Our theme for this month: “Creation Care”

Our Bible verse for today: “The earth and everything in it, the world and its inhabitants, belong to the Lord; for he laid its foundation on the seas and established it on the rivers.” Psalm 24:1-2 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “It all belongs to God”

The other day, on my day off, I wanted to go for a long motorcycle ride. It’s the end of August and motorcycle season is drawing to a close. I haven’t been on too many day-long rides this year and so I was looking forward to it. But it rained that day. And not just a little. It rained hard, all day long. It was also cool. The high temperature for the day was only 64 degrees (odd for August) and the wind was blowing.

As I was moping around the house looking for something to do my wife told me I should go hiking instead. I reminded her that it was raining outside, raining hard. She said, “So, you can hike in the rain, can’t you?” I felt like my manhood was being called into question so I pulled on my hiking boots, drove to one of my favorite trails, and went hiking in the rain.

At first my mind was on that bright sunny day I didn’t get, and the beautiful winding country roads that I was not riding on. But then the Lord called my attention to the lush greenness of the deep woods. He pointed out to me the bubbling creek, the turtles perched on the fallen trees, the crispness of the air, and of how the rain made everything seem so fresh and clean. He reminded me that I have always liked hiking on cool overcast days, especially in a misty rain, and I remembered that “Laughter in the Rain” by Neil Sedaka has always been a favorite song of mine (as sappy as it is!). I distinctly sensed the Lord telling me “Jim, the bright sunny days and the country roads are mine, but so are the cool rainy days and the wet trails and bubbling creeks. It all belongs to Me and in their own way, each is a gift to you.”

God owns it all. He owns all of creation. The country roads, the wet trails, the bubbling creeks, the sunny skies and the rain clouds, it is all His and it is all beautiful in its own way. It’s all part of our Father’s world.

My prayer is that through this month of thinking devotionally about caring for God’s creation, we have all become a little more sensitive to environmental issues and the responsibility we all have to do our parts to take good care of this planet. It all belongs to God and we have been tasked by Him to be good stewards of it.

Enjoy this beautiful creation. It’s a gift to us from our Father. And I encourage you to do your part to take good care of it.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our theme for this month: “Creation Care”

Our Bible verse for today: “Maintain sound wisdom and discretion. My son, don’t lose sight of them.” Proverbs 3:21 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Just use common sense”

As we begin to conclude our month of thinking Biblically about the subject of creation care, I want to emphasize again the importance of common sense and balance in our thinking. The biggest problem we have today regarding environmental issues is the extreme thinking on both ends of the political spectrum. On the far left they are promoting ridiculous and unworkable proposals like The Green New Deal. On the far right they scoff at environmental concerns and refuse to even acknowledge that climate change is real.

As God’s people, the ones who have been tasked by Him to take care of His creation for Him, we have to use common sense. We have to introduce reasonable balance into the conversation. God gave us resources like oil and coal so we can use them. They serve no useful function if they remain buried under the ground. However, it makes sense to use them in the safest and cleanest ways possible. Emissions controls, increased fuel efficiency, Clean Coal Technology, are all good things. They allow us to use the energy resources God has given us while at the same time producing as little pollution as possible. It is simply common sense.

Likewise, to deny that climate change is real is just silly. Climate patterns are cyclical not static, and they are always changing. The earth has gone through at least seven major climatic changes over the course of history, the ice age being the most dramatic. The earth has been in a slow but continuous warming trend now for over 100 years. It is well documented. The question isn’t if the climate is changing, but why. Much of it is simply the natural cycles of changing weather patterns, and some of it is manmade.

Plastic is a manmade substance that we have introduced into God’s creation. In many ways it makes life better for humans, but it is also a problem because it takes so long to degrade and decompose. The more organic materials used to create the plastic, the faster it decomposes. The more synthetic materials that are used, the more durable the plastic is but also the longer it lasts in landfills and oceans. Some of the most durable plastic lasts for hundreds of years. Many millions of tons of plastics enter our landfills and oceans each year. The most organic of the plastics (shopping bags), take 10-20 years to decompose. The more durable plastics (soda bottles) can take up to 400 years, and some plastics can take up to 1000 years to decompose. So common sense dictates that we minimize our use of plastic where we can. We don’t have to eliminate plastic, but we do have to be responsible in how much of it we use.

