Keith and I have made a concerted effort to eat healthier meals this year.  We have not turned into rabid health nuts, the ones who look down their noses at your occasional cheeseburger and tut-tut your references to morning coffee.  Organic food is not in our budget and depriving yourself of a treat now and then just makes you want one more.  We have merely kept the fat and calorie intake to a modest level, substituted complex carbs for the simple ones, and made our servings smaller.  We have been rewarded with modest weight loss and better “numbers.”  The best reward is hearing the doctor say, “You’ve lost some weight.  Excellent!”

            Sometimes I daydream about losing another ten pounds, or maybe fifteen or twenty.  Thirty might be a little too much.  On the other hand, who would not want his doctor to say, “I think you need to gain a little weight?”  No doctor I have had in my entire life has ever said such a thing.  I am not sure the one I have now even knows how to string those particular words together in that order.  Even when I was two minutes old and weighed six pounds eight ounces the doctor wouldn’t say it, and that was probably his last chance in this lifetime.  But still, a girl can dream, can’t she?

            When you stop and think about it, there are a lot of words we often dream about hearing, and many of them we eventually do.

            “Will you go out with me?”

            “Will you marry me?”

            “It turned blue.”

            “It’s a boy.”

            “You’re going to be a grandmother.”

            “He’s here, grandma!”

            Words can be precious.  They can change your life in an instant.  Just wanting to hear certain words can change your life because you suddenly realize you won’t hear them if you don’t change it.

            There are many things I may never hear, especially, “You need to gain some weight.”  But if I really put my mind to it, I could.  If I changed my lifestyle drastically, I could.  It just depends on how much I really want it.  Dreaming alone won’t get it.

            There are some words that are worth a drastic lifestyle change.  They are worth the loss of pride involved in self-examination and the humility of admitting wrong and repenting.  They are worth losing family, friends and status.  Some have even thought they were worth losing their lives for.  Dreaming that I have the faith and steadfastness to do those things won’t get me those words, but if I really want to hear them, I can.  They make take that drastic lifestyle change, but they are worth losing it all, because in the losing you gain everything.

            “Well done, good and faithful servant…enter into the joy of the lord.”
 
Tell the righteous that it shall be well with them for they shall eat the fruit of their deeds.  Woe to the wicked!  It shall be ill with him, for what his hands have dealt out shall be done unto him.  Isa 3:10,11.
 
Dene Ward
 

Keith was having a religious discussion with someone once, a brother as I remember, but one he disagreed with.  I had come upon a pertinent scripture in my own study a few days earlier and gave him the passage.  “Here’s some more ammunition,” I said.

            That word came naturally to me.  Keith was a certified firearms instructor for the state.  He taught probation officers, and prison guards how to shoot.  As a probation officer he carried his own weapon, having to qualify every year.  He taught me how to shoot well enough to dispose of a dozen poisonous snakes over the years and he taught the boys too.  So the word “ammunition” came naturally.

            However, it nagged at me enough that over the next few days I began wondering if we don’t have that mindset much too often,  Yes, we are in a battle.  Yes, the scriptures talk about our “weapons,” weapons God Himself supplied for our warfare.  And yes, our fight is not just with Satan, but with his ministers as well.  But look at this passage:

            As for me, I have not hastened from being a shepherd after you; neither have I desired the woeful day; you know: that which came out of my lips was before your face, Jer 17:16

            Jeremiah was NOT happy about Judah’s coming destruction—he did not “desire” the evil day.

            There’s an old story about a man who was converted after thirty years of different preachers telling him he was lost.

            “Why now?” someone asked him.  “Why listen to this preacher?”

            “Because,” the old man said, “he really sounded like he was sad about it.”

            Is that our problem?  Do we get too much pleasure out of the fight?  Are we just a bunch of gung-ho cowboys in our zeal?  Are we more interested in winning arguments than in winning souls?

            God gave Jeremiah plenty of ammunition, and he used it well enough that he was thrown into prison for it.  But he never enjoyed the job.  In fact, a good many of the prophets disliked their mission.  “I went in the bitterness of soul,” Ezekiel said.  In his confrontation with the priest of Bethel, Amos as much as said, “This wasn’t my idea.” 

