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2024 PERSERVERENCE

Your practical, inspirational resource

for supporting your spiritual walk.

 

Our theme for 2024 is Perseverance and we will focus on how we sustain in the midst of what’s to come this year.

Bitter partisan divides have deepened over the past few years and the rhetoric has become extremely dangerous. While it may be difficult to remain calm while reading the daily paper or watching the TV news; don’t be distracted or deceived. If we stay within God’s will for our lives everything will work out for our good.

Gods Will is in our best interest. We can be sure that the best way to seek our own self-centered interests is to be entirely God-centered. In this paradox, godliness and the self-life meet. Or, as Jesus said, “Whoever loses his life will preserve it” (Lk 17:33). 

For 2024, let’s avoid the political noise and negative discourse that is kicking into full gear. As children of light we must PERSEVERE this year because we are more than conquers. 

 

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You Are One With The Master

“But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit”
1 Corinthians 6:17

 

The believer and Jesus are one. Jesus said, “I am the vine, ye are the branches . . .” (1 John 15:5). When you look at a tree you don’t think of the branches as one part. You see it as one – as a unity. All who believe in Him are one with Christ. Our spirits are one with Him.

 

How are you demonstrating this unity in today’s divisive environment?
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You Are A New Creature

“. . . but though our outward man perish,
yet the inward man is renewed day by day”
(2 Corinthians 4:16)

 

In the New Birth, our spirits are recreated, our bodies are not. It is in our spirit where all things have become new. We still have the same bodies we always had. There is a man who lives inside the body. Paul calls him “the inward man of the heart” (1 Peter 3:4).

 

This man is hidden to the physical eye. No one can see the real you – the inward man. They may think they do but they only see the house you live in. You are on the inside looking out. The same thing is true with the people you know; you’ve never really seen the real man on the inside.

 

When a man’s house is decaying, the real man still lives. The real man never dies. It is this inward man who is born into the family of God, who is in perfect union with the Master.
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You Are A Child of God

 

No truth in all the Bible is as far reaching as the blessed fact that when we are born again into the family of God – God the Father is our Father. He cares for us! He is interested in us, each of us individually, not just as a group, or as a body, or a church. He is interested in each of His children and loves each one of us with the same love.

 

Get acquainted with your Father through the Word. When you were saved, you were born into His family as a spiritual body. Babies in the natural must eat natural food to develop and grow. The Bible instructs the children of God: “As newborn babies, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby . . . “ (1 Peter 2:2).

 

It is in the Word where we find out about our Father, about His love, His nature, how He cares for us, and how He loves us. He is everything the Word says He is. He will do everything the Word says He will do.
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Getting To Know You

If I knew you and you knew me,
and each of us could clearly see
by the inner light divine
the meaning of your heart and mine;
I’m sure that we would differ less
and clap our hands in friendliness.
If you knew me and I knew you.
Howard Thurman

 

Understanding the complexity of human beings takes time, effort, and imagination. One must ‘fool around’ the edges of another’s life getting closer and closer to the central place. There must be a will to understand which informs the integrity of one’s desire to understand. 2022 can be a year we step out and lead the critical conversations that will heal our nation.
The Bible teaches us in Ephesians and Colossians how to accomplish this, “Let no unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building up the one in need and bringing grace to those who listen.” And that, “Your speech must always be with grace, as though seasoned with salt, so that you will know how you should respond to each person.”
The Foundation for Critical Thinking offers, “much of our thinking left to itself, is biased, distorted, partial, uninformed or down-right prejudiced. Yet the quality of the life we produce, make, or build depends precisely on the quality of our thoughts. Shoddy thinking is costly to our spiritual witness. Excellence in thought, however, must be systematically cultivated.”
We naturally think from our own perspective, from a point of view which tends to privilege our position. Fairness implies the treating of all relevant viewpoints alike without reference to one’s own feelings or interest. Because we tend to be biased in favor of our own viewpoint, it is important to keep the standard of fairness at the forefront of our thinking. This is especially important when the situation may call on us to see things we don’t want to see or give something up that we want to hold onto.
Most people do not understand the degree to which they have uncritically internalized the dominant prejudice of their society or culture. Sociologist and anthropologists identify this as the state of being “cultural bound.” This phenomenon is caused by sociocentric thinking, which includes:

  • The uncritical tendency to place one’s culture, nation, religion above all others,

 

  • The uncritical tendency to select self-serving positive descriptions of ourselves and negative descriptions of those who think differently from us,

 

  • The uncritical tendency to internalize group norms and beliefs, take on group identities, and act as we are expected to act—without the least sense that what we are doing might reasonably be questioned,

 

  • The tendency to blindly conform to group restrictions (many which are arbitrary or coercive),

