Category Archives: Relationships

Blogs in this category deal with relationships between ourselves and God, family members, other Christians, and the lost.

A good start each day is essential

Posted on December 14, 2015 by | Comments Off on A good start each day is essential

good startWe have all heard that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Studies have shown that those people who eat a well-balanced breakfast daily do better quality work, are more able to handle the challenges and stresses of the day, and are in better health. Each day, schools across America give a free balanced breakfast to school-aged children so they can focus on learning rather on their hunger. I began thinking over the weekend of not only daily breakfast time at our family home but about what a balanced spiritual breakfast means for the believer.

After 40 days of fasting, Jesus offers advice for the soul

We’ve all read it in our personal devotions, have heard it taught in Sunday school, and even have heard preachers discuss it from the pulpit – the story of Jesus being tempted by Satan after he had spent 40 days fasting and praying in the wilderness. After being tempted by Satan to turn stones into bread, Jesus rebuked him, And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God (Luke 4:4). As I began studying this verse, I remembered what I once heard a small-town radio preacher say – if you want to live in this body you have to feed it; if you want eternal life, you must feed the soul. Feeding this body, bread, as Satan tempted Jesus, would only feed the physical body. When we eat, we are only feeding our physical body; this morning I had scrambled eggs, a couple of turkey sausage patties, and two of the small canned biscuits. While it was a filling and very satisfying breakfast it did nothing for my soul. It simply fed the physical body.

A good start of the day must include fellowship with Jesus

David, described by the author of the Book of Acts; I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after mine own heart, which shall fulfil all my will (Acts 13:22c), understood the importance of seeking the Lord early in the day. He wrote, O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is (Psalms 63:1). Solomon wrote on a similar theme, I love them that love me; and those that seek me early shall find me (Proverbs 8:17). God is not talking about those that find Him early in life in this context, but those that wake up with a purpose to find and spend time with the Lord in the very first moments of the day. It takes a great effort to roll out of bed, grab your Bible, and begin reading and praying.  It becomes so easy to roll out of bed with a grunt, turn on the coffee pot, eat breakfast, and next thing you know, you’re already out the door for work without even reading one verse or spending time with the Lord in prayer.

When we truly put the Lord at the beginning of our day it does do a few things. Firstly, it allows us to put Jesus first in everything we do. When we do put the Lord first in our morning routine it changes the way we approach our work, our coworkers, and even our family members. It also allows the Lord to see our determination to follow the leadership of the Holy Spirit. I’m reminded of the testimony of Daniel: Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house; and his windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime (Daniel 6:10). Almost everything I’ve read about Daniel is that he prayed in the morning, evening, and noontime. Even when laws were passed against praying to the Lord, Daniel continued his routine of making the Lord the center of his life. Although we do not know exactly what three times Daniel prayed each day, I do believe that one of the times Daniel prayed was early in the morning before he began his daily routine.

A good start can set the course for the day

I will admit there have been times where I have skipped breakfast in the morning. For whatever reason, I simply didn’t have the time or just forgot to eat. It was those days where it seemed that I was the most distracted and irritable. And there have been times where I made the decision not to read my Bible or spend time in prayer with the Lord before I began my day. Just as skipping breakfast had a real influence of my day, so did skipping my personal, quiet time with the Lord. I have found I am more irritable, I get less work done, and everything seems to bother me. Aches and pains, stiff joints, and even some people, generally speaking, seem to irritate me more. However, when I have spent the time in prayer and personal Bible study in the morning, it is amazing the difference it makes. I can handle challenges and difficulties better, aches and pains seem more tolerable, and I get more done because my attitude towards what needs to be done is better. 

If you’re ready for a real change in your life that will also help your spiritual growth, I would invite you to do a thirty-day challenge – make fellowship with the Lord the first thing you do in the morning. Be ready for Satan to create all kinds of havoc as you begin to adopt a Christ-centered morning routine. Even after you’ve established it, Satan will still try to sabotage your efforts. However, I can tell you from experience that the Lord will honor and richly bless your efforts to become more Christ-focused. 

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Weakened foundations and empty lives (pt 2)

Posted on December 2, 2015 by | Comments Off on Weakened foundations and empty lives (pt 2)

brick-crackEmpty lives and weakened foundations seem to go together. I have seen this each day in the college courses that I teach and have experienced in my own life. When we build our lives around anything other than Jesus nothing within is where it needs to be or in its proper perspective. Having a life without a firm foundation leads to an emptiness that is hard to explain but we’ve all experienced. It wasn’t until 2006 that I began to understand where this emptiness came from and how I actually contributed to its development. 

