Trust AND Obey » life

The Jar

Dave Miller — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 23:00:17 +0000

All I remember of the beginning is that I was standing in a kitchen in a well-appointed home. It was daytime and there was a well-dressed woman sitting at a table across the room having coffee. I was standing next to a microwave on a countertop and there was a clear glass jar next to it. In the jar was a baby in an amniotic bubble and it was alive.

The baby had bluish, transparent skin and I could see tiny internal organs and a beating heart. At the baby’s midsection, I saw two ovaries. She was a girl. I looked up at her expressionless face and she opened her eyes, they were like milk chocolate; a beautiful little brown-eyed girl. She blinked and looked at me, and I started crying.

I was crying because I had helped to put her where she was. She was still alive, but wouldn’t be for long.

Turning to the stylish woman at the table, I intoned through my tears, “Why did you do this!?”

“You know why,” she answered incredulously, “I’m having company over today and I can’t be pregnant for company!”

I knew I had to get this baby back to where she belonged, and fast. But this didn’t make sense; I’m a handyman, not a doctor.

The woman seemed annoyed, “I told you I needed to have some things done around my house to make it presentable. You agreed to help me do that. This was just part of your job. What’s your problem?”

My knees buckled; I sank to the floor. Lying on my right side, I curled up and sobbed. My heart weighed a thousand pounds and my head threatened to burst.

“I didn’t agree to help you kill your…” It came out like a shout and a moan. I had to stop and hold my breath. My stomach was full of stones. I felt like vomiting.

And that was the end.

My dreams are like that usually. They start in the middle and are over before they finish.

I haven’t been able to put it out of my head today. I still have a remnant of that sickening feeling that I’m an unwitting accessory to the murder of an innocent. The baby in the jar was going to die and I couldn’t do anything about it.

Yesterday I read an article about seven former Planned Parenthood employees who are willing to testify before congress that the national abortion factory that is the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) regularly uses taxpayer monies to fund abortion on-demand.

PPFA receives more than one million dollars a day from federal and state sources which, by law, may NEVER be used for elective abortions. Malfeasance by Planned Parenthood is a well-known secret that shouldn’t surprise anybody; the lack of congressional oversight is criminal and, again, shouldn’t surprise anybody.

In the time it took you to read this article another brown-eyed girl has been killed by an employee of Planned Parenthood. If you are a taxpayer, you helped kill her.

But this is just part of your job, citizen. “What’s your problem?”

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; Jeremiah 1:5a

Beautiful ‘Buts’ in the Bible

Dave Miller — Fri, 07 May 2010 12:00:12 +0000

The word ‘but’ changes whatever comes right before it. A ‘but’ is not always pleasant, like when somebody says to you, “I think you have a good idea, but…” It doesn’t matter what comes after a but like that, it isn’t going to be good.

But a ‘but’ is beautiful when it changes a bad beginning into a good end. For example, “I was sick last week but I got better” or “I once was lost but now am found.”

Here are some of my favorite buts in the New Testament

Matthew 4:4 – But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’” (Quoting Deut. 8:3)

John 1:17 – For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

John 3:17 – For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.

Romans 5:8 – But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 11:22 – Behold then the kindness and severity of God ; to those who fell, severity, but to you, God’s kindness, if you continue in His kindness ; otherwise you also will be cut off.

1 Corinthians 15: 56-57 NKJV – The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

1 John 4:10 – In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

Revelation 21:27 – and nothing unclean, and no one who practices abomination and lying, shall ever come into it, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

Each of these verses contrasts two different states of being. Death and Life. Romans 6:23 makes this clearer, perhaps, than any other verse in the bible. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. I think this is the most beautiful but in the Bible.

Here is where I usually spend time summing up the point, but my words are useless. Read God’s word through His servant Paul.

Ephesians 2:1-10 – And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved ), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith ; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.

Truth.

No Left Turns

Dave Miller — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 03:20:42 +0000

Today I received an email with one of those “heart-warming” emotional stories in it. You know the kind. They usually tell about doe-eyed baby animals who survive a terrible ordeal, dying people who beat the odds, or cherub-faced children who understand the true meaning of life. They are usually completely fabricated and are so sweet they induce nausea.

Surprisingly, this one was not fictional and was written by a respected journalist named Michael Gartner. It is entitled, “A Life Without Left Turns.” If you would like to read the entire article, here is the link. If you would just like a synopsis, read on.

My father never drove a car.

Well, that’s not quite right.

I should say I never saw him drive a car. He quit driving in 1927, when he was 25 years old, and the last car he drove was a 1926 Whippet.

“In those days,” he told me when he was in his 90s, “to drive a car you had to do things with your hands, and do things with your feet, and look every which way, and I decided you could walk through life and enjoy it or drive through life and miss it.”

At which point my mother, a sometimes salty Irishwoman, chimed in:

“Oh, bull___!” she said. “He hit a horse.”

“Well,” my father said, “there was that, too.”

So my brother and I grew up in a household without a car.

Another portion tells about his father and mother’s church habits:

My mother was a devout Catholic, and my father an equally devout agnostic, an arrangement that didn’t seem to bother either of them through their 75 years of marriage. (Yes, 75 years, and they were deeply in love the entire time.) He retired when he was 70, and nearly every morning for the next 20 years or so, he would walk with her the mile to St. Augustin’s Church. She would walk down and sit in the front pew, and he would wait in the back until he saw which of the parish’s two priests was on duty that morning. If it was the pastor, my father then would go out and take a 2-mile walk, meeting my mother at the end of the service and walking her home. If it was the assistant pastor, he’d take just a 1-mile walk and then head back to the church.

He called the priests “Father Fast” and “Father Slow.”

Later in the account we find out why it is so named.

As I said, he was always the navigator, and once, when he was 95 and she was 88 and still driving, he said to me, “Do you want to know the secret of a long life?” “I guess so,” I said, knowing it probably would be something bizarre.

“No left turns,” he said.

“What?” I asked.

“No left turns,” he repeated. “Several years ago, your mother and I read an article that said most accidents that old people are in happen when they turn left in front of oncoming traffic. As you get older, your eyesight worsens, and you can lose your depth perception, it said. So your mother and I decided never again to make a left turn.”

The piece ends with his father’s death at 102 years of age.

“I want you to know,” he said, clearly and lucidly, “that I am in no pain. I am very comfortable. And I have had as happy a life as anyone on this earth could ever have.”

A short time later, he died.

What a horrible story. Let me sum it up from a Christian viewpoint.

A man gets married, works hard all his life, has two sons, walks everywhere, doesn’t drive a car, avoids church, lives to be 102 years old, dies peacefully and goes straight to Hell.

If there is nothing more to this life than to live happily, comfortably, healthily and die peacefully, then religion is a complete waste of time and we should just skip church like this man did and go for a walk instead! His story is an example of how not to live and we should pray that our lives are not wasted as this man’s was. How terribly, tragically sad this story is. Proof that Satan will give you anything you want in this life if he can have you in the next.

But if the Bible is the truth and there is more to our existence than this brief journey we call life, then our purpose must be to never live a life focused on selfish comfort and pleasure. Our true purpose must be to reach those who do not know about Jesus and share God’s gift of eternal life. (I’ll let you in on a secret: most of your friends at church are trying their best to live their lives like the man in this story. If they have retired already, time is running out for you to tell them that they’re wasting their life.)

Here is a truly heartwarming story that Christians should pass around more than the one by Gartner. This one is from John Piper’s book Don’t Waste Your Life.

In April 2000, Ruby Eliason and Laura Edwards were killed in Cameroon, West Africa. Ruby was over eighty. Single all her life, she poured it out for one great thing: to make Jesus Christ known among the unreached, the poor, and the sick. Laura was a widow, a medical doctor, pushing eighty years old, and serving at Ruby’s side in Cameroon. The brakes failed, the car went over a cliff, and they were both killed instantly. I asked my congregation: Was that a tragedy? Two lives, driven by one great passion, namely, to be spent in unheralded service to the perishing poor for the glory of Jesus Christ – even two decades after most of their American counterparts had retired to throw away their lives on trifles. No, that is not a tragedy. That is a glory. These lives were not wasted. And these lives were not lost. “Whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it” (Mark 8:35).

Americans spend billions of dollars every year trying to live a life like Michael Gartner’s father. Can you imagine him standing before Jesus on the great Day of Judgment and telling God, “I walked instead of going to church.” Or “I never drove a car and didn’t let my wife make left-hand turns.”

What will you say when you stand before Him?

Please, don’t hold this man’s life up as something to be emulated. His life was a waste. His one and only, precious life was a waste because he refused to know Jesus. Please don’t waste your life like this man. Please!

The Manhattan Declaration

Dave Miller — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 04:55:27 +0000

All believers should support the aims of The Manhattan Declaration; to declare and defend the sanctity of life, to affirm and codify the biblical definition of marriage and restore true religious liberty, even when it isn’t politically correct.

One of the men I respect most in this world, John MacArthur, has decided not to sign the declaration. This is a summary of his reason (read the entire statement here).

In short, support for The Manhattan Declaration would not only contradict the stance I have taken since long before the original “Evangelicals and Catholics Together” document was issued; it would also tacitly relegate the very essence of gospel truth to the level of a secondary issue. That is the wrong way—perhaps the very worst way—for evangelicals to address the moral and political crises of our time. Anything that silences, sidelines, or relegates the gospel to secondary status is antithetical to the principles we affirm when we call ourselves evangelicals. – John MacArthur

Dr. Albert Mohler explains why he is one of the original signatories of the declaration here at his blog.

I signed The Manhattan Declaration because it is a limited statement of Christian conviction on these three crucial issues, and not a wide-ranging theological document that subverts confessional integrity. I cannot and do not sign documents such as Evangelicals and Catholics Together that attempt to establish common ground on vast theological terrain…The Roman Catholic Church teaches doctrines that I find both unbiblical and abhorrent — and these doctrines define nothing less than the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But The Manhattan Declaration does not attempt to establish common ground on these doctrines. We remain who we are, and we concede no doctrinal ground. - R. Albert Mohler

It is with great trepidation that I must respectfully disagree with one portion of the first sentence of Dr. MacArthur’s summary. He says, “support for The Manhattan Declaration would…tacitly relegate the very essence of gospel truth to the level of a secondary issue” I agree that relegating the truth of the gospel to the level of a secondary issue would be the worst way for believers to address these issues, but this declaration does not do that.

This declaration has nothing to do with primary issues such as the gospel, justification, the sovereignty of God, or any other essential Christian doctrine. This declaration is an agreement on a secondary issue where the scriptures allow freedom for the conscience-bound Christian.

Are we to do things in this world only with others who believe undeniably, certifiably, exactly and rigidly the same as we believe? I doubt there are two Christians in the world that have exactly the same beliefs. How are we to be salt to the world if we don’t rub up against it? How are we to be light if we hide ourselves under a bushel basket? (Matthew 5:13-16)

- Story time -

Three people, one an Atheist; one a church-going, unrepentant adulterer; and one a saved sinner meet at a homeless shelter to feed the hungry. They all do exactly the same work for exactly the same amount of time. What effect does this good deed have on their eternal souls?

The Atheist will have no part of the kingdom of God because he denies Christ is Lord and will be judged according to his rejection of Jesus. This good deed may alleviate some of his eternal suffering, but he will spend eternity separated from God and in torment.

The unrepentant adulterer will have no part in the kingdom of God because, though she says she believes in Jesus with her lips, her heart is far from Him as evidenced by her actions. Jesus will say to her in that day, “Depart from me you worker of iniquity, I never knew you.” This good deed may alleviate some of her eternal suffering, but she will spend eternity separated from God and in torment.

The saved sinner will be ushered into God’s heavenly kingdom because, though he is a sinner, he acknowledges that Christ is Lord and though he sins on a daily basis, he also repents on a daily basis. This proves that his faith is genuine and it is by that faith, given freely through the grace of God, that he is saved and will spend eternity in the presence of the One Holy God. This deed has nothing to do with him getting into heaven, but he will be rewarded in the kingdom of God for this selfless act of love.

Remember, the worst room in heaven is infinitely better than the best room in hell.

God is not going to withhold the believer’s reward because he did good deeds standing side-by-side with an atheist and an adulterer. Neither will the unbelievers share in heaven because they did the same good deeds as a believer.

The atheist is condemned because he denied Christ with his words, even though he did good deeds.
The adulterer is condemned because she denied Christ with her deeds, even though she confessed him with her word.
The believer is approved because, by grace, he confessed Christ and his words and deeds are the proof.

So what does this have to do with The Manhattan Declaration?

Let us say that doing the work of God means carrying a heavy load up a mountain along a rocky path. I am carrying this load by myself, struggling and sweating all the way. Now let us say that an unbeliever comes along side of me and, for some reason or no reason, begins to share my load. Am I to stop doing the work of the Lord so as not to be yoked unequally to this unbeliever? (2 Corinthians 6:14) Of course not! I am not marrying this person. I am not in a business partnership with this person. I am temporarily allowing him to help me do the work that God has appointed to me.

What really matters is Jesus’ work on the cross and God’s work in drawing the sinner to belief and repentance. The sanctity of life, marriage and religious freedom are secondary issues compared to the primacy of the Gospel. At this point in time, I fail to see how The Manhattan Declaration does violence to the Good News of Christ.

I have read The Manhattan Declaration, but haven’t signed it – yet.

I am leaning toward signing it, but there are too many Evangelical Christians that I respect deeply who are opposed to it for the sake of the Gospel. Please add your thoughtful comments to this post, or post a link to your blog, and help convince me and others what a “Narrow Path” Christian should do. (Matthew 7:13-14)