Haven And Earth

A Spiritual Health Check-up!

As we go along the road of our Christian walk many things impact on our life in Christ. Life is busy and lots of times the things of God get lost in our hectic life. It is good sometimes to simply step aside from our daily routine and take a spiritual assessment of how we are doing.

The following 'check-ups' are presented to take our spiritual temperature, take our spiritual blood pressure and check our spiritual pulse to evaluate our general spiritual health. They are intended as a 'self exam' . They are not an evaluation the pastor or a brother in Christ can carry out. We must do our own 'check-ups".
Read on and see how your spiritual health is:

How's your appetite?

They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Acts 2:42 Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering;... And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: Hebrews 10 :23 -25

A warning sign for spiritual decline that we can use to keep tabs on in our own spiritual health is an indifference to the study of the Word. The spiritual life, no less than the natural, requires appropriate and continual nourishment. For this need, God has made ample provision in his Word. To the faithful disciple, the Scriptures are a rich source of spiritual nutrition.

"0 how I love I Thy law! it is my meditation all the day." To one who loves the Lord, the reading of the Word is a joyful occupation...like eating a satisfying meal. But, it happens that some who carry the Christian name and who once rejoiced in Christ, lose their love for the Scriptures.

They may read them daily, but no longer with the serious conscious attention to their meaning that makes the scriptures our "bread of life."

They avoid the deep things of the Word that might bring conviction or a life change and instead confine their devotions to the familiar "milk of the word."

Their minds are occupied during their daily reading with thoughts of household tasks or business concerns.

They rationalize their failure to read and study the Word with the excuse that the scripture is too hard for them to understand.

They feel they can achieve the same result by utilizing 'devotional readings' and religious literature and in so doing put themselves on a starvation diet..

They want to stand before their peers as a Christrian but without putting forth any effort in building a strong spiritual body. Failing to partake of that nutrition of the inner man, they find they are powerless and lacking in any growth of the soul. In our physical bodies, a lack of appetite is a sure indication of illness or a poor constitution. Such a lack of appetite for the Word is conclusive proof that the soul has departed (or is in the process of departing ) from God and is declining in spiritual health. It has grieved the Holy Spirit and lost the vital power of godliness.

As we read these words of warning, it is best if we take each sentence to heart and not endeavor to push the admonitions off onto neighbors or others in the church. If we are conscious of these habits developing in our lives, we can see in it an infallible spiritual weakness. They declare that we have lost our appetite for spiritual nutrition and are drifting from God. We must ask God's forgiveness for our shallowness of heart and begin again to hunger after the complete and satisfying 'meals' in the word as we did when we were first saved.

Are you eating regularly and well ?

NOTE: Lord willing, We will continue with two more "check-up" questions.
Sunday will be:
Shortness of Breath?

Then on Monday:
How Are You Feeling Today?

Sin By Any Other Name

A little girl was asked by her Sunday school teacher, "What's the first thing we must do if we want to be forgiven?" "We have to sin."

Correct. But that isn't our problem. We have all sinned, says the Scripture; the two questions are how did we get into that condition and how can we avoid it. If we think of sin merely as a long list of things we don't want to do anyway, we are missing not only the truth, but also the chance to be forgiven. Sin, as Paul says, is both wide and deep. It's not a simple thing. It deserves serious thought.

Paul uses two words---trespass and sin. Trespass is a willing violation of a known law. When the sign says, "Keep off the grass", and I walk on it anyway, that is a trespass. We know something is wrong, but we do it anyway. On the other hand, the most common word for sin in the New Testament means:

"missing the mark." That seems a little less fearsome. We wanted to do right, but we simply failed. After all, we are human.

Could it be that we fail because we will to do so? We made a choice and the choice was to do something wrong. Then we do indeed fail and become frustrated. We sin, but perhaps it is also a sin of omission. We know what should be done, but the cost of obedience is too great.

On the other hand, sin may appear so glamorous and rewarding that we are tempted to disobedience.

Granted, we as Christians tend to blame our human nature for our sin. That is the way we are---we "fall short of the glory of God," just as Paul said we would (1 Cor. 3:23). But if we're totally honest, we have to realize that most of our failure comes because we deliberately trespass---we go against what we know. The warning may be ever so slight, but it is there. And when we go against it, we miss the mark of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

Much of our sin is our "being," but much is also in our behavior. Paul gets to this later in his letter to the Ephesians.

