To What Purpose November 8?

Anyone with a modicum of understanding of the God of Scripture knows God delivered us from judgment on November 8. He answered the prayers of multiple thousands of Christians and other God- fearing Americans. Our national sins of abortion and flagrant sexual immorality alone – not to even mention our other national sins – our sins stink to the highest heaven just as Sodom’s sins sent their stench to God’s nostrils (Genesis 18-19). 

Yes, God had mercy on us this time by not giving us what we deserve.

At this point we ought to be reminded of St. Paul’s comment to the church at Rome: “Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?” (Romans 2:4)

Christians and other God-fearing Americans ought to take serious and measured heed of what the apostle wrote.

The Church has enough to repent of to keep us on our knees for the next four years. And I IMPLORE US to not sit back now and think our work is done until next time. Such an attitude would be very unwise and very costly.  God is not One to be mocked.

Perhaps that is one reason the Holy Spirit made it easy for us to find model prayers of repentance. I call it the DEN prayer models: Daniel,Ezra,Nehemiah. Look at chapter 9 in each of the three Biblical books and you will find model prayers in which every pastor, deacon, priest, bishop, rabbi, and Sunday School teacher/catechist could lead their congregations. And the DEN prayer models also can serve as templates for individual prayers as well.

You and I must not fail to recognize and openly acknowledge the gift of grace (Grace: God giving us what we do not deserve. Note the difference in the definition of Mercy I listed at the beginning) – we must not fail to recognize and openly acknowledge the gift of grace God extended to us on November 8. We must not be like the ten lepers healed by Jesus – of whom only the one returned to give Him thanks. (Luke 17:11-19)

Christian, and you who fear the God of the Bible, God still calls us to national repentance. We kill 3500 babies in the womb each DAY in American abortion centers. We have elevated sexual perversions to the law of the land. We have turned our backs on the truly needy among us (I use the phrase “truly needy” on purpose). We are carelessly and cavalierly permitting our children and grandchildren to be taught God is merely an ancient myth useful only within the four walls of a church or synagogue. We have enthroned the ‘dollar’ to the place of worship and shoved the Creator to the periphery of our day to day lives. And those are only the beginning of our sins for which God will judge us if we do not repent.

What the prophet wrote in 2 Chronicles 7:13-14 still holds true, and may God help us to never lose sight of that promise – AND that implied warning: 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, 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.”

God has done His part. He has granted us His mercy. Now we must do our part.

 Christian, and those of you who fear God – how then will we live?

What a somber and sober choice lay now before us.

Never Give Up the Fight

How do we keep doing "well-doing" when it seems a struggle to put one foot ahead of the other? And perhaps more important is the question, "Why should we keep doing it?" I answer those questions in my latest message from Galatians. https://youtu.be/oMz9P0_Hi7A

Growing Old With God

(I wrote this several years ago and is excerpted from my second book, Lessons Along the Journey)
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I hadn’t slept well the night before, and weariness settled over me like a heavy rug. Nancy and I returned home from Mass, ate lunch, and were unwinding on the couch where she continued our conversation about her passion for art. But I couldn't keep my mind from drifting. As it did, my eyes focused on her face.
         
I’d noticed her changing features before, but somehow this time I saw her anew. Creases now feather her cheeks and forehead where her skin was once smooth and supple. Gone is her naturally dark auburn hair. She colors it blonde to mask the gray.
         
When I asked Nancy to marry me nearly four decades ago, I thought I knew her. I thought I loved her. Now, half-listening to her describe the colors she planned to use in her next project, I realized how little I really knew or loved her in 1975.
         
We’ve weathered many storms during our years together. Some of them were tsunamis. I don’t even like to dredge them up in my memory. Our son suffered through divorce. Nancy’s beloved stepfather died. Two years later, I lost mine. Financial crises and long periods of unemployment rocked our marriage from time to time. Friends turned their backs on us because of our commitment to Christ. And then there were a dozen military-related moves from one end of the country to the other, which forced us to leave family, friends, and familiar places.
         
Sometimes I wonder how we survived it all. God’s grace? Unquestionably. Intervening from the shadows, often without revealing His hand, our Father brought peace when turmoil overwhelmed us, and freedom when fear bound us. He quieted us when, in frustration, we lashed out at each other instead of going to our knees before our God.
         
God’s grace, certainly. But something else has proven vital to our relationship: our communication with each other.
         
I suppose better than eighty percent of our discussions over the years have been casual. You know the kind: what’s for dinner, what happened at work, the kids have colds . . . . But because of that casual eighty percent, she and I can also meet in intimate, deeply personal conversations. We are able to talk about our hopes, joys, fears and dreams because we have spent so much of our time learning about each other. That’s why I know her – and love her – so much more today than I did when we married.
         
Which brings me to the real point.
         
Thirty-nine years ago, I thought I knew Jesus. I thought I loved him. But, oh, how my knowledge of Him and my love for Him are so very different today than they were in 1972 when I first offered Him my heart.
         
Why? Unquestionably, because of God’s grace. But I am sure there is something else at work.

Early in my walk with Christ, I learned the importance of communing with Him in prayer, study of Scripture – and since 2005 when I entered the Catholic Church – in the Sacraments. Over the years, I’ve worn out three Bibles, memorized scores of Scripture texts, and can allude to a hundred more. I’ve spent time with Him in the morning, the evening, and throughout the day.
         
To be honest, most of my prayers – eighty percent? – are not what I would call passionate. You know the kind: Lord, I need a good evaluation at work. Mom needs guidance about moving from Florida. Gerry needs a job. Helen’s son is ill. But because of that eighty percent, because I communicate so often with Him, I know how to be intimate with Him when battles rage beyond my control.
         
