Malachi 3 & 4 -- How We Treat God

God is doing all the talking here, and He relays just how impetuous His people have become:

“You have tired the Lord with your words.”

“How have we tired Him?”
“Return to Me and I will return to you.”
”How can we return?”
“Should a person rob God?  But you are robbing Me.”
“How have we robbed You?”
“You have said terrible things about Me.”
“What have we said about You?”

They refuse to see or admit their own sin against God.  In fact, they most likely are suffering from spiritual blindness brought about by years of continually deciding to sin against Him. 

What words had tired God?  “Where is God who is fair?”  I’ve discovered long ago that God is more than fair.  He treats each of us far better than we deserve.

In asking us to return to Him, God had mentioned the fact that He doesn’t change.  WE do.  We worship and pray one minute and then sin the next!  Here, He was telling them that this had been happening for generations.  This surely shows God’s longsuffering watchcare over them.

In stating that they’d robbed Him, God was talking about not getting the 10% tithe.  Years ago, He hit me square between the eyes with that one, as I read Him saying, “Test Me in this.  I will open the windows of heaven for you and pour out all the blessings you need.”  God has proven Himself to be more than faithful with this promise.  It does take faith on my part.  I have to learn to trust Him.

Even after all of this, the people said, “IT’s useless to serve God.  It did no good to obey His laws and show the Lord All-Powerful that we were sorry for what we did.”  Their judicial blindness was leading them over the precipice.  However, there were those who honored the Lord, “and the Lord listened and heard them.  The names of those who honored the Lord and respected Him were written in His presence in a book to be remembered.”  God said, “They belong to Me; on that day they will be MY VERY OWN.”

Father, I know I’ve come so far from where You started calling me to Yourself again.  You dusted me off and cleaned me up.  You’ve taught me the things You were trying to teach these people, yet there are still times when I wrongly allow myself to feel entitled or when I become frustrated and I fail to honor and respect You in my thoughts or actions.  I’m sorry for that.  But I am so glad that I can feel remorse for my sin, for that means that You are active in my life, constantly calling me back to You.  I just don’t know what hope I’d have if You weren’t.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

Malachi 1&2 -- Giving God A White Elephant

It can become so easy to just be going through the motions on just about anything.  For instance, the four months of unbearably hot weather here have caused even the most workaholic people I know to stay indoors more, leaving tasks undone and to-do lists getting longer.  A why-fight-it mentality seems to be setting in.  Tired of waiting for a break in the weather, many people seem to have just given up on yardwork, stating that it just isn’t worth it anymore.

That seems to be what was happening in Malachi 1-2 and God begins to question them to move them off high center.  But amazingly, the people’s responses are disrespectful and contentious!

“I have loved you.”  “How have You loved us?”

“Why don’t you honor Me?  Why don’t you respect Me?”  “How have we shown You disrespect?”

God lets them know that He’s watched their selection process as they determined which animals to bring as sacrifices.  Rather than choosing their best animals for Him, they were bringing “blemished odds & ends”, my commentary said.  Almost the way we pick out a white elephant gift to take to a party – “What can I get rid of that I really don’t like anyway?”

The people had actually become weary of serving God.  God had heard them say, “We’re tired of doing this.”  Their passion was gone and they were tired of waiting for Messiah.  As a result, they’d lost respect for God.

A what’s-the-use mentality is hard to overcome, and it seems vitally important that we catch it in the early stages and make changes before we lose our passion. As the heat continues her, I’ve tried t force myself to work outside on projects – most recently on a class float for Homecoming. Surprisingly, I’ve found that 102 is “the new cool”, 107 is bearable, and 113 is a hot day.

In spiritual matters, we can ask God for strength to avoid burnout and to provide us with His perspective on things.  Rather than deciding that we need a break, we can, through the Holy Spirit, be given sort of a spiritual booster shot to kick start our service to God and our desire to love Him back and respect Him when it all starts to wane.

Father, please prevent me from getting spiritual weariness.  Don’t let me fall into the trap of malaise by giving up even one day on knowing that You love me and desire Your best for me.  If You don’t quit, then I shouldn’t either.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

Jude 1-24 Where To Draw The Line?

