YOU SANK MY BATTLESHIP

When it comes to marriage, God did not hand out a bill of rights to us, but a simple role description for both man and woman that entails each part or role that they are to live out. If done properly, their acts of obedience to what God requires of them will bring much happiness into their marriage as well as peace in their home. It would be ever so wise to understand what that role description requires before one signs on to such a great responsibility. But unfortunately, most people do not really understand what it will take to make a marriage work before they say, “I Do”. They simply want to be married and reap the rewards of that sacred institution.  God’s Word outlines for us what those requirements and responsibilities are. While there are many privileges of being married, those privileges should never be the focus of our individual responsibilities. The focus should be on obeying what God has commanded that we do and in having that perception, we reap the privileges that come with His blessings… and they are great!  Even non-Christians can benefit from God’s instructions if they are applied properly.  

I’ve seen through the years that when attending a class or teaching a class on marriage, people often times will tend to focus more on what the responsibility of their spouse is, rather than what they personally are exhorted to do. Sadly, after the class, they return home only to assume the former role that they had been living and nothing changes in their life, marriage or home. The next time a class is offered on marriage, they choose not to attend because they feel like they were never helped by the last one. The simple fact of the matter is: that one of them, or both for some reason or another was unable to hear what God was saying to them on a personal level, or they simple refused the council or advise they were given. Like playing a game, most people are more interested in “playing the game”, than learning the rules to guide them in their participation.  

Last week I was playing “You Sank My Battleship” with one of my grandsons. Since he had never played the game before I was trying to explain to him what the rules were. As we began playing, we were laughing and having fun. After a very short time he no longer wanted to play by the rules but wanted to do a little cheating on the side to advance his torpedoes and blow me out of the water. Upon my rebuking his cheating, he told me that, “it was only a game” and it was okay if he wanted to have two turns in a row, as well as taking a look at my layout, to determine where I had placed my battleships. Of course by doing that, he would know exactly what numbers to call out, to have a direct hit on my ships every time. Then having two turns to my one turn, he would quickly win the game. While I explained to him that “winners never cheat and cheaters never win”, and that if he was going to play by those rules, I did not want to play; he quickly assured me that he would do it right way the next game because he said; he loved me and wanted to sink some more of my battleships! I thought to myself upon hearing that, “I think he gets it” and gave a hearty chuckle!  You see marriage is kind of like playing “You Sank My Battleship”…it can start out just fine. Both people can be having a blast and then someone wants to cheat on the rules a little. Then one of them wants to change the rules and before you know it, they have blown the other one out of the water.

You see those people want to play the game to reap the benefits by winning the wrong way. In some marriages, people will allow themselves to be guided by the rewards instead of doing it the right way. In the end the rewards will be much greater, if they were accomplished by the proper means that it takes to win. Like my grandson, many people are willing, to stop cheating and play by the rules the right way, because they love whom they are playing with and while they may say something crazy like, “I love you and want to sink some more of your battle ships”, the fact of the matter is, they love whom they are in the marriage with, and are willing to go through the process the right way; once they understand that the way they were doing it was the wrong way!. When that happens, hope abounds and change is right around the corner. No matter how long you are married, always be willing to do things God’s way. For they truly will bring the most peace and joy in any situation.

Loving on you today,

Bren

OH WHAT A TANGLED WEB OF DEBT WE WEAVE

Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive! -Sir Walter Scott

Debt is a complicated subject and there is a great deal that could be said about it. Far more than I could begin to say and I'm sure much wiser advise than what I can give. But I would like to share a few little morsels about what I have personally experienced and learned concerning it. In my home, my husband is and always has been the financial caretaker, accountant, lender and for the most part burden barer of and over our finances. While he has always confided in me in all the decision making, I can attest to the fact that he has spared me much concern and relief from the burden of our family’s finances. Whatever my husband and I have, we have only because of the sacrifices and choice that we have made together through the years and God blessing those sacrifices and choices. I,in no way consider myself to be a financial advisor, nor do I consider to have all the answers. But through trial and error and long term hard work, I know what has, and has not worked for my family. I have learned from a good teacher by his choices and sacrifices through the years to be consistent, longsuffering and patient to get the end results of things we would like to have or achieve. I personally view the entire financial debate in one simple word, “Stewardship”! I learned this too from my husband. God’s Word teaches that God is the owner of everything and we are mear mangers and that includes our money. If we properly manage what God gives us, I have seen firsthand blessing. If on the other hand we mis-manage those things, I also know the sting of loss and disappointment as well. While my husband has been a good teacher, I must tell you that I had to trust the Lord first before I ever learned to trust my husband. In trusting the Lord, it gave me a net of security that otherwise, I believe that I would not have had with my husband. That net of security was simply making the decision in my heart, to do things God’s way! After that, trusting my husband became as easy as my trusting the Lord. For in the end….that is what it is all about…..doing your best, and leaving the results to the Lord.

