Category: Faith

Which Rich?

Posted on by Dorci

A wealthy society, prominent schools, medical access, fine clothing, a good church. Successful.  A community where anyone would be fortunate enough to have a home and raise a family.

Sound familiar?

Like one of countless neighborhoods in America, doesn’t it? 

Only this community, more specifically the church in this community, is mentioned in the Book of Revelation.  Jesus Christ speaks directly to her, the Church in Laodicea.  But He doesn’t send His congratulations at being a center of modern medicine, or for being a mecca for trade and wealth, or for dressing themselves in fine clothes. 

They had made the mistake of finding contentment in their earthly treasures.  And in their wallowing, they had become spiritually destitute.

They thought they had everything, but because He sees differently than we see, Christ gives them an eye-opener – a warning and a call to repentance.   He tells them they are wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked.    

They had allowed their prosperity to rob them of their zeal for Christ, and their faith had become lukewarm.  Good for nothing.  Tasteless. And they were in danger of being vomited from His mouth.

Sound familiar?

America has anything anyone could want.  Lady Liberty lights the way to welcome countless people from around the world who come to find their American dream – a job, a home, education, medical expertise. We are the land of the free and the home of the brave.

And we’ve become spiritually impoverished. 

We are now the home of the seeker-friendly church. We’ve watered down the gospel for fear of hurting someone’s feelings.  We’ve made it exciting for fear of alienating young people.  We’ve rested on our American laurels.  We’ve molded to the world instead of allowing the truth to mold it.

And we’ve become, in large part, wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked. 

But as always, Christ gives us hope.  As He counseled the Church in Laodicea, I believe He counsels the Church in America, and wherever else it applies, to “buy from Me gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich; and white garments, that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed; and anoint your eyes with eye salve, that you may see.” Rev. 3:18

It’s not in a white-collar career, a mini-mansion, a car with heated seats, clothes fresh off the Paris runway, or in any kind of fame that we are made whole.

It’s not in a set of religious rules, or intricate stained-glass windows, or hip, modern teaching about how nobody needs to worry about hell, maybe peppered with a cuss word here or there to prove that Christians aren’t all stuffy. 

It’s in the person of Jesus Christ. 

It’s in believing in Him and putting faith in Him and His work on the cross.

There is nothing inherently wrong with wealth or a finely-tuned Sunday morning service. 

But:

1. Those will not save one soul.  And in this sin-sick world, people need Christ.  People are hungry for the truth, hungry for answers, hungry for hope and starving for love.  And it’s a sin for a church to rob someone of that knowledge in favor of an entertaining Sunday get-together. 

2. Those are not our goal.  Our goal is to know Christ and take what He infuses into our souls to the world as salt and light.  Our goal is to give ourselves over to Him for the sanctification of our souls and renewing of our minds. 

Our goal is to get up on the cross with Christ and die. 

It’s to overcome the world, not give in to it.  To overcome the enemy, not join forces.  To overcome the sin that entangles us, not sit and wallow in it. 

And this can only be done as we hold onto Christ.  And if we do, He gives us a promise:

“To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.” Rev. 3:21

We have a short time here, and then the reward.  May we see ourselves through Jesus’s loving, gracious, sober eyes and remember the reason we’re here.

Grace and peace, love and joy,

 

 

Hello again!

I’m excited to announce that my testimony, along with 39 others, will be published in a book and released sometime later this year!  Some stories, like mine, will be about how, against all odds, the truth of Jesus Christ penetrated hearts and brought people to a saving faith in Him.  Other stories will be glimpses into the lives of believers and how they were able to keep holding onto faith despite trying times.  All will be stories of hope and the miracles that only Christ can do. I’ll let you know more details as they’re announced.  I’m excited to see how the Lord will use the book in the lives of many hurting people desperate for real hope in a world that’s increasingly lacking it.  Add it to your Christmas list!

Where Are You Staying?

Posted on by Dorci

It was probably a day like any other day.  People are milling around John, known as The Baptist, as he talks about the One Who is to come.  Daily more people come to hear about the Light who has come into the world, to learn of repentance, and to be baptized. 

John is talking with two of his followers when he sees Jesus of Nazareth walk by, and declares “Behold the Lamb of God!”  John 1:36

They turn and see the One they’ve been hearing about.  The One Who they’ve heard will baptize with the Holy Spirit.  The One Who takes away the sin of the world.  And they leave and begin following Him.

“Then Jesus turned, and seeing them following, said to them, ‘What do you seek?’ They said to Him, ‘Rabbi’ (which is to say, when translated, Teacher), ‘where are You staying?’  He said to them, ‘Come and see.’ They came and saw where He was staying, and remained with Him that day (now it was about the tenth hour).’”  John 1:38-39

These two new apostles, Andrew and probably the man who would author the gospel of John, wanted to know where Jesus lived. They left John the Baptist to stay, not in a certain place, but with Jesus Himself.  Where Jesus went, they went.  Where He slept and ate and spoke, they were there with Him.

His home, wherever that would be, would now be their home. And their lives would never be the same.   

Had Andrew and John stayed with John the Baptist, they would have only heard about Jesus.

They would have missed out on three years of actually getting to know Him, walking with Him from place to place, talking with Him along the way about the great mysteries He held deep in His heart.  They would have missed seeing Him perform miracles and watching Him change the hardened hearts of men and women.  They would have missed seeing the joy in His eyes when children skipped up to Him and threw their arms around Him, and hearing Him laugh as He held them tight. 

They might have missed that day at Pentacost when they were filled with the Holy Spirit and blessed with gifts from God to live out the greatest calling to go out into the world and preach the Good News. They would have missed seeing countless others come to know Jesus–the Man they knew as friend, confidante and Lord–as their Lord and Savior. 

Hearing about Jesus was good, but living with Jesus brought them to the Source of all good things, to the very feet of God, the place of all power. 

The word staying in the apostles’ question is the same word translated as abide that Jesus later uses in this admonition: “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.” John 15:5

Jesus calls us to abide with Him, too.  It’s not enough to hang back and hear about Him from teachers, parents or friends. 

He now lives in us and He wants us to live in Him, wherever that may be.  He wants us to beg the question of Him, “Where are you staying?”

Jesus doesn’t live in church.  Don’t leave Him there. 

If we’ve received Him as Lord and Savior, He lives in our hearts, and we are to live in Him. 

He is now our home.

 

And for each of us He is in a different place.  He is walking in a different direction in my life than He is in yours.

He is doing a different thing, teaching a different lesson, healing a different wound in each of our lives. 

He is sanctifying individual souls.  And only He has the power to do it.

Why be satisfied with only hearing about Him, when we can live with the Source of all life?

Where is Jesus in your life right now?  What does He want to teach you?  How is He working to mature your faith?  Where does He want to go and who does He want to serve through you? 

Are you right there, following in obedience, living where He’s living?  Are you in communion with Him daily, learning from the Master, being filled with His Spirit, receiving His gifts and living the abundant life He longs to share with you? 

Jesus said we can do nothing unless we abide in Him. 

But if we do abide in Him, there is nothing we can’t do.

Last Days Living

Posted on by Dorci

But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.

They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over gullible women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth. Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these teachers oppose the truth. They are men of depraved minds, who, as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected. But they will not get very far because, as in the case of those men, their folly will be clear to everyone.

You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, persecutions, sufferings—what kinds of things happened to me in Antioch, Iconium and Lystra, the persecutions I endured. Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them. In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evildoers and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.” 2 Timothy 3:1-13

What we face today should come as no surprise.  Paul warned us of rampant sin, wolves among sheep, and persecution long ago.  So, the question is: what kind of response should we have? 

1. Expect it. 

There has always been sin and always will be until God pronounces judgment on the world and makes all things right.  But here Paul is warning us about a specific type of sinner.

