Cursed be the day on which I was born! The day when my mother bore me, let it not be blessed! Cursed be the man who brought the news to my father, “A son is born to you,” making him very glad. Let that man be like the cities that the LORD overthrew without pity; let him hear a cry in the morning and an alarm at noon, ​because he did not kill me in the womb; so my mother would have been my grave, and her womb forever great. ​Why did I come out from the womb to see toil and sorrow, and spend my days in shame? Jer 20:14-18.
              
I can remember times when Keith knew he had to confront someone, either about their lives or their teaching.  I remember how quiet he became before he left the house, how pensive he looked, his inability to eat or laugh or even smile, and the amount of time he kept to himself in a back room with the door shut, praying. 

A preacher’s job is not an easy one.  Look at Jeremiah in the passage above.  This man was vilified, threatened, imprisoned and virtually kidnapped all because he preached the message God sent him to preach.  And he knew what was coming—because it always has come since the days of Noah’s ridicule to now.  Especially now, when the world, and often the brethren, have deemed that the worst crime of all is to "offend" someone by telling him he is wrong. But a man who has dedicated himself to the Word of God cannot turn from his God-given mission.

The Spirit lifted me up and took me away, and I went in bitterness in the heat of my spirit, the hand of the LORD being strong upon me. Ezek 3:14.  God told Ezekiel from the beginning that his was a hopeless task.  The people would not listen.  They would be “hard-headed,” and to help Ezekiel, He would make him just as stubborn as they.  But still he did not want to go.  He went “in bitterness of spirit.”  Yet this man, of all the prophets to God’s people, was probably the most successful.  Pay attention:  success does not make it any easier.  It was years before Ezekiel was respected by his countrymen, and then only after he was proven correct by the fulfillment of his prophecy.  In all the years before he was a nutcase, a lunatic, at best a fanatic who was woefully misled. 

Amos was flat out told to leave.  “Go home, you country bumpkin and preach there.”  And Amos replies, “Hey!  This wasn’t my idea…”

Then Amos answered and said to Amaziah, “I was no prophet, nor a prophet's son, but I was a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore figs. But the LORD took me from following the flock, and the LORD said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’ Amos 7:14-16a

Of all places for God to send this unsophisticated southerner, the urban capital of the northern kingdom, where people lived in luxury and only listened to prophets who praised them really stretches the understanding.  But God knows what we need better than we do, and those folks needed a plain-spoken man of justice whose objectivity might possibly reach a few.

So let me leave you with a couple of thoughts.

When the preacher comes to see you, or when he simply preaches a tough sermon that steps on your toes, be kind.  He is not “out to get you.”  He does not want to hurt your feelings.  What he wants to do is obey His God and save both your soul and his.  It was not easy for him to say, or preach, what he did.  Give him the benefit of a doubt.  Appreciate what he went through before he even got there, and the fact that he cares enough about you to say anything at all.

And remember—this isn’t just the preacher’s responsibility.  It’s yours too.  Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. Gal 6:1.  If you are a child of God, you will be putting yourself on the line too.  Just remember what it cost you as you fulfilled the mission when the preacher stands in the pulpit.  He does it every Sunday, and every other day of the week when you are not even aware.
 
My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins. Jas 5:19-20
 
Dene Ward

The biggest clearance sales of the year start this week.  I clip coupons all the time, but clearance sales are good, too, and a clearance sale that I can use a coupon on makes my day.
            Where we live, I often resort to catalogues.  The shipping works out about the same as the gas it would cost to go to the store, and when you add in the time, there is no contest.  As you might guess, I am not one of those “Born to shop” women.  I only shop when I need something.  But when a clearance catalogue hits my mailbox, I usually try to think ahead to what I might need in the near future. 
            Of course you know the problem with clearance catalogues.  They only have some of the colors left, in only some of the sizes—usually the weird colors and odd sizes, say, chartreuse size 0 or fluorescent orange plaid size XXXL.  If you want the good stuff you have to call in early, preferably the same day you get the catalogue, and have several options on your list.  That way you might get one or two things you need in the correct size and a reasonably non-hideous color.
            If something is totally free, I am not quite as picky.  I had a coupon once for a free 12 pack of one of those odd new Dr Pepper flavors, if I also bought a regular 12 pack.  Keith is the Dr Pepper drinker in this house, but he doesn’t like his favorite things fooled around with—not his coffee, not his iced tea, not his Coke, and certainly not his Dr Pepper.  I almost did not use the coupon.  Then I thought, hey, it’s free!  If he doesn’t like it, I can give it to someone else.  We were nearly out of drinks and the regular Dr Pepper was on sale, so it was no loss to us if that is what happened.
            Isn’t it amazing how people line up for good sales, and go nuts for things that are free, but no one is lining up for the most important free thing there is—eternal life!  You can’t even tell anyone about this great deal without them looking at you askance and walking away in the middle of a sentence--or making a pronouncement like, “I don’t discuss religion and politics.”
            Unfortunately the majority of the world hasn’t a spiritual bone in its body.  People are all too consumed with the here and now, with immediate results, with instant gratification of any and every desire.  It’s interesting that Paul calls such people “babies” in his letter to the Corinthians.  It takes spiritual maturity, an ability to see beyond the present and to weigh the true importance of things, to understand that this world is not what counts.
            A baby will cover his face with a blanket and think no one can see him.  He has not yet learned that there is any other perspective than his own.  He thinks if he cannot see you, then you cannot see him.  That seems to be how many adults live their lives as well.  The only things that matter to them are what they are going through, and how it affects them.   The self-centeredness of an infant has grown into the selfishness of an adult. 
            So it is difficult for people to realize that they are sinners in need of salvation.  That is the first hurdle to cross.  You cannot convert a person who thinks he is spiritually safe.  That is why Jesus had more luck with harlots and publicans than with the religious leaders of his day.  And the sad thing is that if they could ever realize their need, the solution is free!  No coupons needed.  Yet they miss the greatest clearance sale ever.  Salvation has been on sale for thousands of years.  100% off, totally free.
            Don’t let pride and immaturity make you miss the bargain of your life.
 
