WATER OF LIFE

I was at a men’s conference last weekend where I had to rate all the relationships in my life and I rated my relationship to authority figures as the worst. Then the pastor explained that I am only as close to God as the worst relationship in my life. He said it doesn’t matter what they think of me, I have to clean it up.

God also showed me in my dreams before and after this sermon that I was having problems with authority in my life. He used the symbols of my mother and father in my dream. In the first dream I was arguing with my father and older brother and in the second dream I was angry at my mom. The Lord has healed my relationships with my parents but He is still using them as symbols of my struggle with authority in my life. The first dream was about my desires versus my mothers ideas about how things should be done. That dream is a message about the conflict with authority I face at work. In the second dream I was angry with my father and older brother about their insensitiveness to others, which I is also a struggle I have with authority figures in my life.

Also this week, I was reading the New Testament (according to a chronological reading schedule) and miraculously I read this passage about Christlikeness in relationships and with authority:

Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting for those who belong to the Lord.
Husbands, love your wives and never treat them harshly.
Children, always obey your parents, for this pleases the Lord. Fathers, do not aggravate your children, or they will become discouraged.

Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything you do. Try to please them all the time, not just when they are watching you. Serve them sincerely because of your reverent fear of the Lord. Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people. Remember that the Lord will give you an inheritance as your reward, and that the Master you are serving is Christ. But if you do what is wrong, you will be paid back for the wrong you have done. For God has no favorites.
Colossians 3:18-4:1

This message is also timely because my mother-in-law came today to visit us for the next week and a half. Submitting to and honoring the authority in our lives is important because God is the ultimate authority—and how we react to authority is how we will react to His kingship and authority over our lives.

We Americans are some of the worst at submitting to authority. We founded our country by rebelling against an earthly king and we have completely lost our understanding of how to live under the authority of a king. Our children learn from what we do more than what we say. I don’t want my children having issues with my authority or honoring me as their parent in the future—that is motivation enough to surrender this sin to God’s healing hand.

Lastly, why do I share my struggles with you? Because as a pastor at the men’s conference shared, we have to stop being ashamed of what we’re attacked with. We have to bring it to the light. My blogging is one way I keep myself accountable—it’s out there for the whole world to see (including people at work and church!). It’s also a way to keep me humble because others can see that I’m far from perfect and struggle just the same.

There can be a burning in your heart when you die to self. This is the burnt offering of the new covenant. In the old covenant burnt offerings were made according to the LAW, NOW THEY ARE MADE ACCORDING TO THE LEADING OF Holy Spirit.

Instead of following the Law everyday we are following in Christ’s steps to the cross everyday. We are a living sacrifice as we die to ourselves each day and come one step closer to being made into the image of Christ. We are no longer called to follow a set of rules or commands but instead to follow the guidance of His Spirit within us and make the sacrifices of self that He leads us to make.

So put to death the sinful, earthly things lurking within you. Have nothing to do with sexual immorality, impurity, lust, and evil desires. Don’t be greedy, for a greedy person is an idolater, worshiping the things of this world. Because of these sins, the anger of God is coming. You used to do these things when your life was still part of this world. But now is the time to get rid of anger, rage, malicious behavior, slander, and dirty language. Don’t lie to each other, for you have stripped off your old sinful nature and all its wicked deeds. Put on your new nature, and be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like him. In this new life, it doesn’t matter if you are a Jew or a Gentile, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbaric, uncivilized, slave, or free. Christ is all that matters, and he lives in all of us.
Colossians 3:5-11

I don’t know where I picked my ‘it’s got to be fair’ mentality. It might be part of my legalistic mentality or remnants of my old idealist/inequality philosophy which I blogged about here: Self-sufficiency

I look around me at work and I can see people who get away with doing little and I resent that. And I see others who receive favor because their better at playing politics than I am.

But it’s true that God himself isn’t fair. He decides who he will show favor to through His mercy and grace. Grace is unmerited favor and there is nothing—no matter of works—we can do to earn it.

God chooses to show mercy to some, and he chooses to harden the hearts of others so they refuse to listen. Romans 9:18

He isn’t fair in the our assignments or our lots in life. The prophet Jonah didn’t think it was fair and resented the fact that God was showing his mercy to the wicked Assyrians. Jonah refused his assignment to preach to the Assyrians so God stuck him inside a whale until he was ready to accept his assignment. Another example is when God told the prophet Jeremiah he would never marry.

Who are you, a mere human being, to argue with God? Should the thing that was created say to the one who created it, “Why have you made me like this?” When a potter makes jars out of clay, doesn’t he have a right to use the same lump of clay to make one jar for decoration and another to throw garbage into? Romans 9:21-22

I can get burned out and frustrated just like Jeremiah and want to quit and walk away from it all:

Lord, you always give me justice
when I bring a case before you.
So let me bring you this complaint:
Why are the wicked so prosperous?
Why are evil people so happy?
You have planted them,
and they have taken root and prospered.
Your name is on their lips,
but you are far from their hearts.
But as for me, Lord, you know my heart.
You see me and test my thoughts.
Drag these people away like sheep to be butchered!
Set them aside to be slaughtered!

