For any of you who have at least two small children, you know that when the two siblings get into a dispute each one tries to outrun the other to get to the parent first to deliver their version of the conflict before the other gets to weigh in.
They do this because the kids know that the first to tell their version too often becomes the lens of scrutiny by which the parent will judge the other’s subsequent tale.
A wise parent will not rush to judgment upon the breathless rendering of the first child’s tale, before hearing the other late-arriving child’s account, and considering the merits of both stories together.
An even wiser parent will realize that their two kiddos think that the first telling wins the day, so they will flip the script on their two quarreling children by allowing the second arriver to give their account of the conflict first. Do this enough and the kids will see that the privileged account position is not given to the winner of the race to the parent. If you read one account over another, keep in mind that you may be falling into a trap whereby you empathize with one of us “tattling kids” over the other.
To this I will point you to the words of King Solomon:
Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this [is] the whole [duty] of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether [it be] good, or whether [it be] evil. [Ecclesiastes 12:13-14 KJV]
So let me pose some general questions to the group.
Who on this thread is surprised by the concept that God tells us to hate certain things?
Ye that love the LORD, hate evil: he preserveth the souls of his saints; he delivereth them out of the hand of the wicked. [Psalm 97:10 KJV]
The fear of the LORD [is] to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate. [Proverbs 8:13 KJV]
Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate: it may be that the LORD God of hosts will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph. [Amos 5:15 KJV]
Hatred is bad, right? There is no good reason for anger, isn’t that what many have been raised to believe?
Then explain this verse to me:
Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: Neither give place to the devil. … Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you. [Ephesians 4:26-27, 31-32 KJV]
Did Paul write something contradictory in verse 26, that he reversed in verse 31?
When God is described as getting angry, is Our Holy Father in Heaven committing sin?
Explain the seeming contradiction, if you will. You might be forced to reconsider the human taught idea that “all anger” is bad and “all hatred” is bad.
The problem we have as modern-day Christians is that we have let the outside world define how we engage with worldly ideas, and bad philosophies. God clearly tells us to hate evil, not tolerate it.
The difference is we are not allowed to hate people and that is the essential point. But what do we do when we legitimately hate the lies of sin that are destroying people, when the people we encounter have taken to defining their identity by the sin and the lies they believe? For them, they see no distinction between the rejection of their sin and the rejection of them personally. Why is that? How is it that people so identify with sin that they create their own suit out of it and pretend that suit is their birth skin? This delusional psychosis that they have drives them into desperation and anger which demands that everyone accept the sin as their personhood. In fact, they demand it so much that they celebrate their sin with a “Pride” month, reveling in their delusion, expecting everyone to affirm their fiction with them.
Like in Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego’s day, a figurative towering golden statue is raised above the crowd and everyone, without exception, are commanded to bow down to it and worship it or face the fire and wrath of the leadership. As we consider these statues, and contemplate the fires of “popular opinion” we are given a choice. The former tolerance we were given to just “agree to disagree” is no longer an option on the table.
The rulership we are under, no longer allows for dissent. We must choose to act when the trumpet sounds. We must decide whether we will affirm the present delusion with abeyance or resistance.
We must look to The Word of God and choose this day whom we will serve.
Every shift in a paradigm begins with little tweaks here and there and little changes which seemingly go unnoticed.
The older I get the more I can see the far-reaching dire consequences of those seeming “little changes and tweaks.”
The Israelites were birthed into a nation under the unified belief in a monotheistic Creator God, so with such a good start, how is it that they so often had to have God scourge them with wars, famine, pestilence and drought, for their rebellion and infidelity to serve Him and Him alone? What compromises led to their being sodomites in their cities, and pagan idol worship and Asherah poles in the high places, or the women baking cakes to the Queen of Heaven cult?
All this resulted from a series of little compromises and tolerances. A failure to hate evil, and allow lies to be given the same protections and credence that the Word of God was given.
Back then the worship of false gods were accompanied by the building of a shrine or the carving of an idol. Today, the same paganism is practiced, however, it does not show with such clear statuary. It comes in the form of unbiblical ideas, and twists of perspective that bury the plain meaning of Scripture into the obscurity of past contexts, symbology, and the need for some “worthy” academic to help us find our own truth.
We cannot merely shrug off the Words of Scripture that make us uncomfortable, for God’s Word was not given to merely collect dust and be rendered back to us by some theologian with one foot in human wisdom, and one foot on the throat of God’s Word to make sure that the messages from it are sanitized for the public hearing.
