in those old cookbooks was headed by a comment like, “Very filling,” or “Easy and good,” or “A family favorite.”  And I know those statements were true because I remember eating some of those recipes and even the dishes they were served in on our family table.  Not only were they good and filling, they were inexpensive, even in today’s dollars.  But would anyone even be tempted to use those old recipes today?  Would we serve them to guests?  I doubt it.  Somewhere along the line we’ve become status conscious, even in our food preferences.
            How about our spiritual tastes?  Just look at a modern worship service.  Would that “mega-church” down the road be satisfied with congregational singing and a simpler sermon loaded with scripture?  No, they demand a praise band for entertainment and a comedian/motivational speaker for their “pep rally.”  It is no longer about carefully approaching a Holy God with reverence and fear to offer our gift of worship, but all about how it makes ME feel and what I get out of it.  It’s about whether I approve instead of whether God approves.  Unfortunately, we seem to be falling into the same trap.
            In the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, the people came together to worship, standing for hours as the Law was read (Neh 8).  Then the Levites explained it, “they gave the sense” (8:8), what we would call a sermon.  No praise bands, no shouting, no dancing in the aisles, just a calm, intelligible sermon.  And how did that sermon affect them?
            And all the people went their way to eat and drink and to send portions and to make great rejoicing, because they had understood the words that were declared to them. Neh 8:12
            How about us?  Do we expect, even demand, something besides plain food with simple ingredients?  Are we dissatisfied with the old hymns because we are so Biblically illiterate that we cannot comprehend their depths?  Do we complain about simple old-fashioned sermons because they’re boring? 
            Would we ever stand for hours listening to the Word of God being read, then go home to Sunday dinner with rejoicing just because we were able to hear His Word?  Or would we cover our meals with the gravy of griping and serve dessert on a platter of complaints?  Is it all about ME instead of all about HIM?
 
Thus says the LORD: “Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls. But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’ Jer 6:16
 
Dene Ward