Long ago and far away I remember someone saying, immediately after a sermon on the subject, “Attitude shmattitude.  I am sick and tired of hearing about attitude.” 
            I thought to myself, “And you, sir, certainly have a bad one.”
            Hanging by one of the magnets on my refrigerator is a quote by Charles Swindoll that ends, “…We have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day.  We cannot change our past…we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way.  We cannot change the inevitable.  The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude…I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.  And so it is with you…we are in charge of our attitudes.”
            My neighbor recently returned from a trip to Alaska, a trip she and her husband have wanted to make for a long time.  They flew to Anchorage, then rented an RV and traveled the state for two and half weeks.  As they were returning the RV, ready to fly back home, she fell in the parking lot, face down.  It was a nasty fall.  The ER doctor put 14 stitches in her face.  Five of her front teeth were knocked out, and she is still, after two months, receiving the dental repair work for that, already totaling $10,000.  She needed a doctor’s note before the airline would allow her on the plane to fly home.  She was in a wheelchair, of course, and the other passengers were staring out of the corners of their eyes—being too polite to stare straight on.  (We’ve all done it.)  Her husband finally told everyone she had had a run-in with a grizzly bear, and she looked so bad someone actually believed it.
            You know what she said after she told me about it?  “It’s okay.  It was the last day not the first, so our trip wasn’t ruined.  I can’t eat very well, so I’ve lost about 20 pounds.  I can’t chew on my nails, and for the first time in my life I have nice looking nails.  And I fell so flat I’m lucky I didn’t break my nose as well.”
            She put me to shame.  She had come up with four blessings in her mishap, when I wonder if I would have been doing anything but moaning. 
            As Christians our attitudes do make the difference.  The way we handle adversity should make people ask us, “How can you do that?  What is your secret?” 
            Those early Christians knew the secret.  They rejoiced “that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor” Acts 5:41; took “pleasure” in all their sufferings “for Christ’s sake” 2 Cor 12:10; “received the word in much affliction with joy” 1 Thes 1:6; and “took joyfully the spoiling of their possessions” Heb 10: 34.  How?  They had their priorities straight, and that kept their attitudes straight.  They truly believed a better place awaits us. 
            That is what faith requires: for he who comes to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of those who seek after him, Heb 11:6.  Sometimes I think we focus so much on the first part of that, that we miss the second part.  If I want this world and its “stuff” so badly, then maybe I don’t really believe there is a reward waiting for me.  If I do not have the attitude of Paul that “to die is gain,” then my faith is an empty shell.  Why in the world do I bother?
            Attitude, shmattitude.  Don’t get sick and tired of hearing about it.  It can help you make it successfully to the end, which is really only a beginning that will never end.
 
But call to remembrance the former days in which, after you were enlightened, you endured a great conflict of sufferings, partly being made a gazingstock both by reproaches and afflictions, and partly becoming partakers with them that were so used.  For you both had compassion on them that were in bonds and took joyfully the spoiling of your possessions, knowing that you have for yourselves a better possession and an abiding one, Heb 10:32-34.
 
Dene Ward

We just returned from a birthday party—a double birthday party, which meant twice as many guests, twice as many cakes, and twice as many gifts.  It also meant twice as much time unwrapping the gifts. 

That last part did not bother Silas at all, but it seemed to bother Judah a little.  He started playing with one gift and then was handed yet another to unwrap.  So he had to stop playing and unwrap.  Once it was done, he started playing again, sometimes even went back to the first one he had unwrapped, but then he would be handed another.  You could almost see his little brain forming the thought, “There is such a thing as too many gifts.” 

The next morning even Silas had trouble with the number of gifts.  I sat and watched him go from one to the other, back and forth.  I wondered if he wasn’t finally realizing, you can only play with one toy at a time.