We, as Christians, need to return to the place where we care most about God’s opinion above all others. Where we truly subject our own reasoning to the scrutiny of the Holy Spirit that teaches our inner spirit to discern what is true from what is soothing deceptions meant to entice us away from God’s mirror.
We who are aspiring or accomplished writers must ground ourselves in the Word, and know firmly that the grounding we are rooted in is not that of our own preferences or the views of the crowds we run with and call friends.
The test of the strength of our roots is when we, the tree planted in the soil, are buffeted by the winds of challenge. If the blowing of the winds, uproot us, we know we only had a shallow understanding to base our positions on. But if our roots have been given the opportunity to deepen into the earth and curl around the embedded foundational rocks of the Word of God, the winds of challenge may blow upon us, and we may sway and lose leaf cover, but we will not be uprooted, for our grounding is solid.
Satan looks for the areas in our lives where we have made compromises with worldly wisdom. Areas where we fear to speak truth because we might offend those in our circle who love the darkness rather than the light.
The chinks in our spiritual armor come when we rely on man’s wisdom over God’s and the enemies of our faith will most certainly exploit those vulnerabilities as we are tested by the fires and arrows sent our way.
We have to examine how we will respond to what God reveals and what He in His Word commands, before we reach the days of our trials. Will we bow to the idol towering over us, or will we defy the evil of the day, even to the point of challenging the rulership’s directives.
Our allegiance should be predetermined.
When the scripture uses cryptic symbology in teaching and prophecy, you will almost always find that the explanation of that symbology following it. Usually there is an attendant angel present when one of the prophets ask about the symbolism and the angel explains the meaning. When Jesus told parables, the disciples ask Him about the meaning afterward and He always explained it. When John was taken up into heaven to see the future events of Christ’s second coming, building upon the words of Jesus in Matthew 24, he was often told what the images he saw symbolized.
When Christ imparted His Holy Spirit into us, He expected that we would not shy away from passages we do not readily understand without further study into the broader companion scriptures.
[It is] the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings [is] to search out a matter. [Proverbs 25:2 KJV]
As we believers in Christ as made part of His royal family, we inherit these spiritual positions of royalty and our mission is to take on this “honour of kings” and to search out the matters which God has concealed in His precious Word.
As each of you yield to God’s spirit in the calling He has brought you to with the creative gifts of writing, remember that you act in partnership with Him, but You don’t lead Him. You allow yourself to be open to what He will reveal to you about yourself in the expression of your gift.
The beginning questions you must answer for yourselves are:
Do you trust that the decisions God has already made for you were made with your best in mind?
If God chose to make you male or female, did He have a good reason for doing so, and have you made peace with the “rightness” of His decision?
If God assigns different roles to different genders and situations, do you trust that He is wise in doing so, or do you waste time coveting what He assigned to another? How can you trust and focus on the path God has chosen for you, if you spend your time looking off at another person’s journey and wishing you were on a different path than the one God determined for you?
It all comes down to trusting God and accepting that the plans He has specifically for you are good ones.
This goes to accepting God’s character by faith rather than feeling. By releasing the need for God to give an account for Himself, to just accepting His good intentions considering the knowledge of what He has already proven.
But without faith [it is] impossible to please [him]: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and [that] he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. [Hebrews 11:6 KJV]
IF you want to achieve a result that pleases God, you must do it in faith, setting aside all other viewpoints that cloud or distract you from seeing Him as He is.
God will often reveal His truths more readily to a child or to a farmer or fisherman before He will reveal them to the self-made millionaire or the pretentious academic. The difference between these sets of seekers, is that the child, farmer and fisherman often times have less of a problem getting over the obstacle of their own pride to be able to see and trust God when He reveals Himself and His way to them.
The Pharisees were blind guides. The rich young ruler went away sorrowful because he had much wealth.
For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, [are called]: But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, [yea], and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in his presence. [1 Corinthians 1:26-29 KJV]
But though rude in speech, yet not in knowledge; but we have been throughly made manifest among you in all things. Have I committed an offence in abasing myself that ye might be exalted, because I have preached to you the gospel of God freely? [2 Corinthians 11:6-7 KJV]
I now yield the floor to hear your thought on this and your responses.
Brian Stansell (aka O'Brian of the Surface World)
I was born in war.
Fighting from my first breath.
