How to Make the World a Better Place

I heard a young man tell me that he thought he would go to heaven because he was making the world a better place. He didn't seem to be doing anything that was positively affecting anyone. He was wrong about two things: that's not what it takes to go to heaven and he wasn't making the world a better place.

Making the world a better place is a nice concept. I think most people mean that they are positively affecting the people they know. They think that smiling and greeting others is enough to make the world a better place. While I agree that it is better to smile and greet others, I don't believe this is making any major contribution to the world.

Each person has their own limits to how much of the world they can positively affect. Some people will have a large impact by their leadership abilities. Others will have a smaller impact with their desire to personally serve. We must get away from the idea that changing the world requires global recognition. We need to focus on our own calling and capacity to change the world.

The first person who needs to be positively affected is yourself. You must be a different person in order to draw people toward a positive change. We must see ourselves as the first project. If we have the ability to do all the things that are great but don't have love, we are just a big bag of loud noise. (Interpretation of 1 Corinthians 13) We must be different. In fact, we must be radically different to change the world.

Our focus must be toward our calling. God does not call us to things He will not gift us to do. He gifts us through a desire and an ability to do what He has called us to. He gives us the strength and works the circumstances so that we can change our world. Who would have thought that a nun in Calcutta, India would become internationally known by helping the poorest people on the earth? This is a God thing.

Changing the world means that we will listen to God. His leadership is essential for great things to happen. Disaster is around the corner when we strike out on our own. Even the disciples were told to stay in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit had come to them. You cannot get ahead of God but you can certainly go where He never wanted you to. His power and His timing come when we follow rather than try to lead Him.

Discouragement is a part of great accomplishment. We should know that failures are not always bad things. Many times they make us stronger. Many times we will call out to God when we realize that we have been acting on our own initiative. You can do everything right some times and still have a disaster. God certainly allows His people to struggle to get their total dependence upon Him. Their failures became testimonies to others. The world was changed by these testimonies. Do not believe that God has lost control simply because you aren't able to accomplish what you thought you would.

The best way to make sure that you are on track is to keep in constant contact. It is easy to get lost when we do not check our compass or gps. This gives us assurance that we are doing what is right.

Then, to quote Sir Winston Churchill, "Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never!" Things will happen which will make you want to stop. But never do so. Change the world as you can with as many as you can.

If It Was Easy, It Wouldn't Be Called Discipline

Many people hate discipline. (I first wrote "all people hate discipline" but I realized that there are some people who love a disciplined life. This blog doesn't apply to them. In fact, most of the problems of life doesn't apply to them.) Discipline is doing what we must do when we would like to do something else.

Discipline is not about knowing what to do. Most of us already know what to do. Discipline involves doing what you know to do. The student knows that he or she would do much better on an exam if studies were done each day. Cramming comes the night before because this wasn't done. The average man knows that he is gaining weight. Cramming comes when he tries to get into some pants he hasn't worn in some time. He knows he should have exercised or eaten less or a combination of both.

This is true of most of these things in our lives. Do we really believe we don't have to work on our marriages daily? Do we think we can clean our houses once a year? What does knowing what we need to do have to do with doing it? It seems very little.

The couch beckons us to sit when we come home from work. The tv tells us to sit still. The sand monster closes our eyes and makes us sleep. Our lives pass on without much happening if we don't fight our natural tendencies and do something.

We get complacent because we are actually not that dissatisfied with our present state. I may not like things as they are presently but I don't dislike them enough to get up off of the couch. "I can do that later," is my mantra. Later gets later and later because I am pleased with the way things are.

This is probably the greatest reason we don't grow as Christians. We don't pick up our Bibles or pray or serve because we are fairly happy with the status quo. We just aren't that interested in becoming more that we are right now.

This is also the reason that many people are without a job. Their companies have shut down because there are a number of employees who weren't working that hard. They were not improving. They were not challenging themselves to learn something new. Think of it, if the person who had a job for the last eight years had been going to night school, they could have learned an alternate career or something that would get them promoted in the are they are already working in. They would have been in a much better position to have gotten a new job when the economy went south. But this would have taken discipline.

Go look at yourself, your house, your car and maybe your garage and ask whether this is the way you want to look, live in, drive or wonder what you have in the garage. It will take discipline to make things different.

It will take discipline to keep things as they are if you are happy. It is harder to stay at a certain weight than to get there. It is harder to keep things clean than to clean them. We have a tendency to forget that we need to keep working after we have achieved our goals.

I have heard that 80% of success is beginning. I believe you need a plan and you must work your plan no matter what if you are going to improve. It will take discipline.

Do You Call Him Lord Jesus?

There are many reasons to go to church today. It could be good for business. It may be that you or someone you love needs healing. Your preacher may be a good speaker and always keeps your attention. You may need to go because you need some place to find hope. These are not exhaustive reasons but they are reasons that many go to church on Sundays.

Today I will not ask you to go to church. I will ask you if you call Jesus "Lord."