Don’t be an environmental extremist on either end of the political spectrum. Common sense and balance are what’s called for.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our theme for this month: “Creation Care”

Our Bible verse for today: “Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you should answer each person.” Colossians 4:6 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Don’t slander the opposition”

I’m a fan of the nightly news show “Special Report: with Bret Baier” on the Fox news channel. His motto is “Fair, Balanced, and Unafraid”. I’ve tried watching nightly news shows on other networks but I’ve discovered them to be too biased in their reporting. I realize that Fox News has the reputation of having a conservative bias, but that’s mostly true of the opinion shows (which I don’t watch). I think Special Report really is fair and balanced. The other thing I appreciate about Brett and his panel of commentators is that they are respectful and temperate in their language. They don’t engage in overheated rhetoric or hyperbole, and they are not mean-spirited.

That’s an important point because the political conversation in our nation today is overwhelmingly mean, exaggerated, overheated, and filled with slanderous assertions that have no basis in fact.  But it’s never okay for God’s people to engage in that kind of discourse. We are to be the adults in the room. That’s the point that Paul was making in Colossians 4:6. Our speech is to be gracious. It’s also to be seasoned with salt (truth and facts), but we are to do it in a calm, reasoned, and intellectual manner that shows respect for those who might disagree with us. We are not to be mocking and mean.

As we have been noting all month, environmentalism is a politically-charged issue in our society. The liberal left has highjacked the issue and made it one of their pet projects. Many conservative Christians have responded to that by thinking of creation care as a liberal political issue that we don’t want anything to do with. But creation care was a Biblical issue long before it was a political issue. It belonged to us, God’s people, long before it belonged to Greenpeace activists.

As the people of God we need to advocate for common sense approaches to creation care that balance our stewardship responsibility to care for our Father’s world, with the human factor that necessitates the use of the energy resources God has given to us. And we need to do it with graciousness and respect.

I encourage all of us to avoid slandering those with whom we disagree. State your case. Do it with facts and good reasoning. But don’t mock or slander those on the other side.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our theme for this month: “Creation Care”

Our Bible verse for today: “Well done, good and faithful servant! You were faithful over a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Share your master’s joy.” Matthew 25:21 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “It’s a matter of good stewardship”

Hopefully at this point in our study it’s clear to all of us that for Christians, creation care is less about politics than it is about good stewardship and taking care of our Father’s world. What I’m trying to achieve with these devotional messages is a shift in our thinking.

The actual practice of creation care for us as individuals isn’t really very hard. It consists mostly of simple things like disposing of our waste properly, and being economical in our use of resources, and taking steps to minimize the amount of pollution we create, and recycling. Our individual efforts are not difficult or burdensome. And when taken together, with all of us doing our parts, the difference in our Father’s world can be significant.

So the question isn’t can we do it but will we do it? Do we want to, and will we? When it comes to issues of creation care the primary stumbling block for most conservative Christians isn’t that it’s too hard. Instead it’s that political sensitivity I’ve been writing about all month. It’s the belief that creation care is a liberal policy issue and therefore we’re against it, when in fact it is a Biblical stewardship issue and we must therefore be for it.

In Matthew 25:21 Jesus told a parable about a faithful steward who took proper care of the things his master had entrusted him with. The master then commended the faithful steward and expressed his joy over how the steward had conducted himself. The point of Jesus’ story is that this is how our Father in heaven feels when we take proper care of the things He has entrusted us with. That includes His creation. And please note that in the parable there is no mention about what the servant thought or how he felt about the particular resources the master had entrusted him with. The only thing that mattered to him was that those resources were important to the master and therefore they needed to be important to him too.

In the Bible God has made it clear that He values His creation very much, and He has tasked us with taking good care of it for Him. If creation care is important to Him then it needs to be important to us too. It’s simply a matter of good stewardship.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our theme for this month: “Creation Care”

Our Bible verse for today: “For his invisible attributes, that is, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what he has made.” Romans 1:20 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Worship Him”

For more than twenty-one years my family and I lived in Southern California. Seventeen of those years were in San Diego, a beach community, and four were in the desert near the Mexico/Arizona border. I have to admit that I did love living near the beach, but the desert not so much (although it does have a beauty all its own). However, my favorite place was the mountains. Just three hours east of San Diego lay the San Bernardino Mountains and up top, at over 8000 feet in elevation, was the town of Big Bear Lake. We would regularly get away to the mountains for a few days of skiing and playing in the snow.

