The Difference in Jesus

Church joy, obedience, and freedom of heart are different from what this world may think

I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

Psalm 27:13

I tried to share this word with a loved one last night. I hope she heard what I said.

But, in case she didn't, and in case anyone else needs to hear, this is something on my heart today, after a very difficult few weeks.

First of all, the healing and understanding that comes with salvation does often take time in life, but it's also immediate or instant.

The Holy Spirit painstakingly gave us the Bible, working through one people and another people over centuries, recording trial, error, and victory in Christ alike.

Not only does the Bible record show us how salvation immediately saves us, how the love of Jesus immediately opens our understanding and gives us new hope for life (even life everlasting through Heaven); but salvation speaks directly to us as individuals, blessing us to understand rescue and freedom in Jesus, immediately.

But how does the freedom of Christian salvation square with issues of slavery? How on earth have the oppressed, historically, understood life in Christ when oppression has been extremely contrary to knowing Jesus and the freedom of salvation in Him?

The short answer is that, even though salvation in Jesus is immediate in the life of a person who gets saved, circumstances are often slow to be reconciled with that salvation.

And, indeed, fruit of the Holy Spirit is patience.

When we are in the habit of waiting on spiritual outcomes, we're easily contented with such as we have. And we don't look forward to anything terribly fleshly.

To wait on Jesus is to wait on something spiritual, even the promise of salvation for children and grandchildren.

That's how many who were slaves in America were able to have joy and freedom of heart in Christ, trusting Heaven's promises, as did Abraham.

"WAIT! on the Lord," the pastor repeatedly shouted above the pew.

When we're waiting, in Jesus, we're waiting on Heaven Himself, and we're expecting our children's repentance, which is obedience.

Some people may get confused about that. Because, the Bible says things like, "Children, obey your parents in all things," which, to the lost, could mean going to get cigarettes for dad. But the HOLY Spirit tells the faithful the true meaning. Jesus says we can't love mother or father more than Him, so Apostle Paul clarifies, "Obey your parents in the Lord."

In Jesus, our obedience is to knowing Him and the way that He counsels.

To help people survive the slavery of Paul's time, Paul counseled servants to, yes, be obedient to their earthly masters, but Paul didn't stop there.

The whole of what he said is to have the Holy Spirit, that Spirit of obedience to Heaven, in the tasks that you and your masters need completed in order to live in peace one with another; but do NOT serve in order to be "men-pleasers" (Colossians 3:22). Instead, serve in "singleness of (Christian) heart" with those who you are working with, with reverence or fear of Heaven. "And whatsoever you do, do wholeheartedly, as for the sake of Heaven, and not for men" (Colossians 3:23, paraphrased).

In Jesus, there's a difference in the reason and in the ways we serve even our own selves.

In Jesus, I work for my health, that I may serve another day, and that I may see my loved ones and others break with sinning one day. In Jesus, choosing not to sin anymore is where our freedom of heart really is.

God is Good, So Choose Good

Holiness is the opposite of perversion

... Blessed is the womb that bare thee ... .

Luke 11:27

In so many ways, we're living during a tumultuous, evil time in this world. Faith in Jeesus is the way many of us manage to hope, but there are so many challenges to faith that even some faithful are falling away from those things the Bible speaks to us.

We would be better off if we would only remember a preacher named Paul, who was saved by the Holy Spirit while he was persecuting Christians.

Paul had a revelation, a prophecy, that applies to us today. He said, "For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables" (2 Timothy 4:3-4).

Sadly, that makes me think of one sister who came to me after church and, just out of the blue, said I should read such and such a book of the Bible. She wasn't saying I should do so out of the Holy Spirit's call. Instead, she was lusting after something she thought the Bible was condoning. So, she was urging me to read what she had read, with the expectation that I would follow the lusty gossiping way of telling the scriptures.

Far worse than homespun gossip about what the Bible means by one thing or another, some study groups are actually teaching perverse meanings instead of the wholesome, whole truth of Heaven's word to us.

Yes, it's true that the Bible mentions childbirth, as well as nursing during infancy, many times. In the Christian sense, that's a wholesome thing. The Bible values childbirth, and values the mother as nurturer during infancy. But that value was never lewd.

The Hebrew people of times when the Bible word was being written down didn't turn something Heaven-given into anything perverse. They valued mothers: not nudity, and not perversion.

They were accustomed to simple conversation that exalted motherhood.

"Blessed is the womb that bare thee ... ," one woman cried out to Jesus, ironically at a time when He was rebuking evil perversion (Luke 11:23-28).

1 Peter 1:15 says, "Just as He who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do."

"For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers ... ." (2 Timothy 4:3)

Thank the Lord (thank Heaven!) for salvation in Jesus, who brings us away from wrong teaching and grows us in light and truth.

Even in Old Testament times, prophets could see the light of Jesus.

"The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. He will be eating curds and honey when he knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, for before the boy knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, the land of the two kings you dread will be laid waste. ... In that day, a person will keep alive a young cow and two goats. And because of the abundance of the milk they give, there will be curds to eat. All who remain in the land will eat curds and honey," said the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 7:14-16, 7:21-22) about the time of Jesus' birth, which happened more than 700 years after Isaiah's speech.

