Ranked Choice Voting

I was a fan of ranked-choice voting (RCV) long before it was in the news.  (Voters and democracy would be better off with ranked-choice voting, October 18)

The biggest single reason for it is that when you have a third candidate in the race, they generally split the vote of one party and give the election to the other party.  Which is wrong.

A three-party race also allows a person to win with less than 50% of the vote, which is also wrong. 

For these reasons, we need RCV. 

BUT BEWARE. 

The people selling it today also often ask for non-partisan elections and primaries.  And THAT is wrong. 

The single most important piece of information we need on a candidate is their party alignment.  Most elections only focus on one or two issues, but that candidate in office will vote on a hundred different things and most often with their party. 

In non-partisan primaries and elections, party alignments are usually ignored or unknown.  Let the parties choose their own candidates.  We don’t need 3 candidates of one party in the general elections.  This is the only way we can have more real choices in our elections.

So if you get a chance to vote for RCV, make sure you know what you are voting for.

 

Another Look at the Idea of the Separation of Church and State

We hear so often about the separation of Church and State, but I don’t think people really think through what this actually means. 

They say it’s the separation of religion from public life and policy, but then why call it Church?  Church is uniquely a Christian term. 

Then too, what exactly is a religion?  We know some religions by name and practice, but is the idea of religion limited to those with names and organizations?

I venture to say that a religion at heart is a description of reality, of life.  It answers, or tries to answer, all the big questions of life.  What is good, what is bad, what is right, what is wrong, what is true, what is false, what are the rules, are there any rules?

You can call it a worldview.  Everybody has a worldview.  Everybody has a system of beliefs about life.  It’s generally not as well organized as a Church Creed, but they have one nonetheless.  A religion is only a worldview that has a god in it.  When a lot of people have the same worldview, we give it a name. 

But everybody has a worldview.  An atheist’s worldview is just as much a religion as a, well, religion.  Even the atheist has his highest authority to which he obeys and submits his allegiance.  He has rules by which he governs his life.  And nations have worldviews, just like individual people. 

It makes no sense for the Founders to say that our government must not be mingled with religion, if by that you mean, a worldview that includes God, or a god.  Did they say or mean that our nation does not recognize a god? 

Our Declaration of Independence says that our Creator, God, created us equal.  That means that nobody has a divine or inherent right to rule over other people.  But we were created, and by extension, by God.  And this Creator also gave human beings inalienable rights. 

That, my friends, is what makes America.  Without God, the creator of everything, we don’t have inalienable rights, and without inalienable rights, we don’t have the United States of America.

But going a step further, what God were they talking about?   Equality and inalienable rights are not parts of all religions.  Actually they are unique to the Bible religions, Judaism and Christianity.  But the Founders were Christians, because when they wrote the Constitution, they noted Sundays as the day of rest (the Sabbath) instead of Saturdays, the Jewish Sabbath.

So Christianity is interwoven into the very fabric of American life.

But the court called supreme said that our government cannot favor one religion over another.  It must be neutral with regard to all religions.  That basically means that no religion is true.  They are merely opinions or preferences, like your taste in music or books. 

BUT a religion is an all-encompassing worldview.  You CANNOT NOT have a worldview.  And whatever worldview you have is essentially your personal religion.  If it is unique to yourself, you probably didn’t name it, but if others share it, it probably has a name.

If the United States is not at its core a Christian nation, then what is it? 

The standard answer is that we are a secular nation.  And this can be said of all the countries that comprise what we call modern Western Civilization. 

But what does that mean?

It means that no religions are true.  They all have some nice things in them, but they are not essential to public life and policy.  Individuals may find some comfort in them, but religions are all just opinions and preferences.   There is no right or wrong, at least not a right and wrong that we should all agree on and adhere to.  Its just what you like and can agree on.

But secularism is an all-encompassing worldview just like any standard religion, with its own set of absolute truths. 

I see two forms of this today.  If all religions are equal, then they are equally untrue.  There is no God.  Therefore there is nothing higher than yourself or anything to which you give your loyalty, whether government, society, or some cause.  There are no moral standards as such but what we accept of governmental laws or public consensus.  If we want to accept that.

The other is the more pragmatic atheism that exists today. It won’t come right out and say there is no God.  It only tells you to keep all God stuff to yourself so as not to offend somebody of another religion.

But practically speaking, it is a religion.

Its god is the earth.  That is all we have.  We should sacrifice our life and wellbeing to it.  Government is our savior and benefactor, and science is the truthbearer, like the Holy Spirit. 

Its prophets are Freud, Huxley, Camus, Nietzsche, and Marx.  Its moral code, instead of Ten Commandments, it has three: diversity, equity, and inclusion.  Interestingly, this moral code is not personal, but societal.  It’s the government that lives this out, not individuals. 