In the first stanza of his poem, Rabbi Ben Ezra, Robert Browning wrote, “Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be. The last of life, for which the first was made, our times are in His hand who said ‘A whole I planned, youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!’”
         
As husbands and wives grow old together, they learn what love and intimacy with each other looks like. When men and women grow old with the King of Glory, they learn what love and intimacy with Him is like. When life’s storms rip at our foundations, when the hot breath of Satan prickles down our neck, our deeply personal knowledge of God will be our fortress. Our passionate love for Him, born through intimate communion, will be our strength. Surely, that is one reason the prophet urged: “Seek the Lord while He may be found, call Him while He is near” (Isaiah 55:6).

The Leaven of the Gospel - Sunday Sermon

What our world would be like if the Church did its job as the Church did its job in the first century when a few rag-tag men changed their entire world? THAT is the leaven of the gospel. You can listen to my message here:

https://youtu.be/yIG89CxOOO4

Sermon from Galatians 4_4

Those who believe the Bible is the inerrant word of God know there is a time for everything in God’s individual and specific plan for each of us. I talk about it in my latest message through Galatians. https://youtu.be/Er14bI6-_yc

The Best -- or the Only?

You were dead in your transgressions and sins . . . But God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love he had for us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, brought us to life with Christ (by grace you have been saved) . . . (Ephesians 2:1-5).

It felt like the hottest day in mid-August. As I jogged around the neighborhood, my sweat-soaked shirt clung like a second skin. Waves of heat rippled above the asphalt. The humidity was so high, I thought I was breathing water. 

That suffocating combination of heat and humidity is probably why I smelled the cat before I saw it. I rounded the corner and spotted its decaying body in weeds by the curb. Its lifeless lips tightened into a grotesque grin, and sun-bleached ribs peeked through putrefying flesh. I held my breath and picked up the pace to move past the odor.


Over the years, I’ve passed dozens of dead animals during my exercise routine, and I always ignored them. But this time – probably to keep my mind off the heat – my thoughts wandered back to the cat.

“What if someone dressed the dead cat in a silk suit and tie?” The question dropped into my mind and, for a moment, the image startled me.

“What if someone draped a gold chain around its neck and splashed expensive cologne on its face?”

I smirked at the ludicrous image. A gallon of cologne couldn’t mask the odor of death, nor could the most expensive clothes hide its appearance. Nothing short of God’s supernatural intervention could breathe the fragrance of life into that corpse.

Then the spiritual parallel swept into my mind.

Scripture repeats the message so often, it’s a wonder anyone misses it. Without Christ, we are all spiritually dead in our sins. That’s the point St. Paul tried to impress on his readers in Ephesus: “You were dead in your transgressions and sins” (Ephesians 2:1). The Greek word the apostle used to emphasize their condition before God made them alive in Christ (v. 4) is nekros. It’s the same word from which English speakers get necrotic.

In other words, before God’s intervention, they were necrotic. And without His intervention through Christ, so are we. It doesn’t matter who we are, or what we have – academic degrees, religious titles or affiliation, hefty bank accounts, political power, or praise from others. Without Christ, we stink (Isaiah 64:6; 2 Corinthians 2:15,16), and God can smell us on the other side of the universe. Nothing short of His supernatural power exercised through His Son gives us life.

The Bible calls it being, “born anew” (John 3:1-7, 1 Peter 1:3). And the Catechism of the Catholic Church proclaims: One becomes a member of this people not by a physical birth, but by being “born anew," a birth "of water and the Spirit," that is, by faith in Christ, and Baptism” (Para 782).

Being compared to a dead animal was not a proud moment for me. But the dead cat image captured my attention and gave me a glimpse of God’s ineffable mercy, because regardless of the depth, breadth, and frequency of our sins, God’s grace can cleanse us. By our faith in Christ – and in no other -- God clothes us in glistening robes at our baptism and, through our ongoing confession and repentance, breathes life into our necrotic corpse (Isaiah 61:10).

No one smells so badly that Jesus’ blood cannot transform the odor of decay into the sweet fragrance of eternal life.

We have Scripture’s promise about it. But we also have Scripture’s warning:

Jesus is not the best way to heaven. He is the only way.

Social Media and Evangelism

Jesus said, “We must work the works of Him who sent Me as long as it is day; night is coming when no one can work.”(John 9:4)

Who knows how much longer Christians will be able to work in the fields that are “white to harvest”? For those who are paying attention, darkness may very well be settling not only over America, but over the whole world.

Social media has provided the devil and his children an unprecedented means of evangelizing the world for his relentless evil. But social media ALSO provides God’s children an equally unprecedented means of evangelizing the world for Jesus Christ.

Not everyone believes he or she is sufficiently articulate to write and post meaningful essays on social media about Jesus. But we DO NOT have to be articulate to effectively and fruitfully evangelize for Christ on social media.

Here is one suggestion: When you read your Bible and God speaks to you through a particular paragraph or verse, type that text into social media and share a sentence or two about what the text means to you.

Or, here is an even easier suggestion: When you read a text of Scripture that speaks to you, copy the text onto social media without comment. God’s word – by itself – is able to speak to the hearts of those who will read the Scripture.

Night is coming when no one can work for Christ – certainly not as easily as we can work for Him today. Let us then use every tool available while it is still day.

Sunday Sermon Galatians 2_20 part 2

Each time we don’t receive from God what we ask, each time we get knocked to the ground, we face two choices: throw Christ over the cliff, or look to the One we call Father and trust Him to work in our circumstances from a heart of deep and abiding love – regardless how things look or feel.  I talk about it here: https://youtu.be/NMB5Tvp9FA8