No weapon that is formed against you shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against you in judgment you shall condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of Yahweh, and their righteousness which is of me, says Yahweh. (Isaiah 54:17 )
Category: The Fathers love
Are you broken?
I have wondered about this many times in my life. I have even asked myself, “Just how broken am I?” The answer never really becomes clear most of the time and after a while, I forget I even asked the question. Brokenness is being spiritually cracked in ways that medical science can’t detect. It is not a state of being which many people will be able to see in you most of the time. Although, they will detect it if it gets really bad.
How can we, as Christians or even non-believers, fix our brokenness? Well…on our own we can’t. You may try different things like drugs of different kinds which will lead to being broken on a different level altogether. You could go to a psychologist or some other therapist to attempt to find the reason for it and possibly find a “cure”. But the problem lies with your soul and whether you are a believer or not you can feel and truly be broken.
Sometimes it happens when a loved one dies or a business deal goes sideways. Anytime something else is placed in a higher position in your life than God, a crack forms. The longer it stays there, it will keep growing and causing more cracks to form. Satan knows this and he will keep adding to the illusion that you are doing really well, keep up the good work. But, the problem is that you are doing his work for him. Unless you can discern where or why the crack in your life began, it may never be fixed or rather you may not want to get it fixed.
God can and will give you the ability to fix it but only by acknowledging that you need Him and His Son in the place of whatever you have above them now! This is not one of those times to go it alone because that is how you got here in the first place. We all think that we can handle our problems all by ourselves when the truth is that we can’t. Living your life as if you are in control of every part of it is foolish and until you realize that small bit of wisdom…you will keep on making little mistakes which will add to your broken state of being.
God can get you back on the right path in your life but only if you will allow Him to do so. He doesn’t push Himself into your life nor does He force any of His ways into your daily living. Love doesn’t force and cannot be forced on anyone, that is the message in the Bible and it is His message to all of mankind. God’s love is above all of our ideas of love and it cannot be undone once you realize you have it. It is your choice to follow His lead in your life, one step at a time and one day at a time.
Here are a few Bible verses which tell us how we should love each other and Him:
“Let all that you do be done in love.” 1 Corinthians 16:14
“So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.” John 13:34-35
“There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because He first loved us.” 1 John 4:18-19
“So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” 1 Corinthians 13:13
“If you love me, you will obey what I command.” John 14:15
“Above all, be loving. This ties everything together perfectly.” Colossians 3:14
“Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” 1 John 4:7-8
“Hate stirs up trouble, but love forgives all offenses.” Proverbs 10:12
About Dad and Father’s Day
My father died in 2001 from a heart attack. My grandfather died in 1995 due to untreated COPD, although he never smoked as far as I know. I think it was due to his hobby of woodworking and breathing sawdust for many years. These were the two father figures in my life. One who was with me while growing up and one that wasn’t.
I spent many hours, days even, being angry and hurt while I was growing up. Especially during my teen years. I felt betrayed and tossed aside by my dad, and my grandfather as good as he was didn’t know how to help me. I now realize that I wasn’t tossed aside by my dad, and my grandfather was at a loss about how to handle my feelings.
My real problem was that I got conflicting stories about our relationships. Sometimes it went one way and everything was OK. Then, later it would change and there would be frustration and bitterness mixed in with other feelings and being a teenager didn’t help. We would go to church and I would hear about the love of God and how we are supposed to emulate Him in our lives.
Then we would get home and things were…different. Nothing like what I had heard in church. There was no abuse or anything like that, but God’s Word wasn’t spoken of or read in our house until my grandfather was over 80. I would find him reading and studying the Bible then, but that didn’t happen while I was younger.
In many ways I would like to thank my father and grandfather for showing me what NOT to do in this life. So that when I became a father myself I would tell my son that I love him and I began reading the Bible when he was small. When he was 12 I became the pastor of a small church, so he got to see me preparing for sermons, praying and studying God’s Word.
Fathers have a lot on their shoulders, sometimes grandfathers do too. The only One Who can help the ENTIRE family to muddle through the teen years and come out still smiling and being a family is Jesus. Having that foundation in my life and my family’s life has helped me so much while raising my son. Since my family was broken before I even knew what a family was, I had no idea how to be a dad.
