Christian Living Archives - Page 6 of 21

6 Observations From Jesus Healing A Leper

November 14, 2020 by EnnisP Leave a Comment

God Sees The Less Privileged Differently
And Honors Them With Accountability

Jesus is often referred to as a personal Savior but you have to break that down to understand what it really means. Saying He is a Savior is one thing. Calling Him personal is another.

The Savior part isn’t that difficult to understand. He died for our sins, all of our sins, a price we could never pay ourselves. That sacrifice makes salvation from eternal condemnation possible.

But what about the Personal part?

We could say “Personal” means He’s interested. His sacrifice was motivated by concern for us. The Bible clearly says that His death was an expression of love (Romans 5:8). What that means is He really cares about the individuals He saves. He not only saves them, but He also wants them to be saved.

He’s disappointed when they don’t get saved and elated when they do.

He’s spiritually and emotionally involved.

That’s personal.

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The caring part shouldn’t be assumed. There are many people whose work involves saving people from calamities: lifeguards, Firemen, EMTs, police, and more. Lifeguards are required to be strong swimmers. Caring about the people they save from drowning is an added benefit but isn’t required.

Jesus did, however, care. He was emotionally involved and His caring is evident as the following story indicates.

12 Reasons Belief Beats Politics

October 10, 2020 by EnnisP Leave a Comment

Belief Is Easily Possible And Results In Endless Benefits

I’ve been a Christian for decades – more than I care to share – and I’ve spent a lot of time in church services, Bible studies, and general conversations with other Christians. The topics were always related to God, the Bible, theology, Christian living, and the like.

More recently, politics has dominated those conversations and it’s changed the perspective a lot. Now, favored political candidates are as popular as Moses and David. The opposition, of course, is worse than Pharaoh.

Participating in the electoral process is right up there with daily devotions. If you don’t vote you’re backslidden. Even worse, if you vote for the wrong candidate you’ve spurned the will of God. Blasphemous!

When the candidate of choice wins office, it’s the emotional equivalent of crossing the Red Sea!

That line of thinking is problematic. You can’t synthesize government and religion. The purpose of one is totally different to the purpose of the other. The two will never fully mesh.

The church is commissioned to evangelize the world. The government is commissioned to manage it. Neither is commissioned to make it absolutely right. They act separately and for different reasons.

We obey the church not because we have to but because it is supposed to represent the voice of wisdom and reason. Or, that’s the hope. There’s no guarantee. Several churches and church leaders (all denominations) have gone off the deep end (adultery, pedophilia, embezzlement, etc.).

Those that don’t go quite that far can still border on the moronic and we should be careful enough not to follow.

Belief Exercises Reason

No names mentioned but several years ago I came across an individual who was instructed by one of his church’s elders (the prophet) that God wanted him to marry a certain person. The church’s teaching was that elders speak directly from God so he complied.

He married the young lass and after several years of intentional effort, the relationship never gelled. It was then they realized that God had nothing to do with it.

I wasn’t involved in counseling that particular situation.

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All of that is to say that obedience should be taken with a grain of salt. Instead of obeying one person or one tradition, we should learn how to ascertain collective wisdom. Speak to many people and gain a broad understanding of the issues.

There is an art or skill to learning how to do that and the discussion could be quite long but there is no space for it in this post.

From a parenting perspective, however, instead of teaching your kids to do what you say, teach them to think about the “whats” and “whys” of their choices before imposing commands. They’ll be better served in the future.

But you’ll need to be ready for the unexpected. They may choose something different to what you planned and you need to be big enough to live with that.

Back to my line of thought. [Read more…] about 12 Reasons Belief Beats Politics

In Quiet Moments by Tim Pepper

September 11, 2020 by EnnisP Leave a Comment

Torn Between Furious Action and Patient Waiting…

God has a plan for you… That’s what I was taught. What do I do with that information though?

“God can steer a moving object.”

“Prayerfully wait on the Lord’s timing.”

“Put feet to your prayers.”

These are all things I’ve heard people say about what we are supposed to do with the knowledge that God has a plan for us. They are contradictory and platitudinal at best. What do they even mean and is there any truth to them?

I pray a lot. In quiet moments at work sometimes I breathe the words, “God, get me out of here….. Please?” I pray at night when I’m going to sleep. I pray throughout the day. My prayers have changed in later life. They used to just be angry rants about what I thought I deserved from life. Now I’ve learned that none of us deserve anything from life really. But I still sometimes pray those prayers.

What they really mean is that I’m not happy with where I am, or with what I’ve achieved, or with what I believe my hope for change is. I want someone to blame for it all. God’s an easy target. So I vent. I let all my anger out and direct it at my loving creator.

I think about what I must look like to Him sometimes when I see my 4-year-old melting down in tears because he can’t put his pants on straight. I think I must look like that to God, crying over my lot in life. He sees the bigger picture. I see the bigger picture too and help get the pants straightened out. I often can’t resist making some comments about how all that crying didn’t really help things much. God doesn’t add those insults to my injury. He just helps out and keeps the earth revolving around the sun so that I don’t die in flames or ice. [Read more…] about In Quiet Moments by Tim Pepper

The Long Journey From Racism To Equality

August 3, 2020 by EnnisP 2 Comments

The End of Slavery Was Not The End of Slavery

I was born in the deep south.

The city was Jacksonville, Fl.

The year was 1949.

It was a time and place where racism thrived.

What I didn’t know until recently is just how bad Florida’s racism was. In my recollection, states like Alabama and Mississippi got most of the bad press so I thought of them as the real offenders but Florida, it seems, was just as bad if not worse.

Florida has a checkered past. It is recognized as the first location where free people of color first arrived in the early 1500’s and is also home to the first settlement of runaway slaves, Fort Mose. The Fort is situated two miles north of St. Augustine and was established under Spanish authority in 1738. It was a safe place for slaves to settle after escaping from plantations in the north. According to history, these liberated slaves bravely fought alongside the Spanish against English invasion.

Contrasting that, however, is the fact that Florida is the place where slavery first began in the Continental US (1526) and where it was practiced for decades even after the Civil War. Though history offers a flicker of decency in the early years, slavery and racism dominate the record.

I was surprised to learn that the U.S. Sugar Corporation was federally indicted for enslaving black sugarcane workers through debt peonage on Florida plantations as late as 1942. I wasn’t taught that bit of history in school but you can read about it here. The indictment was ultimately quashed on procedural grounds but it and the reasons for it are on the record.

The horrors of that historical fact should be unacceptable to any decent, fair-minded, rational person. Seventy-seven years is a long time to NOT figure it out, but that’s how long sugar cane farmers flouted the 13th Amendment of the Constitution with their slavery workarounds.

It begs the question. Do slavery loopholes still happen today? If businesses, aided by sentimentally aligned policymakers, could get around the law for seventy-seven years, is it improbable to think the same mindset could be driving segments of the business community today?

Innocence By Ignorance

As a youngster growing up in Jacksonville, I didn’t know enough to ask these questions. I was innocent but only because I was ignorant and I was also immersed. I was surrounded by racism. Things were better in Jacksonville than on the plantation but not by much. You didn’t need to look hard to find the evidence of Jacksonville’s racism everywhere: public transportation, public facilities, education, politics and even the workplace.

Racism was the norm. It was accepted. It was entrenched. [Read more…] about The Long Journey From Racism To Equality

Living Is Counseling

January 1, 2019 by EnnisP Leave a Comment

You Can Be Neutral
Only If You Declare Your Neutrality

In most cases, counseling is something that happens only when necessary and is usually arranged by special appointment. People who require counseling for non-medical reasons are dealing with problems stemming from past experiences and those problems are effecting the quality of life in the present.

That’s the short explanation, what we’ve been led to think, but it raises an important question. How do people avoid problems in the first place?

The counseling process is complicated. In fact, it’s mysterious because humans are complex and experiences, both good and bad, add to that complexity. We’re not as normal as we like to think, or even worse, maybe we are.

The most popular version of counseling is after-the-fact crisis management. It’s the solution we turn to not because we have a problem but because the problem, undetected heretofore, has been around long enough for us to reach overload. It’s entrenched and won’t be easily dislodged. Counseling, where we hope to find the answer, is more like a slow and tedious untangling process than a quick fix. There’s no pill for this.

The process includes a bit of self-discovery, others discovery, and experience analysis. These three elements are the basic influences in every person’s life. They teach us how to think and act.

But what I just described is only one type of counseling. The people who provide it are professionals and it only takes place after the fact. It’s corrective, not prophylactic.

The Bigger Picture

But what about the rest of life? How do people learn to believe in themselves or not? Why do some people develop a fear of water? When do people become afraid of crowds? What influences these outcomes?

Nature plays a part but only a small part. The website, Very Well Mind, provides a short list of 98 phobias. It’s only a partial list but it’s long enough to show there aren’t enough natures to go around. The bigger causes must be found elsewhere.

Medical News Today says,

It is unusual for a phobia to start after the age of 30 years, and most begin during early childhood, the teenage years or early adulthood.

They can be caused by a stressful experience, a frightening event or a parent or household member with a phobia that a child can learn.

And there you have it. It’s more about timing than nature. All the input is external and happens in the most formative years. Nature is not the culprit. Phobias are nurtured.

Both good and bad qualities, strengths and weaknesses, are being shaped by people and experiences.

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Counseling Happens Everyday

Counseling happens 24/7 in everyday life. Living is counseling. If you’re alive, you’re counseling and being counseled.

There may very well be times when a special problem arises that requires professional attention, but at all other times, I am counseling others by the way I live. The way I manage money, time, relationships counsels others in how to manage these things too.

Everything I do, everything I say and every attitude I entertain sends a message to those around me. I am counseling everyone around me, and everyone around me is counseling me.

It isn’t intentional, but it is real.

The more influence one has, the more their counsel takes hold.

What About Moral Issues

We like to think we can live our own lives completely to ourselves and separate from everyone else without interfering, intruding or asserting influence. Not so! [Read more…] about Living Is Counseling