In true and wholesome context, we see Jesus was old enough to eat honey and something like cottage cheese when he was weaned away from being nursed by his mother.

... But why does the prophet call the food that nature provides "good," and the food of infancy "evil"? It's because, while motherhood is a blessing, that initial bond isn't good to cleave to. Heaven never meant the human condition to be like insects that spend a lifetime gathering pollen from flowers! (So don't even go there, you fable tellers!)

As to why the Apostle Paul rebuked adults, who weren't mature in their understanding, by saying they needed the "meat" instead of the "milk" of God's word: That's an expression!!!!

How many times did we hear, as children, "You have to crawl before you walk"? No one who said "You have to crawl" actually expected adults to stop walking and begin physically crawling!

So, Paul compared adults to babies. It's not because they were physically doing as babies. It's because they didn't have the spiritual appetite that they needed in order to grow strong in Christ.

At no time, until this week, had I ever come close to thinking Paul meant anything perverse. (Thank you, Jesus.) And it's almost a vexation (spiritual harassment) to have to think like someone else about such a simple word of faith in order to try to reason somebody back into Jesus, back into Heaven.

Lord, help.

Thank Jesus for salvation. Thank Jesus for Heaven's way of delivering us from sins of the past, for giving us grace to be justified, meaning made right in Jesus (Romans 3:24-26). As some church elders used to say, "He clothed me in my right mind."

Verse of the Day!

Eating from the Right Tree

Living through the knowledge of good and evil isn't a good thing

The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

Revelation 22:2

First of all, I have to say there's no sin in highlighting verses, and parts of verses, from the book of Revelation, the way I have above.

Some people have fits when there are pieces of Revelation seemingly in isolation, because the prophecy of Revelation says not to remove anything from the prophecy. But I know that that means not to remove something from the text in an effort to suppress the prophecy, or in an effort to mislead people. That does not mean to avoid talking about a scripture from the prophecy, keeping everything in a right context with the prophecy.

In the case of Revelation 22:2, above, the prophecy is about the "leaves" or pages of the Bible. The scripture says the Tree of Life has leaves that are for the healing of nations: those leaves are the Bible's New Testament.

I know, because we have life and eternal life in Christ through the New Testament; and the Bible's book of Genesis tells us that eating from Tree of Life that Heaven provides is to live forever.

But we also know, from Genesis, that there's a type of tree that isn't good to eat from. Genesis calls that type of tree the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

That does not mean that Christians are not supposed to know about good and evil. We're just not supposed to live off of knowing evil, the way Satan does.

To make that more plain: I now know that we cannot eat the fruit that grows from the flower of potato plants. That fruit is bad, or a little poisonous to us as humans.

That fruit looks and smells exactly like a tiny tomato. But a tomato is good and healthy for us, and that potato fruit is not.

In order to know how to eat from a garden, I need to know that some fruits are bad or not edible, and that others are good to eat. There's nothing wrong with having that knowledge.

But I cannot use that knowledge to do harm. Spiritually speaking, THAT would be to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. When you know Heaven's instructions and willingly eat in wrongdoing, you do harm even to yourself.

Not eating from the knowledge of good and evil simply means not to try to live doing ANYTHING you know Heaven doesn't intend.

Heaven gives us plenty of plain good to eat from.

Always Consider Your Calling

A note to singer/songwriters

To you, O LORD, I lift up my soul.

Psalm 25:1

Psychology, today, is a fickle thing. Sometimes, it proves how awesome the one and only God of Heaven is. But, often, it's nearly an enemy to faith.

Just when I think I've found THE article to cite in support of magnifying our only Creator and Savior through music, the article takes a turn for almost evil!

One writer for a mainstream psychology magazine (not one of the scholarly journals) highlights how scientific studies hint that the human brain is meant to respond to music the same way birds were created to communicate in "song."

The writer says some birdsong is apparently romantic, meant to draw a mate, and there may be a similarly in us humans.

The writer even hints that the human brain may respond negatively to some sounds in music, just as certain sounds from one male bird to another may garner a fight between birds.

But, because that writer is somebody who feels we should all "experiment" with all kinds of music — instead of being "Pollyanna" about music — and says some melancholy music can be soothing, I can't cite that article in good conscience.

And I can't cite an article from a scholar who feels like jazz music is the stuff we're meant to live on. This man tells of how he went from club to club as a 19-year-old, soaking in jazz over a beer with friends. His life story is supposed to help all of us recognize jazz as balm for the soul. He loves programs that indoctrinate kids into loving jazz, kind of like others who write that bluesy music can improve students' sense of identity and well-being.

Thankfully, Heaven has shown me what a wrong path of life that is!

Admittedly, I made that same mistake as a young person, thinking jazz is so full of expression that kids should learn from it. Today, while I think there are some things we all can learn from jazz, I'm thankful to have divorced myself from a strong interest in it.