Jude spoke of people who were actually against God but who maybe didn’t even realize it.  They were particularly wanting to not call anything a sin that was sexual.  My commentary said that “their thought life is polluted.  Living in a world of filthy fantasies, they eventually find fulfillment of their dreams in sexual immorality.”

In verse 18, Jude said, “In the last times there will be people who laugh about God, following their own evil desires which are against God.”

What kept nagging at me here seemed to be whether there actually is a line between thoughts and actions or whether the Bible forbids us from even having the thoughts.  God often reminds me that it’s the thought that counts, and verse 8 sure sounds like thoughts, rolled around and allowed, will eventually lead to actions.  Then as I listened to Christian radio this morning, I heard the words of a song that said we’re all guilty of the same things --we think the thoughts but we do not carry them through.

It seemed to be the word desires in these verses where such a line might be drawn.  Our physical bodies, infected with the sin virus, are the starting places for desires as chemicals are manufactured and released into our bloodstream based on what we sense around us and what we think.  That seems to be where desire is stoked into thoughts.  And most likely that is where it also should be cut off – before it can cause that chemical bath to wash all over us, taking us out of control.

Jude ends, “God is strong and can help you not to fall.  He can bring you before His glory without any wrong in you, and can give you great joy.”  Physically, great joy seems to be what we seek, but we’re seeking it from the wrong sources when we sin.  Desires are natural to our bodies.  But unlike the unthinking animals Jude mentions in verse 10, God has given us His Holy Spirit to help us disconnect from the physical and thus avoid the sin.

Father, it’s so easy for our thought lives to become polluted when we don’t filter what we take in.  We can also feel entitled to the thoughts, claiming that we are strong enough to avoid them ever leading to actions, but Your Word says otherwise.  Help me to listen to You and not to my body.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

Habakkuk 1-3 -- Waiting On God And Seeing Him Respond

I loved these conversations Habakkuk had with God.  He’d been waiting for an answer to his questions, and it seems that when he finally wrote them down, he received his answers.

He first complained about the sinful culture in Judah.  How long was God going to allow it to continue?  It sounds just like our cries today.  He asked and God answered:  “Watch and be amazed and shocked.   I will do something in YOUR lifetime that you won’t believe even when you are told about it!”

How was God going to get rid of that evil?  By bringing an even bigger evil in – Babylon.  My commentary said that Judah was actually sinning more because they were sinning against a greater light (knowledge of God).  But God’s choice of remedies seemed crazy to Habakkuk!  How could God punish Judah with a nation that was worse than they were?  Habakkuk said, “Your eyes are too good to look at evil.”  I wonder about this, since God knew who to go get, and God knew what the people of Judah were already doing.  Would this mean that, because He is all-knowing that He has to look at evil in order to see His children?

Given the seeming juxtaposition of all this, Habakkuk decides:  “I will wait to see what He will say to me.  I will WAIT to learn how God will answer my complaint.”  So often, we can’t see a way out of trouble, but God has already got an answer on the way, and we simply have to wait for His timing.

Habakkuk expresses the hope that God isn’t done working miracles – “Lord, I have heard the news about You.  I am amazed at what You have done.  Lord, do great things once again in our time; Make those things happen again in our own days.”

God fills Habakkuk with confidence in His watchcare, to the point where Habakkuk can pray that even though there are no crops in the field (Texas today) and no cattle in the barns (Texas today, since there is nothing for them to eat and they have to be sold), I will still be glad in the Lord; I will rejoice in God my Savior.  The Lord God is my strength!”

Father, as Job described, You give and You take away, but You are sovereign and You know what You are doing.  Still we can dare to ask, as Habakkuk did, for You to do great things again in our own times.  Bring our nation back to You, heal our land, and remove sin from our lives, God our Savior!

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

Amos 7-9 Which Way IS Up?