Most errors in personal theology come from imbalance. When we emphasize any side of any issue and ignore the other, we distort the truth. In fact, Paul says that we "change the truth of God into a lie" (Rom. 1:25). In the question of sin, it is easy to emphasize one side of the responsibility and ignore the other. We can say that we do what we do because of what we are, and that is, in a sense, true. Or we can say that we are what we are because of what we do, and that is also true.

The only true balance is that of Scripture which emphasizes both the grace of God and the obedience of man.

Can it be that we have died and no one has bothered to write an obituary? It is only after we have been energized by the life of Christ that we recognize the seriousness of our condition. When the psalmist talks about the horrible pit from which he was dug, he is already out of it. At the time he didn't know that he was in a pit; perhaps he thought that "all the world" was miry clay. After all, a fish in the ocean doesn't know that he is wet.

It is no accident that Paul addressed his letter to the saints in Ephesus. The other people would not have listened to it. Only those pronounced "holy" by the grace of God respond to his call to pursue holiness. The others don't know that they are unholy and have no ambition to become holy. In their deadness, they paint the corpse with flesh tones and imagine that this is life. When a popular entertainer commits suicide, all the couch-potato commentators say, "There was no reason for this, he had everything to live for." Everything, that is, but life.

I saw a magazine cover that displayed a well-dressed, beautiful young woman. She was saying, "I have an ocean-front apartment, interesting, well-paid work, my sex life is great, and my roller skates cost one hundred dollars. Why do I feel like I am missing something?"

Why, indeed? She's dead. For a few thousand years, Egyptian mummies have resided in their wooden boxes, looking as lifelike as they did when they sailed on the Nile. But they are dead.

It is doubtful that the inhabitants of a cemetery argue much about which one has the most elaborate tombstone.

In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul lists the causes of death. He conducts a spiritual autopsy, a post-mortem. There are two reasons this is important. First, we can look back and see where we went wrong in the first place, and then we can look to see where other people go wrong so that we can avoid their error. Both reasons are valid. What is the germ of sin? How are we dazzled by its attractiveness and then blinded by its power to its consequences? The world is too much with us, Late and soon. Getting and spending, We lay waste our powers (poem The World Is Too Much With Us, William Wordsworth).

When the poet Wordsworth wrote these words, he was not thinking of Ephesians particularly, but he certainly voiced a rule that applies whether we are talking about the believer or the unbeliever. We "walk in the course of the world" (Eph. 2:2).

What is worldliness?
To my generation, being brought up in a conservative Swedish home in the Midwest, it was easy to identify worldliness. Anyone who had a great deal more of this world's goods, looked stylishly pampered; was worldly. I shall never forget the Christmas morning my mother threw a deck of cards into the stove. They were "Old Maid" cards. For my mother they symbolized gambling-and gambling was worldly.

Before I move on, I want to say that I don't think my mother was particularly wrong. I am not endorsing gambling or frivolously spending one's time. But there is more to worldliness than this.

New Testament writers tell us that we are to "love not the world, neither the things that are in the world" (1 John 2:15) and "the friendship of the world is enmity against God" (James 4:4).

This is the battlefield. Jesus seems to say we are to be in the world, but not of the world (see John 17:11-16). What did he mean by that? Certainly the world of nature is not evil---God made it and said that it was good. Natural law is not evil. God made it also. What, then, is wrong about the world?

It must be that the world's nearness corrodes our spiritual sensitivity. It lets us see so much with our natural eyes that we are not tempted to look with spiritual vision. We understand so much with our human minds that the temptation is to believe that we can understand everything with our natural minds.

Or is it the aging of our temperament? The course of the world---we hear the thunder of a thousand feet and cannot resist joining the parade. The urge to conform must rise from our basic insecurity. We do not trust our inner vision, so we live by the goals of others.

We live to keep up with the Joneses and the Joneses desperately try to keep with the expectations of those who are trying to keep up with them. It is a deadly cycle. It is the cycle of death.

Gary Moore told me of an experiment made by the French scientist Fabré. Some processionary caterpillars (so called because of their tendency to follow each other) were placed around the rim of a saucer. In the middle of the saucer were placed mulberry leaves, such as caterpillars love to eat. But the caterpillars were busy following each other, 'round and round' the rim of the plate. Within sight of food, they starved to death. Paul talks about this. The way of the world is a way of death whether it is the first century or the twenty-first.