 

  • The failure to think beyond the traditional prejudices of one’s culture,

 

  • The failure to study and internalize the insights of other cultures (improving thereby the breath and depth of one’s thinking),

 

  • The failure to realize that mass media in every culture shapes the news from the point of view of that culture,

Sociocentric thinking is a hallmark of an uncritical society. It can be diminished only when replaced by cross-cultural, fair-minded thinking.
Let’s move into 2022 with a new mind, the mind of Christ. It means we share Jesus’ perspective of humility and obedience (Philippians 2:5-8), compassion (Matthew 9:36), and prayerful dependence on God (Luke 5:16). The believer bears a responsibility to yield to the Spirit’s leading (Ephesians 4:30) and to allow the Spirit to transform and renew our mind (Romans 12:1-2).
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

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Do You Know The Reason For The Season?

 

We are in the season we pause with our family and friends to celebrate the blessings of the past year. We have come through difficult times, and as Christians, we know it is because of the grace of God. Our belief in Jesus Christ and what His Word says has transformed our life. And when we mess up, He has already paid the price, and we are forgiven. His forgiveness is not an excuse to continue sinning. When we slip, He understands. When we practice sin, we must reassess if we really believe in Him and His Word.
 

Do you have a roof over your head, clothes on your back, and food on your table? Sure, you may have worked to buy those things, but who gave you a body and a brain? Deuteronomy 8:18 tells us it is God “who gives you the ability to produce wealth.” So, let’s not forget from whom all blessings flow.

 

I was taught that he who controls the diameter of your thinking also controls the circumference of your possibilities. And relative to this season, the narratives of the holidays have not been designed to focus you on the real reason for this present season.

 

My family worked hard to dispel the Thanksgiving narrative because the origin story of the friendly dinner between Native Americans and Pilgrims that’s often told in school — is inaccurate. Native Americans describe the holiday as a “National Day of Mourning.”

 

The actual origin of the national holiday dates to Abraham Lincoln. On October 3, 1863, he called for the country, “in the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity,” to set aside the last Thursday in November as “a day of Thanksgiving.” The Times published his Thanksgiving proclamation on the front page and several times subsequently.

 

And the Christmas holiday is also a false narrative of a fat guy in a red suit. The overarching theme of Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Christ and is one of the Christian high holidays. But the celebration of Christmas has become a mixture of pre-Christian, Christian, and secular traditions.

 

Christmas trees are widely associated with the Christian holiday, but their origins are far from the Christ-worshipping standards they represent today. Christmas trees began as a pagan tradition as early as the fourth century C.E. European pagans were primarily responsible for dressing their homes with the branches of evergreen fir trees to bring color and light into their dull winters. But pagans weren’t the only people to do this. Romans also used the branches for decoration during the festival of Saturnalia, which took place from December 17 to December 23 in honor of the god Saturn.

 

The legend of Santa Claus can be traced back to a monk named St. Nicholas in Turkey. St. Nicholas gave away all of his inherited wealth and traveled the countryside, helping the poor and sick, becoming known as the protector of children and sailors. Today we focus on 28 days of shopping madness where if you can’t afford to buy gifts or don’t receive the latest, your life is unfulfilled.

 

In the early years of Christianity, Easter was the main holiday; the birth of Jesus was not celebrated. In the fourth century, church officials decided to institute the birth of Jesus as a holiday. Unfortunately, the Bible does not mention the date of His birth.

 

Pope Julius I chose December 25. It is commonly believed that the church chose this date to adopt and absorb the traditions of the pagan Saturnalia festival. First called the Feast of the Nativity, the custom spread to Egypt by 432 and England by the end of the sixth century.

 

Christmas in the twenty-first century is a mixture of various cultures that have shaped how we think of the holiday season today. So, skip the worldwide commercialization phenomenon, skip the fat guy in a red suit, skip fretting over decorating, skip focusing on food, and skip worrying about the right gifts.

 

Let’s focus on preparing our hearts to celebrate our Savior’s birth by reflecting on the hope, peace, love, and joy that Jesus brought to the world.
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Praying With Anger – Part 2