So then as through one trespass the judgment came unto all men to condemnation, even so through one act of righteousness the free gift came unto all men to justification of life, Rom 5:18.
 
Dene Ward

This time of year I usually try to make a batch of chocolate fudge.  I say “try” because I usually fail.  Peanut butter fudge I have down.  19 out of 20 times it will turn out right, but not the chocolate variety. I am talking about real fudge, not the newer recipes that add things like marshmallow crème, and wind up changing the texture just so it won’t flop on you.  If it shines, it isn’t fudge; if it’s soft, it isn’t fudge; if it’s grainy, it isn’t fudge; if it must be kept refrigerated, it isn’t fudge.  Real fudge is matte to the eye, firm to the touch, creamy in your mouth, and sits just fine on the countertop without changing consistency. 
            So a couple of years ago I found a recipe for foolproof fudge in a cooking magazine that I ordinarily trust implicitly.  I made their recipe, and indeed it did just fine, but it was shiny, it was soft, it had to be stored in the fridge.  It wasn’t fudge, and I was disappointed beyond measure.  However, in the article accompanying the recipe, the author stated that fudge is a tricky thing.  If the temperature and humidity are not just right, if your ingredients have sucked up too much moisture from the kitchen atmosphere any time recently, if your candy thermometer is just a degree or two off, your fudge will not “fudge.”  He went on to say that even seasoned professionals feel frustrated when trying to make this unreasonably difficult recipe.  While I am sorry those folks feel that way, it certainly made me feel a lot better.  It helped explain my 1 in 10 record of success over the years.
            Aren’t we glad salvation is not so difficult?  Just follow a few simple directions and suddenly you have a relationship that will help you in the trials of this life, and lead you to the joys of the next, the sweetest of treats anyone could possibly enjoy.  Why is it that some people feel so obligated to make it more difficult?
            My brother-in-law was nearly run out of a church on a rail once because, using the Philippian jailor of Acts 16 as an example, he dared to say that there really is not all that much we have to know before we submit to baptism.  Oh no, he was told, we must know all about the plan of God through the ages, about the true nature of the first century church, about the false teachings on salvation and how to combat them, about the “correct” definitions of faith, baptism, and grace, among other things.
            Just what was it Philip asked that Ethiopian proselyte when he wanted to be baptized?  If you believe with all your heart, you may, and he said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, Acts 8:37.  Funny that Philip never gave him a list of things to memorize and recite before he was allowed in the water.  Isn’t it wonderful—and amazing!—that our Lord will accept our obedient faith the moment we realize our need for Him?
            Yes, there are many things we must all learn.  All these years after my baptism there are still many more.  That’s what the rest of your life is for; that’s why Peter said to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, 2 Pet 3:18.   We never finish that part.  Maybe the problem is, we make this arbitrary list and think once we know it, we are finished.  Just who made the list in the first place, if God didn’t?
            One of Satan’s most powerful tools is frustration and hopelessness.  Let’s not help him do his work by making salvation so difficult that people give up before they even get the chance to start.
 
And [the jailor] called for lights and sprang in, and trembling for fear, fell down before Paul and Silas and brought them out and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved?  And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus and you shall be saved, you and your house; and they spoke the word of the Lord unto him with all that were in his house, and he took them the same hour of the night and washed their stripes and was baptized, he and all his immediately, Acts 16:29-33.
 
