Lyle's Blog

June 14 is Flag Day. It’s also President Trump’s birthday and it’s my birthday. I lived in a small town in North Dakota as a small boy. On my birthday there was a parade in town. Pretty cool, all those flags waving for me.

Flag Day has just become another day. Memorial Day, July 4th, Veterans Day, Columbus Day; not too many think they’re special. Most don’t even know what they’re about. I was lucky enough to be born on one of those days. Flag Day is special, it’s my birthday, and it’s the day the greatest president of these United States was born.

1952 was a special time to be a little boy, a time when flags waving brought excitement to a child and everything was right in the world.

I was lucky to have a father. Back then most people had fathers, I mean fathers is the home. Today fathers like mothers are at best some kind of subhuman class, a throwback to an ancient era riff with wrong practices which merit discarding. Such is the time we live in. Let’s take a quick look at the result of bondage to a staple of post-modern thought.

Stats, we all love stats, polls because they help us determine if we’re winning or losing in the pursuit of our convictions. On my side of the issue at hand, we’ve been on the decline for years and still we ignore the ramifications of our sin. Ninety five percent of homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes. Kids with behavior problems-85%, teenage pregnancy-71%, high school dropout-71%, 63% of youth suicides and 85% of youths in prison come from fatherless homes. Today we see the results of the demise of fatherhood.

Much is said of the difficulty of the single mom in raising her kids. Nothing is ever said about the need to promote the need to start families with a dedication to the tasks of fathering and mothering and the need to keep those roles concise. I’ve noticed I’m a lot like my father and I wonder what I would be like if I had none. I’d probably be like the bulk of men in our society who mimic the attitude of the modern mother. Everything is about me. I have one life and I’ll waste in a way I see fit. Parenting is deemed foolish at best by our younger generation. I’m hoping the lightbulb flicks on and the necessity of the family becomes in style again.

Fathers, like mothers, need encouragement. They don’t need us or the state to micromanage their parenting lives. Pre-marriage and parenting classes should be the norm and those of us who have opportunity, have an open discussion of parenting.

And to put icing on the cake, stop electing politicians who continually push programs that destroy the nuclear family. But it is the local school boards that drive much of this family hatred and it is those meetings we must attend in droves if we are to have meaningful change.

I’m glad I’m a father, married to the mother of my children for forty-two years. I’m so glad I’m not that worthless young man I was at twenty-two.

The war on marriage, fathers, and children must be stopped at all costs. I don’t like the stats mentioned above. They spell the demise of a country. If we truly care we must wake up and speak against the reality of nonsense which is bent on consuming us.

A lot of people say they’re going to leave America and never do. If you take a look around the world there isn’t any place you can go that let’s you get away with the crap you do here. Blacks may not like the shootings in their neighborhoods but at least they can own a gun. America has safety nets for everything which is not the case elsewhere. Nothing is expected of you in America and you still eat, vote, bitch, and remain as you are.

Victimhood has become a legitimate way of life so whether black or white, why leave? Other countries require something of you. Try going somewhere else and not obeying the law or refusing assimilate to the culture. It’s not going to happen. Try going to China or anywhere else and bitching about your rights. They’ll wipe that smirk off your face. America? You can hate it, work to destroy it and we’ll keep your sorry ass here. On top of that we’ll educate you, feed you and give you every handout we can.

Come on and all; we can print as much money as necessary to take care of you and your friends.

John 14:1-3 “Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.”

Everyone at one point questions God. We look back throughout history we question the needless suffering of so many innocent people. Where is God and why does He allow century after century of unthinkable wickedness? Is He really there and if so does He really care.

The disciples were effected by the same thoughts. Like us they could see man’s strife, the very thing that God promised to Adam and Eve in Genesis 3:16-19, a tough, never-ending battle for survival and your one son slaying the other. To this day we still suffer the same hard living and injustices of man. What caused all this suffering and why God doesn’t intervene is the age old question.

Eve disobeyed God. Yes, she was persuaded and tricked by Satan but why was she tricked? Scripture says the duty of the husband is to wash his wife in the Words of God. Of most importance is for man to know what God says. Poor communication with God leads to forgetting what’s most important to God: obedience. Sometimes we do things wrong without thinking and passively repent, believing that God is content with our neglecting His commands.

Adam disobeyed, Moses disobeyed, Saul, David, and it is the same for you and me. God loves obedience more than some sacrifice we might make for wronging Him. God made the sacrifice for disobedience on the cross. We have nothing to sacrifice except our obedience to the cross.