            That’s a far different attitude than I have seen in some brethren, who delight in slinging bandoliers over their shoulders and spraying automatic fire in a drive-by.

            We’re supposed to be saving souls, not murdering them.  Let’s take stock of our attitudes when we go out to battle today.
 
​Give glory to the LORD your God before he brings darkness, before your feet stumble on the twilight mountains, and while you look for light he turns it into gloom and makes it deep darkness. But if you will not listen, my soul will weep in secret for your pride; my eyes will weep bitterly and run down with tears, because the LORD's flock has been taken captive, Jer 13:16-17.
 
Dene Ward

One Sunday, a newly married young woman named Jessie Pounds did not feel well, so her husband went on to church without her. When he returned. she had written the words to this hymn.

Somewhere the sun is shining,
Somewhere the songbirds dwell;
Hush, then, thy sad repining,
God lives, and all is well.

Refrain:
Somewhere, somewhere,
Beautiful Isle of Somewhere!
Land of the true, where we live anew,
Beautiful Isle of Somewhere!

Somewhere the day is longer,
Somewhere the task is done;
Somewhere the heart is stronger,
Somewhere the guerdon won.

(Refrain)

Somewhere the load is lifted,
Close by an open door;
Somewhere the clouds are rifted,
Somewhere the angels sing.

(Refrain)

            Because it is well over a hundred years old, the song contains a couple of words that might be unfamiliar to us.  Do you know what it means to “repine?”  The song gives us a clue with the modifier “sad.”  I doubt I am doing anything joyful if I am repining.  No, the word means dejection or discontent. 
And how about “guerdon?”  The song says we “win” it, whatever it is.  And if you look it up you will find the terse definition “reward.”

Obviously young Mrs. Pounds was allowing her illness to depress her, and the act of writing this song, reminding herself of the hope she had as a Christian, cheered her up.  She wanted to share that hope with us. 

I can already hear some of my brothers talking about how “unscriptural” this song is.  Where does it say there will be songbirds in Heaven?  And certainly Revelation says there is no need for sun because God is the light.  May I just say this?  Those literalists are missing the whole point.  John’s Revelation uses figurative language to describe Heaven.  If you think there will be pearly gates and streets of gold, you are just as mistaken as Mrs. Pounds.  But somehow, I think she knew that; I think she was motivating herself with her own special view of what Heaven must be like.

The descriptions in Revelation are about motivators.  Those first century Christians lived a day to day existence.  They prayed for their “daily bread” because they had no idea if they would have enough that day, let alone tomorrow.  The farmers among them existed at the mercy of the weather and natural disasters.  The shopkeepers and artisans lived at the mercy of the economy.  No one was going to “bail them out.”

            To those people, a place so wealthy that gold and precious jewels were used as construction material, meant security.  It meant rest from working long hours day after day to simply survive.

            Those people lived under the rule of a foreign king.  Doubtless they had all seen wars and battles.  They knew, in fact, that the Barbarian Hordes could still come over the mountains and wipe them out.  Did 9/11 cause you some concern?  Has it made you worry more about the possibility of terrorists under every bush?  Those first century Christians lived with that sort of uncertainty every day of their lives.  In fact, they probably had more safety as a conquered people than ever before.  But the picture of a huge city with huge walls meant safety and peace forever.  Security—that is what those pictures of Heaven were all about, not materialism.  I have no doubt that if John were writing to us, he would use other motivators.

Frankly, I feel we should give ourselves motivators that mean something to us personally, and we should do the same for our children.  “Getting to worship God forever and ever,” translates to a child as having to go to church, listen to sermons, and sit still forever.  If you think that will motivate them to want to serve God all their lives, you didn’t have any business becoming a parent in the first place. 

And that is what Mrs. Pounds has tried to share with us.  On a day of illness that drug her down, she went to the best place to pull herself out of it—thoughts of Heaven, the reward, the “guerdon.”  Perhaps if we sang more songs about the reward, we would do a better job of gaining it.
 
…we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven…Col 1:4-5.
 
Dene Ward

For something that is supposed to be the pre-eminent “Sports Channel,” ESPN leaves me remarkably cold—or actually hot.