I’ve always loved the beauty of mountains and deep forests – I encounter God more there than almost anywhere else. I seem to be more aware of His presence in those settings. There were two places in-particular in the San Bernardino Mountains that were very special for me. One was the chapel in the Forest Home Christian Camp where Billy Graham had his own turning point experience with God as a young man. That chapel is in a beautiful forest setting with spectacular views. As you pray and worship in the chapel you can look out the large windows and just soak-in the beauty of God’s creation all around you.

The other place is in the sanctuary of First Baptist Church of Big Bear Lake. There’s a huge glass window in the sanctuary that looks out over the lake surrounded by the forest. The view is stunning and you can’t help but be reminded of God as the Creator of that beauty. The view really enhances the worship experience.

Tomorrow is Sunday and most of us will gather in our churches to worship the Creator. Perhaps your sanctuary doesn’t look out over a beautiful mountain lake. But still, God can be seen and experienced in all aspects of His creation, from towering forest trees to the flowers in the flowerbeds of your church. In Romans 1:20 Paul tells us that the evidence of His presence and power and majesty are there for us to see, if we only will.

I encourage you to consider the beauty and splendor of His creation. Then let that awareness draw you into a deeper place of worship. His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, can been seen from what He has made. His creation declares His majesty.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our theme for this month: “Creation Care”

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. Woe to those who consider themselves wise and judge themselves clever.” Isaiah 5:20-21

Our thought for today: “Tell the truth when it come to caring for God’s creation.”

We’ve covered some tough subjects recently as we’ve continued to think Biblically about caring for our Father’s world. Just in the last ten days we’ve had difficult and complicated discussions about the use of fossil fuels, as well as the blessings and problems that come from our use of plastics, and what to do with the tons of waste we produce each year, and also about climate change. Yesterday we considered the great deception that is being promoted by the creators of “The Green New Deal”. I pointed out that their initiative is actually a Trojan Horse designed to deceitfully implement socialist economic policies in the guise of environmentalism.

However, on the other side of the coin, we’ve also considered the problem of “climate change deniers”. These are people (usually on the political right) who ignore the clear evidence of good science and instead insist that climate change isn’t real, that it’s a conspiracy being perpetrated by left-wing environmental extremists. I likened such people as being members of “The Flat Earth Society”. I also explained that if we as Christians join that crowd, it makes us appear silly and unserious in our thinking, and that diminishes our Christian witness as we try to share the truth of the Gospel with a lost world.

Whether you’re on the political left or right, whether you are liberal or conservative, it’s important to simply tell the truth. Don’t stretch it, don’t exaggerate or embellish, don’t deceive or manipulate. Like Sergeant Joe Friday from the old television series Dragnet was fond of saying, “The facts ma’am, just the facts.”

In Isaiah 5:20-21 the prophet was writing about those who lie, mislead, and deceive. They twist the facts to suit themselves and to promote their own agenda. Usually they begin with a kernel of truth, but then they exaggerate, embellish, and mislead people into believing that the truth is something other than what it really is. That could include trying to convince people that the situation is worse than it is, or that it is better than it is. It includes those who try to convince the rest of us that environmentally the sky is falling, when it isn’t. And it also includes those who try to convince us that there is no problem at all, when there clearly is.

Don’t let your emotions or political leanings distort your thinking or lead you to misrepresent the situation. Just tell the truth.

“The facts ma’am, just the facts”.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our theme for this month: “Creation Care”

Our Bible verse for today: “Whoever speaks the truth declares what is right, but a false witness speaks deceit … Truthful lips endure forever, but a lying tongue, only a moment.” Proverbs 12:17;19 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “The Green New Deal is a Trojan Horse”

Do you remember the story of the Trojan Horse? It comes to us from Greek mythology. The Greeks had been in a long war with the Trojans for over ten years and it was at a stalemate. In order to win they needed to overrun the city of Troy, but the walls of the city were virtually impenetrable. So they built a huge wooden horse and wheeled it up to the gates of the city, presumably as a trophy for the Trojans for having successfully resisted the siege. The Greeks then pretended to sail away. The Trojans wheeled the horse into the city, accepting the trophy and thinking they had won the war. But hidden inside the horse was an elite group of Greek warriors. That night the warriors crept out of the horse, opened the gates of the city, and allowed the rest of the Greek army, which was hiding outside, to storm into the city and win the war.