Empty lives can indicate the absence of Jesus

Even though I thought I was saved in 1988, and as I have shared with the readers of this blog over the last few years, from 1988 until 2006, things that should have brought me joy either didn’t or simply didn’t last long. There were a few verses that began to affect how I saw myself and my relationship with the Lord once I did finally accept Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior. The first, For every house is builded by some man; but he that built all things is God (Hebrews 3:4), puts things in perspective. David, the man who God said was after His own heart, was led by the Holy Spirit to write, I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well (Psalms 139:14) which conveys the idea that mankind was created by God and not some accident or development of an evolutionary process.

While I was an undergraduate, I took courses in psychology, anthropology, and sociology which were my declared minors. One of the things that fascinated me about all three of these social sciences was a common facet of our basic nature – mankind has what some consider as a per-programmed need to worship something. Durkheim, a sociologist from the late 19th and early 20th Century, spent much of his life’s work studying various primitive groups and noticed that in the absence of what he considered as “standard religions” (such as Judaism and Christianity), mankind would create a complex faith system to appeal to the spiritual world. As an avid Atheist, Durkheim appealed to the rationality of these alternative religions until he reaffirmed the religion of his childhood, orthodox Judaism. What Durkheim learned was that mankind is a social animal, not just in a physical sense, but in our need to relate to some sort of higher being or power. Not only is this demonstrated throughout the Bible, but we see it in the world around us. 

Paul demonstrates this human need for spiritual fellowship was manifested in God’s efforts to reach down to mankind: For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings (Hebrews 2:10) and in this verse: Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God (Hebrews 12:2). God understands our basic need to believe in something greater than ourselves and He understands the sins that take hold of us that prevents us from worshiping Him. When we think of the story of Cain and Abel we see the story of all humanity – a choice to worship God as He has prescribed or to attempt to worship God in a false religion we’ve made. Cain’s decision to offer his own style of sacrifice not only resulted in an empty gesture that had no real meaning, but in a rebuke from God and an anger that led to him murdering his own brother.

Empty lives impact everything we do and all that we have

I was asked if it were normal for Christians to have an empty feeling; the answer is yes. One can be a Christian yet have a life that is focused on things other than Jesus. Let me be clear here – those who are without Christ will have an empty life for the simple reason that they are bound to sin and the world. This was a part of the topic of the first part of this two-part series. Christians can have empty lives when anything other than Jesus becomes their focus. It is one of the reasons that Jesus taught his disciples, No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon (Luke 16:13). When we try to hold onto the things of the world and serve God, not only do we engage in a war between the Holy Spirit that resides in us and the desires and enticements of the world. This is a dangerous place for any Christian to be because the emptiness it brings can easily take root and grow.

Continued on the next page.

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Weakened foundations and empty lives (pt 1)

Posted on November 30, 2015 by | Comments Off on Weakened foundations and empty lives (pt 1)

weakened foundationsWeakened foundations are a serious problem for any building. A while back, when I was planning to buy a house in Oakdale, Louisiana, I went through the process of trying to buy a home. I had been hired by the Allen Parish School Board to teach seventh and eighth grade history at the middle school in that town. One of the inspections that was required was an engineering report which included an evaluation of the house’s foundation. After nearly a week of waiting to hear if the mortgage paperwork was done, I received a phone call from the bank’s loan officer – the house failed inspection because it had a weakened foundation!

At the time, being an impatient young man, I never understood the importance of having a strong and sure foundation when buying a house.  In hindsight, I now understand the important spiritual lessons the Lord was teaching me nearly twenty years ago.

Weakened foundations can never prosper for long

He is like a man which built an house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock: and when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it: for it was founded upon a rock. But he that heareth, and doeth not, is like a man that without a foundation built an house upon the earth; against which the stream did beat vehemently, and immediately it fell; and the ruin of that house was great (Luke 6:48-49). In this teaching by Jesus, He is expounding on the only two ways people respond to the gospel message – they either accept it or don’t. Unlike the story of the Three Little Pigs where the descriptions of the three houses, one made of stone, one made of wood, and the other made of straw, Jesus’ teaching doesn’t give us any discernible difference in the appearances of the two houses. For all purposes of this particular lesson, the houses probably appeared identical. They probably offered the same luxuries, the same basic floor plan, and all the comforts of that era. The difference was in the foundations of the houses. While the one house had a strong foundation and would stand the test of time, the other house didn’t – in the words of Jesus, “and the ruin of that house was great.”

