"The most famous mutiny in history was the rebellion aboard the HMS Bounty in April 1789. That incident inspired five motion pictures and numerous books. Three weeks after the Bounty left Tahiti with a cargo of breadfruit trees (a cheap food source for Caribbean slaves), the crew mutinied. First Mate Fletcher Christian, the leader of the mutineers, forced Captain William Bligh and eighteen loyal sailors into a small open boat and set them adrift.
"The mutineers took the Bounty back to Tahiti. Sixteen crewmen chose to stay there. But Fletcher Christian and eight other men took some Tahitian islanders with them and set out for a safe hiding place. They chose a lonely, uninhabited island called Pitcairn.
"One of the sailors made whiskey from the native plants, and the resulting drunken orgies quickly turned to violent brawls. Though the island looked like a paradise, the mutineers began to view it as a prison. One by one, the mutinous crewmen were either killed in fights or murdered in their sleep. Even Fletcher Christian died violently.
"Finally, only one of the mutineers was left alive, a sailor named Alexander Smith. As the last man living, he felt responsible to look after the women and fatherless children who remained. Smith regretted the sinfulness of his past, and he knew he lacked wisdom to care for the women and children. He needed guidance from beyond himself.
"Looking through a sea-chest, Smith found a Bible. Over the next few weeks, he read it from cover to cover. Then he asked God to take control of his life. He also taught the women and children to read the Bible. Fathered by various mutineers, those children grew up, married, and had children of their own.
"In 1808, the American whaling ship Topaz stopped at Pitcairn. The Americans were the first visitors to the island since the mutiny on the Bounty, eighteen years earlier. The sailors from the Topaz were astounded to find an orderly Christian society in which there was no crime, no disease, no alcoholism, and no illiteracy.
"Pitcairn had been hell on earth under the reign of Fletcher Christian and his fellow mutineers. The people had suffered under something called "the wrath of God" - the inevitable result of human hearts filled with murder, envy, lust, rebellion, and drunkenness.
"But when the last man on Pitcairn turned his heart over to God, the wrath of God was replaced by the love of God, and Pitcairn became a paradise on earth. The transformation of that tiny island is just a glimpse of what could happen in our own society. If we would choose to receive the love and mercy of God, we would escape the wrath of God now being revealed against the godlessness and wickedness of our age."
'Reason to Rejoice: Love, Grace, and Forgiveness in Paul's Letter to the Romans'
by Ray C. Stedman
Friday, August 27, 2010
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Spiritual Journey
In December 1911, Douglas Mawson, a twenty-nine year old Australian geologist and explorer, led a twenty-five man scientific team to the frozen and forbidding tundra of eastern Antarctica. The team established a base at Commonwealth Bay and sent out small expeditionary parties. After a brutal winter at base camp, Mawson decided to explore the interior with two companions, a dog handler named Belgrave Ninnis and world ski champion Xavier Mertz.
The three men planned to travel twelve hundred miles across the largely uncharted territory, but the conditions proved far more arduous than expected. After six weeks, the men and their dogs had covered only three hundred miles. They decided to turn back, but that very day Ninnis, along with the six strongest dogs and the food sled, vanished into a crevasse. Mawson and Mertz had just a week’s supply of food for themselves, no dog rations for their six remaining huskies, and a five-week journey ahead of them to return to Commonwealth Bay.
They set off, shooting the weakest dogs one by one for food as their hunger demanded. Mawson and Mertz noticed deep strips of their own skin peeling off, not realizing that the huskies’ livers were poisoning them with toxic amounts of vitamin A. After three weeks – and still a long distance from the base camp – Mertz died.
Mawson pushed on. He made it to Aladdin’s Cave, an outpost just five and a half miles from base camp, where fierce winds stranded him for a week. Finally the weather broke and Mawson made the steep hike down to camp. But he arrived too late. The ship sent to pick up his expedition had sailed away just six hours before. Remarkably, six men had waited in case Mawson returned, and they holed up in the camp with him until the ship came back for them – ten and a half months later.
We might marvel at such a story of courage, hunger, and survival. Yet those events a century ago reflect the spiritual journey for many of us. Just as Douglas Mawson could not be tied down to a mundane, ordinary life, many of us feel the same way about our spiritual lives. Surely God did not intend the abundant life to be drab, boring, empty, or tedious. We harbor deep suspicions that something deeper and vaster lies beyond our daily routines. We may not face howling winds and blistering cold or find ourselves stranded on the most desolate and isolated continent of the world, but many of us share the deep yearning to explore the spiritual realm more fully. We want to know the deep interior things of God. Along the way, we face a range of obstacles that stop some of us in our tracks. We find ourselves, at times, distracted – even poisoned – by things we thought were harmless. And then at the moment we feel like we’ve finally arrived home, we find that the ship has left with most of our friends.