Three times Amos received visions from God about impending disasters for the northern kingdom of Israel.  After the first vision, Amos prayed, “Lord God, forgive us!  How could Israel live through this?”  So the Lord changed His mind and forestalled the punishment.  After the second vision, Amos prayed again, “Lord God, stop!  How can Israel live through this?”  It’s scary to think about even requesting that God stop a punishment that’s deserved, but Amos dared to pray, and God again relented.  The third vision was of the Lord standing by a straight wall with a plumb line in His hand.  The Lord said, “See, I will put a plumb line among My people Israel to show how crooked they are.  I will not look the other way any longer.”

This passage always reminds me of climbing our town’s old north and south water towers.  After climbing at the slightly-less-than-vertical angle for some 100’, I’d reach the ladder that departed from that angle, going straight up through the catwalk to access it.  It always felt like I was climbing up an overhang, leaning outward as I climbed, because I’d been climbing for so long at the previous angle that it seemed that it was straight up when it really wasn’t.

Here, the people had been “climbing” or living at an angle away from what God wanted for so long that when He put a plumb line among them (Christ) to show His true angle, they too felt that the true angle had to be wrong, and that’s why, centuries later, they would deny that Christ is Messiah.

In chapter 8, God relates how the Jewish people would be spiritually blinded for denying Christ’s Messiahship:  “The days are coming when I will cause a time of [spiritual] hunger in the land.  The people will not be hungry for bread or thirsty for water, but they will be hungry for words from the Lord … they will search for the word of the Lord, but they won’t find it.”  Of course, God can sovereignly do that to anyone who willfully chooses to deny the truth of the Cross.

To show how badly they had fallen away from Him, God says, “I will keep watch over them, but I will keep watch to give them trouble, not to do them good.”  Oh, that would be horrible to hear!

Father, Your words to a people who were far from You, despite being chosen by You, remind me of the song, Living Life Upside Down.  The writer talks about trying to go his own way, without You, and finally realizing that, instead of climbing up to heaven, he’d been descending into a well, because he, like the people here, had been living life upside down.  He’d failed to take advantage of Christ, our Plumb Line, whom You sent to show us how to live for You.  Don’t ever let me forget having that same feeling, and the climb it took to get back to You.  Thank You for loving me enough to show me just how wrong I’d been.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

Amos 5 & 6 -- They Didn't Even Realize

The Israelites were saying, “Come on, God … bring judgment and justice!”  But they did not know what they were asking, for they were living lives that would bring that divine justice back on their heads.  Instead of the Passover, in verse 17 God promises, “I will pass AMONG you to punish you.”

A great way to envision their spiritual blindness is this:  Imagine a typical Sunday morning at church, especially the worship service.  Everyone leaves with a smile on their faces, believing it was a good morning.  But then imagine instead hearing this from God:

“I completely hate your feasts; I cannot stand your religious meetings.  If you offer me … offerings, I won’t accept them.  You bring your best offerings, but I will ignore them.  Take the noise of your songs away from me!  I won’t listen to the music.”

Wouldn’t that be a shock to hear?  It certainly should have been for the Israelites, who probably thought they were “doing church right.”

But God point-blank said, “I know your many crimes, your terrible sins.”  They thought that what they did away from church had no effect on their worship at church, but as I’ve read before, “Work and worship do not sanctify sin.  Sin contaminates work and worship.”

God also gives them an “Oh, by the way …” revelation – they thought He didn’t know about it, but He said, “While you traveled in the desert for 40 years, you carried with you your king, the god Sakkuth, and Kaiwan your idol, and the star gods you made.”  Even as He was originally rescuing their ancestors and bringing them out of Egypt to the Promised Land, they were secretly (or so they thought) bringing along idols that they worshiped!

Despite their many sins, acknowledged or not yet known to God, He still called out to them twice here:  “Come to Me and live … Come to Me and live.”  Such love from our Creator and such apathy from His creations.

