Forgiveness: What it all comes down to.

[Forgiveness] James MacDonald flicks the LED on to Matthew 6:14-15. Forgiveness/Unforgiveness is an important issue in my life and what is taught in the following is irradiant to the grave importance of forgiveness. Forgiveness is not an option and if left to partial obedience, unforgiveness will mess you up. Read on and if you are convicted - repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.

For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.Matthew 6:14-15

“Let's start with this most obvious lesson...we must choose to forgive. Forgiveness is a decision I'm making. In Matthew 6:14–15 Jesus said, "For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But, (don’t miss this) if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses."

"Now, sometimes a passage of scripture seems complicated as soon as you read it. That's not the case when we realize what Matthew 6:14–15 says. Jesus’ words are stunningly clear. Read them again above.

Do you get it? I mean, those are pretty serious verses! Not hard to understand - just hard to undertake. You read them and think, "that’s gonna leave a mark! I’m going to have to look again at how forgiving I am." That's nothing you want to be messing around about, or sort-of getting it right. The verses aren’t complicated - but they will definitely complicate your life if you are an un-forgiving person!

And it's not saying that you get saved by forgiving. It is saying that people who really are saved are forgiving people, increasingly so. Not perfectly, not entirely, but increasingly we are more and more forgiving. As the love of Christ penetrates our hearts more and more deeply and more and more genuinely, we just become more forgiving people. Forgiveness is one of the expected bi-products of genuine salvation.

You ought to be the most forgiving person that you work with. Out of all the people, when they talk about you, they're like, "Man, he's not a guy who holds grudges. He's just not someone who finds fault." "She doesn't try to make people pay, she just lets it go. She just moves on. She's not petty." "He's not a scorekeeper. He's just not like that. He's forgiving, that's what he is." That's what people ought to be saying about you. The more you get to know Jesus, the more it ought to be true in your life that you choose forgiveness."

James MacDonald

The Crystal-Clear Reason for Living

Objectifying the "Glory of God" often becomes extremely obscure and sometimes turns into a stumbling block for many. What many studiously diligent Christians and scholars discover is actually crystal-clear and even more awe-inspiring and motivation to draw closer to God.

The following from John Piper's Don't Waste Your Life offers just that lucidity your faith needs to grow closer and perhaps understand God more fully:

The Bible is crystal-clear: God created us for his glory. Thus says the Lord, "Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory" (Isaiah 43:6-7). Life is wasted when we do not live for the glory of God. And I mean all of life. It is all for his glory. That is why the Bible gets down into the details of eating and drinking. "Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God" (1 Corinthians 10:31). We waste our lives when we do not weave God into our eating and drinking and every other part by enjoying and displaying him.

What does it mean to glorify God? It may get a dangerous twist if we are not careful. Glorify is like the word beautify. But beautify usually means "make something more beautiful than it is," improve its beauty. That is emphatically not what we mean by glorify in relation to God. God cannot be made more glorious or more beautiful than he is. He cannot be improved, "nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything" (Acts 17:25). Glorify does not mean add more glory to God.

[Glorify] is more like the word magnify. But here too we can go wrong. Magnify has two distinct meanings. in relation to God, one is worship and one is wickedness. You can magnify like a telescope or like a microscope. When you magnify like a microscope, you make something tiny look bigger than it is. A dust mite can look like a monster. Pretending to magnify God like that is wickedness [(because you're assuming God is tiny)]. But when you magnify like a telescope, you make something unimaginably great look like what it really is. With the Hubble Space Telescope, pinprick galaxies in the sky are revealed for the billion-star giants that they are. Magnifying God like that is worship [(because you know he is huge and you want to understand him)].

We waste our lives when we do not pray and think and dream and plan and work toward magnifying God in all spheres of life. God created us for this: to live our lives in a way that makes him look more like the greatness and beauty and the infinite worth that he really is. In that night sky of this world God appears to most people, if at all, like a pinprick of light in a heaven of darkness. But he created us and called us to make him look like what he really is.

This is what it means to be created in the image of God. We are meant to image forth in the world what he is really like.

Soccer Gods

"You shall have no other gods before Me."
Exodus 20:3

Some people thought I was the best soccer player ever. After leading my brand new high-school and club soccer team to back-to-back appearances in the play off and semi-final game--never as a winner--I earned an invitation to the coveted Olympic Development Program (ODP) and Alabama College Showcase that would solidify a soccer scholarship to any soccer powerhouse in the nation.

Had I pursued this course I would have been well on my way to living my childhood dream. For as long as I could remember, soccer had been the focus of my life and often, my salvation. And now it was paying me back. Big time.

But strangely, just as I was reaching the pinnacle of athletic success, I slipped into an unexpected funk. I felt uncharacteristically empty and purposeless. After all my sacrifice, after all the incredible achievements (small in God's eyes and at this point, mine too), I couldn't seem to shake free from whatever was oppressing me.