Part 1 laid bare how emotional attachments that leads to anger are the defeat of expectations. Today, in Part 2, we will explore how anger can obscure our ability to think objectively and rationally, leading to choices that don’t honor God.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everybody” Colossians 4:6
More people have a short fuse lately. It’s getting harder for people to muster empathy or regulate our knee-jerk reactions.
“When you anticipate something is going to be temporary, you’re able to absorb a higher level of stress. When things don’t work out as expected it makes us more prone to be aggressive with ourselves and with one another,” says Pauline Wallin, a psychologist in Camp Hill, Pa.
Reports of poor treatment ranged from inappropriate language to rudeness to sexual harassment to sparring over mask and vaccine policies:
  • A woman pulled a gun on servers at a Philadelphia fast food restaurant when they asked her to order online.
  • A California woman was charged with felony assault for attacking a Southwest airlines flight attendant and dislodging some of her teeth.
Of course, it’s the people-have-lost-their-ever loving-minds incidents that make the news, but they are also a reflection of a deeper trend.
Once activated, anger can color people’s perceptions, form their decisions, and guide their behavior, regardless of whether the decisions at hand are related to the source of their anger.
I don’t know what it’s like to be you, and you don’t know what it’s like to be me. But by the grace of God, we can see each other‘s hearts.  Just because we don’t always agree doesn’t mean we have to be enemies. If we take a moment to listen to each other, we will find we are more alike than different. While the politicians use division and anger for their political gain, God uses the beauty of our diversity for unification.
Given that anger has the potential to grip a nation over a sustained period, it is important to understand how it may shape individual choices over time. By shaping basic cognitive and social processes, anger shapes our decisions and the lives we lead.
Politicians have done a great job at understanding that being in a negative mood can lead a person to form relatively pessimistic expectations, whereas being in a positive mood can lead to relatively optimistic expectations.
As Aristotle wrote, “angry decision makers may have a difficult time being angry at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way. Their emotional experiences and appraisals may hinder their ability to view a situation objectively and rationally. Instead, they approach situations with confidence, a sense of control, and negative thoughts about others. These appraisal tendencies may cascade into undesirable outcomes in some situations, such as aggression, unrealistic optimism, and overconfidence.”
We may have allowed anger to become entrenched in our lives by habitual practice. Still, we can also practice responding correctly until that, too, becomes a habit the watching world sees, and God is glorified in our response.
You will know your anger is controlling you when:
  • your desires are more important than Spiritual desires;
  • when you disregard scripture;
  • when you demand personal satisfaction when you are not satisfied.
Selfishness not only leads to wrong thinking, but it also leads to wrongdoing.
How do we disregard scripture? Proverbs also tell us that “Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly” (14:29). Ecclesiastes advises us not to be “quick in your spirit to become angry, for anger lodges in the bosom of fools” (7:9). Thus, it is wise to imitate God in his patience and be slow to anger because it is foolish to give in to your temper. When interacting with others, “a soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger” (Proverbs 15:1). We should be slow to anger so that we are able instead to respond with grace.
Be angry, but do not sin, and rather “ponder in your own hearts on your beds and be silent” (Psalm 4:4). Our response to feelings of anger should not be rash but should be quiet and thoughtful.
Anger itself is not a sin, but intense, unrestrained emotion can lead very quickly to corruption. As God said to Cain, “It’s desire is for you, but you must rule over it” (Genesis 4:7). In the same way, we must not let our feelings of anger lead us into sin, but we must master them and restrain them so that, like God, we can be “slow to anger and abounding in love and compassion.”
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Victimhood

Politics, COVID, or democracy all lead to narcissism and feelings of victimhood. Even well-off people fall prey to this disease. We want to believe things are not our fault and the other is the cause of us losing something. Every age has a notion of this being the worst time ever.

The reality is that we are all susceptible to greed, rich and poor alike. Greed arises from man’s fallen nature. But greed is not just financial. This fallen nature impels man to satisfy his desires with the least possible expenditure of effort, which often requires his satisfaction at the expense of others.

Biblical commentator John Ritenbaugh describes greed as a “ruthless self-seeking and an arrogant assumption that others and things exist for one’s own benefit. An accursed love of having, which will pursue its own interests with complete disregard for the rights of others, and even for the considerations of common humanity.”

Author Tom Nichols offers a counterintuitive description, “we are losing because we won. We are suffering because we are successful. We are unhappy because we have what we want.“

The Bible defines it as self-interest at the expense of others and provides us several examples: Satan was expelled from Heaven for wanting to be God. Adam and Eve wanted the knowledge of God. And Cain wanted the love Abel received.

In Romans 1:18b, we see that we are very capable of suppressing what we know to be true:

“Men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.”

All this led to Jesus coming to demonstrate how to put others first and simply “love God and love your neighbor as yourself.”

Some say the Bible does not condemn the pursuit of self-interest. They point to Scriptures like Philippians 2:4, “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” And Matt 6:20, “But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven . . .”

“There is a place for legitimate self-interest, to which the bible periodically appeals, only it must be balanced by a compassionate concern for the interest of others.”

Sadly, many of us in the Christian community have missed the point. We establish rapport exclusively to satisfy our emotional and material needs. We commoditize relationships to further our careers, families, bank accounts, and material possessions and essentially build mutually exclusive affiliations. We use those affiliations to limit who we engage.