It is Christianity that taught us to love our neighbors as ourselves, and to do unto others as you would have others do unto you.  And, of course, the Thou shalt not kill; actually it’s Thou shalt not murder.

But we need to examine what exactly is this religion that we have replaced Christianity with.

If there is no God, then human life is an accident of nature.  There are no rules but what we make by law or consensus.  Life is cheap.  We are certainly not created in the image of God and of inestimable value, like Christianity teaches.  Having children is like having pets.  If we get one or more at an inconvenient time, then we are free to dispose of them.  Raising them doesn’t require two parents, but merely one or more adults.  Government agencies make the best adult guides for children.  Certainly careers are far more rewarding and important than going to a park with a toddler or playing catch with a middle schooler.

Life is cheap also in the sense that there is no inherent reason why I or anyone else should care about people I don’t know or am not related to.  Other people are basically and often obstacles to what I want in life.  Competition, so to speak.  In another very real sense, we are all dependent on others.  Somebody grows the food that I eat, and somehow it makes it to stores where I am able to buy it.  Knowing all this still doesn’t mean that I will or need to pay for this when I get it. 

If there is no God, then life ends at death, and what is the point to all of this?  Have the most fun I can have while it lasts, but please don’t ask me to sacrifice my life to some cause.  It’s my life, I only get one, and only for a very short time.  So I will live to see that I get the most I can out of it, and if that means at someone else’s expense, why not? 

When we talk about the separation of Church and State, we are really only exchanging one Church, or religion, for another.  The United States was based on Christianity, a Christian understanding of life.   Meaning, that Christianity is true. 

What the Founders did not want is for the Church to be a part of the government, like they had and still have in Europe, where the King of England is Head of the Church of England. 

You may not like the Church or Christianity, but the fact remains, without Christianity you would not have inalienable rights, and without inalienable rights, you would not have the United States of America.

 

Why Christians in America Must Be Involved in Politics

Christians could be the busiest people you know.  In addition to all the regular things people do, work, families (and they tend to have bigger ones), taking care of the house and cars, exercise, they also attend church at least once a week, and many churches insist that their people also be a part of a small group that meets together often.  They are also encouraged to make time everyday for alone time with God: Bible reading, prayer, some do journaling.  Many are also involved in some form of volunteer work, whether at church or the community.

Whew!

We don’t need any more things to do.

But I am saying that Christians in America must be involved in politics.  We need to adjust our schedules.

But why?

In America, we have representative government.  That means that there are people whose specific jobs are to represent you.  They speak for you.  They act on your behalf.  They act in your name.  They spend your money.  They borrow enormous amounts of money that you have to pay back.  Or pay the interest on.  They make policies that affect you.  And your kids.  And their schools. 

And they are working on policies that will affect your church.  And how your church conducts its business. 

In Illinois, where I live, our elected leaders demand that we have free access to kill our unborn children.  We will pay for people from all over the country to come here so we can kill their babies.

You may say that you are against abortion.  You may even have voted for people who are against abortion.  But the fact remains that our elected representatives in Illinois strongly support abortion, and they are spending your money to have as many abortions as possible. 

They are your representatives.  They are acting in your name and spending your money to do this. 

They are teaching our children in our public schools that they should question their genders, choose new ones, that it doesn’t matter what they were born as or what they choose, there is no right or wrong, truth or falsehood.  There is no normal sexual behavior.  They are all equal.

Luke 17:1,2 ¹ Jesus said to His disciples, “It is impossible for stumbling blocks not to come, but woe to him through whom they come! ² “It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea, than that he would cause one of these little ones to stumble.

This is exactly what they are doing.  They are putting stumbling blocks in front of our children.  Our elected leaders and our tax dollars are doing this in our public schools.  For a while, parents had the option to opt out of sex education, if you even knew what was in it.  But now they are trying to remove that opt out option.  You will have no choice but to have your youngest children learn about all things sexual.  And all without any reference to values and purpose, things like marriage or families.  Sex is just something that people do, like watching television or playing sports.

You may have your own kids in private school or even homeschooling.  So you shouldn’t care what happens to all the other kids? 

They have removed God from our public life, our public policy, and our public education.  But you will say, that’s what the Constitution says.  No, that’s what they want you to think it says.  You have to read what the Founders wrote themselves and not what people today tell you what they said.

The Founders wanted the Bible used in public schools to teach people how to live, because a free people has to be a moral people, and the Bible was the best source of moral instruction.  The First Amendment was a prohibition on a national Church like what they have in Europe, and freedom of religion and conscience doesn’t mean that our government is to be neutral toward all religions.  The Founders were united on a Christian foundation for our country, and they wanted to be sure that the government was not imposing a particular Christian denomination on everybody like they were doing in Europe, which was why many of them came to America in the first place to get away from.