Maybe you have never thought of this. Calling Him "Lord" means that you are totally devoted to Him. You hold nothing back. You make no excuses for the things He tells you. It means you give like He owns you. It means that you serve without reservation. It means that you are not trying to protect your time from Him but you are giving Him all of your time. It means that each word you speak is meant to be pleasing to Him first.

I sometimes think we have lost the meaning of "Lord" in our American culture. We speak so much about freedom without understanding what it means. We think we should be free to be rude or stingy or greedy or any number of vices. We think we should be able to do whatever we want as long as we don't get caught.

We fail to see true freedom. For example, marriage allows us the freedom to act in the marriage relationship. Merely living together is not freedom. Freedom requires commitment. The first Americans understood that clearly.

The Bible says that we are under bondage to our sin before we come to Christ. It has a control over us. Christ frees us from that bondage. We should not go back to it. Yet, people sometimes think they are free by acting in sin. Then, why do the alcoholics I know fail to see their freedom when they drink?

Jesus said that if we remained in His word that we were truly His disciples. He said we would know the truth and the truth would set us free. So, when we are obedient to what He has said, the truth is revealed and we are free.

This makes no sense to those who would not call Jesus Lord. They think it is just the opposite. If He is truly your Lord, you know the truth and you are free. If not, you don't understand this blog at all.

Why Do We Keep Sinning?

I sat at a red light yesterday when I notice that the guy in the right turn lane next to me was honking his horn and yelling at the lady in the car in front of him. She could have turned "right on red" but chose not to. Nothing obligated her to turn. The guy next to me was trying to become an obligation. Actually, he was a real jerk. When she finally turned and he passed by I noticed that he had a bumper sticker which reminded people to pray.

Bumper stickers don't make you a Christian but I thought he must have some motivation for putting this on his car. I wondered if he was a Christian who somehow forgets his commitment to Christ when he gets behind the wheel of a car. I'll bet he would tell me that his attitude and actions were not a good Christian testimony if he saw it in someone else.

Before I throw any more rocks at this guy, I have to ask the obvious question about myself: I know what sin is. I know that I have made a commitment to Christ to be different from the world. Why do I keep sinning in the face of what I know?

I am selfish. No matter how altruistic I appear I know that down deep I am selfish. I want to be noticed when I do something good. I want to receive something for any work I do. I want things that will make me feel good but may not be good for me. I want, I want I want.

I am full of pride. I despise others receiving things that I believe I should have had. I think they are not as good as me. They don't deserve what I should have received. I dislike it when people cannot remember my name. I dislike it when they don't pay attention to me. I think I am so important.

I am impatient. My own self importance means that traffic should part for me. Others should just pull their vehicles off the road so that I can pass. Those in line ahead of me at the bank need to put me right at the front. My time is more valuable than anyone else's.

I am vengeful. I want to extract a pound of flesh whenever I am wronged. I will do so by gossip or merely not telling the person who has offended me about the pitfalls down the road. They should get what is coming to them and I will be the agent who delivers it. I will try to get as many people as I can to dislike this person who has offended me. Forgiveness is just not in my nature.

I could name a lot of things that I am naturally but Christ came to live in my life so that I would no longer have selfishness, pride, impatience, unforgiveness, hatred and bitterness rule my life. I have got to learn that I can overcome these things only by Christ who lives within me. I must know that I will continue in these things if I don't spend time with Christ and other godly people. Victory will be contingent upon my continuance in obedience to God's Word.

Plainly put: I am weak but He is strong. My only hope of living a God pleasing life is depending on Him living my life for me. This takes things that Americans don't do much any more. This takes meditation on His word. It takes genuine prayer. It takes taking time out of your day to acknowledge that He is Lord of the day. It takes surrender from my own self importance to realize the worm I am so that I can see His majesty.

Will I become sinless? I am too far away from that idea to assume it is possible. I am afraid that my sinless moments often become points of pride. I should lose myself in His presence rather than try to measure my sinless moments.

Honestly, that guy yelling at the lady could have been me. This time it wasn't. If Christ is truly my Lord, I will live differently.

The Stuff of Stress or Is It the Stress of Stuff?

I have been thinking about how much more stress is in my life than I once had. When I first married my wife and I had little of nothing. She had one semester left in college. I had already graduated. We had no furniture and no real debt. We were able to move at a moment's notice. We had nothing to lose. The Lord could make a smooth move for us from one ministry to another in a matter of days.

This isn't our case now. We have been married for thirty-two years. We have accumulated more furniture than will fit in our house. We have electronics that I am neither willing to hook up because I don't need it nor sell or give away because I might need it one day. I have a yearly house payment that equals the total price of the first house we made an offer on soon after we married. We have tons of things to lose. It would take at least six months for the Lord to move us.

Why do I keep all this stuff? I can't say its because I need it. Much of the stuff is in boxes that we haven't opened in years. Our garage is full of stuff. Our cars have never seen the inside of the garage. Our closets are full of stuff. I have lots of clothes that don't fit anymore but I promise myself I will lose weight and get back into soon. Get real!