Have you ever read Proverbs 31 then slumped your shoulders in defeat and thought, “I can’t possibly be that woman?”  Take heart.  God does not expect you to have every gift this woman has, nor to play with them all at once.  Just think for a minute:  what does he tell those Corinthians in chapter 12?  Some of you have this gift; some of you have that one.  Some of you have yet another.  Don’t try to be what you are not—just use what I give you the best you can (the Ward version).

Cooking I can handle, most of the time.  Bookkeeping I have down pat.  But the only things I can do with a needle and thread are sew on a button, take up a hem, and mend a seam.  I can’t darn, quilt, crochet or knit.  I have made clothes and worn them, but I consigned them to an early death as soon as I had replacements.  I have finally learned to master the pressure canner instead of cringing in fear, but I couldn’t decorate one wall much less a whole house—I have no eye for it.

Do you see the point?  The Proverbs 31 woman is the ideal.  God lists it all, and it gives us some sense of duties in the home.  What it doesn’t do is command us to be some sort of Jill-of-all-Trades Renaissance Woman.  It just says, this is where the center and purpose of your life and everything you accomplish in it must be—your family.  Be the best cook or the best seamstress or the best gardener or the best organizer or the best comforter or the best home businesswoman—or maybe two or three of those--whatever present God has given you to unwrap.  Do that, and you have “done what you could.”
 
For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness, Rom 12:4-8.
 
Dene Ward

A few Sundays ago the chill weather made it possible for me to wear my best suit, one a little heavier than anything else I have, one a little more expensive, but a hand-me-down from a friend.  We stopped at the grocery store on the way home to pick up a couple of limited time specials.  That’s one way we stay financially afloat—picking up specials when we are already the thirty miles into town for assembly.
              So we were loading the trunk and as she passed, a stranger said to me, “That’s a lovely suit.  You’ve been to church, haven’t you?  I apologize for being nosy, but would you mind telling me where you attend?”
              Would I mind?!  Of course I spent the next five or ten minutes telling her where I attend, when we meet, who we are, and what we do.  Then I handed her a blog card and pointed out my contact information in case she had more questions.  “Please email me or just call.  I can give you more detailed directions,” I finished with.
              I know a lot of people who no longer “dress up” for church.  They certainly have that right.  But I know a lot of others who go even further—who tell those of us who grew up doing it that we are wrong, that we are trying to be Christians on the outside instead of the inside.  I have yet to figure out why wearing my good suit on Sunday makes me a hypocrite any more than someone who thinks sitting on the pew in jeans on Sunday then dressing up for the boss all week makes him a Christian. 
              In fact, tell me this.  If you were this woman and you were searching, who would you ask on a Sunday about noon at the grocery store—the guy in shorts, tee shirt and flip-flops or the man with a tie on?  The lady with a dress on or the one with cut-offs and an oversized shirt hanging over her waistline?  Maybe there is something to be said after all for making it obvious on a Sunday that you have been to church. 
              But then we have this point—it isn’t what you wear on Sunday that makes the Christian; it’s what you wear every day. 
              Put on therefore, as God's elect, holy and beloved, a heart of compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, longsuffering; forbearing one another, and forgiving each other, if any man have a complaint against any; even as the Lord forgave you, so also do you: and above all these things [put on] love, which is the bond of perfectness, Col 3:12-14.
              My neighbors need to see these spiritual clothes every day.  There can be no “dressing down” spiritually after you have “put on Christ” in baptism, Gal 3:27.  The people I work with, the people I go to school with, the people I come into contact with, especially on a regular basis, should know by my speech and my actions that “I went to church on Sunday.”  God won’t accept a “casual Friday” set of spiritual clothes any day of the week.
              I’ve had a great many things make people ask me questions—maybe that’s a good subject for another day, but it all boils down to this—I have to look different.  Whether it’s how I act, how I speak, how I run my family, or any number of ways, it needs to be obvious.  Let’s stop making judgments about one another’s literal clothes, and just go out there and show people who we are with the spiritual wardrobe of a child of God. 
 