The federal government and many states are bankrupt, but we just let them continue borrowing and printing money as if it doesn’t matter.  You are responsible with your money.  You wish you had more of it, so you could further the spread of the gospel, or a myriad of other worthwhile causes.  But the government insists on taking more and more of your money, because they can, both to enrich themselves and their friends.  And to spend it on countless things you would never want to spend it on if you knew what they were spending it on in the first place.

I have long known that nations rise and fall on their leaders.  You can see this throughout the Bible with all the various kings that they had. 

Personally, I believe we have passed the point of just trying to elect the right people.  I believe that our election system is broken.  Not everywhere, but too many places.  Unless God intervenes, there is no way out of our downfall as a nation.  Oh, the United States will still exist as a nation, but not the nation it used to be or the one it was supposed to be.

I want to cite a Bible passage here which used to be referred to often in this context, but seminaries are saying now that we cannot.  It doesn’t apply to this situation.

I disagree.  And I won’t take the space here to try to prove my point.  But are they saying that we do nothing?  That God will not get involved here?

The passage is: II Chronicles 7:13,14 (NASB95) ¹³ “If I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or if I command the locust to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among My people, ¹⁴ and My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

The passage in question mentions God’s people and their land.  We are God’s people and this is our land. 

The passage also mentions climate issues and pestilence.  Which we also have.

The cure in all such cases depends on God’s people. 

I am convinced now that our country will not be able to ‘elect’ our way back to righteous ideals and conduct.  God must intervene. 

The passage speaks of Christians humbling themselves and praying and seeking God’s face and turning from their wicked ways.

Are God’s people here really so wicked that God has to express His displeasure in these ways?

My answer is yes, but not in the ways you are thinking. 

The people who represent us are taking our country down a long dark path.  And we are letting them.  As I said, they represent us.  They act in our name.  They spend our money

I will be told here that God doesn’t care about nations; it’s all about the individuals.  We must win people to Christ.  That’s our mission.  And that will take care of the rest, though that is far less important.

But nations are composed of individuals.  Millions of them.  And what government legalizes, it normalizes.  And what government teaches to our children in our schools is what most of them will believe when they are older. 

When I was a kid, the Bible and churches were respected.  You could open a Bible with people on the street and talk about Jesus.  Now our government has created a hostility toward the Church and the Bible. 

We, the Church, have not reached our communities and country for God.  We must humble ourselves and pray and seek His face and turn from our wicked ways.  All the wicked ways of our political leaders fall on us. 

Right now the main way Christians need to be involved is prayer.  But not any ordinary prayer. 

Like Jacob wrestling with God, like Abraham bargaining over Sodom, like the woman and the unjust judge, like Daniel and Nehemiah confessing the sins of the people which they themselves were innocent of. 

I know Christians who are resigned that things will continue to get worse, but no need to worry.  We will all be raptured out of this.  There is nothing that we can do about it.  I say, then don’t do this for yourself, do it for your children and their children. 

People thought the rapture was going to come 50 years ago.  Forty years ago. 

OK, live like Jesus will come back today.  That means you are working your butt off, like He might not come back for years.  But you are not to sit around waiting for Him to come back.

Don’t think of our nation in the abstract.  It is 300 million people living in a common space.  To reach 300 million people for Christ you need broad-based actions as well as individual interactions.  Corrupt leaders lead to a corrupt people.  Celebrating non-normative behaviors as normative behavior makes bringing people to repentance harder than it used to be.

Our future as a nation is in God’s hands.  But if God’s people don’t really care one way or the other, will God work in spite of us or will He wait until He works with us?

The Christian and Society

In November, our country will have another election.  Few churches talk about elections, and I think Christians often think that politics are not that important for Christians.  Our citizenship is in heaven, and we are just passing through.  Our hope is in God and not human deliverers. 

But then we still have to pay taxes, make a living, and make decisions about schools for our children and where we should live.

We wanted to send our kids to Christian schools, but we couldn’t afford it.  I discovered that 2/3 of our property taxes went for public schools.  I couldn’t send my kids to a Christian school, but I was paying for public schools.  So I would have to pay double for my kids’ education if I sent them to that private school. 

Welcome to politics. 

Public schools in Illinois are teaching your kids that they may not be the gender they were told when they were born.  They can be any gender they want, and they should decide this as soon as possible.  No time to waste with gender affirming surgeries and puberty blockers.

Where do your kids go to school?

Welcome to politics.