We must live in this world, it is true, but we must not live as though it were the only one! Again and again we are reminded of Paul's other-worldliness. He had seen beyond the rim of time, both into the past and into the future and he was never the same. Whatever trials there may be in this world, they were not enough to keep him from his goal. Whatever glories there were in this world-and certainly Paul must have known moments of exquisite joy and fulfillment---they were not grand enough to make him want to remain in this world forever.

Francis Thompson, who wrote The Hound of Heaven, was once criticized by a contemporary who said that Thompson never really felt at home in this present world. The answer came back that while it might be true of Thompson, the shame was that too many people who call themselves Christian do feel at home in this world.

When we look at past Christian martyrs, we may think, "The church has finally found its place in the world, because not many are martyred for their faith today. The church has finally found its place in the world." Could it be that the world has finally found its place in the church? It is possible.

Brass or Gold?

"He carried away also the shields of gold which Solomon had made. Instead of which King Rehoboam made shields of brass and committed them to the hands of the chief of the guard, that kept the entrance of the kIng's house. 11 Chronicles 12:9-10].

Rehoboam's foolish forsaking of the Lord, and the sad degeneration of the kingdom, was symbolized by his substitution of the brass shields for the gold ones that were lost to the enemy.

In the Church upon earth there is the ever present danger of substitution of the counterfeit for the genuine. Too often the old time praying, burden bearing, fearless pastor and his modest, interceding wife pass on and in their places are time serving "dudes and dudeens" who are little more than "social Sammies", and fashion plates. They cannot bring people to a real knowledge of saving and sanctifying grace because it is futile to ask one to go-farther than he has gone himself. The preacher who talks in generalities and does not present the gospel clear, becomes the door through which compromise comes and the sad result is a cold, formal, worldly church.

Many people never hear a message against sin because their pastors are sinners themselves.

Will a gay preach against homosexuality? Will an adulterer preach against adultery? Will a murderer preach against murder? Will a thief preach against covetousness? In some popular holiness churches the brass of psychological sanctification has been substituted for the gold of a pure heart. But these substitutes do not put the death blow to the "old man" with his traits and deeds. In many instances "the church" has become "a gymnasium to play in", "a restaurant to eat in", "a dormitory to sleep in" and a "deep freeze" to stifle the amens and quench the fire. AMEN!Frequently, the preaching is set aside for film strips or sound traces while popular "gospel song" entertainers "star". Of course, a spiritual flavor is added while they "pause in His presence for a moment of prayer." Such religious make believe does not meet the deep longings of the human heart any more than money gods, sex gods, pleasure gods, cult gods, sport gods or political gods, for they are all dead gods that do not satisfy.

We are not exempt from the dangers of brassy substitutes. If the ministry ceases to cry out against all forms of sin while preachers and laity become materialistic minded, then it will be easy to fall prey to appeasement. One is no better than that to which he gives his consent. If he sanctions a let down he has let down himself. If we are content to settle for anything less than old time, Holy Ghost conviction on the services , then we may expect people to confess a little, but not confess all and to pray a little, but not to pray through.

Vance Havner tells of a wild goose that landed in a barnyard. The food was so good and the conditions so comfortable that he decided to spend the Winter. When Spring came he heard the call of his kindred birds winging their way to their nesting grounds in the cool marshes of the north. He attempted to join them but alas, he had fed too well and he could rise no higher than the barnyard fence. Their sweet, happy song faded in the distance while he was left behind. And so it would be easy for us in our materialism to settle down to a worldly, cold and formal ritualistic worship.

Shields of brass are poor replacements for genuine gold. Nothing will take the place of prayer and fasting, testimony and faithful preaching, coupled with holy living. Personally, I am not willing to accept any substitute for the shekinah presence of the living God. A Holy Ghost, Heaven sent, prayer bought revival is the need of this generation. It is the nature of fire to go out. It is the nature of love to wane and wax cold. It is the nature of prosperous people to forget God. Revival must be repeated again and again if we would survive. We thank God for the concern that we sense here and there, but concern must deepen into burden if we would pray the glory down. If we would see God's kingdom advance we must live for revival, labor for revival and suffer for revival. We must be so occupied with it that we lose sight of self and all else. We must keep a holy compassion in our hearts for the people of this our day and generation. We must sacrifice and go all out for souls lest we ourselves be forever lost.