Father, our sins are bright as day to You, and they do taint our worship, casting an ugliness upon what should be a beautiful moment between the Creator and His creation.  Please help me to have an acute awareness of all sin in my own life and help me acknowledge it, quit it, and ask for forgiveness before I attempt to ever begin to worship You.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

Amos 3 & 4 -- When God Speaks, People WILL Finally Listen

I was reminded of the phrase, “To whom much has been given, much is required,” as I read this.  In chastising the rogue nation of Israel, now separate from Judah, God said, “I have chosen ONLY you out of all the families of the earth, so I will punish you for all your sins.”  Israel had broken that agreement to walk with God.  God is now roaring at them as the Lion of Judah for good reason.  Israel’s sins were so blatant that they shouldn’t marvel at being caught in them.  The people had been warned again and again by God, yet they ignored the warnings. 

Like a father who stares incredulously at his child who was raised to know better but who has not utterly failed morally, God cries out, “The people don’t know how to do what is right.”  So like a loving Father, God invoked increasing levels of discipline, attempting to bring His children to their senses.  Yet with each harsher level of punishment, God saw no effect whatsoever, and His love for them cries out in this repeated phrase:  “Still you did not come back to Me.”

Israel then got to hear the message they didn’t ever WANT to hear:  “Get ready to meet your God, Israel.”  It’s going to be just as bad as it sounds.

My Bible’s sidebar says, “No one enjoys being disciplined.  Yet, it is often through the discomfort of chastisement that we return to the right path … You change your life by changing your heart.”

Father, help me to not just hear You when You speak, but also help me to listen to what You are telling me.  I’d rather hear it from You as my Friend than I would from You as my enemy as they did here.  Help me to change my heart and change my life.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

Amos 1 & 2 -- Be Careful About Your Amens

A shepherd became an evangelist after getting his revival message from God, and I can just see the Israelites clustered around him, saying, “Amen!  Preach on, brother!” as he pronounced God’s coming judgment on their enemy neighbors.  “Syria will be destroyed!  Gaza will be punished!  I’ll punish Phoenicia, and Edom, Ammon and Moab!”  But starting in 2:4, my commentary says, “Now the Lord is getting uncomfortably close to home.”  Judah and Israel were listed next, and to be numbered among those Gentile nations must have been appalling.  “By their sin, Judah and Israel had forfeited all special recognition by Jehovah.”

God was about to send them all into captivity for ignoring Him and His teachings.  They’d been warned, but they hadn’t listened or made any changes.

The sidebar in my Bible today was from Hearing God’s Voice Above The Noise:  “When God speaks, do I listen?  When God roars from heaven and wants my attention, do I stop talking and listen?  Or is my life so busy that I only listen now and then?  Do I only listen to God when it doesn’t interfere with the normal course of events?  Or have I been so arrested by what God says that I stop dead in my tracks and listen?”

Father, You know how much I dislike it when I talk to Joseph about his behavior and he says, “I know, but …”  He’s actually saying that, yes, he agrees with me, but he doesn’t necessarily want to obey for some reason, trying to rationalize it all.  I often do that to You, Father.  I’m sorry.  I know that once I hear from You, my immediate reaction should be to change what I’m doing and not try to argue or rationalize.  Please help me to do that, Father.  I don’t want You to have to ever say about me, as You did about Judah, “He rejected the teachings of the Lord and did not keep His commands.”

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

Philippians 4 -- A Diet Of The Mind

“And God’s peace, which is so great we cannot understand it, will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.  Brothers, think about the things that are good and worthy of praise.  Think about the things that are true and honorable and right and pure and beautiful and respected.  Do what you learned and received from me, what I told you, and what you saw me do.  And the God who gives peace will be with you.”

Paul is talking about our thought life – that inside part of us that we can keep conveniently compartmentalized from the outside world, or so we think.  My commentary says:  “The Bible everywhere teaches that we can control what we think.”  We can’t simply give up and say we can’t help having unwelcome thoughts.  Here’s Paul’s secret:  “A person cannot entertain evil thoughts and thoughts about the Lord Jesus at the same time.  If, then, an evil thought should come to him, he should immediately get rid of it by meditating on the Person and work of Christ.”

We are so tempted to indulge ourselves with evil thoughts, I think, out of a sense of entitlement, reasoning that, because we don’t physically commit the sin, then we can at least allow ourselves the indulgence of the thought, almost in compensation for the sacrifice.  (It sounds a lot like someone who’s concerned about their weight and dieting deciding to indulge in a rich chocolate dessert as compensation for two days of healthy eating!)

