Good Morning Everyone,   Our theme for this month: “Think for yourself”   Our Bible verse for today: “May they all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us, so that the world may believe you sent me; I am in them and you are in me, so that they may be made completely one, that the world may know you have sent me and have loved them as you have loved me.” John 17:21; 23 (CSB)   Our thought for today: “Come out of the world for a while.”   John chapter seventeen has been called “The great priestly prayer of Jesus”. The entire chapter records a lengthy prayer spoken by Jesus to the Father. In it He prays for Himself, and for those who were His disciples in that day, and for all those who would ever be His followers. That’s the section in which John 17:21; 23 appears – it’s part of Jesus’ prayer for all future believers.   Jesus was praying there that His followers would enjoy a sense of unity and peace among themselves that would be similar to the relationship enjoyed by the three persons of the Trinity. That then, would be a great testimony to the world and it would bring glory to God. This is an important understanding for us as we prepare to gather with our church families this Sunday.   As a Pastor I spend a lot of time with people behind the scenes of their personal lives, helping them to sort through all sorts of difficult and painful life situations. Doing so helps me to appreciate the truth that everybody has stuff going on in their lives that they wish wasn’t there. Everybody. Including you and including me. We’re all dealing with stuff. That’s just life. And that means that life is challenging and stressful for all of us, even during the best of times.   But then, if you add on top of the normal stuff all of the craziness that’s part of our world these days, including the COVID 19 pandemic and all of its associated side issues; along with the racial tensions and the protests and riots; along with the angry and divisive political situation we have right now in this country; and all of it together will absolutely wear a good person out! The constant stress and strain of all of it combined leaves everyone a bit edgy and jaded. And that of course, can result in unpleasant and unhelpful additional tensions and problems.   Back to John 17:21;23: Jesus’ prayer is that His people will come together in unity and enjoy the sweet, sweet fellowship that He enjoys with the Father and the Holy Spirit within the structure of the Trinity. That’s an image of what our times together as a church family should look like.   Sabbath is a day for worship, fellowship, rest, and renewal. It’s a time intended by God for His people to be rejuvenated in body and soul. It’s a time to take a break from all the thinking that the rest of life requires from us the other six days of the week. I encourage you to come out of the world for a while and enter into the sweet fellowship of the Body of Christ as your church family comes together. It’s what Jesus prayed for. I hope to see you on Sunday.   God Bless, Pastor Jim

Copyright © 2020 Oak Hill Baptist Church, All rights reserved.

Good Morning Everyone,   Our theme for this month: “Think for yourself”   Our Bible verse for today: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness, who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” Isaiah 5:20 (CSB)   Our thought for today: “Beware of ‘The Brave New World’, but don’t fear it.”   In 1932 British author Aldous Huxley published his dark and disturbing novel “A Brave New World.” The story is set in a futuristic One World society where individuals are genetically engineered in the womb to fit into certain classes, and where overlord government officials use sleep-learning and a variety of other psychological tools to manipulate and control the population. The result is that the authorities are easily able to control the people, getting them to believe and do whatever is required of them. There’s much more to the story, including some brave heroes who discover the truth and rebel against it, but now you have the context and the setting of the story.   Our world today has become something of a “Brave New World”, and in the same bad way. In our case the efforts to control and manipulate people haven’t reached the draconian depths depicted by Huxley in his story, but they are heavy-handed and they are bad. We’re in the situation the prophet Isaiah wrote about in Isaiah 5:20 whereby powerful persuasive cultural forces have convinced masses of people to abandon long-held and time-honored traditional Biblical principles of morality and righteousness, and substitute for it a severely distorted understanding of right and wrong, of good and evil. Ours has become an up-side-down world where what used to be called good is now considered evil, and what used to be evil is now considered good. And, worse, if you don’t agree with that new perspective it means that you are evil too.   Sadly, masses of people, including many Christians, are giving in to the powerful cultural forces and are being swept up in the new way of thinking. They’re abandoning the time-honored long-held beliefs given to us by God in the Bible, and accepting the theology and morality of our Brave New World. Why? Sometimes it’s because their moorings in correct theology weren’t strong to begin with and therefore, they are easily fooled into believing a lie. In other cases, they have found that life is easier if you just go along so you can get along. In either case, they drank the cool-aid and they have joined the larger culture in the new up-side-down way of thinking.   The way we as Christians avoid that happening to us is to think for ourselves. First, we must be solid in our faith. We must know what we believe and why we believe it. We must be securely moored to the foundational principles of our faith. Then we have to have the courage to resist the lies and to stand strong for what we know to be true.   Life in our Brave New World is not going to be easy, but the good news is that Jesus promised us He would never leave us nor abandon us (Hebrews 13:5), and that we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us (Philippians 4:13).   Beware of the Brave New World, but don’t fear it.   God Bless, Pastor Jim

Copyright © 2020 Oak Hill Baptist Church, All rights reserved.

