Our theme for this month: “Telling the truth”

Our Bible verse for today: “Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; rebuke, correct, and encourage with great patience and teaching. For the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, will multiply teachers for themselves because they have an itch to hear what they want to hear. They will turn away from hearing the truth and will turn aside to myths.” 2 Timothy 4:2-4 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Just tell them the truth.”

The other day I came across a passage in a book I’m reading which I think provides a startling snapshot of the condition of our culture. The book is “Strength for the Weary” by Derek Thomas. In one chapter he makes reference to Neil Postman’s important book “Amusing Ourselves to Death.” In that book Postman contrasts two other important and classic books, George Orwell’s “1984” and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.”

In “1984” Orwell describes a futuristic society in which the daily lives of the people are controlled by a heavy-handed authoritarian nanny-state. Every aspect of their lives are dictated and controlled by “Big Brother”. In “Brave New World” Huxley’s futuristic society needs no governmental “Big Brother” to take away their autonomy because the people have no desire for it. In Huxley’s world the people are easily amused by trivialities and silly little nothings. They have no serious interests, no initiative, no hopes, no dreams – and it doesn’t bother them.

In Orwell’s world all books are banned. In Huxley’s world there’s no need to ban books because nobody wants to read one anyway. In Orwell’s world the flow of information is limited and tightly controlled, with only officially approved thinking being tolerated. In Huxley’s world the people are absolutely overwhelmed with so much information and choices that they can’t process it all. Therefore it all becomes trivial and meaningless to them, to the point that they no longer even try to think deeply.

In “Amusing Ourselves to Death” Postman argues that it is Huxley’s vision that has come true in our society today. He writes that we have allowed ourselves to become so focused on our comforts and entertainments, and we are so inundated with noise and distractions and overwhelming volumes of information, that we have become silly and trivial people who have difficulty thinking serious thoughts and who don’t live meaningful lives.

I think Postman is only half right. Personally I believe we are living in the worlds of both Orwell’s “1984” and Huxley’s “Brave New World”. We have allowed our country to become a nanny-state that is intrusive and controlling, and at the same time we are amusing ourselves to death as our society becomes increasingly silly and superficial.

For Christians the answer is for us to stay focused on the truth of God’s Word. We must have and maintain a Biblical worldview for ourselves, and we must speak Biblical truth into an increasingly oppressed and superficial culture.

We, the people of God, have the truth of God that others need to hear. People in our culture today need clarity of thought and they need hope. The only truths and perspectives that truly matter are that which God gave to us in the Bible. We need to preach it in season and out of season, whether they want to hear it or not.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “Telling the truth”

Our Bible verse for today: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” Galatians 5:22-23 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Don’t live a lie.”

Not everyone who professes to be a Christian really is one. Hitler professed to be a Christian but he obviously was not. Likewise, in the movie “The Godfather – Part III” Michael Corleone is a ruthless crime boss who oversees a mafia operation of gambling, prostitution, loan sharking, extortion, and murder. In one scene we see him in church lighting candles, kneeling in prayer, and receiving a blessing from his priest. While he is doing that his henchmen are out in town beating, torturing, and murdering people on his instructions.

Not everyone who professes to be a Christian is a Christian.

Also, there are many people who have made a genuine profession of faith in Christ at one time, but who are now out wandering in the spiritual wilderness. They have drifted far from the practice of the faith and are now instead involved in adultery, drugs, alcohol, petty crimes, and more.

Not everyone who professes to be a Christian is a Christian, and not everyone who professes to be a Christian is a faithful Christian. All of those people are living a lie.

In Matthew 7:13-23, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught a lesson about those who are faking the faith. In that passage He used as His examples false prophets who claim to have a word from God but don’t, and regular people who claim to follow Jesus but who are not living according to Biblical principles. In His lesson He told His listeners that you will know such people by their fruit. In other words, you will see the evidence of what is real by how they live their lives.