Metaphorically the term “Trojan Horse” refers to any trick or strategy that fools someone into accepting what appears to be help from a foe, when in fact it is a trick to advance the foe’s agenda. A malicious computer program that fools you into running it, but which then allows a hacker access to your computer, is known as a Trojan Horse.

“The Green New Deal” currently being promoted by the far-left-wing of the Democratic party is a Trojan Horse. The term “New Deal” is a reference to the massive depression-era public works program implemented by President Franklin Roosevelt which was designed to pull the country out of the depression. The promoters of the Green New Deal want their program to be thought of like that. It’s being promoted as a revolutionary and inspired environmental package which will help to save our planet.

In truth it is more about socialism than it is about environmentalism. It does contain some environmental initiatives, but they are extreme and unrealistic. But also, it is packed full of socialist-themed pet projects that have little or nothing to do with the environment. It includes programs promoting universal healthcare, a universal income for everyone, a much higher minimum wage, various forms of income redistribution, and lots of other liberal goodies. It is a Trojan Horse. It plays on people’s concerns for the environment, and uses that to deceitfully slip-in large parts of the socialist economic agenda that they would never be able to get passed into law in any other manner. When confronted with this deception, the promoters of The Green New Deal make the spurious argument that those economic issues are tangentially related to the environment. But they offer no proof that they are.

It’s unfortunate that they had done this because as we have been learning this month, there are some legitimate environmental concerns that do need to be addressed. But the deception perpetrated by The Green New Deal only serves to raise suspicions and causes further distrust regarding the true motives of those on the political left.

Don’t be fooled. The Green New Deal is a modern-day Trojan Horse. It is not what its promoters pretend it is.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our theme for this month: “Creation Care”

Our Bible verse for today: “Then the Lord answered Job from the whirlwind. He said: Who is this who obscures my counsel with ignorant words?” Job 38:1-2 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Resign from the Flat Earth Society”

Okay, you knew it was coming eventually. Today we’re going to talk about climate change. It’s a subject that causes left-wing extremists to run around like Chicken Little insisting that the sky is falling, and it also causes right-wing extremists to sound like they belong to the Flat Earth Society as they insist that climate change is a hoax being perpetrated by a vast conspiracy.

The fact is that the climate is changing. It’s undeniable. The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) constantly measures and records the earth’s temperature. The average surface temperature of the earth has been steadily creeping up for the last 100 years (a total of almost 2 full degrees) and it seems to have accelerated in the last 35 years. The six hottest years on record have occurred between 2010-2018. The average temperature of the oceans continues to rise, and global sea levels have risen about 8 inches. Numerous studies by NASA scientists, as well as others, have also confirmed all of this.

The question isn’t “if” climate change is happening, but “why” is it happening? To deny that it’s happening is just silly. It ignores the obvious facts. It makes us sound like conspiracy theorists who also believe in a flat earth and who deny that the moon landing really happened. And that diminishes our witness as Christians. If that’s a reflection of the depth and seriousness of our thinking, then how can our proclamation of the Gospel be taken seriously by unbelievers?

Good science demonstrates that the climate is changing, but good science also demonstrates that the earth is always in a state of climate change, and always has been. Climate patterns aren’t fixed they’re cyclical. Climate scientists and geologists can clearly document at least seven major cycles of warming and cooling over the course of the earth’s history, the most dramatic of which was “the ice age”, which was then followed by a warmer age that melted all that ice.

Most of the “climate change” the earth is currently experiencing is part of the normal cyclical pattern of historical climate change that is always occurring on earth. Are manmade causes also effecting the climate? Yes. Without question. Greenhouse gases; the urban temperature gradient that occurs from paving over vast areas of land; depletion of the ozone layer; and other manmade causes do contribute to the problem. But much of it is simply part of a natural cycle of climate change. And that, of course, is the inconvenient part of this discussion that the environmental extremists would prefer to avoid. To hear them tell it, climate change is all from manmade causes.

The primary point I wish to convey here this morning, and the one thing I hope you will take away from this, is that climate change is real and when we deny it, it makes us sound like members of the Flat Earth Society. We sound silly and poorly informed, and that hurts our witness as Christians.

