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| What sphere of influence has God given you? Has He given you a responsibility or a task that is too big for you? Good! That means that He wants you to look to Him to manage it. Stop trying to give it back to the world and give it to Him! (How many times have I been telling myself that very thing lately!!!) When He gives us a responsibility that is too big for us to handle, we need to go to Him on our faces and beg his forgiveness for trying to do it ourselves:
Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will lift you up. James 4:10
Ask for Him to take the land for us once again, like He did for the Israelites at Gezer:
Wait for the LORD
and keep His way.
He will exalt you to inherit the land;
when the wicked are cut off, you will see it.
Psalm 37:34
Then give us faith and provide the armor we need to continue to battle:
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints. Ephesians 6:10-18
It is only when we have come to the place of putting aside our pride and humbling ourselves before the Lord, admitting we have NOTHING in ourselves to carry out the responsibilities He has given us; then asking Him to take over, that we will be equipped to BEGIN to face our life and ministry.
Dont compromise. Give up all you have to Him. He alone will provide the strength for the battles you face every day and the satisfaction of pure and total victory.
Blessings. | | |
| Part 1
What happens when people who believe in Jesus do not live in a way that is distinct from the culture, confronting the culture where it departs from all that we hold dear? We compromise. We become ineffective. Ultimately, we have absolutely NO IMPACT on the world around us because we have failed to show the love of Christ, preferring to look like the rest of the world in all of its apathy and self-loathing.
For the past several weeks that question and its horrible conclusion have confronted me as I have studied Gezer, Samson, the Shephelah, the Nazirite vow, the Philistines vs. the Israelites, and the failure of the children of Israel to obey God in all that He commanded them. Hmmmmm. Here's the Reader's Digest version, part 1:
I guess the situation that struck me the most was the Philistines vs. the Israelites, because it sort of ties in all of the topics and wraps them up into a package...
See, we think of the Philistines as being big backward barbaric clods--you know, Goliath is a dumb "fee fi fo fum" sort of giant with not enough brain to get out of the way of nimble intelligent David's stones. Actually, the Philistines had more technology than the Israelites. The Philistines had iron when the Israelites didn't even know how to sharpen iron (see I Samuel 13:20), and archaeology shows that they had sophisticated cities with huge olive processing plants and cultural centers with many interesting (and sensual) rituals and gods (cool, huh?); whereas the Israelites were simple uneducated tent dwellers with sheep and a single God who required bloody sacrifices with rigid rules applied to the timing and application of the sacrifices.
At this point, let me ask you a question: If you were living 3,000 years ago, which culture would you be more interested in? I know what my answer would be!
...except for one thing. The Israelites knew the True and Living God. The Philistines lived by chance, their idols could not do anything for them. They held no hope for the future. Their only hope was in the world they lived in--their strength, culture, education, technology, riches, and idols of wood and metal, which they could not take with them into eternity. Does this sound familiar????
Part 2:
If you read part 1, you already know about the Philistines...their culture, education, and religious rituals were very attractive...attractive enough to draw the country dwelling children of Israel into illicit relationships which pulled them into serious bondage and caused horrific pain in the end.
So why did it happen to begin with? Compromise. Don't you think that God knew that the Philistines were interesting people? He TOLD the Israelites to take control of the land He had given them (in other words--GET RID OF THE PHILISTINES!), but they did not TRUST Him enough to do what He told them to do (Philistines are big and scary), so they compromised. They already knew that they must obey every word God gave them or reap the consequences, from Moses in Deuteronomy 11:26-28, for example:
See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse-the blessing if you obey the commands of the LORD your God that I am giving you today; the curse if you disobey the commands of the LORD your God and turn from the way that I command you today by following other gods, which you have not known.
Pretty clear, huh? So WHY would they NOT obey that very clear command? Fear. Mistrust. They allowed themselves to become distracted by the rest of the world and did not focus on the One True God who had told them exactly what to do, and had shown them that He was more than capable of fulfilling His promises. They listened to people and they looked at the outward appearance of things in order to make decisions, rather than listen to the One who was totally in control. One glaring example of that was in their failure to take control of a strategic city called Gezer, that is the topic for tomorrow; but first let me ask you some questions.
How are you making your decisions about your life, your family, career, ministry? Are you basing your decisions on outward appearance? Do you look at other people and say, "look what they have! I can do that too," or are you looking up and asking the question, "Lord of the universe, what can I do to impact the world for Jesus Christ today?" Ask yourself: Who are you serving?
More tomorrow | | |
| This is the most blogging I've done in 3 months! Been thinking about confronting the culture. Read my last 2 Xanga blogs if you have the patience. I have a myspace one too which I'll post in a few days.
Blessings. | | |
| This was my reply to Robert Pachico, published a few days later:
Letter misquotes Scripture
10/22/04 - To the Cigar,
It is a shame when people twist and wring false statements out of the Bible by misquoting it. Robert Pachico has gone to quite an extreme to make his case about God being an "abortionist," even to the point of misquoting two passages of Scripture.