Thankfully, my wife and I had given our lives to Jesus before our son was born, although we were busy with work and I had gone back to school before I knew we were even having a child. Our life with Jesus suffered because of our work during this time because while I was in school, I worked in the lab at the hospital on the weekends. Sunday was my wife’s only day off, so many weekends during that time neither of us went to church. I do regret that, but it can’t be changed now.
God loves all of us and He doesn’t want us to live our lives without Him, but there are so many who choose to do this. Why? Because, love can’t be forced upon someone. God knows us better than we know ourselves because He has known us since before we were born, even from the beginning of creation. Just as any father on Earth, God wants a relationship with us. Seek to learn more about Him by reading His Word and praying for Him to reveal its wisdom to you for your life.
Have a wonderful Father’s Day!
So little time…
Do you recognize that life itself seems short? If you are past your teenage years, you probably see every year this way. Sometimes when we are young it seems that time just won’t go very fast at all. Particularly when you are in school and you would rather be fishing or playing outside or for today’s young folks, at home playing video games. Time seems to just fly by once you have finished school or have a child and from that point on it never slows down (except in line at Walmart).
Our lifespans seem long, especially when we are under twenty, but 70 years or even 80 is not very long at all. Living beyond that is by God’s grace alone and under His supervision as well. So, what do we do with this amount of time that we are given? What should we do with it? As some country and rock singers say, “Just LIVE it!”; but do we really know how to do this?
Most of us don’t figure out HOW to LIVE until a good portion of it is gone! When we are young, we are going to school and hanging out with friends. As we get to our “adult” years, we are so busy trying to pay bills and keep food on the table that we don’t even think about what “living” means! As our children get older and move on to college or their careers, usually we begin to see things from a slower pace…usually. Then, when retirement hits us in the face, we realize that we have let all of our flowers die and we didn’t even get to smell them.
Now, we are learning about parts of our body, which hurt now, that we never even noticed before. We want to get out and travel and see the world, but our money is spent on pain medication and doctor visits. Life is too short.
That is why we all should be planning for eternity. What is that? Well, it is the other side of Life which we don’t get to see until this body dies. If you are not a Christian, eternity may not mean much to you. Some see the word “afterlife” and think it is a bunch of hogwash, others see it as a party that never ends, and still others see it as a time of reincarnation to fix things which didn’t get done in this life on the first time around.
Jesus called it paradise and my idea of that is much better than starting over or continuing to have fun into eternity. Paradise can mean different things to different people. For some it may be seeing family members that have gone before us or even to be thankful to God for the grace and forgiveness which allows us to experience His true Kingdom.
As human beings, we can’t imagine in our finite minds the wonders of a perfect and eternal place with God as the Ruler and King. Eternity itself is beyond our thinking because even millions of years is beyond us and one million years is just one tick on the clock of eternity. What will our eternity be like? Your eternity and mine may be two different experiences.
If you are a believer in Jesus, then at some point we may meet in eternity. If you don’t believe in God or Jesus and especially or particularly in anything contained in the Bible, then your eternity will be separate from God and all of His Kingdom. The image above shows an idea of eternity from our perspective on Earth, a road which goes into the horizon and we can’t see its end. That is actually a good way of looking at it.
We walk on it every day even though we don’t realize it. Every event in our life is a pause or a stop on this journey. The path is well-worn and wide if you don’t know Jesus as your Savior, but the path to His Paradise is a bit different. It is narrow but just as long, the big difference is that one leads to Heaven and the other leads to a place without God and a place of torment which was never meant for us.
God knows each soul in hell, but they are there by their own choosing. They are in that place because they chose to live their life without Jesus or belief in Him. It is not a place where God sends you because He hates you. God loves you and wants the best for you, but if you choose to follow your own path and your way of living instead of His, then that is where you will be. In your own version of punishment and misery, but not in Heaven.
Don’t waste the time you have to make that choice by being selfish and greedy for yourself. Pray about your salvation and what it could be and then seek Him out, and He will answer you.
The Living Message of Christ 