merittmusings

Gone too far?

bible.com/72/mat.5.6.hcsb

Yes. You read that right. I couldn’t believe it either. Wherever you stand on the social justice movement, I hope you won’t go so far as to change the scripture to justify it.

Now I’m usually a live and let live kind of person. Yes. I see unrighteousness and injustice around me. I’m not blind. I see criminals walk the streets. I see people who are here illegal walking free. To me that is not just. But of course, that isn’t what justice means anymore.

Let me define what I believe Social Justice to be today. It means that what is mine is yours and what is yours is yours, especially if you are poorer, or care more about people than I do. Social Justice ignores ethnic and economic boundaries. Social Justice doesn’t care if have a deed or a receipt. It allows for theft and redistribution of wealth in the name of compassion. It calls good evil and evil good. Social Justice May have had a good and noble beginning, but like every other good cause, it has been hijacked by the left. So when you change even one word of scripture, it has profound implications.

In the older translations, the word used for justice in this text is righteousness. With this word, the verse speaks of seeking personal righteousness, trying to do better in one’s own life. Every Christian should seek to improve, to grow as a disciple. Many Scriptures support this.

But with this new word, now Christians are called to hunger for justice. 2000 years ago those concepts may have been synonyms. But now? For a Christian to seek justice today isn’t about personal holiness, but about seeking to make sure everything is “fair” as far as he sees it. God is just, and the very example of justice we are told to follow. God does not deal with us justly however. For those who follow Him, He gives grace, forgiveness of sin, and we are not judged according to our sins. So what exactly are Christians to do here? What kind of justice? God’s Justice as we see Him practice? Or the fashionable social justice we see practiced around us?

Believe what you want. But don’t mistranslate the scripture to support your argument.

Sorry for the rant. God bless you all.

Just Wanted to Share

bible.com/72/psa.119.105.hcsb

I hope everyone gets a chance to attend church services today. We may do well on our own, but we need the fellowship of others of like mind and faith to encourage us, to let us know that we are not alone and that others are out there who believe as we do. The best part is that we believe in the truth, that God sent His Son, that His Son, Jesus Christ, died on the cross for our sins, and He rose from the dead and lives forever, even today. These are great truths we ought to celebrate together this morning. Therefore, “do not neglect the gathering of yourselves together”.

God bless and have a great Epiphany! (Visitation of the Wise Men)

Drawing to God

bible.com/72/jas.4.8.hcsb

“Draw me nearer, nearer, nearer blessed Lord, to thy precious bleeding side.”

So the words of that precious hymn roll through my mind this morning after reading this passage. I noticed as I looked down to the shareable pics that Youversion presented me with, that all of them dropped the last half of the verse. I suppose it is more comfortable to see God as one of invitation only without preparation on our part.

It leads some to believe that God accepts you just as you are. That you don’t really need to change, but just believe and arrive in God’s presence as a dignitary of some kind, and it is you gracing God with your dignified presence.

I know this is unpopular to say, but we are sinners. He is perfect and righteous, blameless and holy. Something we don’t talk about much in Christian circles any more is holiness. It seems that modern Christians are all about grace and love and peace, but ignore God’s demands on personal holiness. “Be holy as I am holy.” This is what the whole verse more striking. Certainly we want to draw near to God, but rarely do we hear there is a dress code to visit the Almighty. This isn’t about wearing a tie to church, but about appearing before Him wearing be garments of righteousness provided by Jesus Christ. Jesus tells a parable about a man thrown out of a wedding banquet because he is not wearing the wedding garment. He is thrown out because he was not prepared for the occasion.

Now, I don’t think we need to employ the holiness police at the church door. That’s not what this is about. This is about preparing the heart when we intend to enter the Lord’s presence, either by public worship or private prayer. Hands are cleansed with water. Hearts are cleansed by the blood of Christ. There is an “holy attire” when entering the Lord’s presence and we need to prepare for it.

For today and everyday, cleanse your hands and purify your heart. You are in the Lord’s presence.

God bless you today!

