Category: Uncategorized (Page 19 of 34)

“The integrity of the upright shall guide them: but the perverseness of transgressors shall destroy them.” Proverbs 11:3

Today we live in a society that cares little about how we do things as opposed to what our results are. There seems to be little concern about what tactics get us to the top as long as we get to the top. Integrity can often get lost in the journey to reach our goals and sadly few seem to be bothered by that. The old idea that “it matters little who wins or loses, but how they play the game” has become a saying of derision and mockery.

Today’s verse tells us that playing the game, living our lives, with integrity is important. In fact, if we don’t, the result will be destruction. Our lack of integrity may seem to be working and “getting us to the top,” but in the long run it will fail us. A wise man once said, “Be careful who you hurt on the way up the ladder, because you are sure to meet them all again on your way down.”

There are many stories which illustrate the value of integrity, but here are just a couple I am familiar with. An aging king woke up one day to the realization that he had no male in the royal family to take his place. He decided he would adopt a son who could then take his place. He knew that such an adopted son must be extraordinary, so he launched a competition in his kingdom, open to all boys. After a series of tests, only the ten most intelligent and physical boys were left in the competition.

Since the kingdom depended solely on agriculture, the king gave corn seed to each boy. The boys had three weeks to cultivate it and at the end of the time whoever showed the best cultivating would be king. The boys all rushed home, planted their seeds in pots and started caring for their plants.

One boy in particular was very disappointed. He did everything he should, even praying over his corn day and night, but his seed would just not grow. Many of his friends advised him to go and buy a seed from the market and plant that because no one could tell one seed from another. The boys parents, however, had always taught him to do what was right and they reminded him that if the king wanted them to use their own seeds, he would have told them that. His parents told him that not all are destined to a throne, and it is better to not receive than to receive through deception.

The big day came and it was obvious that everyone had had great success with their seeds except for our one young boy. The king began making his way down the line while asking each boy, ‘Is this what came out of the seed I gave you?’ Each boy responded, ‘Yes, your majesty.’ And the king would nod and move down the line.

The king finally got to the last boy in the line-up who was shaking with fear. The king looked at the empty pot and said, “What did you do with the seed I gave you?’ The boy answered, “I planted it and cared for it diligently, your majesty, but I could not get it to grow.” The boy began to cry as the crowd booed and mocked him.

The king raised his hand, turned to the crowd and said, “My people behold your next king.” The stunned crowd listened as he continued. “I gave these boys boiled seeds. This test was not for cultivating corn, almost all can do that. It was the test of character; a test of integrity. It was the ultimate test. To be a true king, he must place truth above all things. Only this boy passed the test. A boiled seed cannot sprout. Never!!”

We live in a society obsessed with success at any cost. Sports figures shorten their lives with illegal substances just to increase their temporary fame. Business people cut ethical corners to work their way to the top. Students have someone else do their work to better their grades. Does anyone care? Yes, God does and those who have integrity do as well. For all the world’s flaws we have hundreds of stories that are passed down through the years of people who have shown great integrity and are revered for it.

Bobby Jones, one of the greatest golfers of all time, once cost himself a championship by admitting that his ball moved a bit when he removed a piece of grass next to his ball, an automatic one stroke penalty. No one else saw it and even argued against it because they did not see it move. Even the tournament director said he did not notice it. But Bobby was adamant, took his penalty, and lost the tournament by one stroke. Afterwards, when the story made headlines, Bobby said, “What is the big deal, to congratulate me for this, is like congratulating me for not robbing a bank. It was what had to be done.”

Bobby Jone’s action lives larger than almost any other golf story from the past. Why? because as much as society says the end justifies the means, it still honors honesty. In the long run, failure often is often an opportunity for us to show the world that the integrity God speaks of is still alive today. Doing right, for right’s sake, is always right.

“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!”

If you type in the keyword confidence in Amazon books you will get over 14,000 titles that have something to do with confidence.  Writing with confidence, walking in confidence,  confidence in the workplace, confidence in dating, confidence in confidence, the list goes on and on.  There are thousands of articles, programs, and tapes on gaining confidence, retaining confidence, and sustaining confidence.  People pay boku bucks for seminars, speakers, and even swindlers with formulas that turn the shrinking violet into a fearless flower.  Some of these confidence peddlers even propagate their promises from the pulpit, forgoing a spiritual confidence for a humanistic form of positive thinking.

Norman Vincent Peale, Robert Schuller, and Joel Olsteen and many, many others teach a pseudo-Christian message that bases our confidence entirely on our own efforts.  That would be fine if they admitted that they were secularists and their message was a New Age Humanist concoction of many religions, group think, and psycho-babble, but that, unfortunately, is not the case.  They throw in some scriptures, hold up the Bible once in a while and stand behind unusually large pulpits, and in so doing, make a case that their advice must be Biblical.  Well, to pull our a quote from my youth, I find Peale appalling and Paul appealing.  True confidence does not from within us, but from the spirit within us.  The above purveyors of muck attempt to make us totally self-reliant, denying any need for God,
and yet purport to be men of God.

God outlines Who and what we can have confidence in and how that confidence can be foundational to our daily lives.   First of all, we can have confidence in our relationship with God.  Why, because of the sacrifice of Christ on our behalf.  The writer of Hebrews states, “Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the fresh and living way that he inaugurated for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in the assurance that faith brings, because we have had our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed in pure water.  And let us hold unwaveringly to the hope that we confess, for the one who made the promise is trustworthy.” (Hebrews 10:19-23)    The above verses tell us that we can be confident to enter into the presence of God because we have been made clean by the sprinkling of Christ’s blood.  We can draw near to the holy God because the One we hold onto is trustworthy.   Second Corinthians 3:4,5 says, “Such confidence we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God.”

The other day I asked one of my co-workers how he was doing, and he said,  “Pretty good, considering the circumstances.”  He is a believer,
so I mentioned that we will seldom do “really” good if we stay IN our circumstances.  We need to be ABOVE our circumstances because that is where Christ awaits to strengthen us.  Christ gives us the confidence to rise above the world around us and to enter into peace and strength through Him.

We can be confident that God will strengthen us and is there when we need Him.  Again Paul tells us, “For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.”  (Philippians 1:6)  We will go through difficulties, but we can be assured that while we are in His hands, nothing can thwart God’s plans.   As He has told us,  “(We) can do all things through Him who strengthens (us).  (Philippians 4:13)  Our confidence can be based on who the Lord is, not who we are.   When we get overconfident in ourselves, we stop feeling a need for God.  When we stop feeling a need for God, we are, in essence, replacing God.  When we replace God with ourselves, we are, in essence, saying we are equal to God.  That is not confidence; that is ludicrous.

There is the story of a great politician who was asked how he was able to keep himself in prospective when so many others put him on a pedestal.  “When I begin to think too highly of myself I walk outside and look at the night sky.  It only take a matter of minutes to realize how small I really am.  If I am to have confidence it should be in the one who made the stars instead of the one who can only look at them.”

Our confidence should come from Him because He is willing to supply it.   “Be strong and courageous, do not be afraid or tremble at them, for the LORD your God is the one who goes with you He will not fail you or forsake you.”  ( Deuteronomy 31:6)  The verse does not say be strong and courageous because we are strong and courageous but because God goes with us is and  He “…will be (our)  confidence and will keep (our feet) from being caught.  (Proverbs 3:26)

End of Part 1

“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude.” 1 Corinthians 13:4

A while back I showed the grandkids a video that illustrated true kindness and the way we should live it out in our lives.The video showed a waitress having a bad day.  One man was especially mean to her.  The waitress’s son was sitting at the counter watching the way she was being treated.  In walked a man who obviously had some special needs.  He sat down and kindly asked how much the big muffins were.  The waitress told him and he slowly counted out his money and then said he would just have a cup of coffee and small donut. When he left the waitress  looked down and he had left her a tip.  He had not gotten what he wanted because it would not have left enough for the tip.  It made waitress’s day, it made her son’s day, and dare I say, it probably made the man’s day as well.

Kindness is one of those rare things that the more we give, the more we have.  It doesn’t diminish as we give it out.  We can never run out of it because our supply house is in heaven.  When God sees we have given kindness, He automatically replaces it and we don’t even have to put in an order.  The writer of Hebrews tells us, “For God is not unjust so as to forget your work and the love which you have shown toward His name, in having ministered and in still ministering to the saints.” (Hebrews 6:10)  God notices what we do.  He knows our hearts.  He rewards our kindness.

If we want to tell others about Jesus, we need to show them Jesus.  All the words in the world won’t negate unkind acts.  As someone once said, “It is nice to be important, but it is more important to be nice.”  The smallest act can sometimes reap the mightiest of rewards. There once was a man who stopped by a small hotel, but the hotel was full.  The man however was very tired and had no place to turn.  The hotel manager, who lived at the hotel, offered him his own room.  The next day the man left letting the manager know he would never forget his kindness.  He was true to his word.  He eventually built one of the largest hotels in Chicago and called the man to be its manager.  The man gave up his bed and received a hotel in exchange.  It should be noticed that people who do things that count, seldom take time to count them.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that kindness doesn’t always seem to result in reward- at least right away.  Man sometimes isn’t the best at saying thanks, but on the other hand, God never forgets good deeds.  We don’t get God’s love, forgiveness, or salvation from kindness, but we do get His attention.  Sometimes a smile from God is all we need to keep us going and every once in a while we will even get a smile from someone else.

The kindest man to ever live was Jesus Himself.   Every act He did was while on His way to the cross.  Some of the kind things He did were for those who would later turn their backs on him.  The greatest kindness of all was His sacrifice on the cross and that was for all us.  None of us deserved a kindness so great.  If He who gave so much, empowers us to do just a little, should we not do it?  The tiniest act of kindness may be our introduction of Jesus to others.  Without kindness, many would not desire to know Him.  It is said that kindness is the one language that the deaf can hear and the blind can see.  Jesus proved that in His miraculous ministry.  We can prove that in our daily lives.

So whether it is a kind word, a short note, a pat on the back, or a tiny act, kindness can go a long way.  No other book says it better, and no other Man did it better.  Solomon left us this wise piece of advice in proverbs, “Do not let kindness and truth leave you; Bind them around your neck, Write them on the tablet of your heart.” (Proverbs 3:3)   We need to treat people nice, not because they are, but because Christ is.  We don’t need another kind of army; we need an army of the kind.  Let’s enlist.