Iron in our blood. The Evangelical need to pick a fight

I have been reading a very interesting blog, in which I found the following paragraph:

the culture of conservative evangelicals (and especially of the conservatively reformed) is sickening to me. everything is about a battle for x’ or ‘defending the heart of the gospel’ (which changes as the opponent changes…one day it’s justification and n.t. wright is a heretic, the next day it’s inerrancy and kenton sparks is a heretic). that’s not what i want to do with my time. i didn’t go to seminary so that i could get a ‘heresy hunter’ license and claim my spot among machen’s warrior children. i went to seminary because i want to positively contribute to the way christians think about the bible, about their god, and about how to live their lives in relationship to that god.

One can easily get that from listening to the White Horse Inn or Issues Etc. Mind you, I listen to them every week, and in the case of the later, every day. Their shows are interesting, but you just wondered if they ever have a positive view of something that does not involve Calvin, Machen or Luther.

Take for example Issues Etc, if you don't read Scripture under the lenses of Law and Gospel, you are no better than a donkey reading the newspaper, you just won't understand it. But if you if apply the Lutheran Method, then your eyes will be open and then you will understand the message. This sounds to me more like the Jehovah Witness claim about need to read the books written by Russel in order to understand Scripture. I guess both never heard about the guidance of the Holy Spirit!!!

In the case of the New Reformed, if you say that that Reformers' claim that Justification by faith is not the center of the gospel, you may as well reject being a christian. Jesus' proclamation was not that all were saved by justification by faith, which of course, was a central theme that was developed by Paul, but his initial and final instructions were the following:

Mark 1:14.."The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!"

and:

Mark 16:15...He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.

It looks like Jesus is very consistant about what the gospel was all about, was about the kingdom. Later, and rightly, the other historical aspects were added, cf. I Cor. 15:3-7.

But what I like about the article, is that the author rightly points out that the "heart" of the gospels changes so much, from every "defender" of it, that it looks more like the gospel is an octopus, with many hearts. The octopus has 3, but my neo Reformed friends, and other conservatives, are starting to look like the Roman Catholics at the time of the Reformation, having many of Peter's heads, as well as more bones from the apostles than the apostles themselves had!!!!!!

Sounds like we got rid of some relics, to pick up another ones, more acceptable to their liking. Once the common enemy of the time, the Catholics, were "vanquished", the Protestants turned, and still turned against each other to say to the other that they were wrong. The Reformers would be turning in their graves if they would know what sort of legacy would follow their bible loving, Scripture upholding and true christian followers.

Looks like we have a long way to go in order to reach unity in the body of Christ.

Luis A. Jovel

Evangelicalism's Radical Diversity 2

posted by Scot McKnight @12:08am

When you hear these two words, the words "evangelical" and "eschatology," what is the first word that comes to mind? I'm asking you for the first thing that comes to mind.

Here's what would probably be said by conventional culture: "rapture."

What words are you hearing? What "eschatology" do you think evangelicals have?

Steve Wilkens and Don Thorsen, both profs at Azusa Pacific, have a new book that takes on misperceptions of evangelicals. I like the title: Everything You Know about Evangelicals Is Wrong (Well, Almost Everything): An Insider's Look at Myths and Realities .

What this book shows to me is that evangelicals have done a poor job educating the public and culture what it really believes, and instead have allowed a minority viewpoint to become the defining term. Here are some of their claims:
1. Prior to the 19th Century virtually no Christian thinker believed in the "rapture" theory. [The rapture theory, or secret rapture theory, teaches that the Church will be taken into the sky prior to the Great Tribulation and will be in (what I often call) a holding pattern until the Second Coming when the Church will descend with Christ to the earth and populate the millennium.]

2. Today the majority of Christian in the world do not believe this, and here they are including RCC and Eastern Orthodoxy and Protestants.

3. Most Prots today don't believe in the rapture.

4. Even among evangelicals, they argue, this view is not as prevalent as it once was. In fact, Luther and Calvin and Wesley and Whitefield and Edwards did not believe this. They were amillennialists -- they believed the Church age was the fulfillment of the "millennial" image of Rev 20. Some, like Hodge and Warfield, were postmillennialists, which means they saw a Christianization of the world. [I see a trend of this at times among the optimistic among some today.]