Exodus 21:22-25 refers to a premature birth and not to a miscarriage, and actually indicates that if there is serious injury to the child, there is an equal penalty (eye for eye, etc.). Numbers 5:11-31 has nothing whatsoever to do with abortion. In fact, the Numbers passage doesn't even mention the death of the woman, never mind an unborn child!
Here are a few excerpts from the ACTUAL passages in the New International Version (NIV), along with backup in the form of another extremely reliable version, the English Standard Version.
First, here are the actual verses which regarding injury of a child:
NIV Exodus 21:22-25 "If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman's husband demands and the court allows. But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise."
The English Standard Version reads: Exodus 21:22 "When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman's husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe."
Here are the verses regarding jealousy of a husband:
NIV Numbers 5:27 "If she has defiled herself and been unfaithful to her husband, then when she is made to drink the water that brings a curse, it will go into her and cause bitter suffering; her abdomen will swell and her thigh waste away, and she will become accursed among her people. If, however, the woman has not defiled herself and is free from impurity, she will be cleared of guilt and will be able to have children."
The English Standard Version reads: Numbers 5:27-28 "And when he has made her drink the water, then, if she has defiled herself and has broken faith with her husband, the water that brings the curse shall enter into her and cause bitter pain, and her womb shall swell, and her thigh shall fall away, and the woman shall become a curse among her people. But if the woman has not defiled herself and is clean, then she shall be free and shall conceive children."
On the other hand, there are several passages that indicate that God does indeed care about unborn children. Here they are:
From Psalm 139: "For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there were none of them."
From Isaiah 49: "Listen to me, O coastlands, and give attention, you peoples from afar. The Lord called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named my name."
Jeremiah 1:5: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.
Luke 1:31: "And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus."
Galatians 1:15 "But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace..."
The beauty and tenderness of these last few passages indicate that God cares deeply for unborn children - to characterize God as an abortionist is to distort who He is according to the Bible.
It is true that different people interpret the Bible in different ways, but misquoting it is intellectually dishonest and inappropriate at best. Judge these passages for yourself, but read them in their entirety. Look them up and see them in context; or read the entire 66 books and then perhaps you will gain a deeper understanding of what the Bible actually says about God and His relationship to us.
Sandy Gaboury
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| Here's an article that appeared in the URI student paper October 2004...
Bible is pro-choice, 'God is an abortionnist'
10/19/04 - To the Cigar,
In recent weeks, a recurring topic in the hallowed pages of our fine student periodical has been abortion and its spiritual consequences, mainly in the terms of the Christian (and especially Catholic) church.
Most of the argument has taken the form of discussion over the implied meaning of statements made by Church officials over the past 20 centuries regarding the lurid subject matter.
The thing is, for the most part I don't care about the papacy or ecclesiastical history. Because what I believe comes from what William McCabe called in his Sept. 29 column the "handbook with the 'rules and regulations' for its members," the Holy Bible. And according to the Holy Bible abortion is not murder.
There are only two passages in the Bible that speak directly to the issue of abortion, and both indicate unequivocally that abortion is not murder.
Marcus Ross mentioned in his Oct. 1 letter to the editor that Exodus 21:22-25 shows that killing a fetus is a death sentence. Jesse Whitsitt-Lynch made a comment on this in his Oct. 8 column, saying "the text is not a sufficient guide."
I am going to heartily disagree and post the contents of these verses here according to the New International Version of the Scripture, the most popular. "If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she has a miscarriage but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman's husband demands and the court allows. But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise."
In these verses, God tells us what to do if a man who is brawling knocks against a pregnant woman. If the woman dies, the principle of "life for life" is invoked and the man responsible for her death must be killed. If she lives but has a miscarriage, then the death of the fetus is to be compensated for by the payment of a fine, as demanded by the woman's husband.
Thus has God revealed the status of the unborn fetus: it is not an independent, full-fledged human life, whose destruction amounts to murder. It is a thing owned by the woman's husband - a thing whose loss, like that of any other thing, may be compensated for with money.
The other passage is Numbers 5:11-31. Here, God commands a husband to get an abortion for his wife if he suspects she has been impregnated by another man. A priest is to make her drink a potion and tell her, "If any man other than your husband has had intercourse with you, may the LORD make an example of you... by bringing upon you miscarriage and untimely birth."
To deliberately cause a miscarriage is to perform an abortion. And who brings about this miscarriage? Who performs this abortion? It is the Lord who does so. God is an abortionist.
Those intent on misconstruing the Bible for political ends will no doubt persist in denying the facts. But it is time for these anti-abortion zealots to admit that their position contradicts God's moral law as revealed in the Bible. They should stop misrepresenting the biblical truth.
In fact, God is an abortionist.
Robert L. Pachico
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