Much of the world around us today interprets Christianity with insanity. This is especially true in academic communities. The truth is that as Christians, we are not touched in the head, but in the heart.

When a person gives their heart to Jesus, people should notice a difference on the outside just as we have experienced a difference on the inside. I cannot come to Jesus and not change, because it will alter my lifestyle. I am not ready to live until I am ready to die and I am not ready to die until I know Jesus. One goes from hurting to helping people.

When one gets saved, they become a called person to serve the world and a committed person, committed to the story of the life and death of Jesus. Once saved people should not try to limit the power of Jesus, though the world will tell them to do so. We need to quit playing it safe and step out for Jesus without shame or reservation and when we do that, people will notice.

But sadly, people say no to Jesus because they want to keep enjoying their sin or they don’t want scorn from others. They don’t want to sacrifice or perhaps they are satisfied with their own sufficiency or perhaps they think that accepting Jesus will deny them all the things they think bring happiness into their lives.

Lasting and true happiness can be developed only through obedience to God’s Word, by accepting Jesus’ Christ as your personal Lord and Saviour.

Once you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior, and you have an intimate relationship with Him, you will enjoy true happiness. Religion does not produce true happiness; but relationship with the Savior does. Only the principles and absolutes from the bible will bring us lasting happiness, joy and satisfaction.

You can rest your hope in Christ, and find your assurance in Jesus because of who He is, and what He has done. It is on this foundation that a happy life will flow continually, even through the most difficult trials in life and when you experience this transformation in your soul on the inside, people are bound to notice a difference on the outside as you become a new creation both inwardly and outwardly.

Question: Are you living out your faith in such a way that people are noticing a difference?

This is the time of year for planning and resolutions, though many will be broken by now. But, it is also a time for an overall trimming of the sails of life and aiming in the direction of the desired port. Where are you going? How do you plan to get there? What do you expect when you arrive?

A number of ancient cities are known for their character. Babylon stands for evil and is described in Revelation 17. The angel took John into the desert and introduced him to an earthly Babylon in the form of a reigning prostitute. Later the angel takes him to the eventual heavenly Jerusalem.

Sometimes when I read or watch the news I am convinced that we are living in a state of Babylon. It seems all we hear in terrorism, domestic abuse, corporate greed and the list goes on. Babylon represents the godless world system, obsessed by political power, religious seduction and self-centered affluence.

Each of us every day is pressured through the media and elsewhere to join in dancing the “Babylon shuffle.” The pressure is great in contemporary society. The prostitute is the perfect symbol of the godless system lurking all around us.

Love is reduced to a price tag. The joining of body parts is not the joining of lives, yet her attraction and allure are undeniable, for her trade is not sexual but rather commercial and even spiritual.

John moves beyond Babylon in Revelation 21: Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

It doesn’t get any better than that. So as we focus on our resolutions and living out this year, let us focus on and aim to Jerusalem. Let’s not be seduced by the clamoring and twittering of Babylon.

Question: The choice is yours. To which will you point your actions and focus throughout the coming year…… Jerusalem or Babylon?

Recently I was driving through a rural area with farmlands on both sides of the road.  Both were planted with corn ready to be harvested, but I noticed a distinct difference.  On one side was a field of lush green tall corn, while on the other side the corn was half as tall and partially browned from the lack of rain.

Why the difference? The answer was simple. One side had an irrigation system and the other did not.  The difference was obvious.  Crops need water to grow and more water to prosper.

There is a spiritual parallel here. As the roots of agricultural crops need to be irrigated with water, so too do the roots of our being need to be irrigated with the Word of God.

Joy is what we experience when our longing for eternity is satisfied by an encounter with the Lord. When we meet with God through His Word and draw close to Him through righteous living, we enter into fellowship with Him and get a taste of eternity.  Psalm 1 reveals that those who take pleasure in and preoccupy themselves with God’s law will prosper and experience true joy.  In other words, meditation on God’s Word irrigates our souls and makes us grow.

An encounter with God irrigates our soul. The Bible equates spiritual growth with natural growth.  Just like a person is born a baby, so we are born again a spiritual baby.  For you have been born again (1 Pet 1:23).  Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation (1 Pet 2:2).

No one is born a full grown adult. The same is true spiritually: no one is born again as a mature Christian.  It takes time to grow.  The way you grow is through the spiritual milk (irrigation) of God’s Word.  The more you feed on it the more you will grow.

