Month: August 2022

“Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” Matthew 5:48

When I was young and playing softball with my brother Gary, he went through a hitting slump very uncharacteristic for him. After he tried changing bats and everything about his swing, I suggested that maybe he should have his eyes checked. He pooh-poohed the idea saying that his vision was great and that couldn’t be it. After a bit, however, he did go in and was amazed at the difference in his eyesight when the doctor flipped the different lenses into place. He could actually see the chart!

Well, my brother found out that he did have a problem, but it took some close examination to determine it. We can very easily find ourselves thinking we are in a good place with The Lord when just the opposite is true.

My brother didn’t suspect that his eyes were the problem because he assumed that what he was seeing was what everyone else was seeing. Until he got a distinct contrast, until he saw what he should be seeing, he was unaware of his problem.

We might think we haven’t done much wrong in a long time and so we are probably doing really good with God. We might look around and think we are doing much better in our Christian walk than many, so we’re fine. We might pray before meals, wear a Christian shirt once in awhile, and even go to church sometimes. We get to thinking we’re in a good place — a safe place — home free. What finally got my brother into the doctor was not how he stacked up against others, but how he stacked up against himself. He really did not compare himself to others (he was still better than most), but he compared himself to where he should be, could be, and used to be. One of the most powerful weapons satan wields is wrapped up in the word “tomorrow.” We will start reading the Word “tomorrow.” We will get that prayer life going “tomorrow.” We will do that self-examination “tomorrow.” If Gary would have always put that exam off until “tomorrow” he would have never found out there was a problem!

A safe place can be a dangerous place! It lulls us into thinking that all is well and well it will always be. One of satan’s greatest tools is to get us to think that what we did yesterday is good enough for tomorrow. The reality is that we attribute all contentment to God, but sometimes Satan wants us to be content in where we are, as well. He wants us to compare ourselves to others and feel we’ve arrived! We can always find those who are messed up more than we are, but that doesn’t mean we are not messed up! God wants us to continually strive to be more like Him! (see the verse above) It is only when we come to a place of humbly looking at ourselves and asking us the tough question, “Am I all God wants me to be” that we will begin to see what God wants us to be.

We need to do a daily “I-examine.” We cannot be satisfied with seeing the world and everything we do out of focus. We need to ask if we are seeing what could be and should be in our Christian walk. We need not compare ourselves to others, but strive for God’s perfection today! When Gary got is his eyes “fixed” he not only made himself better, but he made the others around him better as well. We need to examine ourselves not just for our own sake, but for the sake of those around us who are dependent on us and need us to be all we can be. To be less than what we should be, is less than what we need to be, if we really want to live for Christ.

“Do you not know that all the runners in a stadium compete, but only one receives the prize? So run to win. Each competitor must exercise self-control in everything. They do it to receive a perishable crown, but we an imperishable one. So I do not run uncertainly or box like one who hits only air. Instead I subdue my body and make it my slave, so that after preaching to others I myself will not be disqualified.”   1 Corinthians 9:24-27

In these verses Paul compares the Christian with an athlete in competition. He talks about our discipline, our effort, and our integrity. These are good verses for us to keep in mind because today our opponents are many. Besides battling against our own flesh and the principalities and powers, we battle against a world that has turned right upside down and is changing the rules of morality to suit a disintegrating world.

Christianity is a faith of common sense. As we stray further and further from Christian principles we also leave common sense further and further behind. I find it amazing that groups that will close entire sections of a forest down for the tiniest of creatures can support the continual killing of the tiniest of humans. Unfortunately, most Christian principles are recognized by everyone as Christian principles. Some are so against Christianity that they must oppose everything about Christianity to prove their dismissal of the faith. Consequently, they must reject many of the common sense principles that Christianity brings to this world. Much of the world is going along with this craziness, but every day you will hear people saying, “where is people’s common sense?” Sadly, it is disintegrating by the same proportions that people reject the Biblical world perspective

I read a story about an unusual happening in the 1990’s in an NCAA Division II national championship cross-country race in California. A runner named Mike Delvaco and 127 of the states best runners were competing on 10,000 meter course to see “who would win the prize.” About three miles into the race, Delvaco was somewhere in the middle of the pack, when he realized that the runners had made a wrong turn. So he yelled out, “You’re going the wrong way,” but they didn’t listen. Only 4 others followed Mike when he turned in the right direction…and suddenly, he found himself in the lead. He must have had some doubt when the field dropped from 128 to 5, but he stayed on course.

However, that lasted only about a mile. Mike and the runners who followed him were soon reunited with the larger pack who, having gone the wrong way, actually shaved about a half a mile off the course. The shortcut of the many put them ahead of the small band of runners that took the correct path. This was bad enough for Mike, but the final blow came when, because so many of the runners had gone the wrong way, the officials changed the official course route to accommodate their error. So when Mike Delcavo finally crossed the finish line, he was number 103 overall. His right action was ignored and because so many went the wrong way they were rewarded with a shorter race. At the end of the race, one of Delcavo’s competitors “thought it was funny that he went the right way.”

Isn’t that a telling statement? In our mixed up world, when so many are wrong, wrong becomes right. Instead of the world keeping a standard of acceptable behavior, it changes what acceptable behavior is. But although the world changes “the course” to accommodate itself, God does not. He know the course; He made the course; and He expects us to run the course as marked. Numbers do not influence God. No matter how many go astray, he does not accept the majority as a sign of rightness. In Noah’s day God did not change his plan for the sake of the majority.

It takes courage and conviction to follow wholeheartedly after God instead of the rest of the world. Sometimes it can get lonely running alone, and we may be wondering where the others are going. Sometimes we will be heckled by the crowd while we are going the right way, maybe even laughed at by others in the race. And ultimately, the “race officials” may reward others for bad turns. But we must remain on God’s course. We must run with discipline, doing our best, staying on course, and when the race is over and we have finished the course, may He who is the true judge say to us, “Well done, good and faithful servant!”