           I can count on CBS to replay nearly every play of any significance immediately.  Not just touchdowns either.  They will show the touchdown from several angles, then show the quarterback as he passed, or the line as they opened the holes for the runner, or any other contributing factor.  If there is a penalty, we see it happen.  If there was an excellent block we see the block.  If a defender made an amazing move around a lineman, we see the move.

            ESPN?  I doubt that even half the plays are shown again.  Instead, we get an interview with someone on the sideline who might possibly have something to do with the game, but more likely doesn’t—he just happens to be famous.  Or we get an update from a game we chose not to watch and have to watch a piece of it anyway rather than a replay of our chosen game.  Most of the time, we never get the replay, even if it was a 50 yard run to set the team up with first and goal.

            On ESPN the commentators talk about every game except the one we are watching.  In fact, they sometimes talk about a different sport altogether.  We hear about other players, other coaches, and other schools—anything but the game we are watching.  We are told the records of every Heisman hopeful, even if they are not playing in our game.  We know which coach played for which other coaches, even if they are not coaching out team.  And they can’t even do it with good English.

            But sometimes we’re stuck.  It’s the only place we can see our team play—and win, we hope, despite not being able to see the instant replays in a timely fashion and at a meaningful angle.

            I guess a lot of people don’t mind.  They are putting up with the same things at the church they attend.  They say they are Christians but their preachers present sermons about societal ills—the ones deemed politically correct to talk about--about love and acceptance of everything and everyone no matter how many of Christ’s commands they break, and never once mention the name of the Savior they claim to worship—Rotary Club talks, inspirational talks, anything but a sermon.  They are handed pamphlets that some board somewhere else decided they needed to study rather than the Word of God, and certainly nothing actually relevant to that particular group and its needs.  If they learn anything, it’s about another game altogether, not God’s.

            Maybe these folks don’t know what to look for.  They expect entertainment rather than edification, emotion rather than instruction, famous people and rip-roaring religious fervor, along with a meal or two to keep the belly from growling.  Jesus had some choice things to say about people like that.  Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.  Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal” John 6:26-27.  It isn’t about the feel-good physical, he told them, it’s about ME!

            On Sunday mornings, I want to hear about my Lord.  I want to study the Word of God and learn more from it than I knew the day before.  On the other hand, I don’t mind a repeat of an old lesson, perhaps from a new angle, and certainly prefer that to an interview on the sideline with someone who is supposed to be “famous” in the religious world.  Big name preachers can sin the same as the rest of us. 

            And you know what?  We CAN turn this channel.  We can look for something else.   
     
           You can look for something else.  Give me the simple truth of the gospel and the quiet worship of those people long ago.  Why don’t you come with me so we can find it together?  Nothing else can fill your soul quite the same way.
 
I am the bread of life.  Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.  This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” John 6:48-51.
 
Dene Ward

I have to admit it—I seldom look at Bible dictionaries.  They scare me a little.  I cannot read a word of Hebrew or Greek so how can I check out what these guys are saying?  At some point I just have to trust them.  That’s why I love it when the Bible itself tells us what a word means.  Sometimes you have to read carefully or you will miss it, usually because you read past it all your life and can’t seem to stop that bad habit.  At least that’s my problem.  You have to pay attention when you read God’s Word, like every time you read it is the first time.
 
           And by doing just that I found a new, obvious definition.  Read Ezekiel with me.

            If I say to the wicked, ‘You shall surely die,’ and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, in order to save his life, that wicked person shall die for his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the wicked, and he does not turn from his wickedness, or from his wicked way, he shall die for his iniquity, but you will have delivered your soul. Again, if a righteous person turns from his righteousness and commits injustice, and I lay a stumbling block before him, he shall die. Because you have not warned him, he shall die for his sin, and his righteous deeds that he has done shall not be remembered, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the righteous person not to sin, and he does not sin, he shall surely live, because he took warning, and you will have delivered your soul, Ezek 3:18-21.

            Did you catch it?  God tells Ezekiel exactly what a righteous man is—someone who warns (and delivers his soul) or someone who listens to the warning and repents.  But what about the “righteous man” who commits injustice, you ask?  He has “turned from his righteousness” and “none of his righteous deeds are remembered,” which means he is no longer righteous.  The only two righteous people in that whole paragraph are the one who warns and the one who repents.

