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Author: <span class="vcard">Liz Smith</span>
Many Christians claim that if you tell non-Christians how Jesus can help them in their present situation, they’ll only love Him temporarily, forgetting Him when it’s all over. Those Christians…
There are many lessons we can learn from the people of Israel and their experience in the wilderness. Some examples are pointed out to us blatantly by Paul in 1 Corinthians 10:6–11: 1) we should not lust as they lusted, 2) become idolaters as were some of them, 3) commit sexual immorality as some of them did, 4) tempt Christ as also some did, nor 5) complain as some of them complained. Whew. That’s quite the list to keep in mind as we walk the Christian walk.
While I was reading the book of Numbers this morning, I came upon another example that resonated with me:
Lately, God has been showing me the importance of my role as a mother. This might sound ridiculously obvious to some, but sometimes we get so bogged down in the “everyday” that we lose sight of what we’ve been gifted with. The other day, upon opening to the dedication page of the book I had just received, I was moved to read this: “To My Mother.”
1) Jesus had nowhere to lay his head (Matt. 8:20), yet many of our church buildings have become little (some not so little) country clubs complete with swimming pools, cafés, bowling alleys, and Frisbee golf parks, built to entertain ourselves and draw in the world with the world’s methods. Even our most conservative churches today are not immune to the lure of fabricating comfortable little kingdoms in the name of Christ, putting faith in “if you build it, they will come,” and completely ignoring the teaching of God’s word to the contrary (Matt. 6:19–20; Phil. 3:19–20).
Recently, someone told me that an individual’s Facebook posts have nothing to do with their spirituality. The discussion arose because we both know a man, elected to the position of deacon at his church, whose Facebook “likes” and “follows” consisted of pages of either obscene jokes and language or scantily clad women. To be fair, the primary purpose of most of the pages in mention was not to publish obscene language and scantily clad women. The overall theme of the pages was guns. But what goes along with guns in the eyes of the world? Women in bikinis that are three sizes too small for their ample bodies and the soldier’s favorite cuss word that can be used as an adjective, adverb, noun, and verb all in one sentence.
Two summers ago, over the Fourth of July weekend, I visited a friend in the hospital. As I walked into the ICU room, the TV mounted on the ceiling glared into the darkness. The movie Jaws was playing, which I suppose has become standard fare for Independence Day television viewing. The patient was sleeping, so I sat down and began to watch. It had been several years since I’d seen it, and I picked up at (of course) the Fourth of July scene on the beach.
If you’re familiar with the movie, this is a very tense scene. The beach had been closed because of recent shark attacks, but the City of Amity had made the decision to reopen for the Fourth since a large shark had been caught and destroyed. The beach was the town’s only industry, and without tourism dollars, the town couldn’t survive the long winter months. So of course, the beach was packed with residents and tourists celebrating the holiday.
But there was a problem. No one was going in the water.
by Gale Carter, Founder and Executive Director, D.O.L.L.S., used with permission
I ask, “With what confidence will your family bury you?” because this past week I watched as one of the D.O.L.L.S. ministry’s dear young ladies was faced with the unspeakable reality of having to bury her mother. Hannah’s mom passed away very unexpectedly, due to a blood clot after a small surgical procedure. No one saw it coming. It happened less than twenty-four hours following sweet Hannah’s eighteenth birthday.
I was so struck by Hannah’s response to her mother’s passing. In a Facebook post she posted a day after getting the horrific news, Hannah said:
God is good. Man is not good. Christians still sin. Christians make mistakes. Christians make dumb mistakes. Christians make really dumb mistakes. Christians have a less-than-perfect theology (despite what they…