Christians are taught to be generous, help those who are in need, tithe to their churches, and support Christian organizations.  But you don’t think you bring enough money home from work to do all you want to do.

Welcome to politics.

Christians are aware of many of society’s ills, and we are taught that the way to change society is through personal conversions.  Change the people, and you change society.

Politicians know that if you change society, you change the people. 

Homosexuality has always been seen as an aberration in our society.  The norm was men and women getting married and having children.  The Supreme Court legalized gay marriage, and soon homosexuality is normalized in our society.  Christian businesses are being litigated and forced to close, because they are being asked, I mean told, to do things contrary to their religious beliefs.

Welcome to politics.

We know we have the Great Commission, to win the world for Christ and to disciple the nations. 

We are told that our country was founded as a secular, pluralistic society.  We teach our kids in schools that they are animals just like dogs, cows, and chimpanzees.  Life is an accident of nature.

Then we wonder why it is so hard to talk to people about God.  God has been pushed so much out of the public consciousness, that people don’t give God a thought, and so we first have to try to prove to them that there is a God, that Christianity is indeed the right religion, that the Bible is the Word of God before we even get to share the gospel with them.

That didn’t use to be the case.

Welcome to politics. 

Our country is getting to the point where persecution for your Christian faith is becoming more and more a reality.  The freest country in the history of the world is becoming hostile toward the Christian faith.  Our rights come from God our Creator, and that includes a right to practice our faith.  But that is changing.

Welcome to politics.

In a war, you have soldiers shooting it out on the front lines.  But generals know it’s not enough just to kill more enemy soldiers than who kill yours.

They often will target ammunition factories, supply lines, and weapon storage facilities to weaken the enemy’s ability to continue the fighting.

Evangelism is sharing the gospel with people, the good news of Jesus Christ.  That is usually one-on-one engagements with people.  But if we allow our schools to teach that God is irrelevant and non-existent, that science is all we need to know, that the government is your Benefactor and Protector, your success in reaching people for Christ is going to be greatly hampered.

Repentance is still a part of the gospel message, but if there is no right and wrong but what you believe for yourself, there is nothing to repent of. 

Yes, I know that the early church changed the world.  They also believed in the power of God, and we usually relegate that to Bible days.  The Church is one more thing vying for the attention of the masses.  We resort to social media trying to get a hearing, and it’s not working very well.

Politics used to just be about paying for roads and police departments and schools, but people are trying to change our entire society through politics.  They are masters of language usage, so that killing preborn babies is really about personal autonomy and protecting those babies violates people’s basic human rights.

Welcome to politics.

You are the salt of the earth and the light of the world.  But you have to be out in the world to make any kind of difference.  You have to be on those school boards, those city councils, those House and Senate chambers, or you have to vote for those who will serve in your place. 

Welcome to politics.

Does Satan accuse us before God?

We saw that the Old Testament spoke often about demons, but it’s hard to think that all this demonic activity at the time of Jesus is just a continuation of life as usual from before.

This is my tentative explanation:

Start here

Revelation 12 (NASB95) ¹ A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; ² and she was with child; and she cried out, being in labor and in pain to give birth. ³ Then another sign appeared in heaven: and behold, a great red dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads were seven diadems. ⁴ And his tail swept away a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she gave birth he might devour her child. ⁵ And she gave birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron; and her child was caught up to God and to His throne. ⁶ Then the woman fled into the wilderness where she had a place prepared by God, so that there she would be nourished for one thousand two hundred and sixty days. ⁷ And there was war in heaven, Michael and his angels waging war with the dragon. The dragon and his angels waged war, ⁸ and they were not strong enough, and there was no longer a place found for them in heaven. ⁹ And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. ¹⁰ Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, he who accuses them before our God day and night. ¹¹ “And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even when faced with death. ¹² “For this reason, rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them. Woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, knowing that he has only a short time.” ¹³ And when the dragon saw that he was thrown down to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male child. ¹⁴ But the two wings of the great eagle were given to the woman, so that she could fly into the wilderness to her place, where she was nourished for a time and times and half a time, from the presence of the serpent. ¹⁵ And the serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman, so that he might cause her to be swept away with the flood. ¹⁶ But the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and drank up the river which the dragon poured out of his mouth. ¹⁷ So the dragon was enraged with the woman, and went off to make war with the rest of her children, who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus.

Revelation is a difficult book to understand.  Are the visions in chronological order, meaning, the things depicted by them?

I don’t think so.

Cf. Revelation 4, where John is taken up to heaven, and he sees the throne of God and the 24 thrones of the elders.  There is a book there that is sealed, and there is nobody to open the book.  Until finally the lamb appears to open the book.