            Notice, God says nothing about the way he is warned.  If you have not read the book of Ezekiel you need to.  Ezekiel preached hard sermons.  He preached plain sermons.  Yet God still demanded that those people repent.  Getting their feelings hurt did not make them “righteous.”  Getting angry about the way they were spoken to did not make them “righteous.”  The only thing
that made them “righteous” was heeding the warning and repenting. 

            Think about that Syrophenician mother who came asking Jesus to heal her demon-possessed daughter.  At first Jesus ignored her.   Then he insulted her.  If she had left with her feelings hurt, her daughter would never have been healed.  She understood that something was more important than her feelings.  And Jesus called that attitude “faith.”  Ah!  Another Bible definition.

            When I hear the warning, if I want to be counted righteous, I must stop blaming others and recognize my responsibility to listen and act.  The failures of others will not save me.
 
Take heed how you hear…Luke 18:8.
 
Dene Ward

Keith recently received a veteran’s pass to a Tampa Bay Rays game in St Petersburg.  (By the way, there may be a Green Bay, but there is no such town as Tampa Bay.  Tampa Bay signifies an area on the central west coast of Florida, usually including Tampa, St Petersburg and Clearwater and their suburbs.) 
 
         But the game was at the end of the season after the Rays’ play-off hopes were gone.  At first you would think it wouldn’t be much of a game, but you would be wrong.  Young players who had been called up from farm teams for the expanded September rosters were playing for a place on the major league team next season.  Older players were playing to show their worth, either for a contract renewal or for another team to show some interest in a trade.  Established players were playing for personal records—a better ERA, consecutive years with a certain number of home runs and RBIs.  I knew it would still be a game worth watching.  No one would be “phoning it in.”

          But imagine there was nothing left to play for.  Imagine they were just playing out the season because it was a contract requirement.  How many home runs would you expect?  How many wins?  And how many fans would bother to show up at all?

          Some of us play at the game of life like that.  We look at our meager accomplishments, at the few years we have left, and decide there is nothing worth living for, nothing worth working for, nothing to look forward to but day after day of waking up to uselessness until one morning you don’t wake up at all.  And as far as heaven goes?  We seem to hope we have enough warning before death to shoot off a last prayer for forgiveness because surely that’s the only “hope” we have.

          Too many of us have bought into the world’s idea of hope—something insecure, uncertain, and probably not going to happen at all. Go out tomorrow and plant a seed.  Now read 1 Cor 9:10:  the plowman plows in hope.  What do you think is going to happen to that seed you planted?  You “hope” it will grow.  If a farmer hoped the way most of us hope, he would never plant in the first place.  “Hope” in the Bible means something is going to happen, and you are simply waiting for it, waiting like someone standing at an established bus stop at the established time, not someone who just guessed what route the bus takes and which corner it might stop at and when, and “hoping” you guessed correctly.

          By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance…for he was looking forward to the city that has foundations who builder and designer is God…these all died not having received the promises but having seen and greeted them from afar, Heb 11:8,10,13.  Could wealthy Abraham have given up a comfortable home to live in tents the last half of his life, could he have stood on that mountain ready to sacrifice his son if he had just crossed his fingers and “hoped” he had a future beyond this life?  No, he had Biblical hope.  He knew he had a reward waiting.

          And so do you—something even better than moving up from Double A, or even Triple A, to a permanent place on the roster of a major league team, and something a whole lot more certain—even if your batting average isn’t quite as high as the next guy’s, even if all they can count on you for is a sac-fly every so often instead of a grand slam.  You still have something to play for, a place “prepared from the foundation of the world,” one that will be there no matter who wins the pennant.
 
And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises, Heb 6:11-12.

Dene Ward

I was a timid child, especially around my peers, and I wasn’t much braver when I grew up.  But God puts something in mothers that is fearsome.  There is a reason people say that the most dangerous creature is a mother who thinks her young are threatened.  All of us in the ladies’ Bible class call it “the mama bear” in us.
    