5. The Council of Ephesus in 431 condemned belief in a literal kingdom on earth.

The point being made here is simple: evangelicals and Christians, as a vast majority, don't believe the rapture theory.

Instead, the Christian position has been the Second Coming (and there's no rapture in this belief), the resurrection, the kingdom of God/reign of God, and eternal life. That's what we agree on; all evangelicals believe such things.

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The Presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church

A small bible study for our church's camp this weekend:

The Presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church
The Holy Spirit is sometimes referred as the “forgotten member of the Trinity”. This may be due not only to the fact that most individuals and churches find it difficult to relate to the third member of the Trinity, but also because we, as human beings, love to as the old saying goes, “pulling your self up by your own bootstraps”. We forget that as a church, we don’t only follow an order or service, good as it may be, but we get things accomplished through and by the Holy Spirit.

Have you asked the Spirit to help you through this day?

God gives us the Holy Spirit so we can be assure of our salvation

We have been given the Holy Spirit to zeal us as God’s chosen people. In Ephesians 1:13-14, we read that the Holy Spirit is the zeal the marks us as part of God’s people. This is the same Holy Spirit that testifies to our spirit that we are children of God, cf. Romans 8:16. Too many Christians question their salvation by measuring how many good works they do. Some even claim that only through an external action the believer, and others will know if they truly have the Holy Spirit! But Paul says that all who believe in God, receive the Holy Spirit at that very moment, cf. Ephesians 1:13. Putting it in simple words, there is no Christian without the Holy Spirit!

How can we doubt that we have the Holy Spirit if the Bible tells us so?

The Church needs the presence of the Holy Spirit at all times

When we go to cathedrals, as tourists of course, we love to admire the beauty and grandeur of the place. We admire its paintings, architecture, and its awesome presence. We try to be quite and conduct ourselves with respect. This is not only polite, but we may feel overwhelmed by the place. But do we as a church, God’s temple, behave the same when we are gathered? A cathedral may be a place of peace, contemplation, but the Spirit of God does not dwell there. We are the true temple of God, I Corinthians 3:16. We are called the household of God, I Timothy 3:15. So we are confronted once again with this reality, just a there can be no Christian without the Spirit, there can be no Church without the Spirit

How do we behave within God’s house?

The fruits/gifts of the Holy Spirit are to be used within the Church and wider world

One of the main problems within the Corinthian congregation is that the manifestations of the Spirit were used to show off their “spirituality”. They didn’t appreciate that by God giving those gifts to such a sinful people, God was showing his mercy rather than his favouritism. The gifts were given to up build one another in love, not to put those who were seen to have lesser gifts, cf. I Corinthians 12. But as mentioned before, we are not going to achieve unity by our own efforts. We may be polite to one another, but that politeness must be because we love one another. Only the Holy Spirit can change our hearts of stone into a heart of flesh, cf. Ezekiel 36:26. Paul warns the Galatians what it is to live a life where the Spirit is not present as a church, cf. Galatians 5:13-21. But after that, he gives us what to live through the Holy Spirit is, 22-26. If we live a life in the Spirit, then, the world will see that we are one, and be a great testimony as to the power of God among us, his church, John 13:35.

Are we allowing the Holy Spirit to take hold of our church?

Prayer.

Women Bishops or biblical fidelity?

What's wrong with this picture??? Depends who you ask, if you are a liberal, culture driven, pro-feminist, pro-abortion, pro-gay, scripture trumping so called "christian", then the answer may be twofold: how come it took so long to reach this stage, and, there should be more women, if not the majority, sitting there as bishops and ordained ministers.

If you are a biblical based, scripture driven, pro-life, pro-family, pro-marriage, conservative christian, the answer would be another question, How could the church of God reject God so clearly in his face?

I don't deny that there are other, more pressing issues that we, as the church of the Lord Jesus Christ should be battling, the likes of poverty, justice and above all, the salvation of souls. Nevertheless, this issue is one of those that Salomon refererred to as:
Song of Songs 2:
5 Catch for us the foxes,
the little foxes
that ruin the vineyards,
our vineyards that are in bloom.

So, to say as some have suggested, that we shouldn't fight or confront this issue, don't see the greater issue, or don't comprehend it's repercussions. As Wayne Grudem has pointed out in his excellent book, Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism?, all those churches that claimed that in order to survive they had to move in with the times, are rather dying, losing members. An example is that the Uniting Church in Australia sees its own demise by 2050, or the Episcopal Church USA, that despite ordaining women not only to the ministry, but also to the post of bishop, and as if that was not wrong enough, went ahead and ordained Gene Robinson, an open homosexual with a partner, as a bishop, the church is still losing members, while the dissenters are growing.