In Galatians 5:22-23 Paul described for us what it looks like when a follower of Christ is living in the fullness of the Spirit. That person’s life will be characterized by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. That’s the fruit we need to see in the lives of other people, and in our own lives. If that fruit is not there, there is something wrong with the faith we profess to be ours.

Don’t live a lie. If you profess to be a follower of Christ then it’s essential to live in a way that honors Him.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “Telling the truth”

Our Bible verse for today: “Don’t be deceived: God is not mocked. For whatever a person sows he will also reap.” Galatians 6:7 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Sooner or later the truth will come out.”

The Biblical principle of sowing and reaping teaches that sooner or later your actions will produce consequences in your life. Good or bad, it all comes back on you sooner or later. The Hindus call it “karma”, but it is an observable and provable truth that sooner or later you reap what you sow.

This pertains especially to honesty and truthfulness. If you’ve paid attention to the news in recent months then you know that the former Trump campaign manager, Paul Manafort, is about to be sentenced to what will probably be a long prison term. He has been convicted of money laundering and tax evasion. Over several decades hundreds of millions of dollars have passed through Manafort’s hands.

Much of what Manafort earned was through legitimate business enterprises. However he lived such an extravagant and excessively luxurious lifestyle that his legal income wasn’t enough to cover his personal expenses. So he engaged in illegal activity too. He accepted money from corrupt government officials and seedy international businessmen. Then he funneled it through an intricate web of offshore shell companies, and eventually into his private bank accounts – thereby evading millions of dollars in taxes that he was legally required to pay. As a result, the American taxpayers were essentially underwriting his decades of luxurious living and conspicuous consumption.

The interesting thing is that many of those crimes were years, even decades old, and had nothing to do with his more recent work for the President. But an investigation into questionable campaign activities uncovered those crimes committed years ago – and it is for those crimes that he will be going to prison, proving once again that you reap what you sow and sooner or later the truth is revealed.

This is an age-old story. One man, in the process of convincing his wife that he had not cheated on her recently, accidently revealed that he had cheated on her multiple times in the past. Another man, applying for a security clearance for a government job, was discovered to have had an outstanding twenty year old arrest warrant for sexual assault. Examples of this are endless.

The answer is to live Biblically now, and tomorrow, and on into the future. Live in such a way now that there won’t be anything to worry about twenty years from now, because sooner or later, the truth will come out.

God Bless,

Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “Telling the truth”

Our Bible verse for today: “Isn’t this the fast I choose: To break the chains of wickedness, to untie the ropes of the yoke, to set the oppressed free, and to tear off every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, to bring the poor and homeless into your house, to clothe the naked when you see him, and not to ignore your own flesh and blood? Isaiah 58:6-7 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Actions speak louder than words.”

Mahatma Gandhi was an activist, a political leader, and a Hindu mystic in India in the early to mid 1900s. He was instrumental in helping India gain independence from Great Britain. Gandhi was a Hindu, but at one point early in his life he was fascinated with the teachings of Jesus. Unfortunately, he never became a Christian. When asked why he didn’t he said, “I love your Christ but I don’t like your Christians.”

While studying the teachings of Jesus, Gandhi was struck by the obvious and blatant hypocrisy of the British Christians all around him. They loudly and piously proclaimed Biblical principles, but their actions stood in stark contrast to their words. To Gandhi, in British controlled India of that day, it seemed that there was little correlation between the teachings of Christ and the conduct of Christians.

This is the point God was making through the words of Isaiah in Isaiah 58:6-7. God expects our actions to match our words. Christian faith should manifest itself in acts of goodness, mercy, love, generosity, compassion, and grace. Regardless of what you profess to believe, it’s what you actually do that tells the real story.

Isaiah went on in verse 8: “Then your light will appear like the dawn, and your recovery will come quickly. You righteousness will go before you, and the Lord’s glory will be your rear guard.” In other words, when your actions match your words, then your light will shine and God will be glorified.