"He carried away also the shields of gold which Solomon had made. Instead of which King Rehoboam made shields of brass and committed them to the hands of the chief of the guard, that kept the entrance of the kIng's house. 11 Chronicles 12:9-10].

Rehoboam's foolish forsaking of the Lord, and the sad degeneration of the kingdom, was symbolized by his substitution of the brass shields for the gold ones that were lost to the enemy.

Many people never hear a message against sin because their pastors are sinners themselves.

WHAT ARE THE HIGH PLACES OF THE ISRAEL OF GOD

2Ki 15:34-35 And he did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, according to all that his father Uzziah had done. Nevertheless, the high places were not removed. The people still sacrificed and made offerings on the high places. He built the upper gate of the house of the LORD. (ESV)

During the reign of Hezekiah king of Judah all the high places were destroyed that other kings of Judah had not removed. Now, these other kings observed and worshiped God, just as some of their fathers had done! Yet they left the high places where the people could still sacrifice to the Lord.

Judah at this time was not worshiping idols or running after other gods, no, they were actually serving Him by sacrifices and offerings. The very things the Lord had commanded them to do! So why the mention or the concern of doing these things at the high places?

The ten tribes of Israel had done these things and much worse with the gods of the Nations around them and the LORD had tolerated them up until Hoshea the last king of Israel. So why care about such a small thing as where or how one worships the LORD, as long as they worshiped Him?

During the Mosaic Covenant the worship of JEHOVAH was permitted at only one place! Jerusalem! Not in Samaria or Egypt or upon some hill to be found in some part of the kingdom of Israel. Why? Because the LORD was to be found among one people only and in a Temple that was to be found only in Jerusalem! To observe this was to obey the Lord with a whole heart.

So, we can "do what is right in the eyes of the Lord," and yet have our high places of worship that are not according to our Covenant. Actually, we are under the Abramic Covenant! We as Christians have labeled it the New Covenant to show and make understood that the Covenant of Israel of Old is not what God has for His people today, since Christ put the Abramic Covenant into affect by His blood (See: Hebrews 9: 14, 15; Gal. 3: 15-18). The Mosaic Covenant was parenthetical and the Mosaic Law was added because of sin until the Promise should come, that is, Abraham’s Seed, which was Christ.

Now, I said all that to show that we must worship in the new way, not by the letter of the law, but in Spirit and in Truth! No lie is of the truth! And a true Israelite is one "in whom there is no falsehood!" Find the truth of God’s Word and walk in it and that is "your reasonable worship" (Rms. 12: 1).

Which are the Terms of the New Covenant: Gen 17:1 When Abram was ninety-nine years old the LORD appeared to Abram and said to him, "I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless," (ESV) Rom 12:1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

God's Not Interested in Our Excuses

When I played basketball on my high school freshman team, Coach Wade was never interested in hearing any excuses. In fact, he had a zero tolerance for the words "I can’t." Unfortunately, I used those words one time and paid dearly. Since then, I’ve had much the same attitude toward "I can’t."

I was with congregation this week to speak at the graduation banquet for their Fishers of Men (FOM) class. I was also privileged to sit in on their final class session. During this class I learned that one of the students was a new convert and he had attained the highest certificate of completion. This is certainly commendable under any circumstance, but what made this student so special is he can’t read. Six days a week for ten weeks this man’s wife read the scriptures and the questions so he could hear and answer. For those unfamiliar with FOM, each student must read hundreds of verses and answer more than 5000 questions over the course of the program. Impressed yet? Consider this – in earning his Bible Teacher certificate he conducted more than seven one on one Bible studies with someone who is not a member of the church. His prospect? His wife who read him every verse and every question. In addition to his daily homework and the 3 hours devoted to FOM class each week, this new brother in Christ is viewing the Jule Miller videos to gain a better grasp of the basic truths of the Bible!

Another sweet sister shared her story with me on Friday afternoon. She works and is raising two of her grandchildren, ages 7 and 5. Despite her many responsibilities, this good sister completed the FOM course and by the end of the ten weeks had conducted more than 20 one on one Bible studies with non-Christians. She is presently studying with 5 non-Christians. In fact, she had a study set up for the Friday evening following the graduation banquet! She admitted that at the first she wanted to drop out but just couldn’t bring herself to quit. She said, ‘It wasn’t just the homework and the weekly class, it was the realization that if I went completed the course and received the training, the Lord expected me to do something with it.’ She continued, "I really had my eyes opened to the fact that the fields truly are white unto the harvest." And with tears in her eyes she said, "Through all of this I realized more than ever that God is good and he will always provide what we need."