Two very important ways of cultivating our walk with God are through daily time spent with Him and developing meaningful relationships with other Christians.  We should carve out time with God through study in His Word and spend adequate time in prayer, and we should spend time with other people who do likewise.  Corporate worship is essential to spiritual maturity and development, but so is involvement in small groups and one on one discipleship. So often we learn best as we teach and disciple others.

Question: Do you want to flourish and prosper spiritually? Then take time each day to irrigate your soul.

In that day their burden will be lifted from your shoulders, their yoke from your neck; the yoke will be broken because you have grown so fat. (Isaiah 10:27)

Well it is that time of the year again, an annual experience when I get a report on my most up to date physical condition. I have been to every kind of ologist there is and have too many times been asked to dress in an undersized grocery bag. I have been poked, prodded and stuck more times than I can imagine.

For the most part, all checked out well, but I still don’t like those sentences that begin ……”but for a person of your age.” I am blessed with good family medical history and I don’t smoke and I don’t chew and I don’t hang around with those who do. But, this year, as with most years, there is that one factor … weight. Some doctors refer to it as obese and refer to the charts. Those docs who know me on a first name basis use the word “fat.” I tell them that I am not overweight, just two feet short according to the charts.

So, here I go again, off to shed the pounds. It’s easy. I have done it many times and lost hundreds of pounds. Mark Twain once commented how easy it was to quit smoking, as he had done it hundreds of times.

No, it’s not easy. It is plain hard work and once you get to the target goal it is a bear to stay there. Let’s face it, I like to eat and that it the root of my problem. It creeps up gradually pound by pound and all of a sudden I am, well … fat again.

Sin is like that. Our natural man likes to do it and it creeps up on you sin by sin and soon you are drowning in it. We can try to wish it away, desire it to be away and even pray it away, but there is nothing passive about resisting sin. It, like losing weight, is just plain hard work. As humans, we like to sin, because Satan wraps it in such beautiful packages.

Physical weight has its consequences. Someone recently asked me how many fat people I knew who were over seventy. It was a sobering question. Sinful weight also has its consequences, often deadly. Isaiah (10:27) talks about a burden lifted from our shoulders.  It is an image of deliverance from oppression and calamity.

It is time for all of us to throw off the sinful burden our shoulders and the yolk around our neck. Get serious. Get real. Sin will take you under and drown you, so we all need to work hard to throw it off.

As for me, I am a man on a mission … a mission to shed the pounds, so if you see me, shake my hand, but please don’t offer me a Twinkie.

Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. (Matthew 7:13-14)

A couple of years ago, my bride and I were in Albuquerque for a meeting that was at the same time as the annual Hot Air Balloon Festival. It was an incredible sight to see all of the multi-colored balloons glistening against the crystal blue New Mexico sky.

My friend asked us if we had ever ridden in one and we both said no. He said that then was the time and the next thing I knew, we were crammed in an oversized laundry basket with two other friends and a young pilot barely old enough to shave and we were trusting our life to him.

Always wanting to know how things work, I started asking questions as I watched the hot air from the burners fill the balloon. There was a brisk wind from the South and I asked how we could ever expect to get back where we started. As we lifted off and began a rather swift ride North, the pilot answered my question.

It seems that the wind, much like the currents in the ocean does not run uniformly at all altitudes. The trick to piloting a balloon is to find out which way the wind is blowing at different altitudes and raising or lowering the balloon’s altitude to catch a ride in the desired direction.

A lot of people run their lives that way, following whatever is the path of least resistance. We take great pains to put ourselves on its path. We’d do anything to keep from waiting in traffic, standing in line at the bank, post office, or grocery store. We’d come back another time when the place is not as busy.

If Noah, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshack and Abednego, Joseph, Joshua and Caleb, Esther and others had taken the path of least resistance, would we be reading about them in the Scriptures? Probably not, because God’s way is not always the easy way.

Sometimes we fail to realize that the struggles and challenges in life, the trials and adversities that we face day to day are just what we need to grow in Christian grace. Matthew talks about the narrow gate and the broad gate. One is easy to pass through and the other takes effort, but the rewards are greater. Which way do you choose?

So, as we go through life, let us not follow the easiest way, but the way of highest calling…. God’s way.

Are you lacking Christian community? Let us pray for you.

Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. (Proverbs 27: 17)

These days, especially in large metropolitan areas, the Christian has a lot to choose from. You can attend a small neighborhood church with dozen of members or you can attend a mega church with thousands of members. You can hear great preaching and sermons that spiritually excite you in person, on line or on television. You can hear wonderful Christian music that inspires you.