Verse 7 tells us God’s peace will keep our hearts AND minds in Christ Jesus.  But my commentary adds that we have a responsibility there also.  “God does not garrison the thought life of a man who does not want it to be kept pure … Right living results from right thinking.  If a person’s thought life is pure, then his life will be pure … And we should always remember that if a person thinks an evil thought long enough, he will eventually do it.”  As God continues to remind me, “It’s the thought that counts.”

Father, this can be a difficult battle for all of us – me included.  Please help me never to feel entitled to let my thought roam into areas I shouldn’t.  Set off alarm bells and red flags in my mind when I get into this danger zone.  Remind me not to indulge myself.  Keep me on a diet of the mind.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

Philippians 3 -- Where Am I In The Race?

Paul was helping to clarify what the Christian life should be like.  We are to worship God through His Spirit and through our pride in Christ, never through pride in what we’ve done, for we can never trust in ourselves.  Just doing that likely means we are committing the sin of pride.

Paul says that he got over the so-called importance of the things he used to believe would draw him closer to God.  He found that there was really only one thing that could – knowing Jesus Christ.  And that knowing takes an eternity to accomplish.

Once he’d understood that, he realized that all those important things he’d lost and had once so highly valued were worth nothing after all.  He didn’t really lose, but instead infinitely gained by his choice to follow Christ.

Paul also realized that, although believing in Christ and His sacrifice for us on the cross gained us our salvation, there was still this lifetime of becoming like Him to be done, not out of duty but out of desire, and that became Paul’s life goal.  He saw it as a race – his only focus being what lay between where he currently was and his goal.  Everything that had happened before was past history.  It was only what he did before the end of the race that mattered.

That’s huge, because all too often we try to beat ourselves down and even disqualify ourselves because of sins in our past.  Yes, they had an impact upon us, but really all they did was affect where we happen to find ourselves at the moment in the race.  If we focus on Christ for the rest of the race, our sole desire will be to make up ground, not to stop the race and go back to examine where we started or ran off course.

What’s at the end?  Paul said, “Our homeland is in heaven.”  We started there and it’s important to finish there.  “We are waiting for our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, to come from heaven.”  And when He does, by His power He will change our sin-filled human bodies into bodies like he now possesses, built to last for eternity and unsusceptible to the sin infection.

Father, thank you for reminding me that the only value in looking back is to worship and praise You for what You’ve done in my life.  The only things I’ve truly lost by following Christ are the things that didn’t matter in the least.  Keep my eyes on the goal, Father.  Don’t let me stray off course.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

Philippians 2 -- Our Part In Unity

Paul was addressing selfishness, its effects on church unity, and how it doesn’t match up at all with the way Jesus lived.  My commentary said that unity is not uniformity, where we would all be made to believe the same thing.  “There may be minor matters on which we disagree, yet we can SUBMERGE our own opinions, where no real principle is involved, for the good of others.”

I think our real problem is this:  Our beliefs become our realities.  The same thing is happening in the lives of others.  Sometimes our reality doesn’t match others’ realities, and because ours was formed by our beliefs, we want to decide that others are flat out wrong.  They of course will probably be going through the same analysis.

So how do Christians in the local church resolve such issues?  Paul points us to Christ, who even though He was equal with God, chose to display love by not demanding His rights as part of the Godhead, but instead willingly chose to submit and to empty Himself out on the cross.  He made Himself nothing for us out of love.  We too often want to build ourselves up out of desire for self.  The thought of a church full of believers willing to do this is amazing!  Yet we would often rather fall far short of the impossible solely because we selfishly desire to build ourselves up.

Maybe that’s what Paul was hinting at in verse 12 when he spoke of working to complete our salvation.  We’re like a diamond in the rough that becomes polished by years of working outward the salvation we’ve received inside.  Someone once told me that this was the Second Great Commission, and we are to be about conquering our own Judea inside ourselves.  As my commentary noted, “People who are willing to die for others do not generally quarrel with them.”