Anything we build in our lives, whether it be a family, a career, a home, or even a ministry, must be built upon a firm foundation. The apostle Paul, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, wrote: According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise masterbuilder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon. For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 3:10-11), as a testimony that the only foundation where we can truly build upon successfully is upon Jesus. Looking back at the biggest disasters and mistakes I’ve made, each one of them have this in common – I tried to build them on my own and on a foundation that wasn’t my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Even Job bears witness to the other foundations we try to use when we don’t rely on the Lord: How much less in them that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, which are crushed before the moth? They are destroyed from morning to evening: they perish for ever without any regarding it (Job 4:19-20). If we are all honest, we have all built aspects of our lives on foundations of dust and sand that crumbled before our eyes when even the slightest trial or tribulation headed our way. Weakened foundations will always fail us.

When we build on weakened foundations, not only do we experience failure but a sense of emptiness too. Again, if we are completely honest with ourselves, that empty feeling – the one where we begin to wonder why we are here – happens after we experience a setback from our failed plans. Plans that were built on something other than our faith in Jesus Christ. A few years back, I met a man who had given up a job where he was making a six-figure annual salary. Astonished, I asked him why and he told me – Jesus wasn’t in it. Yes, it is possible that your plans, in the strictest sense, may be successful, but again, if Jesus isn’t the foundation upon which it is built, it will never bring you the joy Jesus wants you to have. Anything that does not bring us the joy that Jesus has promised us we can have can never be a success, but will always fail; will always fall short.

Weakened foundations have impassable limits

I know that sub-title may sound a little funny, but there is a real lesson here. Nothing we build in this life will last if it is not built on the firm foundation of Jesus. I’ve learned through my experiences, and from watching the world around me, that when we build anything on a weakened foundation, we will come to a place where the foundation can no longer structurally handle the pressure being placed upon it. Marriages crumble when the relationship between husband and wife is built upon or becomes focused on something other than having Jesus as the center and foundation. Children become the victims of abuse or neglect when the home becomes focused and grounded upon something other than Jesus. Even the most noblest of our intentions will ultimately fail when we have built them upon something other than Jesus as the foundation; I’m reminded of the verse, And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men (Colossians 3:23). Whatever we put our hand out to do and if we are to succeed, we must make sure that Jesus is the foundation on which we build.

Weakened foundations keep us from reaching our fullest potential. While stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington in the early 1990s, I remember reading of a construction and renovation project that went horribly wrong. A local business was going to expand its showroom to incorporate what had once been an old garage attached to the building that housed the store. At one point, construction stopped as the old garage slab cracked and the new construction began to collapse. The city’s engineer had determined the old slab had a flaw in it and simply could not support the weight of the new construction. It was good enough to be used as a garage but couldn’t be expanded to do anything else. In the end, the shopkeeper had to remove the old foundation and replace it. Much is the same with anything we do without Christ as its foundation. If it is successful, it will only be for a short time. Eventually, we will reach the point where no matter what we try in our own power, it will still either fail or reach a point where it will not grow and prosper any further. 

Looking back in my own life, there were things I set out to do that didn’t go the way I had hoped. Each of those things lasted as long as they could on the foundation of sand and dust they were built upon. From the start they were destined to fail because they were not built upon the Lord Jesus Christ. Could those things had survived the trials and tribulations? Yes, but it would have required rebuilding and setting upon the firm foundation and centering my efforts on Jesus. 

Rebuilding and centering upon the firm foundation

A few semesters ago I had the privilege of teaching at our college’s extended campus in Morganfield, Kentucky. Although I only taught there for three semesters, I learned a lot during the one-hour commute into a predominantly rural area. There was one morning, when I was already a little behind schedule, when I was stuck behind a house-moving crew. What I could normally drive in thirty minutes became an hour-long ordeal. Later on that morning, while talking with one of my co-workers, I learned that her father was in the house-moving business and she then began to share the various stages required to move a house. She ended her explanation by saying, “if a house is moved properly, once it is set on a new foundation, it will be just as sturdy, if not better, than when it was on its original foundation.” A real-world testimony of the benefits of being on firm rather than weakened foundations.

Just like the house that can be made stronger from a newer, more secure foundation, anything in our lives can be made stronger if we center it on Jesus. Can a failing marriage be saved? Yes, as long as both husband and wife are committed to making Jesus the center of that marriage. Can an uncertain future or job be made more secure? Yes, when Jesus is placed at the center of it. No matter what it is, if you’re willing to place it upon the foundation of Jesus and allow Him to take lordship over it, you can gain great joy and peace from knowing Jesus wants His best for you. It may be that in the case of a job, a business you run, or maybe even a ministry you serve in is not what He has planned for you. You can take great comfort in knowing if He has called you out of it, He will never forsake or leave you. Even Paul took comfort in this fact as he wrote, Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee (Hebrews 13:5).

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