From a biblical perspective incurring debt is never a black and white issue. As a matter of fact there are certain circumstances where debt is almost unavoidable at times. Like for instance, in the purchase of a home or land paying for educations and of course our family’s transportation. While the Bible never says that debt is a sin, unless of course the motive behind it is greed or selfish gain, the Bible does encourage us to avoid debt all together. The reason God discourages debt is because He knows that debt enslaves us in one way or another. One of the best things about God’s Word is, if applied; is that all mankind can benefit from His truths and wisdom. There are many popular misconceptions about the scriptures teaching, on debt. Absolutely nowhere in the Scriptures are we advised or commanded to use debt to accomplish God-given economic goals. On the contrary, the Bible contains many warnings against the use of debt to acquire something. The best way to achieve those goals would be to have a plan, work hard and save for it. However, I have seen some people through the years who get themselves heavily in debt have the impression that God has promised to get them out of their problems and will even use a verse that I have often heard cited in Philippians 4:19: "And my God will supply all your needs according to His glorious riches in Christ Jesus." The promise of course is true, God can and will meet our needs by His vast supply….but note the rest of the verse….according to His glorious riches in Christ Jesus…those glorious riches does not mean material riches, but a wealth of wisdom and truth….those are the riches of God in Christ Jesus…... and I have learned firsthand that does not mean, that Jesus has enough money to bail us out of something because He owns it all…especially when we have gotten ourselves into financial trouble by making wrong choices. He hasn't pledged Himself to us, to cancel the consequences of our unwise behavior. He pledges to us to deliver us and make another way of escape, as we walk in obedience with Him. When we disobey and choose to do things our way, we often times will end up needing His help to get out. However, His help always requires, His terms!

Through the years in conversation with friends as well as my personal recollections of doing things the wrong way, it was always easier to get in debt through the use of lenders, for three reasons. First, because we may have been living, “by sight”, trusting in what we can see. It is much easier to visualize a person who is sitting in front of us, and them assuring us, that we can have what we are asking for; with interest of course! Where with God, we will first need to confirm if it is His will for us to have it, and then of course…it’s that dreaded time frame of His that we would have to wait in….recall with me the scripture in James 4:3 that says …. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts. Well, there ya go… in a nut shell!

The second reason I believe that we find it easier to go to a lender than to God is because we want what we want and it’s not up for debate! So we do not commit it to the Lord…..nor do we even take the time to consider what He may think….we just do it! Psalms 37:5 instructs us to, “Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in Him; and He shall bring it to pass.” God will always show us a way….but it is up to us if we go the way He shows.

The third reason is because, of what it says in Luke 14:28 “For which of you, intending to build a tower, sits not down first, and counts the cost, whether he has enough to finish it?” More often than not, we do not first calculate the outcome or our choices and the wrong choices will always take us further than we wanted to go, keep us in debt longer than we had planned on being in, and the payoff or interest, cost us much more than we end up wanting to pay. Most often we are too quick to let our own will guide us and not God’s will for our lives. I like what Oswald Chambers says about calculating with God’s perspective…. “Haul yourself up a hundred and one times a day in order to do it, until you get into the habit of putting God first and calculating with Him in view.” The jewel in that comment is, “get into the habit”. It’s simply a matter of getting ourselves into a habit of pursuing God’s will in every area of our lives. Do nothing without getting His mind on it first…and then obey what He says to do about it.

 While the Bible may not saying black and white that it's wrong to borrow money, it does however warn us against presuming upon the future: "Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit;' whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that" James 4:13-15. By borrowing you may possibly be denying God an opportunity to build up your faith through a particular provision . The Lord has promised to supply all our needs Philippians 4:19, but He never promised us that we could have everything we want. For like children, He knows that some things are not good for us. Some things can even draw our hearts away from Him. That is why we are to seek His will over a matter and know when He does not come through for us on our terms….there must be a good reason! Sometimes borrowing can be unwise because it is just an easy way out of a situation that would otherwise force us to be stretched spiritually to trust God to come through for us. Romans 13:8 encourages us to owe no man anything….why? Because God does not want His children to be in bondage or slavery to nothing or no one. He knows the heaviness of what debt can bring and longs for us to be smart and never undertake on a debt that we can never get out of, short term. We do not sin because we incur debt, we sin when our debt overtakes us and causes us to worry and be fretful and fearful of our future. For you see, those are the very things that trap us and once we get trapped we become a slave to it.