The night is far spent, and the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light. Let us walk becomingly, as in the day; not in reveling and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to [fulfil] the lusts [thereof] Romans 13:12-14.
 
Dene Ward

I brought four pencils in here by the desk to sharpen.  I gather them up from here and there, all colors, all brands.  Ticonderoga yellow may be the most famous brand, but I haven't a one of those to my name.  The erasers are all in different levels of use.  A couple already sport one of those separate ones you put on the top because the one they came with is totally flat.
So I will grab my old fashioned school sharpener, the one with the hand crank, and get them all back to their pointy selves and ready for use.  Then I will carry them back to the windowsill next to my chair to use with my crossword puzzles.  No, I do not do my puzzles in ink.  Well, if it's a Los Angeles Times Crossword, even their Sunday crossword, I do.  But a New York Times Crossword—no way.  It will wind up a mess if I try.
              The Los Angeles Times Sunday crossword is so easy I can do it in ink in just about 15 minutes.  Once in a great while it will take 20.  I might have one or two squares where I have had to go over a mistake in darker ink to correct it, but most of the time it is clean and legible without a single blotch.  But the New York Times' puzzle takes me nearly an hour and quite a bit of erasing.  If I tried it in ink, I probably wouldn't be able to read it for the mess I made.  I may love to do those puzzles, but I am not an expert by any stretch of the imagination.  You know those people who finish the marathon three hours after everyone else, coming in while the banners and signs are being taken down?  That's me doing a crossword puzzle.  All I can say is, I get it done.  And hurray for pencils and erasers.
              Jesus is my pencil and God is my eraser.  The Lord's sacrifice is far larger than we usually give him credit for.  Not to diminish it in the least, but he didn't just die for us and rise from the dead for us, a process that took no more than three days.  He lived a lifetime for us as a human being, experiencing the same trials and sorrows we do.  God, mind you--and he did it without the failings we so often want to excuse because we are "only human."  When we do that, we insult that sacrifice, because he did it to show us how, to show us that we most certainly can do it, especially with his help—or will we insult that too?
              No, life is not a Los Angeles Times crossword puzzle.  God never told us it would be easy, and that's why I need the pencil.  He promised us "thorns and thistles" and "sweat of the brow."  He told we would have to kill our old man (crucified) and become something brand new.  He may have said, "My yoke is easy and my burden is light," but it's still a yoke and a burden.
              But then he tells me that all is not lost if I do fail.  After all, this life is written in pencil if we just repent, get back on our feet, and try again, determined to go farther than the last time, determined to improve—not to make excuses.  And then God will erase that error like it never happened, clean, white paper without even a smudge, ready for the next attempt.  And with his help, we might even get the right answer this time.
              When we refuse to try, when we make excuses for our failure and refuse to admit our wrong, that's when we are writing in ink.  We can go over it and over it and over it, making it darker and uglier with every try, and everyone will still see the obvious error.  Maybe everyone but the one who need to see the truth the most--me.  And it can never be erased, if that is the attitude we have.
              Far better to follow the Lord's example.  Far better to be tough and work hard and try again and again and again.  Pencil is, after all, easily erased.
 
If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.  (1John 1:6-7).
 
Dene Ward
             

A continuing study of the Proverbs by guest writer Lucas Ward.  This is part 2 of his introductory material.

A few notes about the nature of proverbs before we begin the study.  First, we must understand that proverbs are not always absolute.  By which I mean that these are neither absolute statements of truth, nor are they commands for how we must live our lives in every instance--they are proverbs.  They are general guidelines for how to, in general, lead the most productive lives we can.  They are not true in every instance nor for every individual.  

For example, Prov. 2:11-12 "discretion will watch over you, understanding will guard you, delivering you from the way of evil, from men of perverted speech."  I wonder what Job would have thought of that passage?   He wasn't delivered from evil.  