Father, I know that I must decrease so that You can increase inside of me.  Our human selfishness fights us on every side about this.  Remind me to empty myself out, as Your Son did, especially on minor matters where our beliefs may have resulted in slightly warped realities.  Help me to see as You see.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

Philippians 1 -- Joy Despite Frustration

It’s hard to imagine how someone like Paul, imprisoned in Rome and unable to be out among unbelievers leading others to Christ, could have such joy in his life!  Yet it oozes out from every word he writes.  What did he have to say in answer to every little thing that would set any of us off?  “It doesn’t matter.”  He didn’t let his circumstances or the actions of others dictate his happiness.  Even those people that others might have considered Paul’s rivals weren’t important to him, so long as people were led to Christ by whatever they were doing.

One particular thing he said gripped me:  “I expect and hope that I will not fail Christ in anything but that I will have the courage now, as always, to show the greatness of Christ in MY life here on earth.”

He simply wanted the courage to let Christ leak out of every pore, knowing that others would be seeing Christ through him.

Father, I want that, too.  I know that I’m not imprisoned, yet I can let frustration, more than probably anything else, lead to anything but joy leaking out of me, and when it does, others don’t see Your Son.  Please help me to see that the tedium I often feel is nothing compared to what Paul could have felt being imprisoned with a guard chained to him.  Help me never to take for granted the opportunities You give me to reflect Your Son to others.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

2 Thessalonians 1-3 -- Encouraging Me (And Others) Today

Someone needed encouragement, and I imagine this letter from Paul accomplished just that:

“This is proof that God is right in His judgment.  He wants you to be counted worthy of His kingdom for which you are suffering.  God will do what is right.  He will give trouble to those who trouble you.  And He will give rest to you who are troubled … We always pray for you, asking our God to help you live the kind of life He called you to live … Brothers and sisters, whom the Lord loves, God chose you from the beginning to be saved.  So we must always thank God for you … Stand strong and continue to believe the teachings … The Lord is faithful and will give you strength and will protect you from the Evil One … May the Lord lead your hearts into God’s love and Christ’s patience … Never become tired of doing good.  If some people do not obey … then take note of them … But do not treat them as enemies.  Warn them as fellow believers.  Now, may the Lord of peace give you peace at all times and in every way.”

Father, that’s the kind of pick-me-up I needed to hear today.  I know others are needing to hear it, too.  Don’t ever let me be tempted to give up on You when things get tough, for You are my Rock, and my Anchor.  You are the Cleft I hide in, my Protection and my Friend.  Thanks for the encouragement I needed today!

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

1 Thessalonians 4&5 -- Every Little Action Makes Or Unmakes Character

“We taught you how to live in a way that will please God, and you are living that way.  Now … live that way even more.”

My commentary said, “Holiness is a process, not an achievement … The will of God for His people is their sanctification … their setting apart for divine use … all believers have been set apart from the world to the service of the Lord … However, in another sense, believers should sanctify themselves from all forms of sin … The specific sin against which Paul warns is unlawful sexual activity …”

In 4:4, we read, “He wants each of you to learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable.  Don’t use your body for sexual sin like the people who don’t know God … God called us to be holy and does not want us to live in sin.”

Oscar Wilde, a famous British writer, is quoted in my commentary about how he fell into sexual sin and ended up in prison and disgrace, and he amazingly nails it on the head:

“Tired of being on the heights, I deliberately went to the depths in search of new sensation … I grew careless of the lives of others.  I took pleasure where it please me and passed on.  I forgot that every little action of the common day MAKES OR UNMAKES CHARACTER, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber, one has someday to cry aloud from the housetop.  I ceased to be lord over myself.  I was no longer the captain of my soul, and did not KNOW it.  I allowed pleasure to dominate me.  I ended up in horrible disgrace.”

That just about says it all.