Good Morning Everyone,   Our theme for this month: “Think for yourself”   Our Bible verse for today: “My dear brothers and sisters, understand this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger, for human anger does not accomplish God’s righteousness.” James 1:19-20   Our thought for today: “Don’t take the bait.”   More than twenty years ago author John Bevere wrote a great book that has become a classic of Christian literature and which is still widely studied by Christians today. The title was “The Bait of Satan: Living Free from the Deadly Trap of Offense”. The premise of the book is that Satan wants people to be offended and angry because, as James said, anger does not accomplish God’s righteousness. So he studies us; he determines the things that are most likely to jerk our chains and cause us to be offended; and then he points them out to us and encourages us to be outraged. The potential offense becomes “bait” and Satan dangles it in front of us tempting us to snatch it and get hooked into being offended.   That was twenty years ago. Personally, I’m thinking too few of us read the book. America today is the land of outrage and offense. Our society thrives on outrage. It exists on all sides of the social and political spectrums and it weakens us as individuals and as a society. Congressman Dan Crenshaw writes, “If you’re losing your cool, you are losing. If you are triggered, it is because you allowed someone else to dictate your emotional state. If you are outraged, it is because you lack discipline and self-control. These are personal defeats, not the fault of anyone else. And each defeat shapes who you are as a person, and in the collective sense, who we are as a people.”   To be sure, there are things that should bother us and cause us to speak up. But the kinds of outrage and offense that John and Dan write about in their books is anger and offense that is driven by emotion rather than by reason.   Today offense and outrage are not only common, they are trendy. It’s hip to be outraged. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez even publicly declared “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention!” The message is “Be part of the cool-kids club. Join us in our outrage!” It’s that mob mentality we were thinking about in an earlier devotional in this series.   But according to the Bible, being easily offended, and being driven to the kind of outrage that we’re talking about here, is not cool, instead it’s actually a sign of intellectual and spiritual weakness.   I encourage you to resist the bait. Don’t allow Satan to entice you into participating in the outrage culture. Most things that people allow to trigger them are relatively unimportant in the grand scheme of things and therefore should be like water off a duck’s back to us. It should just roll right off. I encourage you to resist the bait of Satan. Don’t allow yourself to be triggered. Don’t be part of the outrage culture.   God Bless, Pastor Jim

Copyright © 2020 Oak Hill Baptist Church, All rights reserved.

Good Morning Everyone,   Our theme for this month: “Think for yourself”   Our Bible verse for today: “A man’s wisdom gives him patience; it is his glory to overlook an offense.” Proverbs 19:11 (NIV)   Our thought for today: “Don’t give-in to the outrage culture.”   In our exploration of the theme “Think for yourself”, we started by considering why it’s important for us to not be satisfied with shallow or simplistic thinking. Now we’re spending a few days thinking about how it is that various forms of peer pressure, including criticism and public shaming, is often brought to bear upon us in order to shape our thinking, or to get us to do and say the politically correct things. Soon we will move to the third category of ways in which we sometimes allow our thinking to be controlled by others, and that is what I call being part of a cult of personality. My plan has been to take us progressively and logically through these three categories, and I actually mapped out most of the month before we even started. This morning’s devotional is simply where that progression has brought us to today.     One of the books about this subject that I’ve recently read and which I will refer to occasionally throughout this month is Congressman Dan Crenshaw’s book, “Fortitude: American Resilience in the Era of Outrage”. The reason the Congressman wrote the book is because he is so concerned about the way in which the American people are allowing themselves to be controlled by what he calls “The Outrage Culture”:   “(This book) is about outrage culture, and the newfound tendency to reflexively assume the worst of intentions when reacting to news or commentary or political discourse, and default into an emotionally driven hatred of the “other”, whoever that may be. It is the petty, weak-minded, and ultimately unproductive response to neighbors, fellow citizens, and political opponents that has been normalized and even elevated in our culture.”   Dan goes on, “It is about hypersensitivity that has infected our society, where undesirable language is the equivalent of physical violence, where an old tweet or Facebook post can be grounds for ruination and public shame, and where an absence of reason or fact encourages public indictment, moral outrage, and mob rule. Outrage culture is the weaponization of emotion, and the elevation of emotion above reason.”   In Proverbs 19:11 Solomon told us that having patience and overlooking offenses is evidence of godly wisdom and it is a virtue. In other words, we shouldn’t allow people to jerk our chains and trigger our emotions. We should not be participants in the outrage culture. Instead, our spiritual maturity should result in our ability to remain calm and rational even if others around us are being provoking in their manner and speech. In Proverbs 15:18 Solomon wrote, “A hot-tempered person stirs up conflict, but one slow to anger calms strife.” That should be us!   Surviving and thriving in the age of outrage and offense is an important strength for Christians to develop. Therefore, we will think more about this tomorrow.   God Bless, Pastor Jim

Copyright © 2020 Oak Hill Baptist Church, All rights reserved.

