Lyle's Blog

Hebrews 10:31 “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

Who is this God we worship? Why is He good all the time? As I read the Bible I’m continually bombarded with reasons to fear God. Lamentations 1:14 states that he (God) has made my strength to fail and delivered me into hands I can’t fight and am unable to recover. To me, cruel punishment implemented by God is troubling. But then, I’m a man.

Ezekial 26:20 When I shall bring thee down with them that descend into the pit, with the people of old time, and shall set thee in the  low parts of the  earth, in places desolate of old, with them that go down to the pit, that thou be not inhabited; and I shall set glory in the  land of the living;

God instructed Moses to put to death anyone unauthorized to approach the place of the Tent of Meeting, the Dwelling. The beginning of knowledge is the fear of God. Before we can pretend to understand anything, we have to come to grip with who He is. He is the Great I am; always was, is now, and always will be. There is no other god we have to deal with. We can’t understand the Creator of the universe.

So many innocent people suffer in this world. Unspeakable are the crimes against children. The world slaughters them by the millions by intentional acts and neglect. The vulnerable are abused without mercy. If God is so kind and merciful, wouldn’t He put an end to it all? This is the question the world asks and use it to justify their unbelief. I ponder the same question, the difference being, I know God is the Great I Am.

His ways are above our ways. He doesn’t do things the way we do. We are dead in our sins. We don’t realize we are dead until we’re “born again”. God is a spirit and to fellowship with Him, we must be made alive by Him and we fellowship with Him, spirit to spirit. Dead people can’t understand anything. They can not know Him.

Ecc. 7:2 It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting: for that is the end of all men; and the living will lay it to his heart.

Funerals remind us of our own end. We won’t escape. We will lay in that coffin or be fried like a piece of bacon until we’re powder. The death around us should be a reminder that we are not God.

The best thing we have going for us is that we were made in the image of God. And the most we can do for God is to represent Him well. God has a fearful side and vengeance is all His. We are to demonstrate the love of God. Vengeance is easy to understand. We all want it.

Love is hard. Giving Christ to a wretched world was hard. Giving God’s love to those that spit in our face and worse is hard too. In the end we utter the same words as Christ, “Forgive them Father for they know not what they do.”

We all have mentors whether from organic means or we intentionally seek them out. We develop our values many times based on the influence of those we grew up with. Much of the outcome of our lives is related to choices we have made based on those values. Even a good mentor can subtly effect us in adverse ways and our lives can in the end reflect those same short- comings as our mentor. Such is the case of Eli and Samuel.

The first book of Samuel tells the story of Hannah giving her son Samuel to be mentored by Eli the high priest. I’m sure Samuel learned many good things from Eli but being he grew up under Eli’s instruction as a young child, he subconsciously absorbed everything Eli exampled. We all grow up thinking everything is “normal”. It’s only later that we might realize that is not true.

Eli had two sons. They were rotten individuals, abused their position, and were a disgrace to the office of their father. Eli did nothing to correct them. God warned Eli that his inability to reign in his sons would end in disaster and it did. His sons were slain and on hearing the news Eli fell over and broke his neck.

Samuel also had two rotten sons. In typical father fashion he made sure his boys had power and influence. They also were not corrected. As the Bible puts it, his sons walked not in the ways of Samuel. I think this is why the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel and demand a king and why God told Samuel to hearken unto the voice of the people. Godly men have a duty to hold a high standard for their family. When Samuel said things the people knew that he was allowing his family to profit from their labor. This made them disregard what Samuel said. Samuel spoke for God which meant that they were disregarding the Words of the Lord.

Hypocrisy never sits well with those who are under your authority. A father should always take pause when considering exalting his children to a high position, but we see the example of Eli repeated over and over again. Somehow we forget that our children, cute as they may be, are sinners in need of a savior.

Two sisters.  Actually, I have three.  The youngest is close to my age and we have similar views on things.  But the older two are from two different camps.  They both are shining examples of our parents’ generous spirit and I am the benefactor of their kind hearts.  But they come from two different planets even though they share many of the same values. 