What are You Looking For?

bible.com/72/jer.29.13.hcsb

Today is the tenth day of Christmas, ten of twelve as January 6th is traditionally the 12th, or what is known as Epiphany. It is the day that the Wise Men visited the young child Jesus and offered Him gifts after their long journey. It is said that the Wise Men had “seen His star in the East” and had “come to worship Him” for this young child was to be born King of the Jews. But this final moment of worship and joy came after a long and arduous trek. Barring all other obligations, these men set off from their homes to seek out the Christ. Sounds like a parable for us, doesn’t it.

This verse also makes me wonder what we will find if we do not seek with our whole heart? Will we be satisfied with a Jesus that’s only half true? Like my post about Sweet Baby Jesus, some folks are only looking for the Christ child, and don’t want to be bothered by the bearded carpenter from Galilee. Others only seek the wise teacher from Nazareth, who had good things to say about love and brotherhood. Some seek only the Great Physician that will heal their maladies and yet ignore what she has to say about their behavior. Yet the gospel is about more than this. For the gospel, the full story of the Jesus takes us through the cross, the grave, and the resurrection.

Jesus Christ is both Savior and Lord. He has saved us from our sins (Hallelujah!) but He is also ruler of our lives. Since He has bought us, He owns us. We are not comfortable with slavery, yet that is exactly what we are before God. We have been bought and paid for by the Lord of love. We have nothing to fear from Him, but we have every responsibility to listen and obey Him. Should we fail Him, He is gracious. But wouldn’t plan on failing Him on a regular basis. “Should we go on sinning that grace may abound? May it never be!” (Rom 6) Rather let us continue to seek His will, His “good pleasing and perfect will) in our lives, which includes all the things He has already taught us to do in His word. Don’t try to get hung up on what God has planned for your life. That will come. Concentrate on what has already says He wants you to do. Study His word. Fellowship with His people, spend time with him in prayer. These are skills that ought to be well-practiced, so that when He calls us to service, we will be well-prepared.

Go forth and seek Him today, and may He bless whom “dwells within you richly”.

Who’s the Boss?

bible.com/72/pro.16.3.hcsb

Kids are back to school today, my oldest goes back to work, as does my wife and myself. I’ve got a longer day today where I work than usual, so it is a bittersweet reminder that all of us are back on schedule today.

And so, this verse pops up on the feed to remind me who I am working for. Though it feels like we are all working for the man, we are in truth working for God.

The scriptures talk about doing all of work as unto the Lord, and that’s not a bad idea. Would you work any differently if it was the Lord looking over your shoulder? Would having the Lord working beside you make a difference in how you did your work today?

Or would it make a difference to know that the stuff you do everyday, no matter how insignificant you think it is, actually has eternal effect? Just being honest in our business dealings has a powerful impact our our spiritual walk, that even in this small thing, we will be people of integrity.

Consider today how you work, and for whom. God can make any work worthy when He is in it.

God bless and have a great day!

Looking at the Calendar

bible.com/72/psa.90.12.hcsb

You might nite at some point today that there is a new calendar on your desk or wall. While there is no gaurantees, it seems another 365 days have been alotted to us. This verse reminds of this fact, and the calendar, an invention centuries in the making, is there is help us with that.

Should this be the second day of your New Years resolutions, may I encourage you today? Listen to God’s voice. With so many other voices clamoring for your attention, listen first for His. Shift your priority, even though you are busy. Shift so that God’s voice in your life takes precedence. God will honor this.

God bless you all today. Have a good one!

Have Thine Own Way Lord

bible.com/72/pro.16.9.hcsb

So now that we are in a new year, we turn the calendar over into January. Yay! Ok. Back to our routines everyone. We get this brief respite on this Tuesday to realign our priorities, get that first of 365 days of resolutions satisfied, but mostly just to recover from everything we did to celebrate then end of last year.

So we make plans.

But the Lord determines our steps.

So where will you go this year?

Might I suggest a few things?

You might make a commitment to reading your bible every day this year. Find a good bible app, like Youversion, that has plenty of excellent reading plans that practically do everything but open the app for you.