Or 3:16, which is speaking of wisdom when it says "Long life is in her right hand and in her left are riches and honor."  I wonder what the Apostle James thought of that as he died a young, poor man in the service of God. 

So these aren't absolutely true in every instance, but in general they are true.  Likewise they are not commands.  I think that a lot of times sober, serious Christians make the mistake of reading Proverbs as commands because it is "Bible".  It is the Bible, but it is a collection of Proverbs, some of which are mutually exclusive.  Most famously 26:4-5 the first of which says "Do not answer a fool" and the second of which says, "Answer a fool".  You cannot obey vs. 4 without disobeying vs 5.  And vice-versa.  So these cannot be commands, but rather are general statements of truth.  It takes a bit of wisdom to know when each applies.  Taking some time to muse upon these general statements of how to, in general, have the best life possible will help us in each specific problem we have as we move forward in our lives for God.

As most all of us know, after you get to chapter 10 the book of Proverbs seems to be randomly filled with 1-2 verse long proverbs which don't have anything to do with the verse before it or the one after it.  It is a bunch of random, wise statements.  However, there are several topics which are discussed over and over.  I picked six topics and scanned through Proverbs listing all the verses that dealt with each of those six topics.  So, at that point, I had everything Proverbs taught about each topic.  I was able to preach seven sermons on those six topics.   Those seven sermons will become the next seven posts from me on this blog.

Lucas Ward

She took him into her home.  She fed him.  She offered him a place to rest, a place he felt safe.  Then, when he was sound asleep, she knelt next to him and pounded a tent pin through his temple. 
            Many times I have heard Jael, the wife of Heber, described as a sneaky, devious, blood-thirsty woman.  We in our civilized, politically correct, white collar world decry any ancient blood-letting as barbaric, even though people of our own era commit atrocities, from the mega-massacres of Stalin and Hitler to the mob mentality that runs rampant in both the inner cities and suburbia at the lowest flashpoint, be it outrage or fear.  So, in our blindness to our own hidden savagery, we read the account in Judges 4 with a jaundiced and arrogant eye.  If we had spent any time at all on the song of Deborah in Judges 5, we would have avoided contradicting divinely inspired opinion about Jael’s actions.  Blessed above women shall Jael be, v 24.
            Certainly that should settle the matter.  Just for the added emphasis of common sense, though, let’s ponder this question:  What was this nomadic shepherd woman, alone at home, supposed to do?  Should we require that she meet a trained warrior, the captain of a mighty army, in a fair fight?  Indeed, I read that the customs of the day said for a man to force his way into another man’s tent, or to merely enter that same tent when the man was not at home, was an action worthy of death. 
            But how do we reconcile this type of behavior with Jesus’ teaching.  I say unto you, love your enemies, do good to them who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who despitefully use you.  To him who smites you on the one cheek, offer the other also; and from him who takes away your cloak, withhold not your coat also.  Give to everyone who asks and from him who takes away your goods, ask them not again.  And as you would that men should do to you, do also unto them likewise, Luke 6:27-31.  Some would say, “Jael was under the old law. Things are different now.”  While that is so, it only skims the surface of the matter.
            Old Testament Israel was a physical kingdom with a physical king sitting on a physical throne.  They fought physical wars using physical weapons.  Isaiah prophesies a coming kingdom where they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more, 2:4; a kingdom that would have no physical boundaries, but would encompass the whole world, one into which all nations shall flow, 2:2.  Jesus established that kingdom, the church, his throne not on this earth but in Heaven.
            Yet we still fight battles.  Paul spent a good amount of time detailing our armor (Eph 6), our weapons and battle tactics (2 Cor 10), and the characteristics of a faithful soldier (2 Tim 2). 
            Every time we overcome temptation, we win a battle; every time we speak of our faith to others, we take an enemy captive; every time a Christian leaves this world, having been faithful to the end, we pound a tent pin into the temple of Satan.  If we are too politically correct to fight a battle, if we are too finicky for hand-to-hand combat, if we are too “civilized” to pick up a sword and slash our way through the enemy forces, we don’t have what it takes to be a follower of Christ.
            Make no mistake about it.  You are going to war today.  Be prepared to fight in it.
 
