Being Ungrateful

"In everything give thanks; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus."

1 Thessalonians 5:18

I should plaster this all over my room, my books, my things, my everything; because I obviously still have not learned this verse in all its profoundity and yet simple and truthful demand, to give thanks in EVERYTHING. I realized today thanks to the wisdom words of my good friend Tomassetti that I am such and ungrateful fool. It was one of those moments one of the youth leaders from my church described a few Saturdays ago, when the little things in this life can completely throw us off focus. Instead of setting our eyes/minds/hearts to Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith, we set them on this earth, on our pride, on ourselves. Suddenly we are all puffed up, we are the victims, we are the wronged ones, and now the world has to serve ME. And oh how it hurts when with the Sword of Truth we are popped like a balloon and we fall right back down to realize that:

"All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away." - Isaiah 64:6
"So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, 'We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.'" Luke 17:10

And why these two realities? Because both of them, our righteous acts and our obedience, lead us to think that we are somehow deserving of any of the blessings God bestows upon us.
And finally another, extra-scriptural I might add, word of wisdom to mortify the pride in all of us, especially in me:

"Beggars can't be choosers"

But even in this hurtful, pride-mortifying, sin-convicting moment I must be thankful to God for He answered last night's prayer that he would work on my pride, and because He as my Heavenly Father loves me enough to discipline me.

Again:

"In everything give thanks; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus."

1 Thessalonians 5:18

I leave this now as one of those examples in the Bible of what NOT to do: never be ungrateful, never think that just because the Lord has chosen and saved you and blessed you with His Holy Spirit and working in you that in any way shape or form you deserve any of it because you know what? It's by Grace that you have been saved through faith and this not your own doing, it is the gift of God not a result of works, so that no one may boast."

If all you wanted were lemons and God gave you a lemon tree seed, GIVE THANKS!

Fallen Humanity

Something happened a few days ago, two satellites crashed and it just made me think and chucke for a little bit how we are soooo stubborn/fallen/sinful. Millions of dollars are spent looking out into the universe and we are so dense that we have missed the obvious. We are taught how far the planets are from each other and from the moon, the size of our planet and the size of the sun and moons, we are taught how the earth orbits in an elliptical rotation around the sun and how all planets in our solar system orbit the sun in that way. We are taught all about constellations, stars, gravity, supernovas and all about the universe and how it ticks. But we have missed the obvious, seeing we did not see, and hearing we did not understand. The universe works in perfect motion like a clock, we orbit around the sun with other 7 (8 if you still view pluto as a planet) other planets, moons orbit around each planet, there is a belt of asteroids not far from us with asteroids orbiting around our sun and some orbiting around us and in 10,000 years of recorded history that we know of none of the planets have crashed with each other or the sun, no dangerous asteroid has crashed and destroyed our earth, our moon hasn't fallen off of orbit.
We have an amazing God who claims that in Him all things hold together (Col 1:17) and the evidence to prove it, and here come these fallen human beings create objects and send them out into space that they may orbit our earth, and a century has yet to pass and already two satellites have crashed with one another, now endangering a lot of the very expensive satellites that are out there orbiting our planet, even one with people in it.
The saddest part of all is that millions of people have placed their trust in these fallen human beings.

⁵Thus says the LORD:"Cursed is the man who trusts in man
and makes flesh his strength,
whose heart turns away from the LORD.
Jeremiah 17:5

Twilight

1/3/09 (Sorry I was just not going to update all the verbs to past tense)
Yes you read the title correctly. Today after not having been to the movies in like a gazillion years, I decided to go with some of my friends I know from another church. I did not know which movie we were going to watch but trusted in the wisdom of my brethren. When we got there I inquired as to which movie we would be watching and to my surprise found that it would be Twilight. Since I was already there and there were three others already waiting in line to go in I chose to go in as well.

1. Why on earth would any Christian like this movie? Granted, there were some scenes that were funny/cool/ok/great.
But why on earth would I waste my "spiritual calories" on a movie that is so devoid of any nutritional value, spiritual-wise?

2. Yes the movie has no sex scenes, woohoo! but many parts of the movie were very sensual thus VERY uncomfortable.

3. Romantically speaking, ughhh people wake up! STOP drinking the Hollywood Koolaid! Love and Marriage as defined by Christ in the Bible is sooooo muchhh better than the oh-I-can't-live-without-you idolatrous love that Hollywood and most romantic movies offer!
4. Fine there was one thing about the movie that I liked: That the girl was willing to give up her life to save her mother.

I. On Chick-Flicks

I used to love romantic comedies, romantic dramas and everything that ever had to do with Romance, I'm a fool for it, or used to be. Among my favorites were When Harry Met Sally, The Notebook, Titanic, and many others. But as I continued growing, and studying God's word and learning about the true meaning of a biblical marriage, I began to see that the view of romance as presented in these movies was not only unbiblical but sinful.