The question is not “if” the climate has been changing, of course it has. The question is “why” has it been changing. And now you know. It’s mostly just a part of the normal cycle of climate change that is always slowly unfolding on earth, and part of it is manmade.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our theme for this month: “Creation Care”

Our Bible verse for today: “You are to have a digging tool in your equipment: when you relieve yourself, dig a hole with it and cover up your excrement.” Deuteronomy 23:13

Our thought for today: “Don’t foul the land”

I vividly remember a scene from a movie I saw almost forty years ago. The name of the movie was “Shogun”. It was about some British sailors in the 1600s who were shipwrecked off the coast of Japan. They were rescued and brought into a Japanese village to live. The Japanese were meticulously clean as part of their culture, but the sailors were filthy brutes who had disgusting personal habits. The houses they were given to live in soon became hovels filled with filth, and the Japanese were repulsed by it. One Japanese leader, looking at the disgusting mess, commented to another, “Even a bird doesn’t foul its own nest! What’s wrong with these men?”

In Deuteronomy 23:13 God instructed the people not to foul their own nests. He told them to poop outside of the camp and then bury it so nobody would see it or step in it. It was a matter of sanitation and good hygiene, but it was also about being clean and neat and taking proper care of the land the Lord had given them.

In our day, controlling all forms of pollution is a big deal. There are over six billion people on planet earth and together we produce a lot of waste. Not just human waste (although there is a lot of that!) but garbage waste, plastic waste, fuel emissions, spent nuclear by-products, and so on. We use an incredible amount of the earth’s resources and we produce a lot of waste in the process. Simply as a matter of being good stewards of our Father’s world we have to take steps to minimize and properly dispose of our waste.

And it’s not really that hard. Remember the story of my old Oldsmobile Delta 88 – that gas-guzzling gross-polluter I wrote about in an earlier devotional? Today my vehicles get much better gas mileage and they don’t belch smoke at all. Increased fuel efficiency and emission controls are a good thing! I know it costs money to develop that technology, and that then increases the price of our vehicles, but it’s a small price to pay for a cleaner environment.

Have you ever seen a picture of the air over Pittsburg, PA back in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s? There was so much smog in the air from oil refineries and coal burning plants that it looked like thick fog. On most days the air was almost never safe to breath. Now Google a picture of Pittsburg today. The air is clear and clean and safe. That’s the result of advances in emissions control technology (such as Clean Coal Technology) and also the efforts of everyday people to create less pollution as they live their own lives.

As the people of God we have a responsibility to limit the amount of pollution we create. Not only is this our Father’s world, but it is also our home. Don’t foul your own nest.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our theme for this month: “Creation Care”

Our Bible verse for today: “Let us not get tired of doing good, for we will reap at the proper time if we don’t give up.” Galatians 6:9 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Do your part and don’t give up”

Christians have a long and noble history of being change agents in society. In an effort to be salt and light, as Jesus commanded in The Sermon on the Mount, the followers of Christ have always been thought leaders on important issues, and agents of change where change needed to occur. That change always took time, often a lot of time, and it required tremendous effort and great sacrifice on the parts of those leading the effort.

William Wilberforce was a Christian politician in England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He spent decades of his life working to abolish the slave trade in England. At first his fellow Christians opposed him, they thought his concerns were misplaced and his ideas were ridiculous. But Wilberforce never gave up, and slowly over time he began to help people see the wisdom and rightness of the cause. Eventually the slave trade was outlawed in England as a direct result of Christians doing the right thing and refusing to give up on the issue.

Martin Luther King Jr. was a Christian leader who advocated for civil rights for blacks in America. He faced great opposition and tremendous obstacles. But his cause was right and it was Biblical. So he and his supporters leaned into it, slowly won people to their side, and kept pushing for change. Those efforts by Christians who refused to give up eventually changed the very fabric of our society.

Communism in Eastern Europe eventually fell thanks to the unrelenting pressure applied by the churches. The abortion issue in the USA is another example of Christians taking the lead on an important social issue and refusing to give up. There are fewer abortions performed today than at any time since it was legalized in 1973, and the Christian community is still fighting to have Roe v Wade overturned. We will not give up.

As I’ve been stressing all month in this series, environmental concerns were a Biblical issue long before they were a political issue. This issue belonged to us, the people of God, long before it belonged to left-wing environmental extremists. The problem is big and complex, and positive change will only occur in small steps over time. But since this is our Father’s world, and since this is a Biblical issue, we the people of God have got to be the leaders helping to bring about the needed change.

Caring for God’s creation is a vitally important issue. But it’s a difficult issue and change will come slowly. Don’t discouraged and don’t get overwhelmed. Just do your part and don’t give up. Tomorrow we will think about how we can help to minimize the impact of pollution on our Father’s world.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim