All posts by 5Q

Procrastination

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“When I find it convenient, I will send for you.”1

When the Apostle Paul was brought before Governor Felix to be judged for his Christian faith, Paul may have come close to persuading him to become a Christian. On one occasion after listening to Paul’s case, Felix trembled and sent Paul away saying he would speak to him at a more convenient time.

Today is the only day we ever have. Yesterday is gone forever. Tomorrow never comes. Whatever it is we need to do today we need to do today. Procrastination surely is the thief of time. There are many reasons why we put things off—apathy, fear, anxiety, uncertainty, habit, indifference, passive resistance, and/or just plain not-getting-around-to-doing-it.

Whatever the reason, there are some things that are far too critical to put off until a more convenient time—especially putting our life right with God.

Even though Felix spoke to Paul on a number of occasions after saying he would speak to him at a more convenient time, there is no indication that he ever accepted the Christian faith.

If you need to put things right with God and/or accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, why not do that today? As the Bible says, “Behold, now is the accepted time: behold, now is the day of salvation.”2

For help on how to be sure you are a real Christian (without having to be religious) go to: http://tinyurl.com/8glq9.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, help me to be sure that I am a true Christian and help me to so live that it will show in my daily living. Thank You for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully in Jesus’s name, amen.”

1. Felix, the governor (Acts 24:25, NIV).

2. 2 Corinthians 6:2 (KJV).

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As Sick As Our Secrets

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“He who conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will find compassion.”1

Earlier this evening I was reading a church-sponsored website set up to provide a safe place where people can confess their sins and failures. It was called “Sharing Secrets.”

Obviously people all over are desperate to confess their sins and failures and be rid of oppressive guilt. The number of and variety of confessions were pretty much par for the course. People shared their problems with addictions, living a double life, eating disorders, gambling, pornography, adultery, hurt, lying, stealing, relationships, illicit sex, past humiliation, regret, shame, abuse, lust, substance abuse, self-harm and so on.

My best guess is that most of these people were ordinary everyday people. There may have been some but I didn’t read of any who were involved in criminal activity. Some of these people held responsible positions; some were in leadership—including a pastor or two. The reality is we are all fellow strugglers in that we have all sinned, and when we do, we are plagued by guilt. Even if we repress the guilt from conscious memory, it will still plague us in one way or another.

As psychologists tell us, we are as sick as our secrets.

Every one of us needs a safe place to confess our sins and failures and to be fully forgiven. As King David said after confessing his sin with Bathsheba, “Finally, I confessed all my sins to you [God] and stopped trying to hide my guilt. I said to myself, ‘I will confess my rebellion to the Lord.’ And you forgave me! All my guilt is gone.”2

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, thank you that when I admit and confess my sins to You, You fully forgive me and set me free from guilt. Help me not to sin, but when and if I do, give me the courage to confess what I have done to You and to a safe and trusting person, pastor, priest or counselor. Thank You for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully in Jesus’s name, amen.”

1. 1 John 1:9 (NIV).

2. Proverbs 28:13 (NASB).

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Reality Check

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“Faith without works is dead.”1

One of my favorite quotes happens to be from a Buddhist monk who said, “To know and not to do is not yet to know.” To translate this into our Christian terminology it could be, “To believe and not to act is not yet to believe because I only truly believe that which motivates me to action.”

It has also been pointed out that we don’t always act consistently with what we profess but we always act consistently with what we believe. In other words, I may profess to be a Christian but if I don’t act like one, chances are I may not be one.

Furthermore, if I say I believe that Jesus Christ is coming again and unless people receive him as their Savior, they will be lost forever—but don’t do anything to share the gospel—chances are I don’t really believe that people are lost and that Christ is coming back again. I only profess it.

As James put it, “What’s the use of saying that you have faith and are Christians if you aren’t proving it by helping others? Will that kind of faith save anyone? It isn’t enough just to have faith. You must also do good to prove that you have it. Faith that doesn’t show itself by good works is no faith at all—it is dead and useless.”2 And as James also said, “Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.”3

Good works don’t save us. They just confirm what we are and what we believe. Jesus said the same thing. “By their fruits you will know them,” he declared.4 In other words, to know and not to do is not yet to know—or to believe and not to act is not yet to believe.

Have you had a reality check lately to see what you really do believe? You measure it by your actions and the way you live.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, help me to be a doer of Your Word and not just a hearer and grant that my belief in You will be for real—and be evident in what I do and in the way I live. Thank You for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully in Jesus’s name, amen.”

1. James 2:20.

2. James 2:14, 17 (TLB).

3. James 4:17 (NIV).

4. Matthew 7:20.

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Be God to Me?

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“Finally, I confessed all my sins to you and stopped trying to hide my guilt. I said to myself, ‘I will confess my rebellion to the Lord.’ And you forgave me! All my guilt is gone.”1

In my counselor training and counseling days I participated in quite a few therapy groups of varying kinds. Some I found very helpful and others I could have done without. However on one occasion I was involved in a secular psychodrama (role-play) group with 25-30 participants.

We were sitting in a circle and a 30-something lady (whom I will call Janine) asked me if I would role play God for her. This was a secular group so why she picked on me I will never know (we hadn’t even met each other). I believe it had to be a God-thing. At any rate she placed a chair in the center of the circle and asked me to sit on it. I was rather nervous to put it mildly. I had never heard of anyone ever role-playing God. So I kept praying under my breath, “God help … God help.”

Janine got down on her knees in front of me and openly confessed that she had been a prostitute and asked for forgiveness. Immediately the words of Jesus came to my mind and I spoke them to Janine, “Your sins are forgiven.”

That was a courageous thing for Janine to do. It was the beginning of her healing. Unfortunately I never kept in contact with her but I hope and pray that she has, since then, genuinely sought to follow after God.

The point is whenever we sin, we are always left with guilt. Even if we repress it from conscious memory, it’s still there and it is a very unhealthy way to live, physically, emotionally and spiritually. The only cure is confession … to at least one trusting soul as well as to God. As God’s Word says, “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.”2

Dear reader, if you have any unconfessed sin in your life, I urge you to see an understanding pastor, priest, trusted friend and/or Christian Counselor. Like David the Psalmist, who committed adultery with Bathsheba and had her husband killed, when he confessed his sin, he found God’s forgiveness and great release. You and I can do the same.*

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, how can I ever thank You enough for loving me no matter what I have ever done and always forgiving me when I, with genuine sorrow, confess my sins. Help me always to find a trusting person to whom I can confess my sins and weaknesses—as well as confessing them to You. Thank You for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully in Jesus’s name, amen.”

*For help be sure to read the article, “How to Be Sure You’re a Real Christian—without having to be religious” at: http://tinyurl.com/8glq9

1. King David in Psalm 32:5 (NLT).
2. James 5:16 (NIV).

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When God Feels Far Away

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“God … is not far from each one of us.”1

“I attend church regularly,” one person said to me, “but I don’t necessarily believe in God. He seems so distant.”

The difficulty for many of us, even when we believe in God, is feeling close to him and experiencing his presence and love. When we can’t, as Cecil Osborne points out, it is our receptivity that is at fault. God is constantly broadcasting his love, power and blessings to all of us but when can’t feel these, it’s the barriers in our life that block God’s love getting through.

The barriers can be unresolved negative emotions such as anger, resentment, hurt, grief, fear, feelings of inadequacy, guilt and so on. Another barrier can be caused by any impaired relationship with a loved one or friend, by unconfessed sin, living out of harmony with God’s will, or by not making the effort to daily spend time with God in prayer and listening to his Word. When we starve our souls, it feels as if God is far away.

Another reason God can seem far away is because of a lack of sufficient human love, connection, and meaningful fellowship with fellow Christians. We were created for relationships—with God and people. Both are essential for emotional, physical and spiritual well-being. As John, the beloved disciple of Jesus put it, “If we love one another, God’s love is perfected or made complete in us.”2

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, whenever I feel that You are distant, help me to realize that I’m the one who has moved, not You. Help me to see any barrier/s in me and lead me to the help I need to resolve these. Thank You for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully in Jesus’s name, amen.”

1. Paul the Apostle (Acts 17:27, NIV).
2. 1 John 4:12.

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The Seeing Who Are Blind

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“Behold, You [God] desire truth in the innermost being, And in the hidden part You will make me know wisdom.”1

If you watch TV interviews, you have undoubtedly seen how people with an ax to grind, a pet peeve to air, a theory to promote, or a politician wanting to be re-elected, avoid the question being asked, change the subject, or boringly beat around the bush. Some do this because the question puts them on the spot while others are in deep denial and totally blind to reality.

Some time ago we were involved in a joint action law suit against a fraudulent investment company where our attorney had to state to the defendant over and over, “Just answer the question!” to which the defendant would repeatedly reply, “What question?” Talk about a guilty person avoiding the issue. By way of interest, we won the case hands down.

As the communication specialists remind us, we all have a filter system in our mind that filters or blocks out any message we don’t want to see or hear. In other words we can be very selective in how we see and hear any message regardless of its validity.

For instance, “Selective exposure shows that many people will be open only to messages they want to hear. Selective attention shows that some hear only what they want to hear. Those with selective comprehension or perception will see things only the way they want to see them. Others with selective distortion will twist messages to make them match their self-concept or perception of reality. And those with selective retention choose only to remember what they want to remember. Everything else is filtered out.”2

It boils down to personal truth and honesty. The more honest and truthful I am with my inner self the clearer I will see all other truth—including God’s truth. On the other hand, the more dishonest I am the more I will see all truth—including God’s truth—through a distorted filter and twist it to make it say exactly what I want it to say. The latter is a dangerous and ultimately self-destructive path to follow.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please deliver me from the sin of self-deception and denial, and give me the courage to face my own inner truth and reality so I will see more clearly Your truth—as well as all other truth without viewing it through a distorted filter. Thank You for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully in Jesus’s name, amen.”

1. Psalm 51:6, (NASB).
2. Dick Innes, I Hate Witnessing, ACTS Communications, 2003, P. 151. You can order a copy of Dick’s book at: http://tinyurl.com/33kfbk.

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The Thrill of Temptation

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“Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be men [and women] of courage; be strong.”1

Kent Edwards wrote how the tuna fish “were running for the first time in forty-seven years only thirty miles off Cape Cod.”2 They were apparently biting furiously so many would-be tuna fishermen in their excitement to catch a large tuna ignored Coast Guard warnings. What they didn’t realize was that the problem didn’t lie in hooking a tuna but landing it in the boat.

One boat, the Christi Anne, capsized while battling with a large tuna. The same day another boat, Basic Instinct, met with the same fate. And Official Business was swamped when trying to land its catch. The tuna pulled the boat below the surface of the water.

What these fishermen didn’t realize was the power of large tuna fish. That’s pretty much like what temptation does to us. At first it can seem very exciting and enticing but once we take the bait, we’re the ones that get hooked and it can quickly overpower us and pull us under.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me to be always on guard so that I will avoid the lure of temptation and not get hooked or entrapped by it. Thank You for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully in Jesus’s name, amen.”

1. 1 Corinthians 16:13 (NIV).

2. Kent Edwards. Cited in Encounter magazine (ACTS Australia), January 2007.

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Healing the Whole Person

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“Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.”1

Medical science, numerous self-help and recovery programs, and personal experience indicate that emotional, as well as spiritual growth is an essential and often lacking ingredient of physical health, inner peace, and meaningful relationships.

Jesus said, “Do you want to be made well/whole?”2 His purpose was not only to save us from our sins and give us the gift of eternal life, but also to bring us healing and wholeness—not only spiritually, but also physically, emotionally and relationally.

Sadly, many of us, even those of us who are committed to the Christian faith, still have some physical ills that could be healed. Many carry around unresolved feelings of anxiety, fear, anger, depression, guilt and shame. Some struggle with addictions, and many have never found the loving relationships the human heart craves. These are the issues/stresses that either cause or greatly aggravate many of our physical ills and relational conflicts.

As God’s Word points out, in order to be healed of some, if not many, diseases we need to confess our sins—this includes our sins of the spirit such as unresolved anger, resentment, grudges, unforgiveness, bitterness, grief, guilt, fears, lack of trust in God and so on.

Speaking personally, when I resolved a lot of buried grief by getting in touch with it and sobbing it out, I was healed of hay-fever that plagued me for years. And when I got in touch with a lot of buried anger from childhood days and expressed it creatively and got it off my chest, I was healed of painful bursitis in both of my shoulders. When we bury our emotions, where do they go? We never bury them dead but very much alive and, what we fail to talk or weep out creatively, we will inevitably act out in one way or another destructively.

I’m not implying that if we confess all our sins that we will be cured of all ills such as being bitten by a malaria mosquito, eating bad food, or of problems that come from aging. However, if we put into practice and live by the principles found in God’s Word, many of us would be a whole lot healthier, happier and more fulfilled than we presently are.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, thank You for the guidelines that are found in your Word that, if adhered to diligently, will greatly improve my physical, mental and emotional health and lead to a more fulfilled life and loving relationships. Please help me to so live. Thank You for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully in Jesus’s name, amen.”

1. James 5:16 (NIV).

2. John 5:6 (NKJV).

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To Be “As Jesus”

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“Then he [Jesus] said to them, ‘Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.’”1

The story is told how “a wise woman who was traveling in the mountains found a precious stone in a stream. The next day she met another traveler who was hungry, and the wise woman opened her bag to share her food. The hungry traveler saw the precious stone and asked the woman to give it to him. She did so without hesitation. The traveler left, rejoicing in his good fortune. He knew the stone was worth enough to give him security for a lifetime.

However, a few days later he came back to return the stone to the wise woman. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said, ‘I know how valuable the stone is, but I give it back in the hope that you can give me something even more precious. Give me what you have within you that enabled you to give me the stone.’”2

Some readers may remember the debacle caused by the death of Anna Nicole Smith several years ago. On a TV interview I recall hearing Jill Dobson of Star Magazine saying that Anna Nicole “had everything: money, fame, attention ….” Maybe so, but in reality she had nothing for the true riches of life have nothing to do with fame and fortune.

All sorts of legal battles followed Anna Nicole’s death, including those by other men seeking to gain the legal rights of her infant child, claiming they were the father. Do you think this would have happened had Anna Nicole been a penniless pauper? Not likely.

And how much of Anna Nicole’s fortune did she leave? All of it. Like the rest of us—rich or poor, famous or infamous—the reality is that only what we send ahead do we take with us and gain for eternity—providing of course that we have put our life right with God before we leave. I only hope this was true of Anna Nicole.

One of my daily prayers is that God will help me to be “as Jesus” in some way to every life I touch and that they, seeing Jesus in me, will want him for themselves. This for me is the most precious and priceless gift I could ever give to anyone.

Could you imagine the tremendous impact we Christians would make on today’s world if every one of us would make and pray the following commitment.

Prayer: “Dear God, I am available today. Please use me today to be ‘as Jesus’ in some way, first to my own family, and then in some way to every life I touch. Thank You for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully in Jesus’s name, amen.”

1. Luke 12:15 (NIV).

2. “The Wise Woman’s Stone,” Author Unknown. Cited on Inspiration Peak, www.inspirationpeak.com

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Great Fiddling

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“Whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.”1

I have read how Leonard Bernstein, former conductor of the New York Philharmonic orchestra, was once asked which instrument was the most difficult to play. Without hesitation Bernstein replied, “The second fiddle. I can get plenty of first violinists, but to find someone who can play the second fiddle with enthusiasm—that’s a problem. And if we have no second fiddle, we have no harmony.”

I recall hearing a beautiful soloist in a church service. The problem was that she sang off key. Had she just given her testimony, we would have been blessed.

Everybody is gifted in one or more areas. When we use these gifts as God intended with the right motive, there is harmony within ourselves and in the group we are ministering to. However, if we try to do what others are gifted for and we are not, if we serve with wrong motives, or if we have a need to control, there will be disharmony within ourselves and in the group.

God’s reward will have nothing to do with whether we are a first, second or a non-fiddler. They will be according to our faithfulness in using the gifts that we have been given. When we come to the end of life’s journey, we will be required to give an account to God of the stewardship of the gifts he has given to us—not of the ones we haven’t been given.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me to recognize my God-given gifts, develop and use them to the best of my ability for Your glory and the blessing of others. Thank You for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully in Jesus’s name, amen.”

1. 1 Corinthians 10:31 (NIV).

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