Let's see one example, a common favorite:
a. The Notebook(Spoiler alert),

- Noah and the Girl have premarital sex also known as fornication.
- The girl (I forgot her name) is very disobedient to her parents all because of this boy (and people confuse that with love?)
- Finally it's time to go, because she was just there for the summer, and when she moves back to her hometown the relationship ends. She meets another man, gets engaged but after having seen a picture of Noah in the newspaper she has an urge to go see him, thinking if she gets married to the man she's with she'll spend forever wandering what if?
- STILL engaged, she goes back to the town where Noah lives, fornicates yet again, and when her mother arrives to confront her, she justifies her sin by reminding her mom of her past (the mom had in a sense gone through the same experience, falling in love with a poor man), only the way she did it is commonly called SASSING.
- She breaks off the engagement with her fiancé, and ends up with Noah.
- She writes a book about their love story since she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, and after they're really old Noah spends the rest of his days reading their love story to her trying to get her to remember him, she does and then forgets again and then dies, and he dies beside her.

RECAP:
Basically in this movie, their concept of love includes:
- Fornication
- Idolatrous love (Oh-I-just-can't-live-without-him)
- Infidelity
- Dishonoring of the parents

If you're a Christian and I just ruined your favorite movie for you, good I'm glad, trust me I'm doing it out of my love for you sister and brother. Love as described in the Bible is soooo much more glorious and with a much more glorious purpose than that which is depicted in the typical American sap romantic movies. Why expose our eyes and our very souls to movies, songs, among other things that will not glorify God nor edify us? Because of the fun of it? what fun? If people knew how harmful watching that stuff can be, they influence us without us even noticing. We may be saved but we are still fallen, and Satan never misses an opportunity to make us fall into sin.

II. TV Series

How about a common favorite TV show, which I too once liked: Grey's Anatomy
Here we have Meredith, a frustrated surgery Intern who met a guy at a bar, Derek, without knowing much about each other and after a few drinks they leave together and fornicate, they had what is commonly referred to as a one night stand. But she then finds that this man she had sex with is her Resident at the hospital she just got in for her internship. This is just the beginning of endless seasons of the following:
- Fornication
- Deceit
- Lesbianism
- Drunkenness
- Cohabitation
- Infidelity
And a myriad of other sinful activities. Please spare me the justification if you're about to say or are thinking that you're watching the series for your interest in medicine, sure there are interesting cases every once in a while but the LAST thing you will "learn" from this series is anything interesting about medicine.

Please take heed of what we are told here in 1 John 2:15-17

"Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world. 17 And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever."

Is it so hard for you to not watch these things? Then you need to ask yourself just how precious Christ is to you. As Christ becomes more precious to us and we delight in and meditate on His word daily the temporary trappings of this world will seem less appealing, less entertaining and less lovable to us.

Recomended Reading/watching: Book Review - Twilight by Tim Challies
For a biblical perspective on marriage and love and singleness: This Momentary Marriage by John Piper
A movie worth watching: Fireproof - The DVD comes out this month, 1/27/09

Present Day Evangelism

There are multitudes who wish to escape the Lake of fire!

(Arthur Pink, "Present Day Evangelism")

The nature of Christ's salvation, is woefully misrepresented by the present-day "evangelist." He announces a Savior from hell--rather than a Savior from sin! And that is why so many are fatally deceived, for there are multitudes who wish to escape the Lake of fire--who have no desire to be delivered from their carnality and worldliness!

The very first thing said of Him in the New Testament is--"You shall call His name Jesus--for He shall save His people...[not "from the wrath to come," but] from their sins" (Matthew 1:21). Christ is a Savior for those realizing something of the exceeding sinfulness of sin, who feel the awful burden of it on their conscience, who loathe themselves for it, and who long to be freed from its terrible dominion. He is a Savior for no others. Were He to "save from hell" those still in love with sin, He would be a minister of sin, condoning their wickedness and siding with them against God. What an unspeakably horrible and blasphemous thing, with which to charge the Holy One!

True, as the Christian grows in grace, he has a clearer realization of what sin is--rebellion against God; and a deeper hatred of and sorrow for it. But to think that one may be saved by Christ, whose conscience has never been smitten by the Spirit, and whose heart has not been made contrite before God--is to imagine something which has no existence in the realm of fact. "It is not the healthy who need a doctor--but the sick" (Matthew 9:12). The only ones who really seek relief from the great Physician, are those who are sick of sin--who long to be delivered from its God-dishonoring works, and its soul-defiling pollutions.

As Christ's salvation is a salvation from sin--from the love of it, from its dominion, from its guilt and penalty--then it necessarily follows, that the first great task and the chief work of the evangelist, is to preach upon SIN: to define what sin (as distinct from crime) really is, to show wherein its infinite enormity consists, to trace out its manifold workings in the heart, to indicate that nothing less than eternal punishment is its desert!

Ah, preaching upon sin will not make him popular nor draw the crowds, will it? No, it will not; and knowing this, those who love the praise of men more than the approbation of God, and who value their salary above immortal souls, trim their sales accordingly!