The Lamb is Jesus, but why wasn’t He seated at the right hand of God at the beginning of the vision. 

Because it was a vision and not literal historical fact.  The vision was of the past.  The Lamb was not yet seated at the Father’s right hand.

So in Revelation 12, a woman gave birth to a male son who is about to shepherd all the nations with a rod of iron.  Who else is this but Jesus?  This would be Jesus’ incarnation, His birth into our world.

And then there is a war in heaven.  And the dragon, Satan, is cast out and thrown to the earth. 

Revelation 12:10 (NASB95) ¹⁰ Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, he who accuses them before our God day and night.

Remember how in Job and Zechariah, Satan had access to the throne of God, and he was able to accuse Job and Joshua the High Priest before God. 

But Paul says now: Romans 8:33–35 (NASB95) ³³ Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies; ³⁴ who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. ³⁵ Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

 

How can Paul say this, and why did Paul say this, if Satan still was able to accuse us before God?

Consider these passages from the gospels:

John 12:31 (NASB95)  ³¹ “Now judgment is upon this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out.

Cast out of where?  Where else but heaven?

Luke 10:17–19 (NASB95) ¹⁷ The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name.” ¹⁸ And He said to them, “I was watching Satan fall from heaven like lightning. ¹⁹ “Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will injure you.

If this happened thousands of years ago, Jesus would have said, I saw, not, I was watching.

Revelation 12:9 (NASB95)  ⁹ And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.

These other angels who were thrown down with Satan would account for the abundance of demonic activity at the time of Jesus.

Revelation 12:12 (NASB95) ¹² “. . . Woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, knowing that he has only a short time.”

Revelation 12:17 (NASB95) ¹⁷ So the dragon was enraged with the woman, and went off to make war with the rest of her children, who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus.

This all seems related to Peter’s words:

1 Peter 5:8 (NASB95)  ⁸ Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

I don’t pretend that this will answer all the questions.  I still have some.  But I think it answers a lot of them.

 

 

How to hear the voice of God

I was asked to teach on this by a pastor friend, so I am addressing a particular audience.  But I am sharing this with everyone else, because I believe others can benefit from this.

I won’t say that I know everything about hearing God’s voice, but I have learned a lot.  No, I haven’t heard God speak to me audibly yet, but you wouldn’t need someone to teach you how to do that anyway.  You would just hear that.  And, no, I don’t know how to make that happen either.

1) A long time ago I learned the value of spending a lot of time just reading the Bible.  Psalm 1 speaks of delighting in the law of the Lord and meditating in it day and night.  Meditating here is not just thinking about it, but it’s on our lips, like in Joshua 1, where it says that this book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night.  (Joshua 1:8)  If it doesn’t depart from your mouth, it’s on your heart and mind all day too.

I felt God leading me to spend an hour a day just reading the Bible.  I think I started this in high school and did it through my years of Bible school.  I was reading through the Bible 4 times a year.  As I got deeper into my studies with Hebrew and Greek and Bible commentaries, it would take longer and maybe I went through the whole Bible once a year. 

In 2017, which turned out to be the year I was forced to retire from work (another story for another time), I strongly felt God telling me to restart this practice of reading through the Bible.  When I finish reading through the Bible this time, probably in August, it will be my fiftieth time.  I’m not bragging.  It’s nothing to brag about.  I am not even suggesting that you do the same thing.  I am telling you my experience in relating to hearing from God.  Don’t be surprised if He leads you in the same way, and don’t be surprised if He doesn’t.  Don’t follow me, follow God.

But reading the Bible a lot is important.

Two reasons.

It serves as a filter to your life.  I have heard of people who did bad things and then said that, God told them to do that.  If you know the Bible, you will know if something is from God or somewhere else. 

But the Bible is God’s revelation of all the information that you need to know about Him and life.  Or maybe it would be better to say that the Bible is all the information that He wants everybody to know.  That’s the minimum, and He is free to share more with whom He wants. 

I have heard people act like God only speaks to you through the Bible.  That’s not true.  You can see by the things God told people to do in the Bible, that they are specific things to their lives.  Reading the Bible won’t tell what job to take or where to go to school.  You need to hear from God.

But when you know the Bible, you will see countless times how things in your life will resemble things in the Bible, and you will know what God is doing or saying when these things occur.  You will see obstacles in your life, and God will bring to your mind the Israelites at the Red Sea, and you will know that you need to believe God that this is not a permanent block but a path to walk through.

When I first started reading through the Bible, I would just start at Genesis and read straight through.  I don’t do that anymore. 

In the Great Commission in Matthew 28, Jesus said to teach people everything He commanded us.  So I read a chapter a day from the gospels.  If I read through the Bible 4 times a year, that’s about 90 days for each time.  There are 89 chapters in all four gospels together.  So one chapter a day in the gospels is about 4 times all the way through in a year.

I read some Psalms everyday.  There are 150 psalms, so I read 5 psalms every 3 days, with the longest psalm by itself.  So that’s 90 days to read through the book of Psalms. 

There are 31 chapters in Proverbs, so I read 1/3 chapter a day.  That’s 93 days to read the whole book.

Certain parts of the Bible can be less meaningful for me, so I only read one chapter a day from those parts.  That is Leviticus, Numbers, and I Chronicles.  There are a lot of good things in those books, but a lot of chapters that make for less interesting reading, so I don’t want to spend a half hour a day on that.  There are 87 chapters in those books, so that’s roughly 4 times a year. 

The other parts of the Old Testament, the Wisdom books, the history, and the prophets I alternate days so I am reading them all in the same few days.

2) When you read through the Bible, you will notice how often God speaks to people through dreams.  I studied dreams for a while.  I greatly appreciated the work of Carl Jung on dreams.  He was a Swiss psychiatrist who developed the school of Analytical Psychology. 

While I don’t study that much anymore and don’t have a lot of success understanding my dreams, I did stop using alarm clocks that force me to wake at specific times and with sounds that immediately get my attention, whether music or talking.  I wanted to try to remember what I was dreaming, what I was hearing during the night. 

I have had dreams that were significant, but I cannot recall any of them right now that had a lasting significance, but I noticed something else.

3)  I found that God would often speak to me immediately upon waking.  The thoughts would come to mind strongly without any prior thinking about these things.  The first time that I recall this happening was in 1996.  The first thing I ‘heard’ when waking up was the words ‘Rejoice always,’ which I recognized immediately as I Thessalonians 5:16.  This was the first step in a 10 month long journey of later being diagnosed with cancer and then being healed.  I tell the whole story in my book The Importance of Healing, which is available used on the internet.

I have learned to pay close attention to things I hear as soon as I wake up in the morning, or I’ll wake up in the middle of the night, and something will come to my mind, and I know it is from God.  And I need to get up and start writing.

This has happened so many times now I no longer even try to keep track of them.  Now that I write a lot, it often all comes together in the middle of the night.  A lot of writers experience something like this.  Except they might go to bed with something on their minds and get the answer in the middle of the night.  But that is rarely how I see it work.  The thoughts I get are rarely things I am trying to sort out or something I was already working on.

Most of my writing I feel like I am taking dictation, that God is giving me the words.

So pay attention at night and when you get up in the morning, and try to avoid distractions.

4)  I will add that I love music, but I rarely listen to it.  Why?  Because I don’t want lyrics or tunes stuck in my head where I lose control of my thinking, and something is running in my head that I can’t stop.  I’m not telling you what to do here, but if you want to hear from God, know that He speaks in a still, small voice, and you’re not going to hear it a lot if you are surrounded with a lot of other noise, and if your mind is occupied constantly with other things, even good things.  This is just my personal observation here.  Do what you want.

5)  I had a recent revelation, if you want to call it that.  I am writing a commentary on the book of Matthew, so I am forced to understand and think through everything and then explain it, so I am spending more time on things I normally wouldn’t. 

I realized in a fresh way that Jesus came to change everything about our relationship with God.  The Old Testament tells us all about who God is, what He is like, his awesomeness, His power, His holiness.  Then in the New Testament, we learn that this God is our Father.  And that indeed changes everything.

I realized that all of life, particularly family life, is designed or just inherently a picture of higher spiritual realities.  And, while before, we might think of God as being this Being out there who we pray to and make our requests and we try to please, now I see Him as Someone who is inside me, a constant companion and friend and father and older brother all in one. 

I think of God now as someone who is right there with me ALL THE TIME. I talk to Him like I would talk to a human who I could physically see who is always there.  I don’t start with Dear God or Dear Jesus.  We are always talking.  Yes, I do most of the talking.  And, yes, I tell Him I wish He talked more.  But countless times in our conversations, I will say something, and I sense His response, and I know it’s His response.  Can I prove it?  No.  But after dozens and dozens of times, you don’t question it any more. 

You know God is everywhere, the Bible says that He is now in believers, so how else would this look? 

We are children of God.  Now yes, I am a child of my parents, who are long deceased.  I have sons who are in their 30s.  They are adults but still my children.  But I think and have come to believe that God means this in the literal sense.  We act and think of ourselves as adults, but to God we are still children.  My kids as adults are peers in a way, but how can we be peers with God?  So He always sees us as children, like we see our children children.  Or maybe our grandchildren.  This is why humans are the only living things where it takes so long to reach adulthood, and then the cycle repeats with grandchildren, so we have this relationship firmly planted in our minds about what this child-parent relationship looks like.