One believes most anything she hears and the other believes nothing she hears.  Their perception of the truth is determined by how much respect they have for the person speaking.  And therein lies the rub.  Both claim to be Christian.  My older sister will tend to believe anything someone says as long as they say they are a Christian.  The internet is plagued by people that “hear from God” and so it becomes very easy to be duped into spending money on garbage advice.  Sorting through it all isn’t done; it’s just all accepted. 

My other sister mistrusts everything that Christians say.  Because she lives with an atheist who doesn’t allow dissenting views in his home, she has succumbed to the continual indoctrination of leftist media and now she can’t stand opposing views.  She is of a socialist bent and believes everything she hears as long as it’s from the government or “real” news media.  As the government and media are very vocal opponents of Christianity and the moral values it supports, it’s hard to fathom why she is so adamant that her siblings are liars at worst and stupid at best.  Anything we say has to be checked on Snopes (a leftist site), or Googled to see if what we’re saying is accurate (it never is). 

I think it comes down to belief and a lack of understanding the Word of God.  I think we all tend to read the parts of the Bible we like.  Some things about God are hard to understand.  Actually, they are annoying to us.  Animal sacrifice, slaughtering thousands of your opponents, sending people to hell; it’s at best unsettling.  We question a God that isn’t a social justice warrior like so many in and out of the Church are. 

 We are told His ways are above our ways.  It’s like we don’t have the capacity to know why God does what He does and thinks what He thinks.  I mean, we’re pretty good, aren’t we?   

In the garden of Eden there were lots of trees, but only two they couldn’t eat of, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life.  They ate of the first tree and sin entered the world.  I think we don’t understand how terrible sin is and how unredeemable sinners are on their own.  They were driven out of the garden so they couldn’t access the tree of life and live forever.  None of this we totally comprehend.  Eating of this one tree gives the knowledge of good and evil and eating of the other would give us the ability to live forever in that sinful state. Complex, unimaginable God thoughts. 

It’s interesting that before sin entered the world Adam and Eve didn’t know they were naked.  Small children are like that.  It’s just hard to keep clothes on them sometimes.  They’re in that innocent stage.  It isn’t until they’re older and taste of the sin laden tree that things change.  The world if you let it can burden us with sin so our best option is to protect them from the hazing as long as possible. 

I’ve been thinking of late that the best way to deal with people whether they are three or seventy years old is to do more loving than correcting.  It’s love that covers sin; we all need to be covered.   

Hard for some to believe but the Bible has instruction for everything. Success, everyone wants success. Books by the thousands have been written with the sole purpose of telling us how to accomplish that feat. Many are very good and people who have done it offer very good advice.

Following in the footsteps of others may be profitable but in the end, it’s up to you to do the work, not to mention your belief in yourself and the ability to take measured risk. Joshua 1:8 offers us a simple albeit difficult formula for personal success. From the King James: “This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein, for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.

Starting at the end of that verse we notice that we make our own selves successful. Thou shalt make, we do the work. The work is keeping the law of God continually before you. Read it out loud not once but every day. Humans seem to have short memories when it comes to things that contradict their wisdom. We wake, pray, and remind ourselves of who we are and who we are not. We’ll fish out who we are, what kind of metal we’re made of, but who we aren’t is important; we are not God.

So morning and night we read the Word of God so we may remember to keep on the straight and narrow path to success. But it’s also to help us remember who we are. The Bible makes it abundantly clear where our priorities should be. Yes, we will prosper if we obey His Word. On the other hand, we’re reminded that we are like grass or a whisp of smoke, here today and gone tomorrow.

Our greatest success is a relationship with the Creator of the universe. All of our treasures can’t be kept by a blade of grass or puff of smoke. Our biggest success is to stand before God and hearing the words well done good and faithful servant. As the verse says, we are to observe what’s going on around us. Our lives are fragile. We need a deep relationship with God. That is all we need.

Governors, mayors, and probably dog-catchers have trampled on the Bill of Rights. Power cloaked in good intentions give the one wielding the power the idea that they know what’s best for you. That’s never true.

The protests have been mild and sparse. If this continues we will have lost our country. The left scoffs at us becoming like Venezuela but we are that close. Our only defense is the second amendment. I hope we don’t have to use it. We might lose when the thugs come to the door, but if we’re dead we won’t have to attend the re-education camp. Win, win.