Good Morning Everyone,   Our theme for this month: “Think for yourself”   Our Bible verse for today: “So any person who knows what is right to do but does not do it, to him it is sin.” James 4:17 (Amplified Bible)   Our thought for today: “Have the courage to do the right thing.”   This morning I want to continue our discussion from yesterday regarding how criticism is sometimes used as a tool to control people’s actions. The prospect of being criticized can serve as a powerful inhibitor to doing what we know to be right. This is especially true in our society today. Paraphrasing what Congressman Dan Crenshaw explains in his book “Fortitude: American Resilience in the Era of Outrage”, ours is a culture that is defined by a sense of outrage and offense, and public shaming is a tool that is increasingly used to embarrass, silence, and control anyone who dares to disagree with the politically correct mindset. The criticism is often relentless and fierce. And, sadly, often effective.   Using the threat of public criticism and shaming as a tool to control others is not new, but it is getting worse. More than 100 years ago President Teddy Roosevelt offered some insight and encouragement for those who are willing to do what they know to be right, regardless of the criticism they will face for doing so. He said:   “It is not the critic that counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great devotion; who spends himself in a worthy cause, who, at best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails while daring greatly, knows that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls, who know neither victory nor defeat.”   Please don’t misread or misunderstand what Roosevelt was saying there. He was not saying that those who offer criticism are cold and timid souls. Teddy Roosevelt himself had strong opinions on many subjects, and he was vocal about them. If he thought someone was wrong, he didn’t hesitate to say so. So, Teddy himself was often a critic. The cold and timid souls he was referring to were those who were so fearful of possibly being criticized that they attempted nothing. Or, if they did attempt to do the thing, once they encountered opposition or criticism they gave-up or changed course so that the criticism would stop. That’s what Roosevelt was arguing against.   In James 4:17 James was essentially urging us to take the time to evaluate situations, determine the right course of action, and then have the courage and boldness to do the thing you know to be right. Don’t make excuses for not doing it and don’t give-up once you’ve started doing it.   Let me also note that this devotional is not specifically about any one particular issue. Instead, it’s a general principle that I believe should be a basic way in which we practice our faith and live our lives. Pray, search the Scriptures, seek counsel, think deeply, make smart Biblically-informed decisions, and then have the courage to do the right thing, even if you might be criticized for it. Think for yourself and do the right thing.   God Bless, Pastor Jim

Copyright © 2020 Oak Hill Baptist Church, All rights reserved.

Good Morning Everyone,   Our theme for this month: “Think for yourself”   Our Bible verse for today: “Haven’t I commanded you: be strong and courageous? Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” Joshua 1:9 (CSB)   Our thought for today: “Don’t fear the criticism”   One example of people not thinking for themselves is when they form their opinions and make their decisions based upon what is popular rather than on what is right. The appropriate response to the recent (and ongoing) COVID 19 pandemic is a case-in-point. On the frontend of this thing nobody knew for sure what we were dealing with or how dangerous and deadly it would be. Initial indicators were ominous – it seemed like the illness and death that could result from it would potentially be catastrophic. (Even with the extraordinary measures that were taken to control it we have still had 110,000 of our friends and loved ones die from this disease in just over five months – and it isn’t over yet. Without the shut-downs and social distancing measures that number would have been much higher).   But still, there were heated debates and even angry arguments about how much was enough, and how much was too much, in terms of social and economic interventions to control the spread of the disease. A common refrain from the naysayers was some version of “Don’t give-in to fear”. The implication was that the entire thing was overblown and those who instituted or complied with the suggested health protocols, social distancing, and other measures, were doing so out of fear.   Personally, I think those people are confused about the difference between fear and courage. Being dismissive of a risky or potentially dangerous situation is not courageous. That’s reckless and it’s also inconsiderate of others. Courage is when you acknowledge the situation for what it is, engage it, and then do the hard work to get yourself and others safely through it – even if doing so isn’t popular.   I thank God for all the elected leaders, healthcare professionals, religious leaders, and influencers at all levels of society who had the courage to engage the situation, ignore the sometimes withering criticism, and simply do the things that needed to be done in order to get everyone through this. I’m also grateful for all the people who were willing to err on the side of safety, endure the inconveniences and the economic hardships, and cooperate with the best efforts of our elected officials and healthcare professionals to deal with a confusing and fluid national crisis.     Often however, people are too quickly influenced and moved by criticism. Even in those cases when we truly believe our actions are correct, the prospect of being criticized by those who disagree with us can lead us to change course even though deep down we know we shouldn’t. In such cases we’re allowing our actions to be determined by others, rather than boldly doing what we know to be right.   I encourage you to not do that. Have the courage and the boldness to do what you believe to be right, and don’t be deterred by the critics on the sidelines. Tomorrow we’ll consider a word of encouragement about this from one of our country’s greatest Presidents.   God Bless, Pastor Jim