Months passed without me being able to draw up enough energy for a single workout, as opposed to my previous era of five hour a day workouts.

On several afternoons, I summoned the strength to pick up a basketball and take a few shots on the goal. Within a my matter of minutes, discouraged by my lack of precision, I put the ball away for a long time. The very thing I had once hoped to be my ticket to success had eaten me alive.

Idols can do that, you know. There's nothing wrong with soccer--or business or music or writing or entertainment or decorating--but when something becomes the focus of all your dreams and attention and energy, it becomes an idol in your life. For all intents and purposes, you begin worshiping it instead of God.

Nothing can satisfy us like God. And nothing should replace Him in our affections.

The following thoughts often caution my idolistic/idealistic intentions: How many false gods could you name in your life today? What are you hoping they'll do for you?

I pray for Abba to protect my heart from being deceived and to give you and me an overwhelming desire to worship Him and Him only.

Yes, Jesus is the man...

Jesus was fully man and fully God: at birth; at baptism; at death:

1 John 5:5-12
"This is the One who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not with water only, but with the water and with the blood. And it is the Spirit that bears witness because the Spirit is the truth, for there are three that bear witness, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood, and the three are in agreement. If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater, for the witness of God is this, that He has borne witness concerning His Son. The one who believes in the Son of God has the witness in himself. The one who does not believe God has made Him a liar because he has not believed in the witness that God has borne concerning His Son. And the witness is this, that God has given us eternal life and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life."

There is a group of people that claim to be the witnesses of God, they even call themselves Jehovah's Witnesses. And they claim to be propagating the truth that God wants revealed. They claim to be echoing the witnesses of God. But the truth that God once revealed, the true witness of God is that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, God incarnate. And the so-called Jehovah's Witnesses are liars because they deny the very thing to which God gives in the New Testament, summed up in the text I just read. The Jehovah's Witness religious movement says that Jesus may be called "a" god, small "g," but not THE God.

They say He is mighty but not the Almighty.
They say He was created by Jehovah, He is not a member of the Trinity, there is no Trinity.
Elohim, which is a plural word, means plural in majesty, not in person.
They say that the Son during His pre-human state was really an angel by the name of Michael.
They further say that the Son did not even possess immortality. He was created and created to die.
They teach that when Christ was born of Mary, He ceased being a spirit person all together and became nothing more than a human being. The Jesus that walked on earth had only one nature and that was the nature of a man. He was a perfect man, the
equivalent of Adam before the Fall.
The Jehovah's Witnesses also teach that Jesus became, or took on, the role of Messiah when He was baptized.
It was there that God made this human being His spiritual Son. And so He was first a created angel, then a created man, and finally the spiritual Son.
The Jehovah's Witnesses deny that Jesus physically, literally arose from the dead. He was not raised as a human son, He was only raised as an immortal spirit, His body never came back to life. In fact, once He had sacrificed His body, they say, He could never get it back.
Judge Rutherford, the demon-inspired man who invented the religion of Jehovah's Witnesses, said that the body of Jesus was disposed of and God who knows where it is will bring it back and put it on exhibit in some millennial museum.
They say Christ once a mortal angel, then a mortal man, and finally an immortal spirit will live on forever as a spirit being.

And from the way their writings are understood, has regained the original name of Michael. He is back enjoying angelic life.
Well you can see from this mish-mash that these people are not Jehovah's witnesses.
They are not witnesses of the true God.
They do not echo God's witness.
They do not echo God's testimony concerning His Son.
They are liars and they are representatives of the father of lies, they are the devil's witnesses.

And they have many old heresies reframed in their system, very old heresies that come from ancient Gnosticism. This kind of stuff lies behind what John says. This is part of the developing of Gnosticism. We've seen how they believe that spirit was good and matter was evil, and so they denied the full doctrine of the incarnation that God, the good Spirit, could ever take up permanent residence in a human being, was unacceptable to the dualism of their thinking. They did allow the Christ's Spirit to come down at the baptism, stay awhile and then go away. They could not involve God in flesh in any permanent way and certainly not in the sufferings of death.

They thought that at the baptism this divine Christ descended, came into the man Jesus who was simply human...this is part of what the Jehovah's Witnesses say today...they think that the Christ's Spirit came into Him in the imagery of the dove and then for a few years Jesus brought the message of God to man. And then the Christ's Spirit departed and only the man was crucified.

So deity, whatever form of deity it was, what ever form of Spirit being it was, left Him before the cross. And so His death on the cross was not a God/Man death, it was not a death that atoned for our sins at all. It was just another man dying another death. And the best we can draw out of Jesus is from His baptism until His Christ's Spirit left Him to follow the ethical teachings that He gave us.