If you are making a commitment to pray more, I might also suggest PrayerMate. This app allows you to set up prayers for everyone you care about, and include scriptures of prayer that get you going. You just swipe through till you are done. You can be in prayer for several minutes this way and it will help get you to that resolution.

Going to church every week may be a challenge for you to. I can’t tell you about any apps that can get you to church, but there are several that make themselves available online, such as my own, Better Life Church in Morehead, KY. They carry their services online Facebook at 9:30 and 11:30. They also have an app available on the AppStore in case you are looking for more information.

Just a few suggestions for getting you started in this new year. God bless you all and Happy Nee Year!

Happy New You

bible.com/72/2co.5.17.hcsb

Turning over the calendar often inspires us to think in new directions, commit ourselves to new projects and so on. But try as we might, decisions and habits we made in the old year still haunt us into the new.

It is not unlike our new life in Christ. When we make that decision to take on the mantle of faith and commit ourselves to the Lord Jesus, the “old man” of sin and doubt gives way to the “new man” and we commit to going to church and reading our bible and prayer. But like the old year, the old man has a way of haunting us with past sins and pleasures that derail us from our new life in Christ.

As Pail writes in Romans 7, “wretched man that I am, who will save me from this body of death?” Thankfully, God did not leave us alone, for we have gained a new ability in this new life, and He is more than an ability, but the presence of God in the Holy Spirit. Your might have forgotten that the promise is to you as a child of God that when you are baptized, your heart is made pure by the blood of Jesus, so that the Holy Spirit may move in in power and take up residence in our heart. God makes His home with us in that moment. So that while we continue to dwell in this flesh, we have been given more than our own will to deal with temptation. We have the holiness of the Living God.

As you prepare to go into the New Year Christian, remember that God has made you new. You are no longer beholden to past temptations. You don’t have to sin, because God has freed you from sin. Instead, God calls you to holiness, and that is far more liberating. Happy New You!

God bless you all and have a Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas!

bible.com/72/isa.9.6.hcsb

Have a wonderful and blessed holiday!

Sweet Baby Jesus

bible.com/72/isa.7.14.hcsb

so I am flipping through channels last night and come across Will Ferrell’s “The Ballad of Ricky Bobby”, his humorous foray into NASCAR culture. He affected a southern drawl and perfectly blended into the character. I loved Elf, and hoped this would be a similar experience. Well, it was different.

But the highlight for me was the scene where the family sits down to a lunch of domino’s pizza, Taco Bell and KFC. The wife insists that Ricky say grace. He proceeds to pray, seeking blessing and further racing wins from “sweet baby Jesus”, which when challenged, said that he preferred the baby Jesus. His wife and father-in-law both insisted that Jesus had grown up, even had a beard. Ricky would have none of it. He said that baby Jesus was his favorite version of Jesus.

Wow.

And that is Christmas in a nutshell, isn’t it? How many songs have been written, sung, even performed about the baby Jesus versus the risen Jesus? Do we decorate, celebrate, and dedicate so much time and effort to the risen Lord as we do the baby Jesus? Who is your favorite Jesus? Though I’ve seen it addressed here and there, here it is in a secular movie that the issue is brought out, the ridiculousness of it. Yes, come, let us adore Him, let us acknowledge that God’s plan included sending His own Son into the world as a helpless child, so that that child would grow up, live a sinless life, and be executed in the most cruel and humiliating fashion ever devised.

Come, let us adore the One who took the punishment for sin, who endured the wrath of a righteous God for the sins of the world. Let us adore One who loved so much that He died to save us. Let us adore One who loved us more than life.

The angels sang over Him. The shepherds and wise men came to adore Him. His mother marveled over Him. The teachers and scribes were astonished at Him. The Sadducees and Pharisees feared Him. His disciples followed Him. His Father was well-pleased with Him. The Greeks sought Him. Tax Collectors and Prostitutes welcomed Him. His apostles worshipped Him, for “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God!” What will you do?

O come let us adore Him, Jesus Christ the Lord.