The journey to know the heart of God can seem every bit as exhilarating and stretching as an Antarctic expedition. Thankfully, others have already explored and charted the territory. Christian men and women throughout the centuries have walked the Way ahead of us and left maps and markers, and Jesus has done it most clearly of all.
Not everyone wants to be an Antarctic explorer. It’s easier and more comfortable to sit at home and let life pass by. Many of us prefer entertainment to exploration. But for those with a spirit of adventure and hunger for the new, our heavenly Father invites you to an old journey. If you’re willing to pack only the essentials and pursue the wonderful interior places of faith, the Holy Spirit will be your constant companion as you get underway.
'Living the Lord's Prayer' by David Timms
The three men planned to travel twelve hundred miles across the largely uncharted territory, but the conditions proved far more arduous than expected. After six weeks, the men and their dogs had covered only three hundred miles. They decided to turn back, but that very day Ninnis, along with the six strongest dogs and the food sled, vanished into a crevasse. Mawson and Mertz had just a week’s supply of food for themselves, no dog rations for their six remaining huskies, and a five-week journey ahead of them to return to Commonwealth Bay.
They set off, shooting the weakest dogs one by one for food as their hunger demanded. Mawson and Mertz noticed deep strips of their own skin peeling off, not realizing that the huskies’ livers were poisoning them with toxic amounts of vitamin A. After three weeks – and still a long distance from the base camp – Mertz died.
Mawson pushed on. He made it to Aladdin’s Cave, an outpost just five and a half miles from base camp, where fierce winds stranded him for a week. Finally the weather broke and Mawson made the steep hike down to camp. But he arrived too late. The ship sent to pick up his expedition had sailed away just six hours before. Remarkably, six men had waited in case Mawson returned, and they holed up in the camp with him until the ship came back for them – ten and a half months later.
We might marvel at such a story of courage, hunger, and survival. Yet those events a century ago reflect the spiritual journey for many of us. Just as Douglas Mawson could not be tied down to a mundane, ordinary life, many of us feel the same way about our spiritual lives. Surely God did not intend the abundant life to be drab, boring, empty, or tedious. We harbor deep suspicions that something deeper and vaster lies beyond our daily routines. We may not face howling winds and blistering cold or find ourselves stranded on the most desolate and isolated continent of the world, but many of us share the deep yearning to explore the spiritual realm more fully. We want to know the deep interior things of God. Along the way, we face a range of obstacles that stop some of us in our tracks. We find ourselves, at times, distracted – even poisoned – by things we thought were harmless. And then at the moment we feel like we’ve finally arrived home, we find that the ship has left with most of our friends.
The journey to know the heart of God can seem every bit as exhilarating and stretching as an Antarctic expedition. Thankfully, others have already explored and charted the territory. Christian men and women throughout the centuries have walked the Way ahead of us and left maps and markers, and Jesus has done it most clearly of all.
Not everyone wants to be an Antarctic explorer. It’s easier and more comfortable to sit at home and let life pass by. Many of us prefer entertainment to exploration. But for those with a spirit of adventure and hunger for the new, our heavenly Father invites you to an old journey. If you’re willing to pack only the essentials and pursue the wonderful interior places of faith, the Holy Spirit will be your constant companion as you get underway.
'Living the Lord's Prayer' by David Timms
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Take Sin Seriously
Understanding what the Bible teaches about sin is essential to understanding what the Bible teaches about everything else. And if we do not understand what the Bible teaches about sin, we certainly will not be able to understand God. In particular, we will never be able to figure out what makes God angry.
Besides not being able to understand God, if we do not understand what the Bible teaches about sin, we will never be able to understand ourselves - why we behave in an adverse manner to some circumstances, react unkindly to certain situations, have problems in our relationships. We have to understand what the Bible has to say about sin.
To take it a step further, we have to understand what the Bible teaches about sin in order to understand the world itself. Scattered across the globe are scholars, philosophers,and activists who are all trying to identify the source of our problems in the world today. They usually blame the world's problems on circumstances, economic conditions, poor parenting, or a lack of education. After years of research, they tell us things like: "Want to stop war? Make the nations prosperous." Or: "Want to wipe out crime in the inner city? Make sure kids get a proper education." Sorry, but these k9ins of solutions do not cut it. They fall for short because they fail to deal with the root of the problem. They do not take into consideration what the Bible teaches about sin.