Before God we are children in the full sense of the word, and He delights in us as we delight in our own children.  And we need to keep this image of us as children before God as much as possible.  This is how we are to God.  It’s not always easy to see ourselves as the object of this parental love.  It helps if we have children in our lives now where we see the kind of love we have for them. 

Now when we see God as this loving, constant companion who we talk to constantly throughout the day, about anything and everything, wow, what a beautiful day, thank you, Lord, bless that lady over there, those kids there, what should I do about my job, I wish my boss appreciated my work more, I feel uneasy at work a lot, I will leave this with you, help me to enjoy my work more, and so on.

Always leave room for God to speak back to you.  He will.  You may wonder if that is God a few times, but after a few dozen times, you will stop asking.  You will know that it’s God.

When I get up in the morning, I ask God, more like, Lord, as in Jesus, what do you want to do today?  I realize that God wants to be with me just like I just want to be with my kids or my granddaughter.  Being together is the important thing.  I have a general idea of things I want to do, but I am totally flexible.  I generally will do my Bible reading first thing, but very early into that today, for example, this came to mind and I followed it and wrote most of this as fast I could type it.

As I walked the dog before breakfast and was doing my morning prayer, I had more ideas about this article, so I am working on this before I finished my Bible reading.

So, in short, fill your mind with the Bible, keep your head clear from distracting things, and talk with God constantly throughout the day, leaving Him room to respond.  Don’t just keep talking, finish with an Amen, and then shut yourself off from listening to God.  Be conscious of Him as being right there with you just like He was a live human being.

I have discovered this has totally changed my thought life.  I am constantly talking to God, but I am getting things done.  I am constantly asking God what I should do next.  Everyday is an adventure.  And productive.

Let me know if there are other things to talk about here or whatever.

Another Look at I Peter 5:6,7

1 Peter 5:6,7 (NASB95)  ⁶ Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, ⁷ casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.

This is a very familiar verse, but I am not sure we fully understand it.  I’m not sure I fully understand it.

Let’s look at verse 7 first.

It says to cast all your anxiety on God.  Some translations read: care, or cares.  Anxiety is a fear of losing something or of something going wrong.  Care is just something that’s on your mind a lot that you must attend to.  It’s your responsibility.  It’s not necessarily worry per se, but it fills your mind and robs you of your joy. 

Peter is quoting Psalm 55:22 here.  Psalm 55:22 (NASB95) ²² Cast your burden upon the Lord and He will sustain you; He will never allow the righteous to be shaken.

In the Greek Old Testament, the word for ‘burden’ there is the same word as anxiety in Peter, and the verb and preposition are the same too.  So it’s ‘cast your care upon the Lord.  The Hebrew word for ‘burden’ means something that has been given to you, your lot.  There is that expression: we all have our own cross to bear.  Here it need not be a cross, but it is something unique to us.  We have that thing that is ours that weighs on us. 

Cast what has been given you unto the Lord, and He will sustain, support, nourish you.  This word ‘sustain’ is commonly translated as ‘provide for.’  It could, I suppose, be used of parents providing for their children, but it is never used that way.  It’s only used for all fully capable adults, who due to circumstances are dependent on somebody else to take care of them, to give them the basic things of life.

Joseph provided for his brothers and their families during the famine (Genesis 45 and 50), Barzillai provided for King David after he fled from Absalom (2 Samuel 19), Solomon had deputies who provided for his household (I Kings 4). 

So God provides for us, or wants to, when we cast those weighing things on Him.

In the Greek of Peter, the casting is in the aorist tense.  This is not a continual casting.  It’s done, or should be.  But this is connected to verse 6.

Our English Bibles say ‘humble yourselves,’ but this is clearly a passive, ‘be humbled.’  Does God humble us, or tries to?

Yes, Deuteronomy 8 clearly says so, and this is a foundational text for our lives.  Jesus quotes it in His encounter with Satan in a foundational time in His ministry. 

Deuteronomy 8:1–5 ¹ “All the commandments that I am commanding you today you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land which the Lord swore to your forefathers. ² “You shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. ³ “He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might cause you to know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord. ⁴ “Your clothing did not wear out on you, nor did your foot swell these forty years. ⁵ “Thus you are to know in your heart that the Lord your God was disciplining you just as a man disciplines his son.

Israel failed to believe God when they should have at Kadesh-Barnea (Numbers 13,14), and so they were unable to enter the Promised Land, and then they spent the rest of their lives wandering in the wilderness until they died.  But that whole time was both punishment and instruction. 