But no matter where you go or what you hear, unless you are involved in a small group experience, you are not sharpening your spiritual growth. I am talking about Bible fellowship classes, small group Bible studies, prayer groups and accountability partnerships.

All of us are the product of the people we meet, the places we go and the books we read. If we hang around with dogs, we get fleas. In life, we are an associational product. It’s not easy to love a “G Rated” life in an “X Rated world.

The best way to live a holy life is to hang around with those who do. Get involved in a Bible fellowship, a morning Bible and accountability group, or a weekly luncheon with Christian brethren.

Living a holy life is not easy, but in order to do so, we must live in fellowship with God and have the flavor of God in our life. All of that goes with the development of a healthy and godly fear in our lives. To live a holy life, I must be identified with God and with Holy living. The best way to do that is to hang around with holy people.

Since I became a Christian I don’t do what I used to and I am not who I once was. But, I am human and I can slip and slide, especially when I hang around with the wrong people, read the wrong books (TV’s shows, movies and the like) and go the wrong places. No matter how solid my faith, there are limits to the temptation I can resist.

Getting saved is something I have to do alone. It is a private and personal thing between God and me. But living the Christian life is something that is best done in a group setting. It needs to be done with others and, like putting on your clothes, it is something that needs to be done daily. Daily, I must walk with the Spirit or risk walking in the flesh.

Living the Christian life is not easy in this demoralized world, but a team approach makes any task easier. Iron does sharpen iron, as Christians sharpen one another. So, pull along others and grow together.

For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end. (Jeremiah 29:11, KJ21)

Have you ever known someone who has had a near death experience and survived? Perhaps it was a serious disease or perhaps a narrow escape from death. Most people who have such an experience comment that they guess the Lord wasn’t finished with them yet and had something else in store for them to do.

I recalled such an experience at an early age, when recently I read about the tragic loss of life from a flash flood on the Caddo River in Caddo Gap, Arkansas. Dozens of campers were victims of a nighttime flash flood when the river rose at the rate of eight feet per hour. Many saved their lives by scaling up the steep embankments and unfortunately many did not survive.

It made me recall a time when I was a teenager and with five others drove to Colorado to camp there for a week and then camp the following week in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. Shortly after arriving in Colorado one of our group became seriously ill and required medical treatment, causing us to spend the entire two weeks in Colorado. It was much to my disappointment, as I wanted so much to see Yellowstone, where we had campground reservations for months in advance.

It wasn’t until we were on the way back home when we found out about the big earthquake, so strong that it reversed the flow of a river and obliterated the campground where we had reservations. Dozens of campers perished and certainly we would have been among them but for the illness that kept us in Colorado.

I was not a practicing Christian at the time, but I remember wondering what kind of adult life I had ahead of me and what I would have missed if I had been camping at Yellowstone. It was a sobering thought that had a deep and early impression on my life.

Sometimes God saves our life in ways we never know about. Sometimes we do. I have a friend who was flying from Chicago to Detroit and got to the gate just as the plane pulled back. He was angry that he was going to miss a meeting he felt he could not miss. But when he found out that the plane went down over Lake Michigan killing all aboard, suddenly his attitude changes from anger to thanks. He thought that the meeting wasn’t so important after all.

The truth is that every day we live and survive is through God’s mercy and grace. He saves our life daily so we can serve and praise Him tomorrow. Truly, our days are numbered and when we will begin eternity, we know not. But one thing we do know is that each day is a gift, to be lived for His glory and mission each day. Live today as if it were your last and then be thankful when you wake up tomorrow.

Some trust in chariots, and some in horses; But we will remember the name of the Lord our God Psalm 20:7.

As we usher in another year, I recall a question a reporter asked Benjamin Franklin as he emerged from the Continental Convention that was forming the structure of America’s government. “What kind of government have you given us’” asked the reporter. Franklin’s response was “a republic if you can keep it.”

That statement was made more than two hundred years ago and history shows that the cycle of national dominance usually expires in about that period of time. Where are we in the cycle of nations?

The historical cycle seems to be: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to apathy; from apathy to dependency; and from dependency back to bondage once more.

At the stage between apathy and dependency, men always turn in fear to economic and political panaceas. New conditions, it is claimed, require new remedies. Under such circumstances, the competent citizen is certainly not a fool if he insists upon using the compass of history when forced to sail uncharted seas.

As we usher in 2012 we are in worldwide economic chaos, fighting wars we cannot win against enemies we cannot identify. In our country, more people are getting from rather than contributing to the revenue stream that powers democracy. The world is encased in a turmoil never before known in history.