The truth of your faith is revealed not so much in what you say, but in what you do. Actions speak louder than words.

God Bless,

Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “Telling the truth”

Our Bible verse for today: “Therefore, putting away lying, speak the truth, each one to his neighbor, because we are members of one another.” Ephesians 4:25 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Be open, honest, and transparent with each other.”

Some years ago I worked in an organization where it was not uncommon for co-workers to deceive and mislead one another. Members of the organization often engaged in mild forms of deception by withholding key pieces of important information, or by presenting things in a way that was not entirely true and accurate. Sometimes things were described in such a way that would lead a person to go along with a decision or plan, without the person fully understanding what it was they were going along with.

Needless to say, all of that resulted in an unhealthy organizational climate. There was doubt and mistrust among co-workers, and as a staff member you could seldom be sure if you had the full story in any given situation. That’s bad in any setting, whether we’re talking about a workplace, a home, or a church.

Personally I value transparency. I think Christians should be completely open and honest with each other. We need to speak the truth to each other in love. We should not lie to each other or deceive one another. There shouldn’t be shades of meaning, twisted truth, or mild deceptions. Let your “yes” be “yes” and your “no” be “no”. Say what you mean and mean what you say.

In Ephesians 4:17-32 Paul was giving some instructions about how to live the Christian life well. In that passage he covered a variety of different behaviors. He wrote that we are not to conduct ourselves as unsaved people do, and we are not to be hard, cold, calloused, or promiscuous. He said we are not to be corrupt or angry or bitter; we are not to slander other people; and, we are not to be deceitful or untruthful. Instead we are to tell each other the truth in love.

Be real with people. Don’t make them try to guess what you’re up to and don’t give them reason to doubt your honesty. You shouldn’t have anything you need to hide anyway, and if you’re engaged in something that leads you to believe you have to mislead people about it, then it’s something you shouldn’t be involved with in the first place.

Be honest, be open, and be transparent.

God Bless,

Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “Telling the truth”

Our Bible verse for today: “If we say, ‘We have no sin,’ we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” 1 John 1:8 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Be truthful with yourself.”

I’m always amazed at our capacity for self-deception. We lie to ourselves much more than we lie to other people. We convince ourselves of all sorts of things that simply are not true. We tell ourselves we are better than we really are, or worse than we really are. We believe things about other people that aren’t true. We also explain-away and rationalize all sorts of bad behavior that we shouldn’t engage in but which we convince ourselves is really okay or isn’t a big deal.

We justify, rationalize, diminish, obscure, and go to great lengths to make things appear different to ourselves than they really are. Yes, we lie to ourselves much more than we lie to other people.

One of the greatest and most memorable lines about self-deception that has ever been written came from the pen of play writer and poet William Shakespeare. In his play “Hamlet” one of the characters famously counseled another, “This above all: to thine own self be true.” He meant that there is nothing more important than being honest and truthful with yourself, because if you aren’t, you have then deceived yourself. You have lied to yourself and you are now living a lie. Your decisions, your actions, and your dealings with other people will be based upon false assumptions about them and about yourself.

In 1 John 1:8 the Apostle addressed one of the most common forms of self-deception people tend to engage in – we sin but we either convince ourselves that our actions aren’t really wrong, or we shrug it off and minimize it. Doing that is self-destructive. It will always lead to bad results, and it might be the beginning of an extended pattern of sin that becomes habitual.

John’s words are intended to convict us about our thinking, speaking, and conduct. We are not to deceive ourselves. We are not to excuse wrong actions. We must be brutally honest with ourselves and we are to hold ourselves to the highest possible standards.

As Shakespeare urged in his play, be true to yourself. Don’t lie to yourself and don’t deceive yourself. Tell yourself the truth.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “Telling the truth”

Our Bible verse for today: “The grass withers, the flowers fade, but the word of God remains forever.” Isaiah 40:8 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “The truth of the Bible is for everyone, in all places, at all times.”

