I Believe This Is A Positive Message

If you start off your reading by scrolling down and looking at the photo that follows this piece you will get a better understanding(at least that's the thought I had before I got my timing backwards)of my direction tonight! A church, in what appears to be the middle of nowhere! Is that what you see, also? I looked at it for a long time before taking it in. The first thing that got my attention were the lovely colors in the sky, and then the lonliness of the house caught me, and on examination I discovered the tiniest of crosses on the roof at what must be the front, and where I have a hunch there are double doors to facilitate entries and exits. Then I had a vision of where the church is in the world in which I reside. Not the big, gaudy, overdone sprawling complex that has parking lots filled to overflowing on Sunday mornings, the "real" church, the "Body of Christ." Under attack in more ways than I care to think about here, the church is in a period of decline, the one of the "true" Bible believing "way." The picture puts me in mind of something an artist might paint as a depiction of emotions that surround the anonymity of God's people. Almost rebuilding at a distance from the civilized world on purpose. A passive attempt to rekindle the flame of faith that appears to falter as if blown on by the permissive passsions of 21st century America. A location far enough from the real world that the doors can be thrown open without fear of what may wander in to continue the unrelenting assault on morality and christian sanity. It is my contention that there are a lot of really good folks out there that have given up on the church because they see it going the way of the world. Thus is begun a spiral(think of that swirl in your toilet bowl), the more people see the church faltering in faith as it concedes one after another of the major conflicting moral viewpoints present in our American society, the less they see it as a place of trust. A history in the writing actually, in the past 25 years many of the headliners, those in the forefront of media coverage, have fallen prey to human failings and gotten themselves busted bigtime! That allowed everyone else to stand around pointing fingers and guffawing at the folks of faith. What people want to think, they will think, but the church has not gone away, the real one I mean. It has just retreated! The church is alive and well, and trying to regain the ground that has been taken. It may take another generation, and a great awakening in our country for individuals to start seeing the ruin that present trends are leading toward. I must state that God is busy about the business of setting apart a "remnant" of His people. Think about this for just a moment. This is exactly what God has always done with humankind, "preserved a portion unto Himself." If you wonder where the "believers" are, you may have to look a little harder these days to find them, but please, know that we are here, and if sought, can be found, just like God! There are gatherings where our Lord and Savior is worshipped in the fullness of God's grace every Sunday with as much emphasis on remaining faithful as on redeeming the lost. It's all a part of a plan that I haven't the capacity to comprehend. I do know, though, it is good to stand firm with my brothers and sisters in the peace of my Savior which passes all understanding. In Christ's Love, Preacher.

What Is A Church Doing Way Out Here? 

Even On The Darkest Of Days The Sun Is Shining Brightly Somewhere! 

Okay, I'm Posting The Picture. How Does This Relate To A Paradigm Of Sin In People's Lives? 

Thinking Through The True Cause Of Sin In Our World!

Rain is falling on the area of the Great American Desert where I reside. It started with a soft, gentle shower, just a light outpouring of summer nurture. By late this afternoon it had turned into an unrelenting steady, bitter cold, large drop affair. Not a good one to be motoring about in on two wheels. This precipitated(don't you just love puns)my using a car to run over to the market this evening. While at the market a young man stopped me and asked which sin he was missing, and then swiftly proceeded to tell the six he was sure of. Anger, envy, greed, gluttony, pride, laziness, and he looked at me awaiting the seventh. Lust, of course, is the correct answer, but I couldn't just leave it at that and continued to explain that our "lust" comes from the latin "luxuria" or as we might term it today, luxury, which would mean that by today's standards one man's lust is another man's luxury! It was meant as a sort of joke, but the intent was such that the young man headed off with more questions than he came with, which made me stop to think, is it just possible that the reason for the slurring of meanings is the result of the seductive side of sin itself. We don't just wake up one morning and decide to go out and do 3 or 4 before lunch, we, in our humaness, are quite literally seduced by the sin before the commission. We "entertain" the thought, give it permission to wander in many of the directions it can take, and then "justify" our own seduction and subsequent giving in to the desire. Now the whole process of each of the seven sins has set my mind to working on the difficulty we have with avoidance. None of us in our faith walk wish to be caught up in any of the sinful acts available to us. In fact most folks quite purposefully try very hard not to sin. Even those who are not christian follow a set of moral guidelines that they have chosen for themselves in one way or another. So the way that I'm looking at it right now is, "The act or deed(sin) is secondary to the seduction that precedes it, and that is the "thing" we need to be wary of. Sin itself is more or less unavoidable, but being aware of the seduction at it's inception could make an enormous difference in how we act on the impulses created by that seductive process." The bait in most traps is never aquired, because after we realize we've been trapped we're like that rodent that desires the cheese attached to a spring mechanism, dead! The other scenario is one in which we don't want the bait anymore because we realize we're trapped. Just had to think this through a bit "on screen" and then I can reread later to see if I'm making any sense. There is an escape from the trap, too. That is, if you aren't dead already as a result of the seduction! It's the forgiveness that is found through faith in God's Son, my Savior. If you know you've been seduced, seek God's help, He's particularly well versed when it comes to the problems that sin can create. In Christ's Love, Preacher.

I love to see the dogs happy! 

Christ Came That All Might Have Life More Abundant!