Quite frankly, the Bible will be one long, confusing book if we do not understand sin. Salvation, God's judgement, hell, heaven, death, punishment, justification, propitiation, and redemption make no sense apart from sin.
Considering that, what doctrine might Satan want to attack most? It is no surprise that Satan is relentless in his attack on what the Bible teaches about sin. By simply tampering with the doctrine of sin, he has us where he wants us. He knows that if we have a wrong understanding of sin, we will have a wrong understanding of everything else.
I am convinced that many problems in the church today can be traced back to a wrong understanding of sin. Churches are filled with individuals who are self-righteous and who are trusting in their own good works for salvation. Many people believe they are Christians because they are nice people, because they grew up in a Christian family, or because they go to church. Why is this? It is because they do not have any idea of the seriousness of their sin. If they could understand sin's seriousness, they would also quickly understand the folly of trusting for salvation in being baptized, going to church, or being born into a Christian family.
Our churches are filled with Christians who are not growing spiritually. Show me a Christian who is not growing and I will show you a person who does not take sin seriously. Many people say that they want to grow, but really do not mean it - at least not enough. Mostly, they just like to say they want to grow. That way they can appear to be holy while continuing to indulge in the very things that keep them from being holy. They like the benefits of a godly life, but they do no want to make the sacrifices required in order to experience those benefits. They want to be godly, but they do not really want to be godly. They love their sin too much, and they will not deal with it until they grieve over it.
Although every true Christian has, at one point in his life, at least caught a glimpse of the seriousness of sin, it is easy to forget just how terrible it really is as we continue in our Christian walk. When that begins to happen, we can be sure that we have wandered far from God; for the more we get to know God, the more we will hate sin. When men see God for who He really is, they see themselves for who they really are. And when they see themselves for who they really are, their cry is the same: "Woe is me!"
It is certainly not the most pleasant experience in the world to have the darkness of our own hearts exposed. If we are willing to turn on the light of God's Word, however, we will see things about Jesus Christ that we have never seen before. When we think of ourselves adoringly, we think of Christ sparingly. But when we stop boasting in ourselves and begin to admit the truth about us, we become smaller in our own eyes and Christ becomes greater and more precious to us.
'A Fight to the Death' by Wayne Make
Besides not being able to understand God, if we do not understand what the Bible teaches about sin, we will never be able to understand ourselves - why we behave in an adverse manner to some circumstances, react unkindly to certain situations, have problems in our relationships. We have to understand what the Bible has to say about sin.
To take it a step further, we have to understand what the Bible teaches about sin in order to understand the world itself. Scattered across the globe are scholars, philosophers,and activists who are all trying to identify the source of our problems in the world today. They usually blame the world's problems on circumstances, economic conditions, poor parenting, or a lack of education. After years of research, they tell us things like: "Want to stop war? Make the nations prosperous." Or: "Want to wipe out crime in the inner city? Make sure kids get a proper education." Sorry, but these k9ins of solutions do not cut it. They fall for short because they fail to deal with the root of the problem. They do not take into consideration what the Bible teaches about sin.
Quite frankly, the Bible will be one long, confusing book if we do not understand sin. Salvation, God's judgement, hell, heaven, death, punishment, justification, propitiation, and redemption make no sense apart from sin.
Considering that, what doctrine might Satan want to attack most? It is no surprise that Satan is relentless in his attack on what the Bible teaches about sin. By simply tampering with the doctrine of sin, he has us where he wants us. He knows that if we have a wrong understanding of sin, we will have a wrong understanding of everything else.
I am convinced that many problems in the church today can be traced back to a wrong understanding of sin. Churches are filled with individuals who are self-righteous and who are trusting in their own good works for salvation. Many people believe they are Christians because they are nice people, because they grew up in a Christian family, or because they go to church. Why is this? It is because they do not have any idea of the seriousness of their sin. If they could understand sin's seriousness, they would also quickly understand the folly of trusting for salvation in being baptized, going to church, or being born into a Christian family.
Our churches are filled with Christians who are not growing spiritually. Show me a Christian who is not growing and I will show you a person who does not take sin seriously. Many people say that they want to grow, but really do not mean it - at least not enough. Mostly, they just like to say they want to grow. That way they can appear to be holy while continuing to indulge in the very things that keep them from being holy. They like the benefits of a godly life, but they do no want to make the sacrifices required in order to experience those benefits. They want to be godly, but they do not really want to be godly. They love their sin too much, and they will not deal with it until they grieve over it.
