Actions Have Consequences
Imagine you are a very good athlete and someone offers you a bribe if you will not play up to your best and thereby throw the game. Would you do it? Think about it, there is a result. Doing so you will have a life-time of emotions ranging in sadness, grief, loss, guilt, shame, anger, and lifelong regrets.
Would you do it?
Suppose you are in finance and a friend has devised a scheme whereby you can skim big money and get away with it. Would you do it? Oh, by the way though you won’t get caught you will have a life-time of emotions ranging in sadness, grief, loss, guilt, shame, anger, and lifelong regrets.
Would you do it?
Imagine you are in a business that deals with food products. You have just discovered a way you can dilute certain products that would reduce their quality and make you a large profit. It’s easy and not likely to ever be detected. It will enable you to get out of debt and make money. Would you do it? There is one thing you need to know. You will have a life-time of emotions ranging in sadness, grief, loss, guilt, shame, anger, and lifelong regrets.
Would you do it?
Suppose you are a lovely young unwed adult female. Here is where the plot thickens. You are pregnant. You can get a abortion and no one will know. Would you do it? Before deciding, be aware you will have a lifetime of emotions ranging in sadness, grief, loss, guilt, shame, anger, and lifelong regrets.
If you could avoid giving birth while single, would you do it? I don’t mean an abortion. Here is how.
A lovely highschool teenage girl visited me in my office. It was her senior year and she had garnered almost every award and title there was. She sobbed out her story of being pregnant and then said, “I don’t know why I did it.” In conciliatory tones I said, “I know why.”
Abruptly in sharp tones she snapped back a harsh, “Why?” I said, “Because of the things you read, the movies you watched, the stories you listened to, the social media you viewed, and the people you hung-out with, you made up the decision to do it before you did it and subconsciously you have just been looking for the right opportunity to do it.”
With tones of regret she said, “You are right.”
Avoid those things and you are highly unlikely to live with a lifetime of emotions ranging in sadness, grief, loss, guilt, shame, anger, and lifelong regrets.
“All these evil things come from within and defile a person.” (Mark 7: 23 CSB)
The process is defined by the computer axiom GIGO. What “Goes in Goes Out.” Stop it before it starts by programming the mind with virtuous thoughts. Virtue, now there is a thought for you.
Whatever became of the “True Love Waits” concept. It reduced pregnancies. Critics still write of it negatively, but when not taken to extremes it worked. Try it individually in all of life, males, and females.
Aids to Optimism – Part Three
“For the Lord is good; His mercy is everlasting, and His truth endures to all generations.” Psalm 100: 5
“God is good…” He always is. Things aren’t always good, but God is. Complexity consequences when we fail to distinguish between God and things. As a result, we often end up feeling it is God Who isn’t good.
Water is always wet.
Fire is always hot.
God is always good.
Those are basic unchanging characteristics of each. Things aren’t always good, but God is. Don’t confuse the two.
In Richmond, Virginia a woman named Mary Green God sued David A. Hurt. The cases were posted as God verses Hurt. Spiritually that is our God versus our hurt. He still opposes our hurt as He did on Calvary.
“…His mercy is everlasting….”
Grace is God supplying the good we don’t deserve. The good.
Mercy is God sparing us what we do deserve. The bad.
His mercy is everlasting.
If given a box of sand and told there were particles of iron filings in it, you might search for them with your eyes and fumble for them with clumsy fingers without finding them. However, if you were to sweep through the sand with a magnet the almost invisible particles would be drawn to the magnet by the power of the magnet’s force field.
An unthankful heart, like our clumsy fingers in the sand, may discover no mercies. Let a thankful heart sweep through a day and as the magnet finds iron, so in every day you will find heavenly blessings. His mercy is everlasting.
“…His truth endures to all generations….”
In a culture that professes its foundation to be relativism, He offers stability. Many in our society profess there are no absolutes, everything is relative, insecurity. As a result pessimism abounds.
To such perplexed people God offers truth that endures. As there are rules that remain constant once a sporting game has begun, so there are spiritual concepts that don’t change in the game of life. Game on!
The Bible repeatedly presents goodness as a core quality of our Lord. It is His very unchanging nature. Therefore, “Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good! For His mercy endures forever. (I Chronicles 16:34) It is just Him.
“No one is good but One, that is, God.” (Mark 10:18) Daily our experiences confirm both aspects of that.
Walk with Him and you can say with the Psalmist, “Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for His goodness, and for His wonderful works to the children of men! For He satisfies the longing soul, and fills the hungry soul with goodness.” (Psalm 107:8-9) Trust Him, try Him, prove Him. Do it and you will become more optimistic.
Aids to Optimism – Part Two
“Know that the Lord, He is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.” Psalm. 100: 3, 4
Some people strut their moment on life’s stage quoting, “I am the captain of my fate…I am the master of my soul.” Not!
Some live by these words of W.E. Henley in his poem “Invictus”:
“Out of the night that covers me,
Black as a pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever God may be
For my invincible soul.”
Be real! Jesus put things in perspective when He asked, “Who can add one cubit to his height….”
We do better to quote the Christian counterpart of “Invictus” written by Dorthea Day, entitled “My Captain”:
“Out of the light that dazzles me,
Bright as the sun from pole to pole
I thank the God I know to be
For Christ — the Conqueror of my soul.”
An attitude of gratitude is fertile soil for optimism. Exaltation is elevating. Therefore, “Be thankful to Him, and bless His name.” (Vs. 4B)
William Law asked and answered his question. “Who is the greatest saint? It is not the one who prays most or who does most, it is the one who is most thankful.”
It is not the happy people who are optimistic.
It is the optimistic people who are happy.
Happiness doesn’t produce optimism, rather optimism consequences in happiness.
Do you always feel thankful? Be real! The honest answer from all of us is “NO!” Psalm 116: 17 – 19 speaks to such an emotional moment: “I will offer You the sacrifice of thanksgiving….” A sacrifice is something we give that costs us. Sometimes the sacrifice is thanksgiving and it costs us dearly.
Often thanksgiving comes as an act of faith, not from elation over circumstances. “Faith,” regards a suspicious person with an arched eyebrow. Many feel faith is a thin thread by which to be suspended. Instead it is the anchor of the soul.
Robert Jastrow, noted astrophysicist, in addressing the American Association for the Advancement of Science, noted, “For the scientist who has lived by faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream.”
A counter comment is included by Martin Luther in the introduction to his commentary to the Book of Romans: “Faith is confidence in God’s grace so strong and so confident that a man will stake his life on it a thousand times.” So live demonstrating it. That is cause for optimism.
Aids to Optimism – Part One
“Know that the Lord, He is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.” Psalm 100: 3, 4
Jesus does not want your attitude held hostage by circumstances. He does not want circumstances to control your attitude. Rather, He wants your attitude to influence circumstances.
Believers can rejoice because Jesus met their worst enemy, Satan, and overcame him. Because of Jesus’ victory, we work from victory not for victory. It is Jesus’ victory that enables us to be victorious.
The King of Kings has defeated the “prince” of this world.
Don’t ever step into a never-before-lived-day without a spirit of optimism. You choose your attitude. The choice is yours. Jesus in you is the hope of glory.
Yogi Berra said, “When you come to the fork in the road, take it.”
General W. J. Slim was a little more precise in this statement: “When you cannot make up your mind which of two evenly balanced courses of action to take … choose the bolder.”
Dealing with some of the difficulties of life is like wrestling a gorilla. You don’t quit when you get tired. You quit when the gorilla gets tired.
Our Lord knowing this has provided numerous uplifting influences to enable us to regain our footing when knocked down by events that jolt us.
“Enter His gates… and into His courts.”
This was an expression by the ancient Hebrews that speak of public worship. Public worship puts God in focus. It is like looking at an object through a magnifying glass? With the object in the center of the glass in focus you could see it best. However, around the edges everything else might be fuzzy or faded. Worship enables us to get God in focus and things to fade.
It is often ourselves that needs to be put in proper focus. Sometimes we are defeated, depleted, and deflated. At other times we operate from an inflated ego. Worship gives balance. Therein we are dealing with One bigger and more able than we.
Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together. Neither limit your worship to public worship. Walk through life as though the world around you is a great cathedral, and in it worship the God of creation. Be mindful of Him amid His artful creation and silently express adoration to Him. Remember it is He we are to worship, inspired by nature, but it is not nature we worship.
The earth is the Lord’s, and all its fullness, The world and those who dwell therein.” (Psalm 24: 1)
Worship is in essence focusing on God formally and informally. Live with a sense of His presence and worship Him. Having such a companion is cause for optimism.
Cheap Grace – Part Three
(The lifestyle advocated in this post should not be understood as an effort to earn grace, but as a result of already having obtained grace. This lifestyle is not the cause of grace, but the consequence of grace, and cannot be lived without having obtained the grace to do it.)
A slow contemplative reading of the following will open your eyes to what true grace really is. It is tough! As you read, pause after each quote and ask yourself what it means to you, and how you should apply it. No cheap grace is offered here. Dietrich Bonhoeffer who stated them lived them out to the end in a Nazi death camp. In doing so he attracted his detractors to Jesus. The same result is gained today by those who know no cheap grace.
“[Jesus] stands between us and God, and for that very reason he stands between us and all other men and things. He is the Mediator, not only between God and man, but between man and man, between man and reality. Since the whole world was created through him and unto him (John 1:3; 1st Cor. 8:6; Heb. 1:2), he is the sole Mediator in the world…”
“To be called to a life of extraordinary quality, to live up to it, and yet to be unconscious of it is indeed a narrow way. To confess and testify to the truth as it is in Jesus, and at the same time to love the enemies of that truth, his enemies and ours, and to love them with the infinite love of Jesus Christ, is indeed a narrow way. To believe the promise of Jesus that his followers shall possess the earth, and at the same time to face our enemies unarmed and defenseless, preferring to incur injustice rather than to do wrong ourselves, is indeed a narrow way. To see the weakness and wrong in others, and at the same time refrain from judging them; to deliver the gospel message without casting pearls before swine, is indeed a narrow way. The way is unutterably hard, and at every moment we are in danger of straying from it. If we regard this way as one we follow in obedience to an external command, if we are afraid of ourselves all the time, it is indeed an impossible way. But if we behold Jesus Christ going on before step by step, we shall not go astray.”
“The Christian must treat his enemy as a brother, and requite his hostility with love. His behavior must be determined not by the way others treat him, but by the treatment he himself receives from Jesus; it has only one source, and that is the will of Jesus.”
“True prayer is done in secret, but this does not rule out the fellowship of prayer altogether, however clearly we may be aware of its dangers. In the last resort it is immaterial whether we pray in the open street or in the secrecy of our chambers, whether briefly or lengthily, in the Litany of the Church, or with the sigh of one who knows not what he should pray for. True prayer does not depend either on the individual or the whole body of the faithful, but solely upon the knowledge that our Heavenly Father knows our needs.”
“Only he who believes is obedient, and only he who is obedient believes.”
“‘If any man would come after me, let him deny himself.’ The disciple must say to himself the same words Peter said of Christ when he denied him: ‘I know not this man.’ Self-denial is never just a series of isolated acts of mortification or asceticism. It is not suicide, for there is an element of self-will even in that. To deny oneself is to be aware only of Christ and no more of self, to see only him who goes before and no more the road which is too hard for us. Once more, all that self denial can say is: ‘He leads the way, keep close to him.’”
“The child asks of the Father whom he knows. Thus, the essence of Christian prayer is not general adoration, but definite, concrete petition. The right way to approach God is to stretch out our hands and ask of One who we know has the heart of a Father.”
And now the application. These quotes demand we abandon cheap grace, grace without accountability, and apply true grace in all of life.