The stuff is keeping me from doing what I need to do. I can't find the things that I really need because I have so much stuff to go through in order to get to those things. I don't even know all the stuff I have. It makes my life much more stressful.

Why don't I start getting rid of the stuff? I pick up each item and say, "You know, I might need that someday." I put it down and never do anything with my stuff.

I am convinced that the Lord does not want me to have all this stuff. It is not good for me or honoring to Him. I will force myself to admit that there are things I will never need while there are people who do need them. I will sell that which is reasonable, give away all that someone will take and haul away the rest. I will clean my garage and closets. I will no longer become a slave to my stuff.

I must start doing some of that today. I must do some of it every day. I must never stop because stuff seems to arrive at my house all the time.

How about you? How's your stuff?

Just How Much Jesus Do You Want?

I have been reading the story of Jesus triumphal entry into Jerusalem. There were people cutting palm branches and waving them, people singing and people throwing their clothing on the road before Him. They appear to have given their souls to Him. Where were these people on Friday of that week?

I suspect they only wanted a certain aspect of Jesus. Maybe some wanted Him to be the one who fed them as He did a couple of times. Maybe some wanted Him to bring Israel back to an independent country status. Maybe some of them wanted Him to heal. Some may have just liked being around a rock star.

They didn't really want Jesus. They just wanted a part of Jesus. They wanted the part that they liked. If they wanted all of Him they would have been committed. Even His own disciples didn't get it. Though they had been told, they didn't get the whole story.

This isn't our case. We have the whole story. We have heard the story of the resurrection. We have understood that trust in Him brings eternal life. We have heard His call to be totally committed to Him to the point of Him being more important than anything or anyone else we have in our lives.

So, do you want all of Jesus or just the part you like? Before you answer you should know what you are saying. If you want all of Jesus it will take all of you. It will mean that you will not refuse anything He asks of you. You will obey if He asks you to go to the farthest point in the earth to tell one person about Him. You will obey even if you will live out your life in obscurity. You will obey if He asks you to sell your business and give it to the poor. You will obey if He asks you to follow Him into something that will lead you to become a martyr.

Can you say that you are already seeking Jesus wholeheartedly? Does your giving reflect this? Does your serving reflect it? Do you spend time with Him daily? Does your loving of others reflect it? You only want a part of Jesus if you have set limits in your obedience to Him.

Just how much of Jesus do you want?

God Is Still God

It seems that the whole world has gone crazy. The United States is borrowing vast amounts of money from China. This will effectively cause the US to be silent about human rights violations. The Bible says that the debtor becomes a slave to the lender. Therefore, China can tell us to be quiet and can demand a universal currency to replace the US dollar. They have concluded that the US will print money soon to pay off her debts in inflated dollars. A one world currency would prevent this. (Sounds like something you would read in the book of Revelation?) China is a step ahead.

North Korea is threatening to launch a rocket that can hit the US. No country threatens when it believes the other country is strong. The North Koreans evidently think that the leadership will not respond. They understand that they can get other nations involved in any conflict between the US and their poor country.

Iran, who has hated the US ever since putting the Shah in power, is making weapons grade uranium. Their most likely target is Israel. Any war with Israel will unite the Arab nations because they perceive that the US will not support Israel as before.

It seems that our enemies are everywhere. Yet, our military is strong. The enemies must believe we do not have the resolve to defend ourselves. They must believe that we do not have convictions that will compel us to act.

America is creating a deficit that cannot be repaid. The Bible says that the wicked borrow and do not repay. The interest on this debt will increase the taxes on every American so that the middle class will be bankrupt. The current tax code supports the very rich (I know the rich pay most of the countries taxes but it does not bite into their essentials. The middle class pays their taxes from the essentials.) and does not affect the very poor. This eliminates the middle class.

We are heading toward a nationalized health care. This is a disaster in other countries. There is a group that decides when you get treatment and what treatment you can get. However, this will solve the problem with Social Security. These bureaucrats will probably decide that the old were going to die anyway and deny treatment. (Since abortions are done by the millions, we have proved that we do not value life. It makes sense that the very young and very old will be sacrificed when life is not valued.) Thus, we will not have to keep paying their Social Security benefits.

So, we need some good news. I was reading in Revelation this morning. It said that there is a throne standing in heaven and One sitting on the throne. This means He is still in control. He is not bothered by the events of today. He knows what will happen and He has already acted to make good come out of the bad.

My reaction is one of awe and commitment. I reaffirm my commitment to God. I call Him my hope rather than politicians, the economy or even my country. He is my Lord and I obey Him. I receive the sunshine and the rain as others but I also know He will be my provider. I read the news but know that He is the one who directs my path.

In these turbulent times we must: pray for our leaders for that is a mandate from God, seek God wholeheartedly for we will find Him in the darkest of nights, call Him the great "I AM" for He always is and depend upon Him for He is the One who loves us with an everlasting love.

God is still God no matter what.