Father, You fearfully and wonderfully created us as sexual beings, and Your ideal is for us to live in a marriage as husband and wife until You call us home.  The fires of passion do burn hot in us, and if we do not control them, they can destroy us.  Help me to never tire of being on the heights.  Give me the strength to not travel to the depths in search of new sensation.  Keep teaching me to control my own body in a way that is holy and honorable.  You’ve called me to be holy and not to live in sin.  Remind me every minute of every day that every little action makes or unmakes character, and that I need Your wisdom, guidance, and strength in the smallest decision.  This will protect me in the larger decisions.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

1 Thessalonians 3 -- In The Heat Of Battle

Paul was concerned about the new Christians in Thessalonica, for they were now encountering strong persecution.  He worried that, as the devil turned up the heat, he might also trick them into giving up their aggressive Christian testimony in exchange for his relaxing of the persecution, my commentary said.  Even today, we can find ourselves tempted to swap loyalty to Christ for personal comfort.

“They needed encouragement not to buckle under the pressure of opposition.”  We have to remember that opposition is not always a sign that God is displeased with our direction.  Instead, it’s more likely that we are walking in His will and Satan is trying to throw us off.  According to Paul, trials are a discipline in our lives that:

1)       Prove the reality of our faith

      2)      Enable us to comfort and encourage others going through similar trials
      3)      Develop certain graces, such as endurance in our character
      4)      Make us more zealous in spreading the Gospel, and
      5)      Help us remove the dross from our lives.

They are almost like spiritual fitness programs.

For me, yesterday was certainly a day filled with trials.  The only thing I can remember specifically praying was, “God, I trust you.  Help me to know what to do.”  Paul revealed so much more about his prayer life in this chapter.  He prayed night and day, out of habit, and I’ve felt lately that I’ve gotten out of this habit to some extent, even though one of my boys mentioned to their friends the other day about how well it worked when I prayed about even the small stuff, such as finding a lost item.  Thank You that they’ve taken notice, Father.  Paul’s prayers are intensely fervent.  You can almost see the sweat forming on his brow from the effort.  His prayers were very specific.  This not only focused God’s power and attention, but it also allowed Paul to more easily see the results of his praying.  His prayers were also altruistic – praying for the needs of others more than his own needs.

Father, the trials seem to have been dialed up a few notches yesterday, and they’ll probably continue for awhile at this higher level.  In the heat of it all, I’ve not taken as much time as I should to cry out to You.  Strengthen my faith.  Allow me to encourage others.  Give me more endurance.  Clear the spiritual barnacles out of my life, and use this as a story someday of how You picked me up and carried me through the trials.  I really need to be more like Paul in my prayer life.  I pray now that You help me to do that, Father.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

1 Thessalonians 1-2 -- The Way To A Person's Heart

I think all too often I worry that if I confront someone about sin in their lives, I will anger them and they will have nothing more to do with me.  My opportunity will be lost.  Paul wrote something here that showed how he approached that task.

First, in 2:6 he says, “We were not looking for human praise …”  He wasn’t too worried about everyone liking him.  “But we were very gentle with you, like a mother caring for her children.”  He wasn’t spouting out hellfire and damnation and pronouncing “sin” as a two-syllable word, but instead was showing genuine caring for the person he was talking to.  He said that he even shared his own life with them, helping and working alongside them, building personal relationships that showed how much he cared.  I’ve heard it this way:  They don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

He “lived in a holy and honest way, without fault.”  He was practicing what he preached so they could see he wasn’t hypocritical and so they could know that it was possible to lead such a life.  Then he treated them “as a father treats his own children,” but encouraging them, urging them, and (probably the tough part for fathers) insisting that they live good lives for God.  I say that’s tough because fathers do have to pick their battles.  As teens grow up, they naturally take on independence as they become their own persons.  But were a father to say nothing, his children would starve emotionally and spiritually, for they see boundaries as evidence of love.  Discipline indicates the fact that we care.

Often, the person God has placed in our path knows he’s committing sin and doesn’t particularly even like it that he is doing so, but he has no impetus to quit, much like someone who’d love to have a reason to lose weight and tone up, but who has no one to encourage them to do so.  There’s often relief that finally someone has had the courage to discuss the 500-lb. elephant in the room.

Paul seemed to do all of this in a way that wasn’t offensive and that didn’t come off as holier-than-thou.  And people responded.