Dene Ward   

My sister and I stood near the end of the long pier that jutted into the Gulf, a steady breeze blowing our hair across our faces, the hot sun pounding our shoulders as only a Florida sun can.  The planks beneath our sandaled feet were thick and gray, old enough to have splintered on the surface here and there but still solid, only a faint vibration when anyone walked past us.  The waves rolled in, small and steady, splashing the pilings beneath us and sprinkling us with salt spray.
            We had cane poles that day, no fancy rods and reels—just throw it in the water and pull it up when the fish bites.  And all of a sudden one did.  At 11 and with very little experience in the sport, it felt like a monster and I am sure I must have squealed.  Suddenly I was surrounded and a hand helped me pull the thing up.
            “What is that!?” I asked no one in particular.  It was the ugliest thing I’d ever seen, about 5 pounds worth of ugly.
            A man I didn’t know laughed.  “It’s a cowfish,” he said, but actually the profile looked more like a pig’s than a cow’s to me.  He advised me to throw it back and I did—the only fish I ever caught.
            Fishing is a common theme in the Bible—and I bet you’re thinking of the gospels.  But Amos, Jeremiah, Habakkuk all used that metaphor too.
            ​The Lord GOD has sworn by his holiness that, behold, the days are coming upon you, when they shall take you away with hooks, even the last of you with fishhooks. Amos 4:2
            “Behold, I am sending for many fishers, declares the LORD, and they shall catch them. And afterward I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain and every hill, and out of the clefts of the rocks. Jer 16:16
            You make mankind like the fish of the sea, like crawling things that have no ruler. ​He brings all of them up with a hook; he drags them out with his net; he gathers them in his dragnet; so he rejoices and is glad. ​Therefore he sacrifices to his net and makes offerings to his dragnet; for by them he lives in luxury, and his food is rich. Is he then to keep on emptying his net and mercilessly killing nations forever? Hab 1:14-17
            The prophets use the metaphor of God’s people being caught by a net or hook and carried into exile.  It was a fearsome image, one far removed from the picture we might have of a quiet man meditatively casting his line into a babbling brook. It takes Jesus to turn that scary prophetic metaphor on its ear.  Yes, we are “fishers of men,” but whereas the Assyrians and Babylonians made captives of those they caught, Jesus sets us free.
            For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. Rom 8:2.  Free from the law, free from sin, free from death.  How could we be any freer?
            And it doesn’t really matter to him how ugly a fish we are.  Unless we struggle in his hands, he won’t throw us back. 
 
So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” John 8:31-32
 
Dene Ward

Once I was straying in sin's dark valley,
No hope within could I see,
They searched thru heaven and found a Savior,
To save a poor lost soul like me

Chorus

Oh what a Savior! Oh Hallelujah
His heart was broken on Calvary,
HIs hands we nail scared: His side was driven,
He gave his life blood for you and me


He left the Father, with all his riches,
With calmness sweet and serene,
Came down from heaven and gave his life blood
To make the vilest sinner clean.

Chorus

Death's chilly waters I'll soon be crossing,
His hands will lead me safe o'er
I'll join the chorus in that great city,
And sing up there forever more
Chorus
 
            O What a Savior was written by Marvin P. Dalton in 1948.  As a musician I find it one of the most beautiful hymn melodies we sing.  Let's face it, folks—the modern hymns have a tendency to hover over four to six notes and repeat three or four of them incessantly (along with a lot of word repetition as well).  I have asked more than once, "Can't anyone write a melody anymore?"  Well, this man knew how to do it.
            Yet I have heard many want to do away with this hymn because of this one line: "They searched through Heaven and found a Savior."  Why?  Because we all know that God already had it in mind "before the foundation of the world" that Jesus would become flesh and dwell among us, eventually dying on the cross for our sins.  No search was necessary!  Well, of course God had it all planned, but that objection shows a whole lot of ignorance of Scripture.
              And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a great voice, Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof? And no one in the heaven, or on the earth, or under the earth, was able to open the book, or to look thereon. And I wept much, because no one was found worthy to open the book, or to look thereon: and one of the elders said unto me, Weep not; behold, the Lion that is of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has overcome to open the book and the seven seals thereof (Rev 5:2-5).
            Did you catch that?  "No one was found"—that phrase implies a search.  And where did they search?  "In heaven, on the earth, or under the earth."  John, speaking in figurative language, uses the metaphor of a search to impress upon us the absolute impossibility of anything or anyone other than Jesus the Messiah being able to save us.  Just as God paraded the animals in front of Adam to prove to Adam (not Himself) that he needed the woman, John is showing us a search to prove to us that we need Christ.  It's called poetic license, and if you read the Psalms, this sort of thing is not uncommon. 
            God has always used language the way we use it, the same rules of logic, the same use of figures, the same rules of reading (such as context), and language that anyone, not just a scholar, can understand.  The Psalms his people sang in the Old Testament used all these things, and John does, too, in his highly figurative Revelation.  Mr. Dalton was simply using a time- and God-honored way of writing poetry.  Sometimes we get so picky that if it were up to us half the Bible might be thrown out.  Be careful what you are showing about your Biblical knowledge, or lack thereof, and enjoy this beautiful melody and thoroughly scriptural song.
 