After I got saved, after I realized my salvation in Christ, one of the things I happily turned to was the joyful sounds of church songs — not just joyful songs from my childhood, but new ones, too (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ey0P2nV-Mhg).

Having that new life in Christ, I just wanted to rejoice. There was even a new song at that time that kind of expressed my heartfelt farewell to years when I'd given my heart over to jazz (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIIrLMQ-B6E).

Scholars tend not to want to say this, but based on my life's experience, I know the depressed brain gets trained to seek certain sounds for solace. There is a reason "blue notes" (notes that are bent between major and minor musical notes), coupled with slow rhythms, are in country music, bluegrass, the blues, jazz, and gospel music. Blue notes may well have their genesis in the anguished songs sung by Antebellum slaves, and that may be a wonderful fact for nostalgia; but blue notes coupled with slow rhythms seem to almost universally express sadness.

As a child sang in a commercial for a macaroni-and-cheese product, "I've got the blues."

I'm convinced that musics that have a lot of blue notes can even train the brain to accept sadness as joy. From a spiritual standpoint, that can be sometimes appropriate. But it's not good as a steady musical diet. And, in context of blues expression, it may not be so good to bring up children on.

One scholarly article, written by Swathi Swaminathan and E. Glen Schellenberg of the University of Toronto, says that children don't begin to distinguish happiness from sadness in song (other than through tempo) until after around age six, but that happiness and sadness in song is almost universally understood (regardless of anyone's spoken language or nationality) as people gain in age.

So, maybe it's a fair idea, on my part, to say that bringing up children on lilting rhythms coupled with blue notes is kind of setting them up to seek sadness in life.

One study links the way we perceive life to how we respond to music, noting that people who listened to "happy" music tended to see neutral facial expressions as happy, while people listening to "sad" music tended to see neutral facial expressions as sad. Wow.

Similarly, one of the first articles that I said I cannot cite admits that musical experimentation helps people create a sense of reality that transcends what we see.

Again, from a faith perspective, that can be good. But that's not so good, if the result is going to be kids seeking a shade of life that Heaven doesn't intend.

The Bible says raise up a child in how to live life. Give young minds seeds of joy that can begin to grow at some point in their Christian walk.

I know that, when I got saved, I was thankful for seeds of joy from my childhood! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3u4hftALkDM

Amen.

***

Revelation 15:3, KJV: And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints.

Colossians 3:16, KJV: Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.

Colossians 3:23, KJV: And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men.

Matthew 26:30-32, KJV: And when they had sung an hymn, they went out into the mount of Olives. Then saith Jesus unto them, All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad. But after I am risen again, I will go before you into Galilee.

Psalm 30:11, KJV: Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing: thou hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness ... .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=BBe-ocBcTnc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7owFiihXgg

About this last song:

The love of Jesus never will ignore our young people. Heaven sees every one. And Jesus hears their heart, their cry. ... The Bible says Heaven has a plan for every one who is believing on Jesus:
to bring each one forward, out of the dark, into the light of Christ;
to call each one His Lamb of God (even though Heaven knows every name of birth!).

***

Postlude
About my cry of heart for our young people:

It seems like a thousand years ago now, but I remember being lost and in the dark. I remember going to the club and actually thinking the club was a good place and that I wouldn't mind if Jesus or someone from the church were to meet me there. There was music there that must have been orchestrated in Heaven, I felt, because so much talent went into the music. There was a real hug there, people who cared. And, one time, there was agreement in laughter.

But, then, amazing grace how sweet the sound! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Arutp6bfDHo What a revelation it was that an adult choir sang "I'm Going to Sing When the Spirit Says Sing" (in church), and another adult choir sang "Jesus, What a Wonderful Child" (in a shopping mall one Christmas), at a time when I was trying, deliberately, to find my way back to the the Lord. There had been an interim pastor who had begun to lead us back. He left us, but not without sparking, in me, an awareness that I needed Jesus.

I was lost but I got found.

All over the world, there are masses of people familiar with the song Amazing Grace: both Muslims and Christians. But does anyone stop to consider what it really means to have been lost?

In Jesus, being lost means you do belong to Heaven, but it means you've simply strayed away.

Sometimes, God has a purpose in allowing people to stray (Psalm 107:40).

Moses fled into a wilderness in an obvious way. Nebuchadnezzar went crazy and was sent into a wilderness in an obvious way. Isaiah contracted a venereal disease from "one night's [ungodly] pleasure," which he lamented before going crazy and straying into an obvious wilderness. But, sometimes, the straying isn't so obvious. And, sometimes, the straying involves whole flocks, who are trying to console one another through very worldly means [think about the underground illustration from one of the Matrix movies] instead of turning, one by one, back to the voice of Jesus.

Lord, help us.

What Does the Bible Say About ...

Malice

Live as free, but don't use your liberty to be malicious, but live! as the servants of Heaven.

1 Peter 2:16 amplification

Live as if your're completely free, but don't use the flag of freedom as a drape behind which to do evil-hearted things, to anyone! But live in faith or service to Christ, the Savior.

1 Peter 2:16 testimonial