There are a number of Bible accounts where men offered up excuses to God. Adam offered up this lame one – ‘The woman you gave me did give to me and I did eat’ (Gen 3:12) – managing to blame God and Eve at the same time. In Exodus 32:22-24 Aaron offered up this gem – ‘You know how these people are . . . I just cast their gold into the fire and out came this calf.’ Saul patronized the Lord with this classic – ‘We saved out the best so that we could sacrifice it to the Lord’ (1 Sam 15:20-21).

God didn’t accept any of these excuses and he will not accept ours. Instead of excuses, let’s offer the Lord the very best service we can give!

The Salt of the Earth

Matthew 5:13
(A Metaphor)

Salt is a compound, not a mixture. Those who claim that a Christian is merely a sinner covered with Christ's robe of righteousness like a layer of snow covers a dungheap are trying to make man's sin and Christ's righteousness a mixture, and are missing the truth by far.

Even a few eagle saints of the Old Testament had better theology than that; i.e. "As far as the east is removed from the west so far hath He removed our transgressions from us."

Salt is a combination of an earthly element sodium, and a heavenly or gaseous element, chlorine. Sodium is very volatile (has a bad temper), is very unstable. It will burn even when floating on water. Chlorine is so deadly it cannot be taken into the body, breathed or rubbed on the skin. But combine the two. The temper of the sodium is quelled, the deadliness of the chlorine is removed, and we have another substance different from either of them. When Jesus said to the disciples, "Ye are the salt of the earth," this compounding of the two natures is included. So that it is not accurate to call salt sodium. It is not chlorine. It is salt. And a true Christian is neither God, nor a sinner.
He is a Christian.

Here are some spiritually suggestive characteristics of salt.

1. It is eminently useful. More than 2,000 uses have been found. A Christian who is good but not useful is good for nothing and qualifies for Jesus' statement, "But if the salt have lost its savor it is good for nothing. . . ."

2. It is found in crystal white purity many places in the world. It is not actually white in itself, but what its crystals do to light makes it white. Contaminated with soot or dirt the impurities are easily visible.

3. It attracts moisture. True Christians in an otherwise dry service will bring some heavenly dew.

4. It has the power to melt ice without changing its basic nature. Let true Christians come into a cold spiritual situation and they can melt things up without changing their own natures. And instead of making things colder as natural salt does, they will get warmer.

5. Salt is antiseptic. The eyes are bathed in a saline solution to prevent infection.

6. It is a preservative. The salt of the earth, Christians tend to preserve a peaceful and orderly society. Where I am typing this, on the Summerfield, Fla. campground, scores of people live. No policemen are needed. No one drinks or steals or tries to seduce anyone else's loved ones. Everyone drives slowly and carefully to safeguard lives.

7. Salt induces thirst. Innumerable testimonies confirm that sinners have become thirsty for the living water by being around Christians.

8. It irritates open wounds and sores. The Bible describes sinners as "full of wounds and bruises, and putrefying sores." No wonder then that he is irritated when he gets so close to a true Christian that he gets salt in his wounds.

9. Salt has in it the secret of lifting something from a lower to a higher kingdom. Sheep for instance make hydrochloric acid from salt that changes plant fibers into what can become sheep flesh. And the Christian has the secret of helping people from the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of God's dear Son.

Trust

In the early days of emigration to the west, a traveler once came to the banks of the northern Mississippi. There was no bridge, yet he must cross.

It was early winter and the river was covered with ice. Fearing the ice wasn't solid enough to hold him, he hesitated long; but night was coming on and he must reach the other side. At length, with many fears and much caution, he crept out on his hands and knees, thinking to distribute his weight as much as possible, trembling with every sound.

When in this way he had painfully gone half-way over, he heard a sound of singing behind him. There in the dusk was another man driving a four-horse load of coal across the ice, singing as he went.

Isn't this just like some Christians? Some creep tremblingly out upon God's promises; while others go singing through life, upheld by the same Word. Have faith in God!

"Whoso putteth his trust in the Lord shall be safe."

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