They destroy because they despise the efficacious substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ. Any heresy, any heresy that tampers with the death of Christ, the blood of Christ as God bearing the sins of men is satanic. John points that out in chapter 2 of this epistle. "He Himself, Jesus Christ the righteous, is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only but also for those of the whole world." And then again as I read earlier in 4:10, "He sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins."

He came not just to teach us good things and then die as another man, He came to offer Himself as an atoning sacrifice, satisfying God for us. And so, John says this one who came, Jesus Christ, was simultaneously from His birth to His death and forevermore the man Jesus and God. Syrinthis(???) who came up with this, I guess, originally and his followers are dead. Their creed is no factor today. But all who deny the incarnation, all who deny the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ whether totally or partially, all who pervert that great truth are heretics undermining the basis of our salvation. If Christ did not take His divine nature to the cross, He cannot reconcile us to God. If He wasn't fully God He could not and did not conquer sin or death for us. "But He who knew no sin became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."

Some help from Pastor John MacArthur helps in clarifying God's Witness of His Son, Jesus Christ.

Road to Chaplainhood

Here we go again. We begin yet another season of family separation as I prepare to head out to pre-deployment training at the National Training Center (NTC), in Fort Irwin California. We reunite in February, until the end of March, when the unit's deployment begins. It is a sad time every time separation is necessary.
Shifting gears, we've shared with you our desire culminating to Army Chaplaincy. We are continuing to work through the processes necessary to achieve our calling especially as we will need to transition out of Active Duty to University. There is quite a bit of leg work required but we are almost there. It is an exciting time and we are doing as much as we can to ensure a first time selection. However, it is not guaranteed but we rest all things in the hand of The Lord.
We petition your prayers for the three of us to remain diligent in growing and maturing and serving. Thelma continues to excel in being a spouse and mother as well as employee. At home, Noah receives his basic tutelage in music, reading, soccer, coolness and the basics of Scripture, as he prepares for kindergarten this year. Thelma continues to work for her company, Ready Mortgage Corporation doing what she does best, accounting. In addition to that she's able to help out with our dear friends' mission organization, Amiela. She also is completing her Accounting degree and CPA.
Our plate is full and our cup runneth over. We are excited for this year and all our anticipations. We will keep you informed on how we progress. Thanks for reading and praying.

Road to Chaplainhood

To start off this entry and journey, I lay down at the cross of Jesus, any notion, that the projected long-term desire to serve Him is to be accomplished with my own strength and cleverness. Let me repent of all self-doubt and self-confidence. I have learned that to give of oneself to the point of emptiness and one's salvation is the just opposite self...the self is doffed and literally and virtuously non-existent. Humility - Serving others because of/for the glory of God. Marriage and parenthood, the military and even friendship, has taught me the pungency of this God-esteeming attitude.

The proper tools the Lord has filled me with have been procured by way of marriage to my dear wife and best friend, Thelma; my sweet son, Noah; and my employer, The Military - the Army to be specific. Two years ago, I switched military branches, transferring from the Air Force to the Army in search of a better career prospect. Part of this decision involved the helpful counsel of Charles Spurgeon who suggested the following:

"“Yes, I see; you have failed in everything else, and therefore you think the Lord has especially endowed you for His service; but I fear you have forgotten that the ministry needs the very best of men, and not those who cannot do anything else.” A man who would succeed as a preacher would probably do right well either as a grocer, or a lawyer, or anything else. A really valuable minister would have excelled at anything. "

Not that I have failed in everything (I have failed in plenty), but that I would be actively engaged with the Lord to thoroughly ensure that I am to become and remain a valuable minister.

So begins mine and my family's journey to chaplaincy. In the military, my spirit is especially burdened with Jude 22 & 23's exhortation to "...have mercy on those who doubt." Not only do we show mercy as ministers and believers, but we also "save others by snatching them out of the fire." Showing mercy to and snatching serving men and women who daily and willingly go into combat and other dangerously necessary endeavors.

This is my calling and so begins the process to training and becoming a military chaplain.

The Exemplary Husband (1)

If the husband will be the kind of leader he should be, most problems within the family can ultimately be resolved. But if the husband defaults of his biblical and spiritual responsibilities, the problems invariably grow worse - and sometimes even destroy the family.

The husband's role is not simple, and it requires expertise that, frankly, doesn't come naturally to most men. The husband's various duties involve priestly elements, organizational and administrative tasks, and numerous responsibilities related to spiritual and practical leadership of all kinds. Being a godly husband requires the skill of a gifted manager, the heart of a loving counselor, and the ability to lead while gaining a follower's respect - chiefly by being a consistent example. The godly husband is a loving soul-mate, a mentor, a friend, a protector, an encourager, and a devoted listener. This is by no means a part-time calling.