In due time Christ died for us, everyone from Adam to us and everyone in between. Christ comes and tells us, finally your heart doesn’t have to be troubled. He’s building a new kingdom that isn’t tied to Adam; it’s tied to Him. We have a new life in Christ and He isn’t going to leave us here like God left Adam and Eve. God promised the Messiah and the Messiah promised He wasn’t going to leave us here without a comforter. Adam had no comfort; we have hope because we have Christ.

Reading on in John Chapter 3 brings us right back to what God required of Adam: obedience. Jesus said, if you love me you will obey my commandments. There we are back to obedience and loving God. God is a jealous God. He doesn’t do well when we ignore Him and forget to spend time with Him.

Adam forgot to love God more than Eve. We must be lovers of God and obey Him lest we fall into pride and the lust of life overwhelms our desire for Him. His yoke is easy. Jesus summed up all the commandments into two: loving your neighbor as much as you love yourself and then the bigger one, loving God with all your heart, soul, and mind.

We all know the story of Noah’s ark. The Bible leaves out much of the details and so we can possibly assume some things without damaging the message. Let’s take a look and try to make sense of what must have taken place for this to happen the way it’s told.

I’m not concerned with the number of animals which is probably the main thing people are skeptical about. More important perhaps is the what the backdrop had to look like for this to happen.

Noah took probably seventy-five years to build the ark. No doubt he had some help from his sons but I would presume a project that large so far from water outside labor would be needed. This would lead me to believe that Noah was a rich man. Noah had to have been mocked for building such a monstrous barge far from the sea. Men were glad to take the wages for their work and so continued building the old man’s delusion and couldn’t wait to laugh at him when it was finished.

The Bible says that God brought the flood because men’s imaginations and deeds were continually wicked. Noah had three sons and at least two of them were old enough to have had children. Why didn’t they?

When the whole world is against you it’s pretty intimidating and just like Lot, four men and their wives had to be very afraid of what’s going on around them. Children, it would have been natural for his sons to have children. Remembering the wickedness of rest of the population it is possible that their children were taken violently from them.

If you read the accounts of missionaries or even the news you come to understand how brutally savage men can be. It makes no sense that Noah’s sons had no children. Men like sex and kids just happen. This thought doesn’t add or take away from the text or intent of the message.

One other thought is why would a man spend seventy-five years building a big boat to load up with animals to save them from a flood that had never happened before? One reason is fear of man but he could have possibly escaped and headed to the hills (Idaho) and found a way to hide.

Noah saw the things that men were doing. There was no safe place to hide. Noah was afraid of men but more importantly he was afraid of God. He was afraid God was telling him the truth. God was going to wipe men off the face of the earth and the only vehicle Noah and his family had to escape was in the ark. God has told us the same thing.

We’ve been building an ark for two thousand years. The church of Jesus Christ is the ark of today. It’s our only vehicle for getting out of here. Violence seems to be becoming the norm and once again the world is preparing itself for the judgment of God.

The world is still willing to take our money to facilitate advancing what they consider a preposterous message. When Christ returns there may not be many if any looking for him. The mocking isn’t coming just from the world but from the church itself. Noah had other family, another thing we can easily assume. He was out on the fringe of what was acceptable beliefs. His family thought Noah was nuts. The world thinks the same of us.

We’ve got to be willing to be ridiculed for our faith even by our family and the church itself. It’s why the apostle Paul said that he didn’t want to know anything among people except Christ and him crucified.

Jesus said we might have to give up family and friends for his sake. He didn’t come to unify us but to divide us. Noah’s family gave up on him and the same may happen to us. When Noah closed the door on the ark he was leaving a whole lot of people behind. People he loved. His brothers and sisters, maybe his parents; he counted it all as lost because it was.

Getting on that ark wasn’t something he wanted to do. The whole idea was revolting. Just like Christ I’m sure he asked God if there was any other way. In the end God’s will was more important than Noah’s will. So he picked up his cross, his burden, to follow God. He humbled himself to being the slave of God, performing the most humiliating act (building the ark) year after year in front of a scoffing world.

So here we are, promoting a two thousand year old message to a enlightened Christ-rejecting world. If the gospel was foolishness before, it’s ten times that today. So we must make sure of our election, make sure that we are true believers, doers of the word and not just hearers. Noah heard from God and then went to work and working on the impossible task of saving mankind. Noah’s effort did not go unrewarded and neither shall our work.