I know a Christian man whose marriage is struggling and appears to be headed for a divorce. He explained to me that he and his wife have “irreconcilable differences” and after twenty years it seems to them that they would be better off separate rather than together. This is the second marriage for both of them. Both of their first marriages ended in divorce too.

I explained to the man that in a Christian marriage there is no such thing as “irreconcilable differences”. There are no problems that the Holy Spirit cannot lead them to resolve. Reconciliation is always possible. Besides that, their marriage problems don’t rise to the Biblical standard for divorce. Biblically they have no grounds for getting a divorce.

He responded that although standards for divorce may have been different in previous generations, in our culture today it is perfectly acceptable for couples to divorce for virtually any reason. “No-fault” divorce is quick and easy, common and acceptable.

That may be true, but cultural norms are not the standard by which faithful Christians govern their conduct. Christians are people of the Book. We live according to Biblical principles. And that’s true regardless of the culture we live in. God’s Word, and the principles He has established for His people to live by, apply to all people in all places at all times, regardless of culture, traditions, customs, geography, generations, or any other factor. The Bible is true all the time, for everyone.

This is what Isaiah meant when he wrote in Isaiah 40:8, “The grass withers, the flowers fade, but the word of God remains forever.” The Apostle Peter repeated almost those exact words in the New Testament, in 1 Peter 1:25, “The grass withers, the flower falls, but the word of the Lord endures forever.”

Christian, don’t look to the culture for guidance about what’s right or wrong. Base your conduct and live your life according to God’s standards as given to us in the Bible. Make your decisions, especially the hard ones, on Biblical principles not cultural norms. For the people of God, God’s Word is the only truth that matters.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “Telling the truth”

Our Bible verse for today: “I will not violate my covenant or change what my lips have said.” Psalm 89:34

Our thought for today: “My word is my bond”

The other night in our men’s group we had a discussion about the old phrase “My word is my bond.” It means that you can count on me to keep my word. If I say I’ll do something then I will do it – no excuses. In previous generations this was the measure of a person’s character and integrity. If a man looked you in the eye, shook your hand and gave you his word about something, it was as good as a legal contract. His word was his bond.

In our day this is much less common. Today situational ethics are the standard – truth and reliability changes depending on the situation and depending on what a person determines to be most beneficial to them personally at any given moment. Often a person will promise to do something, mean it at the time they said it, but then later change his or her mind. They fail to fulfill their promise or obligation and think nothing of it. Their excuse is, “Well, I meant it when I said it, but since then I changed my mind.”

Meaning it when you say it is only the first half of the truth equation. Actually doing what you said is the second half. We’re not dealing with the full and complete truth of the matter unless the promise was kept. When it’s all said and done, you weren’t really fully truthful if you promised to do something but then didn’t do it.

I have a friend who has a servant’s heart and the skills to fix almost anything. He is always off fixing a plumbing problem for an elderly person, or taking down a big tree in a friend’s yard, or building a wheelchair ramp for a handicapped person, or any number of other projects. However this man has also spent decades working in a highly demanding and very physical profession. As a result his body is wearing out and he is finding it more and more difficult to do his job, and to do the projects he likes to do for other people.

He has one more year until he can retire from his job and somehow he needs to stay healthy enough long enough to make it to his retirement date. In order to do that he has decided he has to clear his plate of all the extra projects and focus just on taking care of himself and getting through this last year on the job. He really, really, needs to do this.

However, there are still some projects he has promised to do and which he is determined to do. As badly as he is hurting and as much as he needs to stop all the volunteer labor, he refuses to renege on a promise made. He is a man of character and integrity. His word is his bond and he will do what he promised to do, even at great personal expense.

Our world needs more people like my friend. We need men and women of integrity, people who do what they say and who can be counted on to keep their promises. Doing so is a Biblical standard, and Psalm 89:34 is just one of many verses that teach it. I encourage you to be a man or woman of integrity. Let your word be your bond.

God Bless,

Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is: