Even More Linkin!

Linking to noteworthy articles from other blogs and websites.

As everything, He became nothing so that you, as nothing, could have everything. You bring nothing to the table except the unrighteousness that makes Christ’s righteousness necessary.

If Jesus is to remain “the reason for the season,” then churches must be the place continually pointing to Him, especially in our preaching. We must take caution that our Christmas programs, which many times are designed to draw unbelievers, are not so secularized that we obscure the message we are trying to convey.

1. Define yourself by Jesus
2. Speak of the Catholic Church with courtesy
3. Explain biblical concepts and terminology
- – And More – -

Then she said, “Jesus died for me. I love my Jesus.” Sometimes I don’t know what “joy inexpressible and filled with glory” means, but at that moment I did. I had no words. So I just squeezed her hand gently and smiled at her through tears and sat there. That’s what you do in the presence of greatness.

Don’t be surprised if people look at you and say hurtful things like “she is really great with child.” Even more irritating will be the future idea that little Baby “no crying did make” when you know that he is fully human.

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.

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!

Here’s why.

As long as I’ve been typing (or “keyboarding” as my kids call it) I’ve used my right hand to hit the first digit of the year. I took my first typing class in 81. In 83 I took my first computer class in high school. When I went to college I spent a lot of time on a keyboard typing computer programs and term papers. Every time I entered the year, I went to the 8 with my middle finger.

In the 90s I worked at three different companies and always had a computer for drafting and CAD design work. Moving from 89 to 90 wasn’t a big deal at all; each digit was just one position to the right. It was the same scenario going from 99 to 00; just one digit over to the right.

Now along comes the dreaded 10.

For nearly 30 years, I’ve been going to my right to type the year. Now I need to go to my left and it is a radical change of a long, long-time habit.

Though this typing change is trivial in comparison, I think there are parallels between this and Jesus’ words to Nicodemus about being born anew in John 3:3. Nicodemus didn’t understand how anyone could be born again – it just didn’t make sense to his worldly, works-based mind. But Jesus was talking about a change, a radical change that goes all the way back to the beginning stages of life and learning. Nicodemus had to first unlearn what he had learned and then relearn the way of the Gospel. This is why Jesus said we must be like little children. My youngest daughter had no trouble going from typing 09 to typing 10 because she’s been typing for less than a year.

The older we get and the longer we cling to our traditions, the harder it is make the changes that Jesus demands. I have family that were born and raised in the Roman church and they thoroughly believe that they can’t change. Not that they won’t change, but that they absolutely can not change.

Making even small changes in our lives is difficult; how much more so the big changes that require us to start all over again. Every time I struggle to use the smallest finger of my left hand to hit the 1 instead of using my right ring finger to hit the 0 I’m going to think about what it means to be born anew. 2 Corinthians 5:17

* Yes. I know that the decade doesn’t end until December 31 of 10, but typing 11 will be way easier than typing 10 and my point would be lost if I waited a year to publish this.

The first thing I noticed on the card is the headline, “Life has only one purpose: SALVATION.” Assuming this is true, I expected to find out how I can get this salvation. I read the entire card, and the name of Jesus does not appear anywhere. Hmm… Maybe on the back.

Nope. Jesus isn’t on the back either. But there is an image (graven?) of a woman in a robe with the inscription, “Only I Can Help You.” I honestly can’t bring myself to open the magazine and read it. As I write this, it sits folded on my desk.

It is so hard to know where to begin with this mailing. I hesitate to call it satanic, but it certainly isn’t from God and it certainly isn’t Biblical, so my descriptive options are quite limited. (Isn’t everything either Godly or satanic?) I decided to start with prayer for my Roman Catholic friends and family who are misled by things like this.

Holy Father in heaven, I pray in the name of your Son, my savior, Jesus that you would bring the people who receive this mailing out of their blindness and into the light of your truth. Please send your Holy Spirit to my friends and family who follow the pope, to those who receive this mailing and to me also. Turn us from all unfaithfulness and selfishness. Put in us a new heart that seeks to glorify you, O Lord, and you alone. Take away all our love for idols, our love for false prophets and our love of diversions that focus our attention on something other than you. And thank you for making your grace free to all who repent and believe. Amen.

There is so much wrong with this card that I’m only going to address the two lines I mentioned previously for the sake of time and space.

The headline on the front reads, “Life has only one purpose: SALVATION” When I first read it, I thought that it was the only truth in the packet, but even that part isn’t true. Our only purpose in life is to glorify God and to begin our eternal enjoyment of Him. (See the Westminster Shorter Catechism for more) The desire for personal salvation in and of itself can be selfish unless, by doing it, we desire to bring glory to God. Remember, God created us for His pleasure and He saves us for His glory. (Ephesians 1:4-5 NKJV ).

As far as the “Only I Can Help You” inscription and the image of Mary; that is simply blasphemous. It is beyond my understanding how someone who calls himself a Christian can attribute those words to Jesus’ earthly mother.  Mary herself expressed her own need for a savior in the Magnificat. “My soul doth magnify the Lord. And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior.” (Luke 1:46-47 KJV). How, then, can it be that she would say that she alone (not the Father, Son or Holy Spirit) can  save?

I mostly feel pity for the misled people who believe this un-biblical fairy-tale, but I also get angry at the deceivers who send this out. They are charlatans and false teachers. Wolves in sheep’s clothing.

If you love somebody who is a follower of the Roman church, please join me in praying for them.