One of the women in the picture (notice all the women "bishops" except one have short hair, makes one wonder!!!), Barbara Darling, third from the left first role, once interviewed me as to gather if I was called to the ministry. Our interview was a mere formality, nevertheless, the interview turned to the topic as to how she had been passed over by men, who did not see God's calling in her life. She saw that as one of the greatest injustices of our time. At the end, I went away thinking if I really wanted to be ordained an Anglican (I was walking strayed from my Baptist roots!!), there were many Anglicans that I admired, N. T. Wright for example, but he has also endorsed women to be bishops. I have written to the good bishop that this approach contradicts his other approaches to be faithful to the biblical sources. However, he said something very encouraging during the debate that the Church of England is going through this last couple of days.

Answering to Cannon Robert Cotto, who suggested that " he was worried that the Church could turn into a sect, refusing to listen to the wisdom that was available in the outside world." Wright came responding to Cotto and others like him in the following statement: "that when the Church started to follow the dictates of contemporary society, it "would cease to be the Church" "

Wright's answer is the correct one, and he shouldn't be answering an ordained minister in that manner, since you would expect him that he had read James 4:⁴You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. And also I Corinthians 1:²¹For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. It seems that some have never cared about what the bible says, unless it's their pet subject, and even then, they twist the Bible to say what they want it to say.

Now, the Anglican Church, as many other denominations in the past, are trying to keep their denominations together, even when they take decisions that are totally against Scripture. I still remember when the Evangelical Church of America, ELCA, took the decision to accept practicing homosexuals to the ministry, and the conservatives walked out of the convention, and the presiding bishop, Mark Hanson, called out to them to "stay in the conversation" What conversation I ask?? The decision was taken, there's no going back.

And why I am talking about homosexuality and the ordination of women? Because they are issues that go hand in hand. As Grudem points this out in his book above mentioned, we can see how women are the ones that make the ordination of homosexuals an issue of justice, the same argument they took when dealing with their recognition to be ordained. One is just a stepping stone to the next.

I haven't touched on the biblical verses that clearly teach that women cannot be ordained, or that practicing, unrepentant homosexuals can be christians, let alone ordained. If people are so blind and don't take the bible seriously, well, that's their choice, but please, don't call yourself a christian, since that title applies to those who are willing to follow not just his teachings, but those of his followers as well. It is very difficult to argue against those who don't see the Bible as authoritative, but rather see the culture as their norm to follow.

With this entry, I just hope to point out some points that are not touched as often in conservative circles, and to show that in this debate, we can go beyond those passages usually cited, to give a stronger and more complete response to those who have rejected Scripture in all of its forms.

Luis A. Jovel

“Why Christianity and the ’4th’ are Incompatible” OR “Why this is NOT a day to celebrate” OR “Why my friends wont like me for the next week or so”

June 29, 2010 | by Kurt Willems


I want to start out this post with a huge disclaimer… what I am about to say may sound radical or irrational to some. I also want to say that I have a great respect for those who differ with me on this issue that I am about to discuss, so I invite your ideas on this post as well. Finally, I have a great deal of respect for those who are Christians and who ‘support’ military and our troops. Those who serve our country (although I may disagree with it from my standpoint theologically) deserve respect for their sacrifices and I am glad to have some friends who have served or are serving in the armed forces.

With all of that said, I have been struggling with the idea of the 4th of July for the past couple of years or so. Each year we get together and remember the day when America won her freedom. We reenact the story through live action plays, we set off fireworks as a display of joy, and we sing prideful songs about our freedom from oppression. In many ways, we treat Independence Day like the Jews in Jesus’ day (and even to this day) remember the exodus from Egypt. Now here is the issue I have: No matter what position you hold in regards to being a Christian and war (I happen to hold to nonviolence); I cannot justify glorifying the ‘wining’ of our independence from our friends across the pond, even if using ‘just war theory’ criteria. How can we celebrate that we killed thousands upon thousands of people (MANY OF WHICH WORSHIPED THE SAME GOD!) over the fact that they were taxing our mammon without giving us representation in parliament or whatever?!!!!! This seems just plain wrong!!!!! Yes, there might be some kind of justice issue here, but the greater injustice to taxation without representation is the violent killing of our brethren.

