3. Daniel J. Dick (Not Daniel R. Dick and not the author Daniel J. Dick) - July 12, 2010
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Love is our Lord, or Sin is our Lord.
Jesus is our Lord, or Sin is our Lord.
God is our Lord, or fear is our Lord.
The Holy Spirit is our Lord, or lust is our Lord.
Integrity is our Lord, or deceit is our Lord.
Sincerity is our Lord, or Hypocrisy is our Lord.We comply with God or we comply with the world.
We take hold of God’s wisdom and live in humility
or we parade our arrogant ignorance as superior wisdom and live in pride as fools.
We honor God or we mock God.At the end, on Judgment Day, will God lie or tell the truth about us?
On Judgment Day, will God judge righteously?
When Ananias and Sapphira sang “I Surrender All”, did God look
down on that and smile?
When Simon Magus offered to buy the Holy Spirit from the apostles, was Peter greateful to have a customer?
Did God’s wrath end when Jesus went to the cross and rose again?
Is His wrath a contradiction of His love?
Did God get rebuked and choose to amend His ways in favor of love after learning a new lesson and seeing that wrath produces nothing but bad things?
Or are we projecting human problems onto the nature of God?Do we understand love if we can watch a sinner go to hell unwarned?
Do we understand love if we can comfort a sinner into hell?
Do we understand love if we can take God’s Word and give it a twist to fit our poor human concept of convenience of what we think love should be?
Can we judge another and call them liars and hypocrites because they contradict us even though they are true to God’s Word?
If we get all jaded, disappointed, disgusted, tired, worn out, burnt out, faithless, hopeless, pessimistic, and just don’t want to deal with it anymore, can we just coast along through life with a “live and let live” attitude avoiding conflict and escaping confrontation as if to tell God, “Just give me heaven and shut up already”?
Or is God entitled to some respect, love, understanding, and honor?
And if God be worthy and require it, is it for nothing but to stroke His fragile ego? Or is it for the greater good of the entire universe?Do we even know God?
I don’t know about you, but I know there is nothing at all that is good about me except that which was brought about by God, and knowing that, I am happy and satisfied and thankful just to have a relationship with God.
I don’t give a rip about appeasing those who fight for ways to justify slaughtering babies in the womb. I don’t care about the moral or ethical requirements that sin would impose on God or His servants. I don’t care about keeping a fair balance between God and Satan according to Satan’s perspective. I don’t comply with the demands of a redefined rendition of love. I don’t want to be running from ghosts that are not there. Nor do I want to be entertaining ghosts who are there while pretending they’re not. I don’t give a rip about getting Satan’s approval of what it means to be a Christian. Nor am I seeking permission from anyone to trust in God.
Now if that is somehow repulsive or arrogant or proud or naive or indecent or hypocritical or foolish or abusive or whatever in your eyes, get over it. It’s your problem. Not mine. I care about people of all races, religions, and such, but I don’t care about the gods of all religions in the least. If you wish to take that as disrespect for the people who engage in other’s worship, just remember that this is not my concern.
If you are an atheist crying out for me to be fair according to your standard, I would ask you how well your atheists are doing in treating Christians fairly, say, in North Korea, or in China, and how well did your Stalin and Pol Pot do in regard to “tolerance” toward Christianity?
If you are a Muslim, I may love you and respect you dearly as a friend, but if you feel I have a moral obligation to respect and honor your religion, I would ask you how well your religion did with our WTC, with the 500 to 600 churches that were burned down in Indonesia only a few short years ago? And how tolerant is your religion when a Muslim wants to convert to Christianity in, say Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Lybia, Somalia, Malaysia, and many other Islamic nations? Would you like America to promote your freedom to promote your religion here the same way Muslims promote freedom for Christians to promote our religion in those lands?
And how about Hindus. Would you like to have the same respect and freedom given to those Dalits or the “Untouchables” caste in India who were poor and destitute and had their villages burned because they wanted to convert to Chritianity, a religion that believed people of all races were precious enough for Jesus to die for?
When you speak of “tolerance”, what do you mean? Tolerance of the poison that would send a soul to hell never to hope for escape through all eternity? Is that love?
Or is the problem that sin has been redefined manipulatively and abusively in order to control individuals, such as in the selling of indulgences to support the building of churches and advancement of a religion, or the carrying out of Inquisitions?
To whom are we accountable for our lives? A tall hat? A collar? An institution? The approval of man? The manipulations of a charlatan or abuser or cult leader? Do we need a mediator between God and us other than Jesus Christ to filter out His Word lest we be led astray by the Word of God? Or does wisdom demand we listen to everyone who asks, “Has God really said not to eat of the that tree?”
Ministry is not about getting people to worship and serve and honor us for our superior wisdom and position in religion. Ministry is about serving God and being faithful and loving in God’s eyes. It isn’t even about getting others to believe we are faithful and loving in God’s eyes. It’s between God and us. It may be true that we cannot be convinced when someone lies and says their religionship with God is real and that’s all that matters. Their relationship with God may be nothing more than something they hope will protect them and win undeserved trust, and their claims may be nothing but an attempt to strike back and abuse those who don’t have a legitimate reason to trust them. Yet it remains true that our relationship with God is a choice we make–a choice nobody else can make for us. We can be liars, or we can be honest. We can love or pretend to love. We can manipulate or bully and hurt people, or we can trust God. And people on the outside will judge us falsely whether we’re good or bad. We may receive honors we don’t deserve and slanders we don’t deserve.