How long must this land mourn?
Even the grass in the fields has withered.
The wild animals and birds have disappeared
because of the evil in the land.
For the people have said,
“The Lord doesn’t see what’s ahead for us!”

The Lord’s Reply to Jeremiah

“If racing against mere men makes you tired,
how will you race against horses?
If you stumble and fall on open ground,
what will you do in the thickets near the Jordan?
Even your brothers, members of your own family,
have turned against you.
They plot and raise complaints against you.
Do not trust them,
no matter how pleasantly they speak.

Jeremiah 12:1-6

“Life was extremely difficult for Jeremiah despite his love for and obedience to God. When he called God for relief, God’s reply in effect was, “If think this is bad, how are going to cope when it gets really tough?” God’s answers to prayer are not always nice and easy to handle. Any Christian who has experienced war, bereavement, or a serious illness knows this. We are to be committed to God even when the going gets tough and when our prayers for relief are not immediately answered.” —Life Application Study Bible

Jeremiah is my favorite prophet in the Old Testament and Paul, who wrote the book of Romans, is my favorite apostle in the New Testament. Jeremiah was bruised and beaten up and Paul was stoned and whipped and they both ended up in jail. Jeremiah’s assignment ends in a very different way from Paul’s. Jeremiah survived the invasion of the Babylonians and was freed from jail, whereas the rest of the Israelites starved to death, or were killed, or taken into captivity. God was faithful to rescue Jeremiah from his enemies but Paul is a different story.

It’s not in the Bible but tradition states that Paul and many of the original twelve disciples died a martyrs death. Jesus died a martyrs death and if we are followers of Christ (like Paul and the disciples) He commands us to take up our cross and follow Him. Personally, I like Jeremiah’s ending much better than Paul’s but God is the maker of all things and decides what purpose we will serve in glorifying Him. Also, when we face trails and hardships these are the times we can feel closest to Jesus.

I was watching the Disney movie Santa Buddies with my children and in the movie SANTA SITS ON A GOLDEN THRONE AND LATER IN THE MOVIE A CHILD KNEELS AND PRAYS TO SANTA> Since when did Santa sit on a golden throne and children pray to him? My children are taught in school to use Common Era and Before Common Era instead A.D. and B.C. (Before Christ). Here in Hawaii there was a cross on U.S Army property and the atheists fought and won to have it removed. How is it that the enemy is advancing in American culture, schools, and government? I believe these are symptoms of an American idol worship of evolutionary science and psychology.

In 1975, Ken Ham was a science teacher and saw students lose interest and stop believing the Bible when evolution science started being taught as fact. “Do you know what these students are being taught in most of their classes? That they’re just animals that evolved ultimately from some primeval soup millions of years ago. They are being indoctrinated to believe that evolution is scientific fact. Growing up in a world full of wonderful technology, they have a great respect for real science. They don’t realize that evolution is not observable, repeatable science.

So to them, the Bible is just an outdated religious book. After all, they are taught how the solar system formed by itself from a dust cloud over millions of years, that the earth is billions of years old, and the fossil record is the history of the evolution of life. They are shown pictures of ape-men, considered to be their ancestors. In history, they hear of “primitive man” going through a stone age in this onward, upward evolutionary process.” (Evangelism for the new millennium, Ken Ham)

I believe God put all those genealogies in the Bible so that there would be a record to trace us all back to Adam. This link is important thus I believe the genealogies to be accurate and totaling 6000 years since the birth of Adam. I can take this all on faith but I think it’s important that we also have creation science to hold up against the evolution science theories. We have to believe that Genesis is fact and evolution science is not. “The first book of the Bible relates to us the account of the biological, geological, astronomical, and anthropological history of the universe—and this history is confirmed by observational science in genetics, biology, geology, and astronomy. Because this history as revealed in the Bible is true, then the message of the Christian gospel (concerning salvation from our sin of rebellion in the first man Adam) is true” (Slain from the foundation of the world, Ken Ham)

I’m not a man of science but it’s easy even for the layman to see the effects in our society, our schools, and in state and federal government. Pastor Dr. Rick Bartosik worked as a prison chaplain in the 1970s and tells how the prison was transformed and the inmates put up a cross in the frontyard. He said they started a successful sex offender rehab program based on six Christian books but then in the 1980s the state psychologists moved into the prison system. I work for the Army and recently I watched a training video where the military chaplain referred soldiers considering suicide to a psychologist.

MY POINT IS THAT THE DECEPTION OF EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE HAS ALSO CONTRIBUTED TO THE ACCEPTANCE OF PSYCHOLOGY IN PLACE OF THE CLERGY> Americans have turned away from God to the false idols of ’science’ and we can see it happening in the schools in the 1970s and the government in the 1980s and even the churches today. One Christian friend is doing a marriage study in his prayer group and he pointed out how psychological terms were used instead of Biblical ones. So why does it matter? Because psychology is the road to strengthening self whereas Christianity is the road to dying to self. There is just as much a problem with mixing psychological theories with Christianity as there is mixing evolutionary theories. We can all the see the outcomes of evolutionary science and psychology on our culture, our children’s education, and our government.