Once we lived in a big old frame house on a rural highway, a dirt road running down the edge of the side yard to its north.  Lucas at four was already a tree climber and the small chinaberry in that section of the lawn was a favorite.  He could reach the lowest limb standing flat-footed on the ground, then swing his legs up to it to hang upside down, pull himself up to sit or even stand on that long sturdy branch.

    One afternoon he was playing in the tree when a group of boys came walking down the dirt road.  There were four of them, ninth or tenth grade teenagers, every one of them bigger and heavier than I.  They must not have seen me among the sheets and towels as I hung out the last load of laundry.  Surely they would have known better than to start teasing a small child with his mother present.  Very quickly the name-calling and threatening turned into all four of them coming at my little guy with arms raised.  What were they thinking?

    I emerged from the folds of flapping laundry breathing fire and probably screaming like a banshee—my memory of the event is just a little foggy.  I do remember that four young toughs wilted before my eyes, turned tail and ran.  I grabbed my baby, ran up the back porch steps into the kitchen and sank into a chair, rocking him as the slam of the screen door echoed through the old house.

    I was thoroughly shaken, not by the boys, but by my own actions.  Where in the world had that come from?  It came from God, the strength to overcome a timid nature and forget your own safety in order to protect your small, innocent child who is unable to protect himself.  We all have that Mama Bear somewhere inside us.  I doubt we could keep it hidden if we wanted to when the need for it arose.

    God put that feeling in us, so surely it must be in Him.  Yet somehow He managed to ignore it.  His Son’s life was not only threatened, but taken in a horrible, painful way, and He managed somehow to stifle that strong, boiling emotion that rises out of you in an almost uncontrollable manner.

    And do you know why?  Because when Satan came after us, his adopted children, He didn’t stifle it, but instead gave free rein to the Mama Bear in Himself.  He loved us so much He found a way to save us, even at an almost unbearable cost.

    Think about that the next time you want to rail at God for the pain you think He has caused you.  We caused Him much more pain and He loves us anyway.

Herein was the love of God manifested in us, that God has sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him.  Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins, 1 John 4:9,10.

Dene Ward

It must be a sign of my “un-hipness.”  I never have, and I suppose I never will understand the desire to buy pants that look worn out right off the rack, faded, holey and torn.  Surely we have reached some sort of social neurosis when a symptom of poverty becomes the popular thing to do for even the wealthiest.

    The Holy Spirit did not go in for this obsession either.  In 1 Peter 1: 4 one of the wonderful things about our inheritance, He says, is that it will not “fade away.”

    When Disneyworld opened in Florida I was 19 years old.  It was the first time I had been to anything “Disney” at all, and I was entranced.  As we rode in on the monorail, I swiveled my head back and forth so much that I was literally “dizzy with delight.”  I laughed at all the corny jokes in the Haunted House elevator.  So much for trying so hard to make everyone think I was now “an adult.”  I could not get enough of all the fanciful details.  I didn’t even mind waiting in line!  Why they had air conditioning vents blowing out on you as you waited!  Isn’t that amazing?

    The first time I took my children they enjoyed it as much as I had.  We had saved money for a year and experienced that park the way it should be experienced, and it was nearly magical, even for us world-weary grown-ups, because we were seeing it again through the eyes of our inexperienced children.  

    But as my boys grew up and became involved in more and more school activities, they wound up going to Disneyworld for state competitions every year, sometimes twice a year.  By their senior years, it was old hat.  They spent more time in their hotel rooms than in the park itself.  It had become so familiar that it had lost its luster.  They even had unused Disney tickets sitting on their desks at home.  Can you imagine?

    Peter says that will never happen with our inheritance.  It will never lose its luster.  It will always be a wonder as if new, never trite or stale or boring.  Imagine every moment of Eternity being like the first time a small child sees the wonder of a grand amusement park—only so much better, a thousand, a million, a billion times over because it was created by God and not man.

    That is the inheritance we have waiting for us.  Somehow I don’t think we will want it to be used, torn, and full of holes.  Looking fresh and new and un-faded every single moment will be just fine.  

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy begat us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, unto an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fades not away, reserved in heaven for you, who by the power of God are guarded through faith unto a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time, 1 Pet 1:3-5..

Dene Ward