Dene Ward

Wives of probation officers learn to live with a lot of things, including fear.  As certified law enforcement officers their husbands regularly go alone into neighborhoods that well-armed policemen will not enter without back-up.  Yet they do it on a regular basis to keep track of their caseload, making sure they are where they are supposed to be and not out getting into trouble again.  Keeping the community safe by supervising convicted felons is their job.  They knock on doors every day, never knowing who might answer, or what condition they might be in (drunk, high, angry) and what they might be carrying with them.  Yes, it’s illegal for them to have a weapon, but they broke the law already, remember? 
            One of the other rules for the probationer is never to go near their supervising officer’s residence.  Most of them have no idea where their officers live anyway, and the office is not allowed to pass out that information, but when you live in a tiny rural county where practically everyone is related to or otherwise knows everyone else, they don’t even need a phonebook to find their officer.  Twice I have had one of those people knock on the door, once when Keith had already left for work. 
             Do you think we are just paranoid?  One time Keith came upon one of his people parked in front of a convenience store with a shotgun in the front seat next to him.  And among several other similar events, on Friday, May 18, 2012, probation and parole officer Jeff McCoy, who had gone to check on one of his people, was shot in the head and killed in Oklahoma City, when his knock on the door was answered.
             That is why I always lock my doors when I come inside, and why, since we had a fence put up, we lock the gate 24/7.
            It’s a habit now.  I come in the door and shut it with a twist of the wrist and it’s locked.  I don’t even know I’ve done it. In fact, one time I walked outside to do something and locked myself out without realizing it. 
            On the weekends when he is not at work, I regularly lock Keith out too.  He will be chopping wood or mowing the yard and I come back in from taking him a jug of water and—flip—it’s locked.  I don’t know it until I hear him knocking at the door.  He never gets angry; he always says, “Good job,” and goes about his business.  Now if I didn’t respond to his knock that might be a different story.
            Acts 6:7 tells us that many of the priests were “obedient to the faith.”  That word “obedient” is the same Greek word used in Acts 12:13.  Peter had been miraculously released from prison and went to Mary’s house, where the church had met to pray.  He knocked at the door and Rhoda came to “answer”—that’s the word “obedient.”  Just as a knock on the door requires a response, the gospel knocking on our hearts requires one too.
            First, let me praise poor little Rhoda.  This was a time of danger for the church.  Two had been arrested and one of those already killed.  The use of the word “maid[en]” or “damsel” tells me she was unmarried and therefore quite young.  Yet she is the one who was sent to answer the door.  What if it had been Herod’s soldiers?  Then she finds Peter standing there and is so excited she forgets to let him in—meaning it was somehow secured, which was probably unusual.  It takes others coming to respond to the continued knocking for Peter to actually get into the house.
            A lot of charlatans who claim to be preachers of the faith will tell you that all you have to do is look out the door and recognize the Lord and you will be saved.  Faith is merely mental assent, with perhaps a lot of excitement thrown in, too much to actually get the door opened to prove its sincerity, but this word requires some action.  Those priests in Acts 6 were “obedient” to the faith.  They responded completely and fully to whatever was asked of them.  “Mental assent” is not an appropriate response to the gospel, any more than me looking out the diamond-shaped pane of glass at my locked-out husband and waving, “Hi!”
            How many professional athletes have you seen wearing crosses and “thanking their Lord” before going out to live exactly the way they want to instead of the way He wants them to?  Too many.  But what about those of us who do not live with such public scrutiny?  How many times do we tell the Lord, even after having “obeyed the gospel” as if it were a one-and-done deal, I’m happy to serve as long as it doesn’t cost too much money or take too much of my precious time, as long as everyone does things my way (which is the only smart way), or calls me every day to check on me and take care of my every whim?
            The Lord is knocking on the door and He wants far more than your words.  He wants all of you, your heart and your life, your total submission to His way of doing things.  Don’t just nod at Him through the peephole.  Either answer the door and let Him in, or allow Him to go on to someone who really wants Him there.
 
As many as I love, I reprove and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. He who overcomes, I will give to him to sit down with me in my throne, as I also overcame, and sat down with my Father in his throne. Revelation 3:19-21
 
Dene Ward