He fed them with manna which they did not know (a new thing they never saw or heard of before) and their ancestors did not know so that they might know that not on bread alone shall humans live, but on everything that comes out of the mouth of the Lord shall man live.

Everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord is a dependency on God that I don’t think most people understand or even think of.  They have no idea how dependent their lives are on God.  We can only respond to the millions of things that happen around us everyday that we have no control over, the people we meet, the traffic in the streets, the weather.  We have read in the self-help books how we need to take control of our lives.  I’m seeing that we have control of nothing but ourselves, but that is not something that produces, or should produce, uncertainty in our lives, but God wants this immediate, continuous dependence on Him.

God’s humbling process is getting us to live in a moment to moment relationship with God.

I tell God, nobody lives like this.  But that doesn’t make it any less true.  This is what I am learning.

But Peter’s command to be humbled has a ‘therefore’ with it, so that means that the command is based on what he said before that.

Peter quotes Proverbs 3:34 from the Greek Old Testament, establishing a simple rule of life.  1 Peter 5:5 (NASB95) ⁵ You younger men, likewise, be subject to your elders; and all of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, for God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

All these verses started with Peter talking about how Christians should relate to other people in the church.  He stresses the need for humility when interacting with one another. 

Why?

Because God is opposed to the proud.  The Hebrew text has ‘scoffers.’ 

Notice there is no middle ground.  There are no nice ungodly people.  Jesus said there are only two ways, a broad one and a narrow one.  (Matthew 7)  Psalm 1 says that the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish.  There are only the righteous and the ungodly.

So let’s turn this around now.

God wants us to be humble.  It is important for us to be humble. 

But what does that mean?

Again, there is no middle ground.  We are either humble or proud.  The Hebrew and Greek words are extreme words: scoffers and arrogant.  We see the outward appearances, but God sees the heart.  (I Samuel 16:7)

So Peter says choose humility, because God gives grace or favor to the humble.

And it’s not ‘humble yourself.’  Well, actually, it’s both.  There are passages in the Bible that do say to humble yourself.  Three times in the gospels, (Matthew 23:12, Luke 14:11,18:14), James 4:10, and Proverbs 29:23. 

But Peter is focusing on something here that we often miss.  God is working in your life to humble you. 

In the passage from Deuteronomy, when God humbled them, He let them be hungry.  And you know what happened then, right?  They started grumbling.

Exodus 16:2,3 (NASB95)  ² The whole congregation of the sons of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. ³ The sons of Israel said to them, “Would that we had died by the Lord’s hand in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat, when we ate bread to the full; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”

They grumbled, or murmured, against God.  That’s “a half-suppressed or muttered complaint.”

The things we complain about, the things that rob us of our joy, are the things by which God is humbling us, that we might know that we don’t live by all these things, and we have no real control over all these things, but by everything that comes from the mouth of God.

So Peter says to be humbled.  Let your life show you how dependent you are on God, “abounding in thanksgiving” (Colossians 2:7). 

Let God humble you that He might exalt you in due time.

People might ask what it means to be exalted.  The word itself may not mean to be raised to a position of prominence, but Jesus contrasts people who exalt themselves who will be humbled and those who humble themselves who will be exalted.  So there are definite distinct outcomes between the humble and those who are not.

All this is because God cares for us.  Our cares weigh us down, but God cares about and for us.  We are important to Him. 

Our biggest problem here is probably wondering if God cares about the things that we care about.  My big care is my country.  Does God care about my country as much as I do?  Aren’t all the nations like a drop in the bucket to Him?  (Isaiah 40:15)

But it wouldn’t make sense to say, cast these cares on Him if He wasn’t interested in working those things out for us.  Psalm 127 (NASB95) says: ¹ Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it; Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman wakes but in vain.

So the Lord builds houses, and the Lord guards cities.  Your cares are His cares.

Now it is possible that we are caring for wrong things.  It’s possible.  There are so many things that I want to do in life, there isn’t enough time in the day to do them all.  God is helping me sort through all of this.

But being humbled by God is recognizing how little control we have over our lives and living before God as His children.  In human terms, we are adults.  To God, we are still children. 

Psalm 55 describes that care as what was given to us.  Certainly my efforts will change little.  By themselves.  I can be completely overwhelmed by the all the needs.  That’s why He said that all things are possible with God, but that’s another lesson.

Now my being humbled by God involves my casting all my care on Him.  Literally, it’s ‘be humbled under the mighty hand of God, having cast all your care on Him.’  If you haven’t cast all your care on Him, then you haven’t been humbled by Him. 

God cares about you and wants to exalt you, whatever that means.  There’s only one way to find out what any of this means.  Let God humble you and throw all that stuff that’s on your mind on God, and watch what happens.