Suffer hardship as a good soldier of Christ, for no soldier on service entangles himself in the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enrolled him as a soldier, 2 Tim 2:3,4.
 
Dene Ward

We were standing on the carport one evening when I saw movement out of the corner of my eye.  I turned just in time to push Keith out of the path of a garter snake determinedly chugging his way up the slope to the concrete slab.  We called the dogs off and allowed him to meander under the mower and off the edge of the pad to the cool darkness under the porch.  A few days later he made another appearance and we discovered his home when he wriggled away—the hollow pipes supporting the metal roofing of the carport.
            I have come a long way in 35 years--from a city girl who screamed and ran from a foot long, pencil-thin, bright green garden snake to a country woman who understands the value of a snake on the property—God’s original mousetrap.  I will never be a snake lover.  I went out one afternoon and found him stretched out at the foot of my lounge chair.  I got the broom and shooed him back into his pipe.  My dogs can sit at my feet and have their heads scratched, but with Mr. Snake it is only a matter of “live and let live.”
            Too many times we take that attitude with Satan.  Yes, he is out there every day.  Sometimes we even bump elbows in passing, but we don’t have to stop and politely say, “Excuse me.”  Don’t give him a cool spot on the carport and an idle belly rub with your bare toes.
            If this garter snake were one of the four poisonous varieties we have in this area—all of which we have seen on our land—he would not be tolerated.  Although my guys may tell funny stories about me and snakes, they cannot deny that I know how to make like Annie Oakley when a bad one comes along.  I have killed them with a shotgun, a .22 rifle, and a .22 pistol.  I have killed them with rat shot and buckshot.  When necessary I have used a shovel.  I have lost count of how many poisonous snakes I have killed.  They get fewer every year.
            How are we doing with Satan?  Does he think his presence is tolerated, even welcome?  Or does he know that it’s dangerous to be around us?  He is fighting a losing battle and he knows it, but that won’t keep his poison from killing us if we allow him to get too close.
 
Do not give opportunity to the Devil, Eph 4:27.
 
Dene Ward
 

Have you noticed the number of commercials and advertisements for weight-loss products, nicotine patches, fitness equipment, and gym memberships?  The ad man is not dumb.  This is the week we decide on our resolutions.  It happens every year.
            Just think about the sales you see in the grocery flyer each week.  February it will be chocolate, strawberries, and roses, and in March it will be corned beef and cabbage.  Candy, eggs, ham, and legs of lamb will top the list in April.  May through August will feature ribs, ground beef, steaks of all sorts, hot dogs, potato salad and baked beans—typical summer cook-out fare.  Then September will devote a whole page to notebooks, paper, and pencils.  And you know what the fall brings—chili beans, apples, turkeys, cranberries, sweet potatoes, and standing rib roasts.  And we all buy most of that “in season” don’t we?  Then we load our carts with salads, yogurt, and Lean Cuisines on January 1, and begin the whole sequence all over.
            They have us pegged.  They pay attention to our habits.  They even know when a trend is about to start so they can cash in from the beginning.  Low fat gave way to low carb, and now the buzzword is “organic.”  It seems to me that labeling food “organic” is a bit redundant, but that’s another topic for another day.
            If men can figure us out that easily, why don’t we understand that our adversary can too?  He knows what will tempt us the most and when it will, and he is persistent.  We can get rid of him for a time, resist the Devil and he will flee from you, James 4:7, but he will always come back and try again.  Just like those ad men, he uses the things he knows will work, and is never afraid to branch out and try a new tack. 
            When you pick up that flyer in the Thursday paper, use it as a reminder to be careful.  Our lives are an open book, in more ways than one.
 