Let me add that I love fireworks, BBQ’s, and any good excuse to hang out with friends. I also love that I have had the privilege to grow up in this country. So, I am not “anti-America” by any stretch; I am happy that I live here. What I think is that as Christians we need to recalculate our past and allow the Gospel to be critical of certain things we now celebrate. Is it honorable to kill because we didn’t like being taxed? I think the Jesus who says “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” would probably say “no.” Mark Noll, who is a historian that is read in almost every seminary across America, said the following in an article he wrote for Christianity Today about just war and the Revolutionary War:

During this confused misunderstanding, the Bible was used as a reservoir of images, moral principles, and types. Many sermons in America (and some in Britain) supported revolt, while a few in America and England argued against it. Serious exegesis, however, of what would seem to us like the relevant passages (such as Romans 13) was very rare. Rather, it was much more common for patriots to liken George III to Pharaoh and George Washington to Moses, or to depict the conflict as a struggle between the Woman and the Beast of Revelation 12. Patriots and Loyalists were both much more likely to add scriptural authority to political reasoning rooted in some other ideology than they were to attempt reasoning from the ground up on the basis of Scripture.



What is quite interesting is that Noll properly points out that the “Just War” principles of St. Augustine were not followed as criteria for the war for Independence. This war was not rooted in scripture, but in a false political agenda. And why was it false? Noll reminds us of how history played itself out: “Americans fought a war to gain the kind of freedom that Canada, New Zealand, and Australia were simply given after not too many decades.” Our nation, in other words, killed other Christians in order to gain independence that would have eventually been granted to them in a “just” fashion, had the founding fathers not been so trigger-happy over issues of taxation and other conspiracy theories.

The most popular rebuttal to what I have said (based on a similar post last year) will probably have to do with the issue of freedom. We have freedom today because of this and other wars. I think that this is a false assumption. I challenge the idea that my freedom to choose came from our independence. I am free to choose because God has given me a free will. Just like the Christians who suffered persecution during the first century and so on, I have the ability to choose because of the grace of God. Even if we had not separated ourselves from England, most likely it would have turned out pretty good. As was already pointed out – Canada never revolted, and they are doing just fine (socialism aside, they have basic freedom).

Is there anyone out there who agrees with me or am I just crazy [if you disagree take it easy on the crazy comments (-; ]? If you agree, why? If not, tell me your thoughts on this historic day and Christian biblical theology.

The End of Men? — A Hard Look at the Future

By Albert Mohler.

What does it mean for large sectors of our society to become virtual matriarchies? How do we prepare the church to deal with such a world while maintaining biblical models of manhood and womanhood? …The real issue here is not the end of men, but the disappearance of manhood.

TUESDAY, JUNE 22, 2010
Is our postmodern, postindustrial society simply better suited to women than to men? Hanna Rosin makes the case for this claim in the current issue of The Atlantic, and her article demands close attention. Men, she argues, are simply falling behind women in almost every sector of cultural influence and economic power. This shift, she understands, is nothing less than unprecedented in the span of human history.

Rosin begins her article with the fact that sex-selection technologies in the West are now more often used to select a preference for girls than for boys, reversing the historical trend. Why? She explains: “Man has been the dominant sex since, well, the dawn of mankind. But for the first time in human history, that is changing—and with shocking speed. Cultural and economic changes always reinforce each other. And the global economy is evolving in a way that is eroding the historical preference for male children, worldwide.”

Rosin’s article is well documented and forceful in argument. The bottom line is the claim that the trend and trajectory of the global economy have for some time now been headed toward female skills and talents. At the most basic level, this means a shift from physical strength to intellectual energies and education. At the next level, it also means a shift from leadership models more associated with males toward the nurturing leadership more associated with women. In any event, the changes are colossal.

The Return of Patriarchy? Fatherhood and the Future of Civilization
Nothing has brought this into clearer sight than the current global recession. In the United States, the recession has been dubbed a “he-cession,” due to the fact that three-quarters of the 8 million jobs lost were lost by men. Even more devastating to men, most of these jobs will not return, given the vast changes the recession has brought about. “The worst-hit industries were overwhelmingly male and deeply identified with macho: construction, manufacturing, high finance. Some of these jobs will come back,” Rosin predicts, “but the overall pattern of dislocation is neither temporary nor random.”

It’s not just the United States, either. In Iceland, Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir (the first openly-lesbian head of state) ran her campaign for office with a pledge to end the “age of testosterone.”

But the picture in the United States is particularly striking. For the first time in the nation’s history, women now outnumber men in the workforce. The working class, “which has long defined our notions of masculinity,” Rosin argues, is “slowly turning into a matriarchy, with men increasingly absent from the home and women making all the decisions.”

Why? “The postindustrial economy is indifferent to men’s size and strength. The attributes that are most valuable today — social intelligence, open communication, the ability to sit still and focus — are, at a minimum, not predominately male.”

Rosin actually makes two main points, and both demand attention. The first has to do with what is taking place in working class families. The matriarchy Rosin describes is now coming more fully into view. In many cases, it is husbands and fathers who are unemployed and wives and mothers who have paying jobs. This means a huge shift in male function, and many men just exit the family process or forfeit decision making. Rosin refers to these men as “casualties of the end of the manufacturing era.” Across the nation, older men are increasingly unemployed and younger men face little hope of a job in this sector — the virtual birthright of previous generations.

Of the fifteen job classifications marked for future growth, men dominate only two: janitorial services and computer engineering. The same pattern is now extending to managerial and professional roles, where women currently hold 51.4 percent of jobs. Why are women gaining and men falling behind? Rosin explains:

They make up 54 percent of all accountants and hold about half of all banking and insurance jobs. About a third of America’s physicians are now women, as are 45 percent of associates in law firms—and both those percentages are rising fast. A white-collar economy values raw intellectual horsepower, which men and women have in equal amounts. It also requires communication skills and social intelligence, areas in which women, according to many studies, have a slight edge. Perhaps most important—for better or worse—it increasingly requires formal education credentials, which women are more prone to acquire, particularly early in adulthood.


Beyond the numbers, Rosin reports that office environments and corporate cultures are adapting to women, as well, reshaped by the gender transformation of the last twenty-five years.

And yet, even after all this, Rosin makes her most powerful argument when she looks, not at the current workforce, but at what is happening on America’s college and university campuses. There, she explains, “we can see with absolute clarity that in the coming decades the middle class will be dominated by women.”

She continues:

We’ve all heard about the collegiate gender gap. But the implications of that gap have not yet been fully digested. Women now earn 60 percent of master’s degrees, about half of all law and medical degrees, and 42 percent of all M.B.A.s. Most important, women earn almost 60 percent of all bachelor’s degrees—the minimum requirement, in most cases, for an affluent life. In a stark reversal since the 1970s, men are now more likely than women to hold only a high-school diploma. “One would think that if men were acting in a rational way, they would be getting the education they need to get along out there,” says Tom Mortenson, a senior scholar at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education. “But they are just failing to adapt.”

While many theories to explain this pattern have been offered, no one can argue with the numbers. Boys are clearly falling behind girls in both educational achievement and aspiration. The long-term consequences of this shift are momentous and virtually impossible to reverse in a single generation. This pattern has vast implications for marital prospects, since women express a strong preference to marry a man of equal or greater educational and professional potential. The collapse of the marriage culture within the working class, Rosin argues, is due to the fact that women are in control and have set expectations “too high for the men around them to meet.”

Hanna Rosin’s article is not the first salvo of information on these troubling trends, but the fact that The Atlantic chose her essay as a cover story is itself evidence of how this phenomenon is taking hold of attention, even among the elites.

For Christians, the importance of this article is even greater. God intended for men to have a role as workers, reflecting God’s own image in their vocation. The most important issue here is not the gains made by women, but the displacement of men. This has undeniable consequences for these men and for everyone who loves and depends on them.

The failure of boys to strive for educational attainment is a sign of looming disaster. Almost anyone who works with youth and young adults will tell you that, as a rule, boys are simply not growing up as fast as girls. This means that their transition to manhood is stunted, delayed, and often incomplete. Meanwhile, the women are moving on.

What does it mean for large sectors of our society to become virtual matriarchies? How do we prepare the church to deal with such a world while maintaining biblical models of manhood and womanhood?

