September 16, 2017 - "An Illustration . . . "

Chaplain’s Corner

Saturday, September 16, 2017

An Illustration…

Greetings, Patriots!

Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, was known for using illustrations when He spoke. Illustrations are a great way to make a point. I would like to use an illustration to help make my point today. If you want to tear it apart, you will be able to, because an illustration is not the same thing as the life lesson it is supposed to be making. So, please don’t beat me up over talking about God being in a situation of divorce... that is not the point I am making, it is a result of my illustration to show our relationship with Him as His beloved children.

Many, many of you reading this have experienced the joy of having children, and the pain of divorce. I am specifically going to talk to the men here, but the life lesson applies to the women, too. Say your ex-wife finds another man to share her life with, and now your children, who are living with her, have another man influencing their lives. Yes, you get to see them off and on, and are able to be an influence, to a degree, but they are around him more and more, and they are heavily influenced by the way he treats them and the life lessons he chooses to expose them to, as opposed to the life lessons you choose to expose them to. Soon, you see a real problem arising... you are not on the same page and you find yourself at odds with the other guy when it comes to how to raise your children.

Being the adult, you know and understand that your children are immature, and they cannot make adult decisions on their own. They need to be nurtured into maturity, and they need to understand that life decisions come with consequences. You have to say “no” to them sometimes, and you have to appear to be the “bad guy” sometimes when you will not give in to their wants and desires. You, being the adult, know that sometimes you have to break your child’s heart for his own good. You know that your job in life is not to be his “best friend,” but to be his Dad. Being a Dad means sometimes having to be “the bad guy” in the eyes of our children when we make rules and decisions for their own good. Being children, they many times do not understand that when we say “no” it is for their own good because we know the tragic results of letting them have their own way all of the time.

Now, here is the conundrum. They now have another man in their life. Perhaps this man seems like he just wants to make them happy. Perhaps he seems like a good guy, who genuinely just wants to be a good parent to them. However, he also starts contradicting the life lessons you are seeking to instill in your children, and soon he seems to be constantly manipulating every situation to make you look bad and make himself look good to them. Soon, you find them not really wanting to spend the weekends with you. You find them distant when they are with you. You find them complaining when you have to insist on them following the rules, and you eventually start hearing about how “great” the “other” guy is in their lives. He never says no. He never enforces any rules on them. He acts like their best friend and seems to care about them. But the problem is that you see them developing into real troublemakers, and you know that if something doesn’t change very soon, irreparable damage could be done. You see your children becoming spoiled little brats. You see that they think everything in life is all about them. You see them becoming lazy, not feeling like they have to do any chores around the house, and they feel entitled to anything and everything they desire in life.

You are standing back, appalled that they are turning out so badly even though you constantly try to keep them in check. Your frustration mounts as you see this guy constantly taking the things you have said and twisting your words out of context to make you look bad. You see him constantly calling into question everything you say and do, and doing whatever he can to make you look like a bad guy to your own children. You cry out in horror as your own children start to mimic him and say those very same horrible things about you and they start to look at you with derision and sometimes it even seems like they actually hate you. You see them rebel against not only you personally but everything you stand for and embrace as good. They figure that if “Dad likes it, it must be wrong.” You cry in frustration as you keep reaching out to them, trying to save them from this developing train wreck, and they do not want to hear anything from you.

On the one hand, as an adult, you realize that you cannot just go over to their house and beat up on this guy that is ruining your children. They don’t see him as a bad guy and a real threat, so if you simply punch him out or do something blatant to remove him from the picture, they will simply see you as the bad guy and you will appear to be proving everything bad he said about you to be true. Your only real option is to find a way to make him show himself for what he is and to be true to yourself throughout it all. You have to love your children no matter how they treat you and be there for them when they eventually see him fall off his pedestal. At some point in their lives, they will finally start to realize that they have been conned all along, and will at some point, hopefully, start to see the real truth about you and your undiminished love for them. Hopefully, they will not have to suffer too much in the transition, but you do know that there will be pain involved. You cry in your heart that your children, who you love so much, have to suffer because someone has lied about you and manipulated their feelings about you.

This is my illustration of the situation that we, as God’s children, find ourselves in today. He created us and loves us, and wants us to be happy, but He also knows what is best for us, and He has established limitations on our freedoms to preserve the status quo as we live our lives in His good graces. He has given us the ability to choose to obey, but that does not absolve us from the consequences of our deciding to ignore His statutes. There really is such a thing as moral absolutes, and He is the Supreme Author of morality, and He has the right to decide right and wrong, good and bad, moral and immoral. It is up to us to trust that whenever He says “no” to our desires to cross a line, it is for our own good. In our infantile, immature state of mind, we sometimes think that He is being rude or cruel in denying us certain carnal pleasures. It is up to us to realize that He has standards and expects us to live up to and support them.