Why is Debt like slavery? If you’ve ever acquired any amount of debt, whether it was a car loan, or credit card balance you couldn’t pay off at the end of the month, you may have felt the burden of slavery. This burden stems from owing money to someone else. That payment is due each month whether you can pay it or not. The heaviness of the burden alone places a ball and chain around our necks holding us captive to that which we cannot get loose. The Bible clearly tells us that we are slaves to the lender when we are in debt. That burden is the slavery of being obligated or in debt to another person. Just as the rich rule the poor, so the borrower is servant to the lender Proverbs 22:7. This is probably the most powerful debt related scripture in the Bible because it puts it into perspective quite well. I would think that for the most part folk that are servants, want to be servants by choice, not because of some debt they owe and are made to be a servant of that debt.

Debt, as with all troubles, can be an opportunity for growth. They are tests of our faith. With the right attitude towards them, we can see them as growing opportunities. Debt is not good. But we can allow it to strengthen our faith and perhaps use our story to help others in the future by overcoming it. I think the important thing to keep in mind is not to be discouraged about being in debt. It would be easy to have a negative attitude. Perhaps it would also be easy to blame someone else, or just the unfortunate situation. But if looking at debt as a trial that can and will be overcome, there is a great opportunity on the other side. God’s word gives that encouragement…Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. James 1: 1-5. When we are obliged to incur debt, there are some important biblical concepts that should govern our borrowing and one of them is, always strive with great effort to pay back any debt incurred as soon as possible. Psalm 37:21 states, "The wicked borrow and do not repay." Here the answer is obvious! One that does not repay their debts, the Bible calls "wicked." Ultimately, a believer has a moral obligation to repay their creditors to the best of their ability.

Oh friend, my heart aches for all of us that have been guilty at times as we have weaved a tangled web of debt, only to find that the desires of our flesh has deceived us into making wrong financial choices. Learning to be a good steward of our money by having a good plan and goal, setting money aside to accomplish those goals and waiting until the money is there, is the very best plan we can have and the best part is; we live in freedom!

Loving on you today,

Bren

GETTING TO KNOW GOD

There are some spiritual phrases that I have never cared for, because they do not truly represent the truth about God and in many ways, dishonors Him by the casual way that they are used. Three of them that I strongly dislike, since my own personal conversion or coming to Christ are; “I got religion!” or “They got religion!” and “Me and the man upstairs got our own thing going!”. When a person becomes a Christian, they do not come to religion, a church, a minister, or a set of beliefs and they sure don’t come to some man upstairs. They have come to the living and Holy God that created them as well as the universe in which they live. They are able to do so according to John 1 by only one means and that is through the blood atonement of God’s personal sacrifice, His only Son, Jesus Christ! The only way that a person can understand how serious God is about any matter is to know Him personally, not, “about Him”, but to personally ”know Him” and His ways. I Corinthians 3:10 says …”I have laid the foundation….But let each one take heed how he builds on it.”  

Like any relationship, in order to know someone you must spend time with them, talking to them, getting to know what they think and how they feel about things. You must dig deep into the person of God….Who He is, what He thinks, what He is like, what His ways are, what His personality is like, and what He thinks and feels about you.  The purpose of building on that foundation which He has laid for us, is so that our pursuing Him will cause us to understand Him in the light that He gives us. Knowing God is the greatest and most privileged pursuit that human beings can attain to. In fact, we were created and placed on this earth in order to know God and have fellowship with Him. It is only when man does things his way, that chaos and disorder will run rapid in their lives and the world in which they live.  The more time we spend building our foundation correctly, the more likely the things we build on it will not crumble or fall. But will endure and produce in us the right stuff that we will need to live and reflect our faith and Whom we belong.  

Sadly, I have found, that for the most part, Christians that regularly attends church are never taught how on a personal level, to develop depth in their foundation with God, thus staying in an infant-like stage of their spiritual growth. Most foundational teachings involve lessons on how to be a good Christian, how to witness, how to observe the ordinances of the faith, how to be a faithful church member, and understanding the doctrines that their church or denomination believe to be relevant and needed. All of these are actually very important subjects to learn about and follow. However, each of these are pursuits of knowledge and must be built on top of the foundation that God has laid for them. You might look at that foundation as a personal encounter with God, where He has taught you personal things about Himself that enable you to understand why He ask of you all the things that He does. If first you can understand why God thinks and acts the way He does, then naturally, you will understand why His expectations of you are what they are.  Jesus said it best in Luke 6:46-49  But why do you call Me 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do the things which I say? Whoever comes to Me, and hears My sayings and does them, I will show you whom he is like: He is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently against that house, and could not shake it, for it was founded on the rock. But he who heard and did nothing is like a man who built a house on the earth without a foundation, against which the stream beat vehemently; and immediately it fell. And the ruin of that house was great.” Notice that Jesus states, whoever comes to Him. In John 5:40 He says, “but you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life.”