Where can we place our trust and faith in the New Year? Certainly not in men nor in nations, as both will disappoint us. Certainly not in the economy, as it is in shambles as the corporate, national and personal debt is one we can never hope to repay. Certainly not in military might, as we are vulnerable to a defense that could lead to world annihilation.

In this coming year, the only safe place to put our trust is in God. “Blessed are all those who put their trust in Him” (Psalm 2:12). “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good; Blessed is the man who trusts in Him!” (Psalm 34:8).

The New Year is always full of resolutions. Let this one be yours from Psalms (18:2) “The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer; My God, my strength, in whom I will trust; My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold”

Put your trust in God! For where your treasure is, there you’ll find your heart. Put your trust in him! He won’t let you down. God is our hope, so put your life in his hands. May this be our resolution for the New Year.

( a thought on life from John Grant)

My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires. Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you. James 1:19-21

There’s an old fable about a Cherokee Indian elder who was teaching his grandchildren about life. He said to them, “A fight is going on inside you. It is a terrible fight between two wolves. One wolf represents fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other stands for joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight going on inside of you is inside every other person, too.”

The children thought about it for a minute, and then one child asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

The old Cherokee elder replied simply, “The one you feed.”

A Rabbi expressed it this way: “The two wolves symbolize the Evil Inclination (Yetzer Hora) and the Good Inclination (Yetzer Hatov). The former thrives on bodily appetites, while the latter thrives on Torah, prayer, and good deeds. Eventually, one swallows the other.”

Paul talked about in his letter to the Galatians, telling them to live by the Spirit, and not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. He said the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature.

In case the Galatians didn’t know how to identify these traits, Paul spelled them out: sexual immorality, impurity debauchery, idolatry witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions envy, drunkenness, orgies, and the like. And then he went on to enumerate the fruits of the Spirit which are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

Reading this causes me to take inventory of my inner self. Clearly, I can see the two wolves within me. Clearly they are in competition. Clearly, on my own I have not the ability to triumph good over evil from within. But the wonderful part of the story is that through the Spirit of Christ, I can overcome all things and I can be the kind of person God uniquely created me to be. I can be all things through Christ who strengthens me.

So, I encourage you to do as I did. Take an inner inventory. Decide who you want to be and who God wants you to be. And, above all else, make sure each day that you take time to feed the right wolf.

Question: How is your spiritual hunger being fed? What are some other sources of nourishment that you could be taking advantage of?

“The Son of Man is going to come in the Glory of His Father with His Angels.” (Matthew 16:27)

The TV on the wall of my office is on constantly and tuned on mute to a popular news network. As I look at it throughout the day, it is a continuum of horror stories – riots, shootings, natural disasters and financial ruin.

We are engaged in wars we cannot win and greed and corruption have at all levels created a world debt that cannot be repaid.  I just watched police in riot gear clashing with hundreds of rioters, as fires were raging out of control, while looters combed the area, as the stock ticker in the bottom of the screen was showing financial markets in a free-fall.

It is with firm conviction that I believe we are near the end of our world as we know it. It is a question of what will get us first, financial collapse, weapons of mass destruction from without or moral decay from within.

From a realistic worldly perspective, there is little reason for encouragement. But, for those of us who know and love the Lord Jesus Christ, His reign in glory is a comforting and thrilling promise that fills us with great hope and anticipation. Like the saints under the heavenly alter in Revelation 6:9-10, we wonder how long the Lord will allow the world to go its sinful way before intervening in sovereign power and bringing righteousness, equity and justice to the world.

With the Psalmist, I wonder “How long, O God, will the adversary revile, and may the enemy spurn your name forever?” (Psalm 74:10) As I look out at the world, I have every reason to feel defeated and discouraged, but God created me for eternal fellowship with him and through Christ gave me the key to entry for that eternal relationship.

Every day when I read the newspaper or listen to the news it is a parade of horrors, but I just finished reading Heaven Revealed, by Dr. Paul Enns and he showed me how the scriptures describe what heaven will be like and I look forward with great anticipation to enjoying it forever. I will be relieved from the aches and pains of this old body and from the disasters of this world.

Heaven is much more than a place to spend eternity. It is also the place where God and Jesus Christ the Lamb live, a place where we don’t have to see darkly as through a smoked glass, but where we can see our Lord and Redeemer face to face. He promises that forever, “They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.” (Rev. 21:3) What a fabulous promise!

Questions: How do you deal with the troubles of the world? How can you place more focus on your heavenly destination?