A real problem we see in our lives today is a trend in society to be “politically correct” and not stand on moral absolutes. People who want to live for their flesh and carnal desires of the flesh do not want to hear God or His representatives calling them out on their aberrant behavior. Some of them go so far as to say that God is love, and He loves us no matter what we do or what our lifestyle is. They are partially correct. God is Love personified. And yes, God loves us just as we are. The problem with our thinking is that we actually think that He has no standards or moral absolutes that He wants us to uphold. Some people actually think that as far as God goes, his position is: “Anything goes!” To think and say and promote such a sick and demented view of our Perfect God is a travesty and pure sacrilege. The people who keep telling you what you want to hear to support your carnal lifestyle are not your friends and do not care about you. They are pawns of the devil himself, whether they mean to be or not. They, perhaps unwittingly, are seeking to destroy you and your precious relationship with the only One Who really and truly loves you unconditionally. They seek to separate you from the very One Who wants to give you the very best life you can have now, and forever. They question the validity of God’s authority to determine what is right and wrong, and they promote the idea that you are capable of being your own god in your life. Does that sound a bit familiar? Do you remember the Garden of Eden and the original sin? Do you remember the original lie as told by the wicked one? He didn’t come right out and say evil things about God. However, he did call into question whether the things God had said were even true. He planted seeds of doubt in Eve’s heart and mind. He told her to look upon the fruit and see that it was “good to eat.” He questioned whether God even had the right to say “no” about eating that piece of fruit. He made Eve feel as though she were missing out on something by not eating the fruit. He said God was trying to keep her from being happy by not allowing her to eat that fruit. He was encouraging her to be her own “god” deciding for herself what was good and what was evil. She was thoroughly deceived, and we know where that got us, don’t we?

Today, our children are being educated in schools that want to expose them to a worldly agenda of acceptance of sin in all of its forms. We are being bombarded with every perversion known to man, and we are being told not only to accept these things and the people who practice them, but we must actually celebrate the sin! We are being told to hold sin and perversion in high esteem, and if we do not, then we are actually haters and evil. Our God in heaven cries tears over us as He sees us descend further and further into the abyss, and He keeps sending us reminders and signs to turn back to Him and the purity of His worship. Blinded by the adversary, people of this wicked world seek their own pleasures and seek to take us down with them. They say that misery loves company. These people in society that reject the virtues of accepting God as the moral compass for our lives are certainly miserable. They seek the temporary pleasure of sin, while at the same time succumbing to the misery of wallowing in their own mire. They have no real joy. They are not truly happy. They have no real peace in their hearts.  But being enslaved to their own desires, they reject the idea of accepting God’s free gift of forgiveness and atonement. They reject the justification that comes through the accepting of His ways, standards, and morality. Some make the mistake of thinking that if they say a “sinner’s prayer” and claim a spiritual rebirth, then they may actually be “saved” from themselves and their own demise, and yet at the same time make no attempt to turn around from the very life of sin that was killing them to begin with. Remember: you cannot serve two masters. Choose one. Choose right, and live forever with the “Daddy” (Abba) Who loves you and seeks only what is good for you and your eternal happiness. Choose wrong, and suffer the consequences of your decision.

We all have baggage and skeletons in our closet. None of us was born without sin, and we all have said and/or done things in our lives that we want to forget about. We all suffer shame before a righteous and perfect God. All of our holiest works are as filthy rags before a perfect and holy God. We have nothing to be proud of. However, we are loved by Him, and He seeks to save us all from ourselves. Sometimes that means saying “no” when we want Him to say “yes.” God does not change to fit our desires. His standards are set in stone and are from everlasting to everlasting. Though He does not change, He can and will help us, through His Holy Spirit, to change to meet His standards. When a person accepts that they are lost without Jesus in their life, and they humbly come before Him in prayer and ask Him to forgive them for their sins and to take over their life, that person is vowing to turn around and walk away from sin and into the arms of Jesus.

I am begging you all to read this scripture and pay close attention to it. Pay close attention to the kinds of people who will NOT be a part of God’s Kingdom, but take courage and find joy in the final verse:

 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 New International Version (NIV)

“9 Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men[a] 10 nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”

Food for thought, brothers and sisters. Please remember that we are to love the sinner and hate the sin.

God bless you, every one, and:
God Bless America!
Stephen King
Chaplain@3upi.com