Father, I thought about praying that You would get me over my fear of confronting sin, but then it seemed that You were saying that confronting was a negative first step.  So I pray instead that You will help me first to invest myself in the lives of those You place before me, building relationships as Paul did, which does wonders in building the bridge to their hearts so that they will be accepting of correction from You through me.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

Haggai 1-3 -- Pollution In Our Lives

The people in this book were experiencing drought just as we are right now, but there was a definite reason for it.  They’d been back in the Holy Land for 20 years after their captivity in Babylon, yet they’d failed to do much of anything toward what was to have been their first priority – rebuilding the Temple.  Instead, they’d not only completed their own homes.  They’d also spent a lot of time making their homes grand, with even paneled walls.  Yet as long as God’s house (and therefore their spiritual condition) lay in ruins, they could expect nothing but drought.

They got the message and began to work, but they quickly got discouraged, thinking about how inadequate the rebuilt Temple was going to be compared to the last one.  God let them know that His Spirit was among them and told them to be strong and fear not:  One day (still future) God would shake the nations and use the treasures that fell out to make the Temple better than it has ever been.

Perhaps the key thing I read today came from Haggai’s third prophecy.  God had two questions for the people to ask the priests:

1)       If holy meat touched other food, would the other food become holy?  The correct answer was “No”.

2)      If an unclean person touched holy meat, would the holy meat become unclean?  The correct answer was “Yes”

My commentary says:  “He that is holy imparts no holiness to anything else, but he that is defiled COMMUNICATES DEFILEMENT.”  I’d say that in medical terms, that would mean, “Defilement is contagious.  Holiness is not.”

That first part is pretty easy to see.  If we are striving to live the way God would have us live, Satan will certainly be going after us.  We’re marked targets, and if we choose to put ourselves alongside people, music, tv shows, movies, magazines, or anything else that does not glorify God, then we are at risk of being spiritually contaminated by it.

Regarding the second part, though, the desire for holiness has to come from within, aided by the Holy Spirit.  We can’t obtain our holiness via someone else’s actions.

I like the way my commentary boiled it down:  “Work and worship do not sanctify sin, but sin contaminates work and worship.”  For the people Haggai was addressing, their offerings were polluted and they were unclean as long as the Temple was in ruins, my commentary added, because they were out of God’s will.

If there is besetting sin in our lives, it pretty well makes our work for God and our worship of Him polluted.  No amount of “doing things for God” will ever make that sin okay.

Father, just as I would never hook a sewer pipe up to a fresh water pipe and think of drinking the water, I’m reminded that my worship of You is polluted when there is sin in my life.  The only way to remove the pollution is to remove the sin.  Period.  You deserve pure worship, Father, and it doesn’t matter if the sin involves attitudes, thoughts, or actions on my part.  It’s all still polluting my relationship with You and my worship of You.  Help me not to let that happen.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

Nahum 2 & 3 -- We Ignore God At Our Own Peril

God clearly had Nineveh in His sights.  Years before, He’d cared enough to send Jonah, the very reluctant evangelist, to Nineveh.  They’d heard and repented, but it didn’t last.  Twice here we hear God saying, “I am against you, Nineveh.”  My commentary said, “Since the Lord has made Himself her enemy, the city doesn’t stand a chance.”

Chapter 3 tells us that this very Middle Eastern city was being judged for her harlotries and sorceries, corrupting others with her idolatry and commerce.  It seems a juxtaposition that now the Muslim world is saying the same about the U.S.!

God had decreed it, and nothing could stop Nineveh’s destruction.  It fell in 612 B.C.  My commentary said that Nahum’s prophecy was so thoroughly fulfilled that Alexander the Great’s army actually marched near or over the ruins of the great city, totally unaware of that fact.  It wasn’t until the 1800’s that Nineveh was ever actually located!

Father, the kingdoms of this world too often lose sight of the fact that You hold all power, and that what You decree, You can easily make happen.  It would therefore be wise to listen to You, rather than suffering Nineveh’s fate.  Help me to not ignore Your word to me as well, Father.  Don’t let me be stubborn and unheeding of Your Word.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford