2 Corinthians 2 -- Discipline

“I didn’t write to make you sad, but to let you know how much I love you … [there had been trouble in Corinth, and Paul had needed to be tough in what he told them] … The punishment you gave him … is enough for him.  But now you should forgive him and comfort him to keep him from having too much sadness and giving up completely … show that you love him.  I wrote you to test you and to see if you obey in everything [they’d needed to discipline a church member and Paul had told them to do it.  Now, they needed to forgive and forget] … so that Satan won’t gain a foothold.”

 

My commentary talked about how reluctant churches are to discipline and the damage that is done when they don’t.  Biblically, it’s necessary and important:  “Faithful are the wounds of a friend”, the Bible says.  “There is a big difference between hurting someone and harming him.  Sometimes those who love us must hurt us in order to keep us from harming ourselves...  True discipline is an evidence of love … Problems that are swept under the rug have a way of multiplying and creating even worse problems later on.”

 

Paul urged forgiveness for the sinner’s sake (“It’s the medicine needed to heal broken hearts.”) for the Lord’s sake (“The problem was not simply between a sinning brother and a grieving apostle; it was also between a sinning brother and a grieving Savior… most of all he had sinned against the Lord.), and for the church’s sake(“an unforgiving spirit in a congregation because sin has not been dealt with in a Biblical manner gives Satan a beachhead.”)

 

Father, that’s good advice not just for a church, but for a family as well.  Help me as a father to understand when discipline is most needed.  Help me in my anger not to sin.  And help me most of all to forgive and forget so that my sons’ hearts are not broken and unmended.

 

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

2 Corinthians 1 -- Tough Times, God Times

Paul was describing how he managed to hang on through some very tough times with God’s help.  My commentary boiled it down to this:

 

1)       Remember what God is to you

a)      Praise Him because He is God

b)      Praise Him because He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ

c)       Praise Him because He is the Father of mercies

d)      Praise Him because He is the God of all comfort

2)       Remember what God does for you

a)      He permits the trials to come

b)      He is in control of trials

c)       He enables us to bear our trials

d)      He delivers us from our trials

e)      He is glorified through our trials

3)      Remember what God does through you

a)      We learn to be channels of blessing to others

b)      He perfects our character and helps us to share the character of God

c)       Through our sufferings He prepares us for something He is going to do

 

“How we handle the difficulties of life will depend largely on what kind of character we have, for what life does to us depends on what life finds in us.”

 

To Paul, having a clear conscience despite everything was very important.  In other words, not disappointing God during our trials.  “When you have a clear conscience, you will live in the light of the return of Jesus Christ, you will be serious about the will of God, you will glorify Jesus Christ, and you will be on good terms with the Spirit of God.”

 

If instead our conscience is clouded by sin, we can find ourselves experiencing the opposite of these things during our trials.

 

Father, there sure have been a lot of trials over the last three years.  But I can look back and see that You’ve been using them to grow my faith and my character, and You’ve taught me better to trust You.  Through it all, I’ve learned how to help others to do the same.  Thank You for the growth that has come from the trials.  Give me opportunities to share with others how they too can find rainbows in the storm clouds.

 

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

Mark 14 -- Would I have?

Would I have poured out something worth a year's wages to anoint Jesus?

Would I have gotten angry at the one who did?

Would I have allowed strangers into my house to have their Passover meal?

Would I have missed Jesus' reminder that He WOULD rise from the dead?

Would I have claimed that I wouldn't fail Him?

Would I have slept while He prayed for what was to come?

Would I have betrayed Him with a kiss?

Would I have obeyed Him and scattered, or disobeyed Him, following behind and into temptation?

Father, it's so easy to look with 20/20 hindsight and think that I would have done better, but the truth is I am just a man and a sinner.  I probably would have done just as these men did.  But having that 20/20 hindsight, I should be NOT sinning and SURELY doing all the things You command.  Yet LIKE THEM, I fail as well.  Thank You for Your loving forgiveness and grace.  Help me to limit the times of failure as I go closer to You.

Sent from my iPad

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

Mark 15 -- What People Did!

What people did!

 

Pilate couldn’t find anything wrong that Jesus had done, yet he gave in to please his constituents.

The religious leaders lied and weren’t out for justice, but vengeance.

The crowds allowed themselves to be whipped up into a fervor to get a murderer released and Jesus crucified.

The soldiers in the Praetorium despised Him for being weak and passive in their view and took out on Him what they most likely despised about themselves.

Passersby wagged their heads in disgust at Him.

The crowd around Golgotha taunted and verbally abused Him.

A guard offered Him vinegar, not water, when he cried out that He was thirsty.

 

It seems that humanity brought out its worst to the best offer we’d ever received – our sins covered, removed, forgiven …

 

But then there was:

 

Simon, carrying the cross.

The Roman soldier, saying, “Truly this was the Son of God.”

The thief on the cross beside Him who believed.

Joseph and Nicodemus, who risked their careers to ask for and bury His body.

 

On which side do we find ourselves?  Does it depend on the day or the situation?

 

Father, yesterday was a tough day.  So was the day before that.  Please remind me in the middle of them that I’ve never had a day as bad as Jesus’ last 24 hours before He died.  Forgive me for even presuming to complain.  Help me to cherish what Jesus did for me on the toughest day of His life.

 

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

Mark 13 -- Whether To Worry Or Watch

There was so much end-of-Jerusalem-back-then stuff mixed in with the yet-to-come Tribulation and Great Tribulation stuff.  I tend not to worry about that for myself, believing that Christ will take all believers out of the world before it starts.

 

Yet what I do think about are those who need to become believers before all of this happens.  Who would want any friend or family member to have to endure such a terrible time?  Jesus has given us the task of telling unbelievers about Him so that they will come to believe in Him and as a result be raptured.  I think Jesus’ continual commands to “watch!” may have to do with finding those who need to come to know Him before that time.

 

Father, give me courage in telling others about You and Your Son.  Don’t let me miss a single opportunity!

 

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

Mark 12 -- More In There Than We'll Ever Know

The Jewish leaders kept coming up with questions for Jesus.  But they weren’t trying to learn from Him.  They only sought to trap Him with His own words.  “They were not asking ‘What is true?’ or ‘What is right?’ but ‘What is safe?’  This is always the approach of the hypocrite and the crowd-pleaser,” my commentary said.  In the same way, it’s often tempting to water down the gospel so as not to offend.  But Christ never did this.  Because His time on earth was short, the urgency of His task propelled Him forward and led Him to ask the hard questions that would cause people to decide for or against Him.

 

The Sadducees did not believe in resurrection, yet they asked a hypothetical question about resurrection designed to discredit Jesus.  They only accepted the law of Moses as their scriptural authority, and they’d not found any evidence of resurrection there.  But Jesus showed them otherwise.  When Moses was meeting God at the burning bush, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had been dead for around 400 years, but God said, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”  If they were truly dead, God should have said, “I was…”  So that meant they were alive even though they’d died.  The Sadducees thought they knew God’s word, but they’d never considered this.

 

Our pastor was telling about a man who was asking about the length of time needed to earn a seminary degree.  He couldn’t believe that someone could actually take 4 to 6 years to study one Book!  Yet the Sadducees had studied the first five books by Moses for hundreds of years and they’d failed to see the truth that God revealed through Christ!

 

Father, Your Word speaks to us on multiple levels and even in different ways at different times as You bring us to it and direct our lives.  Help me to keep my heart open to what You have not yet shown me, and keep me from turning off my mind when I think I’ve already heard it all on any subject.  For if I did that, I’d be just like the Sadducees.  I want to keep hearing from You every day.  Keep it fresh, Father!

 

Your Brother In Christ,

 

Gary Ford

Mark 11 -- A Good Lesson In Killing A Tree

“It was unusual for Jesus to act in judgment, yet there comes a time when this is the only thing God can do,” my commentary said.  It was speaking about Jesus condemning a fig tree and cleansing the temple.  Here’s why He did it:  The tree was “a lesson in failure:  Israel had failed to be fruitful for God.  In the Old Testament, the fig tree is associated with the nation of Israel.  Like the fig tree our Lord cursed, Israel had nothing but leaves … Christ is still seeking fruit from His people, and for us to be fruitless is sin.”  (John 15:16 says, “I gave you this work:  to go and produce fruit.”)

 

The cleansing of the temple occurred in the court of the Gentiles, “the one place where the Jews should have been busy doing serious missionary work.  If a Gentile visited the temple and saw what the Jews were doing in the name of the true God, he would never want to believe what they taught … The court of the Gentiles should have been a place for praying, but it was instead a place for preying and paying,” my commentary noted.  “The chief priests and scribes were using the temple and its religious services to cover up their sin and hypocrisy.  Both Isaiah and Jeremiah had warned the people of their day that the presence of the physical temple was no guarantee of blessings from God.  It was what the people did in the temple from their hearts that was really important.”

 

I was appalled thinking about how the religious leaders of that time were in the temple plotting the murder of someone they saw simply as their competition.  That’s unbelievable!  That it also happened to be against the Son of God was unthinkable!

 

Father, please give me the ability to look at what I do from the outside to make certain that I’m not so caught up in a wrong-headed vision that I become spiritually blinded as they were.  Reveal any wrong motives to me and point me in the right direction.

 

Your Brother In Christ,

 

Gary Ford