Those who have a form of godliness but deny its power.  Those who live a form of religiosity but have no relationship with the living God.  These are dangerous people who wield lies as if they were the truth and they lead many down very destructive paths.  Paul warns us not to have anything to do with them.   

It’s not hard to find these kinds of people if we’re living connected to Christ ourselves.  We are to be so filled with the Holy Spirit that we are able to discern the truth from a lie and not get caught up in false doctrine. 

Be aware by staying in prayer and in the truth of God’s Word. 

2. If you can’t beat ’em, don’t join ’em.

That list at the top?  That’s our personal “do not do” list.  Sadly, it’s not just unbelievers who can get caught up in those sins.  Many Christians allow themselves to fall back into temptation, be pulled back into the world and allow it to mold them instead of allowing the Holy Spirit to transform and sanctify them.  Romans 12:2 warns us about this. 

Stay plugged in to the Holy Spirit through obedience and He will lead you into all righteousness. 

3. Live intentionally. 

A tree only bears fruit when it’s been watered and fed properly and when it’s had the proper light.  A godly life doesn’t come by wishing it.  It comes when we’ve purposed to live our lives in the Spirit by praying, reading God’s Word and obeying it. 

And when we do live a godly life, expect persecution.  Sometimes we expect the opposite: that if we’re “good” we’ll be spared from sin.  That couldn’t be further from the truth. 

When we live by the Spirit it is a threat to the enemy and he will stop at nothing to discourage us, to sidetrack us, and outright attack us. 

The apostle Paul attests to that.

It may seem as if those who do evil get away with their evil deeds.  And they very well may, for a time.  But the day will come when they will, in deep sorrow, bow their knee to the One Who is the truth, and they will be judged. 

We will bow our knee to our Savior and be ushered into eternal life and reward. 

Stand tall, stand firm.  Our Savior is with us.  Who can be against us?  No one!

A Father’s Day We’ll Never Forget

Posted on by Dorci

And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Matthew 28:20b

It was Sunday morning, Father’s Day.  I woke up with plans of hearing a good message at church, and then spending some precious family time together, grilling, maybe watching a movie.  Just relaxing.  But that day would soon be anything but relaxing. 

My husband was already up, and a minute or two after I’d gotten up he looked at me with a slight grin and told me our son hadn’t come home.  He’d left the night before, presumably to hang out with some friends.  One particular friend came to mind and I figured he’d gone there and just decided to stay the night.  He’d probably be home any minute. 

My husband began texting him, and we waited.  He texted again.  Still nothing. 

“Forget the texting.” I said, and I made a mad dash to my phone and started to punch in the number, but my husband was already calling.  He finally answered, and the side of the conversation I heard I didn’t like. 

“Where are you?” my husband said.

He suddenly had a confused look on his face. “What’s around you?”

Panic started to form a lump in my throat. 

A few more minutes of their back and forth and I couldn’t stand it anymore.  I pleaded to talk with him.  I asked him all the same questions.  “Where are you?  What do you mean you don’t know where you are?  Are you still driving?”

“Yes.”

We lost our phone connection.  I couldn’t imagine where he was or how he’d gotten there.  And the scariest thing was, neither could he. 

I finally got him on the phone again.  He thought he was on his way to a certain town.  That couldn’t be.  It was so far away.  He kept saying his face hurt.  His phone cut out again. 

We looked at each other and wondered out loud if he really could be on a road so far away from home.  And why did his face hurt? 

After another 20 minutes or so of 30-second conversations between being cut off, he said he was passing a sign with the name of the town he was entering.  Yes, he really had been headed in that direction, away from home. 

He said he was almost out of gas and we were sure his phone was ready to die.  He said he was pulling into a gas station to fill up.  I prayed with him and told him to stay there. We were coming to get him. 

He said he just wanted to get back on the road and come home.  His face hurt. 

I knew I’d have to call on my “mom voice” and demand that he stay put. 

“Are you on the road?” I said.

“Yes. I just want to come home.”

“Turn around and park and stay there!  We are on our way.”

The tone and decibel level of my voice told him I meant business.  He turned around and parked in a parking lot by a certain restaurant and that gave my husband just enough information to know where he was. 

We both ran around the house grabbing ice, water, ibuprofen.  I asked friends to be praying for us.  And in minutes we were in the car driving the almost two-hour trip out of town to get our son.  The trip was taking too long.  I had to remind myself to breathe. 

We finally got there, searched the parking lot for a minute and spotted his car.  All three of us hugged.  His face was scraped up and a corner of his tooth had been left on a sidewalk somewhere, but he was okay.  We took him to the emergency room around the corner to have him checked out.  His CT scan came back fine, but we figured he must have had a slight concussion. 

When we got back home my husband was able to map out his route with the few landmarks he could remember, which included a dirt road, cows and an Indian reservation. 

The worst part of looking at that map was knowing that in order for him to get where he was, he had to have taken the road we took–a road that for miles and miles wound around some mountains and had plenty of drop-offs.  Even when we showed him the route he must have taken, he still didn’t remember. 

It was nothing short of a miracle that he had made that three-hour drive.  Many miracles, in fact. A miracle he didn’t get into an accident.  A miracle he didn’t fall asleep. A miracle he didn’t run out of gas.  A miracle his phone didn’t die.  A miracle he didn’t drive off the side of a mountain.

His tooth was fixed and his face is healing well.  He had been goofing around with a friend, jumped on his back and they both fell onto the sidewalk. He apparently cushioned his friend’s blow. 

Course we had to ask him if he stopped along the way to go cow-tipping.  We got a bit of a grin out of him. 

My prayers for the next week or two consisted mainly of two words—“Thank you.”  I knew we’d been gifted with a great deal of grace that day.  The day wasn’t relaxing, we missed church and there was no movie.  But we had the best Father’s Day we could have.  We’d been given the gift of more time with our son.  So much better than any old tie. 

We don’t always have such a dramatic reminder of God’s constant presence, but He’s there just the same.  No matter where we go or what we do, He’s with us.  And even when we don’t know where we are, He does, and He’s there.

Always.

 

Suppose…

Posted on by Dorci

“Suppose a nation in some distant Region should take the Bible for their only law Book, and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited! Every member would be obliged in conscience, to temperance, frugality, and industry; to justice, kindness, and charity towards his fellow men; and to piety, love, and reverence toward Almighty God … What a Eutopia, what a Paradise would this region be.”
~John Adams, 2nd President of the United States of America and Signer of the Declaration of Independence

There will come a day when those of us who have put our faith in Jesus Christ will see that Utopia.  When the new heaven and new earth are unveiled, and we are its city set on a hill, gleaming as a trillion bright lights.  When love is the banner and God is its King.  And we’ll understand freedom on a whole new level.

The freedoms our Founding Fathers wanted to bring us in this country were only a shadow of the aching of every soul for spiritual freedom.  As much as we want to bring heaven down to us, no matter how good we could make it, its always going to be less than our hearts desire.

But we have that freedom inside us now, purchased for us on another hill, the hill of Calvary.

And each of us carries the light of that freedom when we agree with Joshua and say

But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.” Joshua 24:15b

Suppose we took those words of Joshua to heart and lived them out in all their righteous glory, and light the darkness around us in a spectacular display of God’s immeasurable love, grace and mercy.

We would allow the Holy Spirit to move us to love passionately, to give wholeheartedly, and to bring the greatest, most joyous message of freedom the world has ever known.

We would let the Word of God permeate our thoughts and actions and it, not the world, would dictate how we would change and who we would become.

We would fling open the gates of heaven into our lives with our prayer and obedience, dispelling all fear and flooding our lives with God’s boldness and power.   And we would serve the Lord with as much dedication and courage and bravery as those who fought to purchase and keep our earthly freedoms, living out the greatest commission to “..go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” Matthew 28:19-20

We would live out the light of the glory of that future Paradise, right here and right now, and set the world around us on fire for Christ.

Oh, what a world that would be.