Copyright © 2020 Oak Hill Baptist Church, All rights reserved.

Good Morning Everyone,   Our theme for this month: “Think for yourself”   Our Bible verse for today: “Iron sharpens iron, and one person sharpens another.” Proverbs 27:17 (CSB)   Our thought for today: “Let’s challenge each other to think.”   I’m deeply grateful for those preachers, teachers, writers, mentors, and friends who God has put in my life who challenged me and pushed me to think for myself and to think deeply. By no means have I arrived. I’m very much a work in progress and I have a long way to go. But those people have helped me tremendously in my process of learning and growing.   I remember many long conversations with my pastor, Oren Teel, as he patiently trained me to assume increasing levels of responsibility in the church. He explained things, he encouraged me to ask questions, he challenged me to think things through, and he recommended books to read and Bible passages to study.   I’m grateful for seminary professors who pushed me to figure out not just what I believed, but why I believed it (and then to explain it to back to them). I’m grateful for the hundreds and hundreds of good Christian authors whose books I have learned so much from. Those books remain on my bookshelves today, filled with underlines and notes in the margins. And I’m grateful for the Christian brothers and sisters I’ve had the privilege to know over the years. They too have challenged me and pushed me to deeper learning. It really is true that iron sharpens iron and one person sharpens another.   Today I’m blessed to be the pastor of a church filled with deep thinkers who are serious students of God and His ways, as well as of people and of the world in which we live. Without even realizing it, they too encourage me to study hard, to think deeply, and to make sure that whatever I’m preaching, teaching, or writing, it is true and accurate. Because if it isn’t, I know they will catch it. Therefore, as I’m preparing, I’m well aware that I’d better get it right. You can’t just mail-in your sermon with this group!   When it comes to avoiding the trap of simplistic thinking, superficial childish faith, and dumbed-down easy-believe-ism, the best thing you can do is to surround yourself with people who refuse to be that way – because they won’t allow you to be that way either.   Iron sharpens iron and one person sharpens another. Let’s challenge each other to really think.   God Bless, Pastor Jim

Copyright © 2020 Oak Hill Baptist Church, All rights reserved.

Good Morning Everyone,   Our theme for this month: “Think for yourself”   Our Bible verse for today: “At that time Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and revealed them to infants.” Matthew 11:25 (CSB)   Our thought for today: “Childlike faith and willful ignorance are not the same thing”   One of the reasons Christians are sometimes satisfied with simplistic or shallow faith is they misunderstand Jesus’ teaching about having “childlike faith”. They mistakenly conclude it must mean we are to remain childish in our understanding of God and His ways. But it doesn’t mean that at all. Having childlike faith simply means that we’re willing to come to God, love Him, and trust Him, even if we don’t have all the answers. We can have childlike faith while still seeking and searching for answers. We can have childlike faith while still working for spiritual growth and deeper understanding.   In his book “Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God” Pastor John Piper reminds us that Christianity has a long history of deep thinking, and it is that deep thinking by Christians that has resulted in many of the great advances in civilization over the last two thousand years. The Apostle Paul was a scholar and deep thinker, as were all of the leaders of the Protestant Reformation. Piper writes:   “This mindset (deep thinking) is the reason that everywhere Christianity has spread, schools have spread. And the longer Christianity has stayed the more serious and thorough the educational enterprise has become. During the Reformation, the major Protestants, especially Luther and Calvin, defended the absolute necessity for higher education against the populist anti-intellectual movements. Invariably, where Protestant universities were strongest, the Protestant Reformation had its greatest impact.”   Christianity thrives and is strongest when Christians are serious students of God and His ways and are therefore committed to the practice of deep thinking about faith, people, and the world in which we live. But we’re in danger of losing that. Far too many Christians are no longer willing to put the time and effort into that kind of thinking. It’s so much easier to be content with superficiality, or to let others do our thinking for us. The childlike faith that Jesus commended, and the willful ignorance that is so prevalent today, are not the same thing. We have to be better than that. We have to want more than that. We’ll think more about this tomorrow.   God Bless, Pastor Jim

Copyright © 2020 Oak Hill Baptist Church, All rights reserved.