For this is the love of God that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not grievous.  For whosoever is begotten of God overcomes the world, and this is the victory that overcomes the world—our faith.  And who is he who overcomes the world but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God, 1 John 5:3-5.
 
Dene Ward

You will find dates from 1793 to 1796 for its opening, but evidently this one is on record and cannot be denied.  The property for the City Hotel in New York City was bought on January 24, 1793.  It was the first building built to be a hotel in America.  At 73 rooms it was huge for the time, but then New York City already boasted a population of 30,000.  It was also the first building in the city with a slate roof.  Hotels have come a long way—some of them anyway.
About fifteen years ago, a music teacher friend and I attended a state level vocal competition in a small Florida town.  She was the state treasurer, the one who handed out checks to judges and scholarship winners.  I was the accompanist for two of the entrants.  When we tried to make our reservations, the one hotel in town, an old Southern relic complete with ceiling fans and rockers on a wood-planked front porch, was booked solid and had been for months.  Our only choice was the motel up by the interstate.  We did not expect much, given the name on the sign and the price, so we weren’t surprised when we quickly stopped by to deposit our bags and saw the size of the room in the gloom.  We had no time to inspect the premises or even turn on a light or open the shades.  We just dumped our bags and drove on to the competition.
              When we returned about ten o’clock that night, we almost left our things and fled, but there was no place to run to.  The parking lot had been empty at 5 pm, but now it was full of souped-up, high rise, four wheel drive pickups, their fenders caked with streaks of mud and their windows with dust.  Evidently their owners also found their rooms cramped, because it seemed like all of them were standing outside, laughing uproariously at one another’s jokes and adding to their flannel-clad beer bellies by the six pack, several of which they tossed around. 
              We actually had to pull in between two of those trucks, and all talking ceased as we left our car.  I have never been so thrilled with my regular accompanist’s attire—a plain, black, mid-calf dress with a high neck and long sleeves.  My friend wore a dressy business suit, and we were both on the wrong side of forty, so they let us pass without a word.  When we got inside, we locked the door, put a chair under the knob, and pinned those still closed draperies overlapped and shut. 
              Then we saw our room in the light for the first time.  You could barely get between the outside edge of each bed and its neighboring wall.  The rod for our hanging clothes was loose on one end, and couldn’t support the weight of even my one dress, much less it and her suit.  The soap was half the size of the usual motel sliver, and the bath towels more like hand towels.  The pipes rattled, the tub sported a rust streak the color and width of a lock of Lucy’s hair, and the carpet had so many stains it looked like a planned pattern.
              After we managed to shower in the tepid, anemic stream of water, we pulled down the sheets and my friend moaned, “Oh no.”  With some trepidation I approached her bed in my nightgown and heels—neither of us wanted to go barefoot and they were all I had—and there lying on her pillow was a long black hair.  Her hair was short and very blond, she being a Minnesotan by birth with a strong streak of Norse in her veins.  “Please tell me the maid lost this hair when she was putting on clean—very clean—sheets.”
              “Okay,” I muttered.  “The maid lost that hair when she was putting on clean—ultra clean and highly bleached—sheets.”
              When we got to bed, it wasn’t to sleep.  Not with the noise going on in the parking lot just outside our door or in the neighboring rooms.  The walls seemed as thin as tent walls.  We rose in the morning bleary-eyed and ready to leave as quickly as possible.  This place offered no “free breakfast” and we would not have eaten it if it had.  We promised one another that if we ever had to come back and couldn’t get a room in town, we would stay anywhere else, even if it meant a fifty mile drive, one way. 
              It was a horrible experience, but some of us offer one just like it to the Lord.
              For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, Eph 3:14-17.
              According to Paul, it takes effort to allow Christ to dwell in our hearts, enough that he prayed for them to have the strength to allow it.  Are you allowing it?  And if you are, what sort of accommodations are you offering him? 
              Making a welcoming environment for him may not happen overnight, especially if we are dealing with deep-seated habits or even addictions of one sort or another.  He understands that, but we must constantly be adjusting our behavior to suit him, not ourselves, putting his desires ahead of our own, becoming, in fact, a completely different person altogether.  Wherefore if any man is in Christ, [he is] a new creature: the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new, 2 Cor 5:17.
              But this isn’t just a problem for new Christians.  I have seen older Christians act as if Christ is nowhere nearby, much less dwelling in their hearts.  Their language, their fits of pique, their dress, their choice of entertainment, and the complete lack of spiritual nourishment they partake of starved him and ran him off a long time ago, and they don’t even seem to realize it.  What?  Do you really think he will stay in a flophouse instead of the four star hotel you should have offered him?
              What it all boils down to is a failure to live like we have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me, Gal 2:20.  Did you see that?  Allowing him to dwell in you (Eph 3:17) and living a new crucified life both happen “by faith.”  Even if you have been claiming to be a Christian for decades, if you are not living up to it, you do not have the faith required.  It doesn’t matter how many times you were dipped into a baptistery if nothing about you changed, or if you have gone back to that old way of life.
              What sort of room are you offering the Lord?  He spent a lot for it, and he will walk out if you don’t live up to the name on your sign—Christian.
 
Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test! 2 Cor 13:5.
 
Dene Ward

This year I will celebrate a landmark birthday.  Suddenly birthdays have become less than exciting.  But all these years have given me one thing that I find invaluable, at least now that I am past them—a boatload of experiences.  In fact, you may be getting tired of hearing about them.
            Here is one that struck me just the other day:  I now need more than two hands to count the number of times a Christian has told me about having his horoscope read, having a tarot card reading, or going to a palm reader—“just to see what it’s like”—and have him tell me how astounded he was.   “I know it isn’t real, but it was so close, it was uncanny.”
            And do you think Satan is going to allow them to be so far off that you won’t even be tempted to believe in them?  Really now, Satan is not that stupid.  But sometimes I wonder about us!  Excuse me, I guess the word should be “gullible,” or perhaps the more politically correct “naïve.”  Solomon was not nearly so concerned about being PC.  The word he used when a child of God put himself into a position to be deceived was “fool.”
            Because deception is what surely follows if we are not careful.  This “uncanny” ability to be so accurate (we think) draws us closer and closer, until finally we are relying on those things more than God, and eventually instead of God.  Yes, it can happen to you.  I have heard Christians I thought were strong tell me they could not make a decision until they had read their horoscopes for the day. 
            And you know what is even scarier?  When it becomes obvious that we want to rely on these things instead of God, He will allow it.  And for this cause God sends them a working of error, that they should believe a lie, that they might all be judged who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness, 2 Thes 2:11,12.  He considers all such things “idolatry” because they are more important to the person than He is, and “adultery” because that person has been unfaithful to Him.  This is a serious matter.  That is another way Satan can get to you.  He will tell you it is just a fun little pastime.  Read Ezekiel 16 sometime today and see exactly how God depicts this “harmless” recreation.  I will judge you as women who commit adultery and murder are judged, and I will bring upon you the blood of wrath and jealousy, Ezek 16:38.   
            So think about it today.  What are we doing that seems harmless but that could have dire consequences if we let it go to its natural end?  Satan has dozens of beautifully crafted lures to draw us in, set the hook, and catch us before we even realize we are in danger.  He is not so stupid that he will make the traps obvious.  Be careful out there today.  Rely on God and Him alone.  Be faithful to Him and He will never be unfaithful to you.
           
For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, fashioning themselves into apostles of Christ.  And no marvel, for even Satan fashions himself into an angel of light.  It is no great thing therefore if his ministers also fashion themselves as ministers of righteousness, whose end shall be according to their works, 2 Cor 11:13-15.
 
Dene Ward