The elites are awakening to the fact that these vast changes point to a very different future. Christians had better know that matters far more important than economics are at stake. These trends represent nothing less than a collapse of male responsibility, leadership, and expectations. The real issue here is not the end of men, but the disappearance of manhood.

What makes a good sermon?

Some say that it doesn't matter how you deliver it, the sermon's power is in the message.

I beg to differ. I can say that Jesus saves in such a dull way, as to look that I don't mean it at all.

Haddon Robinson gives us some pointers as to what makes a good sermon.

Calvin Vs Servet in the Afterlife

A funny cartoon, which I think says a lot of true.

Servet was a heretic by denying the Trinity, yet, he didn't deserve to be killed or to be exiled.

This proved that even the Reformers were victim of what they condemned in the Catholic Church, of intolerance.

Sound like the age of relativism started there and then.

The Joy the endures for ever

The Joy the endures for ever

Luke 10:20

Intro

Joy, or happiness, could be said it’s the one thing most looked for in our culture, and for that matter, throughout all of history. Nobody likes living a place where war takes place, famine, hardship, or difficulty. All of us strive to have a better, more pleasant life. It was Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the USA, and the one who wrote the American Constitution, that wrote the following:”We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

These three rights form the idea of the “American dream”. However, commentators are saying that that dream is more and more difficult to obtain, because even though Americans may have life and liberty, they don’t enjoy their lives as much as they used to.

Today we see how Jesus deals with the disciple’s misplaced source of joy. It is interesting to see that this passage is found in the gospel of Luke, the gospel that is considered the gospel of joy, due to its many references to joy, chairos (in the passage, and the other forms of Joy in the Greek found in this gospel) more than the other 3. Jesus gives the disciples, and us today, a corrective as what it is that we should consider as the source of our joy, a joy that does not change at all, but is assured for us in heaven.

The wrong sources of Joy

Sometimes we read Jesus and we feel that he may be downplaying his disciples. He just sent them to preach, and they bring a good report. All the things that he has commanded to them in the previous verses, they have accomplished. Yet, Jesus dismisses their reason for feeling joyful. Why????

We all have our moments of joy. This morning, most of us have our families with us, and that’s a source of joy. Do you remember how you felt last Christmas, at the table, sharing with your family, that’s a time of joy. Kids, when they are playing their Xbox, PS3, or Wii games, and finished them, they experience joy at having ‘clocked’ the game. When you finally bought your house and moved in, were you full of joy that now you had a home of your own??

If you think about it, all that you have accomplished in life, has been due to the Lord’s grace to you. Even minute things, it is the Lord that has given you the skill, and intelligence, the ability to accomplish this or that task. Just as the disciples were given authority to do miracles, we have been given abilities to accomplish things in our lives from the Lord. But just as the disciples got carried away by the success of their mission, you may also fall victim to that temptation, of measuring your happiness to what YOU have accomplished. This will be condemned by Jesus again in the gospel, cf. The parable of the Rich Fool, cf. Lk. 12:19 and the Parable of the Rich man and Lazarus, cf. Lk 16:19.

What is then, is the source of joy for us Christians??

The rightful source of Joy/Happiness.

It is amazing for me to thing that my mane, Luis Jovel, is written somewhere in a book in heaven. This idea comes from the Old Testament, especially Daniel 12:1. Jesus is telling his disciples, and us today, that our sources of joy, are but temporary. How long will your house stand? How many Christmas will you be able to get your family together for Christmas, or for any other occasion?? Kids, when you finish a game, how long do you have that joy in you? I have finished many games, and done many things that were joyful at that moment, but now, are just memories, and sometimes, I have forgotten them!!!

Jesus is showing us a better way, the real source of joy and happiness. It’s not something that we pursue, as Thomas Jefferson suggested, but something that is given to us by God through Jesus, if only we believe in him!!! As I mentioned last week, not all human beings are children of God, despite of popular culture, but only those who receive him and believe in his name that he gives them the right to become children of God, cf. Jn. 1:12.

Conclusion

Let us therefore, get our right perspective as to the source of our happiness. Our successes and good times will pass away, and will be forgotten, or at best, become good memories. But let your joy’s source be in the knowledge that no matter what happens in your life, you can be assure, that your names are written in heaven, and no matter what happens on earth, be it good or bad, nobody can deny you that joy, ever.

Nehemiah 8:10b Do not grieve, for the joy of the LORD is your strength."

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