People approach God for many different reasons with many different motives. The promise of God only applies to the ones who will come after Him. To understand God more clearly, we must first let Him lay the foundation in us; that only He can do, providing the tools in His Word, which will help us to discover Him and develop a strong relationship and bond with him as we continue to pursue Him.  While coming to God through Christ does not preclude us from experiencing pain, trouble and life storms. It does allow us a stronger foundation to dig in to when those times of trouble do come. God never intended for us to replace or think of Him as a Religion. He never intended for us to follow a preacher, teacher or person as did some Christians in Corinth were doing, only to find that it is Christ that we should follow. We are never to be caught up in the traditions of church sacraments, if those are the things that we do for the sake of religion and keeps us from having a personal relationship with God. Those things are only a shadow of Who He is. We are all given the same right and freedom to know and pursue Him as a child would get to know their parent.  It is however up to us to make the effort. 2 Timothy 2:19 says, “Nevertheless the solid foundation of God stands, having this seal: "The Lord knows those who are His," ….the only spiritual thing we should seek after or pursue, is to receive and maintain a personal relationship with God by means of the doorway that He Himself has provided. As we get to know Him on a personal level, everything else just falls into place. We then will begin to build on that foundation; and all the other things about God will be revealed to us as our spiritual appetite hungers for. Get to know Him today sweet friend, He is waiting for you to meet Him!

Loving on you today,

Bren

THE RELATIONSHIP OF LONELINESS

There are moments into every life when the world seems to pass us by and we are left to eat the bread of loneliness. The rich and the poor, the strong and the weak, the palace dweller and the shack dweller, all have at some point felt the piercing pang that comes from being unnoticed, unneeded and even unwanted. Perhaps that pain is more poignant when we realize that our friends have found us to be expendable at times. That while they march along, some of us sit behind a closed door crying out, wishing that someone would notice us and understand where we are.

There are times in our lives that no cry can find the solace and strength needed to endure a thing, without some kind of friendship or companion to help bare what we must bear, in order to get to the other side of it. Upon asking his friends in the garden one evening to stay awake and pray with him, Jesus’ disciples fell asleep. Why? Because they did not feel what Jesus was feeling at the time. They did not have an urgency in their heart to pray, because they had not been sipping from the cup of loneliness that Jesus had been sipping from. So it was easy for them to fall asleep, when their conscience had not been bothered, nor burdened. Believe me, Jesus understood the loneliness of barren relationships that are great on the surface, but when trial and storms come, many will disappear into the horizon. For Him to be sympathetic to us when we are lonely, He had to experience His own brokenness …alone!

For the child of God, there does not have to be long bouts of sadness and loneliness. For we are freed from those emotions through the power of the redeeming cross. What we must do however, is learn how to manage our sufferings in the shadow of the cross. Sheltered under the protection by the power that is ours, for not just claiming it, but by running to it. That shelter we must learn, is the Rock of Ages, and we must learn to hide in the clefts of that rock.

Perhaps few people know better what it means to stand within the shelter of a rock, than those that defended the Island of Malta against the Germans in 1941. From the safe haven of their man made rock-built cavern, the men watched day after day unharmed as confusion and chaos swirled around them. Outside the rock cover, death would surely consume them, yet inside under the rock, no danger could befall them. They put their trust in the rock that sheltered them from harm’s way.

The rock to which the Christian flees when all around them is sinking sand, is the shelter of God’s reassuring voice that says, “Fear not, for I am with thee always, be not dismayed, for I am thy God. I will strengthen thee, yea I will help thee and uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.” (Isaiah 41:10) Jesus said in John 10:9, that if any man be in Him, He would go in and out and find pasture. You and I must find that pasture for ourselves. We must find out for ourselves and learn to walk in the truth of what He shows us and not be tossed around by doubt and worry. Then can we sing with the Saints of old, Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in Thee!

Loneliness comes in different forms and through many avenues. But no matter the method or reason that it comes, we have a higher ground to run to and there we can find the comfort, love and support that we need to sustain us and remind us of our worth, value and finally, motivate us to not settle for loneliness and pity. But to remind us of who we are in Christ and remember…. that alone is enough!

Loving on you today,

Bren