Whatever may happen, on that final day, where will we be with God?
That’s what matters.
I cannot imagine what it must have been like for the priest to have the rope tied to his waist and face the entry of the holy of holies. Am I ready? Am I about to have my appointment with eternity? Five minutes from now, will I be alive or gone to face my eternal destiny? Ananias and Sapphira were apparently unaware of the danger and were taken by surprise. So were those who touched the ark of the covenant. If you were a priest on the outside of the holy of holies and the priest entering entered unworthily without a rope, would you want to enter to touch a dead priest for the purpose of removing him?
Will the day of judgment be less ominous? Will we face infinite wrath or infinite love? Or will the wrath be infinite because of infinite love? Are we ready? Of those who died so far and had their appointment with eternity, how many were taken by surprise? How many were ready? How many thought they were but were not? How many shored up their confidence only to have it torn away on that final day?
Are we secure? Our children? Our loved ones? Of our loved ones, who would we like to find missing in heaven?… See More
Any? If they are lost will we be certain their blood is not on us?
If we would lead them to Christ and to salvation, can we do that if we are not there ourselves? Can we teach others to seek God if we don’t? Can we teach them to pray if we don’t? Can we teach them to give up sin and trust in Jesus Christ if we won’t? Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things unseen. Is our life evidence? Is anything about God proved without a shadow of doubt by the way our faith affects the way we think and live? If our hearts change, will one more soul be affected and be saved? Ten souls? A thousand or a million souls? A billion? If it’s only one, whose soul would we give up for the convenience of not changing? Our own? Our children? Would we sacrifice them for mammon?
Take Me Into the Holy of Holies
Take me past the outer courts
Into the Holy Place
Past the brazen altar
Lord I want to see your face
Pass me by the crowds of people
And the Priests who sing your praise
I hunger and thirst for your righteousness
But it’s only found in one place
[Chorus:]
Take me into the holy of holies
Take me in by the blood of the lamb
Take me into the holy of holies
Take the coal, touch my lips, here I am
TGSIM – Holy of Holies with Lyrics
REBUKE PUBLICLY or PRIVATELY? -by Andrew Strom. Continue reading “Rebuke Publicly or Privately?” »
I have noticed with much disappointment how many Christian leaders in order to win their point speak untruthfully and sometimes slanderously about the beliefs of others.
I shared this little epiphany I had with a friend of mine on Facebook this morning.
For “sin industries” to survive, and for lies to thrive, Christianity must be slaughtered.
To populate hell, one must either eliminate or neutralize Christians. One must leave behind nothing but fakes, liars, hypocrites, the cowards, the insincere — ones who have no real relationship with God other than to keep Him at arms distance.
To do this on a large scale takes education. Children must be indoctrinated in the schools with our money. Christians must be abused and kept out of education or sequestered into a place where Christian ideals are irrelevant to the subject matter such as mathematics or physics, but never biology, history, English, psychology, or government. They must be taught at an early age that sin is good, pleasing, and a right to be defended vigorously and violently with lies, manipulation and abuse if necessary and that those who oppose sin are evil, intolerant, bigoted and to be linked with extreme racism and fascism.
The war is intense and violent and for a large part, we Christians have laid down our weapons and joined the enemy in an act of treason. But, this life is our only time to declare our allegiance to God or to selfishness, sin, and Satan.
The choice is ours, and the raging battle will give us our chance to reveal who we truly are.
I have a few questions.
The goal here is not to get the right answer and blurt it out, but to think about the question and how it applies to you and me personally.
If your loved ones were going to perish for all eternity and there was something you could do to help prevent that from happening, would you want to know? Or do you feel you already know enough?
Continue reading “Would You Want to Know?” »
Many people feel entitled to demand marriage and divorce as though they were inalienable rights granted by God. After all, who has the right to tell us who we can and cannot marry and whether we can or cannot leave that marriage?
This is evidence a nation and its people have lost their understanding of what marriage is. And with that, they show they have have lost their honor, integrity, courage, security, and sincerity of love. Continue reading “Marriage is a Promise” »
Eileen and I have been in prayer about ministry — ministry here in Fresno at our church serving in the role of training our church up in evangelism, and this is something our pastor and our church has felt a deep hunger and need — to reach the lost for Christ, to see souls saved and discipled. Continue reading “To Pose as a Minister Without Abandoning Sin is Lying to God” »
Evangelism is not about making a sales pitch and getting someone to repeat a prayer they don’t understand. If that’s all we do, then we’re merely innoculating people against the Gospel and increasing the danger that their soul will be lost for all eternity.
True evangelism is about multiplying after our own kind. Like it or not, we all do exactly that. So, if we’re liars, we can tell people to be honest, but our example will be one of hypocrisy and that is the role model we will present for them to follow. How can we teach someone to trust in Christ if we don’t? If we’re entertaining sin, if we’re living in sin, if sin is our Lord, if sin is the one that gets our trust and obedience in practical matters? If that is our condition, then how can we lead others to heaven while going to hell ourselves?
Continue reading “Don't Attempt to Minister Without Grace” »
Real Grace provides emancipation from sin.
Fake Grace provides defense of sin, license for sin, excuses for sin, false comfort for sin, tolerance for sin, agreement with sin, provisions for sin.
John 3:16 does not say, “For God so loved sin …”
John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son so that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
What’s the difference?
Continue reading “Fake Grace – Real Grace” »