Although every true Christian has, at one point in his life, at least caught a glimpse of the seriousness of sin, it is easy to forget just how terrible it really is as we continue in our Christian walk. When that begins to happen, we can be sure that we have wandered far from God; for the more we get to know God, the more we will hate sin. When men see God for who He really is, they see themselves for who they really are. And when they see themselves for who they really are, their cry is the same: "Woe is me!"
It is certainly not the most pleasant experience in the world to have the darkness of our own hearts exposed. If we are willing to turn on the light of God's Word, however, we will see things about Jesus Christ that we have never seen before. When we think of ourselves adoringly, we think of Christ sparingly. But when we stop boasting in ourselves and begin to admit the truth about us, we become smaller in our own eyes and Christ becomes greater and more precious to us.
'A Fight to the Death' by Wayne Make
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Disappointments
No matter what church you attend you will eventually find quarrelsome, contrary, controlling people who will eventually drive you out of the church, and if you allow it, drive you away from your faith. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that the church is the place where our dreams are shattered - he's right. New believers often enter the church expecting to find a little bit of heaven on earth. We all think and hope and expect that our brothers and sisters in Christ will treat us better than the people in the world. But sooner or later we discover that the saints are not always saintly, and the people of God are not always godly. Sometimes they can be cantankerous, mean-spirited, unkind, and sometimes downright cruel. The church - local and universal - routinely disappoints us. When that happens, our faith is shattered and sometimes our hope is destroyed. It takes a lot of courage to face the imperfect people of the 'church,' some of whom say and do outrageous things, and disappoint us again and again, and to keep believing deep in your soul and to stay with this movement called the 'Christian Church.'
Ray Pritchard http://www.crosswalk.com/blogs/pritchard/11635791/
Ray Pritchard http://www.crosswalk.com/blogs/pritchard/11635791/
Friday, August 6, 2010
Fight to the Death
In Romans 8:13 the apostle Paul was inspired to write, "If you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live (nasb)." Also, in Colossians 3:5, believers are commanded: "Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry." Following that command, we are reminded of the importance of obedience and the seriousness of not putting sin to death: "For it is because of these things that the wrath of God will come upon the sons of disobedience: (Col. 3:6). In other words, failing to put sin to death is serious business. The apostle Paul was saying that either we destroy sin or it will destroy us.
Some time ago, a friend of mine told me about a man who introduced himself to a group as a hired killer. As you can imagine, the other people in the group were quite shocked (and perhaps a bit uneasy) to have someone in the midst who was so bold in announcing to the world that he was a hired killer. Fortunately, their concern was eliminated as the man went on to explain that he worked for a company that exterminated insect and animal pests.
According to the Bible, every believer should devote himself to being a killer - not of people or animal pests, but of sin. Put sin to death or it will destroy you and others.
'A Fight to the Death' by Wayne Mack
Some time ago, a friend of mine told me about a man who introduced himself to a group as a hired killer. As you can imagine, the other people in the group were quite shocked (and perhaps a bit uneasy) to have someone in the midst who was so bold in announcing to the world that he was a hired killer. Fortunately, their concern was eliminated as the man went on to explain that he worked for a company that exterminated insect and animal pests.
According to the Bible, every believer should devote himself to being a killer - not of people or animal pests, but of sin. Put sin to death or it will destroy you and others.
'A Fight to the Death' by Wayne Mack
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
The Word of God is Truth
"Anytime you come across siomething that is contrary or contradictory to the Word of God, you can know immediately that you do not have the truth. Whoever wrote it, said it, or taught it was wrong. You are deceived if you believe something that is contrary to the Word of God or that in principle or precept contradicts the Bible. If you embrace anything that contradicts or is contrary to God's Word, you have chosen to believe man above God. You have made the wrong choice! It doesn't matter what it has done for you or for others, nor does it matter what supposed proof you have that the Word of God is wrong. I must tell you, you are simply deceived. Either God's Word is what God says it is, or it is all a lie."
'Lord, Heal My Hurts' by Kay Arthur
'Lord, Heal My Hurts' by Kay Arthur
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Making a Difference by Being Different
"Contrary to what we've been hearing, our greatest need as 21st century churches is not structural but spiritual. Our main problem is not that we're culturally out of touch; it's that we're theologically out of tune. We need to remember that God has established His church as an alternative society, not to compete with or copy this world, but to offer a refreshing alternative to it. When we forget this, we inadvertently communicate to our culture that we have nothing unique to offer, nothing deeply spiritual or profoundly transforming. Tragically, this leaves many in our world looking elsewhere for the difference they crave."
'Unfashionable' by Tullian Tchividjian
'Unfashionable' by Tullian Tchividjian
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