Good Morning Everyone,   Our theme for this month: “Think for yourself”   Our Bible verse for today: “If you call out to insight and lift your voice to understanding, if you seek it like silver and search for it like hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and discover the knowledge of God.” Proverbs 2:3-5 (CSB)   Our thought for today: “Don’t settle for superficial and shallow”   In the introduction to his great little book “Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God” Pastor John Piper urges us to train ourselves to be deep thinkers as a means of learning to truly love God. He maintains that deep thinking is required if we are to come to really know God.   “The main reason God has given us minds is that we might seek out and find all the reasons that exist for treasuring him in all things and above all things. He created the world so that through it and above it we might treasure him. The more we see of his surpassing greatness and knowledge and wisdom and power and justice and wrath and mercy and patience and goodness and grace and love, the more we will treasure him. And the more we treasure him, the more he is consciously and joyfully glorified.”   Our mind is a gift from God. He gave it to us so we would be able explore and consider the great mysteries of life and creation. He also gave us our minds so we can dive deep into His written word, consider the great truths revealed to us there, and come to know Him in increasingly deeper ways.   Too often Christians express suspicion about intellectualism and they’re ambivalent about the life of the mind. Mostly that’s an excuse for being lazy. It’s a means of granting ourselves permission to remain satisfied with children’s Bible stories and bumper sticker slogans. Richard Foster was correct when he declared “Superficiality is the curse of our age!”   Training ourselves to be deep thinkers isn’t easy. Especially in our “information age” where we’re so overloaded with a constant flood of information, and our senses are over-stimulated to the point of making our brains numb. But it can be done. It must be done. Thinking deeply about God and His ways helps us to know Him better and to love Him more. If we don’t do it, our faith will be simplistic and superficial, and we will be shallow Christians. I urge you not to settle for superficial and shallow.   God Bless, Pastor Jim

Copyright © 2020 Oak Hill Baptist Church, All rights reserved.

Good Morning Everyone,   Our theme for this month: “Think for yourself”   Our Bible verse for today: “Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.” Romans 12:2 (CSB)   Our thought for today: “Think for yourself”   We have a serious problem in American Christianity which has been developing for decades and which continues to get worse by the day. The problem is that Christians aren’t thinking for themselves. Or, we’re not thinking very deeply.   The problem manifests itself in three primary ways. The first is that many Christians are content with superficial thinking, especially with respect to their knowledge of Scripture and their ability to apply Scripture to life situations. The second way in which Christians are not thinking, or thinking correctly, is we have become too susceptible to cultural pressures, thereby allowing culture to determine how we practice our faith rather than our faith shaping how we interact with society. And the third way in which Christians aren’t thinking for themselves is that they allow others to do their thinking for them. They decide that they have full trust in a preacher or Bible teacher, or increasingly, in a politician or a political party, and so they simply accept whatever truths that individual or group promotes.   If you want an indication of how serious this problem has become, just do a quick survey of the Christian literature market to get a feel for the kinds of books and magazine and newspaper articles Christian leaders are publishing to sound the alarm about this problem. Here’s a sampling of books which I have read recently and which I will be referring to in the devotional messages in the coming month: “Think” by John Piper; “The Coddling of the American Mind” by Lukianoff and Haidt; “The Sky is not Falling” by Chuck Colson; “Thou Shalt Not Be A Jerk” by Eugene Cho; “Fortitude: American Resilience in the Era of Outrage: by Dan Crenshaw; and “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind” by Mark Noll.   According to Mark Noll, “the scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind”. As a noted Christian historian, he found that compared to previous generations, we have become complacent and lazy in our thinking. Our knowledge of scripture is superficial and our ability to engage in critical thinking is limited. Rather than doing the heavy intellectual lifting of thinking through the tough issues of our day and applying a Biblical worldview to them, we either just don’t bother, or we’re satisfied with children’s Bible stories and bumper sticker slogans, or we allow others to do our thinking for us and then we simply fall in line and follow along with whatever they tell us we should think (This is where cults of personality come from).   In Romans 12:2 Paul’s premise was that Christians will think deeply and by doing so, the Holy Spirit will then transform our minds. But it does require thoughtful study, deep thinking, and intentional effort. All this month we will explore this idea of what it means to think for ourselves.   God Bless, Pastor

Copyright © 2020 Oak Hill Baptist Church, All rights reserved.