American Christians
portraying Christianity
as self-centered individualism
must explain how this integrates with
God’s commandment to love your neighbor.

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The Toxic Source Of Inconsistency

Dr. I. David Byrd

 

An expected result of teaching God’s Word is demonstrating, distinguishing, and defending what we teach. In other words, live what we teach and teach what we live. 1 Corinthians 11:1 says, “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.” The great commission’s high calling is for believers to serve as a Godly example by living out our walk with God.

 

As the world “waxes worse and worse”, we must ponder – is our witness is losing its impact. If people listen more to what we do than what we say, the central question becomes, what are we doing that is driving the world away from the Church? Research shows people are leaving the Church in record numbers. What are they saying to us. Could they be telling us that they are not interested in being a part of what they see from the Church? What attitudes, beliefs, assumptions, or patterns of behavior are we projecting that have become our strongholds and turns people away? Once separated, the enemy has the opportunity to plant all kinds of false truths in their minds.

 

Some believe coercive force is to be used to restrain other people’s activities. Jesus demonstrated that proximity and the Word’s power are more than enough to change humankind’s hearts. Three examples of this:

 

In John 4:4-26, Jesus brought the Samaritan woman at the well to repentance using the Word and demonstrating to those ready to stone her that they too were sinners in need of grace.

 

In Mark 7:24-30, when the Syrophoenician came to speak to Jesus, the disciples dismissed her, labeled her, and advised Jesus to send her away. Yet, Jesus took the time to talk with her. And because of her faith, her daughter was healed.

 

In Luke 24, Jesus responded on the road to Emmaus by using scripture – “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.” The Bible says they responded, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”

 

The Word is enough to transform hearts and minds on its own. It doesn’t need our coercion, legislation, force, dominance, or judgment to help it. The only help it needs from us is to tell people about it and let them see us living it. Besides, we can’t put anyone in heaven or hell anyway. Only God can provide saving grace. When we come to this knowledge and understanding, our personnel theology will be an example of Christ to this wayward world.

 

I still believe the Church can be the example of Christ.

 

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Is Your Commitment To Capitalism or Christ?

Dr. I. David Byrd

 

“What if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb,
but the darkness of the womb?”   Valarie Kaur

 

 

If capitalism works, more people would have achieved economic security as the stock market continues to go up. Capitalism’s premise is that wealth will trickle down to make life better for everyone. The U.S. reports the lowest unemployment in 50 years, rising incomes across all races and job levels, a stock market that continues to reach historic highs (even with the recent volatility sparked by the spread of the coronavirus), the low-interest rates, and a GDP that has been expanding.

 

Juxtapose that against a possibility of a terrible second or third coronavirus wave. A delay in the discovery of a vaccine, a potential constitutional crisis in the election in November, runaway inflation, the prospect of higher taxes to pay for the stimulus, a more significant trade war with China, social unrest, or the dozens of other risks that seem to be bubbling just below. In July, CNBC reports that 32% of Americans couldn’t even pay their rent or mortgage. And according to Newsweek, U.S. billionaires got $583 billion richer since mid-March. Over 30 million Americans can’t find a job despite efforts to become gainfully employed.

 

Was that a political rant? No, that was showing you our need for the dependence on Jesus and not humans’ idols. No ideology is going to last; only the Word of God is eternal.

 

If our history tells us that economic scarcity can lead to violence, then let’s create a system in which more people can access economic success. I read an article from Anand Giridharadas about his interview with Senator Chris Murphy.  They concluded, “America does have a law-and-order problem, but it’s nothing new. And the nature of that law-and-order problem is being the most violent country in the rich world. And the genesis of that violence isn’t Black and brown communities rising up against friendly, overwhelmingly white suburbs of Minneapolis. It’s America, from the founding days of the republic, committing to an economic and political model that made violence a daily, systemic necessity. In short, those fighting to make America less racist are not our law-and-order problem. America’s real law-and-order problem is and always has been racism. The conversation continued with Senator Murphy stating, “This reckoning we’re having with our past is necessary, but it also comes with real consequences for one of the few threads of fabric that unites the country. As we all retreat to our corners, as we all get our information from different sources with different spins, our founding ideals and founding mythology are among the few things that we have left in common. Now, we’re not even sure what that mythology is.”

 

America has destroyed all nuances around American racism. It is now there, in the open, for everyone to see. The result has been to draw a lot of other people out into the open. Unfortunately, even dialogue by religious leaders is coarser and more hateful than ever before. This is antithetical to the Word of God and promotes the sin of self-interest and not the mission of the gospel.

 

Choose ye this day who you will serve. “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”