"MOVE ON"

If, in your heart, you hold bitterness against even a single person, forgive.  If there exists even one person, alive or dead, whom you have not forgiven, follow God's commandment and His will for your life: forgive.  If you are embittered against yourself for some past mistake or shortcoming, forgive yourself.  Then, to the best of your abilities, forget.  And move on.  Hatred and bitterness and regret are not part of God's plan for your life.  Forgiveness is.
                                                                                                                               --Chriswell Freeman

Sometimes Christians have a difficulty when they try to "move on."  But I would like to recommend the thoughts in the above article.  Think through this with me: "Hatred and bitterness and regret are not part of God's plan for your life."  If your life is not quite what you would like for it to be, it may be that you need to learn to move on and leave the bitterness, hatred and regrets of your life behind.

Consider the Apostle Paul: He was hated by his fellow Jews with a passion that seems unbelievable.  They thought Paul was an enemy of the truth and of God.  He was not.  He was God's servant.  There was no hatred in Paul for the Jews.  In fact, he hoped and worked for their salvation.  What would have happened to him if he had sunken into hatred of them?  Paul would just be a minor footnote in Christian history.

What if Paul had become bitter over his treatment at the hands of his fellow Jews?  It would have eaten him up.

What if Paul had let his regret for the murder of Stephen destroy him?  He would have been of no use in the kingdom if all he could think of was his total failure to recognize the truth and that this failure led him to become a murderer.

Forgiveness and personal freedom go hand in hand.  May you experience both at the foot of the cross -- the cross of the crucified Forgiver.
                                                                                                            ~Phillip

How Do Christians Live?

Paul wrote his letter to Titus to instruct him in several issues.  One of those issues was, "How do Christians live?"‚ After addressing older men, older women, young men and young women, he turns to the Christian slaves in the Church in Crete with these words: "Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them, and not to steal from them, but to show that they can be fully trusted, so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive."  Titus 2:9-10

From our perspective this may seem a difficult burden to add to a slave's harsh life, "will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive." But Paul saw that objective as the objective of every Christian life, not just that of the young, beautiful and rich, or the older and secure.

Think about it...a slave making the gospel attractive.  There was nothing attractive about slavery.  Slaves had nothing with which to enrich the church.  A slave didn't own his own time, much less his life.  But in the church each slave was responsible for how he represented the gospel.

Dear Friends at ERCC: If a Cretan slave who never owned a Bible (and probably couldn't read anyway) was held responsible for making the gospel attractive, will you be held less accountable?  It is your job, away from the church building, to make the gospel look good.  Not by being a spin-doctor or super witness, but by the honest, caring and straightforward way you live.

I am sure you want your church to be attractive.  You want well cared-for buildings and grounds.  You want everything neat and clean inside the buildings.  You want a service of which you can be proud.  Good.  But New Testament Christianity has very little to do with those issues and everything to do with the way you live.

Let these words replay regularly in your mind: "...so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive."
                                                                                        Yours for a beautiful Gospel,
                                                                                                           Phillip

THE ABSOLUTE TRUTH

In an address to entering freshman at the University of Chicago, John Mearsheimer made it clear what were and what were not the goals of the educational institution.  The goals were: to encourage critical thinking, to broaden intellectual horizons, and to encourage self-awareness.  The NON-AIMS were equally explicit: "Not only is there a powerful imperative at Chicago to stay away from teaching the truth, but the university also makes very little effort to provide you with moral guidance.  Indeed it is a remarkably amoral institution."

Do you see a problem with the above address to a freshman class?  The University of Chicago (one of the most prestigious universities in America) is not alone in its deliberate abandonment of truth and moral guidance.  The same is true of every secular university in our country.

I know that many of you think the above is a recent phenomenon but it is not.  The foundation for the abandonment of truth and morality was laid in the 19th century and took hold of eastern universities early in the 1900's with the real fruit of this thinking emerging in the 1930's.  We cannot go back in time and prevent this left turn.

We cannot fix the universities.  I can urge the church today to hold to the absolute truth of the Word of God and teach it to our youth.  I can teach the morals and values of the Bible.  But that alone is not enough.

We must demonstrate the practical effect of Christian values, truth and morality in our families and in our society.  They must see that these God-given truths work in real life!  There must be a body of Good People living Good Lives.  Remember that our faith is not a philosophy to be kept in "church" but a way of relating to God and man away from religious settings!

It is up to you to counter-act the amorality and anti-truth mindset of the world and its institutions of higher learning.  The only way to do that is with your life!

"Our people must learn to devote themselves to doing what is good..."  Titus 3:14
                                                                                                                                 ~ Phillip